Hyacinth Girls (26 page)

I opened my eyes and it was dark. Empty, visionless. This was it. Nothing more to see. Opening my mouth and swallowing cold water, filling my lungs. Ice and silence. A body sinking in a lake. No stars, no kiss. Nobody waiting for a rainbow. They could press their hands over their hearts and unless they felt something it would all be for nothing. Indivisible, liberty, and justice for all.

I was shivering and they wouldn't understand. They would go on and on and I would turn into a secret history and it wouldn't mean a thing. For a second I forgot their names. It was the future and they were gone, and I could only hear my own breath. My branches stirred in the wind, and the ground around my roots began to thaw. My numb hand reached for my chest, and I pressed it to my thunking heart.

Good little cat, Good little cat, Good little cat
.

A silver whistle blew and I heard a voice calling.
Callie, you have to swim
. She watched me by the shore. And I wanted to but I couldn't. Everything was heavy. My head, my arms. My legs were asleep. And I wanted…I needed…my body was dissolving. I closed my eyes and remembered about the mud. The mud swallowed everything in this watery waste, the fish bones and bird bones and mold and dust.

 

The lake behind the Brooks' house had become thick with weeds over the summer. Waxy clusters of leaves floated on the water, forming dense tangles that swayed like rafts. Ali Brooks had once told me she
needed
to live on the lake. “If it was up to me we'd live on the boat.” In her living room there were sliding glass doors where she could watch the sunset color the water each evening, and as I looked at the doors in the darkness, I thought I saw movement inside. I had called on my way over. I'd left messages asking her to check the lake. But the glass doors weren't opening, the lights stayed off, and the police, who I'd begged, still hadn't arrived.

The cold wind snapped and rushed as I switched on my flashlight. Then I stumbled down the slope, catching myself in the mud. I was here because of Dallas—what she'd told me on the phone. I knew she might be lying, but I had no other leads.

“You stupid bitch,” she'd said in greeting. “I knew it was a joke.”

I'd been calling on Callie's phone. She'd left it on the floor. I was still standing in our hallway with the red-inked note in my hand.
Sorry Rebecca. It was me. C

It was me who threw the paint? It was me who wrote the notes? It was me, not Robyn. Had it never been Robyn?

Callie's handwriting tilted across the page, giving me an answer.

“Dallas, this is Rebecca. What joke? What's going on?”

As soon as she realized it was me, Dallas's voice softened. She attempted a babyish coo, which turned my stomach. She could transform so easily, without missing a beat, and everything was tilting toward a sharp, queasy drop. The notes weren't what I'd thought, and this girl wasn't, either.

“Callie's gone crazy,” Dallas said. “She sent out all these messages. She said that we killed her, but I don't know what she means.”

“Do you know where she is? Please tell me.”

She sniffled and gasped, and then she started to cough.

“Dallas! Come on! What do you mean she said you killed her?”

“She says we drowned her. In Ella's lake.”

I had begun skimming my beam across the shore, across the trees and the black sky. The left side of the lake was cocooned by countless gray trees. On the right, there were small docks and large houses, some with little porch lights. I imagined those white lights leading kids back home from moonlit swims and trips out in a canoe. Barefoot and dripping, they ran back to their houses, drying their feet on the carpet and leaping into clean beds. Then their parents came in to check on them, kissing their damp brows good night.

Sweet dreams, sleep tight. I'll see you in the morning
.

Curtis swallowed his pills. Callie kissed me good-bye.

A pale buoy bobbed in the water and I caught my breath. Then I started to call her. Again and again. The reeds rustled, the water lapped at the rocks, and I listened for her voice, a splash, a sob. My voice echoed back at me, desolate and empty, and I started screaming louder, not caring
who I woke up. Then I was grappling for my phone because what if she was trying to reach me, but it wasn't where I thought, I must've dropped it in the car. I was racing so quickly, I'd done everything wrong. I couldn't even remember turning off the engine. I'd just needed to find her. But what if she was elsewhere? She could be anywhere else: at the bridge or on the road. I was blind sometimes. So stupid and blind. All those notes. That slanty red writing.

I aimed my flashlight down and saw all the markings.

In the mud there were shoe prints. They were small, like Callie's. I followed them to the water and saw they didn't come back out. And I was gripping my stomach because I was going to be sick, but there was no time to be sick, I had to follow them in. My breath got short as the water soaked my pants, and this couldn't be happening, she wasn't in the lake. Those footprints were old, Callie wouldn't do this. She'd always refused to go swimming, even on the hottest days of summer. She lay on her pink palm-tree towel, sweating in the sun. She said she hated the feeling of cold water on her skin. I could hear her perfectly. This didn't make sense. My whole body was numb, and I remembered Dallas's voice.

