“What happened?” I said.
“We hit a tree,” Rebecca said. “You don’t remember?”
I shook my head.
Good sign. Probably not paralyzed.
Jason turned to me. We were all still in the car. His eyes were wide like a frightened puppy’s. But he and Rebecca both seemed untouched.
“Oh my god,” he said. “Are you okay?”
“I think so.”
I did a quick check to make sure that was true. I was able to look around without any trouble, and none of my body parts seemed to have been displaced. In fact, I couldn’t find more than a few minor wounds anywhere. There were cuts on my hand and a little blood on my temple. But my worst injury was a swollen finger, probably broken but maybe just sprained.
I was okay. Completely, astonishingly, okay. In retrospect, it was nothing short of a miracle that I got through that accident with a few surface wounds and a haircut. At times it feels like I was given nine lives, like a cat. I should have counted my blessings and vowed to stay out of trouble. But I wasn’t exactly in a blessing-counting frame of mind back then. I was moody, hormonal, and angry at the world, and I’d been that way for years. I couldn’t waste my time feeling all lucky to be alive when there were pressing questions on my mind.
Like, How am I going to spin this so my parents don’t freak out?
And, Is this going to keep me from meeting up with Nick?
I wondered how much of the accident he’d heard. I picked up my phone from the floor, but there was no longer a voice on the other line.
“Thank God,” Jason said.
Amazingly, he was able to start the car. We made it a few blocks in the totaled vehicle before it died.
At least we were away from the scene. It didn’t seem like anyone had bothered to call the cops. We walked a little farther down the street while Jason called around until he found someone sober enough to come pick us up.
“Are you sure you’re feeling all right?” Jason said.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
Jason’s friend arrived quickly and we all piled into his car. When he asked where I was going, I gave him Melanie’s address.
“Don’t you want to go home?” Rebecca said.
I shook my head. In truth, I was hoping I might be able to keep the accident a secret from my parents. Since I was alive and relatively unhurt, I didn’t see any reason for them to be involved. In my naive fifteen-year-old mind, I thought this would keep me out of trouble. Melanie wasn’t back yet, but I knew where to find the spare key. I let myself in and tiptoed up the stairs. I shut myself in her room and immediately called Nick. I had three missed calls from him, and his voice was frantic when he answered.
“Elizabeth! Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Jason crashed into a tree.”
“I heard. We drove around looking for you guys.”
“Really?” My heart skipped a beat.
“Crazy night,” Nick said. “You sure you’re all right?”
After we hung up I decided to check. I walked into the bathroom, suddenly worried I was missing an eyeball or bleeding from my stomach. Maybe I was dying and had been too shocked to realize it. My face looked totally normal, though. The damage amounted to a single scratch etched across my forehead, right at my hairline. No missing limbs, no gaping wounds.
I ran my hand through my hair. Small pieces of glass rained down almost delicately, but there was hardly any blood. Just hair and glass and whatever was going on with my swollen finger.
I washed my face and changed into some pajamas, even though I’d promised Nick I’d stay awake in case I had a concussion. When Melanie got home she offered to stay up with me. She was too drunk to keep her eyes open and passed out. It was a little before dawn when I decided to rest for just a few minutes. I made a bed for myself on the couch and realized just how exhausted I was.
Fuck it. If I fall asleep, I fall asleep. Whatever happens next is out of my control.
It felt almost like I was daring the universe, playing a game of chicken with God. I simultaneously had a death wish and believed I was invincible. No matter how recklessly I behaved, things always seemed to work out fine.
I woke up in the morning feeling shockingly normal. It seemed I didn’t have a concussion after all. It dawned on me that I might actually get out of this situation without having to tell my parents. I wasn’t brain-dead and I wasn’t bleeding. The only hitch was my swollen finger, which had doubled in size overnight. I knew I needed to go to the hospital, but that meant dealing with my father, a strict disciplinarian. Melanie and I brainstormed on the drive over until we’d settled on a lie.
