The Secrets We Keep (7 page)

She'd been making fun of us for days. Apparently, one-piece bathing suits were for losers who chose to take art classes over sailing and volleyball. Didn't bother me—the total influence that girl had on my life would last two weeks, then I'd never have to see her again. But Maddy … she was peeved and wanted to prove that she was as good as, if not better than, that girl. Somehow, Maddy decided a second piercing in each of her ears was the way to do it.

Maddy handed me a needle from the sewing kit Mom had stashed in her trunks and an ice pack she'd snagged from the nurse's office. Everybody else in our cabin was asleep, had drifted off hours ago. We hadn't told them about our plan. This was our secret … a secret sisters would keep.

Maddy squinted, her eyes shut so tightly that her face scrunched up, making her look painfully amusing. I told her to relax, but she didn't. She grunted for me to get it over with, then dug her nails into the wooden frame of our bunk bed.

We were naïve back then and assumed five minutes with an ice pack would numb her ear enough for there to be no pain. I never did get to pierce the other ear; she swore and jumped the second I jabbed the needle through her skin.

“Jesus, Ella. That hurt,” she yelled, and shoved me away.

Maddy made me swear to never tell Mom, and only wore an extra earring when we were at school. She stopped wearing the extra one altogether a few years back. The hole was nearly closed now, the pinprick-sized mark almost invisible.

I remembered her words clear as day. It was the first time she'd ever yelled at me, the first time she'd ever physically pushed me away. I also distinctly remembered her calling me Ella.
Me.
Ella.

Seeing my sister lying there on that steel table unlocked a piece of my mind I'd lost a few short days ago. A history, dreams, a future that belonged solely to me. They came back … every memory I ever had, hurtling to the surface. The My Little Pony lunch box I got the first day of kindergarten. The matching dresses we wore for Christmas each year until we were ten. The day we graduated from junior high—Maddy in heels, me in flip-flops. Josh arguing with the pizza guy last week over whether or not he should get his steak-bomb pizza for free because it took them more than thirty minutes to deliver it. And Maddy, yelling at me in the car because she thought I was a loser, someone to be ashamed of.

I turned my head toward the hallway, half-expecting my parents to walk through that door, to have somehow come to the same horrifyingly insane conclusion I had: that they were so completely wrong. That it was Maddy who was dead. That it was me—Ella—who had survived.

“Maddy, this was a bad idea,” Alex said. “I shouldn't have let you do this, not without your parents here at least.”

My parents. Mom was so excited when she realized Maddy was the one who had survived. Dad standing there next to her, immersed in the same joy. They didn't see me; they saw Maddy. Everybody saw Maddy.

“Josh?” He was the one person who knew me, who would see
me
. “Where's Josh? I want to talk to Josh.”

Alex's hand tensed around mine, his eyes looking everywhere but at me. “He's at home, Maddy. After Ella … he's home.”

“What?” That didn't make any sense. Josh and I had been inseparable since ninth grade. I had to kick him out of my house most Saturday nights, and he'd be back first thing Sunday morning with a new anime movie or some extra-credit project for physics. The only reason he wasn't at my house the night of the accident was because I'd kicked him out. I'd needed to finish my last sketch and the constant chiming of his phone with incoming texts from Kim had been distracting me. But why wasn't he here now? “This doesn't make any sense. None of this makes any sense.”

“He came to the hospital with me, Maddy, but by the time they got you settled into your room…”

“No, wait.” The burning in my chest amplified and panic began to wash over me. I yanked on his hand until he stopped. I wasn't ready to leave. Not yet.

“Miss Lawton, we need to get you back upstairs,” the nurse said. She stood up from her seat in the corner and grabbed the wheelchair I'd left sitting in the middle of the room. “I want to take your vitals and give you something to calm down.”

I waved her off and took a step closer to Alex. I didn't want to sit down and be wheeled away. I wanted an answer. “Why did Josh leave? Why didn't he stay?”

