When Reason Breaks (11 page)

“You're a liar,” said Elizabeth.

Emily flinched. “What?”

“I don't mean you're lying about what you told me. I'm sure all of that is true, but you're still lying to them.”

Emily looked confused, but Elizabeth went on, “Lying's the worst. People freak out—I mean, like screaming, punching, crying kind of freak out—when they're lied to. Like when someone asks, ‘Are you okay?' and she says, ‘I'm fine.' And the
person asks, ‘Are you sure?' and she says, ‘Yes, leave me alone.' Lies. All lies.”

“You're right. I lied to you that day in the bathroom,” said Emily. “But you lied to me in the locker room.”

“Maybe, but let me finish my story. Now, if this girl told the truth, she'd say, ‘I'm thinking about dropping out of high school and joining the circus because I'm pretty sure shoveling elephant shit all day would be better than sticking around here.' But, instead, she lies to make it easy on people. And you know what? It doesn't matter because they know she's lying and she still gets labeled the ‘troubled child' who needs fixing and everyone becomes focused on her instead of the lie that set her off in the first place.”

With wide eyes, Emily asked, “Are you okay?”

“I'm fine.” Elizabeth smiled and sucked hard on her straw.

“You're lying,” Emily said with a grin.

“Maybe, but this isn't about me. It's about you. Tell them. Get it over with, Delgado.”

Emily shook her head and hugged the book to her chest. “Tell them what?”

Elizabeth stared at Emily. They were quiet, listening to voices in the hallway and the music pounding below them, so loud the floorboards vibrated.

Elizabeth sprang forward from her sitting position and crawled the few feet that separated her from Emily. She kneeled and sat back on her heels.

“Look at me,” she whispered. Emily pushed her back into the wall and locked gazes with Elizabeth.

Elizabeth scanned Emily's face and then framed the girl's eyes with her fingers.

“Ah, there it is,” said Elizabeth.

“What?”

“Hold still.” Elizabeth pressed down her index finger, closed her eyes, and said, “Click.”

“What are you doing?” asked Emily.

“I'm taking a mental picture of you.” Elizabeth leaned in closer. Emily inhaled sharply.

“I
see
you, Emily Delgado,” she whispered. “Your problem isn't really about your friends or Kevin or your dad. You try to hide it, but I know.” Elizabeth patted Emily's leg. “Trust me, I know.”

“You're drunk.”

“Maybe, but you know what I mean.” Elizabeth popped up to her feet, crossed the room to her previous spot, and grabbed her cup. She sucked hard on the straw and shook the empty cup. “And now I really do need to find the bathroom.” She walked toward the door and half turned back to Emily.

“I know we're not friends or anything, but if you want to hang with Kevin at lunch, you can sit with us. I'll warn you, though. I've been told I'm hard to love. Being close to me is kind of like cuddling up with a rattlesnake. You take your chances.”

Before Emily could respond, Elizabeth was gone.

Emily stayed in the room until her eyes couldn't take any more reading in the near-dark. When she found Abby and Sarah, they smiled and continued to talk with the people
around them. They didn't ask her where she had been. When Kevin spotted her, he swept her up in a bear hug and gave her a kiss. Emily gulped her beer in dark corners and clung to Kevin for the rest of the night, burying her face in his chest whenever people posed for pictures.

Finally, Abby and Sarah wanted to leave. As they waited outside for Abby's older brother to pick them up, they popped gum into their mouths to hide the smell of alcohol. Emily stared at the concrete, trying to stop her world from spinning.

“Did you have fun?” Abby asked.

“Yeah,” she lied.

During the ride home and while she lay in bed, Emily mentally replayed the conversation she had with Elizabeth in the dark room until she fell asleep or passed out—she wasn't sure which.

The next morning, Emily woke up early to go to church with her family. A sharp pain ran through her head. The smells of breakfast turned her stomach, so she passed.

Sitting in the pew, Emily couldn't concentrate. Parts of her felt restless, but her limbs and head were heavy. The priest's words were like needles stabbing through her nausea. He preached about Jacob wrestling with God through the night. About struggles and unshaken faith and not giving up even though he was injured.

