The Half Life of Molly Pierce (10 page)

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I
burst out of study hall and slam directly into someone. I try and push past them but they’ve grabbed my wrist, gently but firmly, and I look up at their face hoping it’s . . . I don’t know. Hoping it’s my brother, I guess. He’s the only person who will leave me alone, no questions, if I ask him to.

It’s Bret.

I feel my heart plummet to somewhere around my stomach. Of course it’s Bret. Isn’t it always? Every embarrassing, awful thing that happens to me, and there’s Bret Jennings. It’s like he’s attracted to my awkward moments.

“Molly, whoa,” he says. “You okay?”

“What, sure! Of course! Bathroom! Going to the. You know.”

There’s no time to rethink the order of those words. I’ve already said them.

“You look a little pale,” he says.

“Hot,” I blurt out. “I mean, I’m a little hot. It’s hot. I’m fine.”

“I didn’t see you in first period.”

That catches my interest, I can’t lie. Bret noticed I wasn’t in first period? But then I remember: I’m his lab partner. Biology was first period today. I left him by himself.

“I know, I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t miss anything important. I mean, I hope you didn’t need me or anything.”

“You’re always needed,” he says, and it’s like he says it before he realizes how awkward it will sound. It falls to the floor, heavy, and Bret blushes and squeezes my elbow quickly, walks away even quicker.

The squeeze of the elbow means a lot of things.

Please pretend I didn’t say that.

Please pretend I didn’t mean that.

Please pretend I didn’t say that but also know that at least on some subconscious level I meant it.

I don’t have time to dwell on that further. I barely make it to the bathroom before the memory comes back, full force this time. I lock myself in a stall and let it hit me. I don’t think I have a choice.

- - -

“But what will he say?” I ask, my mouth turning downward in a flirty, unfamiliar pout.

We’re in a coffeehouse, a dark place with a small, raised platform, a stool, and a microphone. A boy with a guitar has just finished a song. The few people who are listening clap hard. Sayer and I join them; I even cup my hands around my mouth and holler my appreciation.

It’s Parker up there. Sayer’s best friend. He finds us in the crowd and gives a half wave, a goofy smile, launches right into the next song. It’s one of my favorites. “I’m Leaving you, Louella.”

I asked once who Louella was.

He said she was no one. He made her up.

But it feels like she’s real. Like maybe he just changed her name.

Sayer gets my attention again, grabs my knee under the table. I laugh, ticklish, and push him off. Hold his hand instead. Turn serious. Look at him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says.

“Of course it matters,” I say. “He’s your brother.”

“He’s an idiot.”

“Maybe. Still your brother.”

“He’ll understand.”

We both know he won’t understand. We both know Lyle feels like he deserves me. Like I owe him something.

I didn’t ask for his help.

But on the other hand.

I don’t want him sad. I don’t want him hurt.

He’s my friend. My best friend, really. He means everything to me and the last thing I want to do is hurt him.

But I don’t think I can help it.

“Hey,” Sayer says. “Hey.”

I shrug. I’m afraid that if I say anything, I’ll start to cry.

“I have to go soon,” I say.

He nods. “I know. Just don’t worry about Lyle. I’ll talk to him.”

“No. I want to. Let me. I think it should come from me.”

Sayer nods.

I have to go. I try and stand up, but he’s too quick for me. He leans across the table. He kisses me and I kiss him back. It’s just Sayer and me and this music and this tiny coffeehouse and nothing else.

“Don’t leave,” he says. And something in the way he says it, it’s more than that. It means something more.

“You know I have to.”

“You could stay.”

“You know I can’t stay.”

“Who knows. Maybe you’d like me.”

“I know I would.”

Another kiss.

“I love you,” he says.

It’s the first time he’s said it.

I feel some kind of warmth spread through my body. A fleeting burst of happiness mixed with a stubborn, permanent sadness that I can never completely get away from.

“I love you, too.”

