Falling into Place (7 page)

“Ms. Greenberg . . .”

“Yes?”

Carly Blake hesitates. She plays soccer with Liz and they usually sit at the same lunch table, but she's no closer to Liz than any of her other more-than-acquaintances-less-than-friends, and I think Ms. Greenberg knows this. Certainly her look doesn't waver as Carly's lip wobbles.

“I just don't think . . . I just don't know if we can—I mean, Liz is just so . . . and we're all so worried . . .”

Ms. Greenberg actually glares at her, and Carly trails off into silence. Ms. Greenberg puts down the note packets and looks around the classroom. No one meets her eyes.

“All right,” she says. “That's enough. I want you all to remember that Ms. Emerson is not dead. Stop acting like she is. Until I have been notified that she is, indeed, destined for a coffin, I refuse to believe that she is. So yes, I will hold her notes and schedule a day for her to make up her quiz, though I'm sure she'll blatantly ignore both. For those of you who are using Liz's accident as a reason to neglect your work, I assure you it's a weak and despicable excuse.”

If another teacher had given such a speech, the class would have mutinied. A lot of things can be said about the student body of Meridian High school, but no one can accuse them of disloyalty. Liz is
theirs
, and they would have defended her to the death—or to a detention, whichever came first—if they needed to.

But Ms. Greenberg has long been loved and hated for her bluntness, and there's something in her gaze that makes them all feel terribly ashamed.

There, in that classroom, I feel the tides turning. The period ends, and everyone rushes off. The rumors shift. All gossip, they say. Liz isn't on her deathbed. Liz is no longer dead, but recovering. After all, she is Liz Emerson.

Just before third period, Julia comes back to school. For the first time in her life, she is a mess.

Having spent the night at the hospital, she wears the same sweatpants and shirt with the hole in the armpit. There are shadows beneath her eyes, and she is so pale that her skin is almost green.

From the moment she steps foot in the building, she is surrounded by sympathizers, but she hardly notices.

Julia has had her share of tragedy over the years, but they were tragedies contained within her world—her parents' divorce, her brittle and strained relationship with her father, the death of her gerbil. Liz's accident, however, is a terrifyingly immense thing, and try as she might, Julia cannot keep it within herself.

She left the hospital in a vain attempt to escape it. She came to school, and it found her here too.

Next, chemistry.

Liz was supposed to take it during her sophomore year, but due to scheduling conflicts and an extraordinarily unhelpful counselor, she is stuck taking both chemistry and physics during her junior year.

It's really a pity, because Liz had been looking forward to chemistry since the brief unit in sixth grade. It was the colors that had initially attracted her, the vibrant blue of the Bunsen flame and the dusty red of copper and the deep violet of hydrates. It was the logic of balanced equations, the certainty that when element A mixed with element B, compound C would appear. It was like predicting the future; it was like magic. Most of all, it was
being
: of having to be so careful with the hydrochloric acid, of accidentally burning herself while lighting a match, of discovering.

Only, by the time she finally got to take the class, school had already stopped mattering.

Today there is no lab. There is no lecture. The class sits silently, in a darkness lit only by the episode of
MythBusters
on the screen.

They stare at the empty chair. They remember the first day of fifth grade, when Liz arrived and disrupted Meridian as only she could. Liz Emerson, they think, has always been a force to be noticed.

They are wrong.

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O
n the first day of preschool, Liz dug her fingers into the leg of her father's jeans and held on tight as the overly sunny teacher tried to drag her into the overly sunny classroom.

Her dad leaned down and told her to make a wish.

Tearfully, Liz asked her daddy to stay with her.

He promised to never leave.

On the first day of school after her father's funeral, Monica dropped Liz off for the first time. Monica didn't try to hug her, and Liz didn't ask her to stay.

On the first day of fifth grade at Meridian Elementary School, Liz jumped off the swings during recess and headed for the kickball diamond. She kicked a ball into Jimmy Travis's face, gave him a bloody nose, won her team the game, and sat down at the popular table during lunch without being asked. She never left.

On the first day of middle school, Liz walked into the building with Kennie at her side. At recess that day, Jimmy Travis told her that she was pretty, and she kissed him beside the swings.

They were the first official couple.

She dumped him two weeks later when he refused to let her copy his math homework, and from then on, Liz Emerson was rarely without a boyfriend.

She didn't really like any of them.

On the day after eighth-grade graduation, she went to her first party and kissed an older boy named Zack Hayes, who he had given her a red Solo cup. She tried the beer and hated it, but she drained the cup anyway and he refilled it for her. It made the world dissolve and scatter around her like petals, and it wasn't unpleasant. When she wobbled and fell, he caught her and carried her into a bedroom but didn't leave, and she couldn't find the words to ask him to.

Julia found them later and pulled her away, but Liz wasn't sure what had happened before she got there.

On the first day of her freshman year, an upperclassman named Lori Andersen elbowed Liz into a locker and called her a stupid freshman.

During lunch, Liz stole Lori's car keys while Lori was in the lunch line, turned the car alarm on, and threw the keys in a toilet. Then, while Lori was fuming, Liz offered her sympathies and a coupon to the salon for a free facial waxing. Lori, who had an unfortunate habit of underestimating freshmen, took it.

That particular salon was owned by Kennie's uncle. He'd opened it when he got out of prison and found out that he could get paid to pull hair out of people.

Liz called him and told him that Lori would be coming by after school. She asked him to please give her the special, free of charge. He replied that it would be his pleasure.

The next day, Lori came to school with newly cut bangs. It wasn't the best look for her, though her friends assured her that it was adorable. It went well until Lori went outside for gym, and the wind blew her bangs back.

