We’ve never gotten along. Aunt Helen is really into church and prayer and Jesus; she doesn’t approve of my black hoodies and black nail polish and my admitted penchant for excessive swearing. And ever since I announced in the middle of last Easter’s family brunch that I’m not sure I believe in God at all, she’s treated me like I’m some kind of heathen. Maybe it wasn’t the best timing on my part, but I did get a kick out of the horrified look on her face.
Of course, back then, questions of God and the afterlife weren’t really relevant to my life like they are now. I think Aunt Helen is hoping I’m going to have this moment of revelation where I’ll declare myself a born-again Christian who sees the light of Jesus’s love. But June dying hasn’t given me any spiritual clarity. It’s just made everything even more confusing.
“Take care of your mother, okay?” she says to me now. “She needs you.”
I nod. “I know. I will.”
“I’ll be over tomorrow to help with things. Feel free to call if you need me.” She pauses and sniffles a little before giving my shoulder an awkward squeeze. “I love you, sweetie.”
My eyes snap up to hers in surprise. I can’t remember the last time she said that to me. The confusion must show on my face, because she clears her throat awkwardly and takes her hand off my shoulder.
“All right then.” She nods quickly and hurries to the front door before I can fully react. With her back to me, she says, “Remember—this too shall pass.”
I don’t know if she is saying it to me, or to my mother, or to herself. As the door closes behind her, I figure it doesn’t really matter.
In some ways I admire Aunt Helen’s unwavering certainty in God’s divine plan. It must be comforting, to have faith like that. To believe so concretely that there’s someone—something—out there watching guard, keeping us safe, testing us only with what we can handle. I’ve never believed in anything the way Aunt Helen believes in God.
I don’t really know what’s supposed to happen now that everyone’s gone. I’m pretty sure my mother doesn’t know, either, because we look at each other for a long time in silence.
“Well,” she says after a while. Her mouth hangs open like she’s mid-sentence, but she doesn’t finish whatever thought was on her mind. She just turns and wanders into the living room. I’m pretty sure she’s still a little drunk. The last time she drank this much was right after Dad left. I hope this isn’t going to be a repeat of those days.
I follow her and watch as she drops onto the couch and slides off her heels. Flowers and cards are everywhere. I step over a heart-shaped wreath, scrunch in at the other end of the couch, and turn on the television to some formulaic sitcom. The sudden wave of canned studio laughter is startling to my ears. A few minutes later I turn it back off. Mom doesn’t seem to notice.
“Do you need anything?” I ask. I keep my voice low, like I’ll scare her if I talk too loud.
“No.” She doesn’t move. “Did you eat?”
“A little.” All I’ve had today is an apple from this morning, but I can’t stomach the thought of eating anything more.
“You should eat.”
“I will.” I stand. “You’re sure I can’t get you something?”
After a moment, she shakes her head. I hesitate, wondering if I should press, and then give up and go to the kitchen. Dirty plates and silverware are stacked on the counter, so I rinse them off and stick them in the dishwasher. The methodical process of sponging the dishes off and stacking them is a nice distraction. I like having something to do with my hands, kind of like how it was when I smoked in the garden earlier with that weird boy.
And really, what was that about? What was he even doing here? Did he know June? Probably he was just someone in her grade. Most of the graduating class attended the service, but only her closest friends came to the wake. June was friends with everyone, always had invites on the weekends for movies and shopping and parties, but she didn’t really have one single best friend. Not like how I have Laney, and only Laney.
Still, there was something off about that boy. He wouldn’t have been there if he was just some passing acquaintance. It bothers me, the idea that he might have had some role in her life and I didn’t know about it. I can’t stop thinking about the look on his face. That open display of hostility. All of June’s other friends either kept their distance or wanted to cry on my shoulder. At least this guy didn’t bother hiding his true feelings. It was sort of refreshing, really.
