Tumble & Fall (18 page)

Sienna crosses her arms over her waist. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I figured you’d be busy.”

“Who was that?” he asks, glancing out the window.

Sienna feels a quick swarm of butterflies in her stomach. It feels, for a moment, like she’s watching herself from somewhere else. Or watching a movie about a girl and her dad, arguing in the foyer. Before she’d gone into the House, Sienna had been so lost in herself, so tangled up in her own anxieties, that she hadn’t had time to do anything normal, like sneak out, or get caught. However much of her wishes they could just put this all past them, there’s a part of her that’s almost enjoying it.

“His name is Owen,” she says. “We used to play together on the beach. He lives a few streets over. Remember?”

Dad looks up at the ceiling, and Sienna thinks for a moment that he’s really trying, trying to see Owen’s face. But then he runs a hand through his hair. He walks to the steps and sits with his back against the white paneled wall. “Goose, I know this place feels safe,” he says. “That’s what I love about it. It’s part of the reason I brought us here.”

“Then what does it matter if I go out or not?” Sienna asks. There’s anger in her belly, like fire, but she swallows it down. Her voice is tight and unfamiliar. “Do you really still have to treat me like some messed-up little kid?” She watches as the words land and Dad’s face softens. “I’m better, Dad,” she says gently. “I promise.”

Dad looks blankly at her before reaching into his pocket. He pulls out her pillbox and holds it between them.

Sienna stares at it, hoping for a minute it might turn into something else.

“You missed two doses,” he says. “Last night, and this morning. You didn’t think I would check for that, either?”

Sienna swallows. She pulls her sweater tighter around her waist, as if she’s been suddenly exposed. She wishes she could close her eyes and be somewhere else. “It’s not a big deal,” she insists. “They make me fall asleep. And I was planning on taking them as soon as I got home…”

“Goose, this isn’t like you,” Dad says. “I’m worried. You had plans with Denny. She spent the day waiting for you to come home, to pick flowers…”

Sienna’s hands fly up to her forehead. She squeezes her temples like she’s trying to keep her head in one place.
“Pick flowers?”
She laughs, harsh and low. “Are you even listening to yourself? How can you possibly think that’s something I would actually want to do?”

“You’re grounded, Sienna,” Dad interrupts. He says it fast and sudden, like he’s ripping off a bandage. The air between them buzzes, tender and raw.

Sienna stands frozen, her hands tangled in her still-damp hair. The scene she’s been watching from outside of herself has suddenly taken an implausible turn. She’s never been grounded in her life.

“Grounded?” she asks. “I’ve just spent six months locked up with doctors, getting tested and retested and talking about my feelings, and now, now that there’s an
asteroid
, I’m grounded?”

“I’m sorry,” Dad says. “I wish I didn’t have to do it this way. I wish you’d
want
to be here, but—”

“Why would I want to be here?” she asks. “All you care about is Denny, and the wedding.”

Dad sighs. “These next few days…” His voice breaks, and he clears his throat. “I think we should spend them together. As a family.”

Dad locks his fingers together, twisting against his knuckles. Sienna feels a sharp tug around her heart. He’s not asking for a lot. Part of her
wants to want
to be there, too. But she doesn’t. She wants to be with Owen, where she can be herself, and not worry about her every move being measured, being held up to some imaginary standard of
Fine. Sane. Not Crazy.

She swipes the pillbox from his hand and makes a show of emptying the morning’s dosage into her palm. She gulps the pills down without water.

“Goose.” Dad stands as she brushes past him on the steps.

“I’m going to my room,” she calls back over her shoulder. “Isn’t that the way this whole grounding-thing works?”

Sienna stomps up the stairs. She doesn’t remember having many tantrums when she was little—she was usually too busy consoling everybody else. Now, as she reaches the step that creaks louder than the rest, she lays into it with extra oomph. It feels good, she thinks, to make noise.

ZAN

“Come on up!”

Zan and Nick stand just inside the first set of doors, at the bottom of a crooked staircase. They squeeze through the hallway, between an overflowing pile of newspapers and magazines and a pair of rusted bicycles, pushed up against the scuffed white walls.

Nick catches Zan by the elbow. “Hey,” he says. “You sure you want to do this?”

Zan wriggles her arm free and forces a smile. She’s afraid if she stops moving, she’ll change her mind. “Of course,” she says. “It’s why we came.”

