“Ella!” I scream my sister’s name in his face, so loudly that my cheeks beat with my pumping heart.

  “Your room. Now!” My dad points beyond my shoulder, and like a petulant child, I fold my arms over my chest and rush up the steps, slamming my bedroom door behind me and flopping face-first into my pillow. I fold the ends up around my cheeks and muffle my scream, yelling until I nearly run out of air. Tinges of blackout dull my sight. School begins in ten minutes. I’m not going to make it today.

  My parents don’t make a sound for an hour. I don’t either. We give each other this time and space to breathe and fall back down to earth. The unthinkable happened. We cracked. All three of us all at once. It’s the most I’ve felt in this house since we moved here…since I remember not feeling things anymore. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt, truly. I’ve talked to professionals about feelings, taken pills to numb them, dreamt meaningful nightmares that I dismiss easily—but actual feeling? For my sister and what she left behind? I don’t think I’ve ever walked that path.

  The knock on my door is soft. I sit up, my face puffy, and cry out. I rub fists at my eyes and pull my blanket up over my lap like I would on a sick day.

  “Come in,” I croak out.

  My mom’s eyes hit mine. They’re wide with panic, her movements slow and steady. Every step she takes into my room is steeped in caution. I feel like an alien held captive for study; she’s afraid I might be violent.

  My dad steps in behind her, stopping at my door while she makes her way to the end of my bed. She sits with one leg bent, one foot on the floor. We should hug at this point, shouldn’t we? Isn’t this where the I’m sorrys come into play?

  “I shouldn’t have yelled like that,” my mom says, glancing over her shoulder to my dad. His mouth pulls in for a tight smile. He’s nervous too. Their apprehension puts me on edge. I shift my legs under my cover, drawing them in closer to my body.

  “I’m sorry I said…” I swallow hard. My throat is so dry. “I’m just sorry.”

  I said my sister’s name enough for a lifetime, probably. They know what I’m sorry about.

  My dad’s phone buzzes in his hand and he holds up a finger as he steps out in the hallway. My mom looks at the shaggy, brown carpet of my floor, both of us paused while my dad talks to what I think is my school.

  “Yes, she’ll be out today. Nothing serious. Just a little bug,” he says, walking back into the room. “Sorry, I meant to call.”

  My dad’s eyes hit mine and he gives me a brief smile. I mimic it. When he ends the call I whisper out “thanks.”

  “There goes the perfect attendance award,” he says. A joke. That felt nice. Jokes are what we do. Let’s get back to those. I’m so angry at myself for shaking up the snow globe we live in.

  “It’s just a certificate for a free personal pizza. I’ll live,” I say with a wry smile.

  “I’ll buy you a pizza,” my dad says.

  My mom sighs in the middle of our banter; we both grow quiet again. There’s a heaviness that settles in the air of my room. My legs grow hot under my covers, so I unroll my blanket and pull my socks from my feet. I know it was all just a fight, but I feel like I really am sick now. This sick day is no longer just an excuse.

  “Do you…remember Ella?” My mom forces this question from her mouth. I can see in the lines on her forehead how hard those four words were to say. I give them the respect they deserve and think about my answer for several seconds before answering honestly.

  “A little,” I say.

  She nods as she sucks in her top lip. My dad clears his throat and changes his position where he leans at my door, folding his arms tighter around his body. Both of my parents glance at each other and my equilibrium instantly fails me. I lean back so my head hits the wall, a wave of dizzy tilting my entire room, breath hard to come by.

  “You’ve never really been able to…”

  My mom just stops. My dad steps into the room finally, lowering himself to sit on my floor with his back against my dresser. My favorite necklaces dangle from crystal knobs behind his head.

  “What?” I ask quietly.

  My eyes flit between the two of them. They’re literally biting their tongues.

  “Remember much. I was going to say remember much,” my mom says, her voice rough and strained to escape her.

  “Much of Ella?” I prod her to give me more. Please, I’ve endured this morning—I’ve wrecked our bubble. Just give me more.

