The Love That Split the World (25 page)

Beau doesn’t show up for dinner. My calls don’t reach him, and he doesn’t come to take me to the studio either, so I lie in bed and worry. To make matters worse, Joyce Kincaid just sent me a picture of Matt in his hospital bed, and, for one millisecond, I think she’s telling me he’s awake until I see her caption:
Thought you might miss seeing his face
.

I don’t. Maybe I should, but there’s nothing comforting to me about Matt’s pale skin or the tubes in his nose or the bruising along his temple. Every time I close my eyes, the
image resurges until, despite my fatigue, I get out of bed and pace.

I hate driving at night, probably because of both my nightmares and my steadfast conviction that a murderer’s hiding in the backseat, but I grit my teeth and decide to drive to NKU anyway.

I navigate my way through the unlit building to our studio and force myself to stretch quickly, straining my mind for the sounds of Beau’s fingers settling against the piano keys. He’s here. I know he’s here. I can almost feel him. I close my eyes and try to catch his smell in the air, the twang of his voice, the line of his shoulders.

But I can’t. He’s here, but we’re separated by worlds, and it feels so wrong—I’m so terrified it could be permanent—I can’t take being here any longer, and I head home, heart thumping like a jackhammer and breaths coming spastically all the way there.

When I tell Alice in Thursday’s session about Beau’s disappearance, all I can get out of her is one of her infuriating
hmm
s.

“
Hmm
what?” I press.

She shrugs. “Honestly, I hesitate to say too much. We should let this work itself out before we panic.”

But I know what she’s not saying.
What if I’ve had my Closing? What if Beau’s had his Closing?

Friday comes, and Mom and Dad have the rental minivan fully packed. All that’s left is to say our goodbyes before I go settle in to Megan’s old bedroom. Mom and Dad want to follow me over, to talk to Megan’s parents and make sure I have everything I need, but Jack and Coco opt to stay behind at the house and wait for them to get back, so I give them each a hug in the kitchen.

Gus is intensely whiny, stressed by the commotion of packing—a sure sign that he’s about to get dropped off at the “doggy motel.” I kneel down and wrap my arms around his tree-trunk neck, nestling my face into his downy fur. “Be good,” I tell him, then stand up and face the twins.

“Keep me updated, okay?” Coco says. “About Matt and everything.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Though to be honest, you could probably get more news from Abby.” Coco’s gaze falls, and I can tell something’s wrong. I glance around to see if Mom or Dad is eavesdropping then drag Coco down the hall by the elbow. “What’s going on? Abby didn’t like the body spray? Probably should’ve gone with edible body glitter.”

She sighs. “It’s nothing.”

“Coco, tell me.”

“She’s a bitch, okay? She’s awful.”

“Your best friend?”

Coco shakes her leg impatiently. “She’s just . . . she said some things.”

“Things?”

“Stupid, bitchy things.”

“Coco, if someone’s bullying you—”

“They weren’t about me,” she interrupts, and the situation slowly crystallizes for me. “She said Matt’s accident was your fault. She doesn’t even think that. I
know
she doesn’t, but she was saying it to some of the juniors to—I don’t know—impress them.”

I glance toward the living room, where Jack’s sprawled on the couch staring into space. “And Jack’s fight?” Coco nods once slowly. My vision starts to splotch, and I dig the heels of
my hands into my eye sockets. “You guys don’t need to get into fights or end friendships over all this.”

Coco crosses her arms. “You don’t get it. Abby’s changing, or maybe I am. Either way, I’m so done with this gossipy little school. And it’s even worse for Jack—and
no,
not just because of you and Matt.”

“Coco . . . you
just
told Mom and Dad you wanted to stay at Ryle.”

In a rare moment for Coco, her eyes betray the hint of tears. She shakes her head until they subside.
“Jack,”
she musters.

“You ready?” Mom appears at the end of the hallway, clapping her hands together, and Coco’s eyes shoot me the
don’t tell
look as she discreetly shakes her head.

“Let me get my bags from upstairs,” I stammer, and Mom gives us a suspicious look before heading back into the kitchen. I pull Coco into a tight hug. “You fit here. You and Jack fit with me,” I whisper. “I should’ve been there for you, and when you get back . . .” She nods, and I peer down the hall at Jack again. Mom’s buzzing past him back and forth, checking for everything she could’ve forgotten. I decide to risk furthering her suspicions and go sit beside him. “Hey.”