It was then that everyone saw that Lori Andersen no longer had eyebrows.

Liz took Lori's place at the Center Table in the Cafeteria That Looked Exactly Like All the Other Tables but Held Immense Social Meaning.

Later, she would wonder what would have happened if she had let her world change as it should have changed. On nights when she remembered Lori Andersen's missing eyebrows, she told herself that it would have happened anyway. Lori's grades would have dropped anyway. She would have had to work at Subway instead of going to college anyway.

And besides, her eyebrows grew back.

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L
iz's next class is government. They were supposed to debate the death penalty, but today, even the affirmative squad wants to argue that no one deserves to die.

Besides, they're missing a member of their team.

Liz is not fantastic at debate, pointwise. She just happens to like arguing, and she has an incredible talent for making others look stupid.

Julia is also in this class, but she hates debating. It isn't that she's not eloquent—she could probably win every debate based on her vocabulary alone—but she doesn't understand absolutes. She doesn't see why one side is completely right and the other completely wrong.

Which isn't to say that Julia is any more secure in her morals than Liz is. Julia has plenty of issues, the greatest being the ziplock bag she buys from the RadioShack pervert every Sunday after church.

Julia sits there and thinks about the fight she and Liz had the day before yesterday. Just two days ago. Julia glances at the clock and hates it for its blind, relentless ticking, because every moment that passes is another step from yesterday, when Liz was whole and alive, and the world was all right.

It was an old fight. Or at least it had brewed for long enough—three days ago it had simply exploded, burst from both of them, and now it stretches across the hours and hours to hang over them like a storm.

Julia wants to go back to the hospital. She wants to apologize. No, she wants to say that she will do as Liz asked, she will get help, she will move the world to keep Liz Emerson alive.

But she can't. Get help, or move the world.

Instead she thinks about how it all began, and the regret grows and grows until it's almost a tangible thing that she can rip out and bury and undo.

Almost.

It started after their freshman homecoming game. They were sitting behind the bleachers with an innocuous bag of white powder, which Liz had seen peeking out of a stranger's pocket. Naturally, she had stolen it so they could try it. Just a little bit each. Kennie was excited, because she was Kennie and new things, no matter how stupid, made her bounce. Liz was rather indifferent to it all. She was only doing it because she was Liz Emerson.

But Julia—Julia was skeptical on the outside and so, so scared on the inside. Her hands were shaking as she watched Liz inhale, as Kennie tried and choked and got it in her eyes. Her hands shook as she took the bag and opened it, and they shook when she hesitated.

Liz laughed.

Julia did it because of the way Liz stared at her, daring her to take the risk for once. So she did. She took the risk while Liz and Kennie forgot everything their middle-school health teacher had ever taught them—assuming that they had actually listened in the first place. That drugs worked differently on everyone. That you really could get addicted on the first try.

Julia remembered. It didn't matter.

Soon Kennie couldn't sit still, Liz was laughing, and Julia was still shaking. Pleasantly, at first, but as the other two began to quiet down, she shook harder because her fingers kept reaching for more, until there was none left.

Two days before Liz crashed her car, Julia decided that she'd had enough. Her grades were slipping, and sometimes she couldn't breathe. Her father had just lost some money on the stock market and was still paying ridiculous amounts of alimony, and her “borrowed” drug allowance wouldn't go unnoticed for much longer.

And Liz—well, Liz was fine, wasn't she? She wasn't throwing money at the RadioShack guy. She didn't know about Julia's Sundays, when the world was so bright it hurt her eyes, but she was in the dark, alone, trapped in a body that would never again obey her mind.

I didn't ruin my life, Liz. You did
.

But now Liz is almost gone and Julia sits choking on regret, and that's the ironic thing—why didn't she feel guilty earlier? Why only now, now that Liz is dying in a white room beneath fluorescent lights? Why is it that she's remembering the way Liz's face looked after Julia had thrown the blame at her?

She'd had strangest expression. Like something was breaking inside of her too.

Julia stares at the clock. She imagines climbing on the desk and pulling it down, rewinding the hands and praying the rest of the world would follow. She sees the bodies blurring and walking backward, until she is in the hallway again with Liz right there, begging her to stop, stop, get help.

She wonders what might have been different if she'd agreed.

The bell rings, and Julia walks out of the classroom and out the door. The one by the band room, the one no one ever watched, the one in a nook away from the cameras. She, Liz, and Kennie had done it a hundred times before.

She heads back to the hospital.

Funny things, aren't they? People. They're so limited.

Seeing is believing and all that. As though watching Liz will keep her alive. As though by remembering, they know her, intimately. As though they guard all of her secrets, and if by staying close, they can keep her safe.

I think it must be because they can only see so much of the world. All those boundaries—pupils to focus, lids to close, distances to cross, time to navigate.

Don't they realize?

Thought exists everywhere.

What Julia doesn't know is this: Liz knew. Liz had always known that the drug was tearing Julia's life apart. She knew that it was her fault. She knew that the ziplock bags made Julia lonely, but she didn't know how to help.

Some nights, Liz looked back and counted the bodies, all those lives she had ruined simply by existing. So she chose to stop existing.

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A
fter Liz puked, she went down to the basement with a marker and sat on the couch.

The couch—an old brown thing, stained with memories and orange juice instead of hangovers and wine. Monica had stored it down here after she bought the white couch, and when Liz put her face in the fabric, it smelled of dust. No one came down here much. This couch was one of the last pieces of furniture from their old house, from that other life, when Liz had a father who would never leave and a mother who didn't have any grief to bury in her work.