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CHAPTER TWENTY Fifty-Five Minutes Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car She was sharply aware of the time slipping through her fingers, and she wondered if it had always passed this quickly. Yesterday she was getting her first bra, and the day before that she was graduating from elementary school. A week ago, she had taken the training wheels off her bike all by herself and had ridden almost five feet before the entire bike fell apart because she had loosened one screw too many. If only time had moved as quickly during physics class. Outside the car, it had started snowing again. Little specks like dandruff. Gravity, thought Liz. Goddamn gravity, and all of a sudden those suppressed twinges of sadness flared into something much greater. She would never understand, would she? Gravity and inertia, force and mass and acceleration¡ªshe would never know why. She glanced at her clock and thought, I still have time. Objects at rest. But it was like taking a timed test, and her mind did what it always did during timed tests. It wandered, and soon Liz was thinking about fourth grade, the year before her mother was promoted and they moved to Meridian. They were all objects at rest, then. Fourth grade was fuzzy¡ªshe remembered only the most vague and clich¨¦ of events¡ªplaying kickball at recess, cutting in the lunch line, getting caught and subsequently sentenced to five minutes on the Wall. Fractions. Liz had no real friends back then. There were people with whom she was friendly, she sat in a big group at lunch, and she had a reasonable amount of fun. But her friends were interchangeable. Somehow, they all felt temporary. And she certainly hadn¡¯t belonged to the group of girls who wore matching skirts and sneakers from Target. That Liz Emerson had been content in her place just outside the spotlight. She was comfortable with her quiet half anonymity. There was one girl in particular, Mackenzie Bates, who was enormously popular by fourth-grade standards, which mostly meant that she brought the best lunches in the prettiest lunch boxes and was the tallest girl in the class. When Mackenzie spoke, the fourth grade listened. A few months into the year, a girl named Melody Lace Blair arrived at school. Her parents were hippies from California, and Melody came to class in overalls¡ªoveralls, the deadliest and ugliest sin. That would have been enough reason to exclude her even if Mackenzie hadn¡¯t developed an immediate and intense hatred for her. Not only did they share initials, but Melody was exactly one inch taller than Mackenzie. It had started small. Snide whispered comments. Glares from the opposite side of the room. But soon Mackenzie got her group of matching friends in on it, and things began to escalate. At one point or another, most of the fourth graders remembered all of the antibullying assemblies they had sat through. They recalled how eagerly they had agreed to speak up if they saw someone being bullied. But slowly, then with more force, the fourth grade came to agree with Mackenzie. Melody was different, different was weird, weird was bad. It was simple. Maybe they didn¡¯t actively participate in the undoing of Melody Blair, but it was their silence, their willingness to look away, that lent Mackenzie her power. So as everyone else became blind in matters concerning Melody, Liz kept watching. She tried to understand why everyone was so afraid of being different¡ªwhy she was too. A hundred times she opened her mouth to speak up for Melody, and a hundred times she closed it. It would have been a one-way ticket to the center of the shooting range. Say something, I told her, and told her again. Say something. You promised. She wasn¡¯t listening. The final showdown happened in early spring, one of the first days after they were allowed outside for recess again. Maybe Mackenzie was bored, or maybe the change in the weather also called for a change in playground patterns, or maybe she was just experiencing early puberty¡ªwhatever the reason, she cornered Melody and tore her apart with words. It didn¡¯t take long for the rest of the fourth graders to notice and migrate over. Liz had been on the monkey bars with some other girls, but one by one, they left to watch. Finally, Liz did too. She couldn¡¯t help it. There was a certain dark allure in destruction, and who was Liz to defy it? Standing as part of the silent majority, Liz was not the only one who felt guilty. Guilt, however, wasn¡¯t enough of a force to push them from the winning side. So Liz and everyone else stood and listened as Mackenzie and her friends grew more and more vicious. ¡°You¡¯re so ugly that you probably break every mirror you pass.¡± ¡°Your clothes are, like, totally hideous.¡± ¡°You smell so weird. Take a shower, loser.¡± Amid the hoots and jeers of his group of miniature-jock friends, Mack Jennings shouted something about Melody being fat, and within minutes, everyone had arranged themselves into a loose ring. One by one, they went around the circle and stated one thing that they disliked about Melody. When Liz found herself in that circle, she did not move. I tried to push her, but I didn¡¯t have enough force, either. They were barely a quarter of the way around when Melody began to cry. She stood surrounded, wide-eyed and lost, shaking and afraid and confused and searching for answers in eyes that refused to meet hers. ¡°Why do you always walk with your nose up in the air like that? Do you think you¡¯re better than us or something?¡± ¡°Is there something wrong with your feet, or do you always walk like a cripple?¡± Then it was Liz¡¯s turn. When she hesitated, everyone turned to look at her, and Liz looked at Melody. She looked at the tear-streaked face and the red eyes, and she saw something that made her want to cry too. ¡°Liz,¡± Mackenzie said impatiently. Liz opened her mouth and said in a quiet rush, ¡°When¡¯s your birthday?¡± There was a small, confused silence. In it, Liz saw Melody¡¯s hope grow infinitesimally, so Liz looked away when she ripped it to shreds. ¡°I think I¡¯ll buy you a dictionary,¡± she said. Still rushing, the words falling and splattering like rain. ¡°So you can look up ¡®normal.¡¯ You obviously don¡¯t know what it means.¡± Mackenzie laughed. Everybody laughed. Liz stared at the ground. I tried to take her hand, but she was slipping away. Then, suddenly, Melody pushed through the mob and ran into the building. The recess monitors, who were busy trying to wrestle the kindergarteners off the climbing wall, noticed nothing. Mackenzie didn¡¯t move for a moment, disoriented now that her circus act had disappeared. Then she blinked a few times and skipped away with her friends. Bit by bit, everyone else broke off too. Except Liz. She waited until no one was watching, and headed inside. She checked the classroom and the cubby room, and when she didn¡¯t find Melody, she went to the girls¡¯ bathroom. Sure enough, she heard the sobs as soon as she pushed open the door. She stepped carefully, her sneakers almost silent against the tiles, and she saw Melody¡¯s feet dangling beneath the stall door as she sat and cried. But in the end, Liz did nothing. She watched for another moment, and then she went back outside and joined her friends by the monkey bars. Liz would remember that day while sitting in pre-algebra with a blank pop quiz in front of her. Mackenzie was the inspiration for the piece of paper she sent around the class, on which everyone wrote one thing they disliked about the new girl with the weird clothes, and it was partly because of the dangling feet, watching them, that she ultimately befriended Julia. One day, years later, Liz went to the beach with Kennie and Julia. Kennie was in the water and Julia was asleep in the sun, and Liz was trying to clean the sand off her phone when she saw an obituary for a girl named Melody Lace Blair, who had been found dead in her bathtub. The police suspected suicide. Her old school had held a memorial service, according to the obituary. When the students gathered together to remember Melody, one girl gave a moving speech about the beautiful, strong, wonderful person Melody had been, and how she would never be forgotten. Funnily enough, the speaker had the exact same initials as Melody. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Fifty Minutes Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car She gripped the steering wheel and wondered if Melody had known. That Liz had been there. That she had watched her feet dangle. She couldn¡¯t have. If she had, she would have said something. After all, they had been alone. Melody could have insulted Liz all she liked¡ªshe would have, if she had known Liz was there, surely she would have. She could have said the most awful thing in the world, and Liz wished that she had. Because then she could die believing that humans were inherently crappy creatures, and maybe her conscience would be a little lighter on this particular drive. But part of Liz wondered if Melody had already learned what it had taken Liz sixteen years to figure out (and even then, only by ripping off the Gandhi quote she¡¯d come across in her history textbook): that taking an eye for an eye left the whole world blind. Objects at rest. Standing and watching, watching and standing. How do you gather the force to push an object into motion? Was it a riddle? A test question? It didn¡¯t matter. She knew the answer. She drove faster. SNAPSHOT: PROMISE Liz is holding my hand. The credits for some children¡¯s show are playing in the background. It had been about good people and bad people, and it put bullying and being mean into very simple terms. Liz had reached for my hand, and now she asks me to promise with her to be good people forever. To never hurt anyone¡¯s feelings. To stand up for what is right, always. I see the sincerity in her eyes, the faith that we can be heroes, so I agree. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Nevers and Forevers Julia drives to the hospital with her eye on the gas gauge. The pointer is dipping uncomfortably close to E, and she doesn¡¯t have her credit card with her. Her wallet is still on her bed. She forgot to grab it when she left for the hospital yesterday afternoon, and she hadn¡¯t wanted to go home for it. Her father had left her a voicemail telling her exactly what he thought of her spending the night at the hospital, and she doesn¡¯t want him to know that she skipped school too. Julia¡¯s relationship with her father is an estranged and rather bitter one. She blames him for his affair and the subsequent divorce, and besides, he is always disappointed in something. On the rare occasions when Julia looks back on her childhood, she only sees her shortcomings, because that was all anyone seemed to focus on. There was never a best, only better, and her greatest fear was always disappointing people. Liz is afraid of silence, but Julia has long grown used to it. It¡¯s thicker in her house than in Liz¡¯s house¡ªshe avoids her father most nights, and he does nothing to change that. Julia is not entirely sure she wants him to. She has too many secrets, and so long as he doesn¡¯t pay attention, she can continue using his bank account. Julia drives and tries not to think about that. She glances at her rearview mirror. Hanging from it is a pair of bouncy balls, hot glued together and tied with yarn, and Julia reaches for them. They had gone skiing at a crappy little resort that was all that could be expected of anything within two hours of Meridian. The ski hill had looked stunted from the bottom but could have been Everest from the top, and try as she might, Julia simply hadn¡¯t been able to gather the will to lean forward and fall. Liz glanced at her face and, for once, kept quiet. They rode back down on the ski lift and left, and Liz waited until they had pulled out of the parking lot to start laughing. ¡°Grow a pair,¡± she said as Julia coaxed her Ford Falcon onto the interstate. Julia loved her car, which she had fondly nicknamed Mattie (short for Matilda) and everyone else had, less fondly, nicknamed Piece of Crap. She loved the way it smelled, like an old book with a hint of cigar smoke. She loved that it had a story, albeit one that the car dealer had refused to tell her. She hadn¡¯t minded¡ªshe made up a history of her own, one that included a rich Southern philanthropist and a short-lived love affair and an abandoned orange cat. ¡°First of my three wishes,¡± Julia said drily. ¡°Find me a lamp.¡± ¡°Jem Hayden,¡± Liz said immediately. ¡°You can rub him¡ª¡± ¡°Liz!¡± ¡°¡ªof course he¡¯d let you borrow his balls. Although,¡± Liz said, pausing, ¡°he might not be straight. I dunno, Jules. Doesn¡¯t he strike you as gay? A little bit? Has he tried to undress you yet?¡± ¡°Oh, my g¡ª¡± ¡°He hasn¡¯t? He¡¯s gay. Jules, I can barely look at you without wanting to skip to third base.¡± The truth was that he had tried, and Julia had stopped him because she just wasn¡¯t sure. Everyone was pushing for her and Jem to hook up, because he was nice and smart and popular, and they would make an adorable couple. She couldn¡¯t see it. He was boring and always talked to her chest. ¡°God, Liz. Shut up.¡± The next week, Julia had found two bouncy balls waiting on her passenger seat, along with a note that said I GOT YOU A PAIR. Julia smiled. Sometimes it was difficult to like Liz Emerson. But it was very easy to love her. Fifteen miles away from the crash site, Julia takes an exit ramp, because she¡¯s not sure she can drive past the crash site again. She can still see the Mercedes when she closes her eyes, and even though all of the mangled pieces will have been cleared away, she doesn¡¯t want to see it, the hill, the tree, the skid marks. Julia forgets that Kennie is still at school, most likely looking for a ride to the hospital. She does not remember all the small comments Liz made to her in passing, that she thought funerals were stupid and that she didn¡¯t want people crying over her when she died. She can only think about how Liz was on this road yesterday, how the Mercedes was cruising down this very road in one piece yesterday. The passing cars, the blue ones¡ªthey could be the Mercedes. One of them could hold Liz, whole and laughing. But if Julia passes the crash site, if she sees it, she can no longer pretend. Liz never made it past the tree, the hill. Julia wonders where she had been going. The mall, maybe? But hadn¡¯t Liz been there just a few days ago? With one tick mark away from E, she takes an exit and turns into McCraps (so christened in eighth grade with the introduction of snack wraps, which Liz had first called McWraps, and then McCraps after she tasted one; the name had eventually come to encompass the entire franchise). Julia parks and goes inside, and immediately the grease and noise and smell of meat envelop her. Her stomach rolls¡ªJulia has been a vegetarian since fourth grade, ever since her class took a field trip to an organic farm. She had received a sloppy kiss from a calf and fallen in love, and when she learned on the bus back that it was destined to become hamburger, she swore to never eat meat again. But what knocks the breath from her is this: the sizzling grease, the shouting. The old couple drinking coffee by the window, holding hands and smiling. The tired dad with triplets fighting over a pack of ketchup. The group of middle schoolers crowded in a booth, maybe skipping school for the first time ever, laughing. She hates all of them. For smiling. For laughing. For being well and unconcerned and happy while Liz is in the hospital with a ruptured lung and a broken leg and a shattered hand and too many internal injuries to keep track of. No one should be happy. The sun shouldn¡¯t be allowed to shine. The entire world should stay still for Liz Emerson. It doesn¡¯t take a crash site to break Julia. What breaks her is a bit of noise, a few lights, and happiness. She is on the floor without quite knowing how she got there, her knees pulled to her chest and her arms wrapped tightly around herself. Her eyes are shut, and in that darkness, she pretends to be alone. She says Liz¡¯s name, and then says it again and again until it blurs and becomes senseless between her lips, a spell too weak to make the world spin backward. Liz. Liz Liz Liz Liz Liz Liz Liz. Soon she is surrounded by McCraps employees and the old couple and the dad and the triplets and the middle schoolers. Frantic voices, hands at her elbows. For a moment she is frightened¡ªall these people staring, surely one of them will see the mistakes seeping through her skin, the yellowing teeth, the circles under her eyes, the trembling fingers. But she buries herself deeper, and the memories rush over her: all the times she, Liz, and Kennie snuck out to go to the best parties and the worst ones, all of the vastly insane things they did, all of the quiet afternoons spent in Liz¡¯s room painting their toenails while the TV mumbled in the background. She thinks about how it is very, very unlikely that she, Liz, and Kennie will ever do anything like that ever again. Nevers and forevers. These are Julia¡¯s greatest fears. ¡°I fell in love at a drive-through, honey,¡± says the cheerful, fat manager who is driving Julia the rest of the way to the hospital. She had one of her employees fill Mattie up and drive behind them, and best of all, she didn¡¯t ask for an explanation when Julia asked her to avoid the interstate. ¡°He was my cashier. I ordered a Big Mac and paid with my heart. Ain¡¯t that the saddest thing you ever heard? Lemme tell you something, honey¡ªmen are goddamn terrified of babies. Fine. I¡¯m goddamn terrified of commitment. And it ain¡¯t been easy, I tell you, but we ain¡¯t doing so bad, are we? We¡¯re keeping our heads up. . . .