Falling into Place Read online

  But today, with a missing spleen and a broken leg and a shattered hand and a ruptured lung and too much internal bruising to document, it seems unlikely that Liz Emerson will attend school.

  Julia too stays at the hospital with what must be her tenth can of Red Bull wobbling in her hands. Monica is there, of course, and Liam, who hadn’t intended to stay at the hospital, is still asleep against the window.

  Everyone else is already at school. Within the walls of Meridian High School, there is a hush like smoke, like smog. Breathing it is like breathing January air—it stings with each inhale, freezes inside each lung. An hour away, Liz is dying in St. Bartholomew’s, but here, she is already dead. The rumors have made it very clear that there is little hope for Liz Emerson.

  The worst place is the cafeteria, where most of the school congregates before the bell rings, copying homework and gossiping. I get a glimpse as I walk by, a glimpse of the shock and tears, and it’s so strange, the silence, the sniffling.

  How Liz would have hated it.

  She would have known that most of them aren’t crying for her. They’re crying for themselves, for fear of death, for the loss of faith in their own invincibility, because if Liz Emerson is mortal, they all are.

  The teachers are having an emergency faculty meeting, where they receive hastily photocopied sheets of “Things to Say to Distraught Students.” The principal breaks down when she tells everyone that the only reason Liz is still alive is because a machine is moving her lungs.

  But I think at least a few of the teachers must be relieved, just a little, that Liz Emerson is no longer going to be attending their classes. Spanish, because Liz blatantly texted every single day and never participated in class. English, because Liz deliberately formed opinions directly opposite those of the teacher’s. Definitely study hall, because Liz Emerson’s very presence inspired everyone else to do stupid things.

  It isn’t that Liz minds authority, exactly. It’s just that she once liked being Liz Emerson and she liked showing it, and that meant challenging teachers and daring them to challenge her back. And it doesn’t matter that she grew to hate it—she couldn’t stop.

  The teachers who cry: Ms. Hamilton, who teaches psychology and cries at everything; Mrs. Haas, who teaches world history and was actually worried out of her mind; and Mr. Eliezer, Liz’s physics teacher.

  He scratches his jaw, and no one notices the tears in his eyes. It seems unlikely that Liz will ever get her physics grade back up.

  Liz Emerson had failed physics so utterly that she couldn’t even crash her car right.

  Upstairs, Kennie’s sobbing fills the hallway—it’s louder, perhaps, than strictly necessary. Everyone is watching her, and a small and despicable part of Kennie enjoys the attention. She doesn’t bother feeling guilty about it. Her best friend is dying, and her other best friend didn’t even call her with the news.

  Kennie finds comfort in not being alone; Julia finds it in the quiet. So Julia is skipping school and is still at the hospital, where Monica has finally found her, and Kennie is a mess of running mascara.

  Liz, though, found her brand of comfort—numbness, forgetting—in throwing things and watching them shatter. She found it in taking her Mercedes out and driving thirty, forty above the speed limit, with the sunroof open so that the wind whipped her hair all around her. She found it in being reckless, careless, stupid.

  Once, Liz found comfort in me. Once, she found it in holding my hand and dreaming until our dreams came true. Once, she found it in simply being alive. Eventually, she could no longer find comfort in anything. By the end, she was just another girl stuffed full of forgotten dreams, until she crashed her car and she wasn’t even that.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Empty Seat

  Liz has photography first hour, and nothing gets done without her. Kennie and Julia are supposed to be in this class too, but they don’t make it. The majority of the class—the girls, at least—sits in tears, and Mr. Dempsey, the art teacher, is more than willing to let them take it easy. He is terrified that he might actually have to use the “Things to Say to Distraught Students” handout.

  He goes to his office and pulls Liz’s portfolio out of his filing cabinet; he flips through her photos, black-and-white prints, colored and edited ones, and tries to remember the girl behind the camera. Most of the shots have hasty Bs dashed across the backs.

  Mr. Dempsey is the kind of teacher who gets so caught up with a piece of canvas that he often fails to notice when students walk in and out of class. He ignores bells and schedules, fails to hear fire drills (though, admittedly, that’s only happened once so far), and he typically grades haphazardly, at the last minute. It’s not that he doesn’t care. It’s just that he usually forgets.

  Liz has never made much of an impression on him. He knows Julia much better, because she’s the most talented student he’s ever had, and they have had long discussions about aperture and different lighting techniques and the best brand of Earl Grey tea. And he has no choice but to know Kennie, because he’s always telling her to shut up or sit down or not to spill that particular caustic chemical. Liz, though—this was perhaps the one class that Liz Emerson sat through quietly. This class appealed to the little girl she wasn’t anymore, the part of her that was still amazed every time she clicked the shutter and captured a moment.

  And her photos. Mr. Dempsey’s vision blurs slightly as he sifts through them. There are close-ups of gravel strewn across a lawn. Tire tracks in the parking lot. Flowers too close to the road. Trampled, frost-choked grass. A cloudy sky through bare branches.

  The emotion disarms him. He has never noticed the rawness of Liz Emerson’s photos before, and now he sits guilt-stricken as he realizes that this is the first time he has really looked at them.

