And even though I can push them to the back of my consciousness most of the time, I can never make them go away. The colorful pills I used to take every day couldn’t even silence them, not always.
Because of that, since they made me nauseous and didn’t work anyway, I added another chore to my to-do list the other day. It was an easy one to cross off.
Stop taking pills
Don’t tell Calla or dad.
I picture my mental list in my head, with perfect clarity, because that level of focus tends to muffle the voices for a second. My list is on white notebook paper, lined with blue, a pink line running vertically down the left side. After I complete a task, I draw a mental line through it, crossing it out. It makes me feel accomplished.
Without my list, I can’t get through the day. It’s too hard to think without it, too hard to concentrate. Without it, I can’t even appear normal. Its compulsory for me at this point, just one more thing that makes me bat-shit crazy.
No one except Calla and my dad know how crazy I am. And even they don’t know the extent of it.
Not all of it.
They don’t know how I wake up in the night, and have to force myself to stay in bed, because the voices tell me to throw myself from the cliffs. To stop myself, I always dive into bed with Calla, because for whatever reason, she quiets the voices. But she can’t be with me every minute.
She can’t be with me during the day when my fingers itch to scratch into my skin, to pull my fingernails out, to run down to the bottom of the mountain and scream as I hurl myself into traffic.
Why would I itch to do these things?
Because of the fucking voices.
They won’t shut up.
It’s getting to the point where I don’t know what’s real and not real anymore, and that scares the piss out of me. It particularly scares the piss out of me because Calla and I will be separated soon. She thinks we’re going to the same school, that I’ve consenting to going to Berkeley with her. But I can’t. I can’t suck her down with me. I’d be the worst person in the world if I did.
So soon, I’ll be at MIT and she’ll be at Berkeley, and then what will happen?
She’ll be fine, because she’s sane. But what will happen to me?
As I come out of the therapy room, I bend and gulp a drink from the water fountain. A few drops of icy water trail down my neck and instantly the voices react.
Scratch it off.
My hand is already on my throat before I realize what I’m doing. Frustrated, I force my hand to my side.
I’m not going to hurt myself.
Jesus.
I have to stay sane.
Quickly, I find Calla curled up on her normal bench, staring into the distance. I cover the ground between us in twelve long strides.
“Cal? You ready?”
She stares at me like I’m a stranger, before realization filters across her face and she smiles.
“You ok?”
Calla’s voice wraps around me like a blanket.
She keeps me sane.
It’s always been that way, maybe even in the womb, for all I know.
Don’t let her know Don’t let her know Don’t let her know.
Don’t let her know.
I smile, a perfectly normal grin.
“Perfectus.” Perfect. “You ready?”
“Yep.”
We walk out of the hospital, into the afternoon sunlight and pile into the car. I start the engine and steer the car from the parking lot with shaking hands.
Act normal
Calla turns to me, her green eyes joined to mine. “You wanna talk about anything?”
I shake my head. “Do I ever?”
She smiles. “No. But know that you can. If you want to.”
“I know.” And I do.
“Did you know that ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the death of their cats?”
I change the subject and Calla laughs, shoving her long red hair out of her eyes with slender fingers. It’s our thing, these stupid death facts. It’s my thing, really. I don’t know why. I guess it’s from all the years of living in the stupid funeral home. It’s my way of giving death the finger. Plus, by focusing on death facts and learning Latin and making my stupid mental lists, it gives me something to focus on. Any time I focus hard on something, it staves off the voices.
Trust me, I’ll do anything for that.
“I didn’t. But thank God I know now,” Calla answers. “What would you shave off for me if I died?”
I would plunge to the bottom of the ocean for you. I’d comb it for shells and make you a necklace and then hang myself with it. Because if you aren’t here, I don’t want to be either.
I can’t show her how panicky the mere thought makes me, so I shrug. “Don’t give me the chance.”
She looks horrified, as she realizes what she said, so soon after mom died.
“I didn’t mean to….” She starts to say, then trails off. “I’m sorry. That was stupid.”
Calla and I are twins. Our level of connection can’t be understood by those who don’t have it. I know what she means even when she doesn’t. Her comment had come out before she remembered mom. It sounds stupid, but sometimes, we can forget our loss for a second. A blissful second.
“Don’t worry about it,” I tell her, as I turn onto the highway.
Fuck her. She has no right.
The voices are loud.
Too loud.
I close my eyes and squeeze them hard, trying not to hear.
But the voices are still there, still persistent.
She doesn’t deserve you. Kill her you fucking pussy kill her now. Push her off the cliffs. Lick her bones. Lick her bones. Lick her bones.
I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white, trying to force the voices away.
Lick her bones, suck her marrow, show her show her show her.
Today, the voices sound real, even though I know they aren’t. They’re not my voice, they’re just masquerades, a scary mask, imposters. They’re not real.
My voice is real.
Those voices are not.
But it’s getting harder and harder to tell them apart.
