She Lies Twisted (18 page)

“
So I...” James blushed and pulled his hands back. The silence between us became awkward for the first time since we'd met. Whatever it was he wanted to tell me wasn't going to be easy.
Your story can't be any worse than mine,
I thought with a sudden stab of fear. I was going to have to tell it soon. I was going to have to peel back my ribcage and let him see my heart. As I watched the anxiety swarm across his face, I froze up, promised myself I couldn't do it.
How can he even stand it?
I wondered as he looked pointedly back at me. His eyes were boiling over with determination. He wanted to do it but it was going to be hard.

“
So I had...so we...we...” He waited, hoping I would supply the words, hoping that I would figure it out for myself so he wouldn't have to say it. I waited, my back tense, my spine ramrod straight. What was he trying to say?
Please, don't let it be that.
“So I had sex with her because that's...that's what she wanted...” I almost threw up. I almost leaned down and put my head between my legs and emptied my soul on the floor.
Why is he a reflection of my life? How did those fucking harpies know we were the perfect match in misery?
James babbled on, mistaking my silence for judgment. How wrong he was.

“
She said it wouldn't mean anything, that she just wanted to try it, that we should be each other's first because we were so close and I...I should've told her no but I didn't and then afterward, I felt guilty.” James stood and paced across the room to look out the window. I stayed seated, facing towards the living room and away from him. I didn't need to hear the rest, I already knew what happened. I'd seen it myself. “Things were different then. She was different, I was different and so I started avoiding her...” He trailed off and didn't continue for the longest time. I counted seconds in my head and watched the numbers on the stove move upwards.

“
Some of my memories are fuzzy,” James whispered softly. “Like they're underwater and I'm looking at them from above but the day she died, that's as clear to me now as the day I lived it.” He leaned over the sink and closed his eyes. “I had just crossed the street towards my house. School had gotten out and I was trying to leave before she saw me. We'd always walked home together but lately, it hadn't felt right. I think she expected things to change between us but I just wanted them to go back to the way they were.” He whirled around and stared at me, fat drops rolling down his face and neck.

“
Do you hate me?” He asked suddenly. I stood up, too, no longer able to sit still.

“
No,” I whispered, my hands shaking. I understood perfectly. I had to tell him that. He had to know I understood and that there was someone just like him out there in the universe who had made the same mistakes and dealt with the same consequences.

“
She called out to me and I ignored her. I pretended I didn't hear,” he said and his voice began to quiver, to shake like a bridge in an earthquake. It was trying to stay strong but when your foundations are struck, you crumble. “She chased after me and I saw it coming. I tried to warn her but it was just seconds between my voice and the crash. She was so bloody and broken, Neil.” James was sobbing now. I went to him like he'd come to me last night and held him while he cried.

“
She was bloody and broken and when they took her to the hospital, she never woke up. I can't forget the sound of the metal and the crack of bone on pavement, Neil. It haunts me in my sleep.” I shushed him then and brushed his hair back. That was enough. He had told me all I needed to know.

“
We'll find her,” I whispered, getting the strangest urge to brush a kiss across his forehead.
You're going insane. Grief is making you insane.
I decided against it. “We'll find her and we'll make things better and when she's done at the library, you can say goodbye and you can tell her you're sorry and that you never meant to hurt her and that you love her so fucking much that it kills you inside.” I stopped when I realized I wasn't just talking about James. I was talking about myself and Boyd. James pulled away and smiled at me.

“
Thanks, Neil,” he said as I used my sweatshirt to wipe the tears from his cheeks. “And thanks for being my friend. It takes a pretty brave girl to do that.”

"Th
e day that Sydney died, I had the most horrible thoughts about her. I wished she would move away and never come back so that I wouldn't have to watch the hurt in her eyes each and every time she tried to hug me and I pulled away. I told myself that I had only done what she'd wanted because I loved her but in reality, I was being selfish. I wanted us to belong together like that because it made things easier. It made more sense to my mother, to my friends, to the world. But we were never meant to be like that. When I held her that night, I cried because I knew I had made the wrong decision. It meant the world to her and it was only a mistake to me. It was the worst feeling I had ever had. And then she died. Nothing can make that right.”

I paused in my reading, realizing that along the way, I had stopped speaking aloud. My lips had failed to keep up with the beat of my heart. I let my lashes rest against my cheek and listened to Boyd play another horrible country song on his grandfather's guitar.

I'd looked everywhere for his ghost. I'd had to, after my talk with James. I folded the letter and tucked it into the front of my jeans. James had showed it to me later, after I'd made him tea and we'd sat in the living room in silence pretending to enjoy a movie that neither of us were watching. I don't know why he'd written it. Maybe he'd thought the words wouldn't be able to escape his throat. Maybe he'd thought they'd clog up in his chest and I'd never know why he was the way he was. Whatever the reason, he'd written it in tiny, careful letters on a piece of Jessica's stationery. I'd swiped it after he'd fallen asleep on the couch and brought it, along with the harp and the pocketknife, here, to the park where Boyd had taught me to play chess.

“
I can't stay long,” I said as I gazed at the daisies and remembered when James and I had sat under this same tree. It seemed like ages ago but it was only days. I shook my head and relaxed into the grass. The sun cut across my skin in stripes, blocked by thick branches with gold and red and yellow leaves. “I have to go and find Jessica.” Boyd didn't answer, of course, but it was nice to lie there and pretend he could, pretend that the song he was playing was just for me and that nothing had gone wrong in the world.

