The Lies I Told(8)

A hand brushed the side of my face, and fingers pressed against my neck in search of a pulse. Was my heart beating?

“Marisa.”

The masculine voice was jagged with fear and did not belong to Death. I tried to grab hold, use the voice to climb out of the maelstrom. Despite Death’s promise of serenity, it wasn’t my time.

“Why did you do it?” The man’s name danced out of reach, as an arm brushed across my chest. I sensed someone pawing, groping for something. And then: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I’d had this “memory” before, but I still wasn’t sure whether it was an actual recollection or one planted by the police’s retelling of the facts. Memories are dangerous, I’d been told. They aren’t permanent and can be influenced by new circumstances and incoming facts.

“Where did you go?” Jo-Jo asked.

I blinked. “Nowhere. Listening to the rain. It’s really coming down out there.”

Jo-Jo rolled her eyes. “And to think I blow-dried my hair tonight. I wanted to look fabulous for you, but it’ll be ruined by the time I get home. Hoping Jack could see it. Shame to waste the effort.”

“I’m sorry I won’t see him in the Lion’s hat. That’s an Instagram moment.”

“Can you imagine Jack in that?” She sipped her wine spritzer. “He’s changed a lot since high school. No longer the life of the party but a hardworking stiff. Plans to own a real estate empire one day.”

In high school, Jack had made his money selling drugs. He’d started with pot and graduated to cocaine and prescription pills by his senior year. Brit and Jack were the same age, but she’d been a year ahead in school. (Flunked kindergarten, he always joked, but rumor had it he’d done time in juvie.) They started fading when she left for college, and after Clare died, she broke it off. He understood, and they’d stayed good friends. Two years after he dropped out of high school, he was arrested for drug trafficking. He’d done three years in state prison but, once freed, turned his life around. A success story by any measure.

Brit clapped her hands. “Come on, kids, time to sit down.”

“What’s with the barbecue? That was Clare’s fave,” Jo-Jo said.

Hearing my sister’s name was a bit of a jolt. No one ever said her name anymore. Death had taken my sister, but time was slowly erasing every trace of evidence that she’d walked this earth. Clare’s first death had been quick, but this second one was agonizingly slow. Maybe that was why Brit had invited old friends who’d known Clare. She wanted to keep our sister alive as well. It was the only reason that made sense to me.

“I love barbecue, too,” I said. The goal was not to stir the pot with Brit. She reveled in her maternal role, and I wasn’t keen on taking that away from her. She’d been a lifesaver these last couple of months.

Brit looked at me, and I saw the wheels turning. She’d realized her mistake but recovered. “Can’t forget Clare.”

Both Brit and I had found ways to cope after our mother’s death and then Clare’s. She shifted her grief into her career, becoming addicted to hard work that numbed her mind. Me? The classic substance abuser.

“I can still picture Clare and Marisa by the river in their cutoff jeans, halter tops, and cowboy boots,” Brit said. “Clare’s boots were powder blue, and Marisa’s were black.”

“I always struggled with who was who,” Jo-Jo said.

I remembered the day we’d bought those boots. It was the summer before she died. We’d both had the flu and for the first time in weeks felt really good. We’d dressed up and headed to our favorite spot on the river. I’d gotten wasted, and Clare had hooked up with Kurt for the first time.

“The school got their names backward in the senior yearbook,” Kurt said.

It might have been funny if the yearbook hadn’t been issued after Clare died. When I opened the book and saw my face with her name, I laughed so hard I cried. So fucking ironic. Even to the end, no one got us straight.

“I had another trick to tell you apart besides the boots,” Jo-Jo confessed.

“The eyes,” Kurt said. “M’s stare is more intense.”

“True,” Jo-Jo conceded. “But I had another method. When Marisa is nervous, she curls her hair around her finger.”

I ran a hand over my short hair, then caught myself. Maybe nerves explained why I’d been craving a cigarette all night. But I’d tossed that nervous habit along with the booze.

Jo-Jo brushed a lock of hair back from her eyes. “When this rain lets up, we’ll sneak into the alley and have a smoke.”

“First the party,” Brit said.

I’d known Jo-Jo for more than seventeen years. There’d been a time when we’d been almost as close as I’d been to Clare. My sister and I had shared everything with Jo-Jo until we turned sixteen and learned she liked to gossip.

To Jo-Jo’s credit, she’d sensed I hadn’t told the full story of that New Year’s Eve night, but surprisingly she’d never outed me—even after the cops charged her parents with serving minors. After Clare, Jo-Jo’s family moved away, and I found myself on one side of a canyon and the rest of the world on the other. Without Clare and Jo-Jo, my partners in crime, I was lost. I should’ve embraced the real help Brit and Dad forced on me, but I didn’t feel like I deserved to be saved. The booze helped me worry less about being lonely.