Harsh footsteps clatter across the landing above and a shadow hangs over the stairwell. Zan keeps climbing, steadying her nerves with long, deliberate breaths. Whatever she finds, she reminds herself, she’ll know. And Leo wants her to know. The truth will set her free.

“Hey!” A girl stands at the top of the stairs, waiting to greet them. Her hair is dyed white-blond and fried into small, wiry curls. Her thin, boyish frame is swaddled in a dramatic red dress, the collar a scandalously low-cut V, exposing a flat section of bony rib cage between two nearly nonexistent breasts. On her feet, she wears shiny gold platform heels, which appear to be three sizes too big. “Come in! Sorry, the place is a total mess.”

The girl stumbles a bit as she leads them back into the apartment. Zan and Nick share a look as she closes the door behind them. The apartment isn’t so much a mess as it is a total and complete disaster, and probably in violation of a number of health and safety codes. They are standing in what seems to have been once used as a kitchen, but is now a glorified storage space, with clothes, shoes, hats and jackets, jewelry, books and DVDs—basically anything but food or cookware—strewn over every available surface.

“That’s okay,” Nick finally manages. “Are you … are you Vanessa?”

The girl totters unsteadily in her heels to the refrigerator. The shelves are completely bare, except for a large pitcher of something red with chunks of fruit floating inside. “I made sangria. Do you guys want some?” she asks, tossing a pile of sweaters from the counter to the floor. “I thought we had some cups here, somewhere…”

“No thanks,” Zan interrupts. She’s feeling impatient, and more than a little weirded out. Up close, she sees that the girl’s eyebrows have been heavily drawn in liquid liner, over a layer of dark stubble. Her bright red lipstick is faded around the corners of her mouth, a blood-colored stain that looks permanent.

“We’re looking for Vanessa,” Nick says again, this time a little bit louder, as if maybe she hadn’t heard him.

The girl shrugs and takes a giant gulp of sangria, straight from the pitcher. Pink drool oozes down her chin. “She’s not here,” she says through a mouthful of soggy fruit.

Zan feels a tingling in her hands and feet, a weight lifting. The idea of Leo having anything to do with this person was starting to make her feel sick. “So … you’re not Vanessa?” she asks. It seems important to confirm.

“Nope.” The girl shakes her head. “I’m Gretchen. We’re roommates. Or, I guess, we were roommates. I’ll probably never see her again. She took off last week. Are you sure you guys aren’t hungry? There used to be trail mix in one of these cabinets…”

Gretchen begins frantically opening and closing cabinet doors. Zan takes a few steps closer to the door. She has a feeling if they don’t make much noise they could leave without Gretchen even noticing, or remembering they were there.

“Did she say anything about where she was going?” Nick asks. Zan feels torn. She knows he’s doing his job, doing his best to help her learn as much as she can while they’re there. But all she wants to do is go home. There’s no Vanessa. They tried. They tried, but it was too late.

Gretchen finally gives up the trail-mix hunt and collapses onto a pile of winter coats on the floor. “No,” she huffs. “She didn’t really talk to me very much. Nobody did. I think it’s because I was always studying, you know?”

She looks to Nick as if she’s waiting for an answer. He nods slowly. “Sure,” he says. “Okay, well, thanks for…”

“I mean, I know that’s what it is,” Gretchen continues, waving her hand around in front of her face like she’s swatting a pesky bug. “Even my mom used to tell me to get out more. She’d say, ‘Gretchen, take a break. Live a little.’” Gretchen hiccups and gropes for the pitcher, bringing it back to her lips. “So that’s what I’m doing. Better late than never, right?”

Zan fidgets behind her back for the doorknob, willing Nick to look her way, willing him to follow her outside. But she can see by the way that he’s holding his head, the serious look in his eyes, that he’s not going anywhere yet.

“That’s right,” Nick says, ever the gentleman. “What were you studying?”

“Molecular biology.” Gretchen laughs spitefully. “I was getting my doctorate. Doctor of Philosophy. How ridiculous is that? I mean, who even cares? What’s the point? What’s the point of anything, you know?”

Zan’s eyes wander to a framed photo, hung at a disheveled angle on the wall. It’s a girl in a royal blue cap and gown, flanked by a sweet-looking, gray-haired couple. The girl has lifeless, mousy brown hair and wears big, unflattering glasses. Bright white tennis sneakers poke out from the bottom of the too-big gown.