Emily looked at Mamá and Pop and thought about her friends and Kevin. Like Jacob, they all had struggles, but none of them had faced a major tragedy. She watched the news. Compared to others, her life and her problems were pretty
ordinary. So why did it all
feel
like she was in an epic battle? Why did every snarky remark become a festering wound? Why did she always feel like she was pinned to the mat and crushed under their weight? Why wasn't she as strong as Jacob?

After the sermon, Emily concentrated on her footing while walking down the aisle for Holy Communion. The host stuck to her tongue, which made her mouth water. When she swallowed a sip of wine, her stomach lurched. She turned down a side aisle, pushed open a door to the outside, and vomited on the sidewalk.

Elizabeth sat in Tommy's kitchen, where rows of small white skulls covered the table. She scanned the sugar candies and selected one to decorate.

“That's the one, huh?” Tommy asked as he joined her. “How do you choose when they all look the same?”

“One speaks to me each year,” she said seriously.

“O-kay,” said Tommy.

“She understands death,” said Mrs. Bowles, as she delivered to the table plastic pastry bags packed with colorful icing.

“Actually, I've seen services at the cemetery, but I haven't attended a funeral yet.” Elizabeth filled the hollows of her skull's eyes with yellow icing and outlined them with purple.

“Doesn't matter,” said Mrs. Bowles. “You still understand
death. I could tell from the first time you helped us to distribute marigolds on
El Día de los Muertos
. You understand the need to respect death as we do life, which is why we remember and honor those who have passed. A poem often recited during the holiday is: ‘What is death? It is the glass of life broken into a thousand pieces, where the soul disperses like perfume from a flask, into the silence of the eternal night.' ”

“That one always brings a tear to my eye, hon,” said Mr. Bowles as he entered the kitchen. He crossed the room, ignored his wife's hand on her hip, and both kissed her cheek and patted her backside at the same time.

“Seriously, you two? Jeez, just ignore them,” Tommy said to Elizabeth.

“I think they're cute,” she said.

“Really? So if I tried that with you …”

“I'd chop your hand off,” she finished.

Mr. Bowles laughed, while Mrs. Bowles winked at Elizabeth. Tommy was a cool blend of his parents. He got his height from Dad and his eyes from Mom. His brown, shaggy hair was the result of his dad's straight, light-brown hair mixed with his mom's almost black ringlets.

“Anyway, I was talking to Elizabeth, not you, Connor,” said Mrs. Bowles.

“
Lo siento, querida
,” he said and pecked her again. “Hey, Elizabeth, did I ever tell you the two Spanish phrases I learned before asking Elena to marry me? ‘
Sí, querida
' and ‘
Lo siento, querida
.' ”

“You're a smart man, Mr. Bowles,” Elizabeth said and grinned at Mrs. Bowles. Elizabeth created a red heart on her skull's forehead. Swirls of blue and dots of orange covered its cheeks and the top of its head, while its teeth were outlined in black, tiny lines separating each tooth.

Mr. Bowles sat across from Elizabeth, chose two skulls, and did his best to decorate one in green and orange and another in red and blue to honor his dead Irish and British ancestors.

“Anyway, souls are immortal,” continued Mrs. Bowles. “Like the living, they don't want to be ignored. Like us, too, they enjoy a good party, which is why we drink and eat and make candies and tell funny stories.”

“Do you remember when Great-Granddad saw the smoke from the grill and thought the porch was on fire, so he busted through the screen door?” said Mr. Bowles. “He yelled, ‘Bloody hell, Connor, who puts a grill so close to the house?' like it was my fault and it was perfectly reasonable for him to think the porch was in flames.”

Everyone laughed hard.

“Or the time Abuela was cleaning out the big square garbage can and she bent over to scrub down low and she fell inside,” said Tommy.

“She's lucky she didn't break anything and,
Dios mío
, did she swear like a sailor that day,” Mrs. Bowles said and wiped her eyes. She nodded. “It's good to laugh
and
cry. Too much crying without laughing is bad for the soul.”