  The photos slide off his lap and onto the floor. He makes a halfhearted attempt to catch them, but then lets them fall, watching as they drift down around him.

  He leans back in his chair and just looks at it all, the final diary of a dying girl.

  Second hour pre-calc is filled with jocks and preps and other social elites whom Liz considered more than acquaintances but less than friends. They considered themselves much more than that, though, so when Ms. Greenberg says, “Take out last night’s assignment,” the class just stares at her.

  Finally, a braver and slightly desperate student speaks up. “C’mon, Ms. Greenberg. You can’t really think that we’re able to concentrate at a time like this. . . .”

  Ms. Greenberg fixes him with her piercing signature stare. “Were you at the hospital last night, Mr. Loven?”

  “No,” he mutters.

  “Then I expect you were neither physically nor emotionally incapable of completing your assignment. Please take it out.”

  Turns out, most people didn’t finish the assignment. Ms. Greenberg docks points from all of them.

  After going over the homework and answering questions for the three people who actually did it, Ms. Greenberg, ignoring the incredulous stares of the class, hands out note packets for the lesson. She writes Liz’s name across the top of one and puts it in the folder marked ABSENT.

  “Ms. Greenberg . . .”

  “Yes?”

  Carly Blake hesitates. She plays soccer with Liz and they usually sit at the same lunch table, but she’s no closer to Liz than any of her other more-than-acquaintances-less-than-friends, and I think Ms. Greenberg knows this. Certainly her look doesn’t waver as Carly’s lip wobbles.

  “I just don’t think . . . I just don’t know if we can—I mean, Liz is just so . . . and we’re all so worried . . .”

  Ms. Greenberg actually glares at her, and Carly trails off into silence. Ms. Greenberg puts down the note packets and looks around the classroom. No one meets her eyes.

  “All right,” she says. “That’s enou
gh. I want you all to remember that Ms. Emerson is not dead. Stop acting like she is. Until I have been notified that she is, indeed, destined for a coffin, I refuse to believe that she is. So yes, I will hold her notes and schedule a day for her to make up her quiz, though I’m sure she’ll blatantly ignore both. For those of you who are using Liz’s accident as a reason to neglect your work, I assure you it’s a weak and despicable excuse.”

  If another teacher had given such a speech, the class would have mutinied. A lot of things can be said about the student body of Meridian High school, but no one can accuse them of disloyalty. Liz is theirs, and they would have defended her to the death—or to a detention, whichever came first—if they needed to.

  But Ms. Greenberg has long been loved and hated for her bluntness, and there’s something in her gaze that makes them all feel terribly ashamed.

  There, in that classroom, I feel the tides turning. The period ends, and everyone rushes off. The rumors shift. All gossip, they say. Liz isn’t on her deathbed. Liz is no longer dead, but recovering. After all, she is Liz Emerson.

  Just before third period, Julia comes back to school. For the first time in her life, she is a mess.

  Having spent the night at the hospital, she wears the same sweatpants and shirt with the hole in the armpit. There are shadows beneath her eyes, and she is so pale that her skin is almost green.

  From the moment she steps foot in the building, she is surrounded by sympathizers, but she hardly notices.

  Julia has had her share of tragedy over the years, but they were tragedies contained within her world—her parents’ divorce, her brittle and strained relationship with her father, the death of her gerbil. Liz’s accident, however, is a terrifyingly immense thing, and try as she might, Julia cannot keep it within herself.

  She left the hospital in a vain attempt to escape it. She came to school, and it found her here too.

  Next, chemistry.

  Liz was supposed to take it during her sophomore year, but due to scheduling conflicts and an extraordinarily unhelpful counselor, she is stuck taking both chemistry and physics during her junior year.

  It’s really a pity, because Liz had been looking forward to chemistry since the brief unit in sixth grade. It was the colors that had initially attracted her, the vibrant blue of the Bunsen flame and the dusty red of copper and the deep violet of hydrates. It was the logic of balanced equations, the certainty that when element A mixed with element B, compound C would appear. It was like predicting the future; it was like magic. Most of all, it was being: of having to be so careful with the hydrochloric acid, of accidentally burning herself while lighting a match, of discovering.

  Only, by the time she finally got to take the class, school had already stopped mattering.

  Today there is no lab. There is no lecture. The class sits silently, in a darkness lit only by the episode of MythBusters on the screen.

  They stare at the empty chair. They remember the first day of fifth grade, when Liz arrived and disrupted Meridian as only she could. Liz Emerson, they think, has always been a force to be noticed.

  They are wrong.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Before

  On the first day of preschool, Liz dug her fingers into the leg of her father’s jeans and held on tight as the overly sunny teacher tried to drag her into the overly sunny classroom.

  Her dad leaned down and told her to make a wish.

  Tearfully, Liz asked her daddy to stay with her.

  He promised to never leave.

  On the first day of school after her father’s funeral, Monica dropped Liz off for the first time. Monica didn’t try to hug her, and Liz didn’t ask her to stay.

