Hyacinth Girls (28 page)

“I know,” Lara was saying. “I didn't mean—”

Our hands were one mass on the table. I wasn't letting go. Callie's body in Lara's arms. Callie gasping for breath. I finally pulled my hand away and rubbed the wetness around my eyes.

“What was it like?” I asked. “Out there with Callie?”

“Well,” Lara began. “It was a shock when she went under.”

“But you didn't hesitate to go in after her? You didn't stand there watching?”

She tried to appear unrattled. “No, I just went in.”

I thought of our last game of hyacinth girls, when I'd pretended to be Lara, stuttering my good-byes as I watched Autumn drown.

“Callie was asking me about Autumn Sanger,” I said. “I think she was looking for inspiration.”

“Autumn?” Lara touched her loose hair like she'd forgotten a bobby pin.

“I shouldn't have told her,” I said. “I didn't make the connection.”

“I think Autumn was different from Callie.” Lara began tracing her fingers over the table. “Autumn didn't leave a note or anything. She was kind of resigned to how things were.” Her fingers stopped moving, and she seemed to be gathering her thoughts. “Autumn used to meet me every morning at school, and I'd see these bruises on her ankles. She had these really skinny legs and her dad kicked her wearing his work boots. My dad had a temper, too, but he mostly went after my brothers, so I thought I understood, but I couldn't, really. So one day, Autumn comes in and she goes, ‘You wanna see something?' She pulls up her shirt and there's purple bruises all over her ribs. I was like, ‘Okay, this is too much. You gotta tell someone.' And she's, ‘Nah, forget it. That's just the way it is.' ”

“Her dad beat her.” I felt wary. “Are you saying he killed her?”

Lara shook her head. “She just gave up.”

“But you told us Mr. Hort—”

“Autumn was really unhappy. But I wanted to think she got kidnapped because she didn't leave a note. I thought, if she was going to do it, she'd at least try to get her dad in trouble.”

Lara looked at me directly and I stopped brushing my tears away. “She was different,” she insisted. “You saw what Callie wrote online?”

I tried not to sniffle as I nodded my head.

“Think about what she wanted.”

I thought of the darkness of the lake, the vast span of the ocean. The starkness of her message, claiming she'd been killed.

“She wanted to make them sorry,” I said, hesitating. “She thought she could change things.”

“She wanted to have a voice,” Lara said, “so that people would listen. She didn't give up the same as Autumn. That could be hopeful, don't you think?”

 

When I was little, death was something outside me. Not as far away as the moon, but only sometimes nearby. It was the smell in the street when I saw fur in the gutter. Or the cars rushing by when a hand suddenly squeezed mine. It was the shoe in the grass that lay there for weeks, filling up with worms and rain when nobody came back.

Death was a warning, a sharp voice, a door slamming. It was spiky and heavy like a bomb in a dream. You were scared it would fall on you, but you wondered what would happen. Then it surprised you by exploding right inside your house. You looked for your mom, but they wouldn't tell you where, and that was when it changed: it became something you searched for.

A magnet getting stronger. A planet sucking you closer. You were orbiting around it, like a loose feather in the air. You wanted to touch it and understand what it was. So you jumped off a swing at the very top—you closed your eyes and let yourself fall. It was a dare, a joke. A fantasy funeral. You laughed yourself sick until one day you learned.

It had been growing inside you, branching out, getting stronger. It was the thud of your heartbeat, more powerful than you thought. It was the beast who said “Freak!” and then whispered, “Come.” It was a cage
with the door open and a voice telling you, “Fly!” You flapped your arms, but then a new voice interrupted. Someone was calling you. She knew your name.

Here's how it could've happened when I woke up in the hospital.

There's a pile of cards, zillions of stuffed animals. Get-well balloons sway in the corners of my room. Rebecca begins reading the apologies from kids at school. There must be at least a hundred. They sound super-sincere. But most important, when I try to remember, everything is clear, my head isn't clouded with fog, I know who I am. It makes sense. Perfectly. Then I turn my head and see her. Her mascara is running the way it did once before. When she says my name it's like kittens purring, pink velvet noses pushing against my skin. She knows me by heart, like multiplication, and she quickly finds my hand under the covers. Then visitors start to arrive, everyone wants to see me. Teachers and friends, reporters and TV crews: they all start to clap and tell me I'm brave. The light isn't too bright and then weirdly smoky. And when I blink again I see them, my mom and dad.

And none of this was actually true. It didn't happen like this at all. There weren't any cards or balloons when I opened my eyes. Rebecca couldn't read their apologies because there weren't any apologies. My brain was so wasted I couldn't fit words into a sentence—they disappeared like gnats when I tried to catch them in my mind. There weren't zillions of stuffed animals, and the only people who visited were relatives: Grandma Bea, Great-Aunt Gina, and Grandpa Pat. They weren't smiling or clapping or telling me I was brave. I couldn't remember or think. Robyn never came.

