The Half Life of Molly Pierce (3 page)

“No. I’ve never seen him before.”

“It’s such a shame. I’ve always said motorcycles—”

“Coffins on wheels, I know.”

“I’ll stop,” he says. “I’m just . . .”

“I know.”

At home Hazel and Clancy are sitting at the kitchen table and they don’t say anything when we walk in the front door. My mother, she must have called them and warned them. Don’t say anything. Your sister is fine; just don’t say anything. She says she’ll warm me up some leftovers and I excuse myself to take a shower. In the bathroom I throw up three times, but it’s only acid and water. I haven’t eaten all day. Or maybe I have. There’s all that time I can’t remember.

I feel better after the shower and after dinner, even though the four of them sit there and watch me eat and Hazel keeps jumping up to get me water and even Clancy is quiet and keeps looking at me when he thinks I won’t catch him looking at me. I make eye contact with him once but turn away quickly. Everyone says I look exactly like Clancy. After dinner I excuse myself and I brush my teeth and when I go into my room Hazel is sitting cross-legged on my bed.

Clancy and I have brown hair and brown eyes, but Hazel’s eyes are blue and her hair is blond and she keeps it short and pixielike. We tell her she’s adopted because she doesn’t even look like our parents or the photos we have of our grandparents. She doesn’t look like anyone, but my mother has pictures of being pregnant with her. She’s showed us, as proof.

“Stop bugging your sister,” she said once, pulling a photo from a shoe box and sliding it across the table at us.

“This could be anyone,” Clancy had said, pointing at her bulging stomach.

“I’m tired, Hazel,” I say now, and then I see Clancy at the window seat. He’s staring out the window like he doesn’t really want to be here. Clancy’s like me in personality as well as appearance. He prefers being by himself. “Is this an intervention?” I ask him.

“Not my idea,” he says quickly.

“I’m fine, Hazel. I’m tired,” I insist.

“It’s important to talk about things, Molly,” Hazel says.

Thirteen years old and she thinks it’s important to talk about things.

“She doesn’t want to talk,” Clancy says quickly.

“It’s important,” Hazel repeats.

“Can she talk to you, then? She might want to talk to you,” he says.

“I don’t actually want to talk to either of you,” I say. “No offense, Hazel. I’m fine; I’m tired.”

“Well,” she says, jumping off the bed, “I’ll be in my room if you need me.” She slips quietly out of the room.

Clancy hasn’t moved from the window seat.

“Must have been crazy,” he says.

“Sure,” I say. “Crazy.”

“You actually saw him—”

“Clancy.”

“Right, sorry.”

He stands up awkwardly, uncomfortable in his own skin, something I could always relate to. Clancy isn’t in therapy, though. He’s never admitted to anyone that he sometimes might rather be dead.

“Good night,” I say.

“Hey, don’t off yourself tonight,” he says, brightening. Depression humor. He shuts the door when he leaves.

In my dreams I see his face.

Bloody and white on the pavement. The blood warm and filling his mouth, spilling over and pooling underneath him. The white of his eyeballs.

I see both their faces; they are interchangeable. The brothers, Lyle and Sayer. Lyle Avery. Dead now.

What had he said?

He wanted to see me again.

My dreams twist his face into a demon, into an angel, into a red mass of unrecognizable flesh. I wake up sweaty and panicked twenty times until finally I get out of bed. It’s five in the morning and I go downstairs to make myself a cup of coffee.

It’s Wednesday. I get my backpack from the living room. Someone brought it in for me last night. I have homework and I work on it at the kitchen table until my mom comes down and offers breakfast. Scrambled eggs? Toast? I’m not hungry, but I eat whatever she puts in front of me because it’s easier than arguing. My brother stumbles down around six; and Hazel, dressed and bright and cheerful, bounces into the kitchen at seven thirty. And if I thought my parents might give me the option to stay home, they don’t. My mother kisses my cheek and my dad gives me one of his long, meaningful shoulder squeezes and then they practically herd us outside.

I drop Hazel off at middle school and then Clancy and I make our way to the high school. We never talk in the mornings. He’s brought coffee in a travel mug, but he gives it to me. This is his way of making sure I’m okay. Have some coffee; don’t be sad. He’d never be able to actually say it.