She said we drowned her. In Ella's lake
.

Her logic escaped me. All of this escaped me. But there must be some kind of progression, a sequence I could follow. I kept my arms high as I walked in deeper, casting my beam along the moving surface. The rafts of leaves, the pale fingerlike flowers, the distant rope that floated on the surface. She had thrown paint on Robyn. She had written those notes. She'd asked me about Autumn Sanger over and over again. She'd said that Autumn was bullied and her bullies killed her. She'd wondered if Autumn drowned herself because her life would never be good.
I was a shitty mistake and I'm ready to be erased
. I kept forgetting to breathe; my chest contracted. There was something gold in front of me, something
like hair. I opened my hands and my flashlight started sinking. Then I saw what it was, coiling around my fingers. Not hair, just grass. My flashlight was gone. I grasped at the water and my hands came up empty.

I screamed Callie's name and a light blinked on in the distance, then I sloshed deeper into the lake, deeper into this nightmare. I couldn't feel my legs, but they didn't matter. As long as they kept moving, I wouldn't lose my mind. As long as I kept screaming, this panic wouldn't beat me. And then I'd see her on the shore, waving sheepishly. Because she wouldn't really go in, no matter what she told Dallas. The footprints were just a joke. Part of the whole plan. “Oh, Rebecca!” She'd shake her head. “Why are
you
here?” And I'd tell her she was grounded, and I'd keep hold of her, tight.

Something strange was happening. Maybe it was shock. The temperature in the lake was suddenly warm. I was still screaming, but I couldn't hear my voice, and then blue and red patterns started flashing across the water. I took a moment to watch them. Neon flowers. I couldn't feel my body and I was staring at the light. And that was when I saw them, on the far side of the lake.

There was a woman carrying something. I saw what it was.

“Ali!” I screamed. “Ali! Thank God.”

Then somehow I was running, or trying to run, and then I was falling, the weight of my clothes pulling me down.

“Ali! Is she okay?”

Had she heard me? She kept walking. Then she turned her head. And as I saw her profile I realized my mistake. It wasn't Ella's mother. It was somebody else. Her body was more swollen and her hair was too long. She moved slowly, out of the water, flinching against the light, turning her face away. I watched her stumble and catch herself, carefully cradling the thing she held. Clutching tightly, the way a mother holds her baby.
There were sirens now, a flash of white skin under the lights. A flash of copper hair as she turned my way.

Did my husband call you? Is Curtis there?

Men's voices were rising and she looked right at me, eyes panicking, the way they had when she couldn't speak. Mouth clamped shut, our eyes connected, and I was moving toward her as she quivered under the lights. She was no longer tall and goddesslike, but I wasn't dreaming. She had returned with her arms full, a brutal reminder of the past. People were joining us in the water, splashing in their haste, and I screamed one last time because I knew who this was.

Lara Shanley was holding Callie. Her body was in her arms.

Callie wasn't wearing shoes. Her arms hung loose and her feet were slick with mud. The paramedics were rushing around, and in the confusion I fell again in the water. Then I was dragging myself out, dazzled by the light. Callie's eyes rolled open as they set her on the ground, and I crawled behind them, undone by visions. Where was my vision? Where was Lara? We had to stop her. Please, fast. Someone was holding a penlight over Callie, and streaks of water trickled down her face. She didn't move. She was completely limp. They tilted her head to one side, and then they tilted it back. I saw the blue rubber gloves touching her skin and I saw how she didn't gasp. Lara was already gone. Lara had vanished.

“What's her name?” someone asked.

“Callie!” I was screaming. “CallieCallieCallie.”

“Callie! Can you hear me?”

“Nonononono!”

“Starting compressions!”

They started pumping on her chest, and the pressure of their hands
made her body jump, then voices were blooming and lights were exploding and as her body flopped forward, the water rushed out.

We spent our first night on the fourth floor of the Kinney Trust Hospital, in a small room where nothing seemed solid or real. Not the blue folding curtains or the shining speckled floor. Not the walls or the window or the bed where she lay. Over the sheet, I traced her shoulders like delicate, breakable eggshells. Her chest was sunken and inky black streaks were smeared on her skin. Callie's chest went up and down and I counted into the hundreds, then I counted into the thousands. It still wasn't enough. I needed more—more breath, please, more life. Proof that there would always be more.

