The Death of Us (2 page)

About four hours later, my copy of
Bonjour Tristesse
lies open on the couch. I’ve been eating a peach over the kitchen sink, the juice dripping down my chin, my fingers sticky, the peach perfectly sweet and delicious. As I wash my hands, I’m busy thinking about the day ahead: I might wander to the gallery and talk to Kurt, who works there, about the article. I might try and catch Tilly online, or even Dahlia, whatever time zone she’s in, although Mom’ll give me a hard time for chatting with friends, since I haven’t got around to dropping off my resumé anywhere yet today. Instead, I got caught up with the article; changing one line made me change another, and then another. I suppose I could go and do the resumé thing now.

Mom is upstairs, cooing at Cosmo. Dad went out a while ago: he has an office at the university. I mention Dad because when the front door swings open, I assume it’s him. I don’t even look up.

“Callie, you
do
still live here!”

I almost choke.

“It’s been forever,” she cries as I turn to face her.

I’m unable to speak because
Ivy Foulds
has skimmed across my hallway, past the kitchen
counter that juts into our open-plan space, and grabbed me in a huge perfume-saturated hug. She smells just like she used to, vanilla with a hint of something deeper, a dark forest. Her hair is messy in my face and for a long moment I have to swallow the lump in my throat. I hug her hard. She’s light-boned, fragile but strong, like a bird.

She pulls away and takes a good look at me. “Black hair? Cute. So? Did you, like, miss me so much? Can you believe I’m back? Uh, did you have a baby or something? What’s with all the kiddie toys?”

“M-my baby brother … Cosmo,” I manage to stammer.

She’s standing less than a foot away. When we were thirteen, she was pretty. Now she’s
stunning,
her platinum-blonde hair flat-ironed, her grey eyes the same silvery snakeskin pattern I always envied, her skin tanned and flawless, long arms and legs poking from a white shirtdress that looks expensive. I’m still shorter than her, chubbier than her, and I’m wearing my most comfortable, most untrendy black leggings and oversize tee.

“We got back, like, uh, now. I came straight over; the door was open. Oh, I hoped you’d be here!
Callie, we’re going to have so much fun. We’re going to rule Grade Eleven, just like we planned, remember?”

I remember,
I want to say.
I remember how much it hurt when you left and didn’t say goodbye.
I lean against the counter.

She says, “You wanna know what happened, right? I bet you wondered. Did you, like, stalk me online?”

“Um …”

“I’m not easy to find. I know. So retro, it’s cool.” She lowers her voice conspiratorially. “See, I’m not under my real name. I’m Kansas Pearl.”

“I did look for you, course.”

“There’s so much I have to tell you. But first, you. How are you? How’s everything?
Baby
brother? Where is he?”

“Upstairs. Wanna meet him?”

“Or you could come to Kevin’s house and unpack with me. Remember? That’s what we did last time.”

“Your mom’s back with Kevin?”

“Seems he’s running things at the potash mine now. Big shot. Bought me this dress.” She widens her arms to show it off.

“I’ve seen him around. He never said … Not that he’d think to tell me, I guess.”

“So, will you come?”

“Unpack? Sure. Let me tell Mom.”

“I can’t believe you’re still here,” she says. “You look great. Beautiful, as always.”

I laugh off her compliment. “Yeah, yeah.”

“I really missed you.” She reaches for my hand and squeezes it.

I squeeze back. “I came over with flowers the day after. Kevin answered the door and told me you’d gone.”

“And now I’m here.”

“You are.” I find myself smiling.

She drops my hand. “It wasn’t up to me, you know.”

“I bet.” Cosmo starts yelling upstairs. I say, “I’ll text Mom later. She probably won’t even notice. Come on, didn’t you say you had unpacking to do?”

X
ander gets into his car and I slide into the passenger seat. He mutters, “Go, go.”

People are streaming out like rats. One of the cheerleaders takes flash photo after flash photo of Xander’s car. A gruesome online montage will follow. Sick. A group of girls press around Angel, gasping, crying.
Stop,
I want to shout, but I yell at Xander instead.

