Even If I Fall

by Abigail Johnson

  I turn to my sister, the photo of Jason and Allison in my shaking hand, but I don’t say anything. My thoughts are coming faster than I can sort them. Something happened to make him lose control that night, I know it did. I glance at the photo, at the lovesick boy and the girl who was never far from his side. If someone else was there, there’s only one person it could be.

  CHAPTER 34

  Despite having heard nothing from her for a year, it takes me only a few hours to track down Jason’s ex-girlfriend. According to her old college roommate’s Facebook page, she’s currently working nights to put herself through nursing school just outside Austin. I learned from the same former roommate that she doesn’t go by Allison or Ali anymore either, and that her famous waist-length blond hair is long gone too. Knowing all this still doesn’t prepare me for the first sight of her through the window of Rosanne’s Diner the next morning.

  Unlike Allison, Lissa’s hair barely reaches the shoulders of her cream-and-tan waitress uniform. It isn’t golden like I remembered it either; it’s duller and a little darker too, like it hasn’t seen the sun for a good long while. None of her looks like it’s seen the sun in a good long while. She isn’t as pale as Jason, but there’s a wanness to her complexion that is unsettling all the same.

  I watch her for a few minutes, trying to see the girl I knew in the waitress listlessly taking orders and delivering food. She smiles easily enough at customers and coworkers, if with less abandon than she used to.

  I can still remember the first time Jason officially brought her home to meet us during their freshman year at the University of Texas. They’d been dating only a few weeks, but it was already clear that my brother was walk-into-walls, forget-his-own-name in love with her. It was harder to tell just how much she liked him in return, but being with Allison made him happier than I’d ever seen him, and a big selling point for me was that she didn’t try to pull him away from his family like a few other girls had in the past.

  Whenever she came home to visit with him, she was often the one who invited me and Laura to come to the movies or out to eat with them, and it rarely felt like an afterthought. She would even bake with me and Mom while Jason helped Laura with her homework, and afterward seemed perfectly content to watch TV with all of us squished onto the couch rather than slip off alone with her boyfriend—even when he not-so-subtly hinted that he could use a break from his sisters.

  Allison loved spending time with us and made no attempt to hide how much she liked being a part of a family. Her own was tragically splintered. She’d been raised by a declining grandmother and had only a much older half sister to otherwise claim as family.

  I liked having Allison around and I really liked how happy she made my brother. She and I were very different people, and while we probably wouldn’t have been best friends without Jason to connect us, it wasn’t long before my brother wasn’t the only one imagining a future where she’d become my sister.

  Which was why she was the first person I’d called when Jason was arrested.

  I never heard back from the frantic message I’d left on her phone that night, or any of the others I left afterward. I know Mom called her too. Allison never contacted any of us, never came to see us. Jason had no explanation beyond that he’d broken up with her and told her to get as far away from Calvin’s death as possible. I understood his wish, but I couldn’t fathom her leaving then any more than I can fathom it now. They’d been together nearly a year, and yet she vanished without the barest of goodbyes for any of us. She deserted Jason without a backward glance when he needed her the most. I know it would have been hard and I’m not saying she wouldn’t have ended up walking away in the end, but she left while there was still hope. I don’t know that I can ever forgive her for that. That’s all I can think of now as I watch her wave and smile to her coworkers before leaving the diner.

  I push open my car door and cross the parking lot toward her. Focusing on the back of her head, I wait until I’m about ten feet away before I call out the name she tried to leave behind. “Allison.”

  She stops, almost skidding on the asphalt. When she turns there’s not so much as a trace of a smile on her face. She shed her expression along with her nametag the closer she got to her car, like it was part her uniform as much as the clothes she wore. The second our eyes meet she freezes.

  This close to her, I see more differences. The change in her goes beyond a tired girl finishing the graveyard shift at a busy diner. She looks...she looks how I feel most days. Bereft. I almost wouldn’t know her as the carefree girl who stole my brother’s heart. This girl looks like someone who’s lost something, who still suffers dearly from it. The trudge of her steps, the droop of her head. The girl in front of me looks like she’s never been truly happy a day in her life.

  “Brooke?” Allison says my name and edges toward me the way someone might when entering a dark house they fear is occupied. She’s afraid of me; so afraid her voice is shaking. Then she goes still and deathly pale, her hands jerking closed around the strap of her bag. “Is it Jason? Did he—is he—?”

  I stare at her, trying to decide if she’s afraid something happened to my brother or afraid for herself. I hate that I can’t tell. The former would soften my words while that latter would sharpen them in to spikes; it’s the uncertainty that keeps them flat. “Jason’s fine.” I almost choke on the word, as if he could ever be fine where he is, but I’m watching for her reaction too intently to get hung up on anything more than the straight facts.

  Allison’s eyes drift shut and she draws in a breath so full it strains the buttons on her uniform. Her grip loosens on her purse strap before she opens her eyes again to find me frowning at her with a lump in my throat so big, it can’t be swallowed for all I try. She doesn’t move toward me, but it feels as though a part of her is reaching out to me. “I should have called you,” she says. “I should have been there. Your mom and Laura—I didn’t mean to leave like that, but I just couldn’t stay. I—I think about Jason every day. Sometimes he’s all I can think about.” A tear slips down one of her cheeks. The sight of that one, lone tear now when she couldn’t offer any when he needed them clears my throat.

