Wake

by Abria Mattina

She wraps an arm around my back. “I know. I said I knew you didn’t have it in you.”

  “You make it sound like a weakness.”

  Willa chuckles darkly. “I think you’ve got more optimism in you than you let on. You wouldn’t give up on something unless it was really and truly hopeless—but that doesn’t mean you didn’t think about it.”

  “Don’t pretend you know me.”

  She smiles to herself like that’s funny. “I don’t know why Paige thinks you’re hard to read. Everything you think shows in your hands.” She pokes my third knuckle. “Must be because you’re a musician.”

  “You talk to Paige about me?”

  “She brought it up.”

  “Did you encourage her?”

  “She thinks you’re cute.”

  “Really?”

  “Actually, she thinks you’re a creep.” Willa winks. I shrug her arm off and she lets go without protest.

  “I can’t wait to get out of here.”

  “Of this house, or this town?”

  “Out of Smiths Falls.”

  “Where would you go?”

  I shrug. “Probably back to Ottawa.”

  “It’d never be the same. That’s why in books ‘you can’t go home again.’ I did and I hate it.”

  “So go back to St. John’s.”

  “That wouldn’t solve the problem either. No matter where you are, you have to live with yourself.”

  “But you fit in there.”

  “No, I didn’t. And even if I did, I don’t like to repeat experiences.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “You’re a little desperate.”

  I hate that she says shit like that, especially because she’s right. “Wouldn’t you be?”

  “I don’t know.” She knits her fingers together over her knees. “You don’t really want to go back to Ottawa, though. You just want to go back to a time when things were easier, and that time was in Ottawa. It’s misplaced desire.”

  “Thank you, Freud.”

  She puts on a fake Austrian accent and asks if I’ve screwed my mother yet. This girl can make me laugh when I feel like doing anything but.

  “What was your sister’s name?”

  “Thomasina. We called her Tessa.”

  “That’s a charitable nickname.”

  “It’s a family tradition, giving the girls boys’ names.”

  “Willa is pretty feminine.”

  “It’s Wilhelmina Joanne.”

  I can’t help it, I laugh. Willa elbows me lightly but lets my rudeness slide. “Let’s go back and finish our tea.”

  “I think I should probably go home. Eric might need his car tonight.”

  We head downstairs and exchange trite goodbyes in the foyer. I’m just about to step out when she tells me to wait and heads down the hall to the laundry room. We almost forgot about my shirt.

  Willa gives me my laundered shirt and says I can give Frank’s back to her at school on Monday. I thank her and say goodbye, but just as I turn to leave I think better of it and stop. I lean in to whisper in her ear, “It is weird and disgusting.” I’m halfway across the driveway to my car when she calls after me with a sultry smile in her voice, “You’re full of it, Harper.”

  *

  I crawl across the bed and starfish with my head in the pillow. Once home and nested, something inside me relaxes and tears well without intention or effort. I just lay there quietly while my eyes water and my throat aches.

  Elise slips in quietly and lies down with me. She wraps her little arms around me and pillows her head between my shoulder blades. “I hate it that she hurts you,” she murmurs.

  “She doesn’t, Lise; I’m already hurting.”

  She whimpers like a wounded puppy and squeezes me harder.

  “I’m sorry—about that guy.”

  “It’s okay. It takes too much energy to be mad at you. I’ve got better things to do.”

  “I screwed up.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Lise.”

  “Do you not want me to forgive you?”

  “Can you please just be mad at me?”

  “Would it make you feel better?”

  “Yes.”

  “I love you,” she says. “Strange brother o’mine.” She kisses my shoulder and gets off the bed. “I’m not mad, but I will make you a milkshake.”

  Elise makes the milkshakes extra thick. We need spoons to eat them, slouched and comfy on the couch.

  “Feeling better now?”

  I nod and take another bite of peach milkshake. There’s a bitter aftertaste to this one; she’s used too much sugar product. I don’t tell her that, though, because it might diminish the gesture.

  “What happened?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Did she say something?”

  “Yeah, but I started it.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Nah.”

  Elise pouts. When that trick fails to work its magic she makes her lip tremble and whimpers.

  “I think you might have been right about her.”

  Elise immediately snaps out of her fake whimpering. “What?”

  “I might like her.”

  “I thought so. You’re always going over to her house and when Mom asks about your day you talk about lunch and Social Studies and—”

  “Will you shut up?”

  “I made you a milkshake—share your drama with me, damn it.” Her petty demand is actually kind of amusing.

  “Fine. You know how when you’re talking to Willa she can make you feel like you’re the only person in the world?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She can turn that around and make you feel very small and insignificant, too.”

  “Is that what happened tonight?”

  I turn a bite of milkshake over in my mouth while I think about my answer. “Not entirely.” Willa did build me back up again after she tore me down, and I incurred her wrath entirely through my own fault.

  Elise impatiently prompts me to continue with a circular hand gesture.

  “It feels like she can see right through people.”

  “And you like her?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why?”

  Because I haven’t been seen the way she sees me for so long.

