Pretend She's Here(42)

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.



I wanted the lovely lines and the thought of Lizzie to soothe me, but they didn’t. My shoulders still felt like glass. The bus arrived, and from the minute I climbed aboard, I watched for recognition in every face. I couldn’t even breathe. I thought I might shatter. Sitting beside Carole, I waited for her to say something about seeing me on TV. Instead, she pulled out her phone and showed me a selfie she’d taken with Mark Benjamin—the red-haired bearded boy from Casey’s band.

“How come you didn’t text back when I sent you this?” she asked.

“Huh,” I said, peering at the photo. “We have terrible cell reception, remember?”

“Because life in the woods, right,” she said.

“The picture’s really cool.”

“It’s on,” she said.

“What is?” I felt calmer, talking about something as normal as a selfie. It made my heart slow down, and I started to breathe.

“Me and Mark. We’ve been circling each other since seventh grade, but he finally made his move. Well, actually, I did. I took this yesterday. Which you’d have known if you got my text. Which you would have if we weren’t living in the sticks.”

“I know. But seriously, you guys look good together.”

Carole grinned. “He asked me to come work at his family Christmas tree farm this weekend. Which means staying warm by the fire, oh yeah.” She winked, and I made myself laugh. “And that’s one step closer to taking me to the Snow Globe Ball, and if he doesn’t figure that out, I’m going to have to tell him the way of the world. We’re going.”

“The Snow Globe Ball?” I asked.

“Yes, the high point of the long, miserable winters we get up here. Man, do I miss Boston. Why, oh, why, did my mom think she had to be a rural doctor and drag me along with her?”

I wasn’t the only one to have been relocated here against her will. I felt like saying that moving someplace was a little different from being kidnapped, but I held back.

“The dance planning committee meets after school today,” Carole said. “You should come—it’s fun.”

“I’ll miss the bus,” I said, imagining what would happen if I got home late.

“We can catch a ride with Casey’s dad. He doesn’t go to an office, so he usually drives when he’s home and there’s an assembly or some activity—he’ll beat the bus. See you at the meeting, okay?”

“Will Casey be there?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said. “His band will be playing at the dance. Mark’s in it, too. They’re great, and they’ll probably do a song or two this afternoon. You’ve got to hear them.”

“Sounds really cool,” I said, wondering why I didn’t mention I’d already heard them before. Keeping secrets had become second nature, even ones that didn’t actually seem to matter.

*

In English class, I was chosen to read my paper. I had done it on Book Four of The Faerie Queene, how Wizard Busirane had kidnapped Amoretta on her wedding day so she couldn’t be with her new husband, Scudamour. It was my subversive cry for help: What would everyone think to know that I myself had been kidnapped?

The wedding theme also reminded me of Lizzie. She and Jeff were not officially married. I hadn’t had time to sign up online to become a certified ordained minister. But we had performed a ceremony, and the memory filled my mind the entire time I stood in front of the class.

We had chosen the day and time according to when Lizzie’s parents would be busy. I knew they had a conference with her team of doctors that afternoon, so Jeff had driven me up to the hospital in Boston, and we entered Lizzie’s room. He brought bouquets of white roses—a big one for Lizzie, a small one for me, her maid of honor.

“Hurry,” he said as soon as we saw her. She looked shockingly worse than she had the day before.

“I will,” I said. I hoped my voice would work. My face was already soaked with tears.

Lizzie in her white cotton nightgown, its collar and cuffs made of delicate lace, her arms, so pale and translucent they looked almost blue, pierced by needles, tubes twirling down from the pole above her hospital bed. Jeff in his father’s tuxedo jacket, the one Jeff had worn to the Full Moon Dance. He clasped her hand. She was too weak to squeeze his. They gazed at each other, their eyes liquid.

“Do you, Elizabeth Porter, take this man, Jeffrey Woodley, to be your husband, to have and to hold, through sickness and health, until …” I couldn’t say the next part. Until death do you part.

“I do.” Lizzie’s lips moved, but no sound came out.

“And do you, Jeff Woodley, take this woman, Elizabeth Porter …”

“I do,” he said. He didn’t even let me finish. Lizzie was coughing. They had put her on morphine the night before, and she kept drifting in and out of consciousness.

“Then by the power vested in me by best-friendship, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

Jeff leaned down, tenderly kissed Lizzie on the lips. He slid the silver ring he had bought onto her finger. She had lost so much weight, she was skin and bones, so the ring was loose on her finger. He crouched beside the bed, holding Lizzie in his arms for a long time. I stood back, turned toward the window, giving them privacy.