The Edge of Falling (21 page)

“How long has this been going on?” I ask.

He blows some air out through his lips. “Which part?”

I feel like laughing. It’s all so ridiculous. Peter and Claire. The
Post.
The fact that we’ve all ended up here. “You choose,” I say, my voice dry. “How long have you been back in New York? How long have you been lying to Mom and Dad? How long have you been sleeping with Claire?” I fold my arms across my chest. “Any order.”

He inhales, runs his hands over his face. “I didn’t enroll for this year,” he says. “After the summer I . . .” He clears his throat. “After the summer I went back to LA and I stayed at Jeffrey’s.”

Malibu. Our uncle. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask. “You could have come home.”

Peter looks at me, and I can read it all. It’s like a scary movie I’ve seen before. I just want to plug my ears at the bad parts. Instead I focus on what I can: “Claire,” I say.

“It’s not like that,” he says. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“Oh yeah? What’s it like?” My throat feels dry. I have to keep swallowing. “You just decided to shack up with her instead of going to college? You figured, what? Why date Felicia when you can have a high school model? Did you see the
Post
? Do you have any idea what she did to me? To
us
?”

Peter opens his mouth, but I’m on a roll. “And you didn’t fly in because you were concerned about me. You just came uptown because Claire opened her big mouth. Convenient.”

“Caggs—”

“You deserve each other,” I say. “I hope you know you’re just the flavor of the month, too. She’ll get bored; she always does.”

I turn because all of a sudden a new emotion is taking over—the anger giving way, like icicles melting. I can feel the water coming, salty, tangy, and I don’t want to be around Peter when it does.

He makes a move to follow me again. “Don’t!” I yell over my shoulder.

I don’t turn around, but I hear him stop. Silence behind me. Peter is still my brother. He knows when to push it, and
when not to. He won’t follow me. Not now, anyway.

I run down the stairs and out into the waiting elevator. I don’t stop to think where Claire is. I want to get far away from this whole thing. I don’t know anyone anymore. Claire’s betrayed me. Peter has dropped out of school to be, what? Her professional boyfriend? I can’t even think about what my parents would do if they ever found out.

I feel the tears well up again, threatening to spill, but I blink them back and focus on the questions. No matter how much Peter wanted Claire, why would he leave USC? She’s in LA all the time. It’s completely unlike Peter to drop out of school. He’s always been that guy, like Trevor. President of everything, a million extracurricular activities. He wants to be a doctor. I don’t think doctors take a leave of absence from college. Not sophomore year, anyway. Without even thinking, I’ve fallen into the walking game.

Near Fourteenth Street I pass a Starbucks that used to be a specialty grocery store. I used to like that about New York—how quickly things could change. But that was before Hayley. After she died, the city’s ability to move on seemed intentional somehow, vengeful.

When I think about last May, about being on that roof, that’s the single thing I remember most. The way life seemed to be moving past me, rushing forward. Like a log down a river toward the falls. But I was a rock. Stuck. Everything
racing around me, over and under. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything but hear the rapids—far-off, close, unreachable. It was all the same thing. The future I wouldn’t be a part of.

People think those sorts of things are choices. Decisions. Whether you stay stuck or move forward. But they’re not. That’s the thing about May: It wasn’t a choice. It was the absence of choice. Standing up there on that roof I’d never felt so powerless. Hauling Kristen up and over that railing—that was no feat of will. That was a reaction, plain and simple. It wasn’t me; it was some old human system, some trick of the brain: autopilot, adrenaline, whatever you want to call it. It’s funny how when big things happen, people want to know lots of details. They always have a million questions—what it felt like, how you did it, what you thought about in that moment, hovering a millimeter from death. But they never ask the right ones. Never the ones they should.

No one ever asked me why I went up to Abigail’s roof to begin with. Not the
Post
. Not Claire. Not even Abigail herself.

The one question they should have asked they didn’t, just like the one question I should have asked that night in January I didn’t.

Hayley, where are you?

I keep on walking.

I’m on Seventh Avenue, headed straight for Columbus Circle, when I spot Trevor. He takes violin lessons down in
the Fifties, he has forever, and I see him standing on the sidewalk, running his foot along the pavement.