“I slipped last night,” I said.
My dad looked at me. “At the football game?”
“Yeah. In the bleachers while I was trying to get back to my seat.”
“Did you get hurt anywhere else?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Just my finger.”
As I said it out loud, I realized how utterly sane I sounded. My lie was perfectly reasonable, much more so than the truth. My father didn’t even think twice.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll have the nurse come in with a splint.”
“Thanks.” I smiled. “Hey, Dad, is it okay if I stay at Melanie’s again tonight?” There was a house party that night and I wanted to go.
I was relieved that my dad didn’t object, because I figured Nick would be at the party, and I hoped my brush with death might have made him realize how much he didn’t want to lose me. I waited for him to show up, but he never did.
Jason wasn’t there either. I figured he was probably grounded. It’s a lot harder to hide a totaled car than a swollen finger. My father, however, did make an appearance at the party. He showed up, red-faced and screaming, to drag me away.
My small town in South Carolina was close-knit and news got around. Which is a nice way of saying my town fucking loved to gossip. I didn’t tell my parents about the accident, and neither did anyone who had actually been in the woods that night. None of us wanted to get in trouble. It was Jason’s girlfriend’s mom, of all people, who ruined everything. Not that I blame her. She was a mom and was probably genuinely concerned. But her daughter Mary had ulterior motives.
To explain: Mary and Jason had an on-and-off relationship. She suspected he was hooking up with someone else. When she heard about the accident, she figured there was a good chance the girl in question was also in the car. Mary’s instincts were correct. Jason had been cheating. It just wasn’t with me.
“Elizabeth!” he yelled.
I heard my dad’s voice and froze. He stormed into the living room, eyes blazing. He grabbed my arm and marched me through the house. He was too angry to actually look at me, but the rest of the party made up for that. All eyes were on me as we walked out the front door and headed for the car.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Elizabeth?” My father slammed the car door shut. “You’re unbelievable. Do you know that?”
“No. I don’t.” It was a stupid response. But what else was I supposed to say?
“Of course not. Because you only ever think about yourself.”
Oh yeah? How would you even know? It’s not like you’re ever home.
“I’m taking you to the hospital and ordering a drug test.”
I felt tears welling up in my eyes. This kind of interaction was becoming more and more normal for me and my father. There was a time when the two of us really got along, but it had started to feel like nothing I did would ever be good enough.
My dad and I came from two very different places. He was raised in a military family without much money. His mother worked as a schoolteacher while raising four boys. All four of them joined the armed forces at eighteen before attending college on the GI Bill. My father went immediately from the Navy to med school where he trained as a surgeon.
He knew nothing but hard work and discipline. In his world, teenagers had jobs and responsibilities. They didn’t get into car acciden
ts on the weekends because there was no time for late-night parties.
It wasn’t like I was a slacker, not by any means. I went to swim practice in the mornings and soccer practice in the afternoons. On the weekends, I traveled around the South for tournaments and meets for the premier teams I joined in addition to my school teams. And when I wasn’t playing sports I was studying with the aid of tutors to ensure I’d get into a good college.
These things were luxuries, undoubtedly. I can see now how lucky I was that my family could afford to send me to tournaments and hire SAT tutors. But to my father, whose hard work afforded me my lifestyle, it meant there was little room for error. Any time I misbehaved, my dad saw it as a sign that I was ungrateful.
On top of that, he seemed to think I was some kind of drug addict and alcoholic. He drove us to the hospital and parked in his designated spot by the entrance. When we got inside, I stormed off to pee in a cup. I was pretty sure I was in the clear. All I’d had to drink was a little Bud Light, and it had been months since I’d smoked any weed. But I knew nothing about drug tests and was suddenly paranoid.
How long does marijuana stay in your bloodstream? A week? A year? Forever?
