We Were Liars(37)

my head is okay,

no one needs to cry for me or worry about me.

I am fine,

I am alive.

I swim to shore.



Sometimes I wonder if reality splits. In Charmed Life, that book I gave Gat, there are parallel universes in which different events have happened to the same people. An alternate choice has been made, or an accident has turned out differently. Everyone has duplicates of themselves in these other worlds. Different selves with different lives, different luck.

Variations.

I wonder, for example, if there’s a variation of today where I die going off that cliff. I have a funeral where my ashes are scattered at the tiny beach. A million flowering peonies surround my drowned body as people sob in penance and misery. I am a beautiful corpse.

I wonder if there’s another variation in which Johnny is hurt, his legs and back crushed against the rocks. We can’t call emergency services and we have to paddle back in the kayak with his nerves severed. By the time we helicopter him to the hospital on the mainland, he’s never going to walk again.

Or another variation, in which I don’t go with the Liars in the kayak at all. I let them push me away. They keep going places without me and telling me small lies. We grow apart, bit by bit, and eventually our summer idyll is ruined forever.

It seems to me more than likely that these variations exist.





55




That night I wake, cold. I’ve kicked my blankets off and the window is open. I sit up too fast and my head spins.

A memory.

Aunt Carrie, crying. Bent over with snot running down her face, not even bothering to wipe it off. She’s doubled over, she’s shaking, she might throw up. It’s dark out, and she’s wearing a white cotton blouse with a wind jacket over it—Johnny’s blue-checked one.

Why is she wearing Johnny’s wind jacket?

Why is she so sad?

I get up and find a sweatshirt and shoes. I grab a flashlight and head to Cuddledown. The great room is empty and lit by moonlight. Bottles litter the kitchen counter. Someone left a sliced apple out and it’s browning. I can smell it.

Mirren is here. I didn’t see her before. She’s tucked beneath a striped afghan, leaning against the couch.

“You’re up,” she whispers.

“I came looking for you.”

“How come?”

“I had this memory. Aunt Carrie was crying. She was wearing Johnny’s coat. Do you remember Carrie crying?”

“Sometimes.”

“But summer fifteen, when she had that short haircut?”

“No,” says Mirren.

“How come you’re not asleep?” I ask.

Mirren shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

I sit down. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“I need you to tell me what happened before my accident. And after. You always say nothing important—but something must have happened to me besides hitting my head during a nighttime swim.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you know what it was?”

“Penny said the doctors want it left alone. You’ll remember in your own time and no one should push it on you.”

“But I am asking, Mirren. I need to know.”

She puts her head down on her knees. Thinking. “What is your best guess?” she finally says.

“I—I suppose I was the victim of something.” It is hard to say these words. “I suppose that I was raped or attacked or some godforsaken something. That’s the kind of thing that makes people have amnesia, isn’t it?”

Mirren rubs her lips. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she says.

“Tell me what happened,” I say.

“It was a messed-up summer.”

“How so?”

“That’s all I can say, my darling Cady.”

“Why won’t you ever leave Cuddledown?” I ask suddenly. “You hardly ever leave except to go to the tiny beach.”

“I went kayaking today,” she says.

“But you got sick. Do you have that fear?” I ask. “That fear of going out? Agoraphobia?”

“I don’t feel well, Cady,” says Mirren, defensive. “I am cold all the time, I can’t stop shivering. My throat is raw. If you felt this way, you wouldn’t go out, either.”

I feel worse than that all the time, but for once I don’t mention my headaches. “We should tell Bess, then. Take you to the doctor.”

Mirren shakes her head. “It’s just a stupid cold I can’t shake. I’m being a baby about it. Will you get me a ginger ale?”

I cannot argue anymore. I get her a ginger ale and we turn on the television.





56




In the morning, there is a tire swing hanging from the tree on the lawn of Windemere. The same way one used to hang from the huge old magnolia in front of Clairmont.

It is perfect.

Just like one Granny Tipper spun me on.

Dad.

Granddad.

Mummy.

Like the one Gat and I kissed on in the middle of the night.

I remember now, summer fifteen, Johnny, Mirren, Gat, and I squashed into that Clairmont swing together. We were much too big to fit.. We elbowed each other and rearranged ourselves. We giggled and complained. Accused each other of having big asses. Accused each other of being smelly and rearranged again.