  “Why do you like that guy you’ve been chasing?” It’s the perfect subject change. Elise goes all dreamy and slouches down on the couch like her bones have turned to goo.

  “Because, because, because,” she murmurs like that’s a complete answer, with a little ‘mmh!’ of pleasure on the end.

  “Do you really think he’s interested in you?” The question isn’t an insult this time. I’m genuinely wondering.

  Elise makes a face. “No. He has a girlfriend.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  She gives me a look that reads Who do you know?

  “Point taken.”

  Elise huffs. “Her name’s Nina. And of course she just has to be freaking gorgeous.”

  “Is she that girl who ran for class president?”

  “No, you’re thinking of Mina Soto. Nina looks nothing like her. She’s got long dark hair and she’s curvy and she’s from Argentina so she has that stupid sexy Latin thing going for her.” Elise stabs her milkshake with her spoon.

  “I guess they’re pretty serious?”

  Elise only groans and buries her spiky little head in the crook of my shoulder. Poor kid. I guess it was inevitable that eventually she’d learn how bad unrequited love sucks. I’m sorry to say it, but I’m actually kind of glad that she feels it now, before anything happened with that guy, than if she had been allowed to become attached and lose her adorable innocence.

  “You’re better off without him, Lise.” I give her a squeeze. “Think about it: if you started dating now he’d graduate in three months, and then you’d only have the summer together before he goes off to college. You’re a little young to have a long-distance relationship.”

  “If he go
es to school in Ottawa we might be able to visit on weekends.”

  Yeah, and he can cheat on her with college chicks every other day of the week.

  “I think you’re better off not touching this one. You’ll find another guy to crush on and make an ass out of yourself for.”

  “What about you and Willa?”

  “What about it?”

  “Are you going to ask her out?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” she whines.

  “Because she’s neither blind nor insane, and would therefore never date me.”

  “She’s sort of friends with you.”

  “That’s different.”

  Elise snorts like she doesn’t believe me and mutters ‘chicken’ under her breath. Her Ron Weasley poster has a date with a Sharpie.

  Sunday

  I’m making soup for brunch when Willa phones. We have to do the weekly measurements for the Soc project. I don’t think the snapdragons have undergone any big changes and would fudge the numbers under other circumstances, but Willa wants to come over, and I’m not about to say no to that.

  “I’m on my way,” she says before hanging up.

  Shit.

  I dash upstairs to shower and pretend that I didn’t sleep in till eleven o’clock.

  *

  The Social Studies work takes exactly five minutes to complete. “I brought something for you,” Willa says as we pack up our books. She sees my eager look before I can moderate my reaction and teases me, “No, it isn’t food.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because I have better things to do with my day than cook for a jerk like you and then watch you stuff your face.”

  “You feminist,” I say with affected disgust.

  Willa crams her books back into her bag and then opens the foremost pocket. “This is what I brought.” She takes out a scrapbook with a yellow cover and sunflower stickers on the corners. The date on the front is from two years ago.

  “I wanted to show you this, since we talk about her so much.” She opens the book and shows me photos mounted on the black pages. The first one is a graduation photo of a woman with thick, dark hair and delicate features. She and Willa have the same mouth.

  “That’s Tessa.”

  I’ve never lost anyone dear to me. I don’t know how to respond to the picture or how to empathize with Willa’s situation. I study the studio portrait and nod.

  “You must really miss her.” Willa’s sister looks like the kind of woman people can’t help but notice—kind of like Willa herself, even though they don’t look much alike. Willa’s hair is curly and wild, and it’s a deceptively angelic golden blonde. She’s not as delicate as Thomasina and her grey eyes give nothing away.

  Willa smiles at the picture. “I miss talking to her. She made me swear I wouldn’t mourn her.” Willa flips the page and shows me photos taken earlier, when Thomasina had long braids and Willa was just a baby on her lap. In subsequent photos, Thomasina’s long hair is gone. She’s bald and pale with dark circles under her eyes, but that spark is still in them. She’s still trying to tempt people to her, sick as she is.

  “What was she like?”

  “Fiery,” Willa says with a smile. “My mom is a lot like her, but more frenetic. Tessa was sort of disappointed that I was always so serious. When she got sick she sort of got determined to make me live a little more—she thought wildness was healthy.” Willa sighs with pleasurable reminiscence. “We had such great talks, that last year.” She looks at me sideways with a smile like Thomasina’s.

  “You know,” she says, “she told me a lot about the stuff I wasn’t allowed to know as a kid. We talked about love and money and sex, and how it’s so hard to have all three in balance.” Willa takes my hand almost unconsciously and strokes the back of my palm with her thumb.

  “She told me to sleep around,” Willa says with a laugh. “She told me to figure out what I want. Tessa thought that waiting for marriage was the worst idea ever.”

  “You talked about all this with your sister?”

  “Yeah. It was nice. There was nothing that was off limits. You know how when you’re fifteen, you think of yourself as grown up and it’s irritating how everyone still talks to you like you’re a kid? She made me feel like I was grown up and worthy of her confidence.” Willa flips the page and shows me another photo. This one is of a young man, standing by a fence and smiling nervously.

