The Half Life of Molly Pierce (4 page)

“Oh, sure,” I say. I give him my number. I’ll charge my phone tonight.

“See you, Molly,” he says.

And he’s gone. Just like that.

And I don’t want him to go but I can’t ask him to stay. I don’t even know him.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

A
fter school I drop Hazel and Clancy off at the bookstore and head over to Alex’s office. It’s in the middle of town and I have to drive down Prescott Street again and every time I look in the rearview mirror I see Lyle’s bike speeding toward me, weaving in and out of traffic. The truck hitting his back tire. His body flying over the roof of my car. His body hitting the pavement. His body breaking and bleeding.

The man with the two o’clock appointment is older and he always comes out at five of three exactly, crying and red-faced and avoiding all eye contact. That’s fine by me. I can avoid eye contact with the best of them.

Sometimes I wonder what Alex does in those five minutes between this man’s appointment and my appointment, but it’s probably something uninteresting. He probably arranges his notes. Sharpens the pencils that are on his desk. Makes sure his books are still alphabetized.

I like Alex, really. He’s in his late thirties, maybe, and he’s attractive and he’s only rarely prying. Usually he lets me do the talking, and if I don’t feel like talking sometimes we play cards or I let him read a short story I’m working on. He asks me if I want to be a writer, but I’ve never really thought much about it. I like books, of course; I was practically raised on them. The bookstore is older than I am. There’s a room in the back where my parents kept a crib.

“Hello, Molly.”

“Hey, Alex.”

I’m ushered into his tiny office, all bookshelves and hardcover copies of weird psychology encyclopedias. He’s pulled the shades half shut for me; too much light bothers my eyes.

“And how are we this week?” he says.

I collapse in the armchair gratefully, letting my body sink into the cushions.

“I saw somebody die,” I say. No use beating around the bush.

He’s reaching for his reading glasses. His hand pauses and his eyes dart to my face, checking if I’m lying. He doesn’t put it past me. Sometimes I say things just for his reaction and then I laugh like a maniac while he shakes his head and explains to me that all jokes stem from some sort of real feeling and would I like to maybe talk about that in more depth?

“You’re serious?”

“Prescott and Jacobson,” I say. “Motorcycle accident.”

“That was . . . I saw that on the news this morning,” he says. He hasn’t picked up his notebook yet. I told him once I hate when he writes while I talk. It’s distracting.

“He flew over my car,” I say. “He landed on the pavement in front of me. I had to slam on my brakes. I could have run over him. I mean—I almost did. I almost ran over him.”

“Molly, that’s awful. I’m so sorry you had to see that,” he says. He’s sincere. But there’s something else. I don’t know what it is. It’s like he’s searching my face for someone else.

“It wasn’t my fault. The truck behind me hit him. The truck behind me hit his tire.”

“Of course,” Alex says. “It was an accident. It wasn’t your fault.”

“There’s more,” I say, and I wait for him to gesture: continue. “I got out of the car. I wanted to see if he was okay.”

“And?”

“I took off his helmet. And . . . there was blood everywhere. There was a lot of blood.”

Suddenly it’s hard to talk about. Suddenly I can only see Lyle’s face and Lyle’s eyes looking into mine. He looked so sad, but he looked so happy to have reached me.

“Take your time,” Alex says.

I take a deep breath. “Something weird happened.”

“What was that?”

“He . . .” I don’t know why I’m telling him this. Usually I don’t tell him things like this. He always tells me to be honest with him and my parents always tell me to be honest with him but I always leave things out because I don’t want to go back on the medication, because I don’t want him to send me away. Because I don’t want to end up in an insane asylum. They still have them. They still exist. “He knew my name, Alex. He kept saying that he knew me, and that he wanted to catch up to me. Like he . . . wanted to see me or something. He said he fucked up again. That’s what he said. And then I told him he was going to be okay and he said he knew he was going to die.”

Alex leans back a little in his chair. His eyes are big and sympathetic. “Molly, a person can say some pretty confusing things when he’s that hurt. His brain isn’t working properly; his body is expending all its energy on healing its wounds. He doesn’t have time for much cognitive activity.”