Erie and Luka are by my locker, waiting. They don’t know about the accident, but they know I left school early yesterday and they want an explanation. Erie is indignant and offended I didn’t ask her to bail with me.

“Didn’t return any of my text messages,” Erie says, in lieu of
hello
. I realize I haven’t looked at my phone for a long time. I didn’t even get it out of my backpack this morning. I fish around for it now and withdraw it triumphantly: dead. I show it to her.

“Dead,” I say, shrugging.

“And your charger is, what, lost?” she insists. Erie is holding her phone and showing it to me like this is what a phone is supposed to look like, Molly. Fully charged.

“Maybe lost,” I say. I haven’t actually seen it in a while.

“You’re impossible,” she says.

“You missed a test,” Luka says.

“What subject?” I ask. But I don’t really care. I shove past him to get to my locker and open it quickly, withdrawing unneeded books from my bag and stacking them inside.

“Health,” he says.

“Tragic,” I say. Health isn’t a class; it’s a subset of gym. Nobody’s ever failed gym.

“It was pretty important,” he persists. He has a book in his hands; he uses it to gesture and it slips out of his fingers and lands on Erie’s toe. It’s a hardcover; her reaction is elaborate and loud.

“I don’t care about the fucking test, Luka,” I moan, slamming my locker shut and resting my head for a moment against its metal surface.

“Well, you shouldn’t be wearing sandals in October,” Luka is saying. He straightens up and puts the book into his backpack. Erie holds one foot off the ground and whimpers.

“They’re the only shoes I have that go with this shirt,” she says, pouting.

“Do they really go with that shirt, though?” Luka asks.

“How would you even know what goes with this shirt?” Erie shoots back.

“Can I have quiet time? I’m imposing quiet time,” I interject.

“What’s wrong with you?” Luka asks.

And Erie says, “Luka just dropped a
book
on my foot and you’re the one who needs special treatment?”

“Your foot is fine,” Luka says.

“Really. Guys. Really,” I say.

They leave me alone. Erie shoots me a bewildered look and Luka shoots me a tired, patronizing look; and then they talk to each other and they let me be quiet and we walk together through the hallways, but it’s really the two of them and then me. Separate.

I just . . . sometimes I can’t talk to people. And they’ve known me for a long time; they get it.

It’s good to have friends like this because you don’t have to explain things to them right away. Eventually I’ll have to tell them about the accident and about dead Lyle Avery, but for now we’re just walking to class. And sometimes they say my name to involve me in the conversation and I nod like I’m listening but I’m not expected to respond. I’m not expected to do anything other than just walk beside them.

- - -

Before lunch Erie can’t wait anymore and she corners me outside the cafeteria.

“You haven’t said a word to me all day,” she says.

“That is an exaggeration,” I say.

Erie sometimes thinks everything in the world is happening to her or against her or because of her. She considers herself to be a very involved participant in the lives of her friends.

“What, are you like—are you
okay
? You know? Are you?”

She says
okay
in a way that really means—
Are you having a bad day?
Like,
Are you feeling more depressed than usual?
Like,
Should I call someone and tell them?

You make one comment about maybe wanting to die and this is how your friends will treat you forever and ever, like you are a loaded gun in the hands of someone incredibly jumpy.

“I had a rough night. I’m fine. I’ll tell you later.”

Erie shakes her head; and her long California blond hair gives off a light of its own, that’s how shiny it is. She makes her way to our usual spot in the cafeteria, a table in the back by the window. She sits down with her new weird poet boyfriend, Carbon, who sometimes goes through these phases where he only speaks in rhyme.

I don’t know if that’s really his name.

I get in line and pick out my usual grilled cheese sandwich, apple, coffee. My school starting serving coffee after a month-long struggle involving mostly Clancy and me passing petitions around during study halls. We threatened a sit-in and they eventually provided us with these packets of instant and hot water.

In front of me in line is Bret Jennings. I try and make myself as unnoticeable as possible, because the last time I saw Bret, I spilled the majority of my orange juice on his sneakers.

“Hey, Molly,” he says.

So much for unnoticeable.

“Oh, hey. How are you?”

“Drier than the last time you saw me.”

