The Half Life of Molly Pierce
Read The Half Life of Molly Pierce Online
Authors: Katrina Leno
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
Advance Reader’s e-proof
courtesy of
HarperCollins Publishers
This is an advance reader’s e-proof made from digital files of the uncorrected proofs. Readers are reminded that changes may be made prior to publication, including to the type, design, layout, or content, that are not reflected in this e-proof, and that this e-pub may not reflect the final edition. Any material to be quoted or excerpted in a review should be checked against the final published edition. Dates, prices, and manufacturing details are subject to change or cancellation without notice.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
to my brothers:
for their unfailing
& unconditional
support
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
Now for the moment things appear to be going very badly with me, and this has been so for a considerable time already, and may continue so in the future for a while; but after everything has seemed to go wrong, there will perhaps come a time when things will go right. I do not count on it, perhaps it will never happen, but if there should come a change for the better, I would consider it so much gain, I would be contented, I would say: at last! you see
there was something after all
!
—from
The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
, edited by Mark Roskill
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
T
here are long stretches where I don’t remember anything.
I wake up in my car.
I’m driving, but I don’t know where I’m driving to and I don’t know where I’m driving from.
But it’s my car. And my things are in it.
I just don’t know how I got here.
It’s only been a couple hours. I remember what I put on this morning and I’m wearing the same clothes. A pair of black tights. Jean shorts, a tucked-in flowered shirt. A gray sweater, worn and pilled. My favorite sweater.
The clock in my car doesn’t work and I can’t find my cell phone, so I don’t know what time it is. But it’s still light out and it’s October now, a warm October, and it must be around two or three. The sun goes down so early. Did I miss school again? Sometimes I miss school. What’s the last thing I can remember? Ten o’clock? Eleven? History—I can remember history. We’re studying the Second World War. I’m in precalculus. I can’t remember calculus. I’ve been out since ten thirty, eleven.
I check my body for bruises, for cuts, pressing fingers into my stomach and arms, checking to make sure I’m okay. Sometimes I’m cut up all over and sometimes there are twigs and leaves in my hair and once I was halfway to New York.
I live in Massachusetts, by the shore. A town called Manchester-by-the-Sea. That’s the whole name of the town. The people here, they get angry when the tourists abbreviate it. But we can call it Manchester.
It took me four hours to drive back. Two tanks of gas. I broke curfew by three hours and I was grounded the entire weekend. Grounded for something I can’t even remember doing.
It started a year ago and I haven’t told anyone about it, even though it’s only gotten worse. I can’t tell anyone about it because . . .
There are a lot of reasons.
I’m scared they’ll think I’m crazy.
I’m scared they won’t believe me.
I’m scared there’s something really wrong with me.
And so far, I’m handling it. I’m dealing with it.
Usually it’s no more than an hour or two and sometimes it’s only ten minutes. Sometimes I’ll be watching a TV show, and then I wake up standing in my backyard and the same TV show is still on. So I can catch the ending, which I guess is good. Although I have no idea what’s happened up until then.
And apparently I don’t do anything too obvious. Because I’ve been around people before and nobody ever seems to notice. Nobody except Hazel, really. But Hazel notices everything.
Hazel is my sister. She’s thirteen. It’s her and me and Clancy, our brother. He’s fifteen, a sophomore. I’m Molly. I’m a senior. I’ll be eighteen soon.
Clancy never notices anything.
But Hazel.
She’s asked me about it.
I act like she’s crazy, which is the easiest thing to do.
Once I asked her if I ever seemed different.
She said yes.
But it was in a way nobody else would ever notice.
I said, What do you mean?
She said if I was going to keep secrets from her, she was going to keep secrets from me.
It happens once a week, maybe. Every other week. Sometimes more.
I don’t know what it means.
I’ve thought about it and . . .
It scares me.
It leaves me feeling sort of hopeless and unable to control my own body. We’re supposed to be able to do at least that, right? To tell our feet to move and suddenly we’re walking. To tell our arms to lift and our tongue to talk.
To tell our brains to remember.
To commit something to memory.
I think there’s something wrong with me.
I mean . . .
I guess I know there’s something wrong with me. There has to be.
I get these headaches. Migraines. Sometimes they’re really bad; sometimes I have to stay home from school and I have to lie still in bed and keep the blinds closed and sometimes I throw up into the yellow mixing bowl my mom puts on the floor next to me.
My therapist says they’re related to my “emotional difficulties.”
Those are his words, not mine.
He also calls it depression.
I don’t like calling it that.
My mother calls it my melancholy. But I don’t like calling it that, either.
But it’s something, sure.
It’s just . . .
I have to see a therapist once a week and I have to talk about my life and about my problems, but I won’t take the pills anymore. I took them for a while, but I don’t like them and so I stopped taking them. They take away the lows but they take away the highs, too, and so you’re left floating in a strange in-between of colorless, tasteless moments.
And it’s not like . . .
I don’t want to kill myself.
It’s just that sometimes I can’t understand anything, and sometimes it feels like the whole weight of the universe settles itself on my shoulders and I can’t see the reason for anything. I don’t want to die, really, but I don’t particularly want to live.
