Falling into Place (20 page)

After her mother pounded on the bathroom door, demanding what was taking so long, Kennie came out, got dressed, and stayed up all night.

She sat in the darkness and tried to sort out her options. She put her hands on her stomach and hugged the growing life inside her, and tried to find a path wide enough for both of them.

She had $639.34 left in her savings account from her summer job at McCrap's. That might cover a month in one of those really disgusting apartments by the highway. Of course, her parents had guardianship over her bank account, and they'd probably lock her out of it.

She could call her brother, but he was halfway across the country now, and it didn't seem likely that he would help her. Never mind how many babies
his
girlfriends had probably aborted—he would side with their parents.

Maybe she could stay with Liz or Julia. But she'd still be in Meridian and people would still find out. Of course, she wouldn't even have to stay with Liz or Julia unless her parents kicked her out, and her parents wouldn't kick her out unless they knew she was pregnant, and if they found out, they'd tell the entire town anyway. She was going in circles.

Around three o'clock, she ran out of tears and decided to stop thinking about what to do.

Instead she thought about the baby.

My baby
, she thought.

She didn't care about the gender. An hour later, she had names picked out for both, perfect names. She wanted to buy baby clothes. She wanted a car seat. She wanted a future that she could build all by herself.

But when she curled up beneath the covers and listened to her breath bouncing off her blankets, she began crying again because she knew she couldn't do it, not really, not ever.

She couldn't.

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L
iz fumbled to get her phone out of her back pocket. The car swerved a bit, and her breath caught. A strange thing rose in her chest; she didn't know if it was fear or anticipation, but then it burst and she was hollow again.

She unlocked her phone and opened Facebook, and scrolled through her pictures until she found the one she was searching for. It was from the summer before eighth grade, and the three of them stood with the state fair in the background. Julia was wearing a pair of sunglasses she had just bought from the vendor behind them, and Kennie was holding a dish of deep-fried pickles.

That was the last time they ever went to the fair, though Kennie brought the pickles up on a regular basis as a not-so-subtle hint. The appeal of carnival games and rides beneath an open sky had disappeared.

In the picture, Julia was still beautiful and brilliant and fully alive. Clear too, without the poison leaking out at the edges. And Kennie. She was laughing, of course, laughing like she used to—so loudly that an echo reached Liz through all the years and secrets and mistakes. God, how long had it been since she had heard Kennie laugh like that?

This was the
before
picture, and it broke Liz's heart.

Liz stared at her phone. She wanted to go back. She wanted to be a little girl again, the one who thought getting high meant being pushed on the swings and pain was falling off her bike.

I want to go back
.

I wanted her to come back too.

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S
ilence in the Mercedes.

And then.

“Want me to go with you?” asked Liz.

Kennie bit her lip. Her eyes were closed, but Liz could see her eyelashes glimmering with the tears she was trying so hard to hold back. Kennie wasn't wearing any makeup. Liz couldn't remember the last time she had seen Kennie without makeup.

Liz couldn't stand it. She leaned forward and hugged her tight, and tried to swallow the lump in her own throat. “Hey,” she said, but her voice was a plea. “It'll be okay. Okay?”

Kennie nodded against her shoulder but said nothing. She got out of the car.

Liz sat in the parking lot alone. There it was, the silence again. It grew and pounded until at last she moved, savagely, jammed the keys into the ignition and backed up with a squeal. She drove down the street to the gas station, where she grabbed a pack of condoms, slapped it on the counter, and dared the cashier to comment.

She went back to the clinic, and when Kennie came out, Liz gave her the condoms. Kennie stared at them.

“I can't,” she said. “Not for a month, at least. I'll tell Kyle I'm on my period.”

For a month?
Liz wanted to say. She didn't. “Just in case.”

Kennie closed the condoms in her fist. She shoved them in her purse and didn't look at Liz.

And only then, when it was too late, Liz wondered if she'd made a mistake.
Here
, she'd wanted to say.
You still have Kyle. You have us
.

Liz dropped Kennie off and watched her walk into the house, and she began to cry. She cried as she drove, and she didn't care that she couldn't see the road.

You still have me
.

The worst part of being forgotten, I think, is watching.

I watched her cry. There had been silent tears and ones that barely leaked out. There were tears that heaved from her in great sobs. They all slipped through my fingers when I tried to catch them, they fell around her in oceans.

I watched her carve her mistakes in stone, and they arranged themselves around her,. They became a maze with walls that reached the sky. Because she learned from so few of them, she was lost. Because she didn't have faith in anything, she didn't try to find a way out.

I watched her try to face her fears alone, too proud to ask for help, too stubborn to admit she was afraid, too small to fight them, too tired to fly away.

I watched Liz grow up.

You still have me
.

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A
fter lunch, they had a Random Pep Assembly.

Their principal had established RPAs—because that was actually
what they were called
—last year to “boost student morale,” the lack of which became the official excuse as to why Meridian's test scores had failed to meet state standards yet again. No one complained because it meant shorter classes and an afternoon of doing nothing.

Today, the teachers would have a free-throw competition, and the Future Farmers of America (a club that Liz often ridiculed) held a fund-raiser for their spring trip to the National Dairy Expo (seriously, they made it too easy), letting students buy votes to nominate a teacher to kiss a pig. They raised more than two thousand dollars.

Liz remembered why she used to like school. It was an escape from her enormous, silent house. School was always noisy, filled to the brim with different and irritating people. But between sophomore year and junior year, she began to want to escape school too, because now the hallways were filled with people she had torn apart.