Oh, jokes. He has jokes.

“Have I mentioned how completely sorry I am for the orange juice incident?”

“A couple times,” he says, and smiles.

“I, um, well . . . well, we both have apples. For lunch.”

We both have apples?

“Astute, Molly,” he says, but he’s still smiling.

“It’s, um, your turn. To pay.”

He turns away from me. We both have apples. I could die now, really. In this lunch line.

“Well, see you,” he says after he’s given the lunch lady his money.

I pay for my food and try and get to my table without making eye contact with anyone else. Luka has saved a seat for me between him and Erie, but Erie’s talking to Carbon anyway and, besides, I can’t tell them
now
, with all these extra people around. So I lean in to Erie and promise I’ll come over after my appointment. That’s what we call my meetings with Alex. It’s every Wednesday after school and we refer to it as my appointment so it could be any number of other, cooler things. An appointment to do illegal drugs with interesting people. An appointment to continue my studies in assassin techniques and strategies. Luka and Erie are the only ones who know what it really is.

I drink my coffee and wait for the inevitable visit from Clancy, who generally takes it upon himself to relieve me of my leftover lunch money in order to buy himself seconds of everything. Not long after he’s gone, the bell rings and I realize I have study hall next and I never did the English reading. I’ve forgotten the textbook somewhere in the backseat of my car, so I excuse myself from Luka and Erie and of course it’s drizzling outside now, out of nowhere, so I’m going to get soaked.

I don’t have an umbrella and I don’t have time to get my coat from my locker so I have nothing to put over my head and as a result I get rain all in my hair and my face and my eyes and so everything is a little blurry and it takes me a minute before I see him, leaning against my car underneath a huge umbrella. I rub rain out of my eyes with the back of my hand, realizing too late that I’ve effectively smeared mascara all over my face.

It’s Sayer Avery. He looks like he’s waiting for me, but he also looks like he was hoping I’d never come and now that I’m here he’s a little disappointed.

“Hey, um . . . What are you doing here?” I say.

He lifts the umbrella higher, steps away from the car, offers it to me.

I duck under it without thinking. There’s plenty of room for both of us. It’s an enormous umbrella. A golf umbrella. Like a tarp on a stick.

I’m really glad I didn’t say any of that out loud.

“Hi, Molly,” he says.

“What are you doing here?” I repeat.

“I wanted to . . . thank you again. For everything you did for my brother. They told me you stayed with him. They told me no one else would go near him, but you stayed with him.” He seems genuine. I realize I have no idea how he could have found my car. There’s only one high school in Manchester, sure, but my car? He was leaning against my car. Not anybody else’s. I look at my car and then I look at him.

“How did you know this is my car?”

“They gave me a description. The EMTs. I wanted to find you,” he says without hesitation.

“And you just thought you’d . . . wait for me? In the rain? Until I showed up?”

His face changes. For a minute he is lost, confused, sad. Here he is, his brother just died and I’m treating him to a game of twenty questions.

“I’m sorry,” I say quickly, backpedaling. “I don’t know why I can be so . . . Look, I’m just sorry. About everything. About your brother.”

“I shouldn’t have shown up. It must look a little weird.”

“It doesn’t look weird at all. Really, I’m . . . It doesn’t look weird.”

He fidgets with something on the umbrella handle. It’s the little loop you can put around your wrist. He twists it around one finger. He twists it and untwists it. He looks like he wants to say something. He looks like he’s trying to find words that haven’t been invented yet. And I don’t know why but I want to be close to him. It’s like I didn’t even know he existed until yesterday but now that I do, I just want him to never leave again. I want to stay here in this parking lot with him forever. I want to freeze time. I want this rain, this umbrella, this moment—forever.

“The funeral is Saturday,” he says after a long pause.

“Oh,” I say.

“I’d like you to go. I mean . . . I came here to see if you could go.”

“Oh,” I say again. “Sure.”

“We don’t know a lot of people here. My parents are dead. Not a lot of family left. I just . . . I don’t know, I thought it would be nice if you could come.”

“I’m . . . Of course, Sayer. Of course I’ll go.”

“Can I have your number?” he says, taking his phone from his pocket. “I’ll text you the information.”