The Half Life of Molly Pierce (17 page)

Upstairs now and it gets brighter. My breath comes out in puffs of smoke but there’s a fire up ahead.

This fire, it never goes out.

There’s a girl standing in front of it now, throwing small pieces of wood into the trash can to keep the blaze alive. She’s small and thin, about our age, with a cheerful, skinny face.

The runaways.

I don’t know this girl but she bolts toward Lyle with a face lit up and beaming and she throws her arms around his neck.

“Thought you were dead!” she squeals, and I’m reminded of Hazel. This girl is an older, more desperate Hazel. I feel protective of her immediately. When she pulls away from Lyle and looks at me, I stick my hand out.

“Mabel,” I say.

Lyle told me I had to always introduce myself first with the runaways. Otherwise they wouldn’t trust me.

“Susan,” she says. “Where’d you go, Lyle, huh? Haven’t seen you since the raid.”

Every couple weeks there’s a raid. Everybody clears out for a few hours, then scurries back in like mice.

The last raid was the last time I was here. Two months ago, which is a good long quiet streak for them.

“Been busy,” Lyle says, shrugging.

He’s different here. I notice it right away. He talks differently and he holds his body differently.

“Couple people got locked up for a few days,” Susan says. “Dinky and Pretty and Alice. Thought you might be in, too.”

“Too fast,” Lyle says, and smiles.

No, that’s not true, Lyle. You didn’t get caught because you were with me.

“I think it was good for Pretty, anyway,” she continues, smiling, “you know how he gets.”

“I know,” Lyle says. “He here?”

“It’s almost Thanksgiving,” she says, and the smile fades from her face. “Nobody’s here except me.”

“And us, now. Look, I brought you something,” Lyle says. He starts pulling stuff from his jacket I didn’t even know he had. A box of crackers, a wedge of cheese. The bottle of whiskey and a ziplock baggie of chocolate chip cookies. He spreads them on the floor like a banquet, steps back, and holds out his hands. “Eh?”

“I can always count on you,” she says. She’s smiling again and she’s so much like Hazel that I want to reach out and hug her, bring her home, and give her something better to eat and somewhere warm to sleep. “They’ll be back in a couple days, anyway. Nice to have the place to myself.”

We eat together on the floor. We take small bites and let Susan have most of it. We split the whiskey three ways and we laugh and tell stupid jokes and the warehouse gets darker but the fire is bright and hot and I even take my coat off.

Lyle told me he came here for a while after his parents died. He was only nine. He stayed two weeks with the runaways until Sayer found him and dragged him out.

But he’s never really left.

He comes back with food and booze, and I know that besides Sayer, this is his real family. There’s a revolving door of runaways here, but all runaways are the same. That’s what he told me.

After the last of the cheese is done, Susan curls up next to the fire in a dozen mismatched blankets and falls instantly asleep. Lyle and I sit cross-legged on the floor exchanging the last few sips of whiskey.

I didn’t bring him here to tell him, but it’s as good a time as any. I take the empty bottle in my hand and spin it around on the floor so I’ll have something to do. When it stops spinning it’s pointing at him, and he pretends like he’s going to kiss me and I laugh and push him away. But then I guess my face changes and he stops moving and waits for me to say something.

“Look,” I start. My hands are shaking and I sit on them.

I’ve never told anyone before. Besides Alex, sure. He doesn’t count.

I don’t know how to say it.

I’m not a real person, Lyle.

Or, I’m not exactly a real person.

I’m a shadow.

I’m a copy.

I’m a fake.

When I was little, I used to fantasize about having my own body. Molly and I are the same age and when we were four and five and six I was fine with it. But then we turned seven. Something about seven, I don’t know.

Suddenly I wanted more.

I wanted to be by myself. I wanted to be like Molly, who didn’t have to hear my voice in her head all the time.

I always heard her. I saw her dreams and I heard her seven-year-old thoughts and I felt her pain and I felt her jubilation. But it wasn’t mine. It wasn’t my happiness and it wasn’t my sadness and I wanted my own.

I would rather have never been born. But now that I’m here, I want more.