  “Yes, and…”

  “And the day she died,” my dad finishes for my mom. She flinches and reaches her hand to him as if he said too much, but her fingers curl slowly and her fist falls to her knee.

  “It was kind of traumatic…I guess,” I say, letting the scenes flip through my mind like they always have, still photographs from time. The boat. My uncle’s face. The smell of fish. Worms in a foam cup. The water smelled of algae. Cold, wet, deep, dark.

  My sister’s voice. My own scream.

  My dad nods, but there’s a sick expression painted on his lips. I’m not seeing something. My head starts to ache from the search I put it through.

  “Ella was a good dancer,” my mom says, trying to draw my father out of his trance. He breathes in slowly through his nose and moves his gaze to my mom’s.

  “She was. She was a very good swimmer too,” he says. Mom’s face sinks in despair.

  This is a fact that doesn’t fit the puzzle. She couldn’t swim. Or she couldn’t swim in the dark. It was too dark. No way to see the boat. She just jumped in. There wasn’t a pause. No thought or warning. We were fishing and then suddenly—

  I stare into my dad’s eyes. He’s willing me to go deeper. I see it in the way his lids stretch wide, the probing heat of his glare but the sympathy that droops his cheeks. Something is missing. What is missing? What am I not seeing?

  “Ari!”

  I let my eyes fall closed at the faint recollection of my sister’s voice. She yelled my name. She called for me. I hear it now. I let her voice, the sound of it, echo in my head. Why would she jump in the water and call out to me before drowning? Why would she say my name? Why not my uncle’s.

  My skin chills.

  I jumped in the water.

  My eyes flash open and the breath leaves my lungs.

  I was in the water. I…I jumped in the water. I dove in head first. I couldn’t swim. I didn’t know what I was doing. I don’t know why I dove in. Something told me to. My brain—a voice in my head just said to do it. I was escaping and falling. It was spontaneous and it was exactly like Ella. She was the one who had to be watched carefully. I’d always been so careful. And then suddenly, I wasn’t.

  I was like her. I am like her!

  I cover my mouth in an attempt to swallow the shock inside my body. My eyes burn with tears. My lips are wide open in awe, in desperation for words, for something to say that can capture everything hitting me instantly.

  “She tried to save me,” I cry out.

  My mom wails.

  My dad crawls on his hands and knees toward me, reaching for me with his arms while I try to recoil into myself. I dove into the water. It was me, not Ella. Ella was only trying to save me; that’s why she yelled my name.

  “I killed her!” I shout the truth, saliva overflowing my mouth, tears drenching my face, my fingers clawing at my face in shame. “It was my fault! I killed her, I killed her, I…”

  “Shhhh!” My dad crawls up on the bed next to me, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me to him even when I try to flee. This is too much. I shouldn’t have tried to know. I should have kept this in the dark.

  “It’s my fault,” I howl.

  “No, no, no…” my dad repeats. He starts to rock me until I’m compliant in his arms. I meld into him and my mom moves closer to hold me from the other side. They both hug me tight, my arms tethered to my body while my insides ache to shake free.

  “But it’s true,” I cry.

  “No,” my dad repeats.

  He tells me “no” for the next hour. He says it periodically when I start to protest again. I drown in my reality for hours, until my body grows weary and my arms and legs become numb. My mom never leaves my side, even through the four hours of sleep I fall into. I wake in her lap, and I hold onto her thighs and make promises to be better, to do better, because I can’t bring Ella back.

  She tells me I don’t have to be anything, that I’m perfect.

  I take a blue pill.

  Jesse comes to our door.

  My dad invites him inside and that’s the last thing I remember until I wake up to greet Wednesday. It’s time to do it all again, only differently.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I don’t look the same. Not to my own eyes. I’m a different person than I was just twenty-four hours ago. Then, I was a girl who lost her sister and whose family was just moving on…somehow.

  I was never really that girl at all.

  The blue pill has started to melt with the sweat of my palm. The steam of the shower is helping it along. I wonder how long I’ve been taking these? I should know. My stress, my PTSD, my nerves and anxiety—I don’t know if that’s the story I got, or that’s the one I just stuck with on my own. I looked up the name on my phone a few minutes ago. I’ve looked it up before. I’ve always focused on the part that helps people with anxiety.