I rolled onto my side and watched the sun reflect off of his balding head. He'd had hair before I'd ruined our relationship. I should've said no. James should've said no. We were one in the same. It was incredible to believe that there was actually someone else in the world that was as fucked up as I was. I closed my eyes and saw the stitches across his brow, across his lower lip, across his throat. His image was burned in my brain and I found that no matter how hard I tried to care about Jessica, all I could think about was James. We had to find her soon, sure, that was obvious, but I had to help James find Sydney. It felt like if I did that, I was one step closer to letting Boyd go. The question was, was I ready to do that?

I picked a daisy, then another, then another until I had a small pile of them clutched against my chest. I'd never made a daisy chain before but I tried, slitting the stems with my thumbnail and weaving them together like James had done. When I was finished, I had a small crown that I presented to Boyd's ghost. I was careful not to touch him. I didn't think I could handle another one of my family members trying to kill me. I stood behind my ghost, ducked down so that I was standing inside of her, mimicking her, and watched Boyd smile at me.

“
Did you like it?” He asked, strumming the guitar one last time and placing it in the grass by his side. Ghost Me nodded and I placed the daisy chain between us.

“
I liked it so much, I made you this,” I said quietly while I heard the other me say something inconsequential, something unimportant. “I should've told you that I loved it, that I knew the songs were always about me and that I cared. I should've told you that I listened to the tapes when I fell asleep and no matter how much I joked about it, I never thought they were creepy.” Boyd smiled and laughed. I closed my eyes and followed the Ghost Me to the ground where I lay silently, my knees tucked under my sweatshirt, and listened to him pick up his guitar and start a new song with my eyes closed and the autumn breeze brushing my bangs back from my forehead. For a moment there, things were almost good.

My tranquility was short lived.

A kick to my lower back knocked the air out of me and sent hot waves of pain coursing through the stitches in my belly. I rolled to my feet and came face to face with Margaret Cedar.

“
You fucking bitch,” she snarled, her usual tight jeans and skimpy tank top replaced with baggy cargo pants and a gray sweatshirt. I stumbled a step back to catch my breath. “You're as much of a freak as that dead sister of yours. They should put your crazy ass in a mental institution or in the ground where you belong.” She came at me again, fists swinging wildly. I ducked out of the way of those acrylic pink nails and tried not to think about why she was angry.
She thinks you fucked Jarrod.
I bit my lip and swung back at her, using my anger at Jessica to fuel my punch. When my knuckles connected with her delicate, little jaw, pain bloomed up my arm and made me pause long enough for her to leap at me.

Margaret was a frenzy in glimmer gloss, slapping and pulling and tearing at me like one of the demons I was supposed to banish. I knocked her to her back and tried to get the upper hand by straddling her. By this time, people had begun to stare but nobody was helping. Everyone loves a good fight.

“
He's mine, he's mine, he's fucking mine, do you hear me?” I rolled off of her and rose to my feet. She was too wild to hold down, too angry, too fueled by unworthy passion. I pushed her away again and she slammed against the base of the tree with a grunt.

“
I don't want to fight you,” I said and I meant it. With Jessica, with James, with everything that was going on, my struggle was more internal than external and I didn't think I could handle both. She launched herself forward with a scream of rage.
Love works
both ways, Neil, for good and bad.
Boyd had used to say that.

“
I always knew you were a whore,” she panted, her voice cracking with hysteria and exhaustion. She was wearing herself out and not getting anywhere. She was too hot headed, I was too clear headed, she wasn't getting any shots in and that pissed her off. Verbal abuses poured over my head like rain as I turned to walk away. I could still hear Boyd's country twang but I couldn't enjoy it anymore, not with this. “Is that why he killed himself?” She snarled finally, breaking her vituperative string of curses with one that she knew would hurt the most. “Because you were a shitty lay?” My heart froze in my chest, suspended by her words.
Let it go,
my rational brain begged.
Go home, get
James, free Sydney, find Jessica. Those are the things that matter.

I took a deep breath and continued walking.

“
You don't walk away from me,” she continued to screech. “You do not fuck my fucking boyfriend and then walk away from
me.
” She barreled into my back, surprising me with the force behind her lanky and as I'd always believed, anorexic, form. I hit the dirt with a thud as she wrapped her hands around my hair and pulled. I tried to throw her off but her frenzy had reached a fervor and her skinny hands were wrapping around my throat, plastic nails raking my skin and drawing blood. I pushed myself up to my elbows and her weight lifted from my back suddenly. I rolled over and found Margaret suspended above me by the beak-less bird.

She screamed, I screamed, and then her head was twisting back at an angle that I knew wasn't right.

This isn't happening, this isn't happening, this isn't happening.

“
Jessica, stop!” It was too late. Margaret's limbs were too relaxed, her face too slack, her neck too twisted. Margaret Cedar was dead.

The demon dropped her to the grass in front of me in a heap of adolescent limbs and broken dreams. We used to play Barbies together, we used to eat cut up hot dogs with ketchup and watch cartoons, Jessica used to sleep in the same with bed her on sleepovers. Now, she was dead in front of my feet for a boy that wasn't worth it.
Love works both ways, Neil, for good and bad.
In that moment, I knew his statement couldn't have rung more true.

Screams came to me then from the people in the park. People who had seen the girl who had attacked me die but hadn't seen the bird that killed her. What was I going to do now?