“I needed a change,” he said.
“Did it help?”
“No one asks how I’m doing except Dr. Bloom, and she doesn’t really care.”
“You’re lucky. Everyone asks me how I’m doing, but they don’t really want to know.”
“Sometimes you just want to be left alone with it.”
“Exactly,” she said, feeling a heady sense of connection. He
knew
her, saw her. He understood.
“I’ve never told anyone that before,” he said, gazing at her with a beautiful vulnerability.
Was she the only one who could see how broken he was? “Are you here to piss off your
dad? Because—”
“No.” She wanted to add,
I want to be someone else, too,
but it sounded stupid and too young.
He touched her face, and his touch was the softest she’d ever known. “Do you believe
in love at first sight?”
“I do now,” she said.
It felt desperately solemn, this moment. He leaned forward slowly, so slowly she knew
he expected her to push him away, but she couldn’t. Right now, nothing mattered except
the way he looked at her. She’d been cold and dead until this second; he’d brought
her back to life. She didn’t care if he was dangerous or did drugs or couldn’t be
trusted. This feeling, this coming alive, was worth any risk.
His kiss was everything she’d dreamed a kiss could be.
“Let’s get high,” he murmured softly, his lips against hers. “It’ll make you forget
it all.”
She wanted that. Needed it. All it took was the smallest of nods.
September 3, 2010
1:16
P.M.
Ping
. “Flight attendants, please take your seats.”
Marah let go of the memory and opened her eyes. Real life came back with a vengeance:
it was 2010. She was twenty years old and sitting in an airplane, flying to Seattle
to see Tully, who had been in a car accident and might not make it.
“Are you all right?”
Pax
.
“They don’t love you, Marah. Not like I do. If they did, they would respect your choices.”
She stared out the small window as the plane touched down and taxied to the terminal.
A man in an orange vest guided the plane to its parking place. She spaced out watching
him, her vision blurred, until what she saw was a ghostly image of her own face in
the window. Pale skin, pink hair, cut with a razor and gelled in place along her ears,
and black-rimmed eyes. A pierced eyebrow.
“Thank God,” Paxton said when the seat belt sign clicked off. He unhooked his seat
belt and grabbed his brown paper bag out from under the seat in front of him. Marah
did the same.
As she walked through the terminal, Marah clutched the wrinkled, stained bag that
held all of her possessions. People glanced at them and quickly looked away, as if
whatever had turned two kids into goths might be contagious.
Outside the terminal, smokers clustered beneath the overhang, puffing away, while
the loudspeaker reminded them that it was a nonsmoking zone.
Marah wished now she’d told her dad what flight they’d be on.
“Let’s get a cab,” Paxton said. “You just got paid, right?”
Marah hesitated. Paxton never seemed to quite grasp the truth of their finances. Her
minimum-wage job didn’t exactly afford them the money for luxuries like a cab ride
to Seattle from SeaTac. Hell, she’d had to sell her soul for the money to stop an
eviction this month (
Don’t think about that, not now
), and she was the only one of the roommates who even had a real job. Leif sold pot
for a living, and Mouse panhandled. No one wanted to know what Sabrina did, but she
was the only other one who seemed to ever have money. Paxton was too creative to hold
down a steady job—it cut into his poetry-writing time, and that was their future.
But when he sold his poetry, they’d be rich.
She could have said no to the cab, but lately it was too easy to make him angry. It
wasn’t as easy to sell his poetry as he’d thought and the truth of that bothered him.
She had to constantly reassure him about his talent.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Besides, Daddy will give you money,” he said, and he didn’t sound unhappy about the
prospect. It confused her. He wanted them to have nothing to do with her family. So
why was it okay to take money from them?
They climbed into a cab and settled into the brown backseat.
Marah named the hospital and then leaned back against Pax, who put an arm around her.
He immediately opened his worn, dog-eared copy of Lovecraft’s
At the Mountains of Madness
and began to read.
Twenty-five minutes later, the car came to an abrupt stop in front of the hospital.