4
QUATUOR
Calla
One thing about this mountain in the summertime, is that time seems to slow to almost a stand-still and days blend into each other. Before I know it, one day bleeds into two, then three, before somehow, I find myself on Group Therapy duty again.
This time, however, I’m quick enough to call driving rights. I ignore Finn’s indignant look as we get into the car, and I smile smugly at him (real, not fake) as I drive away from the house.
As I steer the car down the mountain curves, the tires squeak on the rain-soaked gravel. Finn stares out the window, lost in his thoughts as we pass ‘the spot’. The place where our mother crashed and died.
A near-by tree hosts brightly-colored ribbons and a small plain cross. It’s lonely here, reverent and quiet. It’s a place that I usually ignore, because otherwise, it makes my heart hurt too much.
Unexpectedly, though, Finn lifts his head.
“Can you stop?”
Startled, I brake, then pull over. “What’s wrong?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing. I just need to be here for a minute.”
He gets out, his car door creaking as he closes it. I’m uneasy as I follow, because we’ve never stopped here before, not since we hung the ribbons and staked the white cross into the ground. It’s sacred ground here, but it’s also emotional ground. And emotional ground is dangerous for Finn to tread on.
“Whatcha doin’?” I ask as casually as I can, following him to the side of the steep incline, to the place where mom plunged over the side as she was talking to me. Balancing here, with our toes poking over the side, we can still see where the trees are knocked down and damaged from mom’s car hitting them. I feel a wave of nausea.
“Do you think she was dead before she hi
t the bottom?” Finn asks, his voice emotionless. My heart squeezes in my chest.
“I don’t know.”
I’ve thought about it, of course, but I don’t know. Dad didn’t tell us and I can’t bring myself to ask.
“What do you think about the other car?” Finn asks, his gaze staring down into the ravine and definitely not looking at me. I inhale, then exhale, pushing the guilt away, far away from me, over the mountain, over the cliffs, into the water.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly.
It’s the truth, because afterward, Dad wouldn’t tell us what happened to the occupants of the other car. Who they were, how many. He thought I was feeling enough unwarranted guilt, enough pain and torment. He wouldn’t talk about any of it and we were banned from turning the television on for weeks, just in case the news carried coverage. You’d think it would be maddening, but at the time, I was so immersed in grieving that I almost didn’t notice.
The problem is, it didn’t stop the guilt.
Because I killed people.
Staring down the side of this mountain, looking at the gouges carved into the trees from the metal of the crashed cars, the destruction of the forest…it’s all evidence. Whoever mom hit is dead. That’s apparent.
And that’s my fault. I killed them just like I killed her.
The only real question is, how many were in the car? Was it one person? A couple? An entire family?
“Do you think there were kids involved?” I ask quietly. Because the thought of that… God. It’s unbearable. I picture scared little kids strapped into car seats, covered in blood and terror. I squeeze my eyes closed to block out the imagined sight.
“I don’t know,” Finn answers, his voice just as quiet. “We could find out, if you want. We could look up the newspaper articles. If you think knowing would be better than not knowing.”
I think on that for a minute, because it’s tempting, so tempting. Then I shake my head.
“If dad won’t tell us, then it’s bad,” I decide. “That means that I’m better off not knowing.”
Finn nods and stares wordlessly out over the trees.
Finally he speaks. “But what was a car doing on this mountain? We’re the only ones who live here. No one else has any reason for being here that late at night. The Home was closed.”
It’s a question I’ve wondered about ever since it happened. Mom was rounding the curve in the middle of the lane because she wasn’t expecting anyone to be there.
But someone was.
And they’d hit each other head on.
“I don’t know,” I reply and my chest feels like ice, like my sternum will freeze and shatter. “Maybe they were lost.”
Finn nods because that’s a possibility, and the only one that makes sense, before he grabs my hand and holds it tight.
“It’s not your fault.”
His words are simple, his tone is solemn.
A lump forms, sticking halfway in my throat, in a limbo area, where it can neither be swallowed or cleared.
“It is.” My words are just as simple. “Why aren’t you mad at me for it?”
When Finn finally looks at me, his eyes are tortured, and blue as the sky.
“Because it can’t be undone. Because you’re the most important person to me. That’s why.”
I nod because now I know the truth. He’s not mad at me because he thinks I’m not at fault. It’s clear that I am. He’s not mad at me because I’m all he has, because I’m a part of him.
“We’ve got to go. I’m going to be late.”
I nod in agreement and we back away from the edge. With a last glance at the sad ravine, we climb back into the car, damp with the drizzle and our tears, and drive silently to the hospital.
When we’re inside, Finn turns to me before he slips into his room.
“There is a grief group. You should check it out.”
“Now you sound like dad,” I tell him impatiently. “I don’t need to talk to them. I have you. No one understands like you.”
He nods, because no one understands like him. And then he disappears into the place where he draws his strength, around people who suffer just like him.
I try not to feel inadequate that they can help him in ways that I can’t.
Instead, I curl up on my bench beneath the abstract bird. I pop ear-buds in my ears and close my eyes. I forgot my book today, so disappearing into music will have to do.