But Molly never thought about that.

She’s the one who made me.

She’s the one who split herself in half and pushed me away from her. Pushed me down real deep inside her until she couldn’t even feel me anymore.

Sometimes I think she’s a real fucking bitch, but without her I have nothing.

Without her, I can’t even walk across a room.

“Mabel?” Lyle says.

I guess I’m crying. I hardly ever cry. They’re borrowed tears. Even these don’t belong to me. I wipe my cheeks and then I laugh. A sharp, piercing laugh that echoes around the warehouse like a bird.

“I have something to tell you,” I say. “And it’s really fucking weird.”

“How weird?” he says.

“That first time I met you?” I say. “That was the first time I met anyone.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

T
he day I met Lyle. That day. Molly goes to school.

She goes to school. She fails a test. She forgets an English essay sitting on her bed. She gets into a fight with Luka about something stupid, about a party he wants her to go to. She spills spaghetti sauce on her shirt.

It is a white shirt. It is new. She tries to wash it in the bathroom, but it only makes the stain bigger and more watery. She spends six minutes crying on the toilet. She is late to health class. They are learning CPR.

That day she drives with Clancy to the middle school. They wait for Hazel in the parking lot. She drives her brother and sister home and she goes into her room and she cries again and she thinks to herself—I hear her, I hear everything—she thinks to herself
I can’t live on this earth anymore. I can’t live on this planet. I just can’t fucking do it. I just can’t, I just can’t, I just can’t
.

Clancy comes into her room. He wants her to drive him to his friend’s house.

“Are you crying?” he asks. He stands in the doorway and watches her on her bed. She wipes her cheeks and stands up and turns away from him and straightens her comforter.

“Get out, Clancy.”

“Are you okay?” he says.

“Clancy—get out. Please get out.”

“I just need a ride,” he says. “Can you drive me to Tom’s?”

“Please, please, please,” she says. “Please, get out. Please, please get out.”

She covers her face with her hands. He stands in the doorway. She turns around. She doesn’t look sad anymore. She looks angry.

“Molly, it’s five streets over. It’ll take you three minutes.”

“Walk,” she says. “You can walk. I’m busy.”

“What are you doing? What are you busy doing?”

“I’m busy.”

“It’s cold outside. I’m not going to walk. It’ll take you—”

“Clancy, fuck! No! Okay? No! You asked me and I said no!”

“What the fuck is your problem?” he asks. He doesn’t ask it angrily. He asks it like—
Really. What is actually your problem, Molly?

“Get out!” she screams.

She crosses the room and pushes him out of her doorway. I watch everything. I don’t know what she’s doing, I only know she is different. Something is different. Something has changed. Her body feels cold and shaky and I feel sick. I think she might throw up. I think—
Calm down, Molly. Really! Just calm down
.

She tries to slam the door, but Clancy sticks his foot in the way.

“Open the fucking door, Molly!” he screams. He pushes against the door and she kicks her foot against his foot but he’s stronger. The door flies inward and smashes against the wall and Molly stumbles backward and catches her hip on the edge of the bureau. I feel her pain like it’s my pain. Our pain. Tears spring to her eyes. Her vision blurs.

They face off. Molly is shaking. I feel her shaking.

“Go fuck yourself,” Clancy says. He just looks at her.

And then she is different. She is still again. She is calm. She is breathing.

She says, “Do you ever wonder what it would be like without me?”

And he says, “No, really, Molly. You’re an asshole. Fuck yourself.”

She says, “Because someday, you’ll find out. Maybe someday you’ll think back to this conversation and you’ll remember it and you’ll think . . .”

No, no, no, no.

No, wait.

Something is wrong. Something is going wrong. Something is unraveling. Something fragile has broken. Some string has snapped.

“What are you talking about?” Clancy asks.

“Don’t worry. You’ll all be better off,” Molly says.

She pushes past him.

