Falling into Place Read online

  “God, Liz. Shut up.”

  The next week, Julia had found two bouncy balls waiting on her passenger seat, along with a note that said I GOT YOU A PAIR.

  Julia smiled.

  Sometimes it was difficult to like Liz Emerson. But it was very easy to love her.

  Fifteen miles away from the crash site, Julia takes an exit ramp, because she’s not sure she can drive past the crash site again. She can still see the Mercedes when she closes her eyes, and even though all of the mangled pieces will have been cleared away, she doesn’t want to see it, the hill, the tree, the skid marks.

  Julia forgets that Kennie is still at school, most likely looking for a ride to the hospital. She does not remember all the small comments Liz made to her in passing, that she thought funerals were stupid and that she didn’t want people crying over her when she died. She can only think about how Liz was on this road yesterday, how the Mercedes was cruising down this very road in one piece yesterday. The passing cars, the blue ones—they could be the Mercedes. One of them could hold Liz, whole and laughing. But if Julia passes the crash site, if she sees it, she can no longer pretend. Liz never made it past the tree, the hill.

  Julia wonders where she had been going. The mall, maybe? But hadn’t Liz been there just a few days ago?

  With one tick mark away from E, she takes an exit and turns into McCraps (so christened in eighth grade with the introduction of snack wraps, which Liz had first called McWraps, and then McCraps after she tasted one; the name had eventually come to encompass the entire franchise). Julia parks and goes inside, and immediately the grease and noise and smell of meat envelop her. Her stomach rolls—Julia has been a vegetarian since fourth grade, ever since her class took a field trip to an organic farm. She had received a sloppy kiss from a calf and fallen in love, and when she learned on the bus back that it was destined to become hamburger, she swore to never eat meat again.

  But what knocks the breath from her is this: the sizzling grease, the shouting. The old couple drinking coffee by the window, holding hands and smiling. The tired dad with triplets fighting over a pack of ketchup. The group of middle schoolers crowded in a booth, maybe skipping school for the first time ever, laughing.

  She hates all of them.

  For smiling. For laughing. For being well and unconcerned and happy while Liz is in the hospital with a ruptured lung and a broken leg and a shattered hand and too many internal injuries to keep track of. No one should be happy. The sun shouldn’t be allowed to shine. The entire world should stay still for Liz Emerson.

  It doesn’t take a crash site to break Julia. What breaks her is a bit of noise, a few lights, and happiness.

  She is on the floor without quite knowing how she got there, her knees pulled to her chest and her arms wrapped tightly around herself. Her eyes are shut, and in that darkness, she pretends to be alone. She says Liz’s name, and then says it again and again until it blurs and becomes senseless between her lips, a spell too weak to make the world spin backward.

  Liz.

  Liz Liz Liz Liz Liz Liz Liz.

  Soon she is surrounded by McCraps employees and the old couple and the dad and the triplets and the middle schoolers. Frantic voices, hands at her elbows. For a moment she is frightened—all these people staring, surely one of them will see the mistakes seeping through her skin, the yellowing teeth, the circles under her eyes, the trembling fingers.

  But she buries herself deeper, and the memories rush over her: all the times she, Liz, and Kennie snuck out to go to the best parties and the worst ones, all of the vastly insane things they did, all of the quiet afternoons spent in Liz’s room painting their toenails while the TV mumbled in the background.

  She thinks about how it is very, very unlikely that she, Liz, and Kennie will ever do anything like that ever again.

  Nevers and forevers. These are Julia’s greatest fears.

  “I fell in love at a drive-through, honey,” says the cheerful, fat manager who is driving Julia the rest of the way to the hospital. She had one of her employees fill Mattie up and drive behind them, and best of all, she didn’t ask for an explanation when Julia asked her to avoid the interstate.

  “He was my cashier. I ordered a Big Mac and paid with my heart. Ain’t that the saddest thing you ever heard? Lemme tell you something, honey—men are goddamn terrified of babies. Fine. I’m goddamn terrified of commitment. And it ain’t been easy, I tell you, but we ain’t doing so bad, are we? We’re keeping our heads up. . . .”

  Julia does her best to listen. It’s the least she can do, but while her heart slowly falls apart, the rest of her is restless. In the front right pocket of her backpack sits an almost-empty ziplock bag, and she grips the door handle so she can’t reach for instant gratification, for escape.

  In this moment, Julia would gladly have traded places with Liz, and she hates herself because of it.

  Julia goes to the hospital.

  Despite herself, she hopes.

  She is vastly disappointed.

  Liz is headed for surgery again. Sometime this morning, her heart had begun to stutter. Ten minutes ago, it began to fail. Now, she is wax beneath white lights and scalpels. Dr. Henderson is working over her, thinking about the note on her medical records: ORGAN DONOR. He thinks about that irony as he works. Liz Emerson will never donate her organs, because they are destroyed, and he doesn’t know if they can get replacements soon enough.

  It seems that Julia may have arrived just in time to see all of her fears come true.