¡± Julia does her best to listen. It¡¯s the least she can do, but while her heart slowly falls apart, the rest of her is restless. In the front right pocket of her backpack sits an almost-empty ziplock bag, and she grips the door handle so she can¡¯t reach for instant gratification, for escape. In this moment, Julia would gladly have traded places with Liz, and she hates herself because of it. Julia goes to the hospital. Despite herself, she hopes. She is vastly disappointed. Liz is headed for surgery again. Sometime this morning, her heart had begun to stutter. Ten minutes ago, it began to fail. Now, she is wax beneath white lights and scalpels. Dr. Henderson is working over her, thinking about the note on her medical records: ORGAN DONOR. He thinks about that irony as he works. Liz Emerson will never donate her organs, because they are destroyed, and he doesn¡¯t know if they can get replacements soon enough. It seems that Julia may have arrived just in time to see all of her fears come true. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Plans, New Years¡¯ Day She took a nap on the brown couch with her arm flung over her eyes, and when she woke up with her suicide outlined backward across her cheek and HERE LIES LIZ EMERSON on her forehead, she continued to plan. The party had not been the catalyst. Nor her stupidity. Nor her hands all over the hot torso of the boy who had gotten Kennie pregnant. It wasn¡¯t the anger that clawed her insides to shreds, anger at all the idiocy, anger at the world, anger that made her dig her nails into Kyle¡¯s skin even as her lips were on his. No, the party was simply the last straw. She had been desperate to feel something, anything. She needed a window, because she had broken her heart throwing it at locked doors. Liz got up off the brown couch. She looked down and saw a natural disaster. She could not exist without tearing everything around her to shreds. Over the next two weeks, Liz Emerson drafted her plans and revised them. She did her research and made sure she would have enough money to pay for gas and set a date. And she also gave herself a way out. A week¡ªthat¡¯s what she allowed herself. An entire week before the last day. She thought of Julia filling herself up and Kennie becoming empty, and she understood. Life was precious. She knew that, knew it deeply, so she would try again. She would try what she tried on the night of the party, but she would do it right this time. Seven days, seven chances. She would wake up seven more times and search again for a reason to go on. She would give the entire world a week to change her mind. But she also knew that life was fragile, and if her week failed, she knew how to shatter. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Seven Days Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car Most of the varsity girls played in the winter soccer league, because Julia¡¯s father had offered to pay for everyone this year as part of his annual attempt to mend his relationship with his daughter. They were all drained from the pre-calc test, and the atmosphere in the locker room was quieter than usual. The team they were playing today was made up of girls from a Division One school. They knew today¡¯s game would be a train wreck. As everyone else adjusted their shin guards and did last-minute stretches, Liz sat on the bench and looked around at each of them, and realized that she had spent the last seven years of her life with these girls and knew no more than the most superficial details about them. Jenna Haverick was great with headers and had a dog named Napoleon. Skyler Matthews was right-handed but played with her left foot, and only ate butter pecan ice cream. Allison Chevero was great at making fouls look accidental, and she had a tramp stamp that her parents still didn¡¯t know about. Other than Julia, these girls were worse than strangers. These were people she had spent years and years with and never even wondered about. She had never asked about their fears or failures, successes and embarrassments. She just didn¡¯t care very much, and as she sat on the bench with her team around her, the absolute sadness of the fact overwhelmed her. She knew so many people, so many, but what was the point? How many of them did she really care about? How many of them really cared about her? ¡°Liz?¡± She looked up. Julia was standing beside her, frowning slightly as she pulled her hair into a high ponytail. Right then, Liz had never been so grateful for Julia, had never felt so guilty as she stared at the dark circles beneath Julia¡¯s eyes. Julia saw it. She sat down and said nothing, only waited. She gave Liz a choice. Liz, unfortunately, chose wrong. There were just too many things she wanted to say to Julia. She wanted to apologize for a thousand things. She wanted to tell her how desperately thankful she was for her and Kennie. She wanted to say that she could never ask for better friends, but all of those things sounded stupid in her head, so instead, she got to her feet and said, ¡°Come on. Let¡¯s go kick some ass.¡± There was some cheering and hollering from the rest of the team in response, and they left the locker room together. But then some of the girls peeled off to go grab their water bottles and other ones had to retrieve bobby pins and hair ties, and by the time Liz reached the field, only a fraction of her team remained. Coach Gilson frowned when he saw them. ¡°Where is everyone?¡± ¡°Coming,¡± said Liz, but the word caught in her throat. An odd unhappiness rose inside her when she said it, because she was once again making promises that she had no power to keep. Eventually, though, the team did regroup. The referee flipped the coin and the girls got into their positions, and Liz tried to focus on the game. But there was something terrifying taking over her thoughts, and it wouldn¡¯t leave. Out of the seven billion people sharing the planet with her, not one of them knew what was going through her head. Not one of them knew that she was lost. Not one of them asked. The whistle blew. Usually, soccer allowed her to forget. She fell in love with the sport because of the way it consumed her, swallowed her whole, grabbed all her attention and stored it in a sphere that they chased and kicked and passed between them like a secret. She obsessed over the unpredictability. She was wholly addicted to the adrenaline. Once, a yearbook reporter had asked Liz to describe her favorite part of soccer. What came to her mind was this: the moment when her foot connected with the ball at the perfect angle, with exactly enough force and just the right timing. It was a rare thing, and it was from those exceedingly rare moments that her weird zeal for soccer took root and grew into something immense. She got this feeling of rightness after every beautiful pass, every soaring shot. She could never exactly describe it, but it reminded her of snapping the last piece of a puzzle into place or pushing a key into a lock, of being utterly certain, somehow, that this was it. In those moments, the world held its breath and everything fit, and she stood in the middle of it all, knowing. During the interview, however, what she said was this: ¡°Winning.¡± In this game, neither happened. They were righteously slaughtered. The first half was downright embarrassing. When they went back to the locker room at halftime, the scoreboard flashed 4-0 at their backs. They were getting desperate by the time they gave up another goal five minutes into the second half, Liz especially. She had wanted today to be the one to change her mind. She had hoped to have one of those connecting moments, to look around and remember that the world made sense, that some things fell apart so better things could fall together. But her passes were messy and all of her shots went wide. Within the first ten minutes of the second half, the team had received six yellow cards. Ellen Baseny got a red card for telling the referee to fuck himself, and two fans were ejected for mooning. Liz went in for a goal. They were down 5-1 now with two minutes left, and she knew it was a lost cause. Who cared? She was a lost cause, and she was trying, wasn¡¯t she? One of the defenders from the other team muttered, ¡°Don¡¯t miss again, skank.¡± Then she laughed. And Liz aimed for her instead. Had the defender been familiar with Liz Emerson¡¯s reputation, she would have kept her mouth shut. Not just Liz¡¯s reputation as a person, but also her reputation of having the hardest kick in the state. The defender was rushed to the emergency room. Liz was given a yellow card. The referee decided that Liz hadn¡¯t meant to do it¡ªshe had been trying to score, after all, and the defender had been in the way. And Liz Emerson got away with one more thing. The final whistle sounded, but she stayed on the field for a while. She looked around the fluorescent dome, at the cleat marks on the grass, and she didn¡¯t want to move. She was so tired. She didn¡¯t want to move ever again. Eventually, though, she went to the locker room to peel off her sweaty jersey, prepared to go home and maybe dig around in her mother¡¯s wine cabinet and take a few shots on the white couch. But when she got there, everyone was laughing. ¡°Damn, Liz, you freaking pegged her. Dude, that was amazing.