Hyacinth Girls (24 page)

I folded the handwritten draft so I could type it up later. Then I looked at my wrists and thought about my dad—how I'd hated him all these years, when he'd been in pain just like me. He didn't like who he was—a liar and a cheater—but he'd found the solution and I finally understood it. The bells rang, nobody moved, and when I looked at the spiky-haired boy at the back of the room, he opened one eye and looked back at me. There was pink in his eye, and a scratch above his nose, and I waited for
him to mouth
Babyshits
, but he didn't. So I kept looking. He left his head on his arm, and I looked into his eye, and he looked back into mine, and I let him.

After school, Rebecca and I met the principal in his office. I had to explain again how I'd got lost, and then Rebecca started spewing about everything. “Her mother passed away. And we just marked the ninth anniversary this weekend.” She couldn't resist talking about Mom, even now. I listened to her explain how sad we were and I felt his powerful blood rushing through my veins.

“You forgot my dad,” I said. “My dad's dead, too.”

Saying his name made me buzz like I'd just drunk twenty cans of Coke. Or like I'd brought someone into the room with us who had pink eyes and a scratched face and bruised, bloody fists. They didn't say anything.

Take that
, I thought.

I imagined him pacing back and forth, punching holes into the plaster walls for the rest of the meeting. He wiggled his butt in their serious faces, and when they kept talking, he let out a long, smelly fart. When Rebecca stood up, I followed her and he came with us, sneering and kicking at the ugly air.

When we got into the car, I turned to her.

“Was it because he killed himself?”

She looked scared. I imagined him gnashing his teeth outside the window.

“You love telling everyone all about Mom, but never Dad. Was he so evil?”

She shook her head no.

I stared into his eyes and he stared back at me. He nodded, and I knew I had to say the thing I'd always tried not to let myself think.

“Did he kill her? Did he kill my mom?”

I watched him press his ear against the window as she began to talk. “It was a car accident. You know that. Your mom was hit by a car.”

He closed his eyes and I glared at him. My mom had been hit by a car. She'd died and he still left me.

“So he slit his wrists?”

He backed away from the car. Then he turned in a flash and ran for the trees. I knew that I shouldn't have asked. He'd already shown me the truth. The X's and Y's. I wanted to call him back and say that I finally understood, but he was getting smaller and smaller and then he was gone.

COULD SOMEONE PLEASE GIVE THE DOG A BATH?

Dallas posted this comment on “
HAVE YOU SMELLED BABYSHITS
?” at 3:23 p.m. on September 17.

There were forty-two members of the group now. I took screenshots of their comments and saved them in a folder named
evidence
. Late at night I retested the password for Ella's e-mail account and it still worked; she hadn't changed it. Then I thought about what Rebecca had told me in the car, and how it wouldn't change anything.

She said Dad didn't slit his wrists, he killed himself with pills. I knew I'd been tricking myself and it didn't even matter. Pills or razors or guns: they all cut through the X and the Y. Rebecca tried to say it was impossible to know exactly why he'd done it, and that anyone who pretended to be sure was lying, but I knew she was wrong. I understood: not the beginning, but the end. Not the cause, but the release.

On Friday, when I walked into in-school suspension, the spiky-haired boy was gone. I took my seat at the back of the room and began planning out what I would say in the rest of the messages that I'd send on Sunday night.

To Alex Penders, I promised that the girls who threw berries at him and called him Piggy Kibble would finally pay for what they'd done.

To Irene Lutz, I apologized for laughing and screaming at her on the last day of school. I also told her that I was going to make sure that we never did something like that again.

For Rebecca, I wrote one last note from Robyn:

SUNDAY NIGHT, 1 A.M., BRIDGE OVER FLINT STREET, JUMPING
.

I decided that I'd wait until late on Sunday night, then I'd begin the first of the eight steps I'd planned. I went over the steps in my mind, to make sure nothing would go wrong, and when I was sure it would work I put my head down on my desk and listened to the school bells for the rest of the day.