  On the first day of fifth grade at Meridian Elementary School, Liz jumped off the swings during recess and headed for the kickball diamond. She kicked a ball into Jimmy Travis’s face, gave him a bloody nose, won her team the game, and sat down at the popular table during lunch without being asked. She never left.

  On the first day of middle school, Liz walked into the building with Kennie at her side. At recess that day, Jimmy Travis told her that she was pretty, and she kissed him beside the swings.

  They were the first official couple.

  She dumped him two weeks later when he refused to let her copy his math homework, and from then on, Liz Emerson was rarely without a boyfriend.

  She didn’t really like any of them.

  On the day after eighth-grade graduation, she went to her first party and kissed an older boy named Zack Hayes, who he had given her a red Solo cup. She tried the beer and hated it, but she drained the cup anyway and he refilled it for her. It made the world dissolve and scatter around her like petals, and it wasn’t unpleasant. When she wobbled and fell, he caught her and carried her into a bedroom but didn’t leave, and she couldn’t find the words to ask him to.

  Julia found them later and pulled her away, but Liz wasn’t sure what had happened before she got there.

  On the first day of her freshman year, an upperclassman named Lori Andersen elbowed Liz into a locker and called her a stupid freshman.

  During lunch, Liz stole Lori’s car keys while Lori was in the lunch line, turned the car alarm on, and threw the keys in a toilet. Then, while Lori was fuming, Liz offered her sympathies and a coupon to the salon for a free facial waxing. Lori, who had an unfortunate habit of underestimating freshmen, took it.

  That particular salon was owned by Kennie’s uncle. He’d opened it when he got out of prison and found out that he could get paid to pull hair out of people.

  Liz called him and told him that Lori would be coming by after school. She asked him to please give her the special, free of charge. He replied that it would be his pleasure.

  The next day, Lori came to school with newly cut bangs. It wasn’t the best look for her, though her friends assured her that it was adorable. It went well until Lori went outside for gym, and the wind blew her bangs back.

  It was then that everyone saw that Lori Andersen no longer had eyebrows.

  Liz took Lori’s place at the Center Table in the Cafeteria That Looked Exactly Like All the Other Tables but Held Immense Social Meaning.

  Later, she would wonder what would have happened if she had let her world change as it should have changed. On nights when she remembered Lori Andersen’s missing eyebrows, she told herself that it would have happened anyway. Lori’s grades would have dropped anyway. She would have had to work at Subway instead of going to college anyway.

  And besides, her eyebrows grew back.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Ziplock Bags

  Liz’s next class is government. They were supposed to debate the death penalty, but today, even the affirmative squad wants to argue that no one deserves to die.

  Besides, they’re missing a member of their team.

  Liz is not fantastic at debate, pointwise. She just happens to like arguing, and she has an incredible talent for making others look stupid.

  Julia is also in this class, but she hates debating. It isn’t that she’s not eloquent—she could probably win every debate based on her vocabulary alone—but she doesn’t understand absolutes. She doesn’t see why one side is completely right and the other completely wrong.

  Which isn’t to say that Julia is any more secure in her morals than Liz is. Julia has plenty of issues, the greatest being the ziplock bag she buys from the RadioShack pervert every Sunday after church.

  Julia sits there and thinks about the fight she and Liz had the day before yesterday. Just two days ago. Julia glances at the clock and hates it for its blind, relentless ticking, because every moment that passes is another step from yesterday,
when Liz was whole and alive, and the world was all right.

  It was an old fight. Or at least it had brewed for long enough—three days ago it had simply exploded, burst from both of them, and now it stretches across the hours and hours to hang over them like a storm.

  Julia wants to go back to the hospital. She wants to apologize. No, she wants to say that she will do as Liz asked, she will get help, she will move the world to keep Liz Emerson alive.

  But she can’t. Get help, or move the world.

  Instead she thinks about how it all began, and the regret grows and grows until it’s almost a tangible thing that she can rip out and bury and undo.

  Almost.

  It started after their freshman homecoming game. They were sitting behind the bleachers with an innocuous bag of white powder, which Liz had seen peeking out of a stranger’s pocket. Naturally, she had stolen it so they could try it. Just a little bit each. Kennie was excited, because she was Kennie and new things, no matter how stupid, made her bounce. Liz was rather indifferent to it all. She was only doing it because she was Liz Emerson.

  But Julia—Julia was skeptical on the outside and so, so scared on the inside. Her hands were shaking as she watched Liz inhale, as Kennie tried and choked and got it in her eyes. Her hands shook as she took the bag and opened it, and they shook when she hesitated.

  Liz laughed.

  Julia did it because of the way Liz stared at her, daring her to take the risk for once. So she did. She took the risk while Liz and Kennie forgot everything their middle-school health teacher had ever taught them—assuming that they had actually listened in the first place. That drugs worked differently on everyone. That you really could get addicted on the first try.

  Julia remembered. It didn’t matter.

  Soon Kennie couldn’t sit still, Liz was laughing, and Julia was still shaking. Pleasantly, at first, but as the other two began to quiet down, she shook harder because her fingers kept reaching for more, until there was none left.