Plus, there was the frostbite. My feet felt radioactive. It was like they'd been trapped in a cage deep inside the sun. My blisters looked disgusting,
like tiny pink mushrooms, and when the doctor snipped them off, I needed the plastic bowl to vomit.

But how was I here?

“It was a miracle,” Rebecca said.

“Did I swim out of the…”

“A miracle,” she repeated.

I didn't feel like a miracle. I felt unbelievably blank. Like at long last I was supposed to see this movie and ended up staring at a black screen. I was just spectacularly glazed over, my mouth hanging open, a dull-brained baby, numb and confused.
Why am I watching this? What happened? Why isn't it starting the way that I thought?

“I just can't understand it,” Great-Aunt Gina said. “Such a beautiful girl.”

“What kind of meds is she on?” Grandpa asked. “Is that why she's acting like this?”

“What do you want me to say?” Grandma Bea said. “It is what it is.”

And then there was Rebecca, who was always there. Looking into my face, repeating my name like a code. She talked and talked, and I didn't know how many days had passed, and she was talking about bread and then I thought I heard her say “Papa.”

“I know what happened with Robyn,” she said. “All of us love you.”

It was more than I could hear right now. I stared at the black screen.

One day someone brought in gigantic hot pink slippers. Rebecca wiggled them on over my bandages and offered me her arm. Then I was supposed to try and walk, but my toes didn't stop me from tipping over. There was a complete disconnect between my brain and my feet. I was going home. I gripped Rebecca's arm and wondered how I was even moving. I couldn't hold my own weight. Below my ankles was just floppy burning meat. I
hobbled up the stairs to our house, clutching her, while she talked me to the top.

“Three more. Two more. C'mon, Callie. Almost there.”

It was like crossing the finish line when I finally made it to my bed. Rebecca piled pillows under my feet and explained that there would always be someone here. It would be her or Great-Aunt Gina or Grandpa Pat or Mrs. Romero. I was embarrassed I needed babysitters, but I was too tired to argue.

“Think of us as your bodyguards,” Rebecca said. “We're making sure you stay safe.”

Then I lay in bed, trying to sleep as much as I could because when I was awake I started thinking.
What did I do? What happened?
My brain burned when I remembered too much. Sometimes, to distract myself, I pretended that I was holding a lighter to different parts of my body. I held it against my knees until I felt the shooting sparks. I waited for my fingers to sizzle. The hairs on my neck crackled and singed. When each part was feverish, I imagined snowflakes. They fell in mounds on my stomach. They cooled my lips and my tongue. They made my ankles shiver and my heartbeat slow. Finally, if I was still awake, I imagined a silky feather that tickled me everywhere. It slipped across my thighs, under my chin, inside my ears. I let it roam all over my body, but I never let it touch my feet.

They were swollen and stiff, like cavewoman feet, and every few hours they woke me with the throb of a second heart. Three toenails fell off. Rebecca fed me painkillers and unwrapped my bandages. Underneath, my skin was blue, gray, and poisonous purple. Rebecca dabbed on the special ointment and I wished she wouldn't look. But then, when she was about to leave, I gripped the side of her arm. I was grabbing at her leg, wiping my face on her shirt. I was crying so intensely, just incredibly needy.
Don't give up on me. What if you give up on me?

“I won't give up on you. Callie, I promise.”

“No! Go away!” I shrieked. “Leave me alone!”

And when she shifted the littlest bit, I started to wail. “Please don't leave me! Why are you leaving?”

Rebecca didn't leave. She stayed by my side. And even though I didn't mean to, I started telling her things: I was a freak, a pathetic baby. I'd been trying to hide it my whole life. But now everyone knew and how could she stand to look at me?

Rebecca let me clutch onto her as she tried to untangle the things I was saying. She said our whole family loved me. Things were going to get better. I wasn't the things they said I was, my mind was just mixed up. I could start over fresh and be anything I wanted. I didn't have to be anyone except for myself. I was trying to believe her, but then my brain was burning. I had to look at Rebecca and remember what I'd done. If I'd left her like that…if she'd had to sit here without me…I never loved her enough; I hadn't understood what would happen at all. And I wished I could still hate how she was always here for me, loving me without limits, forgiving my heartless heart—but I couldn't hate. I gripped Rebecca's sleeve tighter. It had been her voice calling my name; she was the one out there at the lake. “You saved me,” I said.

Then she told me something impossible.

“The person who pulled you out—that was your dad's wife.”

I let go of her sleeve. I stuffed my head under my pillow. Then I pressed it into my mouth like I could swallow it whole.

“I don't want to keep secrets anymore. I want you to know the truth.”

I pressed my fingers into my eyes, sinking underwater. Rebecca said I needed to listen. Then she told me about my parents.