It was raining now, one of those nibbling, inconsistent September rains that came
and went. In front of her, the hospital was a sprawling structure crouched beneath
the battleship-gray sky.
They walked into the brightly lit lobby and Marah came to an abrupt stop. How many
trips through this lobby had she made in her life?
Too many. And none had been happy.
Sit with me during chemo, baby girl. Tell me about Tyler …
“You don’t have to do this,” Pax said, sounding a little irritated. “It’s your life,
not theirs.”
She reached for his hand, but he pulled away. She understood: he wanted her to know
that he didn’t want to be here. When it came to her family, he might be beside her,
but she was alone.
On the fourth floor, they exited the elevator and walked down a beige, brightly lit
lobby toward the ICU. A place she knew all too well.
She saw her father and grandmother in the waiting room. Dad looked up, saw her. She
slowed, feeling both fragile and defiant in his presence.
He stood slowly. His movement must have alerted Grandma Margie, because she got to
her feet, too. Grandma frowned—no doubt at Marah’s heavy makeup and pink hair.
Marah had to force herself to keep walking. She hadn’t seen her dad in so long; she
was surprised by how much older he looked.
Grandma Margie limped forward and pulled Marah into a fierce hug. “It can be hard
to come home. Good for you.” Grandma drew back, looked at Marah through teary eyes.
She looked thinner since the last time Marah had seen her, skinny enough to blow away.
“Grandpa’s at home, waiting for your brothers. He sends his love.”
Her brothers. Marah’s throat tightened at the thought of them. She hadn’t realized
how much she’d missed them until right now.
Dad’s hair was grayer than she remembered. A day’s growth of beard shadowed his jawline.
He was dressed like an old rock star, in a faded Van Halen T-shirt and worn Levi’s.
He came closer, moving a little awkwardly, and pulled her into a hug. When he let
go and stepped back, she knew they were both thinking about the last time they’d been
together. She and Dad and Tully and Paxton.
“I can’t stay long,” Marah said.
“Do you have something more important to do?”
“Still judging us, I see,” Pax said lazily. “Big surprise.”
Dad seemed determined not to look at Pax, as if ignoring her boyfriend could change
the fact of his existence. “I don’t want to jump into this again. You’re here to see
your godmother. Do you want to see her?”
“Yes,” Marah said.
Behind her Paxton made a sound she knew well, that little snort of derision. How many
times had he reminded her that her family didn’t really accept her unless she was
Good Girl Marah, who did what they wanted and looked a certain way? And hadn’t Dad
proved the truth of it last December?
That’s not love,
Pax had said.
They don’t love the real you, and what’s the use of anything else? I’m the one who
loves you for you.
“Come on,” Dad said. “I’ll take you to her.”
Marah turned to Paxton. “Will you—”
He shook his head. Of course he didn’t want to go. He hated pretense of any kind.
He couldn’t pretend to care about Tully’s health. That would be dishonest. It was
too bad; she could have used a hand to hold right now.
She and Dad walked down the hallway. There were people all around them, coming and
going. Nurses and doctors and orderlies and visitors, all speaking in hushed tones.
The muted conversations underscored the silence between her and her father.
Outside a glass-walled room in the ICU, he stopped and turned to her.
“She’s in bad shape. You need to prepare yourself.”
“You can’t prepare for the shit life throws at you.”
“Words of wisdom from Paxton Conrath, I’ll bet.”
“Dad—”
He held up his hand. “Sorry. But you
can
prepare yourself. She doesn’t look good. The doctors have lowered her body temperature
and put her into a medically induced coma in hopes that her brain swelling will go
down. A shunt is supposed to help with that. They’ve shaved her head and she’s bandaged
up, so be ready. The doctors think she can hear us, though. Your grandma spent two
hours today talking about when Tully and your mom were kids.”
Marah nodded and reached for the door.
“Baby?”
She paused, turned.
“I’m sorry about what happened in December.”
She stared up at him, seeing remorse in his eyes—and love—and it affected her so profoundly
that it was all she could do to mutter, “Shit happens.” She couldn’t think about him—and
them—now. Turning away, she went into the ICU room and closed the door behind her.
