Falling into Place(18)

Two days before Liz crashed her car, Julia decided that she’d had enough. Her grades were slipping, and sometimes she couldn’t breathe. Her father had just lost some money on the stock market and was still paying ridiculous amounts of alimony, and her “borrowed” drug allowance wouldn’t go unnoticed for much longer.

And Liz—well, Liz was fine, wasn’t she? She wasn’t throwing money at the RadioShack guy. She didn’t know about Julia’s Sundays, when the world was so bright it hurt her eyes, but she was in the dark, alone, trapped in a body that would never again obey her mind.

I didn’t ruin my life, Liz. You did.


But now Liz is almost gone and Julia sits choking on regret, and that’s the ironic thing—why didn’t she feel guilty earlier? Why only now, now that Liz is dying in a white room beneath fluorescent lights? Why is it that she’s remembering the way Liz’s face looked after Julia had thrown the blame at her?

She’d had strangest expression. Like something was breaking inside of her too.

Julia stares at the clock. She imagines climbing on the desk and pulling it down, rewinding the hands and praying the rest of the world would follow. She sees the bodies blurring and walking backward, until she is in the hallway again with Liz right there, begging her to stop, stop, get help.

She wonders what might have been different if she’d agreed.

The bell rings, and Julia walks out of the classroom and out the door. The one by the band room, the one no one ever watched, the one in a nook away from the cameras. She, Liz, and Kennie had done it a hundred times before.

She heads back to the hospital.


Funny things, aren’t they? People. They’re so limited.

Seeing is believing and all that. As though watching Liz will keep her alive. As though by remembering, they know her, intimately. As though they guard all of her secrets, and if by staying close, they can keep her safe.

I think it must be because they can only see so much of the world. All those boundaries—pupils to focus, lids to close, distances to cross, time to navigate.

Don’t they realize?

Thought exists everywhere.

What Julia doesn’t know is this: Liz knew. Liz had always known that the drug was tearing Julia’s life apart. She knew that it was her fault. She knew that the ziplock bags made Julia lonely, but she didn’t know how to help.

Some nights, Liz looked back and counted the bodies, all those lives she had ruined simply by existing. So she chose to stop existing.



CHAPTER NINETEEN


The Brown Couch, New Year’s Day


After Liz puked, she went down to the basement with a marker and sat on the couch.

The couch—an old brown thing, stained with memories and orange juice instead of hangovers and wine. Monica had stored it down here after she bought the white couch, and when Liz put her face in the fabric, it smelled of dust. No one came down here much. This couch was one of the last pieces of furniture from their old house, from that other life, when Liz had a father who would never leave and a mother who didn’t have any grief to bury in her work.

When she had me.

She rolled up her sleeve and wrote her three rules across her arm, so she wouldn’t forget. She underlined them, and added: HERE LIES LIZ EMERSON.





SNAPSHOT: HIDING


The house is white with blue shutters, and there is something indefinably cozy about it. To the side, Liz is behind a bush, her hands pushing the leaves apart. We have played at least a thousand games of hide-and-seek here. Liz counts to a hundred and then searches everywhere, as though she can’t hear me giggling, as though I ever hide anywhere except behind the brown couch.

Soon Liz will begin to grow up. The older she gets, the less interested she will be in searching, the more easily distracted she will be by television and snacks and stories, the less she will care if I am ever found.

One day, she will count, and I will hide behind the brown couch.

She will forget to seek.



CHAPTER TWENTY


Fifty-Five Minutes Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car


She was sharply aware of the time slipping through her fingers, and she wondered if it had always passed this quickly. Yesterday she was getting her first bra, and the day before that she was graduating from elementary school. A week ago, she had taken the training wheels off her bike all by herself and had ridden almost five feet before the entire bike fell apart because she had loosened one screw too many.