On her way to the gym, she saw Lauren Melbrook. After she, Julia, and Kennie had spray-painted
SLUT
across her front lawn, Lauren had kind of faded. Liz knew that she used to be part of that Ralph Lauren sweater-set group, but of course they had pushed her away after the pictures made their way around Facebook. There were rumors that Lauren was now on heroin, and though Liz knew that she shouldn't put too much faith in gossip, Lauren was indeed walking with a group of verifiable dealers.

Liz took her seat in the front with the other kids who went to the right parties and wore the right clothes and kissed the right people, but as she sat, she caught sight of Sandra Garrison's round stomach. She had gotten pregnant about a year after the pregnancy and abortion rumors had made the rounds. Since everyone thought Sandra had already been pregnant once, she figured that she might as well live up to expectations. She was a senior now, but no way was she going to college. A pity—she had been on her way to being valedictorian.

And there was Justin Strayes, sitting alone at the edge of the bleachers. His GPA had nosedived after the drug dog incident, and now he was on the brink of failing every single one of his classes. And he had been voted Most Likely to Succeed at the end of eighth grade.

A cheer erupted from the gym floor—Mr. Eliezer had just won the free-throw contest. The girls around her were screaming their heads off, because Mr. Eliezer was the youngest teacher in the school, and
hot
.

Kennie was on the floor with the dance team, Julia was waiting to sing with the rest of the show choir, and even Jake was on the sidelines, waiting to give a speech for the student government.

Liz felt very small after spotting each of them. Everyone around her was just bursting with talent—except perhaps Jake, who, for the sake of the nation, she hoped would never be allowed to have anything to do with the government. Still, even Jake was funny and almost smart, and once he grew up a bit, Liz thought that he could make someone happy. Maybe.

In that moment, Liz Emerson felt that she was forever looking up at people who were much, much better than she ever could be, and the only thing she was really good at was pulling them down to her level.

A part of her couldn't help but hope that she simply hadn't found what she was meant for yet, so when the assembly ended and everyone headed for the parking lot, Liz slipped through the crowd and headed to the guidance counselor's office.

Yesterday, she had told Julia to get help. Here was a chance for her to not be a hypocrite, and surely she owed it to herself to take it.

Liz was reluctant because she and her counselor had had a deep and unspoken hatred for each other ever since she had blown up in his office last year, after he had tried to impress upon her that she simply didn't have the intellect to take AP classes and refused to change her schedule to accommodate the classes she wanted to take.

Still, she went to the guidance office and knocked on the door. She had nothing to lose. Mr. Dickson—his name was a testament to his stupidity; in Liz's opinion, a man with the last name
Dick
son should have had the self-respect to not work in a high school—was sitting on his chair, his butt hanging off both sides, and it was with some difficulty that he turned around. His face fell a bit when he saw Liz, but he waved her in all the same.

“Liz,” he said in an overly cheerful voice. “How can I help you?”

Liz hesitated. The words were there—
I need help
—but her tongue would not support them. Her lungs would not force them out.

“I have a problem,” she finally said.

“What kind of problem?” he asked, immediately wary. “Do you want to change your schedule for second semester?”

“No,” Liz said, and then she stopped. She knew that she needed to tell someone that she was suffocating, but she didn't want that someone to be Mr. Dickson.

Very slowly she said, “I think that I might be slightly depressed.”

“Oh,” Mr. Dickson said, sounding nervous. He pushed his glasses up his nose. Liz wondered if any student had ever come to him for actual guidance before. Under any other circumstances, she wouldn't have either.

“Well,” he said, “perhaps you should see a psychiatrist, Liz. I can't suggest any treatment—”

You can't do jack shit
.

“—but what do you think is bringing you down, exactly? We can talk about it, if you'd like.”

Liz picked at her nails. Her manicure was chipping, and she watched as little pieces of her glittery blue nail polish flaked off and drifted onto her jeans. “I dunno,” she said at last. “I guess . . . I guess I've just made a lot of mistakes.”

Mr. Dickson leaned back in his chair. “Well,” he said, “I think that may be a good thing. You see, Liz, we learn from our mistakes, and the more we make, the more wisdom we gather over the years—”

“Yeah, okay, I don't need any of your Dr. Phil crap,” said Liz, and she hated herself, because maybe, maybe Mr. Dickson truly wanted to help her. She just didn't know how to stop. She had been on autopilot for too long.

Mr. Dickson's expression hardened. “All right, then, Liz. What do you want me to say?”

“I don't know,” she snapped. “Aren't you supposed to know what to say?”

“Ms. Emerson, I can't help you if you don't want to be helped.”

But she did want to be helped. She just didn't know how to ask for it, and she was very much afraid that she was beyond any kind of help, regardless.

Mr. Dickson sighed. “You know, Liz, I also went through a dark period during my youth. I've always been a bit overweight—”

It took every single ounce of Liz's self-control to keep her mouth shut.

“—and for a while, I was very conscious of what others thought of me. But I
overcame
that,” he said, leaning forward. The chair creaked. “I began to see that it simply didn't matter what others thought, that it was what I thought of myself that mattered most—”

Okay
, Liz thought.
Screw this seven chances thing. Just kill me now
.

“Just remember, Liz,” Mr. Dickson said, “it's never too late to change. Every day is a blank page, and your story has yet to be written.”

Liz laughed. It was a breathless, desperate sound. “Oh, I think it's too late, Mr. Dickson.”

He smiled at her kindly. “Well, Liz, you'll never change if you don't believe you will.”