Before I left the stall, I made a last-second decision to add a little toilet water to the sample. I figured if there was any marijuana still in my system, this would dilute it. Really, I was a fairly innocent kid, all things considered. But no one, least of all my parents, wanted to believe it.
We waited in the lobby, both of us silent. I could feel the wall of anger thickening between us and I started to cry. My dad refused to show any sympathy, so I went outside to call my mom.
“He didn’t even ask if I was okay! I could have died.”
“Calm down,” my mom said. “I can barely understand you.”
“All he cares about is a stupid drug test.”
“Well, he has his reasons. You did get in a car accident and lie about it.”
“Why does he hate me so much?”
“Elizabeth, your father doesn’t hate you.”
Deep down I knew she was right. My father didn’t hate me; he was just fed up with my behavior. But it was so hard to feel any love through my fog of misery. Some days I woke up convinced there was no point in trying because my life didn’t matter. Other times I felt things so intensely I thought I might explode. Emotions rolled through me like a storm, a series of electric charges outside of my control. I often felt white-hot rage course through me like a sudden burst of lightning. I don’t know where it came from, and I can’t remember when it started. Maybe it had always been there, anger and fear, part of me from the start.
I didn’t need a drug test. Or an MRI. I needed someone to tell me what was wrong with me, as a person.
In retrospect, what I needed was someone to diagnose my depression.
My dad came storming out of the hospital, looking madder than ever. He unlocked the car without saying a word and remained silent the entire drive home. I knew that meant I’d passed the test. It also meant that instead of being relieved his daughter wasn’t a drug addict, my father was furious because he’d been wrong.
I jumped out of the car as soon as we got home and headed straight to my room. I was angry and overwhelmed, and I just wanted to shut out the world. But I heard the front door slam and the beginnings of an argument brewing between my parents. On top of that, my brother was yelling at me from the hallway. Clearly, the gossip had reached him and he was convinced I was a slut.
“Is there anyone in my grade you haven’t blown?”
Shut up. I’m not a whore. I’m not a drug addict. But hey, the rumors say I am. So maybe I should just accept it and lean in.
Chapter 2
I WAS FOURTEEN when my next-door neighbor shot himself to death on a quiet summer afternoon. One pull of the trigger and it was all over for Dr. Winston. I imagined his body in his favorite armchair while his wife of five decades made lunch in the other room. Before that day I don’t think I’d spent one single second wondering what my neighbor’s life might be like. But in the aftermath, I couldn’t stop.
For years, Dr. Winston was just the old man on the other side of the fence. He was kinder than Mrs. Winston, in my opinion, but it wasn’t like I knew either of them very well. They mostly kept to themselves like a typical elderly couple. I usually saw him in the garden, either reading the newspaper or tending to his plants. He was nice to me the summer I became obsessed with gymnastics. When my heroes were Dominique Dawes, Kerri Strug, Dominique Moceanu, and the rest of the seven women who won Olympic gold for the United States.
Our properties were separated by a brick wall, low enough that I could use it as a balance beam. I spent hours out there jumping back and forth, trying out new tricks until I learned to stick the landing. My mother came out a few times to chide me for disturbing the neighbors, but Dr. Winston always sent her away.
“Doesn’t bother me,” he said before smiling at me. “Nine-point-six on that last routine.”
I had long given up backyard gymnastics by the time that summer rolled around. I was no longer a kid, I was a moody teenager. At my lowest moments, I suspected I felt something akin to the darkness Dr. Winston must have been grappling with. He was the first person I knew who committed suicide. He confirmed what I sometimes secretly suspected: that maybe it’s easier to just give up. How many times had he thought about it before he pulled the trigger?
Most of my life, I’ve had a morbid side I’ve managed to keep hidden under soccer uniforms and perfectly selected outfits. Outwardly, I was the last person you would expect to see at a cemetery in the middle of the night, but that was exactly where I sometimes went. There was a graveyard near our house that I liked to visit after everyone else had fallen asleep.