In the bathroom, I am not crying. I am not crying because I refuse to cry, because I have balled up my fists and shoved them into my eyes until angry white spots dance across my vision. Only then do I leave the stall, wipe off my smudged eye makeup with a stiff paper towel, check the side of my neck for the pulse I am never entirely positive I will find.

I want to call Alex again but I don’t. There’s no point. He knows what’s happening to me and he won’t tell me. He tried to tell me before, maybe, but never hard enough.

I take my cell phone out of my book bag and fight the sudden, wild urge to drown it in water.

Who could I possibly use it to call?

Everyone I know has lied to me.

My friends, they know. My family—Hazel sitting on my car, putting her nose against my neck. Sayer. Everyone knows except me and I hate them for it.

Only one person has escaped my anger and suddenly I want to see him. I need to talk to him.

I need to talk to my brother.

And somehow I know I get away with too much.

The nurse, she basically lets me come and go as I please. My teachers don’t even question my frequent absences and lateness. I have no idea where my brother is right now, but the school secretary will tell me. I don’t know how I know she’ll tell me but I’m out of the bathroom and practically running to the main office, and when I get there she doesn’t even ask me any questions. She actually calls the classroom herself and talks to the teacher and tells him to send my brother here.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

Something terrible, apparently, if I can get away with all this.

I see him coming, confused, thinking he’s probably in trouble. I shout a quick thanks to the nameless secretary, dart out of the office, grab his arm, and drag him down the hallway toward the door that will lead us away. Outside.

He doesn’t struggle. So he knows.

Only outside does he question me.

“Where are we going?” he says. “Not that I’m not grateful, you know, for getting me out of algebra.”

I don’t answer him until we’re far enough away from the school that I don’t feel like its walls are crushing me anymore. Then I turn on him. We’re on the path leading to the student parking lot; it’s shaded on either side by thick rows of trees. We’re in the dead middle; we can’t see the school or the cars. Perfectly hidden from view.

“Clancy, you have to be honest. Okay? All questions. Honest.”

He only thinks about it for a minute, but it’s long enough so that I know he’s telling the truth when he shrugs and says okay.

“What’s happening to me?”

“Be more specific,” he says, sighing and looking around me, squirming a little like he’s afraid of something.

“What do you—”

“Yes or no questions. Ask me yes or no questions. And do it quickly, because, you know. You could check out any minute.”

Yes or no? How can I possibly find anything out by asking only yes or no questions? I spin away from him, spin back. Try to counteract the spinning going on inside my head with my physical motion. Try to correct my balance.

Okay, Molly. Relax. Think.

“Something is wrong with me, right? And everybody knows except me.”

“Yes.”

“Everybody knows about my memory loss? My blackouts?”

It feels weird saying it aloud.

“Yup.”

“And they know why it’s happening?”

“Yup.”

“And they’re supposed to act like they don’t?”

“Yes.”

Fuck.

Okay, relax.

Relax.

God, what else. What else? This is the hardest thing in the world.

“Am I . . . fuck, Clancy, am I fucking crazy? I feel crazy.”

He smirks.

He actually smirks, the asshole, but he recovers quickly and he shrugs and he holds out his hand, palm down, and rocks it back and forth.

Sort of.

I’m sort of crazy.

Great.

“So what am I supposed to do?” I say. Quieter this time.

And his face clouds over. Just a moment it’s there: a shadow. And then he shrugs again, runs a hand through his messy hair.

“You should talk to Sayer. I’m sure he’ll have plenty to say about it.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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H
ow can I go back to school?

But I do.

I go back and I sit through the rest of my classes.

Erie tries to talk to me but I brush her off as gently as I can manage. I smile and hope maybe she’ll think everything is okay. But Erie. She knows. What she knows, I can’t guess, but she knows. And so I imagine she isn’t fooled by a simple smile.

A hundred times I want to get up and leave but I don’t. A hundred times I think about calling Sayer, canceling our plans, but I don’t. A hundred times I want to find my brother again, drag him outside, make him look me in the eyes and use his gaze like an anchor. Use him like a lifeboat, use him like a parachute.