  Fluoxetine. Depression. Bipolar disorder. Genetic. Common.

  Those are the words that stand out now.

  Those words resonated. They say people shouldn’t self-diagnose on the Internet, but I’m just filling in gaps. These conversations always happen in doctors’ offices, and I just tune the jargon out while my parents say things like “she’s doing well” and “excellent progress.”

  I wonder what would happen if I just didn’t take it?

  My hand tips and the pill tumbles nearly off my skin. I close my palm and grip it before it spills into the sink and down my drain. I have an entire bottle. I could never completely get rid of them. I shouldn’t. I wonder who I am without these though?

  I put the pill in my mouth and swallow it with the glass of water sitting next to my sink, then step from my clothes and slip through the shower curtain under the hot stream of water. My skin burns. It isn’t the heat but the ache I’ve manifested because I just need to hurt. Jesse sent me a text message this morning. He said he would be here to take me to school. His mom bought a second car—his car.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  He talked with my parents. I wonder what about? I couldn’t bear to break into the conversation or leave the comfort of my cave. I slept and hid because I couldn’t run away. I don’t want to run today. I want to face things. I also want to go back, but that’s not in my cards now.

  I could stay in the shower through every last drop of hot water and then just get used to the cold, but I have to move forward. Moving forward involves leaving this shower.

  I wrap the towel around my hair and squeeze at the ends to make them curl naturally. My phone buzzes at my sink; I turn it over to read the message. It’s Jesse. He’s in the driveway.

  I breathe in deep.

  Be right there.

  I hit send on my text and dive into my shirt, wrestling the long sleeves down my damp arms. I’m wearing one of my dad’s shirts today. It’s some skiing-lodge shirt he bought during a trip he took with my mom last year. One of their date-nights-slash-date-weekends. I hope I didn’t ruin date nights of the future for them.

  I should not be going to school today.

  My arms and legs are heavy; I use their weight to carry me down the stairs with speed. My dad is waiting at the kitchen table. It’s like a replay of the day before only the plastic and glitter is back. It doesn’t belong anymore.

  “You can have your ID back,” he says, setting it down on the table next to my backpack.

  I scrunch my eyes and narrow my focus on it. Picking it up between my thumb and finger, I turn it around and inspect it for some sort of damage. Surely, my parents drew a line through it or slashed some part to make it more unusable than it probably already is. Nothing about it is different. What the hell?

  I hold it out and arch a brow at my dad. He shrugs.

  “Jesse was really convincing. Your mom said she wants proof of the show, though,” my dad says.

  I hold my breath and let that sink in. Jesse talked to both of my parents. He convinced them of the truth, and they, after the night we had, felt like I deserved my fake ID so I could go to a bar and play drums.

  “This isn’t how healthy families work,” I say, tucking the card in a side pocket of my backpack. I make a mental note to remember where it is later.

  “Good thing we aren’t a healthy family then.” My dad blows the steam from his cup of coffee and takes a sip as he stares at me. His mouth ticks up with a grin. I’m not able to return it. I can’t pretend.

  I pull my bag together and move to the cabinets, flipping a few of them open in search of a granola bar or Pop-Tart, or something portable.

  “I can make you eggs,” my dad says.

  “Jesse’s here. He texted,” I say, grabbing a wrapped Danish from a box and tearing away a napkin from the roll by our sink.

  “Oh,” my dad hums.

  His gaze drifts off for a moment, the reality of everything I’m aware of briefly washing over him. He’ll tuck it away again in a second. I can almost see it happening.

  “You guys could always just…I don’t know…come?”

  My dad blinks at my suggestion. I spoke English. I know I did.

  “To our gig. See me play.”

  He chuckles to himself and sits back a little against the counter, holding his elbow in his palm and cup in his other hand.

  “Gig. They still call things gigs, huh?” My dad is focusing on the nuances of language because he’s uncomfortable.

