34 Pieces of You (19 page)

“Yeah,” Jake says, his expression grim. “Maybe you should.”

Sarah pushes her tangled hair away, and sits up in the bed. “No, don’t. I just need sleep, that’s all. I don’t feel that bad, really.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Sarah,” Jake says.

“No,” Sarah says, “I just . . . please . . . I’ll feel better if I sleep.”

“I don’t think she’s slept in days,” I tell him. I know this because lately I can’t sleep either, and throughout the night I hear the sounds of her restless movements below.

“You sure?” Jake asks, his reluctance audible.

Sarah nods and slips back down in the bed, pulling the covers up to her chin. “Can you get me water?” she asks.

I nod, and Jake follows me to the kitchen. I fill a glass and hand it to him.

He says, “I want to stay with her. Make sure she’s okay.”

I remember his face that day in Ellie’s bedroom. “Okay.”

“It’s just . . .” His voice halts, realizing I’ve said yes. The lines and wrinkles disappear. For a minute he looks so much like Ellie it twists me up inside. “Thanks, Jess.”

“My mom gets up at six, so you should be gone by then. Okay?”

“Okay,” he says. He takes the glass back to Sarah’s room. This time I follow him. I stop at the doorway and watch as he sets the glass down on the bedside table and helps Sarah into a sitting position. When he holds the glass to her mouth, waiting patiently for her to sip, I shut the door, because I can’t watch anymore. It’s too much to see everything I’ve lost.

BEFORE. NOVEMBER.

I found her lying on her bed in a robe, iPod cradled to her chest as she mouthed the lyrics to some song. Her eyes were closed, her wet hair twisted up in a towel. It was the first time I had seen her without makeup, and she looked young, slightly vulnerable, her face dotted with light brown freckles, her bare lips pink and glossy.

When I sat down on her bed, her eyelids fluttered open, her mouth twitching into a half smile. She removed the buds from her ear.

“Hey,” she said, her voice mellow. “How’d you get in?”

“Caught your stepdad on his way out. Is your mom still out of town?”

“Yep,” she said with a smirk. “Till Saturday. And as an extra bonus, he’ll leave on Thursday to join her.”

“Lucky you. What are you listening to?”

She held up an earbud. “Guess.”

Lately we had mysteriously grown closer, as if Ellie had decided to wave her white flag in surrender. There was a rhythm to us now. We saw each other regularly—even if it was still kept pretty secret—and texted a lot. She was even teaching me about her favorite bands.

“Well?” Ellie said.

It took a few seconds to identify the lyrics. “Mumford and Sons?”

“You got it.” A slow smile spread across her face. Her eyes were droopier than usual, as if she had been sleeping.

“Did I wake you?”

She shook her head, and put my hand on her waist, an unusual gesture from her. Most days she had to warm up to me first. But with this small encouragement and all the others accumulated over the last fourteen days, I decided to be brave and let my hand slip beneath her robe.

She laughed. “You’re sassy today.”

I shrugged, knowing she’d appreciate a vague response, and, watching her eyes carefully, I began to explore her. “Where were you last night? I texted you.”

This time she was the one to shrug. “Doing something, I’m sure.” She yawned.

“Why are you so sleepy?”

“You’ll get mad if I tell you.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Yes, you will.” She pushed my hand higher so that it cupped her breast. A tingling sensation spread through me.

“Are you trying to change the subject?”

She nodded, reaching up to kiss me.

“Why are you acting so strange?” I settled in beside her, resting my head on her shoulder. I tossed one leg over both of hers and squeezed tightly. She called this my “monkey on a vine” move. “I won’t be mad,” I whispered, kissing her neck and then the center of her chest.

“Fine,” she sighed. “You’re lying. But fine.”

I waited, because everything with Ellie was about waiting—each encounter some sort of pop quiz on patience and endurance. If anything, our time together taught me I could take a lot, but it was never easy.

She reached for a decorative pillow resting along the wall, unzipped the casing, and pulled out a small bottle. She handed them to me.

“What’s this?”

“Some pills my mom threw out a few weeks ago.”

I read the label. “OxyContin. They’re expired.”

“I know,” she said. “And nearly full.”

“Why did she have them?”

“Hurt her back last year, I think.” She laughed sluggishly. “Can you believe she was just going to toss them? What a waste.”

I had heard about this side of her from school, but I had never seen it. “How many did you take?” I kept my tone casual so she’d feel comfortable telling me. But she could hear the tension in my voice.

“Oh, come on, Jess.” She fell back against the bed, and the towel on her head rolled open. Her hair was twisted up in a bun, the color so black it was nearly purple.

I stared at her. “What did you do to your hair? I thought we agreed you wouldn’t do that.”

“Oh my God.” She hopped off the bed. She sat at her desk and began to brush her hair violently. Minutes later she set the brush down, spun around, and said, “FYI: You’re being a priss-bitch again.”

The words hurt, and I could see that white flag being lowered. Soon she would gather it in her arms, fold it corner by corner into a tiny, neat square that would be hidden away. “Why are you being like this? Did you have a fight with somebody?”

“Obviously.” Ellie laughed. “Because I fight with everybody. Is that what you’re saying?”

“With who?” I asked, knowing better than to be distracted into a conversation about what she did or didn’t always do.

“Who cares?”

“With who, Ellie?”

“My stepfather, okay? God.”

“When?”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. Yesterday. Today. All week. What the fuck difference does it make? You can’t fix this, Jess. You can’t fix me. So stop trying.”

“Is that why you didn’t text me back yesterday?”

Her face closed off entirely then. She swiveled around and began brushing her hair again.