Alex hesitated as if weighing his words. He started to step back, but I reached for his wrist, holding him in place. The tears had begun again, my body shaking with frustration over the truth that everybody refused to see. How could I make him understand that I was Ella? That the hand he was holding on to was not his girlfriend's but her sister's. Mine.

“Alex?” There was a demand in the nurse's tone, a plea to him to do something to calm me down, or she would.

“Don't worry about Josh,” Alex said as he gently guided me into the wheelchair. “He knows it wasn't your fault.”

Oh, it was absolutely my fault. I remembered everything now, every last gruesome detail of how I'd killed my sister. My sobs echoed through the hall as he wheeled me onto the elevator, the sound so hollow, so pitiful, that I winced. But it wouldn't stop: not the tears, not the sobs, not the pain.

“Nobody blames you, Maddy. Nobody,” he continued as the nurse leaned over to take my pulse. She looked worried, scared even. Alex looked like he was going to be ill.

I pushed the nurse away and turned toward Alex: “Look at me. Stop telling me it isn't my fault and look at me!”

He circled around to the front of my wheelchair and looked into my eyes. “I've been looking at nothing but you since the accident, Maddy, and I still see the same strong, beautiful girl I always have. This … what happened to your sister doesn't change that.”

I couldn't help but wonder what he would say when he figured out that it was Ella and not his precious Maddy he was taking care of.

 

10

The elevator doors opened at my floor and Dad rushed toward them at the sound of my cries. Mom was there, too, hollering at Alex for not waking them up.

“Not Alex's fault,” I managed to sob out. “Ella.”

That last, heavy word took an enormous amount of energy, and I felt myself slipping, my mind closing in on itself.

“Maddy?” Alex said, the fear I felt pouring off him rivaling my own. I didn't want to see the hope in their eyes die as I forced them to realize that I was Ella.

I studied my dad, my own father, the man who I'd had breakfast with every day for the past seventeen years. The man who coached my middle school soccer team. The man who tried to teach me how to ride a bike one afternoon when I was seven and sat with me in the ER later that same day as they splinted my sprained wrist. Years of time together … of experiences, and my own father didn't even recognize me.

Or maybe he didn't want to. Maybe he wanted it to be Maddy who had lived, so that was who he saw.

Horror flashed through his eyes as he took the wheelchair from Alex and pushed me into my room. Distantly, somewhere in the remote crevices of my mind, I remembered that he still thought I was Maddy and that the soothing words he whispered weren't meant for me.

“What were you thinking?” Mom had Alex by the collar of his shirt and was yelling at him. “Why would you let her go down there? Why didn't you wake us?”

“Please. He didn't do this. I did,” I protested.

Realization of who I was and what I needed to tell them set in. I started to shake, every inch of my body freezing.
Cold.
I tried so hard to say the words, to tell my parents I was Ella, but I couldn't get a sound past my lips.

Dad helped me out of the wheelchair and back into bed, then sat down next to me. “We're gonna get you through this, Maddy. I promise.”

Get through this?
The phrase sounded so foreign to me, an unattainable solace that I had absolutely no right to hope for. I had been tired and angry and jealous that things came so easy for her. I'd screamed at her. The last words I said to her, the last words she would ever hear came from me, and they were bitter and mean.

“What have I done? Oh my God, what have I done?” I wanted nothing more than to trade places with Maddy, to give her back the life I'd taken. I didn't want to be here. Not without her.

“We are not angry with you, baby girl. We could never be angry with you.”

Dad never called me that. He called me Bellsy when I was a kid or Isabella when I was in trouble, but mostly he called me Ella. Baby girl was Maddy's nickname, one she both hated and used to her advantage when she wanted a curfew extension or extra money for shoes or a new pair of jeans.

“I'm so sorry, I didn't mean for her to die.” I shrank backward, the weight of those words settling deep in my core. Pressing my aching shoulders deeper into my pillow, I wished, for a moment, that I could dissolve into the bed and never come back.

“We know that,” Mom said. “It was a terrible accident, but you are here with us, Maddy. You're alive and you have your whole life ahead of you. Your whole life. I want you to think about that, concentrate on getting stronger. That's what your sister would want.”