When I’m done with the dishes, I go back to the living room, only to find Mom fast asleep. The sight of her curled up in her dress, eyes closed and lipsticked mouth parted, makes me ache. She’s been falling apart ever since it happened. I have to admit, I’m glad Aunt Helen has been around to help, even if her control-freak ways grate on my nerves. I am so not equipped for this. I’ve never been good at the emotional stuff. Except anger. Anger, I’m good at.
Not too long ago, June told me I had the thickest skin of anyone she knew. “Nothing ever gets to you,” she said, like it was a compliment. “You’re like a rock. An island.”
I told her to shut it with the poetic crap. What I didn’t point out was how completely wrong she was. Things get to me all the time—I just don’t see the point in making a big deal out of it. I learned pretty early on that no one, aside from Laney, is interested in hearing about my stupid teenage angst. Venting to her is enough of an outlet for me.
I never knew what June’s coping methods were, if she had any to begin with; I never even thought about it, really. Her life seemed so perfect from the outside—what could she possibly have to be upset about? Sometimes I’d catch her standing in front of the mirror in her room, just staring, like she was looking for imaginary imperfections. I used to think it was pure vanity, but I slowly came to realize it wasn’t that. It was insecurity.
It didn’t make sense to me. How could she be insecure, when everyone—our parents, her friends, her teachers, Tyler—always told her how perfect she was? It pissed me off, if anything. As soon as I learned, early on in life, that I could never measure up to June, I’d made it a point to be her polar opposite. June was unfailingly polite; I’m brash and don’t go out of my way to be nice to people I don’t like, ever. June spent crazy amounts of time and energy on her appearance, the right clothes and the right hair style; my default look includes hoodies, jeans, a ponytail and excessive eyeliner. June made honor roll every semester; I flirt the line between average and below average, cut class on a regular basis and there’s basically a revolving door to the detention room designed specifically for me.
When I was a little kid and used to get in trouble, Mom always used to say, “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” But I wasn’t interested in being like June, and I definitely didn’t want to live in June’s shadow. Even if mine was less impressive, at least it was my own.
I take an afghan off the ottoman and drape it over my mother, who now has one dead daughter and one delinquent. June’s unmatchable goodness and my unmatchable knack for constantly disappointing my parents used to even each other out, but now the scale is tipped, unbalanced, spotlighting my own failures more than ever. No wonder Mom’s such a mess. I tuck the afghan in around her shoulders and place a pillow under her head. She doesn’t stir at all, just keeps on snoring. She always snores after she’s been drinking.
That night, I lie in bed, miles from sleep. Closing my eyes, I think about how tomorrow will be the first day June is gone, really gone. Life will keep going and everyone will return to their usual routines, and it’ll be the first real day of living without my sister. My life is now divided into two periods: With June and After June. I can’t wrap my mind around the idea of it.
Laney’s right; it doesn’t feel real. Nothing does.
Sometime between gazing at the ceiling and thinking, I must drift off, because when my eyes open again, it’s not as dark outside anymore. Also, there’s an insistent beeping coming from downstairs. When it doesn’t go away, I sit up and list
en harder. It sounds like the smoke detector. I scramble into the hall and down the stairs two at a time.
“Mom?” I call out as I make my way into the kitchen. Okay, I don’t see fire yet, but I can smell acrid smoke. My heart leaps in my chest. “Mom? What’s going on?”
I find her sitting at the wooden table with an open bottle in front of her. At the stove, dark smoke curls up off a flat pan. I rush over and grab the pan handle, shove the whole thing into the sink and turn on the tap. Whatever was cooking has burnt to an indistinguishable black crisp. I drag a chair under the smoke detector and wave a dish towel until the blaring of the alarm silences.
“Mom, are you okay?” I ask. The adrenaline’s still pumping, leaving my mouth completely dry.
Her eyes are glassy and dull, and she doesn’t look at me. “I was making eggs.”
“Oh.” I return the chair to the table and eye the mostly empty wine bottle. “Mom…how long have you been up?”
