Fans of the Impossible Life (24 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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She tried his house first, but the lights were off and the front door was locked. It was only as she made her way back down the street that she remembered that there was a college fair at school that night.

All the windows were still lit up at St. F, cars emptying out of the parking lot. The air was heavy with the threat of an early-spring rain.

She went inside and went directly to his office. He was gathering up things from his desk, putting them into his bag, illuminated by the blue glow of his computer screen.

“Peter?”

He turned around and saw her standing in the doorway.

“Hey, Mira. Were you at the college fair? I didn't see you.”

She shook her head. Her eyes were red from crying.

“What's wrong?” he said, putting down his things.

She was having trouble forming the words.

“Sebby got kicked out of his house.”

“What?”

“Everything's going wrong,” she said.

“Come, sit down,” Peter said.

“I can't,” she said. “We shouldn't have listened to you.”

She walked away from his door, made her way through the hall, back out to the parking lot.

“Mira!”

He followed her outside. It had started raining.

“I can't do this,” she said. The rain streamed down her face and she stopped to feel it. She was having trouble breathing. She wanted to drown in that rain. She wanted to not have to breathe anymore.

“Come on,” Peter said. “It's pouring.”

He grabbed her hand and led her over to his car. He unlocked the door and opened the passenger side for her. She got in. He got in the driver's side.

“Tell me what's happening. Sebby got kicked out of his house?”

“It's our fault.”

“Whatever it is, it's not your fault.”

She shook her head. Her breath was coming in short bursts between sobs.

“Mira, breathe. It's okay, you don't have to talk if you don't want to.”

Rain streamed down the windshield.

“It's our fault,” she said. “It's my fault.”

“Come on. It's going to be okay.”

She couldn't stop crying. Couldn't catch her breath. He put his arm around her and held her to his chest.

“I promise,” he said. “We can figure this out.”

The night that Mira tried to kill herself, she had been crying for so long that she didn't even know why anymore. This was one year, four months, two weeks, and five days before this night in Peter's car, the days that she had counted because she almost didn't get to have them. At that point she was keeping the crying hidden. When it first started, she let people see it because she didn't know what else to do. She thought if they could witness her in the middle of this thing, then they might be able to understand. But they couldn't. It was exhausting for others to watch. For herself to experience. So she stopped showing them.

It hurt so much that she wanted to hurt herself to stop it. At least when she saw her own blood, she could say, “There it is. There's the proof.” That she still existed.

But that night it didn't help. So she went further. Too far. And finally realizing that it was too much, that she didn't want that, she wrapped her wrist in toilet paper and woke her mother up in the middle of the night like a little girl with a nightmare. Bleeding onto her bedroom carpet.

She had already been in the hospital for a week when Sebby arrived in the ward. She had been spending the afternoon the
way she spent all of her afternoons there, sitting at the window, her eyes drifting out to the courtyard, studying the patch of green through the chain metal on the window. Too green. Back inside to the linoleum floor. She was living in the spaces in between.

She heard footsteps on the linoleum, the squeak of the plastic covering on the chair across from her.

“Hi,” he said.

He looked pale and medicated. But that came with the territory.

“Hi,” she said.

“How's the world looking?” he asked.

“Unappealing.”

“Hm.” He examined the scene down in the courtyard, pretended to be disgusted by it. “Oh my god. You're right. That is terrible.”

She smiled. It felt new.

“You been here awhile?” he asked.

“In this chair? A few hours. In this place? Seven days. You?”

“They just brought me up yesterday,” he said.

A group of pigeons gathered around a trashcan on the patch of grass, making desperate circles in search of crumbs. Someone had brought an old man in a wheelchair outside and left him near the scavenging pigeons. Sebby stood up, close to the glass, and started yelling.

“Sir! Those are flesh-eating birds! Dear god! Run for your life!”

A nurse stopped in the hallway.

“Sebastian Tate, we keep our voices down in here,” she said.

“So sorry, Nurse Ratched,” he said, and winked at her.

“Your name's Sebastian?” Mira said.

“Sebby,” he said. “And you are?”

“Miranda. Mira.”

“Well,” he said, “nice to meet you, Mira.”

One year, four months, two weeks, and five days later Peter drove her home from St. Francis and she couldn't stop crying. A familiar feeling of gasping for air, choking on words that she couldn't even say, “I don't think I can do this.”

Her mother drove her to the hospital again on this night, the intake room so familiar it was as if those five hundred days had melted into nothing. She was back where she had started. Without him.

There was a rage inside her despair this time. This was about promises broken. If she couldn't breathe it was because he was supposed to be there to breathe with her. If she couldn't survive it was because he was taking away the one thing that had saved her.

At least this time they would help her stop it before it went too far. Before the blood dripping onto her mother's carpet. This time she knew what to do.

Try harder to breathe. In and out. Don't think about what it feels like inside. Like a path of shattered glass, bare feet leaving bloody tracks in their wake. At the end of it you can see your half of a heart, still beating
somehow, poor heart, trying so hard even though it knows that it is not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough not enough

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

I called Mira's phone three times that night, Sebby's four times. Neither of them answered. I woke up the next morning to his things still in the garbage bag in the corner of my room.

Mira left right after Sebby did the night before, obviously fighting off tears, but refusing to listen to my requests to stay. I was left alone with the concerned faces of my dads and no choice but to tell them at least most of what was going on. The three of us sat at the dinner table and drank cups of tea until I finally excused myself and went to bed early. I slept with my phone set on vibrate in my hand, hoping someone would call back, that Sebby would show up in the middle of the night and text me to let him in. But there was nothing.