  “Then why didn’t you? I know Cal was your friend too, but you loved Jason, and you left before he confessed. You left while there was still a chance he was innocent.”

  Allison sucks in a breath. It’s an insignificant sound when compared to the early-morning traffic buzzing by on the road behind us, but I hear it. I see what I’ve never seen from anyone else after making that proclamation: guilt. I take a step toward her, feeling the strength of conviction in my voice and willing it to still my shaking hands.

  “Were you there the night Calvin was killed?”

  I could have pulled out a knife and charged her and I don’t think Allison would have reacted more strongly. She lurches backward into her car, shaking her head in denial as tears stream down her face.

  “No, I wasn’t. I wouldn’t have—I wouldn’t have—” A full, body-racking sob brings her almost to her knees.

  I move forward automatically to catch her, and she clutches at my forearms, relying so heavily on me to support her weight that I stumble and nearly go down with her.

  “I told him I should have been there.” She forces my gaze to hers and brings me much too close to the genuine anguish bleeding from her. Her eyes are so wide that I can count the bloodshot veins.

  “Told who—Jason? When did you talk to Jason?” But she can’t hear me over the words and tears choking her.

  “I should have been there. I could have stopped him, stopped everything. I should have—I should have—”

  I have to pry her hands from my arms to get away, staggering back a few steps when I finally break free. She sags against her car, the only thing keeping her from crumbling to the asphalt. “He said someone else was there. It had to be you, it had to,” I say before sucking in a choppy breath.
“Please, just tell me what happened. They were fighting but something more must have happened, something to make Jason...”

  Her mouth continues to gape open and closed, but only sobs come out.

  “He won’t tell me or anyone, but I know he’s trying to protect you. Maybe there was an accident and maybe he didn’t mean to hurt Cal and maybe—”

  “No,” she says, and it’s like a million blades slicing up my heart. “He meant to kill him, I know he did. I should have been there. I should—”

  “I don’t believe you,” I whisper in a voice just barely louder than her crying. I move farther away from Allison, and her tears seem to increase with every backward step I take. I believe her tears, I even believe her regret, but I don’t believe anything else.

  “I loved him,” she whispers, not even to me. “I did. I loved him so much. Tell him—” But she can’t get any more words out, and I wouldn’t ferry them to my brother if she could. She should have been the one telling him she loved him, she should have showed him from the beginning, but she didn’t.

  It’s only when I’m back in my own car, trying for the third time to put the key in the ignition, that I realize my own cheeks are streaked with tears.

  CHAPTER 35

  The drive home seems much longer. I replay the scene with Allison over and over and I feel just as empty when I get back to Telford. It has to have been Allison who was there, it has to. But if she won’t talk to me either... I don’t know what to do, and fortunately—or unfortunately—I don’t have the luxury or torment of time to spend trying to decide.

  I’m a few minutes late for my shift—a first in all the time I’ve been working at Polar Ice Rink, but Jeff acts like I’m strolling up after a week of dereliction. I thought I was finally starting to win him over after Maggie got hired, but now that she’s quitting he’s worse than ever. I haven’t been able to do a single thing right all day, and he’s been only too eager to point out my shortcomings.

  The sparkling clean toilet bowls aren’t as clean as they usually are.

  “I’ll clean them again.”

  The spotlessly scrubbed floors aren’t as pristine as when the tiles were laid. Ten years ago.

  “I’ll scrub them again.”

  I missed a gum wrapper stuck to one of the trash cans I emptied.

  “I’ll go back and get it.”

  I don’t give him any attitude. I don’t give anyone anything beyond flat, emotionless responses as I trudge to the next task and the next task, all the while listening to Jeff remind me I need to care about my job enough to show up for shifts on time because, in case I’ve forgotten, I’m easily replaced. This last line is delivered as I rub my aching knees after spending a good hour kneeling to scrape crusted nacho cheese product from where it’s been sun-baking on the brick wall outside. Jeff waited until the hottest part of the day to tell me about it.

  “Yes, sir,” I say. I should be snarling, at least inwardly, but I feel lost and the kind of bone-deep sorrow for my brother that makes just standing exhausting. Outside, the bricks are still warm from the sun I usually complain about beating down on my skin, the same sun that he gets to feel for only an hour a day in the prison yard. My tears feel closer to the surface than ever. Seeing my too shiny eyes, Jeff finally gives me a moment’s peace and goes back inside.

  I gather my trash and the discarded nacho cartons from the ground and throw them all in the Dumpster. I can tell I’m not alone even before I turn back. I’m expecting to see Jeff stalking back having found yet more fault with my work thus far that day.

  I’m not expecting Maggie.

  She looks half-surprised herself to be standing there. She’s not scheduled to work that day; I know because it was the first thing I checked after Jeff finished initially berating me about being two minutes late. She knows I’m working though, and even if she somehow forgot and was stopping by to grab her paycheck or something, she could have easily come and gone without me knowing.