After school on Friday, I sat on the couch, eating carrots. I'd put the note from Robyn on top of the mail, and I was waiting for Rebecca to come home and see it. I was also thinking about that morning in eighth grade when I saw Robyn in the cafeteria. That must've been the moment. The moment when the universe could've changed. I wouldn't be grounded right now. There wouldn't be a suicide note on our sideboard, and bullets would just be the stuff you shot from a gun. I would've walked over to Robyn and left DH for good. I just needed to wave back. I needed to call out her name.

On the far end of our couch, I imagined Papa crawling on Robyn's lap. Robyn reached for one of my carrots and held it up like a cigarette. “I keep meaning to quit, but they're super-addictive.”

“Vitamin C,” I joked. “You must not resist.”

Since that morning in the eighth-grade cafeteria, Robyn and I had been best friends. We slept over at each other's houses, and she showed me pictures of her dad. I showed her some of my mom, too, and I told her what I remembered. And she said I shouldn't feel bad that I'd forgotten so much.

When Rebecca walked in, I gripped the pillow on my lap. I was back in the wrong dimension and Rebecca was carrying a strudel. A strudel? What for? What did we have to celebrate? Celebrate that I was going? Or celebrate that I was gone?

“Robyn left something for us,” I said. And then I watched her read my note.

If there was one thing Rebecca couldn't resist, it was a girl in trouble. Someone who needed to be saved, a victim to make her a hero. I needed her to go to the bridge on Sunday thinking she could finally be a rescuer, then she'd be out of the way and I could start my plan. Rebecca pressed her hand into her hip. She started asking me questions. But she was mostly worried about me, getting harassed by Robyn. She didn't think Robyn would really jump. She was unsympathetic as DH.

I started stress-eating the strudel, wondering how I was going to convince her. She called Robyn's mom and gave her a warning, but this wasn't the old Rebecca. I'd never seen her give up on someone, so I tried making her sorrier for Robyn—telling how there was nobody else who really cared. “Her mother won't help her,” I said. “She sent
us
this note.” Rebecca's eyebrows crinkled like I was overreacting. “We don't know if this is real,” she said. “Or if Robyn even wrote it.”

“Who else?” I said. Then I saw what I had to do.

“I know because—because of what I did.”

Rebecca covered her mouth with her hand like she was about to throw up.

After Rebecca rushed out, I went in my room and took off all my clothes. The inky places where I'd written Babyshits had faded. I pointed my toes, wiggled my fetus feet, and then I ran my hands over the smooth spaces that gave me the jiggles. I knew what clothes I'd wear on Sunday night: my new-old shirt that someone threw away, my good jeans, and my favorite earrings that Ella had given me. I would brush out my hair that Rebecca said was just like my mom's, and I would give her a kiss good-bye because I knew she'd remember it for a long time.

I lay down on my bed and felt a weight sinking my mattress. Robyn pulled a handful of chestnut hair across her mouth, giving herself a mustache.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, eyeing her on the end of my bed.

“Keeping you company.”

“I don't want company.”

Robyn let her hair slip and then I pulled up my sheet. I needed to shave my legs and I didn't want her to see.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked, chin in her hand. She was imitating Miss Baranski's serious tone.

“Yes. I'm sure.”

“Very interesting.” She tapped her fingers against her cheek. “And how do you think Rebecca will take it?”

“I don't need a psychiatrist, so why don't you leave me alone.”

Robyn nodded like we had some special agreement. “Okay,” she said. “But just answer the question: How do you think Rebecca will take it?”

“She's going to be fine. I can't worry about her right now.”

“You didn't worry about me either,” Robyn said. “That's always your problem.”

“I worried about you, you just didn't know it. And as far as Rebecca goes, she's going to be better off.”

“We weren't better off after my dad died.”

“That was totally different. Your dad had leukemia. Everyone loved him.”

“My dad had to die. You get to choose.”

I pressed my face into my pillow, and then her face was close beside mine. There was a spray of red droplets across her nose and between her eyes.

“Why do you still have that crap on you? Are you trying to make me feel worse?”