She shrugs off the question, her slender fingers picking idly at the label. “It’s just us now,” she says. “The two of us.” Finally she drags her gaze off the bottle and looks me in the eye; she looks as tired as I feel.
I know what she wants me to do. She wants me to come over and put my arms around her and tell her it’ll be all right, but I can’t. I can’t because I don’t know if it will. I can’t because the thought of touching anyone right now makes me sick inside. Why is it so hard?
Eventually I say, “Yeah. I guess so.”
Her throat works as she takes a long swallow of wine. When she sets the bottle back down, I wrap my fingers around the neck and gently pry it away from her.
“You should get some sleep,” I say. I walk around the table to help her stand. “Here. Come on, let’s go.”
She doesn’t fight me on it. With my arm around her waist, I lead her to her bedroom, peel back the covers and carefully roll her onto the mattress. She makes a soft sound as I pull the comforter over her, blinking up at me, already half-asleep.
“Harper,” she says, voice slightly slurred. “I’m sorry about the eggs. I wanted you to have something to eat.”
It’s sweet, really, that she almost burned down the house in a drunken stupor for the sake of my appetite. Fucked up, but sweet. I hope this doesn’t become a habit, though. She drank a lot after Dad left. I thought we were done with that.
“Go to sleep, Mom,” I say softly. Her eyes flutter, her gaze vacant again, and a minute later I hear her breathing deep and even, so I know she’s out.
The house is eerily quiet. All this time I thought silence would be a welcome reprieve, but it’s less comforting than I imagined. The house feels so much bigger and colder than it ever has. I consider going downstairs to clean up my mother’s mess, but the thought alone leaves me drained, so I start for my room, only to end up in front of June’s. It’s like I’ve stepped into wet cement; my feet stay rooted in place.
I stand outside the door for a while, until I feel stupid enough for being scared of a freaking door to force myself to open it and go inside.
This time I look for the last signs of life. One of her pillows is askew; a gray sweater is draped over the back of her desk chair. Other than that, nothing. I go to her desk and pick up one of the plastic bags. Again I notice the blank CD. There’s no case for it, just the disc. As I slip it out of the bag, I realize that it must’ve been playing in the car stereo when I found her.
I turn the CD over in my hands. It’s a normal blank disc, silver, with the words Nolite te bastardes carborundorum scratched across the bottom in black marker. I don’t recognize the phrase—Latin, maybe?—or the handwriting. It’s definitely not June’s, which was round and loopy and girlish. I wonder if it’s a mix Tyler had given her, back when they’d dated, but that’s doubtful. Tyler’s not bright enough to quote another language, and promise rings aside, his romantic gestures don’t usually go beyond big talk. His idea of chivalry is coming to the door to pick a girl up for a date rather than honking from the driveway.
I switch on June’s stereo, slide the disc into the tray and flip it to the first track. There are a few seconds of silence, and of all the things I expect to hear from those speakers, it most definitely is not the startling guitar riff that comes blaring out. A backbeat chimes in, an echoing bass, accompanied by a man’s voice—rough around the edges and with a certain swagger to it.
I turn the volume up a few notches and stretch out on the floor, my back on the carpet, and feel the bass thrumming through me, vibrating. You make a grown man cry. This is not June’s music. When we were younger, she plastered posters of manufactured boy bands on her walls, bought the albums of teen pop princesses. As a teen she listened to girls with guitars who didn’t really know how to play, mainstream hip-hop hits, whatever generic pop medley was currently in high rotation on the Top 40 station.
The rock song ends and another by a different band comes on, slower, sort of bluesy. The singer is almost mournful, talking about a girl who had nothing at all.
I stay on the floor and listen to one song blend into the next. Some I can place—after all, everyone knows “Stairway to Heaven,” and Laney had a Billie Holiday phase that lasted long enough for me to recognize her distinctive velvety croon—but most of them I don’t recognize. Each one is different, ranging from amped-up rock to jazz refrains, strung together in a way that feels like it should be schizophrenic, but somehow the transitions work. It’s not jarring. The music rises and falls in the way a conventional story is supposed to, building up and hitting the climax and then easing into the conclusion.