The click of the door sent her back in time. Suddenly she was sixteen again, coming
into her mom’s hospital room.
Come here, baby girl, I won’t break. You can hold my hand …
Marah shook the memory free and approached the bed. The room was sleek and boxy and
filled with machines that plunked and whooshed and beeped. But all she saw was Tully.
Her godmother looked … ruined—crushed, almost—pierced by needles and hooked up to
machines. Her face was bruised and cut and bandaged in places; her nose looked broken.
Without hair, she looked small and vulnerable, and the tube going into her head was
terrifying.
It’s my job to love you
.
Marah drew in a sharp, ragged breath. She was responsible for this; she knew it. Her
betrayal of Tully had to be part of why her godmother was here, fighting for life.
“What’s wrong with me?”
She’d never voiced this query before, not when she’d started smoking pot or sleeping
with Pax, not when she’d cut her hair with a razor or pierced her eyebrow with a safety
pin or when she’d gotten a small Celtic cross tattooed on the back of her wrist, not
when she’d run away with Pax and lived on food they found in Dumpsters. Not even when
she sold the story to
Star
magazine.
But she asked it now. She’d betrayed her godmother and run away from her family and
ruined everything, broken the only hearts that mattered. Something must be wrong with
her.
But what? Why had she turned her back so completely on everyone who loved her? And
worse, why had she chosen to do that terrible, unforgivable thing to Tully?
“I know you’ll never forgive me,” she said, wishing now, for the first time, that
she knew how to forgive herself.
* * *
I waken in a darkness so complete I wonder if I have been buried alive. Or maybe I
am dead.
I wonder if a lot of people came to my funeral.
Oh, for God’s sake
.
“Katie?” This time, I think I make a sound. It is her name, but it’s enough.
Close your eyes
.
“They are closed. It’s dark. Where am I? Can you—”
Shhh. Relax. I need you to listen
.
“I’m listening. Can you get us out of here?”
Focus. Listen. You can hear her
.
There is a break in her voice when she says
her
.
“… up. Sorry … Please…”
“Marah.” When I say her name, lights come on. I see that I am in the hospital room
again. Have I always been here? Is this the only here for me? Around me are walls
of glass, through which I see other, similar rooms beyond. Inside here, there is a
bed surrounded by machines that are hooked up to my broken body: tubes and electrodes
and casts and bandages.
Marah is sitting beside that other me.
My goddaughter is in soft focus, her face is blurred a little. Her hair is cotton-candy-pink,
razor-cut, and unattractive as hell, a little roosterlike the way she’s gelled it,
and she has on more makeup than Alice Cooper in his heyday. A big black coat makes
her look like a kid playing dress-up for Halloween.
She is saying my name and trying not to cry. I love this girl, and her sadness scalds
my soul. She needs me to wake up. I can tell. I will open my eyes and smile at her
and tell her it is okay.
I concentrate hard, say, “Marah, don’t cry.”
Nothing.
My body just lies there, inert, breathing through a tube, eyes swollen and shut.
“How can I help her?” I ask Kate.
You’d have to wake up
.
“I tried.”
“… Tully … I’m so sorry … for what I did.”
The light in this room flickers. Kate pulls away from me and floats around the bed
to stand by her daughter.
Marah looks small and dark next to the glowing image of her mother. Kate whispers:
Feel me, baby girl
.
Marah gasps and looks up. “M-mom?”
All of the air seems to go out of the room. There is an exquisite second in which
I can see that Marah believes.
Then she slumps forward in defeat. “When will I learn? You’re
gone.
”
“Can it be undone?” I ask Kate quietly. It scares me to ask, and the silence between
my question and her answer feels like an eternity. At last, Kate looks away from her
daughter and at me.
Can what be undone
?
I indicate the woman in the bed—the other me. “Can I wake up?”
You tell me. What happened?
“I tried to help Marah, but … really. When have I ever been the person you want beside
you in a foxhole?”