Falling into Place Page 9

  But Liz didn’t say anything and didn’t care that she wheezed, and Julia was thankful.

  She closed her eyes and threw her head back. The rain hit her face and slid down her shoulders. Her legs were muddy and her shoes were so heavy with water that they released a small wave with every step. She just ran, and there was something eloquent in the sound of rain and footsteps.

  “Watch it, gimp,” Liz said when Julia veered into her. Julia’s eyes snapped back open, and she found Liz running backward and smirking at her, and Julia laughed because she loved the ache in her legs, the stretch in her muscles, the heavy thudding of her heart, the rain that was everywhere.

  She failed to notice that the wetness on Liz’s face wasn’t rain. She didn’t realize that Liz was drowning, or that Liz was crying because she knew that she could never outrun the things she had done.

  “Where are we going?” Julia asked, but Liz didn’t answer. Julia was okay with that. Liz rarely ran the same route twice, and Julia didn’t mind following.

  So they just ran, and eventually they turned a corner and Julia saw Barry’s Pond, which a disgustingly rich old couple from Florida had recently purchased. It had been a controversial sale—Meridian generally disproved of outsiders. Julia slowed as the grass turned to sand, but Liz went faster. Julia opened her mouth to say “What the hell,” but before she could, Liz ran onto the dock and over the edge without stopping, and disappeared in a flurry of bubbles.

  “Crap,” Julia said under her breath, and then, louder, “Liz?”

  But Liz didn’t come up, and after a minute, Julia began to panic. It was raining harder now, and she could hardly see. She ran onto the dock and stood at the edge, waiting for Liz to pop up, but she didn’t.

  “Liz!” Julia shouted, bending over the water. “Liz—!”

  Then she screamed, clear and shrill, as Liz shot out of the water, grabbed her, and dragged her under.

  Julia came up choking. Liz was choking too, because she had been laughing as she pulled Julia into the water. Julia wanted to snap about fifty waspish things at Liz as she coughed the water out of her lungs, but as she turned to, she saw Liz laughing and breathless and brilliant and beautiful and hers.

  So she splashed her.

  Liz splashed her back, and they chased each other through the pond and the rain, their heads thrown back to drink in the sky, their fingers wrinkled, their hair plastered to their scalps.

  Eventually, they dragged themselves back onto the dock to lie in the rain, which had faded into a drizzle. It tickled and left behind a fogginess that made the world blurry at the edges and just for them, only them.

  As Julia lay there, her eyes closed, the splintering dock digging into her back in a dozen places, she heard Liz say quietly, “Thanks for coming with me.”

  Julia smiled and sighed an unintelligible response. She spread her arms wide and felt the elastic of her sports bra tightening with every inhale, and for a moment, she couldn’t feel where she ended and the world began.

  “I love you guys,” Liz said suddenly, fiercely. “You and Kennie. God, I don’t know what I’d do without you two.”

  Julia opened her eyes. Liz was lying beside her, her bare stomach rising and falling very slightly. Her hair had fallen out of its ponytail and framed her face like a nest, and suddenly Julia was afraid, because Liz, her Liz, always kept her heart locked away.

  “Are you drunk?” she asked, uncertainly.

  “No,” Liz said, and she smiled.

  Julia had seen Liz in homecoming dresses and in pajamas, Ralph Lauren blazers and flip-flops from Target, but she had never seen Liz as beautiful as she was then, with her eyes closed and her lips just barely, barely curved, because until then, Julia had never associated the word peaceful with Liz Emerson.

  Liz sighed. It was a soundless thing, only a parting of lips. “Sometimes,” she said, so softly that Julia wasn’t sure if she was meant to hear, “sometimes I forget that I’m alive.”

  So, in the hospital, looking over an utterly different Liz, one who looks everything except peaceful, Julia leans forward and whispers two words to her, suddenly, fiercely.

  “You’re alive.”

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  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Six Days Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car

  It was one of those quiet days, muted somehow, lit by a fuzzy sun behind thin clouds. Liz had finished all of her homework in study hall and the school had ordered Jimmy John’s for lunch, and—well, maybe she was too numb to be content, but six days before she crashed her car, Liz Emerson was no unhappier than usual.

  Until she went home, and things began to go downhill.

  Liz had just unlocked the door when Kennie called.

  Liz answered the phone and Kennie’s voice screamed, “Oh my god, just leave me alone, Mom!” A door slammed, and Kennie said into the phone, “Hi. I can’t go shopping. My mom’s being a bitch. Surprise.”

  “What did you do this time?” Liz’s voice bounced from wall to wall. Damn house, she thought, and promised herself that she would never buy a big house. And laughed, because here was a promise she could keep.

  “It’s not funny,” Kennie snapped. “I didn’t do anything to her. I’m not done with that stupid physics project, and I keep telling my mom that it isn’t due until next Wednesday, but she says I need to stop procrastinating and get, like, an attitude adjustment. It’s not like it’s even my fault, ’cause fucking Carly Blake won’t actually touch our project—What, Mom?”

