Pretend She's Here(73)

And our cottage in the dell,

And I dreamed a love story,

Of the girl I knew so well.



I shivered—it was the first song of his I’d heard, when Chloe and I had hidden, listening to him and the band playing in the woods. Even though it seemed crazy, it felt as if he had written the song for me, long before we’d met, even before we’d known each other existed.

*

One afternoon, lying on my bed in the room I shared with Bea, I got a new text from Casey.

Casey: How are you?

Me: Not sure.

Casey: Why not?

Me: Home doesn’t feel like home anymore.

Casey: Then come back here.

Me: Not sure the fam would be wild about that idea.

Casey: They can come, too.



I smiled.

Then I heard footsteps in the hall. Seamus, our golden retriever, lay on the floor beside me and lifted his head to see who was coming. My stomach tightened, the way it did when I’d hear Mrs. Porter approaching. Noises did that to me—they triggered an avalanche of memories and set me on guard, always ready to defend myself.

There was a knock on the door, and Patrick and Bea were standing there, looking so alike with their black hair, lightly freckled skin, and Atlantic Ocean–gray-blue eyes.

“Let’s go,” Patrick said. “You need to get out of here.”

“Where?” I asked.

“A ride. The beach, Gillette Castle, anywhere but your room,” he said.

“We’ll disguise you and spirit you past the reporters,” Bea said.

“No disguise!” I said, louder than I intended, thinking of the months I’d spent wearing Lizzie’s hair, face, clothes.

“Okay,” she said quickly.

I wanted to jump up, be the same excited, enthusiastic younger sister who’d always followed Bea and Patrick anywhere. But it was as if the bed was a magnet and I was an iron bar: I couldn’t move. I didn’t move. Neither did Seamus. He barely left my side lately. He knew I needed him.

“I don’t want to go out,” I said to my brother and sister.

“You’ve been cooped up too long,” Bea said. “You’re depressed, Em.”

“Can you drive me to Maine?” I blurted. “Then I’ll be undepressed.”

“The scene of the crime? I don’t ever want to go back there again,” Bea said. “I can’t imagine why you would.”

“Casey,” I said.

“Well, of course,” she said. “Duh, I’m an idiot. Well, he’ll have to come visit you here.”

“I get why you don’t want to be disguised,” Patrick said. “So we’ll sneak you out the back door, into the car. You can duck down so the reporters won’t see you.”

“My little celebrity sister,” Bea said.

The press. The media. Exclusive interview. Celebrity. How could you get to be a celebrity for something you hadn’t done yourself? Getting kidnapped and stabbed? It seemed disgusting. Everywhere I went there were news trucks—at both hospitals, here at home in Black Hall, outside the doctor’s building, outside the therapist’s office. Some of the news trucks were like fancy mobile homes, with lounges for the reporters to relax in and studios for them to edit and transmit footage.

They did whatever they could to get shots of me. Their cameras zoomed in, trying to see through our curtains. They caught me biting into a piece of toast, a glob of strawberry jam sticking to my chin. When I walked outside, from our side door to the car in the driveway, they followed my every step. They yelled my name.

“Come on,” Patrick said, sitting beside me on the bed. “Please? I’m worried about you. You’re supposed to start school Monday, but how are you going to do that if it’s so hard even to take a ride with us?”

“I’m not going back to school,” I said.

Bea and Patrick just stared at me. They’d told me the journalists hovered just off school property, shouting questions at them. Reporters went to my older siblings’ colleges, to my dad’s job sites, and into the marsh to stalk my mother walking Seamus. Seamus, the greatest watchdog in the world, would apparently just wag his tail at them.

All I wanted to do was stay right here on my bed. It was comfortable. It had a squishy pillow-top mattress. The color of my comforter was persimmon—somewhere between red and orange—warm and bright and cozy. My side of the room was painted Tuscan gold with dusky lavender window trim. I used dark ink to draw tendrils and vines of English ivy, the leaves outlined with real gold leaf, a technique I’d learned in set design class. I’d copied the colors and design from the lobby of the Nehantic Theater, where I’d acted in a play the summer of eighth grade; the colors were the opposite of Lizzie’s black-and-white and earth tones palette, and they used to make me feel so happy.

“Look,” Patrick said finally. “I don’t want to pull age rank, but I’m about to. Seamus needs a walk. You need fresh air. Bea and I need coffee. I’ll carry you to the car if you really want me to.”

“I’ll walk,” I said. I stood slowly, and my ribs screamed. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror: My hair was two-tone. The bottom half was Lizzie black, and the top two inches were Emily reddish-blond. My eyebrows had finally grown in, and I thought they looked pale and boring without the kohl. And this fact weirded me out: I felt naked without the beauty mark. Now that I didn’t look like Lizzie anymore, I also didn’t look like myself.