Sometimes I wish I could slip away while I sleep. Wake up someplace better. Someplace quieter.
But I don’t believe in heaven, so I’m not sure where that place would be.
I made the mistake of telling people this. So I was sent to a psychiatrist.
And it’s gotten better since then.
I don’t know.
Sometimes it’s fine. Sometimes I’m fine.
Other days.
It’s hard for me to have a conversation. It’s hard for me to get up, brush my teeth, comb my hair.
It’s hard for me to face my friends at school. It’s hard for me to write a research paper. It’s hard for me to take a breath. Air, sometimes, seems too thick. Tastes like smoke.
I don’t know why I feel that way. I have a great life. It’s perfect, really. My parents are fine. My brother is fine. My sister is fine. My friends are fine. Things are fine.
This is what I keep telling my therapist, but he keeps making me go back and back and back.
He says, Do you sometimes get the feeling you’ll never be happy?
I say, Don’t we all?
He writes something down on a little pad of paper.
I say, I was just . . . That was a joke. I was joking.
He says, Do you always joke like that?
I say, Oh god, Alex.
He lets me call him Alex.
I haven’t told him about my missing time.
Like I said, I haven’t told anyone.
I kind of want to . . .
Just figure it out. See if I can figure it out by myself.
I just hate thinking there’s a part of myself I don’t understand. That I can’t control, that I can’t tame, that I can’t stop. That I can’t change. It makes me crazy. It makes me angry. It makes me scared. It’s scary.
One minute you’re in history class and it’s ten thirty in the morning, and the next minute you’re driving your car and you can’t find your cell phone and you don’t know what time it is and how many hours you’ve lost and where you’ve been and what you did and whether you haven’t just lost your entire fucking mind.
That’s what it feels like. Like I’ve lost my entire fucking mind. Like I’ve gone crazy and like I’ll never be normal and like I should just pack my things the second I turn eighteen, move to Alaska or Scotland or Romania. Get as far away as I can from everyone I love and just lead my life in a quiet town, knitting sweaters and selling them on street corners to pay my rent and buy food.
I can’t knit. I would learn.
I look at myself in the rearview window. I look the same as I looked this morning. I have my hair in a bun and I look tired. I’m on Water Street, I’m driving through the touristy section of town; there are small shops on either side of me. My parents own a shop here. Was I coming to see them? There it is, on the right. By-the-Sea Books. I work there after school some days. They only pay me minimum wage. I know for a fact the other cashiers get paid more. My parents say yes, but the other cashiers do not get dinner and a place to live and clothes to wear and a car to drive.
Fair enough.
I put my signal on and take a left onto Prince Street.
Should I go back to school? Make up some excuse about where I’ve been? Sick grandmother? I use that excuse a lot. My grandmother is dead. All my grandparents are dead. No one knows that, I guess. You say sick grandmother and people don’t usually ask questions.
Right on Allen Street.
I’ll go back home, take a shower, take a nap. Be back at the bookstore by five and hope they don’t call my mom before then. Tell her I skipped out again. Maybe they’ll call my dad. He’s a lot easier to deal with. He gets flustered and takes any excuse I give him with a hint of gratefulness. He just wants to believe I’m not crazy.
I don’t want to go back to school. It’s hard to get back into the sway of everything after you’ve been outside yourself for a few hours. Or inside yourself. Or next to yourself. Somewhere else. Who knows?
Left on Prescott.
That’s when I see him.
There’s more traffic on Prescott. It leads into the center of town and it spans the length of Manchester. Quickest way through.
I see him from far off in my rearview mirror. I don’t know what makes me see him. The motorcyclist. He’s dressed in black. Black jacket, black helmet. He’s going too fast. He’s weaving in and out of traffic and I know something awful is going to happen before it happens. I feel like I’ve seen him before, the boy on the motorcycle, and I feel like I know it’s inevitable, what’s about to happen. He’s speeding through cars, he’s riding the yellow line, he’s gaining on me, and I know it’s me he’s coming for. It’s me, I’m the reason he’s speeding. He’s trying to catch up to me.
But that’s crazy.
I look up as the light turns yellow, but I’m already halfway through the intersection so I keep going.
The boy on the bike, he’s not slowing down. The cars around him are stopping for the red light, but he’s speeding up and he’s trying to beat the traffic that’s already crossing Prescott on Jacobson.
For a second I think he’s going to make it.
But then he doesn’t.
The truck hits his back tire and he’s in the air and I’m screaming without realizing it, braking without meaning to, and I lose him somewhere over the roof of my car. The squealing of tires and the crash as a second car hits the truck that hit his bike and suddenly the boy has landed on the road in front of me. He’s flown off his bike and clear through the air over my car, and I don’t know how I’ve gotten out of my car but I’m out and I’m still screaming and I’m running over to him like, I don’t know. Like I can save him. But there’s blood on the pavement and there’s blood leaking out of his helmet and his leg, one of his legs—it’s broken, it’s bent all wrong. And I know he’s going to die. I don’t know how I know but I know, and I fall to the pavement in front of him and I pull his helmet off. Because why? Because I don’t know. It’s all I can do.