A Danger to Herself and Others(47)

When the doctors asked me what happened that night, I told them.

When Agnes’s parents asked, I told them too.

I wasn’t lying. Really, I wasn’t. But I wasn’t telling the whole truth either.

I didn’t remember the whole truth.

We started playing Truth or Dare. We already knew (we thought) each other’s truths, so we must have agreed to do mostly dares.

I remember running up and down the hall in my underwear—Agnes must have dared me to do that. It wouldn’t have been much of a dare because the hallway was empty, and I’m not shy anyway.

I remember saying, “Dare or dare,” to Agnes when it was her turn.

I imagine that she grinned, but maybe she rolled her eyes. Maybe she was bored. She would have answered, “Dare.”

Maybe I asked her to do something smaller at first. Maybe the game had been going on for hours by the time I offered her one final dare: “Stand on the window ledge.”

I know this much for sure: Our room was on the second floor of the dorm, and our windows looked out over a terra-cotta courtyard. The sills were over a foot wide both inside and out, wide enough that we sometimes sat with our legs hanging out on warm days and never felt the least bit unsafe.

Maybe Agnes didn’t want to do it. Maybe she thought I was kidding. Maybe I reminded her that I’d just streaked through a public hallway, and maybe she reminded me it wasn’t really streaking because I hadn’t been completely naked.

Or maybe Agnes simply shrugged and agreed to do it, because it was easier than arguing with me. Maybe she wanted to get the game over with.

She would have taken off her socks—bare feet are less slippery—and I would have opened the window wide. She’d have had to crouch to get outside. I can picture her standing, pressing her back against the top half of the window, which was closed. Some parts I remember clearly: She held her arms almost perfectly straight. She pressed her hands back so far they were almost reaching back into the room through the open bottom window. Her fingers were balled into fists. There wasn’t anything for her to hold on to.

Her knees were almost at my eye level. The outer windowsill was wider than her feet. I don’t remember being scared. It didn’t look precarious. It was late, but there were lights on in the courtyard.

I can still see the moment she opened her fists and moved her arms out, feeling brave. Her blond hair caught the light. It looked like it was glowing.

Other details I remember distinctly: Agnes losing her balance. My arms reaching out. Her blond hair rising around her head like a golden crown as she falls. The little yelp she made as she hit the ground.

There was nothing light as a feather or stiff as a board about Agnes’s descent. She landed feetfirst, but her ankles buckled uselessly beneath her, not strong enough to sustain her weight. She fell forward and her skull hit the courtyard with a crack.

I turned and ran out of the room, dialing 9-1-1 as I rushed down the hallway. I think I almost fell as I ran down the stairs. How ironic that would have been, if both of us fell, one right after the other.

I heard the sirens before I saw the ambulance.

I was crouched beside her in the courtyard. Agnes was crumpled on her side, her cheek pressed against ground. There was blood in her blond hair. I didn’t try to move her. I knew you weren’t supposed to do that.

By the time the EMTs rushed toward us, a small crowd had gathered, but everyone else hung back.

I rode with her in the ambulance.

I answered their questions as best as I could.

We were playing Truth or Dare.

She fell.

No one had to tell me that Agnes had suffered a brain injury, lapsed into a coma. No one had to tell me that she’d never be the same. No one had to point out that Jonah wouldn’t want her like this. I’d known it, felt it in my belly the instant I heard that sound—crack.

It wasn’t until Agnes’s parents showed up and the police came that they asked whether I’d pushed her. I said no. Of course I said no. I said I wouldn’t have, couldn’t have done that.

Agnes’s parents didn’t believe me.

They didn’t ask whether I wondered about pushing her.

Not a push, not really. Just a little tap.

The answer would have been no, I didn’t wonder. I heard a voice whisper in my ear.

Just to see what would happen.

It sounds like Lucy’s voice: deep and hoarse from years of vomiting.

But I didn’t know Lucy then.

The voice I heard that night can’t have been Lucy’s.

I open my eyes. “What happened to the girl, Lucy? Rhiannon, the one you pushed?”

Lucy doesn’t answer. Her knee isn’t jutting into my side anymore. Was I so lost in my own thoughts that I didn’t feel her get up and go back to her own bed? I reach my arms out, trying to find her.

“Lucy?” I say again, louder this time, even though there’s no need to raise my voice in this tiny room. We can hear each other’s whispers even when we’re in our own beds.

I get up and cross the room. It’s so dark that I can’t see Lucy’s bed. I hold my hands out in front of me like I’m Frankenstein’s monster. I shout Lucy’s name. I run my hands along the wall, my fingertips sliding over the nooks and divots of the cheap brick. I lean my head against the window’s cold glass to make sure it hasn’t opened, that Lucy couldn’t have slipped outside. I drop to my knees and crawl on the floor, knock over the pile of romance novels, hit my head on the side of my bed, and then crawl beneath it, groping in the darkness, trying to find where my roommate is hiding. I scream for someone to turn on the lights.