Falling into Place(10)

I almost put my hands on her shoulders—they’re thin, sharp, just like Liz’s—and tell her It’s okay, it’s not your fault, she was already breaking, but I don’t.

It’s hard to lie when the truth is dying in front of you.

Monica runs her fingers across Liz’s raggedly chewed nails, and she still doesn’t see. I forget the lies and try to whisper the truth in her ear, but she can’t hear me over the beeping machines.


A nurse watches us. She gives us ten minutes, fifteen, before she breaks away from the clump of monitors in the center of the room. Her scrubs are covered in pink dinosaurs, and they look out of place among the grays and blues—she looks out of place, a little too hopeful, a little too brave.

She is very gentle when she touches Monica’s arm and says, “I’m sorry. I can’t let you stay any longer, ma’am. The risk of infection is too high.”

It’s kind and very blunt, and I like that she doesn’t hide behind bullshit. She doesn’t say Liz is strong, because she isn’t right now.

Monica almost refuses. But she takes a long look at the stranger who is her daughter, and after a moment, she nods. She reaches out for her, but at the last instant, her fingers tremble and she pulls back.





SNAPSHOT: BAND-AID


Liz is sitting on the kitchen counter, a Band-Aid on her knee. Monica is trying to hug her, and Liz is pushing her away.

A little while before, she had been jumping rope by herself in the driveway, humming the theme song from Arthur. The world had started coming into focus by then, the sky had grown flat and distant, and I was starting to fade.

She had jumped three hundred and sixty-eight times when a bug flew into her mouth. She screeched and tripped, her legs tangling in the rope. She fell and tore her knee open, and when I tried to help her, she didn’t notice.

She had gone inside, trying very hard not to cry. Monica sat her on the kitchen counter and patched her up, all the while telling her how brave she was. It went to Liz’s head a bit, so when Monica tried to hug her, Liz pushed her away and said, “I’m fine, Mom! It’s nothing. Just leave me alone.”

Monica’s heart broke a little bit, and she never tried to hug Liz again.

Later, I would try to push them back together, but neither would budge.

There were little gestures after that—a pat on the back on Christmas, a squeeze across the shoulders on the first day of school. But Monica was too afraid of being overbearing, and Liz tried too hard to be strong.

So there were no more hugs in the Emerson household.



CHAPTER NINE


Voicemail


Monica doesn’t go back to the waiting room. She finds a chair and drags it to the hallway outside the ICU, and her arms are shaking so badly that she drops it twice. She positions it beside the doors, reaches into her purse, and pulls out her phone.

She makes three calls. The first, to her boss, to let him know that her daughter is in the hospital and she will not be going to work, or to Bangkok that weekend. The second, to the airline, to cancel her reservation.

And the third, to her daughter, so she can hear her voice on the recorded message.

“Hey. It’s Liz. I obviously can’t answer at the moment, so leave a message.”

Monica calls again and again, and she doesn’t know why, but each time she expects a different ending.



CHAPTER TEN


Popularity: An Analysis


Kennie half trips off the bus, stretching her sleeping leg as she wobbles across the parking lot. Out of habit, Kennie looks around for Liz’s Mercedes, or Julia’s Ford Falcon (which, despite Liz’s endless teasing and the fact that Julia has access to both of her father’s Porsches, she refuses to get rid of). They always went to each other’s meets games and competitions—she had even sat through their soccer tournaments, every single one, though she never knew when to cheer. But then she remembers that Julia is buried alive in homework and Liz apparently had something else to do today, so no one is here to watch her dance.

That’s the thing about Kennie—she has always liked being watched. Whereas Julia dislikes attention and Liz hardly seems to notice it, Kennie needs it like certain other people need cocaine. She’s the kind of person who says things that make jaws drop. She likes it when people stare and talk and judge, because it means that someone is always thinking about her. It’s what popularity means to her, and Kennie, frankly, has always been popular.