My dad used to visit me, once a month, at the beach. He kept it a secret from his wife because she didn't want us in contact. She was jealous because he'd cheated on her with my mom right before their wedding.
And then she thought they were still cheating, but my dad was only visiting me. He had visited me. He'd bought me ice cream, hugged me, and kissed me. He carried me in his arms. He'd wanted to know me. I kept trying, but I couldn't remember. “Why didn't anyone tell me?”

“His wife thought your parents were cheating,” Rebecca said. “And she came to me, threatening suicide. So I told her the truth about your visits, thinking it would help.”

But instead his wife went to the beach and saw us, and she hit my parents with her car.

“It was so horrible, Callie. We didn't want you to imagine. Or to remember any of it—even though that meant leaving out your dad.”

The woman I saw at Grandma's—my dad's wife—had killed my mom. Mom was murdered, and Dad killed himself not long after. I felt a blankness stretching over me, like a sheet pulled tight, blocking out the light, the air, the feeling of being alive. I couldn't remember it at all, but I saw their faces changing. I saw the fear in their eyes. I saw the way their lips stretched. I hadn't known why my parents died or remembered my dad's visits. I thought my mom's life was perfect, but with just a few words they both were changing.

What about a bath?
they asked.
It'll make you feel better
. But the idea of getting in the tub seemed totally impossible. First, I would have to get out of my bed. Put my feet on the floor. Find a way to stop crying as I staggered down the hall. Then there would be soap and undressing and my feet wrapped in plastic bags. They weren't supposed to get wet. I'd have to keep them out of the water.

“Let me open your curtains,” Grandpa said, but I wanted it dark.

“I brought you some juice. Just have a little sip.”

I sipped like a newborn baby, starry-brained and speechless. I was learning how to speak—each word felt like a stone. Mom, Dad. They didn't mean what they used to. When I closed my eyes they lay heavy inside my stomach. Mommy, Daddy. I tried curling up around them, sticky drool drying against one cheek. I wanted to pull them close, feel them with me, decide if we were the same by the way their names sounded on my tongue. But they were always too far away. They weren't here when I needed them. And when I cried out their names new words came raining down. Murdered. Victims. Babyshits. Bullets.

“They're just labels,” Rebecca said. “Nobody's just one thing.”

I felt the words heaping up on me in a tall stone pile—a thousand colored stones—ready to crush. She was murdered. A victim. They rolled and shifted. She was a hero, Evil McFrenzy. They pressed down on my chest.
Your parents were so much more than what happened to them
. I was supposed to be more, too. Mom's murderer had given me that chance.

Lara
, Rebecca said. Murderer, killer.
Not just one thing
. The woman who saved me. But who had she saved? Who was the girl who tried to die in the water—who looked for an answer in the lake and came up cold and empty? That girl had wanted to change her own story, but she missed the most obvious thing: after you died, your story wasn't yours. The things you'd left behind—your notes and actions—could all be misunderstood, forgotten, ignored. My dad had loved me, but I couldn't remember. My mom suffered, but I'd seen only perfection. The words I'd had for my parents were as wrong as the ones I'd been given at school. And the words I gave Rebecca…I looked at her again.

Raspberry-tea-drinking guardian. Falls-for-everything hygienist. Turtleneck-wearing softie who couldn't understand. She held my hand as she sat on my bed, and I tried to really see her. If she knew me now, I wanted to know her back. She had never asked for a title, she wasn't
Momma R or Auntie, even though she raised me and loved me the way a parent would. Who was she? What words? I dropped my head onto her shoulder. Then we sat there for a while, feeling the things I couldn't name.

It happened one morning, I still don't know why, I opened my eyes and something was different. My feet weren't screaming. The second heart had stopped throbbing. My arms were light and the pile of stones was gone. Babyshits, murderers. I tested them carefully. Mom, Dad. I looked at the window and sunlight was coming in. The cane beside my bed was white like Christmas candy. I put my fingers around the handle and waited for the idea to wear off. I would lie back down in exactly two seconds. Three, four, five, six. I wasn't lying down—I wanted to get up.

Push back the blanket. Shift feet carefully. Don't go too fast. Take your time
. Someone had opened my window. I could feel the cool air. A bird was cawing outside. Sounded like a crow. Then my feet were on the floor, and my legs were all wobbly. But it didn't hurt too bad, and I kept holding my cane. Then like a miracle I was leaving my room.

Grandpa Pat was sitting in the living room. He was working on his laptop. When he saw me coming in, he stopped typing. He didn't say anything as I continued unsteadily forward. But he looked at me like I would burst into flames. Was I going to escape? Try to kill myself again? Start sobbing like a maniac? My grandpa didn't know.

Then my foot went wrongward and I tumbled to the floor.

Grandpa crouched beside me. I could see the wet comb marks in his hair.

“Gina!” he yelled. “Gina, can you get in here?”

My great-aunt came in and then they moved me to the sofa. They put
pillows under my feet and checked my pulse. Grandpa covered me with a blanket and then they both stood together. Mom's dad, Rebecca's mom. Watching me like I was a broken doll.