  “Yeah, we sometimes say cool and hip, too.” I say. I’m uncomfortable too.

  “Hip, huh?”

  “No, I made that one up. But things are cool. We say that one.”

  He nods and his eyes stick to my face for maybe the longest they’ve been able to since before.

  Before.

  “Are things?” he finally says.

  I puzzle my eyes at him.

  “Cool? Here, I mean?” He motions to me then to his chest.

  I crack some. The welled tear hits my vision fast, and I try to erase it with the back of my palm as I hiccup with emotion. I nod.

  “Yeah, a little. We’re a little cool. We’ll get there, too. Just…”

  He stands and moves closer to me, setting his mug down and pulling me into a hug.

  “Your mom went to work this morning. She needs the routine, but I’m here ready to break it whenever you want. Okay?” He kisses the top of my head and I shake in his arms. My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s Jesse.

  “Okay,” I nod against my dad.

  I swallow it all down, choke on it, then turn my eyes away from my dad and walk right through the door.

  I’m not sure how much Jesse knows, but I get that he knows enough to let me be the one to bring things up first. Maybe I will later. For now, I want to pretend this life is all normal. I’m just a girl getting into the passenger seat of her boyfriend’s hatchback with tape holding the window in place.

  Jesse leans over when I get my buckle on and puckers his lips for a kiss. It’s corny, and he’s being that way on purpose. It’s also sweet.

  I peck his lips with my own, but before I can back up, he reaches up and cups my face and rests his head against mine. His lips dust mine a little more softly the second time, and I close my eyes and just exist here for the moment.

  “I know,” he says.

  I breathe in.

  I breathe out.

  I nod.

  “Let’s go to school,” I say.

  He pulls away and places his hands on the wheel, tapping the shifter with his palm and putting us in reverse to back down my driveway.

  “You know I’m giving you a full day of school,” he says. “Must mean something.”

  He looks at me sideways, crooked smile hugged by parenthesis. I give him the same look.

  “Yeah…it must,” I say.

  There’s a fullness to those words without actually saying what they mean.

  Jesse pulls into our school lot, parking next to Sam’s coffin car, and the three of us walk in together. Jesse holds my hand until we have to part, and Sam takes over when he has to leave. Her first hour is just a few doors down from the band room, so I get to walk with her longer. She’s completely in the dark about my life right now. Seconds before our school day starts is not the right time to fill her in, either.

  “Did you get your ID?” She’s excited about me buying liquor.

  I laugh and reach into the pocket of my backpack to show it to her. She can’t hide her reaction. She’s never been able to fake it with me.

  “Girl, that’s shit!”

  She holds it closer to her face as if somehow that view will make it better. I snort out a laugh and take it from her hand, putting it back in my bag.

  “I know. It was sort of a situation. It’s been a long two days.” I sigh.

  “You took a sick day. Must have been!” She laughs about it, and I fake it along with her. Unlike my friend, I can lie. I’ve been lying to myself for years.

  The need to hug her then, though, gives too much away. I wrap my arms around her and hold on just a little too long.

  “Ari?” Her voice is soft in my ear. I feel the tears wanting to slip out. I can’t do this here.

  “It’s okay,” I say, plastering the smile back on my face. I step back and let our eyes meet; I shine the truth at her for a beat then put my mask back on. “I’ll tell you everything later. I promise.”

  She nods, but I see how worried she is. I reach out and take her hand, squeezing it.

  “I. Promise.” I repeat and cross my heart with my other hand as I let go of her touch.

  I slip through the door as the bell rings and head right for the drum kit, picking up the sticks and starting to play—loud, furious, feverish, erratic, and constant. My beats shift from swing to jazz to just noise. It’s a barrage, and it’s the only way I can express myself. My hands say the words I can’t formulate. I scream with my sticks and my rhythm. I shout and beg and cry—the crashes come down hard, the cymbals vibrating until they nearly come off their stands. Sweaty and arms limp, I sit back and pant, then glance up to take in the dozens of pairs of eyes blinking at me. Josh’s are the biggest. My teacher’s look angry. Most people are just afraid.