She rubbed her hands on her cheeks in circles. “It doesn't come off.”

“Get some soap and a sponge,” I told her. Then I jumped out of bed and ran over to my desk, grabbing the page I'd been working on. “Why don't you read this?” I said. “I wrote you a letter.”

I shoved it in Robyn's face and she held it limply in her hand.

Robyn

I think the end will be like the beginning. I'll feel you waiting beside me, and I'll answer all your questions and wipe away your tears. You'll wear your silver headband and hum along to “Frosty” and I'll want to stay with you but it'll be time for me to go. One kiss to never forget, and you'll whisper in my ear, “I forgive you. I love you.” Then you'll watch me go under. The sky will burst open as I wash away our names and then I'll turn into the rainbow that finally ends the storm. Up in the sky, I'll
watch them changing, losing their sharp sticks, and the world will be safer for people like you.

Please forgive, don't forget. Callie McKenzie

Robyn dropped my note on the floor. “All of this is bullshit.”

For the next hour, Robyn haunted me. When Rebecca came in my room to talk to me, Robyn slithered under my sheets. “I read your letters to your mom,” Rebecca said. Then she showed me something I'd written. It was about how if Mom could see me from heaven, I'd be this big disappointment. And I didn't want to look at Rebecca, to see how much I'd let her down, too. I knew I couldn't take anything back, and I'd probably already reached her limits. But Rebecca was so sure I was wrong, saying that mom would never regret me, and I knew she meant well, but it was too sad—to see her still trying.

Then Rebecca was trying to keep it together as she asked me about Robyn, and I realized why people confessed right before they died. The crying was a release. Like flushing a lake out of my body. Dirty water flowing out until I was empty and wet. Rebecca mopped my face, and Robyn hid by my legs, and then it all came out like a burp, filling the air with its stench. I had squirted the paint. There. It was done.

“If that had been you,” Rebecca asked, “how do you think you'd feel?”

I was still crying as I answered. It was the easiest question in the world. I'd feel hopeless. Ruined. Like everyone hated me. Humiliated. Awful. Like I wanted to die. Rebecca seemed satisfied and I saw Robyn peek out at me. She rubbed her soft cheek, but the paint was still there. Nobody would ever know how much Robyn and me were connected. There wouldn't be any record of our friendship if Robyn wanted to forget.

I wondered if she'd already deleted our messages, and unremembered our first meeting. Maybe when she looked at Papa she pretended she'd bought him herself. “We were friends,” I told Rebecca. “Me and Robyn.”

“All My Interactions with Robyn Doblak,” I wrote. Rebecca had agreed to let me write it as long as I told her everything, and now Robyn leaned over my shoulder as I stared at the empty screen. I couldn't remember the first time I'd seen her—it must've been in seventh grade, but she didn't stand out to me, not until I heard about her dad. That was when
everyone
noticed—the girl whose dad died. I typed #1 at the top and started with the first time we talked—almost ten months ago, right before Christmas. I could hear her humming “Frosty the Snowman,” and then I smelled strawberry perfume, and when I looked around we were back in middle school. There were foil trees stapled to the walls, and Miss Baranski was running late. We were waiting outside her office and I was about to take off. Robyn spoke to me first. She was looking at my wristband. “Pit bull awareness?”

I turned to the ghost in my room.
Why did you talk to me?

She flipped up her hands:
Who knows?

She looked in my eyes as I repeated my ten-month-old words.

“There was once this pit bull who saved thirty peoples' lives. But all anyone thinks is they're these vicious crazy killers.”

You were nicer than I expected
, she said.
I knew about DH
.

I remembered how she touched her headband and told me she wanted a dog. She cried so openly, but I didn't know what to do. She came closer and I saw her mascara, running down all over her cheeks. I knew I couldn't change the past; I could only do what I'd done already. I raised my hand to her face, using my sleeve to wipe under her eyes. Her
skin was hot and I didn't want to move. But I knew I had to go soon. There were only two days left.

She seemed really thankful, I wrote.