I looked at Dad, wondering if he felt the same way, if he believed that, too. He smiled and nodded, but I could see the anguish behind his eyes, the battle he was waging to keep his emotions in check. “Ella wouldn't want you to waste a single minute of your life feeling guilty. She'd want you to live, to do everything you ever dreamed of and more. Do it for her, Maddy. Live for her.”

They wanted me to be Maddy. Alex, Dad, Mom, the friends who had waited in the hall for hours … days until I woke up, only leaving when Alex promised to call them if my condition changed. Every single one of them wanted Maddy to live. That was who they thought I was, that was who they told themselves I was. Maybe the real problem here wasn't that they didn't recognize me, maybe it was that I was me and not my sister. How was I supposed to tell them the truth, the horrible truth—that the girl they had rallied around, had begged God to let live, was gone?

I couldn't do it to them. I couldn't do it to her. If they wanted Maddy to live, then I'd make sure she did. Maddy deserved a chance at a real life, at happiness. I'd taken that from her with one angry jerk of the wheel. In my own selfishness, I'd done this to her, cut her life short. She'd get the life she deserved. She'd grow up, go to college, and have a family. I'd make sure she had everything she ever wanted or die trying. I'd make this up to her, to my parents, to Alex. I'd bury myself and give Maddy my life in return.

 

11

It was freezing out. A thin layer of frost glistened on the granite headstones as people carefully picked their way across the slick grass. It was supposed to warm up and be bright and sunny by midafternoon. Didn't matter to me either way.

The inside of the car smelled like a combination of rug shampoo and pine trees, and I couldn't help but wonder if there was a cheap cardboard air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. If I tried, I could probably see it from here. But that'd mean I'd actually have to move, and I didn't want to.

The windows had fogged over, and I swiped my hand across the glass. Mom and Dad were already there, standing by the giant hole in the ground and talking with the minister. People filled in around them, their heads bowed and their shoulders tense.

I was glad to be out of the hospital, doing something besides staring at the white walls while everybody talked in hushed tones about how much progress I'd made. I was no longer crying and hadn't taken a pain pill in days, but that had little to do with “progress” and everything to do with me not caring anymore. Part of me had died with Maddy, a piece so significant, so integral to who I was that I felt completely lost without her.

The shrink they'd sent to talk to me in the hospital thought it'd be a good idea if I went to the burial. Something about closure and moving on. My doctor agreed and discharged me a day early so I could attend. I'd said I'd go, but now that I was here, I couldn't move from the car, couldn't walk ten yards to the graveside to see my sister … to see
myself
buried.

The car door opened, and I slid over to avoid the rush of cold air.

“You coming?” Alex asked.

I'd been in the hospital for twelve days and he was there the entire time, hovering, always asking me if I wanted something to drink or if my shoulder hurt. At first I thought it was sweet. I enjoyed his company over my dark thoughts. But now I felt suffocated. I needed some privacy to say goodbye to my sister, to apologize for the last words I'd said to her. But I was never alone. Alex was always there.

He offered me his hand and I took it, stared at it as I memorized every minute detail, every insignificant flaw as his fingers entwined with mine. “Where's your coat?” he asked as he helped me out of the car.

“At home,” I said.

My parents were paranoid about bringing me out into the cold and had thrust two coats on me when they picked me up from the hospital this morning. Truth was, I didn't want either one. Something about the slap of the cold air against my skin felt good, reassuring. Each goose bump that rose on my skin was welcome, a sharp reminder that despite the misery I was encased in, I was, in fact, still alive.

Besides, the two wool coats weren't mine; they were Maddy's. I'd worn her black dress, but having her coat surrounding me, her warmth seeping into me, seemed wrong.

“Here,” Alex said as he shrugged out of his. I turned to let him wrap it around me, flinching when his hand brushed against my neck. Up until now, the only part of my body he'd touched was my hands.

“Your shoulder hurt?” he asked. They'd reset my dislocated shoulder while I was unconscious. My arm was still in a sling, but that was mostly due to the weight of the cast on my left wrist.