“Hi,” he mumbles.

I lower my voice. “Remember when I was the worst?”

His eyebrows flick up, and he struggles against a smile. “When was that?”

“At least all summer,” I say, “but possibly longer.”

He finally looks at me, and despite the way his chubby cheeks have started to hollow after his recent six-inch growth spurt, he is unmistakably a stretched-out version of my baby
brother. Coco’s always been the more assertive leader of the two, and it surprises me to see goofy, laid-back, go-with-the-flow Jack looking so grown up and downtrodden.

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.

“For?”

I look over my shoulder to watch Mom slip into the laundry room. “Coco told me about the fight.”

He rolls his eyes and sighs in annoyance as he cranes his neck to look for Coco. “Jack, it’s fine. I won’t tell Mom and Dad. I just wanted you to know that . . . you’re wonderful, and I love you, and I don’t want you to pick or finish fights on my behalf, and I’m sorry I haven’t been around much, and also you were wrong about the carburetor, so there’s that.”

Jack snorts a laugh. “You’re weird.”

“Are you sure? Because no one’s ever told me that before.”

“And you’re not the worst.”

“Likewise,” I say. “You’re very not the worst.”

I stand to go, but when I walk behind the couch, a sharp lift in my abdomen doubles me over, and when I cut my eyes back to Jack, he’s gone. The house is dark, the windows along the deck a glare-ridden midnight blue, and a soft yellow circle glows on the kitchen table, just under the hanging stained glass lamp over its center. I feel swayed by a slow motion, like the world’s swirling around me at half-speed.

My mom sits at the end of the table alone, her face pressed into her hands and her shoulders shaking. She pulls her feet up onto the chair and hugs her legs to her chest, letting her forehead dip against her knees. She looks young, a lot younger really, or at least like she’s dyed her hair.

Oh, God. Why is she crying? Who is she crying for?

I don’t want to see this. I can’t. I stumble backward down the hall and run up the stairs, time jolting back into place as I push back my bedroom door to find my hideous Raider staring at me from behind one eye patch. The floor is bare, apart from the cardboard boxes stacked in the corner, but I still feel too crowded to breathe.

I try to focus on anything other than the pain in my chest and the multicolored dots popping across my vision:
The nights Megan and I spent watching thunderstorms from the garage, searching the sky for shooting stars from the roof of the porch. The hours I slept in Beau’s arms on the floor in the closet. The stories Grandmother told from the rocking chair. The bus stop where I waited in the dark, in the sweltering heat and burning cold on school mornings.

Still can’t breathe, can’t calm down.

The sledding hill in the backyard, and the creek at the bottom that nearly gave me frostbite. The sprinklers we ran through in summertime. Sneaking downstairs with the twins on Christmas Eve to see whether Mom and Dad had put our presents out yet. The series of clues Mom spread throughout the house that led me to the garage, where my birthday present, a Saint Bernard puppy in a blue bow, waited for me.

And the night I climbed through the window and looked back to find that Beau had vanished. The slow passage of minutes ever since then that I’ve spent waiting.

I’m in a house full of ghosts. I can’t take the thought of adding another. I bring my hand to touch the wall. “Grandmother,” I whisper into the emptiness. “If you can hear me,
find
me.”

Megan’s mom is an anesthesiologist, and her dad’s an architect who loves hunting, so their house is not only enormous but remote, hidden down a long gravel road and a beautiful perimeter of forest. As a kid, its spaciousness and its white columns reminded me of the White House, but the floor plan is surprisingly open and modern.

Mr. and Mrs. Phillips escort us all down to Megan’s room, which takes up the majority of the basement, its sliding back doors stepping onto a big patio that overlooks a manmade fishing lake. The room has a distinct princessy feel that Megan neither had anything to do with nor ever worked to change or keep up. The floor, usually covered in clothes and paper and books, is now spotless, and I feel a twinge of sadness.

“Can’t believe we agreed to let you skip out on us,” Dad says from behind me.

“You guys thought it was a good idea,” I remind him. “Independence and mental health and all that.”

“No, your
mom
thought that,” he says. “She’s the fun, laid-back one. I’m the disciplinarian.”

I snort. “Yeah, that sounds like you. You should consider changing the title on your business cards from Horse Whisperer to Horse Fascist.”

