Authors: Carmen Rodrigues
I miss Ellie. I miss everything that was our Before. And for that reason alone, I dig a hole to China. I open the box, slowly taking out photos: Ellie in her
Mork & Mindy
T-shirt and me, looking slightly unsure, that flower tucked behind my ear; Ellie helping me blow out the candles on my sixteenth birthday; Ellie the week before she died, her hair as black as Snow White’s.
The bubble in my chest is full now. The pain is so great I run from it. I run until I’m in my parents’ bathroom, my face pressed to the cold tile floor. But the pain follows, and all these voices surround me.
I have a secret. Jake never wanted you. You just kept throwing yourself at him. Some days I just want it to all be over. I promise.
Just let me stay. Jake used you, the way you used me. We use each other.
I stare at my bandaged arm, the cut hidden beneath it the work of a jagged key. And I know there is only one way to make this pain stop.
There’s time,
I hear Ellie say.
I’m barely able to breathe as I grab my father’s shaving kit from below his sink. I pull the straight razor free, taking everything that is dark inside me and silencing it with that first jolt of pain.
A thin stream of blood rushes down my palm, drips off my fingertips, and settles into the grout. I close my eyes, and Ellie is there. Purple pills raining down on us. The bubble in my chest ripping my skin, eager to get out.
I lean my head against the cabinet, tug the blade deep into my flesh. The blood streams out now, pools onto the floor. I fall onto the tile. The dusty sea of lost things beneath my parents’ claw-foot tub fades into Ellie twirling and singing,
I have so many secrets, but I won’t tell you.
The room twirls with her.
Sarah, catch up. Sarah. Sarah. Sarah.
My body grows colder and colder. And still, through it all, Ellie calls my name.
D
o
y
o
u remem
b
er h
o
w we m
o
ved in tandem, my arms wrapped around your waist, my head hidden underneath the
b
ack side
o
f y
o
ur shirt? Y
o
u
b
aked pies and sang and I f
o
und that dimple a
bo
ve y
o
ur hip
bo
ne and t
o
ld it the secrets
o
f my day . . .
o
f fingers stained red with finger paint,
o
f a recess spent chasing the girl with fl
o
ppy hair and murky eyes.
Y
o
u were thirty-six then, and y
o
u l
o
ved him.
AFTER. APRIL.
I am covered in Sarah’s blood. That’s why I am sitting here, in the hospital’s designated smoking area, talking to a detective. All I want to do is smoke my cigarette, but it’s hard to smoke when your hands are shaking so bad.
“I just want to know if she’s okay,” I say. In response, the detective jots something onto his notepad and nods. He’s a large man with deep-set eyes and spotty gray hair. He slides an ashtray across the picnic table and says, “I just need to write my report, okay?”
An ambulance screeches to a halt outside the emergency-room doors. The detective watches it unload, his eyes automatically tracking the medics’ movements. When the patient’s inside, he says, “You’re not in trouble, Jake.”
I put out my cigarette. “I don’t care about that. I just want to know if she’s okay.” I pick a piece of dried blood from the fabric of my sweatpants and set it on the picnic table. I consider returning to the ER’s front desk, demanding that the nurse give me a logical reason why I can’t see Sarah, why they won’t provide me with any new information. “I just really need to know, okay?” My voice rises, and the detective shoots me a look in response.
“Son, you’re going to have to stay calm; getting excited isn’t going to help your friend—”
“I’m calm.” I lower my voice. “But she’s more than a friend, okay?”
“Son, I know you’re frustrated, but rules are rules. The hospital can’t release any information on your friend’s condition if you’re not a family member—”
“But I’m the one who called the ambulance—”
“And that was a good thing. You might have saved your friend’s life.”
I flinch at the phrase “might have saved.” The detective’s voice grows softer. “You’ll find out more. I promise. Now let me do my job, okay?” The detective taps his pen over his notepad. He’s only interested in facts, and so I give him the facts. As I speak, the pounding in my head grows, and over it is a loop of Sarah’s voice asking me to not disappear. And when I close my
eyes, there is a flash of her lying on her parents’ bathroom floor, her nightgown soaked in blood.
“How did you know?” The detective leans in, real curious. “How did you know to go inside when she didn’t answer the door?”
“I was worried. She doesn’t leave her house, really—”
“How do you know that?” he asks, and even though he says I’m not in trouble, his voice is wary.
“Because . . . ,” I say, and I tell him about the night before, how I was there with her, how I left because I didn’t want her mom to find me there in the morning. How I went for a jog. How her mom’s car was gone when I got back. Halfway through, my voice halts like a train that’s hit a wall. A pain shoots through me, stretches from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. It’s the same pain I felt with Ellie. I sit on the picnic bench and try to steady myself. I put my hands over my eyes, run them through my hair. I take a moment to breathe. “I should have never left.”
The detective reaches out, pats me awkwardly on the shoulder. “Ain’t no one to blame for what she did. She’s just in a lot of pain. Now you just take a minute for yourself, okay?” He stands. “You just sit tight.”
He walks briskly toward the emergency-room entrance, disappearing behind the double doors. I lay my head against the
picnic table. I open my mouth, breathe in and out, watching the air turn into fog. The loop in my head grows stronger. It says,
If I need you, you’ll come back for me?
It says,
Don’t disappear.
And underneath the loop is the sound of someone in a lot of pain. It is the sound of someone crying.
