The Words We Keep

The post on the Underground has a picture—a digital damnation—of Alice clinging to the cliff, me standing below her, yelling into the rain, looking abso-freaking-lutely insane.

Ping!

Sam: Holy crap, Lil! Is Alice OK?

Sam: are you?

Me: yeah

no

Sam: look, I know things have been weird, but I’m here if you need me

Me: thanks

too late

Micah convinces me to go home when Dad and Staci finally get to the hospital. Dad quickly hugs me before rushing to the Other Side, without a word about the fact that I’m standing next to Micah, who I was specifically told to never see again. Dad doesn’t have time to stop to tell me I’ve let him down, and he doesn’t need to. I know.

I’ve let me down, too.

Let everybody down.

At home, Margot’s on her bed, her eyes red and swollen, scanning the pages of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows frantically. She chews on her fingernails while she reads, like she’s trying to bite them right off.

“Margot. Stop,” I say, swatting her hand away as I sit next to her. Her finger is red and scabby in the corners of the nail bed. I tell her Alice is going to be fine, even though I have no idea, because what else can I say?

My eyes wander her room, a strange mix of little-girl and preteen: stuffed animals and dolls on her shelves next to a makeup kit.

“You need to sleep,” I tell her, tugging the book away. She tugs it back.

“I thought it was working,” she says, her finger going back to her mouth. “There’s something I’m missing.”

I’m too tired to argue with her about the difference between fantasy and reality, so I sigh, give her a hug, and leave her alone with her magic. Back in my own room, I stare at Alice’s unmade bed, wishing she were here—whichever form of Alice it happened to be. Manic, red-lipped Alice with her booming laugh, or sullen, short-haired Alice with her eye rolls and cocooning. I don’t care which, as long as she’s home.

In the dark, I walk the seven steps to Alice’s chaotic side of the room, pull back the rumpled comforter, and get in.

—

Staci and Dad come home well after midnight. I meet them in the front hallway. Staci lights a lavender candle. Supposed to be calming, she says.

“Do you hate me?” I ask.

“Why would he hate you?” Staci blows out the match. “We’re just glad you were there. I don’t even want to think what could have happened otherwise.”

Dad pulls me tight against his chest. It’s the first time he’s really even acknowledged me since the principal’s office.

“She was still a little loopy, but she told us how you stopped her from going higher. You probably saved her. She’s lucky to have you. We all are.”

I didn’t save her.

I can’t even save myself.

“She’s gonna be okay,” he adds, standing back to look me in the eye, and I wonder if it’s the same lip service I gave Margot. “They’re watching her concussion and adjusting her meds. Nothing you need to worry about.”

The lavender fills the front hallway, but it’s doing little to calm me.

“Don’t tell me not to worry, Dad.” I say. “I am worried. And I know you want everything to be better, but it’s not. And she is not okay.”

He shakes his head a little too vigorously.

“What happened tonight was bad. But it was an accident. She’s getting better. She just needs to find the right dosage.”

“Dad! You’re not listening.” My voice wobbles. I promised to help her. “She’s not even taking her meds.”

You also promised not to tell.

He looks at me like I’m speaking another language. “She didn’t tell me—”

I run up to our room, grab Alice’s bottle of unused pills, and run back down. I slam it in front of Dad, who has already retreated behind the French doors of his office.

“Of course she didn’t! Because we don’t talk about anything we need to be talking about. We’re all just pretending Alice is fine. That we all are.”

He picks up the pills. Then he places them down softly, stands, and turns away from me, to face his rows and rows of books. Tale after tale, characters he knows inside and out, when he can’t see the story playing out right in front of him. The unhappy ending we’re all headed for if we don’t twist the plot, and soon.

“What do you want me to do?” Dad’s gesturing wildly with his arms, pacing back and forth in front of his books. I’ve hit a nerve. “Stuff the pills down her throat? Grind them up and hide them in her Lucky Charms?”

I go around his desk so he has to look at me.

“What if she hurts herself again?”

Dad meets my eyes. We’ve never talked about that night. Never discussed how he groaned when he saw her on the floor. The raw, throaty sound that filled the bathroom as he scooped her off my lap. Instead, I washed the blood off my hands. He washed the floor.

And we pretended like that was enough.

“Exactly,” he says, a quaver in his voice now, too, one hand on his bookshelf. “What if I push her and she does that again? I can’t—I can’t lose her.”

I put my hand on his arm.

“Dad, we’re losing her anyway.”

He shakes his head, his eyelids blinking quick, only barely holding back the tears.

“I don’t know what to do.” Dad’s voice catches in his throat. It guts me. “I mean, I was by her bed in the hospital, and it’s like I’m standing there, watching someone I love be in pain, and I’d do anything to stop it. To take it from her. But I can’t. And I just feel…helpless. You know?”

“I do.” The image of me sitting helpless on the bathroom floor with Alice fills my brain. “I know exactly what you mean.”

Dad sinks into his chair, his eyes searching the picture of us at the beach like it might have the answers.

“Do you remember this day?”

I nod. “It’s the day Alice made me swim out too far.”

Dad shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “There was a riptide. We couldn’t see it from the beach, but one minute you were next to Alice, and the next minute I looked up and you were gone.”

“I thought I followed her,” I say, trying to remember the details of that day.

“She followed you,” Dad says. “I swam after you, too, but she got to you first. To this day, I don’t know how she managed to get you back through those currents.”

I’m six, trying to stay afloat. Reaching for Alice’s hand. She tells me we’re explorers.

I look at Dad, trying to make his words make sense. I was the reason we almost drowned. Not her.

“I felt so helpless that day,” Dad continues. “But it’s nothing compared to how I felt that night in the bathroom. How I feel every single day. What kind of father can’t help his own daughter? I’m supposed to have the answers, but I don’t.” He puts his head in his hands. “Nobody tells you what to do when your child wants to die.”

The words fall, so harsh—so true—that they seem to surprise even him. He shakes his head. “So yes, I want to pretend everything is fine because I don’t know how to fix this, Lily.” His voice is quiet now—resigned and sad and lost. “I don’t know how to fix her.”

I grasp Alice’s pills tight and fight the tears pricking my own eyes at this helpless version of my dad, the man who tucks me into my spot on his chest and tells me everything is going to be okay. That he’ll make it okay.

Except this time, he can’t.

“She doesn’t need to be fixed, Dad. She’s not broken,” I say. “She’s Alice.”

—

In the bathroom, the red-tinged grout screams: Help me.

I didn’t know how then, and I still don’t. And neither does Dad. That truth scares me to my core.

And you told him about the pills.

Alice will hate you more than ever.

She’ll disappear again.

Maybe for good this time.

I hear Dad and Staci leave to go back to Alice, and I fill the bath, strip down to my scars, and submerge in the water. Hoping it will clear my head. Cleanse me.

I sink below the surface, holding my breath, the memory of the water, of the tug of the ocean, coming fast and fresh. Alice and I weren’t off on one of her wild ideas; we were caught in a riptide. She must have been terrified. But she acted so brave. She saved me.

My lungs burn for air. But I stay below the water. In the silence. The nothing.

The words I yelled to her on the cliff come back, stinging and sharp: You ruin things.

I’ve been so wrong. About everything.

Micah says it’s not my fault. I want to believe him.

To let the words absolve me.

But the monsters out-scream everything:

You swam too far.

You let her bleed.

You let her fall.

She’s not the one who ruins things.

You are.