Afterparty(87)

I am breathing fog and rain. I am shivering in the cold, wet jacket, and the sleeves hurt where my arms are scraped raw from the elbows to the wrists, my arms encased in gabardine and blood and rain.

He says, “Go, you have to go.”

I am nodding my head but there’s nothing to say. I am breathing hard, as if I had been running miles and miles, running hard through a ravine of dark inclines.

He says, “Emma. Focus. We’re leaving.”

I say, “Get off the roof.”

There’s rain, and there’s breathing, and there’s the moment when he backs away.

He says, “Do you know what to do?”

“Just go away.”

He says, “Go down the stairs and out behind the ballroom. Walk down to Hollywood Boulevard. Turn east. In a couple of blocks, it’s the Mayfield. There’ll be a bunch of taxis. Get in. Go to the Chateau. Or in front of a club. Are you up to walking?”

I nod my head.

I say, “I have to go get her.”

Dylan says, “No. You don’t. Hear the sirens? Are you taking this in? I’ll walk you to the other staircase. At the bottom, there are people making out. Go out past the doorway, Hollywood Boulevard, east to the Mayfield, don’t hail a cab, just get one at the Mayfield. Do you have cash? Walk home.”

I say, “Okay.” It is hard to climb down stairs, and when I step over the bodies at the bottom, nobody looks up.

There are sirens and flashing lights and running.

I go out the door, I go back out into the night, and I’m not the only person in a wet dress walking through the rain, down to Hollywood Boulevard. When the streetlights hit my dress, it glows. But I am not the only glowing girl walking away.





CHAPTER SIXTY


CONSIDER THE VIGIL: I’M NOT THERE.

Three days after Afterparty. A hard rain is flattening magnolia leaves against my window, the sky is almost white between the branches. White and cold.

Eighty-seven people have said yes to the vigil on Facebook. They are standing outside Cedars-Sinai Hospital, holding hands in hypocritical fellowship with everyone else who treated Siobhan like an expensive form of dirt. They’re posting pictures of rain-sodden votive candles, waterlogged teddy bears, and helium balloons with her name on them.

Lia Graham recommends room deodorizer candles encased in pear-shaped glass to stay lit through the downpour, green for pine and yellow lemon zest. She is tagged on the event page in a knot of rain-drenched juniors singing inspirational songs. Waving their candles and praying for Siobhan to live. Waiting for her to die.

I, on the other hand, am sitting on the floor of my closet. The screen of my phone glows through the darkness with all of Dylan’s texts that say some variant of Talk to me.

And my one text message back that says No.

I have watched “Tickle Penguin” on YouTube one hundred and sixteen times. I have watched a goose play with a cocker spaniel. I have prayed for her to live for three days straight, but unless you believe in the saving power of the ratty hotel awnings and the giant hydrangea bush that broke her fall, you are stuck with Occam’s Razor, which our physics teacher likes so much: The simplest solution is the likeliest; I pushed her off the roof, ergo, she dies.

And no matter how many times emissaries of Religious Convo lead eighty-seven juniors waving room-deodorizer candles in chanting the Lord’s Prayer, it would take a huge number of screwdrivers to wipe out their ability to reason their way to the inevitable conclusion.

If they knew.

Even so, it seems highly unlikely that they’re going to start chanting, Our Emma, who art hiding in her closet, you are so not a walking exemplar of badness, the she-devil of Latimer Country Day, the harlot of the Hollywood Hills.

Even I wouldn’t say that.

Because every bad thing that a person can do, I just did.

My dad, watching me sitting in the closet in the dark, but who knows nothing, is also trapped under the influence of Occam. I am sitting in the closet, ergo, I am sad because Siobhan has fallen.

He offers to drive me down to Cedars to visit her, but how do you visit with a person in a medically induced coma? Do you just stare at her unconscious face? Do you talk to her as if she could hear you, and pretend that she’s taking it in? Do you say, Hey, sorry I killed you, bye, but you don’t get to take me down no matter what asinine pact I accidentally said yes to?

If things don’t get better, we’ll jump off a tall building? No.

My dad is making soup: pea soup. Pea soup and French onion soup and chicken curry broth so far. This is as close to a mother as I’m going to get, a soup-making father who doesn’t understand a thing. And I think, Well, that’s pretty close.

And I start to wish I could tell him, but of course, there’s no way.

What happened that night and how hard it was raining and how it didn’t seem real and then it seemed like the only real thing in my life.

My dad sits down outside the closet. The door is open a crack; I can see the window and the tree and the sky. I can see a slice of his plaid shirt, and an oven mitt.

He says, “Ems, I know you aren’t ready to process this yet, and I understand, but I want you to hear me. Whatever happens to Siobhan, whatever she did and whyever she did it, it’s not your fault. Do you hear me? You’re a good friend, you’ve been very kind to her, and sweet, and you’re probably the reason she could cope for as long as she did.”