But I don’t.

He told me to talk to Sayer and so I will.

I tell myself my anger will abate as the day goes by, but if anything I am angrier than ever when the last bell rings.

Clancy is waiting by my locker. He puts his arm around my shoulders when we walk to my car and nobody says anything. Shouldn’t people say something? Make fun of him? Shout insults at this sudden break in his usually stoic demeanor?

But they don’t. They won’t.

For some reason, they wouldn’t do that to me.

And, by association, they wouldn’t do that to him.

In some weird way, he might be lucky to be my brother.

“Why the yes or no?” I ask in the car. I don’t know if he’ll answer me but we have time to wait for Hazel, anyway, and it fills the silence.

“Alex said it might be easier for you,” he says.

“Why?”

“No idea,” he says.

“You all talk to Alex?”

“Not, like, daily, Molly, so don’t get all weird. Just sometimes.”

My nail polish is blue. It’s chipping. It’s light blue and it’s chipping. I look at it for a long time, and Clancy looks at me for a long time and then he looks away. And after that Hazel gets in the car and I try shifting to drive before I remember the engine is off. And then I try shifting into drive again before I remember the engine is still off and then I finally turn the engine on and when the motor comes to life, I press my forehead against the steering wheel and take a deep breath.

“Molly?” Hazel says from the backseat.

“I’m fine,” I say automatically.

“Clancy?” she says.

“She’s fine, Hazel.”

Hazel looks at me in the rearview. I try not to meet her gaze but it’s hard. Her blue eyes fill up the whole mirror.

They’re both doing shifts at the bookstore today, so I drop them off first, and I drive home in silence, the radio turned off and the windows rolled up and only the soft breeze of heat from the vents to disturb my forced peace.

I don’t really have time for a nap before Sayer gets here, but I lie down anyway. It takes me a long time to get to sleep and my alarm goes off practically the second I do and I end up feeling more tired than when I got home. But at least the circles under my eyes have faded a little.

A very little.

When I pull myself out of bed, it’s ten of four and I shower in three minutes, get dressed in another three.

With four minutes to go, I sit on the edge of my bed and wonder what the fuck is going on.

I’ve been wondering that a lot.

With each new memory that surfaces, my grip on things gets a little more slippery.

A little farther away.

What do I know so far?

The basics, Molly. Just think about the basics. Like Clancy’s yes or no questions, it might be the easiest way to organize things.

Okay.

The basics.

I was friends with Lyle. He told me how he felt about me. I told him that I couldn’t return the feelings because I had feelings for someone else.

For his brother, apparently.

But there’s something between us, Lyle and me. Something that happened to me or something he did for me. Something that makes him feel like I owe it to him.

I have no idea what that could be.

The doorbell.

The journey down the stairs seems to take forever, and with each step my anger boils up under my skin until I swear I have turned red with the heat of it.

And when I open the door, I know Sayer can tell, because at first he smiles and he opens his mouth to say hello and then he shuts it and takes one tiny step backward. More like a shuffle. He shuffles backward and I step out of the house and plant myself firmly on the welcome mat and I cross my arms over my chest because suddenly it is freezing.

“I told you I would explain,” he says.

“You lied to me.”

“I can explain now.”

“But you lied to me.”

“What did you remember?” he says.

“No, wait,” he says.

“Can we just . . . can we get out of here?” he says.

“Let me get my coat.”

A half an hour later and Sayer has pulled the car to the side of the road and we’re walking through a brief patch of forest to where, I know, the trees will open up on to a public beach. It’s sure to be deserted with how cold it is and with the sun already so close to setting. The perfect place to talk.

He drags a blanket from the trunk of his car, so I guess he planned this. Or, I don’t know, maybe the blanket came with the car. Or maybe he bought the blanket for the car and now he just keeps it in the trunk so in case he breaks down somewhere in the middle of a snowstorm he can use it to keep from freezing to death.