“You know what, that has a ring to it. Not a bad idea, sugar cube.” He kisses the top of my head, and Mom releases a little whimper.

“We’ll give you a minute,” Mrs. Phillips says, then slips back up the stairs with Mr. Phillips.

Mom pulls me into a hug. “It’s only for a few weeks,” I remind her.

“And then you’ll go off to college,” she says. “You’re too grown up. Stop that.”

“Trust me, I tried.”

Mom laughs, and snorts back her accumulating tear-snot. “We really are so proud of you.”

“Thanks.”

“Call us, sugar,” Dad says, nudging my chin with his hand.

They leave, and I dissolve onto the bed. If only Beau were here, I wouldn’t feel so scared or empty. If only I knew where Grandmother had gone.

26

Joyce Kincaid calls me Saturday morning to remind me about the benefit tonight. They’ve combined it with Raider Madness, a portion of the proceeds going to Matt’s medical expenses and the rest to the football team.

“I just hope that, wherever he is, he knows,” she sniffles. “That he sees how much everyone cares. And I’m so happy you could stay through all of this. It would mean so much to him.”

“Yeah,” I say, “I’m happy I could stay too.”

Truthfully, I’d been desperately trying to convince myself I didn’t have to go to the benefit, while driving myself insane with the thought that, very likely, Beau would be there, if in another universe. Even standing on the other side of an impassable veil from him sounds better than the last couple of days without him. When I hang up with Joyce, I slip out the back of
Megan’s room onto the patio. The air is cooler than I expected, and dark clouds hang in low clumps over the pond and the woods. Everything’s completely distorted by fog, but I set out anyway, taking my phone with me. I try to get ahold of Beau again, but the call won’t go through, and I’m left trudging aimlessly through the forest, straining my mind in an attempt to open his world again.

My phone starts buzzing in my hand, and I nearly drop it before accepting the call and planting it against my face just as I process the name onscreen.

“Rachel?”

“Well, hello to you too,” Rachel says, apparently indignant at my surprise.

I sigh. “Is there a reason you’re calling, Rachel?”

She lets out an even longer sigh. “Look, I’m sorry about
what happened between me and Matt. He was wasted, and I guess I was . . . curious.”

“It’s fine,” I say sharply. “Is that all?”

“God, Natalie, I’m trying to apologize.”

“You don’t need to.” The anger in my voice makes my words unconvincing, even though I honestly don’t know who I’m upset with anymore.

“Fine, whatever,” Rachel says. “I was just calling—I just wanted to know if you wanted to ride together to Madness tonight.”

“Why?” I say, genuinely confused.

“Because no one else gets it,” she replies fiercely. “Because I don’t want to spend another freaking second listening to Molly Haines sobbing like she knew him. I don’t even want to go tonight, but now that it’s for Matty . . . I just thought if
you
went . . .”

She trails off, and I’m so surprised I don’t know how to answer.

“Hello?”

“Okay,” I say.

“Okay what?”

“We can ride together. I don’t really get why, but fine.”

“Fine,” she says. “You can pick me up at nine. I don’t want to be there all night.”

“Wow, really? Thank you so much.”

“And people think
I’m
the bitch,” she retorts.

Rachel lives in a trailer park out past Derek Dillhorn’s McMansion neighborhood, like the city planners thought it might be a good idea to remind poor people they were poor and rich people they were rich. It’s a complete grab bag as far as upkeep. Rachel’s house is one of the nicest, with a neat yard she’s probably responsible for tending since both her mom and sister work night shifts and sleep mostly during the day.

When we were kids, we loved to have slumber parties over there on nights Janelle, her sister, was in charge because there were no rules. As we got older, though, the invitations to Rachel’s house stopped coming, and it’s been ages since I’ve been here.

She’s waiting out in the yard, another thing she used to do when we came over, to make sure no one knocked or rang the doorbell while Mrs. Hanson was sleeping. Watching her walk up to the Jeep, I feel an ache of regret. Not that I feel bad for her—I don’t—but I remember all the reasons I love her. All the reasons we used to be friends. She may be a bitch, but she’s a genuine bitch with heart. She’s a fighter, keeping everything together for her family, and working hard to graduate, despite the
fact that Mrs. Hanson’s been telling her she was pretty enough not to have to since we were ten years old.

“Never thought I’d see an Ivy League girl in my driveway,” Rachel says as she plops into the passenger seat. “So, what made you decide to stick around in the boonies for the rest of summer?”