“He knew my name, Alex. He said my name.”

“This is a small town, Molly.”

“No, this was different. He acted like he knew me. Like he
really
knew me. But I’d never seen him before.”

“Friend of a friend? Someone you met one time and never thought about again?”

Was it possible? I search back through a year of disjointed memories. All the blank spots, the missing time, keep jumping to the surface. I know I’ve never seen his face before. I would have remembered him.

Or . . .

I don’t know.

Maybe I wouldn’t have.

Maybe I don’t.

“I don’t think so,” I say, but now I’m not so sure.

“Nobody wants to experience something like that by themselves. Even if he’d only met you once, Molly, enough to know your name, he might have invented a stronger connection with you, to help himself.”

This makes sense.

This makes sense, doesn’t it?

“Do you think that’s possible?”

“Of course. Think about it. If you were so injured you thought you might not make it, wouldn’t you want to be with someone—anyone? As opposed to a perfect stranger? Or by yourself?”

It’s a far better explanation than any I’ve been able to come up with.

“Tell me what else,” he continues. “What happened after the accident?”

“He asked me to ride with him in the ambulance and he told me to call his brother for him. I took his cell phone and then in the hospital we were in a private waiting room and it felt weird. The brother and me. It felt like I was intruding on something.”

“You didn’t feel like you had a right to share his grief.”

“I was covered in blood, Alex,” I continue. “The brother, he, um . . . he asked me to go to the funeral. On Saturday.”

“Are you going to go?”

“Do you think I should?”

“I think it might bring you a sense of closure. He probably invited you because you were there for his brother when no one else was. There is nothing wrong with declining his invitation, but I think it might be a good experience.”

Since when did I let any experience be good.

I don’t say that out loud.

What I do say is, “Thanks, Alex. It was, um . . . really helpful. To talk to you.”

“I think that’s the first time you’ve ever thanked me, Molly.”

And I don’t blame him for looking just the smallest bit pleased with himself.

When I finally get home and plug my phone into the wall, it’s been dead for over twenty-four hours and I have approximately thirty-seven text messages from Erie, the last one received about a half hour ago, asking me if I think it will be easy to find a new fucking best friend who’s prepared to put up with all my dead-phone bullshit. I text her back and tell her to come over after dinner. She responds immediately—
OK
.

Nothing from Sayer yet.

And nothing from Luka, but that’s no surprise. He’s worse with his phone than I am.

At dinner my family is back to their regular selves. So I’ve discovered how long dead-boy sympathy lasts around here and it’s less than one full day. Although I shouldn’t say that. Mom has brought my favorite dessert home—lemon meringue pie—and Dad pours me a small glass of wine without even asking. Clancy is his usual brooding self, pushing his peas around on his plate like he’s trying to figure out what they’re saying to him, and Hazel chirps tirelessly on about her perfect day, her perfect friends, her perfect life.

Fucking alien.

The doorbell rings halfway through dessert but Erie lets herself in without bothering to wait for any of us. She eats an entire second dinner at an impressive pace and consumes two pieces of pie in less than six minutes. She has the metabolism of—I don’t know—a hummingbird. Something that eats a lot and moves like a blur and somehow stays annoyingly skinny.

I’m not as skinny as her. I have a fuller face and a small waist but bigger thighs and hips.

I’m not looking forward to retelling everything to Erie, but I’ve already decided I’ll leave out all the weird stuff. The more I think about Alex’s take on things, the more I realize how unnecessarily freaked I’ve been. Especially with Erie, who finds a way to blow the simplest situation amazingly out of proportion. I’ll stick to the basics. Dead boy. Ambulance. Brother. Funeral. The end.

I should call Luka, I know, and tell them both together, but the idea of the two of them is exhausting. I’m tired. I’m always tired on Wednesdays and I still have homework to do and it’s already seven. I was supposed to wash my hair tonight. I still could—maybe Erie will braid it for me.