It’s unfortunate that he is standing here right now. That it had to be him, in this moment. I know what I’m about to do is no good. That I should just keep walking. But I can’t stop myself. I don’t know how. That’s the thing about anger—it’s a transformative force. It can bring you back and then get behind you, push you forward. I’m angry with Claire about that article, angry with Peter for lying, but when I see Trevor, holding his music case, his eyes slightly squinting into the sun, all that rage gets directed like water through a funnel—one clear, straight line. His disappointment about the
Journal
, his comments about Astor, his eyes at the dance, standing on the stairs. It all makes me rage. The fact that he’s still here. That he reminds me so much about everything I don’t have anymore.

I move up to him fast. He’s surprised to see me, and he kind of warbles, takes a step back. I’ve spent months running from him, but now the serendipity of him being on the street feels like destiny finally handing me a card. It’s my turn to confront him now. To make him listen to what I have to say.

“Did you read that Page Six piece?” I ask.

“What are you—?” He’s still trying to catch up—did I seek him out? Do I remember his violin schedule? Yes, actually, but I don’t tell him that.

“Peter is living at Claire’s,” I continue.

Trevor squints at me but doesn’t seem surprised.

“Did you know that?”

He blows some air out through his lips and nods.

“You’re kidding me.”

“Claire didn’t—”

“Who does Claire think she is?” I interrupt. “She’s butted into everything. She’s run her big mouth all over Manhattan. I thought she was my friend.”

Trevor looks at me, incredulous. “You’re kidding me.”

“Trevor—”

“No. Caggie, I’m sorry, but you have to get this.” He steps closer to me, and I see the side of his mouth twitch, the little corner of his cheek flaring the way it does when he’s really concerned. I used to watch that cheek when we were studying, saw it wink at me when he first leaned down, close, and told me he loved me. “You don’t get it. Claire is the only one who’s actually been brave enough to say something. To
do
something. Do you know why Peter is there?”

“No,” I admit.

“He didn’t want to leave you.” Trevor’s hair falls into his face, but I can see his eyes staring at me. The purest blue. “He wanted to stay to make sure you were okay.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I say, glancing away. “Why would he do that?”

Trevor exhales. “Come on, Caggie. You’re not the only person who lost someone in all of this.” He holds his gaze to mine, and I recognize something in it, something I haven’t seen in a long time. The way he used to look at me. How I knew how much he cared.

“I know,” I say.

He shakes his head. “You don’t.”

“Of course I do. You’re not my brother, Trevor. You’re not in this family.”

“No, you’re right, I’m not. But I was . . .” His voice catches. “I screwed up, Caggie.” He steps closer, like he’s testing the waters. I don’t move. “I should never have left this summer. I should have stayed with you, even if you wouldn’t let me in. I should have seen you every day. I should have been
with
you.”

I shake my head. I can’t deal with this. There is too much spinning. Claire and Peter and Astor, spokes on a wheel turning faster and faster, about to puncture something.

“Look at me,” he says.

I pick my head up, just slightly. “Don’t do this, Trevor,” I say. But it’s quiet. Shaky. I’m losing ground.

“I made a mistake,” he says. “I thought things would be better for you if I wasn’t here.”

“How?” I whisper.

“I don’t know,” he says. He shakes his head. “It was stupid. But you kept pushing me away.”

“Trevor . . .”

He looks at me, head-on. “I didn’t go to California this summer,” he says. “I helped Peter at the beach house.”

I gape at him. “What are you talking about?”

“There was no one else to do it. I thought at least that was a way I could help.” He steps closer to me still and puts his hand on my elbow. Cups it the way he’s done so many times before. “I love you, Caggie. Don’t you know that?”

“I . . .”

But in the next instant he kisses me. He puts his hand on the side of my face and one around my waist and draws me close to him. His lips feel like relief. Everything else melts away, and for a moment I’m just focused on what it feels like to be with him. Wonderful, exhilarating. The purest kind of perfect.

But so many things are wrong. We can’t just kiss here like nothing happened. We can’t just pretend that we can move on to okay when there is so much standing in the way.