The pills are under her parents’ vanity. He doesn’t follow her. She puts them into her purse and then she goes downstairs and she takes a bottle of water from the fridge and then she slams the front door of the house and she runs across the yard to her car and she drives at exactly the speed limit. Her hands are white on the steering wheel but they are not shaking. And her mind—her mind is so quiet it’s like she’s not even there anymore. I can’t hear her thinking, and I can always hear her thinking. I can always hear her thinking. But now it’s like I am alone in her body just watching someone else drive us somewhere I have never been. Molly has never been here. I don’t know what this place is.

It is October twenty-sixth. A Friday.

She drives to the warehouse and she parks in the empty parking lot and she gets out and stops only for a minute and looks up at this building and I still don’t know what she’s thinking but I’m scared. For the first time in my life, I am scared of her. I don’t know what she’s going to do. I don’t know what she’s planning.

She goes inside. She passes the homeless people and the junkies and she finds the fire that never goes out. The runaways don’t even look up at her.

She pushes deeper into the warehouse and then I can feel her again. And then all of a sudden I can feel her again and she is happy. She is happy—a strange, lurching happiness that pulses and thrums through her body and settles in her fingers and the tip of her nose. And something else, there is something else. Relief. There is relief. There is stillness. There is calm.

She finds a small, abandoned room.

And that’s where she stops.

She sits down on the floor of the warehouse and she takes the bottle of water out of her purse and she puts it in front of her and then she takes the bottle of sleeping pills and she puts them in front of her and then I think to myself—
oh
.

Oh, how could I have been so stupid?

She leans back against the wall and I can hear her again. I can hear what she’s thinking and she’s thinking—she’s wondering—How long will it take me to die?

Will it be quick?

Will it be very painful?

She opens the bottle of pills and spills them out into her palm.

It will be easy, she thinks. It will be simple. I will just fall asleep.

And I think—I think, I wonder what I would have been like if I was normal. If I wasn’t an alter, I mean. If I didn’t have to share this body with her. With Molly.

It’s not easy.

Every day I wake up when Molly wants to wake up. Every day I go to sleep when Molly is tired. I wear the clothes Molly wants to wear. I do my hair the way Molly wants to do her hair.

The movies I watch, the books I read.

But what little life I get—I want it. I like it.

And now here she is and she’s going to ruin everything for me.

But—no. I won’t let her.

I won’t let her.

She unscrews the top of the water bottle and she holds the pills in her hands and she is trying to decide whether she should put them into her mouth one by one or all together.

And then all of sudden it is me.

It’s me.

It’s me and not Molly.

It’s me and I’m holding the pills and I don’t know how long I sit there just holding them but I can’t move. It’s been so long. It’s been so long since I’ve taken over and it’s like I’ve forgotten how to move my body. Our body.

My body.

I don’t know how long I’m there, but then someone sits down in front of me.

It’s a boy. He’s eating a cheese and tomato sandwich. He takes a big bite of the sandwich and then he holds it out to me and says, “Want some?”

And then I start crying.

And then he holds his hand out, palm up, and I dump all the pills into it and he takes the empty pill bottle from me and he uses his hand like a funnel and puts all the pills back into the bottle.

Then he takes the water bottle and holds it up and says, “Do you mind?” and I shake my head and he takes a big sip and he says, “Thanks.” And he says, “What’s your name?”

And I say, “Mabel.”

And it is the first time I have ever introduced myself. It is the first time I have said my name out loud to a stranger.

And he says, “Mabel. I’m Lyle. It’s nice to meet you.”

And I say, “I wasn’t going to do it.”

And he says, “Oh. Okay.”

And I say, “No really. I wasn’t going to do it. I stopped her. I saved her life.”

And I think—one day I will explain it to you. One day I will explain what I mean.

But right now. Right now I’m just so happy. Right now I’m alive. Right now I’m here. Right now I’ve saved Molly’s life. Because she would have done it. She was going to do it.

I heard her, and she was going to do it.

In the kitchen I peel an orange and eat wedge after wedge with deliberate care.

It’s dark outside.

Mabel is quiet, for now.

I still can’t feel her.

That day. That day.

I remember that day.

Of course I remember that day.

I didn’t think—

I didn’t think anybody knew.