The Elizas: A Novel(18)

I think I saw someone running away.

I swallow hard. It’s vindicating that Desmond has confirmed this, but it scares me that such violence actually exists. Who could have pushed me?

I picture my mother’s face swirling above me yesterday in the hospital. And Bill’s, and Gabby’s. Who alerted them to come? How had they arrived so quickly? Then I remember it hadn’t been that fast—I’d been sleeping for quite a few hours before I spoke to them. But still. Is it possible they’d already been in Palm Springs? But what am I presuming, that one of them pushed me? Why would they do that? Because I’m a drain on them? Because they’re sick of my shenanigans? Because I’d done something to one of them? Something inside me rolls over with a ripple. Maybe. But why can’t I remember what that is?

I stop on Gabby again. It’s not as though we’re close. After Bill made the introductions the first time she and I met, I went into the kitchen, and she followed. I didn’t ask her to follow me. Nor did I really want her there.

“Um,” Gabby said quietly once we were alone. “I heard your dad died. So did my mom.”

I snorted. Like I was going to have that conversation. Straightening my spine, I pulled out a big bottle of vodka from the freezer. My fingers burned with cold as I unscrewed the cap, and I poured myself a tall glass.

“Want some?”

Gabby’s eyes widened. “No way.”

I tipped the glass to my lips like I was a pro. I’d never had vodka before, but I felt like I needed to establish myself with this girl early on so she knew the pecking order. I took the tiniest sip and tried not to wince. I watched Gabby stare at me in horror.

“Maybe you shouldn’t do that,” she whispered.

Then my mother and Bill walked in. My mother immediately saw the bottle on the counter. “What’s that?”

Neither of us answered. Gabby pushed her glasses up her nose.

“Who got that out?” my mother said, staring at me.

Gabby cleared her throat. “Um, I did. I just wanted to try it.”

Bill looked appalled. “You?”

“Oh, please.” My mother rolled her eyes “It was clearly Eliza.”

“No,” Gabby’s voice was stronger now. “It was me.”

I don’t know why she took the blame. I wanted to believe it was because I was so crazy and unpredictable that she thought it would be better just to defuse my actions and not make waves. But I wasn’t entirely sure. I needed to be sure. I needed her to fear me. Why I needed that so badly is something I can’t remember now, but I distinctly wrote about it in my journal: I don’t need her feeling sorry for me. She doesn’t know what I can do.

Through the years, I proved to Gabby what I could do. I locked her in a closet and stood outside reading facts about body decomposition from a criminology textbook. I put preserved animals I found at pawnshops on her pillow at night. I was a fan of fake plastic spiders in cereal bowls, a rubber dismembered hand in her backpack, and once, shoving the old child-sized coffin I kept in my room into the front entrance of the house and squeezing myself into it just before she walked through the door. Gabby had fainted when she saw me—just crumpled bonelessly to the floor, thwacking her head on the doorjamb. She’d needed stitches on her eyebrow. And yet, when Bill asked Gabby what had happened, she said she’d tripped. She never told on me for anything I did to her. She just absorbed all of it silently, stoically, pretending like it never happened.

Why didn’t she ever fight back? I heard her arguing with her friends on the phone. I hacked her email and uncovered quite a few heated debates on a Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince fan fiction message board. She lost her shit when a girl at school called her a “fuckface.” I’d called her far worse. Was she doing it because she’d figured out not reacting was the path to victory? Or was she storing up each and every incident, cataloging it carefully and referring to it often, slowly growing angrier and angrier and then downright vengeful? Was she a volcano ready to blow?

Do you really think someone would want to hurt you? Lance had asked. Gabby might have wanted to, but I just couldn’t imagine Gabby doing such a thing. She didn’t have the chutzpah.

I open my eyes and look around. The light seems different in my room. For a moment, I’ve forgotten my train of thought. I’ve had a stroke, I think frantically. But the clock says it’s only a few minutes later, and all of my limbs work. I reach for my cell phone, but I’ve received no new calls. I’m about to put the phone down when I hit the button for my saved photo gallery. There’s a video I don’t remember recording first in line in the preview window.

I press Play.

The camera pans over the hospital room I’ve just left: first the corner with the sink, then those ugly paisley drapes, then a slice of window, the view of the parking lot. I hear a small sigh. The camera shifts, then shows my body on the hospital bed: my arm, my fingers, my chin. My eyes are closed.

I look at the video’s time stamp: 10:09 p.m., yesterday night. The angle is such that I could have held the phone outstretched, selfie-style, but there was no way I’d taken it. I’d only found out my phone was in my room this morning.

Seized with an idea, I scroll back past the video to see if I had taken any pictures at the resort . . . but I hadn’t. The last photo in my camera roll was an image of an antique cymbal-playing monkey toy; a customer had brought it to the store where I work in hopes of making a trade. The monkey was old and well loved, some of its fur rubbed off, the little battery compartment on its butt rusty and corroded.