“Stuff,” I offer.

She runs her hands through her hair. “Sounds important.”

We lapse into silence as I pull out of the neighborhood and turn back toward the school. We’re still ten minutes off when Rachel’s eyes snap to the passenger window. “Pull over,” she says anxiously.

“What—why?”

“That’s it, the memorial!”

“Memorial?” I say, scouring the side of the road up near the next intersection. “For Matt? He’s not
dead
.”

“Shrine, vigil, whatever you want to call it—just pull over.”

I slow down and rumble to a stop beside the poster stapled to the telephone pole that reads
PRAY FOR MATT KI
NCAID
#4.
Teddy bears and notes and flowers and jerseys sit in piles around the sign, and Rachel jumps out and runs to them before I’ve turned the car off. I step out and follow to where she’s kneeling in the gravelly shoulder, two fingers pressed to the sign.

“What are we doing here?” I ask softly as I approach.

She opens her eyes and sighs in annoyance. “What does it look like? I’m praying. What, are you too sophisticated to pay your respects?”

“Rachel, can we cut it out with your whole snobby Brown bit?” I say, sitting down beside her. “I’m really not in the mood.”

She glances at me sidelong. “Why
did
you stay? I mean, was it because of Matt?”

I run my fingernails over the sides of my scalp. “I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe partly. But mostly, I’m just trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing right now. It didn’t feel like a good time to leave.”

She drops onto her butt and pulls her thighs up to her chest, resting her chin on her knees. “You’re lucky.”

“Why?” I ask, suspicious.

“Because you’re one of those people who’s
supposed
to be doing something, while the rest of us just do what we do, you know?”

“No,” I say. “I don’t think there are people like that.”

She gives a brittle laugh. “Natalie, you’ve wanted to go to Brown since you were fifteen. That year, all I wanted was for Janelle to invite me to her parties and to go to homecoming with Derek. I thought I was just enjoying my life, you know, while you were trying to get away from yours. But everything I’ve ever wanted was wrapped up in high school, and now it’s like there’s just
nothing
. Nothing except Matt in a coma, and all my friends going off to UK. And you, getting the hell out of here like you’ve always wanted.”

“It’s not you guys I wanted to get away from,” I say quietly. “You know that, right?”

She gives me a disbelieving look then glances back at the poster. “At least you want something, even if it is just to leave. I have nothing to want, except for everyone to come back. Nothing, forever.”

“What about dance?”

“I never wanted to
dance
,” she answers. “I wanted to be on the dance
team
. That’s different.”

“I don’t know if I want to go to Brown.” It comes out like a balloon deflating, but there it is, hanging in the air for the first time ever. “I want to be smart. I want to know the truth, and to matter.

“That’s stupid,” she says.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s stupid,” she repeats bluntly. “You won’t
matter
because you went to Brown. You already matter.”

“Rachel,” I sigh. She doesn’t understand—and how could she?—but she opened up to me, and today, right now, I want to try. “Look. When I was fifteen, I lost someone who was really important to me. She knew me better than anyone, than even my family or Megan or Matt. Like, she totally got me and was more like me than anyone I’ve ever met, and once she was gone, I stopped feeling like I knew who I was, and I especially stopped feeling like I fit in. I went back to feeling like a five-year-old kid who had to prove she was just like everyone else. That’s why I quit dancing—I felt like it was feeding into that feeling, and I wanted to learn how to be myself, unapologetically. And I want to know about my heritage, because I’ve still never really looked.
That’s
why I chose Brown. Because it’s far away, but not
too
far away, and they have Native American and Indigenous Studies
and
dance, and yes, because it’s Ivy League. It’s a little easier to explain wanting the supreme college experience than all the other stuff.”

“You could’ve explained that, if you wanted to.” Rachel appraises me with the same look she used all those years ago when we first met. “Well,” she says finally, “Brown won’t make
you become yourself either. You just
are
yourself, whether you want to be or not.”

“And just because you don’t know what you want yet, it doesn’t mean there’s nothing to want.”

She rolls her eyes, but then a smile lifts up her mouth. “Whatever.” She pushes against her knees to stand and dusts off the back of her jeans. “We should get going.”

I nod. “Just give me a second?”

“Sure.” She walks back to the car to wait for me.

I turn to the poster, unsure of what I need from it exactly. I touch my hand to it like Rachel did and close my eyes. “Help me,” I whisper.