I d
o
n’t
b
elieve y
o
u when y
o
u h
o
ld my hand and say y
o
u never want t
o
let me g
o
.
BEFORE. NOVEMBER.
I woke to Ellie beside me, her arm flung across my chest, her eyes watching me. The room was dark. I looked out the window. The rest of the world was dark too, except for a streetlight glowing in the distance.
“What time is it?”
“Nine, I think,” Ellie said.
“What?” I sat up, the panic automatic. “My mom’s going to kill—”
“Don’t worry,” Ellie said. “Your mom thinks you’re at Lola’s, still studying for a test.”
My head felt foggy. It was a struggle to string words together. “But I’m not at Lola’s. I’m here.”
“Jess, don’t make this into a thing.”
“You took my phone?”
“What’s the big deal? I couldn’t very well text her from my phone. Then she’d know you were here.” She tugged me back down so that we were both lying on our backs. “Relax. There’s time.”
I rolled onto my side, propping myself up on an elbow. I had so many questions, but I knew better than to ask them. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Not really.” She took a deep breath and sighed.
I stared at her in the dark, her black hair fanned around her face like some kind of ironic halo. The space beneath her eyes was swollen from crying.
“Do you want me to tickle your back?” It was what my mom did for me whenever I got upset. Ellie nodded, turning away from me. I ran my fingers up and down her spine, and then I started tracing words onto her skin: “crab,” “happy,” “peace.” Finally, when her shoulders sloped a little and I could tell she was slightly relaxed, I traced “love.”
“What word was that?” She rolled over to face me. I shrugged, too nervous to speak. She took another deep breath, her eyes incredibly sad.
I touched her face lightly and said, “You really scared me. I . . . I didn’t know. Are you . . .” I paused, trying to find the
right question. “Does this happen a lot?” I knew that it did. The scars told me so. But I thought this might ease her into talking about it.
The look on her face told me it wasn’t up for discussion. And when she changed the subject by asking me to grab her water bottle, I wasn’t surprised.
Halfway there, I picked her robe up off the floor and wrapped it around me.
“No,” Ellie said. “I wish you wouldn’t.”
I turned back to her.
“Would you take it off?” she asked.
“Ellie,” I said, unsure.
“Please, Jess.”
I nodded, but my hands trembled slightly as I slipped the robe onto the floor. I crossed my arms self-consciously over my belly, but she came to me and lowered them to my sides. Then she stepped back and took me in. Finally she said, “You’re beautiful, Jess.”
I felt so many things right then, but mostly that I wanted this moment to last forever.
She handed me the robe, and again I put it on. When she sat down, I followed—the water now forgotten—as I waited for whatever might come next. She was silent, her thoughts somewhere far
off. I wanted to bring her back to me, so I said, “Ellie, are you—”
She put her finger to my lips, tears streaming down her face again. “Jess,” she said, her voice hollow. “I slept with Tommy.”
I was sure I hadn’t heard her correctly. It seemed impossible, but then she said, her tone matter-of-fact, “It was last night. That’s why I didn’t text you back.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re lying,” I said, telling myself this was just another way for her to test me.
“It’s true,” she whispered.
I moved away from her, toward the window, and pressed my face to the cold glass. Everything inside me was shutting down, and instead of tears there was something much darker: a stark emptiness I had never felt before.
“Jess,” Ellie said. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be a big deal.”
I flicked on the lamp beside her desk and began to dress. Ellie watched me, blinking rapidly as her eyes adjusted to the light.
“So you’re just going to leave?” she asked.
“Yes.” I needed to be away from her. Needed some time to think about what all of this meant. How her sleeping with Tommy but being with me were two things that might coexist.
I stopped dressing. “Can you at least tell me why?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I had that fight with Sargeant. I didn’t . . . I wasn’t thinking.”
“And that makes it okay? I mean, is this what’s going to happen every time you’re
not
thinking?”
She stared at me blankly. “I don’t know.”
I started to dress again, pulling on my socks and boots, grabbing my coat.
“So that’s it? We’re done?” she said.
“Isn’t that what you want?” She turned to stare at the wall, rapidly retreating into herself. I was tired of chasing her. I wondered what would happen if I let go. “Isn’t that what you want?” I repeated.
Finally she looked at me. Her voice was flat. “Jess, don’t you get it? I’ll destroy you. I destroy everything.”
Before, I might have gone to her, convinced her she was wrong, but the path between us was blocked now.
“So we’re done?” she said.
“I guess so,” I said, not sure of anything except that I wanted to hurt her as much as she hurt me.
She nodded.
At the door, I hesitated, pathetically, hoping she’d find some way to convince me to stay. But she didn’t say a word. She just continued to stare at that wall.
In her mind, I was already gone.
M
o
m saw the cuts t
o
day. I was reaching past her f
o
r a c
oo
kie. She held my hand and twisted until my f
o
rearm was raised cl
o
se t
o
her face. She l
oo
ked at me, injured eyes,
b
ut didn’t say a w
o
rd. Typical.
AFTER. APRIL.
Concerned Therapist enters my room at the junior psych ward. Her fake leather loafers sound less like they are shuffling and more like they are being dragged against the linoleum floor. Still, her face is perfectly composed. She has makeup on, but underneath her eyes are lines and wrinkles where she’s never had them before.
She moves to the window, draws the curtain aside, and stares at who knows what. All I can see is her solemn face reflected in the dark windowpane and the hazy glow of streetlights that dot the parking lot.