I kept my hands in her hair, anchoring her to the earth. It was tangled and dirty and still smelled of the lake. I worked out the knots, crumbling mud between my nails, and every once in a while, a nurse would come in. She would pad over to Callie's machines, check her oxygen level, say something incomprehensible, and then pad back out. There was a chair in the room where I was supposed to sit or sleep, but I'd decided I wouldn't sleep. I would stay awake forever. If I closed my eyes she might slip beneath the sheets, transform into air, evaporate like steam. I was going to stay awake, guarding her like this. A doctor came in. A nurse wrote on her chart. My mother arrived, spoke words, and then left. I'd been given a pamphlet telling me how to cope. The word
suicide
was on the cover and it seemed like nonsense. A word like
sclerosis
or
sumac
or
sunrise
, maybe. It was a word that could mean anything, anything but
that. I looked at the tips. Hide your household poisons, lock up your pills, throw out your razors. I was trying to understand, but my brain was flooded. Had I really seen Lara? Was she saving Callie? Had Callie been doing what they said in the lake? Had she planned it all out and thought it all through? Or was it just a joke that could change our lives forever?

Why did anyone do anything? That was the real question.

I watched a small brown spider crawl across the speckled floor. If Callie were awake she'd crouch down and scoop him up. “A pholcid!” she'd exclaim with childlike awe. Then she'd deposit him somewhere safe, unharmed and free. The spider paused, lifted two legs, and then continued onward. His reasons for being here were as incomprehensible as ours.

You can run but you can't hide. Dead Babyshits leaves a stain.

Warning! Babyshits poops her pants. GET A FUCKING DIAPER.

BETTER DO WHAT YOU SAID BABYSHNIINNNTTTTTTTTSSSSSS! DIE BITCH GOODNIGHT.

I looked at her texts for the second time that night, trying to understand the bitter jumble of information. Her friends had sent these—their names were on them. Nauseating words that seemed irrational, repulsive. I wanted to lie down on the floor, press my face against the cold vinyl, and be sick down there until something made sense. I had never looked on her phone—I thought that she would tell me. Why didn't she tell me? How couldn't I know? The answers seemed impossible and my regrets were useless. The only thing that made sense was Callie's moving chest. It went up and down and I started talking.

“Let's get out of here,” I said. “Let's get in the car. I'll give you the map
and you choose where we're going. We'll go anywhere you want, Callie, anywhere you can imagine. I'll roll down the windows and put on some music.”

I watched her chest rise and fall. I put my hand on hers.

“Do you want to go to Iowa? I've never been there. We'll get on the highway and drive for a while. We'll watch the states flashing by, the fields and valleys, the wide-open plains like you see on TV.”

I looked at the tubes covering her nose and mouth. The respirator hissed, loud and relentless.

“I think we'll live on a farm. It'll have a bright shining silo, and we can start raising animals, whatever you want. You won't have to go to school. We'll spend the day outside. We can learn to milk cows, and you'll tell me about your plans…. Maybe you'll decide to travel the world, learning different languages. Or you'll go work in a rainforest so you can discover new species. You might want to stay up all night, just dancing, in your socks….”

I stroked her smooth forehead and touched her hair.

“You can still do anything. Callie, you can.”

Callie had sent me a message. I noticed it around dawn. An e-mail with the subject line “Sorry Rebecca.” I squinted at my phone's small screen and managed to open it as I trembled.

Rebecca I'm sending you my last five interactions with Robyn so you can know the whole truth. I also wanted to tell you I'm really sorry again. Love, Callie

It was excruciatingly intimate, the details of those interactions. Callie's friendship with Robyn had changed in the space of a few weeks. They had become so close that it felt like love—or maybe it really was
love—and this was more astonishing and difficult than either of them expected. Callie was ashamed and afraid and she hadn't wanted anyone to know. She'd hidden it from me and then their love had gone sour.

I remembered my feelings for Joyce—how I imagined walking into the ocean when she ignored me. When you were thirteen or fourteen years old it seemed like a reasonable reaction. When things felt so wonderful and awful your life could shrink in a dizzying moment…and then you couldn't see all the moments still waiting in your future. Callie had been hiding behind a mask, thinking she was too messy and complicated. And I'd been hiding, too, hoping her life would be easier than mine. But easy wasn't real. Love was powerful because it could hurt you. Love hurt now; I could've told her that. It was messy and graceless. It went wrong, it even died. But the thing she needed to know was that it didn't have to destroy you. It could resprout and grow again; it could still come back.