I concentrate on feeling the music rather than hearing it. I feel the vibration, I feel the words. I feel the beat. I feel the voices. I feel the emotion.
Someone else’s emotion other than my own is always a good thing.
The minutes pass, one after the other.
And then after twenty of them, he approaches.
Him.
The sexy stranger with eyes as black as night.
I feel him approach while my eyes are still closed. Don’t ask me how I know it’s him, because I just know. Don’t ask me what he’s doing here again, because I don’t care about that.
All I care about is the fact that he is here.
My eyes pop open to find him watching me, his eyes still as intense now as they were the other day. Still as dark, still as bottomless.
His gaze finds mine, connects with it, and holds.
We’re connected.
With each step, he doesn’t look away.
He’s dressed in the same sweatshirt as the other day. The irony is lost on you. He’s wearing dark jeans, black boots and his middle finger is still encircled by a silver band. He’s a rocker. Or an artist. Or a writer. He’s something hopelessly in style, timelessly romantic.
He’s twenty feet away.
Fifteen.
Ten.
Five.
The corner of his mouth tilts up as he passes, as he continues to watch me from the side. His shoulders sway, his hips are slim. Then he’s gone, walking away from me.
Five feet.
Ten.
Twenty.
Gone.
I feel a sense of loss because he didn’t stop. Because I wanted him to. Because there’s something about him that I want to know.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes, listening once again to my music.
The dark haired stranger doesn’t come back.
5
QUINQUE
The rain might make Oregon beautiful, but at times, it’s gray and dismal. The sound of it hitting the windows makes me sleepy, and itch to wrap up in a sweater and curl up with a book by the window. At night, when it storms, I dream. I don’t know why. It might be the electricity of the lightning in the air, or the boom of the thunder, but it never fails to trigger my mind to create.
Tonight, after finally falling asleep, I dream of him.
The dark-eyed stranger.
He sits by the ocean¸ the breeze ruffling his hair. He lifts his hand to brush his hair out of his eyes, his silver ring glinting in the sun.
His eyes meet mine, and electricity stronger than a million lightning bolts connects us, holding us together.
His eyes crinkle a bit at the corners as he smiles at me.
His grin is for me, familiar and sexy. He reaches for me, his fingers knowing and familiar, and he knows just where to touch me, just where to set my skin on fire.
I wake with a start, sitting straight up in bed, my sheets clutched to my chest.
The moonlight pouring onto my bed looks blue, and I glance at the clock.
Three a.m.
Just a dream.
I curl back up, thinking of the stranger, and then condemn myself for my ridiculousness. He’s a stranger, for God’s sake. It’s stupid to be so fixated on him.
But that doesn’t stop me from dreaming about him again. He does different things in my dreams. He sails, he swims, he drinks coffee. His silver ring glints in the sun each time, his dark eyes pierce into my soul like he knows me. Like he knows all about me. I wake up breathless each time.
It’s a bit unnerving.
/>
And a bit exciting.
After two such nights of fitful sleep, rain and strange dreams, Finn and I kneel in front of plastic storage boxes, sorting through stuff from my closet. Piles of folded clothes surround us, like mountains on the floor. Rain pelts the window, the morning sky dark and gray.
I hold up a white cardigan. “I don’t think I’ll need many sweaters in California, will I?”
Finn shakes his head. “Doubtful. But take a couple, just to be safe.”
I toss it into the Keep pile. As I do, I notice that Finn’s fingers are shaking.
“Why are your hands shaking?” I stare at him. He shrugs.
“Don’t know.”
I eye him doubtfully, so used to watching him for any sign for any sign of a problem. “Are you sure?”
He nods. “Quite positive.”
I let it go, even though it makes me uneasy. If I don’t shield Finn from distress, he could have an episode. Obviously I couldn’t shield him from losing mom, but I do my best to protect him from everything else. It’s a heavy thing to shoulder, but if Finn can carry his cross, I can certainly carry mine. I unfold another sweater, then toss it in the Goodwill pile.
“After mine, we’ll have to do yours,” I point out. He nods.
“Yeah. And then maybe we should do mom’s.”
I suck in a breath. While I would like nothing more, just in the name of moving forward, there’s no way.
“Dad would kill us,” I dismiss the idea.
“True,” Finn acknowledges, handing me a long sleeve t-shirt for the Keep pile. “But maybe he needs a nudge. It’s been two months. She doesn’t need her shoes by the backdoor anymore.”
He’s right. She doesn’t need them. Just like she doesn’t need her make-up laid out by her sink the way she left it, or her last book sitting face down to mark its page beside her reading chair. She’ll never finish that book. But to be fair to my dad, I don’t think I could throw her things out yet, either.
“Still,” I answer. “It’s his place to decide when it’s time. Not ours. We’re going away. He’s the one who will be here with the memories. Not us.”
“That’s why I’m worried,” Finn tells me. “He’s going to be here in this huge house alone. Well, not alone. Surrounded by dead bodies and mom’s memory. That’s even worse.”