“Get moving, would you?”

Xander says nothing. He turns his key, hits the accelerator.

Outside, the quarterback rounds people up. Get them away. Good. Then I’m calculating the distance from the bridge to the river, the impact, the speed of the car. Party forgotten.

Xander doesn’t speak. He’s the guy you want beside you when you’re stuck in a lifeboat. The guy you want with you when your plane crashes in the Amazon and everyone else is dead.

That word. Solid. Final. A flat, dull word punctuated at either end by the tongue. I’ve spoken out loud.
Dead.

Xander says, “Come on, man. Give me something.” His phone beeps. “Yep,” he says, reading the text. He chucks the phone between us. I read the message:
St Mary’s Hosp
. It’s from that ER friend of his.

Xander takes a left too sharply, tense. Speeds through a red light and crosses the other bridge, the narrower one. I don’t want to look at the main bridge, the one the car went off, but I crane my neck. The flash of police lights. Boats below. Four of them. I imagine her under water,
struggling to breathe, trapped in the car’s metal embrace.

Callie would like that image. Man, would she ever.

Xander hustles down a residential street at seventy K. Too fast. But go faster. Hurry. He’s making a right on Main, past Callie’s house. I see through the window, although I wish I hadn’t, her baby brother, Cosmo. Held in someone’s arms. Screaming.

“Still messy?” says Callie.

“Who, me?” We’re in my bedroom, unpacking my clothes and trying to fit everything into a space that’s still plastered with posters of boy bands we used to adore. Stuff is all over, clothes piled everywhere, magazines, my brand-new laptop—
thanks, Kevin
—eReader, old photographs. There’s one of me and Callie. I hold it up.

It shows the two of us hugging like crazy,
beaming at the camera. For a moment, I’m there, Callie’s hair splashing in my face, the smell of her shampoo and raspberry lip balm. Callie’s dad took the shot just before we went for that walk.

I say, “God, we’re gorgeous.”

“Whatever.” She smiles, though.

I show her a different photo of the two of us sunbathing in her yard, and say, “Your hair looks good your original colour, you know.”

“You sound like my dad. I like it like this.”

“At least let me paint your nails over.”

“What, you don’t like dark blue?”

“I like the colour but it’s chipped.”

“Now you really do sound like my dad.” Callie looks out the window. “You can see my front door from here. Look, there’s Mom and Cosmo. They’re going for coffee with these baby twins. Mom’s really into the whole baby thing.”

“Is she?” I glance out. Her mom is pushing a stroller down the street, facing away from us. She walks like Callie—slightly stiffly, her shoulders up. She never liked me. She writes about love and compassion in her picture books, but I never saw much evidence of that. Maybe this time around I
can convince her I’m a good person. I say, “What’s Cosmo like? I wanna meet him.”

“I dunno. He cries a lot.”

“If you won’t let me paint your nails, at least stop staring out the window and help me with this, will you?”

Callie stands beside me as we wrestle an extra clothing rod into the wardrobe. Once it’s in place, we hang my dresses. She bends over to start unpacking the last of my gigantic suitcases and pulls out a dress with tiny straps. “Wow,” she says. “It’s like a spiderweb. Is it silk?”

“That old thing? Have it. I never wear it anymore. I wear white. Can’t you tell?” I glance at the row of dresses we’ve just hung. All of them are white or cream.

“Really, I could have it? It’s beautiful.”

“Stuff weighs you down, right? Time to start over.”

Callie says, “You sound a little sad.”

My left shoulder lifts and drops. “Sorta.”

“Come on, you can trust me,” she says. “You know that.”

“I was in love with this guy in Kansas City.”

Something opens in me, like a hole where a tooth used to be. I probe it and feel the absence.

She says, “Kansas Pearl? You lived in Kansas City, then?”

“That’s where we were for the last year. Before that, San Francisco—Mom even tried to fire it up with my dad. Online. Just for a few months. You can imagine how that worked out.”

“Not good?”