The next day was Friday and I had no good reason not to go school besides the fact that I felt like everything was terrible and I had no idea how to fix it. So I showered, put on my uniform, ate breakfast, and walked to St. F.

Maybe everything's okay,
I kept thinking as I walked.
Maybe somehow everything's actually okay.

I had algebra first period, elaborate word problems with Mr. Hepworth. He was still writing the first one out on the board when the dean's secretary came into the classroom and whispered something in his ear.

“If it's absolutely necessary,” he said.

The secretary turned to me.

“Jeremy, could you come with me please?”

“Me?” I said.

She nodded. An interested murmur went up around the room as I stood up.

“You'd better bring your things with you,” she said.

“Okay,” I mumbled, picking up my books.

I followed her, feeling the room watch us go.

“What's this about?” I asked as we made our way down the hallway. She was a nervous bird of a lady, all indirect eye contact and frizzy hair.

“Dean Pike needs to speak to you in his office,” she said.

We had our doddering figurehead of a headmaster, and then there was Dean Pike, who really ran the school, a silver-haired man in his fifties who always had a smile and a jovial “Keep that shirt tucked in!” for every student.

The secretary led me to Pike's door and opened it.

“Jeremy Worth is here,” she said.

I went in and she closed the door behind me. Dean Pike was sitting at his desk.

“Jeremy,” Pike said. “Thank you for coming. Please have a seat.”

“Is everything okay?” I asked, sitting down.

“Well . . .” He paused and thought for a minute about how to answer. “We have a little bit of a situation on our hands. You're very close friends with Miranda Powers, aren't you?”

I nodded.

“Have you spoken to her today?”

“No,” I said. “I saw her yesterday.”

“What time?” he asked.

“I don't know. Around six thirty, maybe. She was at my house for dinner. Is she okay?”

“She's absent today. But we are trying to get in touch with her family.”

“What happened?”

Pike cleared his throat before continuing.

“We had a report from a student this morning that Miranda was seen on campus last night,” he said. “After the college fair, around seven o'clock. In Peter Sprenger's car.”

“Maybe she came back to school after I saw her.”

“This student reported that she saw inappropriate behavior going on between Miranda and Mr. Sprenger.”

Pike tapped his pen on his desktop in a nervous rhythm.

“Inappropriate?” I said.

“Normally I would not take a report without any other eyewitnesses so seriously. I am not interested in an unfounded witch hunt. But Mr. Sprenger has a history of walking a fine line
with students when it comes to inviting them into his personal life. And if there is any possibility that he is conducting himself in an inappropriate way with a student, then we are dealing with a very serious situation.”

“I'm sure it's a misunderstanding,” I said.

“I need to ask you something, Jeremy, and I need you to be honest with me.”

I could feel myself starting to sweat.

“Sure,” I said.

“Have you ever been to Peter Sprenger's home?”

I didn't say anything. Pike tapped his pen impatiently.

“I need you to tell me the truth.”

“No,” I said.

“No, you have not spent time at Mr. Sprenger's home?”

“No, never,” I said.

Pike sighed and put down his pen.

“I am really disappointed that you answered that way, Jeremy.”

“I'm telling the truth.”

“You're not telling the truth. Mr. Sprenger himself informed us that you spent a significant amount of time with him at his home last spring after the incident with your locker. Isn't that true?”

Now I was sweating.

“Yes,” I said.

“So why did you just answer my question untruthfully?”

I didn't know what to say.

He shook his head.

“This is very disappointing,” he said.

“So . . . that was a trap, or something? You just . . . what? Wanted to test me?”

“I wanted to see if the students who are closest to Peter Sprenger feel that they have something to hide about their relationship with him. And I feel confident now that I have my answer.”

Just then the door opened and Mira's mother burst in.

“Can I help you?” Pike said.

“I'm Miranda Powers's mother,” she said. She was out of breath. “What is the meaning of these phone messages I've been getting all morning?”

“I'm in a meeting with a student,” Pike said.

Mira's mom looked at me. She was pale and disheveled, her hair loose around her face.

“Jeremy,” she said.

“Is Mira okay?” I said.

“Why don't you go wait outside, honey? I'll be out in a minute.”

I left them alone in the room and sat on a bench in the hallway. I could hear Mira's mother yelling. Pike's secretary was watching the door, looking like she might intervene.

When Mira's mom finally came out of the office I stood up. Pike was with her.

“I think you should go home for the rest of the day, Jeremy,” he said. “We'll be in touch with your father.”

“I didn't do anything wrong,” I said.

“Come on, Jeremy,” Mira's mom said. “I'll drive you home.”

My head was spinning as I got in the car.

“Where is Mira?” I asked as her mom pulled out of the parking lot.

“She's in the hospital, honey,” she said. “She had a little bit of a relapse. But she's going to be okay.”

“The hospital?”

Her mom nodded.

“She ate dinner at your house last night, right?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “She left after dinner. She was upset about Sebby. I didn't know where she went.”

“Mira doesn't always handle being upset very well.”

“Oh,” I said.

“She's going to be okay,” she said. “And I know that this stuff with Peter is nonsense.”

“I think I said the wrong thing,” I said. “To Dean Pike.”

“We're going to straighten it all out,” she said.

She stopped at a red light.

“Can I see Mira?” I said.

She turned to me. She was crying.

“Oh, not yet, honey,” she said, touching my arm. “But soon, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.