  “Is that her boyfriend?”

  “No. That was the guy she had the best sex of her life with—when she was a virgin.”

  “If she was still a virgin then it isn’t sex.”

  “It’s a little more complex than that. To the day she died he remained her best lay—and they only hooked up once, and didn’t do what we think of as ‘sex.’ He was our next door neighbor.”

  “So if he was such a good lay why didn’t she date him?”

  “He moved after high school. Last I heard he was doing a tour in Afghanistan.” Willa shrugs at this scanty knowledge. “He and Tessa wrote a few times.”

  “Did you save the letters, too?”

  Willa nods. “She left me all kinds of stuff like that. I haven’t worked up the guts to read them yet.”

  We go through the rest of Thomasina’s pictures. Willa is just a little girl in some. She was a pretty cute kid. In the course of our perusal Willa informs me that I’m the only friend to whom she’s ever shown this book.

  This is an extremely personal offering she’s making. Thomasina was undoubtedly important in her life, and she trusts me enough to expose some of the happiest moments of her life as well as the subject of her deepest grief. And after what happened yesterday, I can hardly argue that she isn’t my closest friend. I’ve told her things I haven’t even told my family.

  “It’s nice that you have such good memories of her.”

  Willa smiles at the photos, but it’s a shaky expression that hints at some greater underlying emotion. “Take the good with the bad, I guess.”

  There’s plenty she’s not saying. Willa never gives a straight answer if she can help it.

  Frank: March 10 to 13

  March Break: Day One

  I hadn’t noticed it before, but Willie has a lot in common with the dog I had for a week when I was ten. It was an abused stray, skittish and vulnerable. Sometimes that dog would be as docile as a lamb, and just when I began to think there was no fight left in her, she lashed out and went for the throat. Mom made me get rid of that dog, and now she’s gotten rid of Willie.

  I booked the week of her March Break off to spend it with her. To be honest, I feel guilty about spending so little time with Willie, but after today I think it’s safe to say she doesn’t want to spend time with me. We haven’t had much to say to each other since she moved in. Willie is conscientious and tidy, just like always. She pitches in around the house and makes good food, and I’m mostly glad to have her here. But now that I see her properly, I see that I’m living with a stranger, not my little sister.

  Things are getting complicated. I don’t like her volunteering at the hospital. It gives me a bad feeling—being around places like that might remind her of Tessa, of why Willie fell off the wagon to begin with. Not that arguing with her does any good. Months of telling her to stop, and she still goes out every week to that place.

  March Break: Day Two

  Willie and I spend the morning at the sugar bush. This place seemed way more fun when we were little, and Willie keeps giving me that pained look that us kids used to give Dad when he made us do things we’d outgrown. We stay for pancakes and then head home. Willa makes maple chicken for dinner with the fresh syrup we bought. Takes her gloves off to handle the meat and I don’t remember the scar being that bad. It’s a miracle that girl has her thumb. I ask her how it feels and she says she still doesn’t grip well with her left hand. I suggest referring her to Jack in the PT department at the hospital, and Willie tells me not to bother.

  “Just leave it alone, okay?”
/>   March Break: Day Three

  After supper I get a phone call from a boy asking for Willie. I don’t want to give her the phone but she picks up the other line before I can lie to the guy about her not being home. Willie’s had enough trouble from boys; she doesn’t need another one to crash through her life. It’s only later that I realize I should have written down his number and screened his calls.

  “Who was that boy that called earlier?”

  “A serial rapist.”

  And she used to be the good child.

  March Break: Day Four

  I want to trust Willie, but she makes it hard. The boy that phoned yesterday is in my house, and he’s not just any boy—he’s Dr. Harper’s kid. Now Willie’s doing a school project with a cancer patient? He’s currently sitting in my living room drinking mint tea, and I don’t hear them talking about schoolwork, either.

  After dinner I talk to Mom and Dad about it. They agree that the situation has bad news written all over it. Talking to Willie about it is an exercise in futility.

  “I can’t get rid of him,” she says. “We’re doing a project together.”

  “It didn’t sound like schoolwork this afternoon.”

  “If I was going to murder him, I wouldn’t do it with you plainly eavesdropping in the next room, Frank.”

  She doesn’t seem to grasp that it’s my job to eavesdrop. Mom and Dad tasked me with taking care of her. I know this kid she’s hanging out with. He ended up in the back of my ambulance last fall—twice—and I know firsthand that he has some serious issues weighing on his body. Willie doesn’t need to lose anybody else. She’s dealt with enough death.

  When Willie goes to the hospital to volunteer I head over to Doug’s house. Luke is asleep on the couch when I get there but Doug dismisses his company.

  “He sleeps like a log.”

  Doug hands me a beer and steals a quiet kiss. Luke doesn’t stir in the other room.

  “Willie’s giving me trouble.”

  “Coloring on the walls?”

  Doug smirks and sips his beer. He’s teasing me. My sister hasn’t been ‘Willie’ since she was five, but having her here, being protective of her in a whole new way...the old name fits, even though I don’t dare call her that to her face.