I close my eyes and try to feel whatever my sister had felt in this. Which song was playing when she carefully, purposefully, popped sleeping pill after sleeping pill, those last moments of awareness before she slid into dark, permanent nothingness? More important, who made it in the first place? And what did they mean by it?
Did anything mean anything?
Aunt Helen comes over the next morning, as promised. She and Mom sort through the crazy amount of flowers and cards covering every spare inch of our living room. I stay in my bedroom, listening to June’s CD on the neglected Discman I recovered from the depths of my closet. I can’t stop thinking about it.
This isn’t June’s kind of music, and it’s not my kind, either. My iPod is loaded with recommendations from Laney, all of the underground rap she likes, and some of my favorite indie artists, like the Decemberists and Cat Power and Sufjan Stevens. The songs on this CD sound more like something my parents would’ve listened to when they were my age.
I listen to the music and stare at my walls. They’re covered in pictures I’ve taken ever since I got my Nikon SLR for Christmas and started taking photography more seriously. The only blank wall is the one nearest to my bed. I’ve been saving it for something special, but I don’t know what.
I’m still staring at the empty white space when Aunt Helen comes up to my room with a sandwich and a glass of milk. I take out my headphones and sit up when she enters. She doesn’t knock or anything, of course. Just barges right in and looks at me a little suspiciously. I think she does this because she wants to catch me in the middle of something. She probably thinks I sit up here carving emo poetry into my wrists with a razor blade. It’s like I’m on suicide watch, by mere association.
“I made this for you,” she says, thrusting the plate into my hands. “You should eat something.”
I look down at the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I hate jelly. I also hate when people come into my room without knocking.
“Thanks,” I mumble. She stares at me, frowning, until I take a bite. God, with the way everyone’s carrying on, you’d think I’m anorexic or something. I know I’m on the scrawny side, but seriously, this is getting ridiculous.
Satisfied, she takes a step back and surveys my room. Her frown deepens when her eyes land on the Reservoir Dogs film poster tacked up over my dresser. Jesus probably wouldn’t approve, so of course, by proxy, Aunt Helen doesn’t, either.
She tears her gaze away from the poster and looks at me again. “I know this is a difficult time,” she says. “It’s going to be an adjustment for all of us.”
An adjustment. Talk about your understatement. I put down the sandwich and take a drink of milk, waiting to see where she’s going with this.
“Your mother and I are worried about how you’re coping,” she continues. “She says you haven’t…been very emotional.”
It’s true. I can’t deny it. I haven’t cried at all, not once. Even when I try to summon tears, it’s like the well inside of me is bone-dry. There’s just…nothing.
I glance away and shrug. “Maybe my mom should be worried about how she’s coping. I’m not the one getting drunk off my ass, am I?”
“Don’t take that tone with me,” Aunt Helen snaps. “Your mother is doing her best. She only cares about you.” She sighs, the tension easing from her shoulders. “Listen, Harper. I realize how hard this is for you.”
A flash of anger heats up in my chest. She doesn’t understand. She can’t. If she did, she’d leave me alone instead of trying to force me to talk about this.
“You just have to take comfort in the fact June is with God now,” she tells me.
I stare at her coldly. “Don’t Christians believe people who kill themselves go to hell?” I ask.
Her eyes widen. “I don’t think—”
“Get out. Please.”
“Harper—”
“Just go, okay?”
Once she’s left the room, shutting the door hard behind her, I lie down on my side. I hate Aunt Helen. I hate her stupid your-sister’s-in-a-better-place crap. Like she could somehow know that. The anger bubbles up again, white-hot, and I lash out one closed fist and punch the wall. It doesn’t make me feel any better, just hurts the hell out of my knuckles. My eyes burn like maybe I’m going to cry, but no tears come. Dammit.