It was a strange kind of bravery, especially for a child who hated the night. It was a five-minute trip from my house to the cemetery. I always ran the whole way, feeling in control and alert. Once I got to the graveyard, I felt okay, almost understood. I looked at all the markers and wondered about the people buried beneath the ground. Had their lives been happy? Had they welcomed death like Dr. Winston? Or were they somewhere in between, constantly wondering if it was all worth it, like me?
My answer to that question could change from moment to moment. I wished I could ask Dr. Winston how he knew it was time.
So I decided to hold a séance the week after he died.
Which really wasn’t very Christian of me at all. I was aware that the Bible explicitly warns against communicating with the dead. I’m sure my mom had entire verses about the evils of necromancy committed to memory. She was a woman who read the Bible every night before bed with a yellow highlighter in hand. Surely, she’d be horrified to know I was planning to hold a séance in her own backyard; and that, honestly, was part of the appeal.
I scheduled the séance for Friday at midnight. My friends Stacey and Caitlyn were spending the night and they were both game for a little black magic. Not that we actually knew what we were doing, of course. Our collective knowledge of how to hold a séance started and ended with The Craft.
“Do you have a Ouija board?” Stacey asked.
“No. Do we need one?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Probably not.”
Short one Hasbro-branded divination tool, I decided we should find something that had belonged to Dr. Winston. Some object he had touched or a talisman to connect his spirit to the physical world. Without breaking and entering (and giving Mrs. Winston a heart attack), our options were limited to whatever we could find in the yard. I figured a few flowers from his garden would do just fine.
Once I was sure my parents were asleep I snuck over the fence. My friends kept watch while I swiped a few gardenias. I did know how crucial candles were for setting a séance-y atmosphere, and I’d taken a few from my mother’s closet that afternoon. I don’t remember seeing any Yankee Candles in The Craft, but Dr. Winston probably wasn’t all that picky.
And who doesn’t love
the smell of pumpkin spice?
My friends and I took our séance stuff to a corner of the yard and sat down in a circle. We held hands and closed our eyes, so better to summon the spirits. I called for a moment of silence to channel the gods before I began to hum.
“Hmmmmm. Hmmmm. Dr. Winston, we are calling you back from the dead.
“Hmmmmmmmm. Can you hear me, Dr. Winston? We have these flowers from your garden.
“We’re outside your house and we’d like to talk to you.”
Stacey and Caitlyn added their own humming. “Hmmmmmmmm. Hmmmmmm.”
“Dr. Winston, we wish you no harm. I’m sorry there’s no Ouija board. I just want to know why you killed yourself.”
“Hmmmmmmmm. Hmmmmmmm.
“If you’re here right now, show us a sign.”
Signwise, I was thinking maybe an object might topple over unexpectedly or the candles would go out. I would have taken a slight breeze as proof positive that the séance had worked, but the spirit of Dr. Winston wasn’t fucking around. The words had hardly left my mouth before everything suddenly went dark. All the lights in my house, all the lights in his house. I jumped up and ran around so I could see the rest of the street. Pitch-black. Dr. Winston had shut down the power on the entire block.
“Holy shit,” Caitlyn said.
“Oh my god.” Stacey held her hand over her mouth. “Did that actually just happen?”
All three of us started screaming and laughing at the same time. We ran into my house and booked it straight up to my room. I locked the door and Stacey made sure the windows were shut. We kept laughing for a long time. Yes, that actually happened. For my friends, that was the end of it. Séance achieved. I began to regret running off like that. I might have played it off like a game, but my intentions had always been serious. If Dr. Winston really was communicating from the great beyond, what was he trying to say by blacking out the whole neighborhood?
Was he answering my question? Was it a warning, that it wasn’t my time?
Maybe Dr. Winston knew what was in store for me over the next few years. Perhaps he was trying to scare me off. To shake me loose from having such an ambivalent relationship with death. Or maybe it was a much simpler message.
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