  The door slammed again. “Anyway. Yeah. Sorry.” When Liz didn’t say anything, Kennie said, “Ask Julia. Her dad doesn’t care where she is, does he?”

  Which was unkind, especially coming from Kennie. They didn’t talk about Julia’s dad, just like they didn’t talk about Kennie’s mom or Liz’s pre-Meridian life. Liz didn’t comment, however, because she knew how much Kennie hated it when her mom nagged and nosed. She’d been like this since the abortion—snapping and cynical, and the personality fit her like a sweater that had shrunk in the wash. But then Liz thought she would be too, and then she thought, Don’t think, not that, not today, don’t think.

  “Julia’s still at Zero,” she said.

  That was what they called O’Hare University, the local college. University O, zero, and where most of them would end up after they graduated. Julia took analytic geometry (which was abbreviated on her transcripts as Anal. Geo., a fact that Kennie usually found endlessly funny) and health physics there, because Meridian High didn’t offer them and because Julia was a goddamn try-hard.

  “Oh. Okay,” sighed Kennie. “I should go. Sorry. Maybe next week.”

  Or not.

  Liz hung up without saying anything, and now she was stuck with the silence. It magnified, the silence—Liz was annoyed after she hung up, but within minutes, she was truly and unapologetically pissed off at Kennie, at Kennie’s mother, and she threw in the rest of the world for the hell of it.

  It took three seconds to decide that she couldn’t stay in the house for the rest of the day, so she shoved her feet into running shoes and went out the garage door. The winter was a wall that she smacked straight into, the air a living thing that crawled through her sweats and layers and settled against her skin.

  Liz had always loved the cold. When she was younger, she loved breathing in and feeling her snot freeze, and she never grew out of it. She put her iPod on shuffle and slid it into her pocket, and she began to run.

  Sometimes she ran just to take wrong turns and different routes, because she liked getting lost. But the truth was, Liz hated running. She did it to stay in shape for soccer or to get out of the house, but she would never play a soccer game again and the house would still be there when she got back.

  But she always felt like she was chasing something when she ran, something invisible that she never caught. It felt like she was p
laying tag with herself, and Liz hated tag.

  She ran the mile loop around her house and ran it again, and as she started the third mile, she could barely breathe and her entire body was cramping. She was tired of seeing all of the same things over and over again; she was tired of running in circles. She didn’t want to chase anymore.

  This is stupid.

  I should stop.

  So she did.

  Fuck running, she thought. Fuck tag.

  She went inside and slammed the door behind her. Then she opened it and slammed it again, slammed it and slammed it harder. She put all of her weight into it and the force was so great that one of the vases fell off the mantle and shattered, spitting crystal across the wood and chipping the polish. She ignored it and went upstairs and slammed her own door.

  Overreacting, she told herself, and her own anger frightened her, but not enough to calm down. She tried, though—really she did. She shoved a superhero movie into her Blu-ray player and went straight to the scene in which the hero made his final stand and the background music was so dramatic and soaring that it always made her cry. But today everything was cut from cardboard, and a minute later, she was ripping the movie out, breaking it in half, fourths, throwing the pieces across the room.

  She grabbed her camera and hurled it at the wall. It smashed to pieces after making a dent in the plaster. She could feel all of her little cracks widening into larger ones, faults that ran all through her, tore her apart. She took the old, worn books from her bookshelf and ripped them in half, one by one; the pages fluttered around her as she reached for the rest of the movies, all the stupid heroes, and broke them all.

  She struck her lamp off her desk and shredded her homework. She hurled her calculator at the floor and flung a perfume bottle at the mirror. The mirror stayed intact, but the bottle shattered, flooding her vanity with perfume and glass.

  Her breath caught in her throat. She took a step back and looked around her room, and an odd feeling rose within her. It always did, when she was staring at shattered things—an urge to get to her hands and knees and gather them to her. She wanted to stack them back together and make them whole again

  But she couldn’t, and so she sat down in the center of her room with all those pieces spreading around her, and made a wish instead.

  I wish second chances were real.

  SNAPSHOT: WISHES

  Liz is leaning over the edge of the tower. I am holding her hand and her father hovers behind her, and together we keep her steady. She looks down and makes a wish on the dandelion she has gripped in her small, sweaty hand the entire way up. She wishes for the only thing she has ever wished for.

  Liz Emerson wishes to fly.

  After, she’ll look at me and tell me to make a wish too.

  Years later, she will remember all those wishes. She will consider jumping off that very tower to see if any of them came true.

  In the end, she will decide against it. She won’t know how to make jumping off a scenic tower look like an accident.

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  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Worlds Fall Apart

  Kennie doesn’t arrive at the hospital until after the commotion has mostly died down. “God, Mom, no one else’s parents are here,” she snaps as she gets out of the car, because despite everything, she’s still afraid of how her mother’s appearance will affect what people think of her. She knows it’s despicable, but she can’t help it.