¡± ¡°Surgery. The bitch has to get surgery.¡± ¡°Hell, yeah. She deserves it.¡± It made her sick. Liz closed her eyes for a moment as she shoved everything back into her bag. God. What had she been thinking? She couldn¡¯t even remember. It had been plain stupid, and not just that, it had been cruel. The other girl would have to pay for surgery, physical therapy, and she¡¯d definitely be sitting out the season. Liz imagined the situation being reversed. She imagined missing the entire season, not even having soccer to take her mind off things¡ª Liz walked out of the sports club and stood in the frigid air. She felt a bead of sweat freeze as it made its way down her spine, and she tilted her head back to look at the sky and asked, Why? Then she got into her car, and on her way home, it struck her that she hadn¡¯t signed up as an organ donor. She hadn¡¯t wanted to when she got her license¡ªher body was hers. She slammed her brakes and turned sharply, flipped off the guy who beeped, and headed for the local clinic. Five minutes later, the clipboard of paperwork lay in her lap. Her fingers were wrapped tightly around the pen, and her eyes were closed. In her head, she made a list. It was titled Things I¡¯ve Done Right, and this was the first item. In a week, she thought, I will have two. And my heart will beat for someone who deserves it. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Driving Habits ¡°God, Mom,¡± snaps Kennie. ¡°Why don¡¯t you drive even slower?¡± ¡°I¡¯m already driving two miles above the speed limit, Kennie.¡± Kennie is fairly certain that her mother is the only person alive who has ever been ticketed for driving too slowly¡ªit had happened during freshman year; she was late to school, and even the office ladies had laughed at her, the bitches¡ªwhich makes her all the more upset that Julia had totally ditched her, that her mom wouldn¡¯t let her drive to the hospital with Carly Blake. Liz. ¡°I could have driven myself,¡± says Kennie. ¡°In light of recent events, I don¡¯t think that would have been a good idea.¡± And she begins to lecture again, her favorite rant, all statistics about car accidents and insurance, and Kennie ignores her as usual. She looks out the window and searches for signs of the crash. She doesn¡¯t know exactly where it was¡ªFacebook wasn¡¯t specific, but she searches and figures that, somewhere along the way, she will find it. She has to see it. She has to see the spot that defeated Liz Emerson, because part of her still refuses to believe it exists. And just then, she sees it. A splintered fence, ruined snow all around. She doesn¡¯t look twice¡ªcan¡¯t, because her eyes have filled and the world has blurred. A sob is building, and Kennie grips her seat with both of her hands. ¡°. . . and Liz was a lovely girl, of course, but her driving has always worried me. I can¡¯t say I¡¯m entirely surprised, honey¡ª¡± Kennie whirls. ¡°Mom!¡± she screams. ¡°Just stop!¡± ¡°Kendra Ann! I¡¯m trying to teach you to have good driving habits. You need to learn some responsibility, and that temper of yours! You need to have a meeting with Pastor Phil for¡ª¡± ¡°I don¡¯t care,¡± says Kennie. ¡°I do not care.¡± Her mother snaps something back, but Kennie has started crying. She really doesn¡¯t care, not at all, doesn¡¯t care about anything except the fact that the fence is broken and the snow is dirty, and yesterday in that spot, her best friend nearly died. She is so busy crying that she doesn¡¯t see the actual crash site, when they pass it. Good thing too. I don¡¯t think Kennie could have handled it. If a broken fence from a rogue cow and a patch of trampled snow could push her into screaming at her mother¡ªor rather, made her so terrified that she stopped after screaming that one line¡ªmaybe it was lucky that she didn¡¯t see the contorted tree, the little scraps of blue Mercedes, the snow still streaked with pink. ¡°She is,¡± Kennie whispers to herself. She is a lovely girl. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Forty-Nine Minutes Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car The answer was breaking. Her childhood ended on the day she watched Melody¡¯s feet dangle, and maybe she hadn¡¯t realized it then, but what she decided was this: she would no longer be an object at rest. The only other option was to be what Mackenzie was. An object in motion that would stay in motion, even if it meant flattening everything in her path. And so she broke every promise she had ever made. And with the energy from so many shattered things, she pushed herself into motion. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Twenty-Three Missed Calls Later ¡°Mom? Yeah, I¡ªokay, yeah, I¡¯m sorry. I fell asleep¡ª ¡°No, I¡¯m not drunk, Mom. I¡¯m not high, either¡ªyeah, sure, I¡¯d be happy to bring home some of my pee in a coffee cup, if you don¡¯t care if it spills. I¡¯m driving your car. Seriously, I¡¯m¡ª ¡°Mom. Mom. Mom. ¡°Yeah, I know you called me twenty-three times. . . . I can see it on my phone¡ªno, it died while I was asleep, I brought my charger¡ªwell, I couldn¡¯t see it then, could I? I don¡¯t sleep with my eyes open¡ªokay, yeah, sorry, Mom. I¡ªno, I don¡¯t think aggression is a side effect of meth. Steroids, maybe¡ªI¡¯m not on steroids. ¡°I¡¯m at¡ªno, I¡¯m not interrupting you¡ªdo you want me to answer that? I¡¯m at the hospital¡ª ¡°I¡¯M FINE. ¡°No, I have not overdosed. ¡°No, I don¡¯t have alcohol poisoning. ¡°Mom, just listen¡ªI¡¯m here for a . . . classmate . . . no, you don¡¯t know her¡ªshe¡¯s not pregnant! I don¡¯t have a girlfriend. No, I didn¡¯t have sex last night¡ªI wish¡ªkidding, kidding. Chill. I¡¯m fine. ¡°She got into a car accident. I saw her car on my way to Costco¡ªwell, I didn¡¯t move them, so I assume all of the groceries are still in the car, unless someone broke a window and stole everything¡ªno one broke a window, Mom. Yeah, I¡¯ll check later. Okay, I have to go¡ªno, because people are starting to stare at me like I¡¯m insane. Yeah, there are other kids from school here too¡ªthey¡¯re all just getting here, school must have let out . . . no, I didn¡¯t, I told you, I was asleep. I didn¡¯t skip, Mom, I . . . overslept a bit. Yeah, pretty much. Until like, one thirty. I haven¡¯t slept in ages, Mom. I was up until three the night before last night working on that stupid physics project. . . . Okay. Yeah, I¡¯ll come home tonight. . . . Yeah, I know. I know. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, okay. Love you too.¡± CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT The On-Again Off Again Jake Derrick has not come to see Liz Emerson. Liam realizes this after he hangs up with his mother and looks around. The waiting room resembles the high school during lunch hour. The cafeteria has a distinctive seating arrangement: the center tables belong to the popular, the outer rings to the nerds and outcasts and dorks and freshmen. Here in the waiting room, the jockiest and the preppiest, the ones who knew Liz the best, have taken over the center area with an air of manifest destiny. Liam is still beside the window, undoubtedly the least popular person in the room. But from his position, it¡¯s easy to see everyone who comes and goes, and Liam is certain that Liz¡¯s boyfriend has yet to arrive. It takes him a moment to remember whether or not they are, in fact, still together. Jake and Liz had established their tumultuous relationship at the end of Liz¡¯s freshman year, and Liam has paid attention without meaning to. He can¡¯t help it. His crush on Liz Emerson began on the first day of fifth grade, and except for the year or so during which he had hated her guts, he has paid attention. No. Even then. But the truth is, everyone pays attention. That¡¯s why they were all here last night; that¡¯s they¡¯re all here now. She is Liz Emerson. She matters. To everyone, it seems, except her boyfriend. It started when Jake kissed her under the stars in the movie theater parking lot. He was a grade ahead of her, had made the varsity football team in his freshman year, and was widely lusted after. That night, he literally swept her off her feet. According to popular opinion, it was the most romantic thing that had happened all year. According to Liz, it was the definition of clich¨¦, and he had tasted of nacho cheese. Their most infamous breakup had taken place during sophomore year. It was the night of the homecoming game, and Liz dumped Jake right after he made the winning touchdown. On the way to some party¡ªLiz hadn¡¯t even been sure whose it was, but it had alcohol and pot and people, so it didn¡¯t matter, they were going¡ªshe told Julia and Kennie, ¡°God, he¡¯s just one big clich¨¦.