Falling into Place(16)

If another teacher had given such a speech, the class would have mutinied. A lot of things can be said about the student body of Meridian High school, but no one can accuse them of disloyalty. Liz is theirs, and they would have defended her to the death—or to a detention, whichever came first—if they needed to.

But Ms. Greenberg has long been loved and hated for her bluntness, and there’s something in her gaze that makes them all feel terribly ashamed.

There, in that classroom, I feel the tides turning. The period ends, and everyone rushes off. The rumors shift. All gossip, they say. Liz isn’t on her deathbed. Liz is no longer dead, but recovering. After all, she is Liz Emerson.


Just before third period, Julia comes back to school. For the first time in her life, she is a mess.

Having spent the night at the hospital, she wears the same sweatpants and shirt with the hole in the armpit. There are shadows beneath her eyes, and she is so pale that her skin is almost green.

From the moment she steps foot in the building, she is surrounded by sympathizers, but she hardly notices.

Julia has had her share of tragedy over the years, but they were tragedies contained within her world—her parents’ divorce, her brittle and strained relationship with her father, the death of her gerbil. Liz’s accident, however, is a terrifyingly immense thing, and try as she might, Julia cannot keep it within herself.

She left the hospital in a vain attempt to escape it. She came to school, and it found her here too.


Next, chemistry.

Liz was supposed to take it during her sophomore year, but due to scheduling conflicts and an extraordinarily unhelpful counselor, she is stuck taking both chemistry and physics during her junior year.

It’s really a pity, because Liz had been looking forward to chemistry since the brief unit in sixth grade. It was the colors that had initially attracted her, the vibrant blue of the Bunsen flame and the dusty red of copper and the deep violet of hydrates. It was the logic of balanced equations, the certainty that when element A mixed with element B, compound C would appear. It was like predicting the future; it was like magic. Most of all, it was being: of having to be so careful with the hydrochloric acid, of accidentally burning herself while lighting a match, of discovering.

Only, by the time she finally got to take the class, school had already stopped mattering.

Today there is no lab. There is no lecture. The class sits silently, in a darkness lit only by the episode of MythBusters on the screen.

They stare at the empty chair. They remember the first day of fifth grade, when Liz arrived and disrupted Meridian as only she could. Liz Emerson, they think, has always been a force to be noticed.

They are wrong.



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


Before


On the first day of preschool, Liz dug her fingers into the leg of her father’s jeans and held on tight as the overly sunny teacher tried to drag her into the overly sunny classroom.

Her dad leaned down and told her to make a wish.

Tearfully, Liz asked her daddy to stay with her.

He promised to never leave.


On the first day of school after her father’s funeral, Monica dropped Liz off for the first time. Monica didn’t try to hug her, and Liz didn’t ask her to stay.


On the first day of fifth grade at Meridian Elementary School, Liz jumped off the swings during recess and headed for the kickball diamond. She kicked a ball into Jimmy Travis’s face, gave him a bloody nose, won her team the game, and sat down at the popular table during lunch without being asked. She never left.


On the first day of middle school, Liz walked into the building with Kennie at her side. At recess that day, Jimmy Travis told her that she was pretty, and she kissed him beside the swings.

They were the first official couple.

She dumped him two weeks later when he refused to let her copy his math homework, and from then on, Liz Emerson was rarely without a boyfriend.

She didn’t really like any of them.


On the day after eighth-grade graduation, she went to her first party and kissed an older boy named Zack Hayes, who he had given her a red Solo cup. She tried the beer and hated it, but she drained the cup anyway and he refilled it for her. It made the world dissolve and scatter around her like petals, and it wasn’t unpleasant. When she wobbled and fell, he caught her and carried her into a bedroom but didn’t leave, and she couldn’t find the words to ask him to.

Julia found them later and pulled her away, but Liz wasn’t sure what had happened before she got there.