  And part of her is afraid because she had her abortion not far from here, and doctors all knew each other, right?

  “Maybe you should stay in the car, Mom,” she says. But her mother insists on coming in, so Kennie runs ahead.

  She stops at the entrance and looks up at the great blur of a building through her tears. It’s very unreal to her that Liz, Liz, is behind one of those windows, barely alive.

  Her mother comes up behind her and fusses a bit over the state of Kennie’s hair and makeup. Maybe this is why she has always been so preoccupied with what people think of her—because her parents always are. Appearances matter in her household, and Kennie has grown up with the impression that she is only what people think she is.

  Kennie swats at her mother and runs, toward Liz and away from the rest of it.

  She bursts into the waiting room and everyone surrounds her, hugs and tissues while her mom goes to talk to Liz’s mom, and then,

  “Heart.”

  “Failing.”

  “Almost died.”

  “Where were you?”

  “No,” says Kennie when her mother, who has left Monica, tries to comfort her. Their mothers don’t like each other, which is fine—Kennie doesn’t like her mother right now either. “No, just stop. Stop.”

  But someone else tries to take her place. “No!” she screams blindly, her eyes shut to all of them. “Go away, just leave me alone—leave me alone!”

  She slides to the ground, and the tears come.

  When Julia finally takes off the scrubs and makes her way back to the waiting room, Kennie is the first person she sees.

  She sits in a corner sobbing great, heaving sobs, curled into herself as though she could disappear, her hair fanning and frizzing over her shoulders. Strangest of all, she is alone. Julia watches a moment, and then it hits her that she has been a terrible friend. She walks over slowly, the sounds of her approach drowned out by Kennie’s great gasps, and crouches down beside her.

  “Kennie . . .”

  Kennie raises her face a fraction of an inch, and Julia gets a glimpse of the mess of mascara and red eyes.

  “Y-you didn’t tell me,” Kennie blubbers. “Y-y-you didn’t even c-call me.”

  Julia bites her lip and swallows hard. “I’m sorry. Kennie, I just—I’m so sorry. I just . . . I forgot. I’m sorry.”

  “And you left me at school,” Kennie says with a muffled wail.

  Julia can only nod, because she doesn’t think she has ever felt this guilty.

  Then Kennie is bawling all over Julia’s sweatshirt. Julia puts her arms around Kennie’s thin shoulders and leans her cheek against Kennie’s arm. They sit there for a small eternity. This is their pain, their tragedy, because Liz is theirs.

  “Have you s-seen her?” Kennie finally whispers into Julia’s shoulder.

  Julia nods again.

  “Is she . . . how is she?”

  Broken. Dying. Unfixable. Gone.

  Julia says, “Sleeping.”

  Kennie buries her face deeper in Julia’s sweatshirt, and Julia holds her tighter.

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  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Forty-Four Minutes before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car

  Liz thought about Kennie.

  Kennie always acted so shallow that sometimes it was difficult to remember that she wasn’t.

  At the end of seventh grade, Kennie had bought the three of them matching rings with BFF engraved inside the band. They were cheesy, cheap things that later turned their fingers green, and on those rings, they swore proportionally cheesy, cheap promises: that they would always be there for each other. They would remember each other’s shortcomings and they would fill them. They would do the “all for one and one for all” thing, forever.

  Kennie’s greatest shortcoming was her inability to say no, and Liz knew that. Everyone knew that.

  And so, forty-four minutes before she crashed her car, Liz thought about how Kennie had done everything Liz had ever told her to—or tried, at least—and how Liz had never once told Kennie to do the right thing. She thought about all the parties at which she had seen Kennie giggling and drunk in the arms of almost-strangers, all the parties at which Liz had watched different boys lead Kennie into different bedrooms. She could clearly rememb
er too many instances when Kennie had glanced back with a sort of helpless look in her eyes, and Liz had only laughed and called Kennie a slut in a loving way, and turned away because she wanted to keep drinking and dancing and forgetting.

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  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Five Days Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car

  She promised herself, once, that she would never puke again.

  It started during the summer before seventh grade, when she and Kennie looked in the mirror while trying on swimsuits and called themselves fat. Liz had decided to eat less, less still, and then not at all. She told Kennie to do it with her, and Kennie had tried, but she wasn’t very good at it. Kennie loved food more than she loved being skinny. She went on and off, sneaking food when she said she wasn’t eating, stashing it in her room. Liz thought that their little diet might have made Kennie eat even more than she used to, but it didn’t matter—Kennie didn’t gain a pound. Lucky Kennie.

  Liz, of course, didn’t last much longer. She liked eating too. Bulimia was her compromise, and what a deal it was. Eat all you want, gain nothing. It was perfect, until she started playing soccer again in the spring of seventh grade, and she could barely run the length of the field. It was perfect, until she was dizzy all the time, and so cold she felt on the brink of freezing solid. And then all of the stuff they’d learned in health class came back in a rush, an avalanche, and Liz stopped, mostly.