¡± Jake Derrick is. He is decently hot but not nearly as hot as he thinks, and only about half as funny. He is not quite as stupid as everyone assumes, remains blissfully and utterly unaware of his own supreme arrogance, and will never, ever deserve Liz. And certainly Liam is jealous, but he dislikes Jake because Liam is one of the few people who have paid attention closely enough to know that Liz does not like Jake either. Liz and Jake¡¯s favorite pastime is fighting. Jake is the kind of person who is absolutely assured of his own rightness, and Liz is the kind of person whose primary goal in life is to tear such people down. Their fights involved Jake calling Liz unmentionable things and Liz snapping back with comments that hurt where only she knew to hurt him. Three days before Liz crashed her car, they started arguing about Liz¡¯s physics project on gravity. Liz was almost done, and Jake was trying to make her feel stupid by saying some shit about how acceleration is the third derivative of position and telling her to change everything, and it turned nasty very quickly. Eventually Jake called Liz a bitch and told her to fuck off and go to hell all in one breath, and Liz had laughed in his face and slammed the door behind him. Liam does not know about the fight. He has no access to the best gossip, and it always takes awhile for news to trickle down to his lowly position among the other nerds and rejects. It is true, however, that despite the fight, Liz and Jake never actually broke up. Technically. In the end, Liz simply did not want to waste any more time on Jake, even to dump him. She was searching for a reason to live, and he wasn¡¯t helping. As much as Liam dislikes Jake Derrick, it disgusts him that he is not here. Jake and Liz have been a couple for nearly three years. He should be here, at least, pretending to be heartbroken. Or maybe Jake really would have been heartbroken. Liam doesn¡¯t know. He doesn¡¯t know Jake well and has no particular wish to remedy that situation, so he makes a halfhearted attempt to withhold judgment. But the truth is that Jake Derrick¡¯s heart is a fickle and melodramatic thing. He has teared up over dead dogs and spectacular football games, and no doubt he will cry over Liz too. But in a month, two, he will be making out with another girl, someone with bigger boobs who will believe him when he lies. Liz will become no more than a pickup line. ¡°I fell in love in high school. I know that¡¯s clich¨¦ and stuff, but it¡¯s true¡ªLiz and I had something real. When she died, I just . . . I don¡¯t know. I was so lost. Maybe I still am. I¡¯m lost.¡± CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Scavenger Liz only stayed with Jake for so long because he kept something inside her alive, some piece of her that still believed in love and yearned for romance. And he could be so sweet, so adorable in the things he did, sending her flowers with notes written on the petals, sneaking up behind her in the hallway to bury his face in her hair, telling her all the time that she was beautiful, that she took his breath away. Then there was homecoming during junior year, just a few months before. Liz was about to break up with him once and for all, and then he did something that made her wonder about love again. She opened her locker after her last class, and a flower fell out. There was a ribbon tied around the stem, and some sort of Shakespeare quote written on it in Jake¡¯s scrawl, which should have turned her off right away. Julia liked Shakespeare. Liz liked the cynics¡ªOrwell, Twain, Swift, Hemingway. But she had just come from the homecoming pep rally; the hallways were loud and her hair was messy from the wind and the flower and ribbon were so beautiful that in that moment, she felt beautiful too. IT IS THE EAST, AND LIZ IS THE SUN, the ribbon said (and truthfully, a part of Liz cringed because Jake was just so goddamn clich¨¦). GO EAST, SUNSHINE, TO THE PLACE WHERE WE FIRST MET. So she did. She went to the middle school, about three hundred feet east of the high school. The first time she had ever talked to Jake had been sixth grade. They had arrived at the water fountain by the gym at the same time, and he had gallantly stepped back. For a moment, she thought it was incredibly sweet that he had remembered, but as she walked toward the middle school, a twinge of suspicion grew inside her. Jake was not the sentimental type¡ªhe could hardly remember what had happened last week, much less what had happened five years ago. She went into the building and stopped in front of the water fountain by the gym, read the waiting card. YOUR LIPS ON MINE, UNDER THE STARS. At the movie theater parking lot, she picked up the waiting teddy bear and took the note from its paws: WHERE WE HAD OUR FIRST DATE, A TEA PARTY WITH TEDDY BEARS. The hospital, where she had visited him after he had broken his collarbone playing football. She had brought him a mug of chai tea (which Jake had ignored in favor of his hospital-issued chili dog) and a get-well bear as a joke. They had ended up making out in the hospital bed until a nurse had come and asked Liz, none too politely, to leave. The scavenger hunt led her all over Meridian and wasted an entire tank of gas, and at the end, she found herself parked at the edge of the overgrown field by the elementary school. Jake was standing in the middle of it, holding a sign with the last clue written in black Sharpie. It said WILL YOU GO TO THE DANCE WITH ME? She said yes. Liz had a generally hard time believing in love, and she was not in love with Jake Derrick. She was in love with the things he did. Turned out, though, her suspicions were correct¡ªthe scavenger hunt was beyond the imagination of her self-involved boyfriend. Jake had known that Liz¡¯s friends would do the majority of the work. Really, all he had to do was stand there. But that afternoon, in the abandoned field by the elementary school, Liz pretended that they were. In love. She lied to herself. Her world was almost beautiful. She didn¡¯t care that it was false. CHAPTER THIRTY After the Surgery There are three kinds of people after the surgery is pronounced successful. There are the ones who are breathless, shaking, crying in that crushing and desperate kind of relief¡ªnamely, Liz¡¯s mother and Julia. When the doctor first told Monica that her daughter had not died on the operating table, she went to Julia and held her, because she couldn¡¯t hold Liz. All team practices have been cancelled for the day, so the waiting room is clogged with the second kind of people, the ones who aren¡¯t surprised at all. They shrug and say that they were never worried, never mind the fact that they had all abandoned their homework out of their professed concern. They sit around the low tables and say that they always knew Liz was strong enough to pull through. And then there is Matthew Derringer, who is just the slightest bit disappointed, because he has already ordered flowers for the funeral. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE The Art of Being Alive Julia has always been the good girl, Sunday afternoon activities aside. So her heart is nearly falling out of her chest when she grabs a pair of scrubs from a passing cart, pulls them over her jeans, and walks into the ICU with all the nonchalance she can muster. It smells clean, clean like linens and antiseptics, like organized and monitored death. There are rows and rows of almost-corpses buried beneath white sheets. Julia has never shied away from blood or sickness, but this room makes her want to run and never look back. She doesn¡¯t want to see Liz here. But she does. As always, Liz Emerson is hard to miss. This time, it¡¯s because, of all the patients, Liz looks furthest from reanimation. She looks beyond hope. Julia¡¯s legs are shaking as she walks over to Liz¡¯s bed. She stops a good six feet away, afraid to go any closer, afraid that she will bump into one of the many machines and something will unhook and Liz will die and it will be her fault. There is a chair by Liz¡¯s head, and Julia stares at it for a long while before she decides to sit down. She slides her backpack from her shoulder, takes out a pre-calc textbook, and opens it to the chapter the class is studying. She begins to read. I watch her lips move. They¡¯re trembling too. ¡°¡®For any point on an ellipse, the sum value of the distances from any given point to each foci will be a fixed value.¡¯ I remember this chapter. Don¡¯t worry. The test is easier than the homework, and she¡¯ll probably curve the quiz. You won¡¯t miss much. Anyway. ¡®In the case of a hyperbola, however, the difference between the distances will be . . .