“We don’t have to pretend.”

“Don’t we?” Callie suddenly won’t catch my eye.

“You never told, right?” I say. “Not Kevin? Not even your mom?”

“Course not.”

“I knew you probably hadn’t told Kevin or he wouldn’t have us back.” Callie was always loyal—you can see it in her, like you can in a horse. I mean that in the best way—a fine, loyal horse. It makes me want to do something for her, like fix her hair, or get her some decent clothes. There aren’t so many loyal people on this earth.

“Are you happy to be in Edenville?” she asks.

“I didn’t want to leave Kansas. Understatement. I—” I touch my chest, over my heart. “Can we
change the subject? Why don’t you try the dress on? Then we could go to a bar tonight or something.”

She laughs. “Ivy, we’re too young to get into a bar.”

“We look way older than sixteen. You’re telling me you haven’t been into a bar? What? Ever?” Now I know what I can do for Callie. She totally needs to get out more—her mom was always too controlling. I say, “We’re going to have so much fun.”

“I don’t know,” she protests weakly. She starts folding a towel she’s picked up from the floor.

“It’s summer vacation. You deserve this. Tell you what, I’m going to be your ticket to the best summer ever. Like it was supposed to be last time.” I pull off my dress and chuck it onto the floor.

“Okay, um …” She looks away.

Yep, she totally needs to loosen up. “Are you
blushing
?” I ask.

“Course.”

“You’ve seen it all before.”

“We’re not kids now.”

I shimmy across the room.

“Ivy!”

I giggle. “What?”

Callie smiles. “Nothing. Put some clothes on.”

“If you let me paint your nails. And if you promise to wear my silver dress—”

Her phone rings and cuts me off.

Mom’s calling. Whoops, I forgot to text her and I’ve been at Ivy’s house for ages.

She says, “I’m on my way home now.” Her voice is tight.

“What’s wrong?”

“Your granny fell off that dreadful step. I knew she would. The hospital called.”

“Hospital?”

“Your dad’s tied up, just for an hour. I need you to watch Cosmo—please, love.”

“Is Granny all right?”

Ivy pats a spot next to her on the bed and says softly, “You okay?”

Mom says, “Where are you? Aren’t you at home? Is that Rebecca?”

“I’ll be there in two minutes, don’t worry. How’s Granny?”

“She’s all right. I think. Shaken. Look, I’ll meet you at home right away.” Mom ends the call.

I sit next to Ivy, heavy suddenly. “My granny fell.”

“Is she okay?”

“I think so. But I have to go. I have to babysit Cosmo. I’ve never done that before.”

“A baby can’t be that hard to figure out. I’ll come help.”

“Um, I think Mom would prefer it if I …”

Ivy shuffles closer. “I understand. Family.”

I lean in to hug Ivy goodbye but she’s doing that European kissing thing. On the bed, we semi-hug but Ivy ends up kissing my hair. Awkward.

Then I’m out of there. I hurry down the back alleyway, the dust of summer on my sandalled feet, the dirt of the day grimy on my clothes and hair, the silky silver dress clutched in my hand.

The morning after Ivy walked back into my life, I’m awake early. Not that I really slept for worrying about Granny. I keep reminding myself that she was released from the hospital, so it can’t be too
bad, and that Mom and I are going to see her after breakfast. A warm breeze drifts through my open window, lifting the curtain, as if the day is peeping in. The sky is already bright although it’s not even seven. I love the light in Edenville.

A line floats into my head.
She asked you to stop by the river when the world cracked open like an egg.
This happens to me all the time: words drift like bubbles in my mind, but I never write them down. I guess I feel like they’ll look different, stupid somehow, if I do. At least I can write stuff for
Flat Earth Theory
; non-fiction feels more straightforward, as if there’s a right way to do it. Mom’s always eager when I write for the zine, overexcited, over-proud. I know, poor me! I should be pleased she’s so interested in my writing but instead it makes me feel pressured to write something amazing, which makes my imagination curl up and die. A voice floats up outside my open window.