Mrs. Bowles wiped her eyes once more and said, “What a
sight, with her legs sticking out of the can.” She chuckled and added, “
¿Quiere café?
”

“
Sí, querida
,” said Mr. Bowles.

“I was talking to Elizabeth,” she said and smiled.

“
Sí, gracias
,” said Elizabeth as she reached for a new skull to beautify.

The next day, Tommy and Elizabeth sat beneath the weeping willow in the cemetery after embellishing the tombstones with marigolds and bedazzled candy skulls. Elizabeth rested the first skull she selected the day before next to Sophia Holland's headstone.

Mrs. Bowles offered Tommy and Elizabeth a blanket and bagged lunches before she left.

“Your mom's the best,” said Elizabeth as she removed a sandwich from the bag. She held up a napkin and plastic utensils. “She thinks of everything.”

“Yeah,” said Tommy. “She's a keeper.”

Elizabeth retrieved her marble design–covered journal from her bag. While she ate, she alternately glanced over the cemetery and jotted down notes.

Tommy inched toward her and extended his neck to view the page.

“If you get any closer, I'll stab you in the eye with my pencil,” she said.

“The point of the holiday is to honor death, not encourage it,” said Tommy.

Elizabeth giggled and continued her work in her notebook.

“So, whatcha got in there?” Tommy asked and craned his neck again.

“Random thoughts, poems, sketches, et cetera.”

“Can I …?”

“No,” she said, cutting him off.

Tommy sighed. “You know, I read somewhere that to remain alive in the physical world after death, a person should procreate or publish.”

“What are you suggesting, Tomás?” Elizabeth asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Well, we're too young to have babies. I mean, we're not technically, but I'd rather wait, so the only real option right now is to publish.”

“Well, then, mission accomplished,” said Elizabeth. “You've had lots of articles published in the school newspaper. I'll call you the Immortal Mr. Bowles from now on.”

“I like the way that sounds,” he said and rubbed his clean-shaven chin.

“According to your mom, the soul is immortal, so we don't have to do anything to live forever. No books or babies required.”

“Right, but if you want to be remembered in the physical world, you should leave something physical behind,” said Tommy. “Think about it, a child is likely to have children, and so on and so on, and a published work lives forever. We wouldn't still be talking about Shakespeare or Dickinson if
they didn't create something that was eventually shared with the world.”

“True, so, I ask again, what are you suggesting, Tomás?”

“You should publish something in the newspaper.”

“My photos are published all the time. That's art, so consider me immortalized.”

“Yeah, but you could do more, like write articles or publish something from your secret journal there.”

Elizabeth remained quiet for a minute. She closed her notebook and clutched it to her chest. “Taking pictures for the newspaper is different. Those aren't personal. What I write in here is. And I can't go around stabbing everyone who hates it,” she said, jabbing her pencil up and down.

“True, but will you think about it?”

“Sure,” she said. “I'll consider it, on one condition.”

“What's that?”

“I get to eat your Dead Bread,” she said with a smile.

“I don't have any
Pan de Muerto
.”

“Liar! Your mom put a piece in my bag, so you must have one, too.”

“Clearly, she likes you more,” said Tommy as he opened his paper sack wide to show her the absence of sweets.

“Like I said, your mom's the best.” Elizabeth ripped her piece of bread in half and offered it to Tommy.

“Thanks,” he said and took a bite.

After eating, Elizabeth lay on her side, her bag beneath her head like a pillow. She patted the space beside her.

“Nap time?” Tommy asked with a smile.

“Yeah. I couldn't sleep last night.”

“Shocker,” he said and lay down next to her.

“I know, right?” She forced a smile and closed her eyes. “Poke me in the side if I snore, okay?”

“If you're sleeping so soundly that you're snoring, I definitely will not poke you.” He gently removed a small leaf from her hair. “You deserve to rest in peace.”

Elizabeth glared at him.

“I mean it, not in a creepy way,” he said with a smile and closed his eyes. “Besides, I'm going to join you, so I won't know if you're snoring. We'll both R.I.P., me and double-E.D.”

“Please don't ever publish your own poetry,” she said with a laugh.