“How many did you take?” She could avoid answering my question about the text, but this I needed to know.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Are you deaf? Why do you give a fuck about this?”

“Because I do.”

“I was just testing them out—”

“What does that even mean?”

She hesitated for a second. “I don’t know, okay?”

“How many?”

She slammed the brush down. “Two, okay? Why do you fucking care?”

I sat next to her, put my hands on top of hers, trying to calm her. “Please don’t talk to me like that.”

“Jess, you’re so confused.” She pulled her hands away from mine.

“No, I’m not confused. I’m not.” I leaned over and tried to kiss her, but she shoved me away.

“You’re acting crazy.”

“I’m not,” I said, the tears gathering.

“Are you actually going to cry now? Oh, you’re kidding me. You’re like some sort of goody-goody. How can you ever understand me?”

It was those last words that made me do it. I went for the bottle and uncapped it, dropping two pills into my palm.

“What are you doing?” Ellie asked. “Stop it. Just stop it.”

I popped the pills into my mouth, swallowing quickly. Ellie grabbed my face, squeezed my cheeks so that my lips puckered together painfully. “Spit them out,” she said. “Spit them out!”

I twisted away from her. “Too late. You want this. Then I want this. That’s how it works.”

She took a step forward. I thought she was going to hit me, but she grabbed my arm and dragged me to the bathroom. I fought her the whole way, but despite her stature she was way stronger. She shoved me to the floor in front of the toilet. Then she knelt down beside me. “Open your mouth,” she said, but I ignored her. “Open your mouth, Jess!” She sounded like a parent, like if I didn’t listen to her, she’d count to three and then who knows what. “Jess,” she said, “you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re going to get hurt like this. Is that what you want?” She waited for me to speak, but for once I let the silence settle between us.

“Fine.” She stood up. A few seconds later her bedroom door slammed shut. I knew I should go after her, but I couldn’t make myself move. It was quiet for a bit, but then I heard this mournful kind of wailing, a sound that should never belong to a human being.

I got to my feet, every part of me shaking, and made my way to her room.

She was naked, sitting on the bed with her bare back to me. She was bent over, something silver in her hands.

“What are you doing?” I moved closer, and that’s when I saw her hand move swiftly, the slice of a blade across her thigh, and
then blood, bright and thick. “What are you doing?” I shouted. She was sobbing now. I took the blade away from her and ran to the bathroom to get a washcloth and some peroxide from underneath the sink. When I returned, she was curled up in the fetal position on her bed, the blood seeping into the sheets. I cleaned the wound as best I could and held the cloth to her skin to stop the bleeding. Telling her the whole time that everything would be okay.

“But it’s not,” she kept saying. “It’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

I started to feel the OxyContin. My mind seemed to ease away from itself, the worries still there but not my ability to care. I wondered if it felt the same to Ellie, if that was why she took them in the first place.

The bleeding had stopped now. I wiped the remnants of it from her naked body, the washcloth passing line after line of old cuts. I began to cry softly. When I stood, Ellie whimpered, “Don’t leave me.”

“I’m right here,” I said. I undressed quickly until we both wore only our histories—hers mutilated, and mine uninterrupted until now. I crawled into bed, curved my body around hers, and whispered, “Let’s sleep, Ellie. When we wake, everything will be better.”

Y
o
u have everything I ever wanted.

AFTER. APRIL.

The next morning, Jake is gone, and I have to convince myself that he was really here. That I didn’t imagine him. That I’m not as far gone as I think. And after a while, I’m able to believe in the memory of waking beside him in the night, his hand running up my thigh until it rested in that indent between my waist and hip.

“Are you okay? How do you feel?” he asked.

I twisted around, too sleepy to find words, the noise in my head down to a soft rumble. “Yeah, I’m better, I think.”

“Sleep some more. You’re exhausted.” He pulled me closer, until my head lay against his chest, and caressed my back with tentative hands. I tried to relax into him, push away the millions
of questions flooding my head. There were still no answers, still no reasons why. The only concrete thing was his presence in my bed. But maybe that was all that mattered. Maybe just for the moment we both needed to forget. I reached up to kiss him, but he was hesitant. “Jake, it’s okay. I want this.” I kissed him again, this time peeling up his undershirt until my hands lay flat against his abdomen. His skin was warm, taut. I slid my hands higher, running them over his flesh like it was familiar to me, when, really, I had never treated his body this intimately before.

“Sarah, wait,” he said, but I continued touching him. “Sarah, I just want to hold you.” He wrapped his hands in my hair, his breath as shallow as mine. “I can’t.”

It wasn’t the worst thing he had ever said to me, but it hurt all the same. It was our song and dance. He didn’t want me. He didn’t know what he wanted. Or he didn’t think he could give me what I wanted. “Why did you come?” I asked.

“I just needed to see you.”

“So you see me,” I said, my hurt turning into anger. I tried to pull away, but he held the length of me, keeping me still. He buried his head in my neck and whispered, “Please, Sarah. Don’t, okay? I just need time . . .” His voice cracked. He stopped talking and held me tighter, his face hidden from my sight.

I rubbed his back. I knew how hard it was for him to say even
that much, but I needed more. “Promise you won’t disappear on me. . . .”

He nodded, his breath ragged. “I promise. Okay?”

But the next morning, like always, he was gone.

I take deep breaths, searching for my center like Concerned Therapist has taught me. But all I find are the things I have lost: my friendship with Jessie, the way Mattie used to trust me, the way Meg used to look up to me, the way my parents believed in me.

I find myself back in my bedroom, the room soaked in Jake’s scent. I stare at the tangled sheets, and a deeper loneliness takes root.