Erie’s my oldest friend. She moved from California to Massachusetts when she was five and her mom walked into my parents’ bookstore and asked for a job. She rang as a cashier for a little while until she found something better and that’s how I met Erie. She was always hanging around in the children’s section, pulling endless books off the shelf to see whether they had enough pictures. At five years old I was reshelving her discards. Not much has changed.

Her full name is Erie Black, no middle name. Or, that’s what I’m supposed to tell people. Really, her full name is Erie Moon Black, but I’m not allowed to ever repeat that, ever, under penalty of her revealing that I once peed in the middle of the hallway in my sleep. When I was fourteen.

We all have secrets.

After dinner Erie and I head up to my room and she plops herself down on her stomach on my bed and I take the window seat and she doesn’t take her cell phone out, which from her is a sign of utmost respect. She realizes I have something important to tell her.

So I tell her.

I leave out the weird parts—the lost time (of course) and Lyle knowing my name and Sayer meeting me by my car. I do tell her he asked me to the funeral but I omit the details.

When I’m done, Erie has shifted to sitting cross-legged, her face in her hands and her blue eyes wide and alert. You have to work for it sometimes, but Erie can be the best kind of listener. She never says anything until you’re done, and she’s completely riveted if it’s a good enough story.

“Wow,” she breathes when it’s clear I’ve told her everything. “Wow, Molly, that’s just . . . I can’t believe it. Are you going?”

“Alex thinks it’s a good idea.”

It helps to call him Alex. You could just be talking about one of your other friends. Not your head doctor.

“If you want me to go with you . . .”

“I don’t think Sayer would want me to bring anyone. He said it’s going to be small.”

“Let me know,” she says. Her face has changed a little. Slightly. Like she was about to say something and then remembered she couldn’t. “Sayer, huh? That’s a weird name.”

I shrug. “He seems nice.”

“But they’re not from around here?” she says. “We would have met them before.”

It’s true. The towns are so small around here that we even know people from two and three high schools over.

“Could be new,” I say.

“This is awful, Molly,” she says, and she actually shudders. “That you had to see all that. Had to go to the hospital, even. Your fault for skipping school and not inviting me.”

“I didn’t plan on it,” I say.

“You left five minutes before the bell rang. Couldn’t you have waited?”

“I did?” I say, and then I nod my head vigorously, realizing that I’m supposed to know this. “Obviously, sure, I did.”

“Who texted you, anyway?”

“What?”

“You got a message on your phone. I saw you read it. And then you wrote something back and you just got up and left.”

This was interesting. I’d never pressed my friends for information about how I acted when I lost time. When I tried it on Hazel, she saw through me in a second. I’m apparently not very good at pretending to be normal.

I don’t remember getting a text message.

“Unrelated,” I say unconvincingly. What else am I supposed to say? Was it related? I have absolutely no idea.

Erie raises her eyebrows. “Doubt it,” she says.

“Suit yourself.”

“Let me see your phone, then.”

Should I? Not like I can really stop her from just grabbing it, anyway; it’s on the desk and she’s faster than me. Besides, maybe I’ll find out something interesting. I nod my chin at it. She reaches and picks it up before I can change my mind, and starts scrolling eagerly through my messages. Erie respects privacy as much as my parents respect an offhanded joke about suicide. Which is to say, you know, not at all.

Then, crestfallen, she says, “You deleted it! Not fair, Molly!”

I go with my safest response: a shrug.

“There’s nothing here from yesterday morning,” she continues. “You’re tricky. Who are you talking to that you don’t want me to know about?”

“Your boyfriend, maybe.”

She throws a pillow at me. I catch it and hug it to my stomach. I feel weird. What did Erie see? Who sent me a message? Why had it made me leave?

“Oh, incoming,” she says suddenly, twisting my phone around so I can see the screen.

“Who is it? Luka? I was supposed to call him.”

“Private,” she says.

Private? Who do I know that’s private?

“Oh,” she continues. That weird expression again. Made weirder because generally if Erie wants to say something, she’ll say it. “Funeral details.” She tosses me the phone.

I feel a weird chill as I realize she’s right. It’s the address and the time of the funeral Saturday. But the number’s private. How am I supposed to text him back, let him know if I can go or not?