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  HarperCollins Publishers

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  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Plans, New Years’ Day

  She took a nap on the brown couch with her arm flung over her eyes, and when she woke up with her suicide outlined backward across her cheek and HERE LIES LIZ EMERSON on her forehead, she continued to plan.

  The party had not been the catalyst. Nor her stupidity. Nor her hands all over the hot torso of the boy who had gotten Kennie pregnant. It wasn’t the anger that clawed her insides to shreds, anger at all the idiocy, anger at the world, anger that made her dig her nails into Kyle’s skin even as her lips were on his.

  No, the party was simply the last straw.

  She had been desperate to feel something, anything. She needed a window, because she had broken her heart throwing it at locked doors.

  Liz got up off the brown couch. She looked down and saw a natural disaster. She could not exist without tearing everything around her to shreds.

  Over the next two weeks, Liz Emerson drafted her plans and revised them. She did her research and made sure she would have enough money to pay for gas and set a date.

  And she also gave herself a way out.

  A week—that’s what she allowed herself. An entire week before the last day. She thought of Julia filling herself up and Kennie becoming empty, and she understood. Life was precious. She knew that, knew it deeply, so she would try again. She would try what she tried on the night of the party, but she would do it right this time. Seven days, seven chances. She would wake up seven more times and search again for a reason to go on. She would give the entire world a week to change her mind.

  But she also knew that life was fragile, and if her week failed, she knew how to shatter.

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  HarperCollins Publishers

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  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Seven Days Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car

  Most of the varsity girls played in the winter soccer league, because Julia’s father had offered to pay for everyone this year as part of his annual attempt to mend his relationship with his daughter. They were all drained from the pre-calc test, and the atmosphere in the locker room was quieter than usual. The team they were playing today was made up of girls from a Division One school. They knew today’s game w
ould be a train wreck.

  As everyone else adjusted their shin guards and did last-minute stretches, Liz sat on the bench and looked around at each of them, and realized that she had spent the last seven years of her life with these girls and knew no more than the most superficial details about them. Jenna Haverick was great with headers and had a dog named Napoleon. Skyler Matthews was right-handed but played with her left foot, and only ate butter pecan ice cream. Allison Chevero was great at making fouls look accidental, and she had a tramp stamp that her parents still didn’t know about.

  Other than Julia, these girls were worse than strangers. These were people she had spent years and years with and never even wondered about. She had never asked about their fears or failures, successes and embarrassments. She just didn’t care very much, and as she sat on the bench with her team around her, the absolute sadness of the fact overwhelmed her. She knew so many people, so many, but what was the point? How many of them did she really care about? How many of them really cared about her?

  “Liz?”

  She looked up. Julia was standing beside her, frowning slightly as she pulled her hair into a high ponytail. Right then, Liz had never been so grateful for Julia, had never felt so guilty as she stared at the dark circles beneath Julia’s eyes.

  Julia saw it. She sat down and said nothing, only waited. She gave Liz a choice.

  Liz, unfortunately, chose wrong.

  There were just too many things she wanted to say to Julia. She wanted to apologize for a thousand things. She wanted to tell her how desperately thankful she was for her and Kennie. She wanted to say that she could never ask for better friends, but all of those things sounded stupid in her head, so instead, she got to her feet and said, “Come on. Let’s go kick some ass.”

  There was some cheering and hollering from the rest of the team in response, and they left the locker room together. But then some of the girls peeled off to go grab their water bottles and other ones had to retrieve bobby pins and hair ties, and by the time Liz reached the field, only a fraction of her team remained.

  Coach Gilson frowned when he saw them. “Where is everyone?”

  “Coming,” said Liz, but the word caught in her throat. An odd unhappiness rose inside her when she said it, because she was once again making promises that she had no power to keep.

  Eventually, though, the team did regroup. The referee flipped the coin and the girls got into their positions, and Liz tried to focus on the game.

  But there was something terrifying taking over her thoughts, and it wouldn’t leave. Out of the seven billion people sharing the planet with her, not one of them knew what was going through her head. Not one of them knew that she was lost. Not one of them asked.

  The whistle blew.

  Usually, soccer allowed her to forget. She fell in love with the sport because of the way it consumed her, swallowed her whole, grabbed all her attention and stored it in a sphere that they chased and kicked and passed between them like a secret. She obsessed over the unpredictability. She was wholly addicted to the adrenaline.

  Once, a yearbook reporter had asked Liz to describe her favorite part of soccer. What came to her mind was this: the moment when her foot connected with the ball at the perfect angle, with exactly enough force and just the right timing. It was a rare thing, and it was from those exceedingly rare moments that her weird zeal for soccer took root and grew into something immense. She got this feeling of rightness after every beautiful pass, every soaring shot. She could never exactly describe it, but it reminded her of snapping the last piece of a puzzle into place or pushing a key into a lock, of being utterly certain, somehow, that this was it. In those moments, the world held its breath and everything fit, and she stood in the middle of it all, knowing.

  During the interview, however, what she said was this: “Winning.”

  In this game, neither happened.

  They were righteously slaughtered. The first half was downright embarrassing. When they went back to the locker room at halftime, the scoreboard flashed 4-0 at their backs.