¡± Julia glances down at Liz¡¯s face and begins to cry. She had tried to avoid it, looking, but it¡¯s terribly difficult to not look at an almost-corpse, when the almost-corpse is your best friend. Liz¡¯s face is gray like air pollution. Her hair is a mess, and parts of it have been chopped off so the doctors could stitch up her scalp. There are shadows beneath her eyes and bruises all over one cheek, and worst of all, her eyes are closed. Liz has always hated sleeping. Once, we read the story of Sleeping Beauty together¡ªwe didn¡¯t understand much, because it was a harder version, and an unhappier one. Everyone was dead by the time the princess woke up, and maybe that was when Liz began to fear missing things. The makeup is gone and her face is as naked as Julia as ever seen it. She sees the sadness, the exhaustion, the fault lines beneath the surface, and suddenly Julia is furious. If Liz had slept more, maybe she would have been a more careful driver. Maybe she wouldn¡¯t have been so reckless and ruthless and lost. A tear slides down Julia¡¯s nose and falls onto Liz¡¯s hand. Julia watches her face for a sign of life. For anything. But Liz is motionless, a girl of wax and shadows. ¡°Damn you,¡± Julia whispers, her voice small. ¡°We were supposed to go running tonight. Open gym for soccer starts next week.¡± They would have gone too¡ªLiz liked running through snow. She would go now, were her leg not broken in three places. Well, maybe not. For soccer, Liz almost waited. The chances of Meridian¡¯s girls¡¯ varsity soccer team winning the state tournament have gone down dramatically. Without their junior captain and star forward, it will be a miracle if they even pass sectionals, and Liz hadn¡¯t wanted to be responsible for that failure too. But she needed ice on the roads. She needed her accident to look as accidental as possible. And she just didn¡¯t think she was capable of waiting another three months. Julia, however, knows none of this. She looks down at what remains of her best friend, and she thinks of all the times Liz was quiet and not really there. The times when she was the Liz everyone else knows, all snark and insanity, and the moments when she was the one that stared at invisible things and hadn¡¯t truly smiled in a long time. ¡°God, Liz,¡± Julia says, and she closes her eyes to force the tears back. They overflow anyway, pooling somewhere deep inside her. ¡°I can¡¯t run in the rain alone.¡± It was right before cross-country season, junior year. It was pouring outside, and Julia was curled on the window seat with a book and a cup of soup when someone began ringing her doorbell insistently. She opened the front door and found Liz standing on her porch in nothing but a pair of rain-soaked shorts and an obnoxiously green sports bra. ¡°Come on,¡± said Liz. ¡°Let¡¯s go running.¡± Julia gaped. ¡°What the hell are you¡ªit¡¯s raining!¡± ¡°I¡¯ve noticed,¡± Liz said impatiently. ¡°Go change.¡± She looked at Julia¡¯s chest critically. ¡°You¡¯ll start an earthquake if you let those things bounce.¡± ¡°Liz, it¡¯s wet.¡± ¡°No shit, Sherlock. Now come on.¡± Julia closed the door in Liz¡¯s face and waited to see if Liz would leave. She didn¡¯t, of course, so Julia went upstairs to change into a sports bra and her Nikes. And they went running. The rain was warm and smelled of beginnings. Liz and Julia ran unevenly, their footsteps syncopated: right right foot, left left foot. After a few minutes, Julia fell back a bit, because her strides were longer than Liz¡¯s¡ªit was kind of awkward trying to run beside her, because she had to take a normal step, and then a smaller one so that Liz could match it¡ªand she was already wheezing. Breathing in the contents of ziplock bags did nothing to improve her lung capacity. But Liz didn¡¯t say anything and didn¡¯t care that she wheezed, and Julia was thankful. She closed her eyes and threw her head back. The rain hit her face and slid down her shoulders. Her legs were muddy and her shoes were so heavy with water that they released a small wave with every step. She just ran, and there was something eloquent in the sound of rain and footsteps. ¡°Watch it, gimp,¡± Liz said when Julia veered into her. Julia¡¯s eyes snapped back open, and she found Liz running backward and smirking at her, and Julia laughed because she loved the ache in her legs, the stretch in her muscles, the heavy thudding of her heart, the rain that was everywhere. She failed to notice that the wetness on Liz¡¯s face wasn¡¯t rain. She didn¡¯t realize that Liz was drowning, or that Liz was crying because she knew that she could never outrun the things she had done. ¡°Where are we going?¡± Julia asked, but Liz didn¡¯t answer. Julia was okay with that. Liz rarely ran the same route twice, and Julia didn¡¯t mind following. So they just ran, and eventually they turned a corner and Julia saw Barry¡¯s Pond, which a disgustingly rich old couple from Florida had recently purchased. It had been a controversial sale¡ªMeridian generally disproved of outsiders. Julia slowed as the grass turned to sand, but Liz went faster. Julia opened her mouth to say ¡°What the hell,¡± but before she could, Liz ran onto the dock and over the edge without stopping, and disappeared in a flurry of bubbles. ¡°Crap,¡± Julia said under her breath, and then, louder, ¡°Liz?¡± But Liz didn¡¯t come up, and after a minute, Julia began to panic. It was raining harder now, and she could hardly see. She ran onto the dock and stood at the edge, waiting for Liz to pop up, but she didn¡¯t. ¡°Liz!¡± Julia shouted, bending over the water. ¡°Liz¡ª!¡± Then she screamed, clear and shrill, as Liz shot out of the water, grabbed her, and dragged her under. Julia came up choking. Liz was choking too, because she had been laughing as she pulled Julia into the water. Julia wanted to snap about fifty waspish things at Liz as she coughed the water out of her lungs, but as she turned to, she saw Liz laughing and breathless and brilliant and beautiful and hers. So she splashed her. Liz splashed her back, and they chased each other through the pond and the rain, their heads thrown back to drink in the sky, their fingers wrinkled, their hair plastered to their scalps. Eventually, they dragged themselves back onto the dock to lie in the rain, which had faded into a drizzle. It tickled and left behind a fogginess that made the world blurry at the edges and just for them, only them. As Julia lay there, her eyes closed, the splintering dock digging into her back in a dozen places, she heard Liz say quietly, ¡°Thanks for coming with me.¡± Julia smiled and sighed an unintelligible response. She spread her arms wide and felt the elastic of her sports bra tightening with every inhale, and for a moment, she couldn¡¯t feel where she ended and the world began. ¡°I love you guys,¡± Liz said suddenly, fiercely. ¡°You and Kennie. God, I don¡¯t know what I¡¯d do without you two.¡± Julia opened her eyes. Liz was lying beside her, her bare stomach rising and falling very slightly. Her hair had fallen out of its ponytail and framed her face like a nest, and suddenly Julia was afraid, because Liz, her Liz, always kept her heart locked away. ¡°Are you drunk?¡± she asked, uncertainly. ¡°No,¡± Liz said, and she smiled. Julia had seen Liz in homecoming dresses and in pajamas, Ralph Lauren blazers and flip-flops from Target, but she had never seen Liz as beautiful as she was then, with her eyes closed and her lips just barely, barely curved, because until then, Julia had never associated the word peaceful with Liz Emerson. Liz sighed. It was a soundless thing, only a parting of lips. ¡°Sometimes,¡± she said, so softly that Julia wasn¡¯t sure if she was meant to hear, ¡°sometimes I forget that I¡¯m alive.¡± So, in the hospital, looking over an utterly different Liz, one who looks everything except peaceful, Julia leans forward and whispers two words to her, suddenly, fiercely. ¡°You¡¯re alive.¡± CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Six Days Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car It was one of those quiet days, muted somehow, lit by a fuzzy sun behind thin clouds. Liz had finished all of her homework in study hall and the school had ordered Jimmy John¡¯s for lunch, and¡ªwell, maybe she was too numb to be content, but six days before she crashed her car, Liz Emerson was no unhappier than usual. Until she went home, and things began to go downhill. Liz had just unlocked the door when Kennie called. Liz answered the phone and Kennie¡¯s voice screamed, ¡°Oh my god, just leave me alone, Mom!¡± A door slammed, and Kennie said into the phone, ¡°Hi. I can¡¯t go shopping. My mom¡¯s being a bitch. Surprise.¡± ¡°What did you do this time?¡± Liz¡¯s voice bounced from wall to wall. Damn house, she thought, and promised herself that she would never buy a big house. And laughed, because here was a promise she could keep. ¡°It¡¯s not funny,¡± Kennie snapped. ¡°I didn¡¯t do anything to her. I¡¯m not done with that stupid physics project, and I keep telling my mom that it isn¡¯t due until next Wednesday, but she says I need to stop procrastinating and get, like, an attitude adjustment. It¡¯s not like it¡¯s even my fault, ¡¯cause fucking Carly Blake won¡¯t actually touch our project¡ªWhat, Mom?