I open my eyes, and something flutters across my vision. My heart starts within my chest as I try to catch hold of the change. The poster is gone, a new stone sign appearing in its place. The paraphernalia littering the shoulder is gone too, replaced with a mound of purple and yellow wildflowers, but before I can read the new words on the sign, they change again. Not back to Matt’s name and number either, but to a wooden cross with words etched into it that vanish before I can process them,
PRAY FOR
MATT KINCAID
#4 reappearing almost instantaneously.

Oh God.

Alice must be right.

There are more than two worlds.

Either that, or I just moved through time again. Maybe the poster will be replaced someday. Maybe it used to say something different. All I know is there are at least two other signs occupying this exact space.

Just then Rachel honks the Jeep’s horn and shouts, “Hey, Nat, it’s hot, and God can hear you fine in the car, okay? Come on.”

Before Grandmother disappeared and before there were more than two worlds and before my childhood love was in a coma, Raider Madness used to be one of my favorite events of the summer. I remember all the excited nerves jostling around inside me freshman year as Mom drove me over. The carnival-style night ends with an open football practice, and it was Matt’s first year on the team.

I wondered if they’d give him any playing time, or if Devin Berskhire, the senior QB, would be out strutting across the field the whole time. I actually
worried
that Matt would get to do a few plays and mess up. Not because I cared whether or not he was good at football, but because I knew how embarrassed he’d be, and the kinds of things his dad would say to him later. It’s weird to think that Matt was only weeks away from escaping Raymond’s constant criticism, and now . . .

The things that used to scare me seem so small now. An increasingly familiar pain pushes against me, an ache to have Beau here. I can’t help thinking everything would be okay, or at least better, with Beau here.

Rachel and I make our way through the parking lot, snagging a fair amount of stares and whispers. Rachel responds by baring her teeth. “Goddamn gossips,” she says. “Staring at us like, what are those two girls who’ve both made out with Matt Kincaid doing standing beside each other?”

“It’s not you,” I say. “It’s me.”

“Well,
that’s
not egotistical.”

“It’s a fact. I’m the one who made out with someone else
at Derek’s, then argued with Matt in the street before he drove off. They all think it’s my fault, and they’re not exactly wrong.”

Rachel stops walking and snorts. “Oh my God. You don’t honestly buy that?”

“Don’t you?”

She sort of glances around then grabs my sleeve and drags me behind an inflatable obstacle course. “Look,” she says. “Matt told me something. And he really didn’t want me to tell anyone else, but if it’ll help you get over this phase, then I guess it’s worth it.”

“Go on,” I say.

She crosses her arms and looks down at her sandal, which she’s twisting against the ground. “Matty’s an alcoholic.”

“What?”
I say. “No, he’s not.”

“I mean, that’s the short version, not his words, but yeah,” Rachel says. “He told me the night of his birthday party. Or . . . the next morning, actually.” I stifle a groan as she looks back up at me. “He started drinking more when you guys broke up, and I guess it got out of hand. Lately, the guy hasn’t been able to take a sip without finishing the bottle.”

I shake my head in disbelief and slump against the moon bounce. “How could I not have known that?”

She shrugs. “No one did. We all just thought he was partying, like the rest of us. He only told me because he felt bad that we almost screwed and he barely remembered it. He was really ashamed. It wasn’t the first time he blacked out, and he knows he’s a dick when he drinks too. He just hadn’t figured out how to let go of it yet.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah,” Rachel says, though she doesn’t know the half of it.

She doesn’t know how the Other Matt refused a drink that fateful night of the party, how Beau tensed when I even offered it.

Nah, I shouldn’t,
he’d said.

How, after Matt and I fought by his car, Beau dragged him off me and threw him down in the street.

And then that morning, in the hospital, when Beau sat apart from the Kincaids, Joyce’s upper lip raised in a near-snarl like she blamed him for the accident. The Other Megan affirming, that yes, in fact, Joyce
did
blame him. Not for the accident. For the drinking in general.

It’s all making sense. Matt may have just become an alcoholic in our world, but he’d already been one in Beau’s. A golden boy with a predisposition to addiction, regardless of his circumstances.

“Are you all right?” Rachel asks, gripping my shoulder. That’s when I realize how lightheaded I feel. Rachel steadies me as I slide down the side of the inflatable castle to the ground.