  They were getting desperate by the time they gave up another goal five minutes into the second half, Liz especially. She had wanted today to be the one to change her mind. She had hoped to have one of those connecting moments, to look around and remember that the world made sense, that some things fell apart so better things could fall together.

  But her passes were messy and all of her shots went wide.

  Within the first ten minutes of the second half, the team had received six yellow cards. Ellen Baseny got a red card for telling the referee to fuck himself, and two fans were ejected for mooning.

  Liz went in for a goal. They were down 5-1 now with two minutes left, and she knew it was a lost cause. Who cared? She was a lost cause, and she was trying, wasn’t she?

  One of the defenders from the other team muttered, “Don’t miss again, skank.”

  Then she laughed.

  And Liz aimed for her instead.

  Had the defender been familiar with Liz Emerson’s reputation, she would have kept her mouth shut. Not just Liz’s reputation as a person, but also her reputation of having the hardest kick in the state.

  The defender was rushed to the emergency room.

  Liz was given a yellow card. The referee decided that Liz hadn’t meant to do it—she had been trying to score, after all, and the defender had been in the way.

  And Liz Emerson got away with one more thing.

  The final whistle sounded, but she stayed on the field for a while. She looked around the fluorescent dome, at the cleat marks on the grass, and she didn’t want to move. She was so tired. She didn’t want to move ever again.

  Eventually, though, she went to the locker room to peel off her sweaty jersey, prepared to go home and maybe dig around in her mother’s wine cabinet and take a few shots on the white couch. But when she got there, everyone was laughing.

  “Damn, Liz, you freaking pegged her. Dude, that was amazing.”

  “Surgery. The bitch has to get surgery.”

  “Hell, yeah. She deserves it.”

  It made her sick. Liz closed her eyes for a moment as she shoved everything back into her bag. God. What had she been thinking? She couldn’t even remember. It had been plain stupid, and not just that, it had been cruel. The other girl would have to pay for surgery, physical therapy, and she’d definitely be sitting out the season.

  Liz imagined the situation being reversed. She imagined missing the entire season, not even having soccer to take her mind off things—

  Liz walked out of the sports club and stood in the frigid air. She felt a bead of sweat freeze as it made its way down her spine, and she tilted her head back to look at the sky and asked, Why?

  Then she got into her car, and on her way home, it struck her that she hadn’t signed up as an organ donor. She hadn’t wanted to when she got her license—her body was hers. She slammed her brakes and turned sharply, flipped off the guy who beeped, and headed for the local clinic.

  Five minutes later, the clipboard of paperwork lay in her lap. Her fingers were wrapped tightly around the pen, and her eyes were closed. In her head, she made a list. It was titled Things I’ve Done Right, and this was the first item.

  In a week, she thought, I will have two.

  And my heart will beat for someone who deserves it.

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  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Driving Habits

  “God, Mom,” snaps Kennie. “Why don’t you drive even slower?”

  “I’m already driving two miles above the speed limit, Kennie.”

  Kennie is fairly certain that her mother is the only person alive who has ever been ticketed for driving too slowly—it had happened during freshman year; she was late to school, and even the office ladies had laughed at her, the bitches—which makes her all the more upset that Ju
lia had totally ditched her, that her mom wouldn’t let her drive to the hospital with Carly Blake.

  Liz.

  “I could have driven myself,” says Kennie.

  “In light of recent events, I don’t think that would have been a good idea.”

  And she begins to lecture again, her favorite rant, all statistics about car accidents and insurance, and Kennie ignores her as usual. She looks out the window and searches for signs of the crash.

  She doesn’t know exactly where it was—Facebook wasn’t specific, but she searches and figures that, somewhere along the way, she will find it. She has to see it. She has to see the spot that defeated Liz Emerson, because part of her still refuses to believe it exists.

  And just then, she sees it.

  A splintered fence, ruined snow all around. She doesn’t look twice—can’t, because her eyes have filled and the world has blurred. A sob is building, and Kennie grips her seat with both of her hands.

  “. . . and Liz was a lovely girl, of course, but her driving has always worried me. I can’t say I’m entirely surprised, honey—”

  Kennie whirls. “Mom!” she screams. “Just stop!”

  “Kendra Ann! I’m trying to teach you to have good driving habits. You need to learn some responsibility, and that temper of yours! You need to have a meeting with Pastor Phil for—”

  “I don’t care,” says Kennie. “I do not care.”

  Her mother snaps something back, but Kennie has started crying. She really doesn’t care, not at all, doesn’t care about anything except the fact that the fence is broken and the snow is dirty, and yesterday in that spot, her best friend nearly died.

  She is so busy crying that she doesn’t see the actual crash site, when they pass it.

  Good thing too. I don’t think Kennie could have handled it. If a broken fence from a rogue cow and a patch of trampled snow could push her into screaming at her mother—or rather, made her so terrified that she stopped after screaming that one line—maybe it was lucky that she didn’t see the contorted tree, the little scraps of blue Mercedes, the snow still streaked with pink.