“I have to go,” I say, pulling back.

Trevor loosens his arms around me. “Caggie, please, can’t we talk about this?”

I look at him. Maybe I’m crying. I can’t even feel my face. “No,” I say. “It’s over, Trevor.”

He doesn’t fight me as I walk away.

I don’t know what to think of any of this, so I don’t. I
shut my brain off. I turn down Fifty-Eighth Street toward Broadway and then up to Fifty-Ninth. Around the Plaza. We had Hayley’s eighth birthday there, in the Eloise Suite. We brought her friends downstairs for high tea. She may have been an artist—sensitive, wise beyond her years—but she was also just a little girl. She loved dressing up in pink, eating sugar cookies, and sliding on white elbow gloves. I remember I put together the gift bags for that birthday: little Eloise totes with her guests’ names stenciled on the front. Fake pet turtles, a box of wax crayons, and black patent-leather Mary Janes in each of their sizes.

The next day, when we were checking out, Hayley wanted to know where my gift bag was. I told her the bags were just for her friends. She looked at me, really puzzled, and then said, “But you’re my sister.”

You’re my sister.

Here is the truth. What I can’t say to Peter or Trevor or Claire: It doesn’t get better; it gets worse. I miss her more every single day. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but what about death? What happens when you know there will never come a time when the ache will be alleviated? How do you deal with missing someone forever?

I walk the last eight blocks home, and when I get there, Astor is standing outside. In the chaos of Peter and Claire and Trevor I almost forgot about everything that is going on
with him. And that I’ve avoided about ten of his phone calls. He looks nervous. He’s tapping his foot against the pavement like he’s trying to chip it away. His shirt is untucked, and his cheeks are flushed. Beads of sweat hang from his forehead.

“Caggie,” he says. He sounds like he’s been waiting forever.

He pulls me to him as soon as he sees me. Puts his hands around my waist and drags me in like a tow truck. I feel numb. Blank. So overloaded with everything that there isn’t space for anything. Even when he starts kissing me—fast, furious—I can barely feel his lips at all.

I try to pull back, but he keeps me close, his arms locked around me. I start to feel like I’m suffocating. He’s crushing me, and the more I try to squirm, the tighter he holds me. I suddenly remember something I came across in my Google searches on drowning. How if you’re trying to rescue someone from the water, they will try to climb on top of you in order to save themselves. They’ll hold you down. Often the people who try to rescue are the ones who end up drowning.

“Stop.” I yank myself back far enough to look at him, and the moment our eyes lock, he releases me.

He’s still got ahold of my hand, and I let him trace my fingers with his thumb. He glances down the street, then pulls me up onto my front steps. “He found out,” he says. His eyes dart back and forth, like someone is watching us.
“I tried to call you. I called you a million times.”

“Who?” I ask, groping for time, but I already know he’s talking about his dad. The image of the glass frame pops into my mind like red paint lobbed at a white canvas. Loud. Screaming. Sudden. Hysterical, even.

“He found out about what?” I swallow.

“We had a deal,” he says.

I get the distinct impression he isn’t speaking to me, not really. He’s talking to himself, relating the story out loud so it becomes something he can sort through. Pieces of a puzzle he’s got to take out of the box and set faceup on the floor.

“My dad and I. If I stayed in school and didn’t flunk out this time, I could stay.” He glances at me, like it’s a look he’s stealing. Something that doesn’t belong to him. “I thought it would be easier to get my records. I didn’t think it would matter, but they kicked me out. Kensington.” I hear him swear under his breath.

My stomach bottoms out. I feel sick. It’s the same feeling I got standing in his mother’s shrine room. I think about his father on the phone. The intensity in his voice. He wanted to send him away. And now, standing here, I know where he wants him to go. I remember Peter’s warning:
They left because he turned into a fucking psychopath.

“I need somewhere to go,” he says.

He’s still holding tight to my hand, so tight that I’m afraid to look down. I’m afraid his knuckles will be white. That I’ll be able to see blood draining.

“Okay,” I say. “It’s going to be okay.” I try to keep my voice level, but it won’t stop shaking.