The Words We Keep

“Lily!” She shouts down to me, waving like we haven’t seen each other in ages. “I’ve had another amazing idea!”

From the bottom of the cliff, I yell up to her, “Come down, okay? Alice? Come down here and tell me.”

She shakes her head. “No, no. I have to go up. Up. Up. Up! That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

Her eyes are wilder than I’ve ever seen them. How long have they been like that? Her pupils dart around the rock as she talks, her words coming almost too fast to understand.

“What if I get a running start? What if I leap beyond the rocks? And so, like—BAM!—it hit me.” She closes her eyes and presses a finger to her temple. Without her shirt on, the scars on her arms stand out, dark against her skin. “What was my idea? What was I saying?”

“Alice, just come down. It’s too wet up there.”

Her eyes snap open. “Oh yes, the cliff! So, what if—and this is the genius part—what if when I jump, I don’t fall? What if I fly?”

“Alice. No.”

“I can do it. I know I can.”

A crowd has gathered behind me. Watching her lose it. Seeing her scars.

“Alice,” I say like I’m trying not to scare away a baby bird. “This is not a good idea.”

“Yes! Yes, it is! You’ll see!”

She’s climbing again, one hand reaching up to grab a craggy jut-out. Her feet slip on the slick rock, but she scrambles back and hoists herself up to the next level of rocks.

“Stop, Alice. You need to stop.”

She laughs, a ringing, echoing trill. It’s too high. Too loud. Too uncontrolled.

“Can’t stop, Little Sis! I’m going to be brave like you. Like I used to be.”

“This isn’t brave,” I yell up to her. “It’s stupid.”

She laughs again and keeps climbing.

Micah tells me he’s going to run around to the barricaded entrance up top. He takes off in the night. Behind me, people whisper.

“…bipolar…”

“…Fairview…”

“…crazy…”

Cell phone lights punch through the dark. They’re filming her. Stockpiling evidence against the sanity of the Larkin sisters. And suddenly, standing here at the bottom of this cliff, all the emotions of the last few days erupt like a powder keg. Why is she doing this? Why now, when things are falling apart, does she have to do this?

“Just stop!” Before I can filter my thoughts, I yell up at her, “Why do you have to be like this?”

She frowns down at me. “Be like what?”

“Like this! Why do you have to act so, so…”

She stops climbing, her toes balancing on a ledge. She looks over her shoulder down at me. “So crazy?”

“No, that’s not—it’s just—it’s too far. Like when we were kids. Like when you said we should sneak into the school. It’s always one step too far, and you just, you just—”

My mind flashes back: I’m six, and I follow Alice into the ocean. She dares me to swim out farther. Go on an adventure.

I’m sixteen, and I follow her into the school. Alice opens the door.

All her impulsive ideas. Her reckless thoughts. Always taking over, and taking me down with her. “You ruin things.”

The wild in Alice’s eyes turns to anger. “I knew it. I knew you were mad at me about the trespassing.”

“I’m not mad, Alice. I’m tired of babysitting my big sister.”

“Nobody told you to babysit me.”

“Oh right. That’s all I ever hear. ‘Look out for Alice.’ ‘Don’t anger Alice.’ ‘Help Alice.’ Alice, Alice, Alice. Do you know what it’s like to find your sister on the bathroom floor with a blade pressed to her skin? Do you know what that does to a person?”

Her eyes fill with tears as she stares at me from above. She opens her mouth like she’s going to say something, but stops and turns around, lifting her arm high to grab at a rock, her voice half carried away by the wind. “Well, maybe you’ll get lucky and I won’t fly after all.”

Without thinking, I step barefooted onto a rock, hoist myself up, and start climbing. Alice is climbing, too, but I’m faster, and soon I’ve almost caught up to her, and we’re halfway to the top when I grab her ankle. She shakes me off and reaches for the next rock, but I lunge for her one more time.

“Come. Down,” I yell, but I miss her—just barely—and as she yanks her leg away, her other foot slips.

And time breaks.

Because it’s moving too fast and, somehow, too slow.

And she’s falling.

And screaming.

A blur of skin and darkness and tumbling rocks.

And I’m fumbling my way down, and then crawling to her, holding her, and there’s blood in her hair, so much blood.

On me.

On everything.

Micah’s voice brings me back.

“Someone call 911!” He picks Alice up off the sand, one arm under her knees and one behind her back. Her head lolls backward lifelessly.

And all the monsters in my head shout together:

Please be okay.

Please be okay.

Please be okay.