  That’s when I notice the black, padded camera bag slung over her shoulder. She watches me take in the bag and lets confusion ripple over my face before she speaks.

  “This isn’t me forgiving you or saying I’m over what you did. I don’t and I’m not. I made a promise,” she says, shifting the bag in front of her and checking one of the compartments. “And so did you.” There’s an unmistakable challenge in the lift of her chin, like she’s daring me to back out.

  Like Jeff, she’s close enough to see my eyes, but unlike Jeff, she doesn’t let my barely checked emotions send her scurrying away. If anything, her chin lifts higher.

  Mine trembles. I did have that split-second hope that she’s here because she forgives me, or at least because she’s willing to talk. That hope crashes to the ground, barely limping. “You don’t have to film anything. I’m not auditioning.”

  “I already promised Jeff we would close so he could leave early, since I’m sure he has a date.”

  I almost want to smile at how neatly Maggie backed him into a corner. “I’m still not auditioning.”

  Maggie carefully lowers her bag to the sidewalk and shrugs at me. “Why not?”

  “You know why not,” I say, because finally, she does.

  Maggie nods to herself. “Because of your brother.”

  “Yes,” I say, kneeling in front of the brick wall again to continue scraping off dried cheese.

  “Because you can’t leave him.”

  “Because I can’t leave any of them.” Now more than ever, the thought of deserting my family is unthinkable to me. I can’t do it. I won’t do it. My hand stills. “They need me.”

  “So you get to love them but they don’t get to love you?”

  I turn toward her, frowning.

  Sighing, she squats down to join me on the ground and picks up a wire brush to start scrubbing another section of the wall. She’s attacking it with more aggression than it deserves, and I know most of that is her redirecting that emotion away from me. “Does he even know, Brooke? Did you tell him what you’re giving up because of him?”

  My scrubbing slows while hers intensifies. I didn’t tell him it was because of him.

  Huffing, she goes on. “I don’t know a thing about your brother.” She side-eyes me without stopping her scrubbing. “I looked at one story online, and one was enough.”

  My ears start to burn thinking of all the stories I read before Dad banned us all from looking at any more. Reading each one had felt like being stripped and publicly flogged. And those were just the ones that reported the facts. The ones full of wild speculation and expert analysis into the mind of a teenage murderer could cause me to break out into a cold sweat just from the memory. I’m too much of a coward to ask which one she read.

  “But,” she continues, “where is the logic? How does it help him or your family to deny yourself something that you’ve spent most of your life working toward? You’re passing up the chance to skate professionally so you can stay near your family. Are you going to do that with every choice you make for the next thirty years, give or take depending on good behavior?” The air rushes out of me like I’ve been punched, but Maggie doesn’t stop. She tosses her brush down and twists to face me. “Not so nice to think about, is it? Maybe you need to.” Finally her voice softens, but with that softness comes the pain threaded through her voice. “Look what you’ve done since he went to jail. You’ve cut yourself off from almost everything. Skating was the one thing you held on to, and now you’re letting it go too.”

  “I’m not—”

  “You are. And worse, you think you’re being noble.” She brushes one angry tear away with a slap of her hand. “You’re not. I bet your brother would hate this.”

  My heart twists in pain, but Maggie gives me no chance to say anything.

  “You say you love your brother—does he love you? Does he? Would it make him happy, seeing you out here l
ike this when we all know you belong in there on the ice?” She lowers the arm she pointed with. “Would your parents be proud of you for this? Would your sister look up to you?”

  I want to close my eyes, to block out the fierce expression on Maggie’s face. “My mom knows I have to stay here. I may want to skate, but she’s right.” I start to shake in the humid afternoon air. “Jason wouldn’t survive in that place without me and my mom visiting him. My mom would be a mess if she had to go by herself. My dad might never leave the basement, and Laura would find a cage just big enough for her and throw away the key.”

  Maggie doesn’t say any more until we finish the wall and go inside. “Brooke. Do me a favor and skate. Try.”

  I glance from her to the ice and back again. “It doesn’t matter anyway. My friend Anton, the guy who was supposed to skate with me, I told him I don’t need him anymore.” It was the first thing I did after I left Allison.

  “You never needed a partner. Audition on your own. Partner stuff is nice but you don’t need it. You know you don’t.” She sighs. “I can’t make you audition. I think you should. I think you’re wrong about the people who love you. I hope your brother is one of them. If he is, then I bet he’d love to think about you on the ice, that it would make him happy even if it meant seeing you less.”

  But she’s wrong. Nothing will make my brother happy again, me leaving least of all.

  * * *

  At home I stop midway to the kitchen when I hear Mom’s voice. Only it’s not Mom’s real voice, it’s the falsely bright one she reserves for only one person.

  “—much better. I don’t know if it was the flu or food poisoning, but she’s fine and no one else got sick.” Pause. “I’ll tell her you’re glad she’s feeling better.”

  I linger at the foot of the stairs, listening for a few moments from around the corner and wishing that the happy, carefree reality Mom relays to Jason on the phone were the true one.