“Is this you?” Zan asks, leaning in for a better look.

“Where?” Gretchen crawls on her hands and knees. “Oh. Yeah. A real bombshell, right?” She laughs drily. “I mean, the saddest part is I bought those shoes, special. My parents came all the way from Wisconsin, so I bought new sneakers. I wanted them to be clean.”

Zan looks down at Gretchen on the floor. There’s a tug around her heart and all of a sudden she feels like crying again. Where are Gretchen’s parents now? Why didn’t she just go home?

“Vanessa had the best shoes,” Gretchen continues, speaking to nobody in particular. “These are hers!” She stretches out one leg and flops her ankle up and down, the sparkly heel knocking against the floor. “Most of this stuff is hers, actually. I figured she wouldn’t mind if I tried some things on. She was always telling me to borrow whatever I wanted.”

Zan looks to Nick. His eyebrows are lifted, and she almost expects to see his ears and nose twitch, like a dog after a scent. She glances behind him down a long hallway, a pile of skirts and dresses leading toward an open door.

“She was so
nice
,” Gretchen continues. “And I was such a bitch! So she never did the dishes. So what? She always invited me places and I never went. Not once. And now she’s gone.”

“Is that her room?” Zan asks, stepping over a tower of textbooks on the kitchen floor.

Gretchen nods, and Nick follows Zan down the hall. “Take whatever you want,” Gretchen shouts. “She won’t be coming back. Why would she? She had tons of friends. I’m sure she’s with them all, now. Someplace awesome.”

Zan steps carefully between piles of long scarves and vintage handbags. The room has two giant windows and dusty sunlight cuts thick beams across the floor. A string of prayer flags hangs over one window, and the walls are covered in quirky drawings, hung in frames of different colors and sizes. An acoustic guitar pokes out of the closet, and the back of the closet door has been transformed into an artful display of chunky necklaces and long, dangling earrings, hung like constellations from shiny nails and hooks.

“Even her mess is cool.” Gretchen sighs, her breath hot and wine-soaked on the back of Zan’s neck. Zan steps deeper into the room, wishing Gretchen would disappear. Her stomach feels suddenly empty; a dull throbbing starts at the base of her skull. She hears Nick’s heavy footsteps behind her. She doesn’t know why, but she wishes he’d disappear, too.

Dresses and skirts are tossed on the bedspread, a colorful patchwork quilt. They are all flowy and long, the kind that Zan always wishes she had the body to pull off. Beside the bed is a pile of books, the spines frayed and tattered. She looks closer to find that they are mostly books of poetry.

The Beats. Bukowski. Brautigan.

All of Leo’s favorites.

Zan perches gently on the edge of the bed. The room seems to spin and pull away from her, whipping around as she sits, silent and still, the eye of the storm. Everything about this room has Leo written all over it. Vanessa was just the kind of girl he would have loved.

“What’s—” Nick starts to speak from the far corner of the room. Zan looks up to find him crouched over a scattered pile of photographs. Her heart thuds louder in her chest as she lifts herself up from the mattress.

Nick rises quickly to his feet. He has something in his hands. “What is it?” Zan asks.

He looks like he’s seen a ghost. His lips are pale as he glares at the floor.

“Let me see,” Zan says quietly, holding out her hand.

Nick doesn’t move.

“Nick.”

Slowly, he unfolds his clenched fingers and hands her a photo, torn in half.

Even before her eyes have fully focused, she knows. She recognizes the patch of pale sky over Leo’s shoulder. The white creases around his eyes, from smiling and squinting at the sun.

It’s the same photo she has framed beside her bed.

Only, she’s been cut out. Most of her, anyway. All that remains is the tangle of her dark, wet hair, blown by a sudden gust across his forehead.

Before she knows how or why, Zan dashes across the hall to a tiny bathroom. The empty churning in her stomach burns through her esophagus, boiling up inside of her until she’s spitting bile into the dirty sink.

Whoever Vanessa was, Leo wanted her to have his picture.

A picture of him, as he’d always wanted to be.

Happy. Carefree.

And alone.

CADEN

Time passes in fragments, slowed to an almost imperceptible pace. A few hours, in the world of Caden, used to mean next to nothing. The difference between one video game and the next. Or a party at one beach and a party at another.