¡± The door slammed again. ¡°Anyway. Yeah. Sorry.¡± When Liz didn¡¯t say anything, Kennie said, ¡°Ask Julia. Her dad doesn¡¯t care where she is, does he?¡± Which was unkind, especially coming from Kennie. They didn¡¯t talk about Julia¡¯s dad, just like they didn¡¯t talk about Kennie¡¯s mom or Liz¡¯s pre-Meridian life. Liz didn¡¯t comment, however, because she knew how much Kennie hated it when her mom nagged and nosed. She¡¯d been like this since the abortion¡ªsnapping and cynical, and the personality fit her like a sweater that had shrunk in the wash. But then Liz thought she would be too, and then she thought, Don¡¯t think, not that, not today, don¡¯t think. ¡°Julia¡¯s still at Zero,¡± she said. That was what they called O¡¯Hare University, the local college. University O, zero, and where most of them would end up after they graduated. Julia took analytic geometry (which was abbreviated on her transcripts as Anal. Geo., a fact that Kennie usually found endlessly funny) and health physics there, because Meridian High didn¡¯t offer them and because Julia was a goddamn try-hard. ¡°Oh. Okay,¡± sighed Kennie. ¡°I should go. Sorry. Maybe next week.¡± Or not. Liz hung up without saying anything, and now she was stuck with the silence. It magnified, the silence¡ªLiz was annoyed after she hung up, but within minutes, she was truly and unapologetically pissed off at Kennie, at Kennie¡¯s mother, and she threw in the rest of the world for the hell of it. It took three seconds to decide that she couldn¡¯t stay in the house for the rest of the day, so she shoved her feet into running shoes and went out the garage door. The winter was a wall that she smacked straight into, the air a living thing that crawled through her sweats and layers and settled against her skin. Liz had always loved the cold. When she was younger, she loved breathing in and feeling her snot freeze, and she never grew out of it. She put her iPod on shuffle and slid it into her pocket, and she began to run. Sometimes she ran just to take wrong turns and different routes, because she liked getting lost. But the truth was, Liz hated running. She did it to stay in shape for soccer or to get out of the house, but she would never play a soccer game again and the house would still be there when she got back. But she always felt like she was chasing something when she ran, something invisible that she never caught. It felt like she was playing tag with herself, and Liz hated tag. She ran the mile loop around her house and ran it again, and as she started the third mile, she could barely breathe and her entire body was cramping. She was tired of seeing all of the same things over and over again; she was tired of running in circles. She didn¡¯t want to chase anymore. This is stupid. I should stop. So she did. Fuck running, she thought. Fuck tag. She went inside and slammed the door behind her. Then she opened it and slammed it again, slammed it and slammed it harder. She put all of her weight into it and the force was so great that one of the vases fell off the mantle and shattered, spitting crystal across the wood and chipping the polish. She ignored it and went upstairs and slammed her own door. Overreacting, she told herself, and her own anger frightened her, but not enough to calm down. She tried, though¡ªreally she did. She shoved a superhero movie into her Blu-ray player and went straight to the scene in which the hero made his final stand and the background music was so dramatic and soaring that it always made her cry. But today everything was cut from cardboard, and a minute later, she was ripping the movie out, breaking it in half, fourths, throwing the pieces across the room. She grabbed her camera and hurled it at the wall. It smashed to pieces after making a dent in the plaster. She could feel all of her little cracks widening into larger ones, faults that ran all through her, tore her apart. She took the old, worn books from her bookshelf and ripped them in half, one by one; the pages fluttered around her as she reached for the rest of the movies, all the stupid heroes, and broke them all. She struck her lamp off her desk and shredded her homework. She hurled her calculator at the floor and flung a perfume bottle at the mirror. The mirror stayed intact, but the bottle shattered, flooding her vanity with perfume and glass. Her breath caught in her throat. She took a step back and looked around her room, and an odd feeling rose within her. It always did, when she was staring at shattered things¡ªan urge to get to her hands and knees and gather them to her. She wanted to stack them back together and make them whole again But she couldn¡¯t, and so she sat down in the center of her room with all those pieces spreading around her, and made a wish instead. I wish second chances were real. SNAPSHOT: WISHES Liz is leaning over the edge of the tower. I am holding her hand and her father hovers behind her, and together we keep her steady. She looks down and makes a wish on the dandelion she has gripped in her small, sweaty hand the entire way up. She wishes for the only thing she has ever wished for. Liz Emerson wishes to fly. After, she¡¯ll look at me and tell me to make a wish too. Years later, she will remember all those wishes. She will consider jumping off that very tower to see if any of them came true. In the end, she will decide against it. She won¡¯t know how to make jumping off a scenic tower look like an accident. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE Worlds Fall Apart Kennie doesn¡¯t arrive at the hospital until after the commotion has mostly died down. ¡°God, Mom, no one else¡¯s parents are here,¡± she snaps as she gets out of the car, because despite everything, she¡¯s still afraid of how her mother¡¯s appearance will affect what people think of her. She knows it¡¯s despicable, but she can¡¯t help it. And part of her is afraid because she had her abortion not far from here, and doctors all knew each other, right? ¡°Maybe you should stay in the car, Mom,¡± she says. But her mother insists on coming in, so Kennie runs ahead. She stops at the entrance and looks up at the great blur of a building through her tears. It¡¯s very unreal to her that Liz, Liz, is behind one of those windows, barely alive. Her mother comes up behind her and fusses a bit over the state of Kennie¡¯s hair and makeup. Maybe this is why she has always been so preoccupied with what people think of her¡ªbecause her parents always are. Appearances matter in her household, and Kennie has grown up with the impression that she is only what people think she is. Kennie swats at her mother and runs, toward Liz and away from the rest of it. She bursts into the waiting room and everyone surrounds her, hugs and tissues while her mom goes to talk to Liz¡¯s mom, and then, ¡°Heart.¡± ¡°Failing.¡± ¡°Almost died.¡± ¡°Where were you?¡± ¡°No,¡± says Kennie when her mother, who has left Monica, tries to comfort her. Their mothers don¡¯t like each other, which is fine¡ªKennie doesn¡¯t like her mother right now either. ¡°No, just stop. Stop.¡± But someone else tries to take her place. ¡°No!¡± she screams blindly, her eyes shut to all of them. ¡°Go away, just leave me alone¡ªleave me alone!¡± She slides to the ground, and the tears come. When Julia finally takes off the scrubs and makes her way back to the waiting room, Kennie is the first person she sees. She sits in a corner sobbing great, heaving sobs, curled into herself as though she could disappear, her hair fanning and frizzing over her shoulders. Strangest of all, she is alone. Julia watches a moment, and then it hits her that she has been a terrible friend. She walks over slowly, the sounds of her approach drowned out by Kennie¡¯s great gasps, and crouches down beside her. ¡°Kennie . . .¡± Kennie raises her face a fraction of an inch, and Julia gets a glimpse of the mess of mascara and red eyes. ¡°Y-you didn¡¯t tell me,¡± Kennie blubbers. ¡°Y-y-you didn¡¯t even c-call me.¡± Julia bites her lip and swallows hard. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. Kennie, I just¡ªI¡¯m so sorry. I just . . . I forgot. I¡¯m sorry.¡± ¡°And you left me at school,¡± Kennie says with a muffled wail. Julia can only nod, because she doesn¡¯t think she has ever felt this guilty. Then Kennie is bawling all over Julia¡¯s sweatshirt. Julia puts her arms around Kennie¡¯s thin shoulders and leans her cheek against Kennie¡¯s arm. They sit there for a small eternity. This is their pain, their tragedy, because Liz is theirs. ¡°Have you s-seen her?¡± Kennie finally whispers into Julia¡¯s shoulder. Julia nods again. ¡°Is she . . . how is she?¡± Broken. Dying. Unfixable. Gone. Julia says, ¡°Sleeping.¡± Kennie buries her face deeper in Julia¡¯s sweatshirt, and Julia holds her tighter. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Forty-Four Minutes before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car Liz thought about Kennie. Kennie always acted so shallow that sometimes it was difficult to remember that she wasn¡¯t. At the end of seventh grade, Kennie had bought the three of them matching rings with BFF engraved inside the band. They were cheesy, cheap things that later turned their fingers green, and on those rings, they swore proportionally cheesy, cheap promises: that they would always be there for each other. They would remember each other¡¯s shortcomings and they would fill them. They would do the ¡°all for one and one for all¡± thing, forever. Kennie¡¯s greatest shortcoming was her inability to say no, and Liz knew that. Everyone knew that. And so, forty-four minutes before she crashed her car, Liz thought about how Kennie had done everything Liz had ever told her to¡ªor tried, at least¡ªand how Liz had never once told Kennie to do the right thing. She thought about all the parties at which she had seen Kennie giggling and drunk in the arms of almost-strangers, all the parties at which Liz had watched different boys lead Kennie into different bedrooms. She could clearly remember too many instances when Kennie had glanced back with a sort of helpless look in her eyes, and Liz had only laughed and called Kennie a slut in a loving way, and turned away because she wanted to keep drinking and dancing and forgetting. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Five Days Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car She promised herself, once, that she would never puke again. It started during the summer before seventh grade, when she and Kennie looked in the mirror while trying on swimsuits and called themselves fat. Liz had decided to eat less, less still, and then not at all. She told Kennie to do it with her, and Kennie had tried, but she wasn¡¯t very good at it. Kennie loved food more than she loved being skinny. She went on and off, sneaking food when she said she wasn¡¯t eating, stashing it in her room. Liz thought that their little diet might have made Kennie eat even more than she used to, but it didn¡¯t matter¡ªKennie didn¡¯t gain a pound. Lucky Kennie. Liz, of course, didn¡¯t last much longer. She liked eating too. Bulimia was her compromise, and what a deal it was. Eat all you want, gain nothing. It was perfect, until she started playing soccer again in the spring of seventh grade, and she could barely run the length of the field. It was perfect, until she was dizzy all the time, and so cold she felt on the brink of freezing solid. And then all of the stuff they¡¯d learned in health class came back in a rush, an avalanche, and Liz stopped, mostly. Mostly. Thanksgiving¡ªsurely that could be an exception. So much food that she couldn¡¯t help herself, and she couldn¡¯t stand feeling bloated. Christmas too, and Easter. Buffet outings. But other than that, she ate, and she kept it inside her. That was perfect too, until one day she puked and there were little streaks of blood among the undigested food. It was macaroni and cheese, she remembered. Little chunks of it, blood like sauce. She was so terrified that she broke down entirely, sat against the wall and sobbed for a good half an hour, because three hundred people died every day from starvation, and here she was, trying to become one of them. When the tears dried, she looked at herself in the mirror and swore she would never puke again. Soon, though, she would go to a beach party and stare at the sky from the top of a tower of wishes. Soon they would be buying homecoming dresses, getting their hair done, arriving at the dance, and Kennie would tell them that she was pregnant. Soon she would watch Julia double her weekly supply of ziplock bags. Soon Liz would make out with Kennie¡¯s boyfriend, go home, and make plans. Soon she will hate what she sees in the mirror and try to change it the only way she knows how: two fingers down her throat, her dinner in the toilet. Five days before she crashed her car, that¡¯s exactly what she did. She tore the kitchen apart. She sat on the white couch with the TV blaring, eating chips. She drank almost an entire liter of orange soda. There was a pecan pie in the pantry that she covered with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream and attacked with a fork. There was a plate of ribs from the restaurant down the street and an entire bowl of leftover ravioli from the Italian place in downtown Meridian. She ate and ate and tried to keep it down. How much shit can I hold in? It was not a rhetorical question. The answer: No more. She set aside the Styrofoam container and the pie tin and the can of whipped cream and the empty ice cream carton and the soda bottle and the bag of chips, and she got to her feet. The floor creaked as it bore her weight. Ten minutes later, she sat on the cold tiles, her head against the bathtub, too tired to move, too tired to ever move again. She thought of that day¡ªit seemed like so long ago, seventh grade¡ªwhen she had stared at herself in the mirror and made a promise she thought she would keep. But that was the thing. It was a different time, when she kept promises. When she thought they were meant to be kept. She knew better now. She dragged herself upright and walked to the mirror. She stood, she stared at the girl in the mirror with eyes that held nothing at all, and she asked, ¡°Am I beautiful yet?¡± Beautiful like Julia, who was brave enough to be different¡ªor used to be. Beautiful like Kennie, who saw how ugly the world could be but loved it anyway. Beautiful like anyone else, beautiful like everyone else. But she wasn¡¯t, so she wanted to be so thin that everyone could see what she was like on the inside, all failing heart and shattering pieces. No, Liz Emerson wasn¡¯t beautiful, but soon she would be dead, and it wouldn¡¯t matter anymore. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX ¡°Meridian Teen Injured in Car Crash¡± Liam scrolls down his phone, opened to the Meridian Daily¡¯s website. He scans the new article about Liz and the crash, and notices that he is mentioned in passing. ¡°A classmate of the victim saw the crash and called the police.¡± The article blames the crash on icy road conditions. It states that Liz was¡ªwas¡ªthe soccer team¡¯s captain and mentions that she scored the winning goal in the state championship last year. There are quotes about how Liz is a wonderful person, beautiful and always smiling. Liam laughs under his breath and closes the tab. Superficial article for a superficial girl, but he doesn¡¯t really believe it. It irritates him that they whitewashed the truth and called Liz Emerson wonderful because she was beautiful. She would have hated it too. Unfortunately, everyone else in the waiting room also seems to be reading that article, and after a few minutes, Liam begins to catch pieces of conversation. ¡°A classmate? Who was it?¡± ¡°Kennie or Julia, obviously.¡± ¡°No, they didn¡¯t know until after.¡± ¡°Maybe it was . . .¡± ¡°. . . or . . .¡± Liam pulls his hood over his head and turns his face away, and prays that the average intelligence of his classmates will not increase within the next few minutes. ¡°Hey, weren¡¯t the police questioning Liam yesterday?¡± Damn. ¡°Liam? You mean the guy who plays flu¡ªoh, hey! Liam. Liam!¡± They swarm around him, and Liam has to remind himself to keep his misanthropy in check before he pushes back his hood and turns around. ¡°Yeah?¡± ¡°You were the one who found Liz, right? What was it like?¡± It¡¯s Marcus Hills who asks. In the article, Marcus called Liz beautiful. In real life, he usually remarked upon her boobs. I don¡¯t need to keep my misanthropy in check. It runs wild. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN Four Days Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car She woke up and decided to take a drive. She grabbed her keys and headed for the interstate, and she drove along her crash route to test the road conditions. Dry with salt, but still icy at the edges. And it would snow between now and then, anyway, and the turn, her turn, was a tricky one even in good weather. Her accident might actually end up being an accident, and she wasn¡¯t certain if she liked the idea. Doesn¡¯t matter, she decided. Same result. The interstate rose over a half bridge, and Liz pushed down on the gas. The land sloped away, down and down and down until it melted to grass and trees. There. She pictured it as she drove. Onto the bridge. Tighten grip on the wheel. Accelerate. Brake. Skid. Jerk the wheel to the right. Break through the railing. Close eyes. Fall¡ª Liz grappled with the wheel as the car swerved, catching the interstate railing and leaving a streak of blue paint behind. She swallowed hard and took a breath. She had started following her own instructions. Four more days. She kept going, all the way to Cardinal Bay¡ªstill an unimpressive city, but it had a mall. Liz took the exit and parked. She headed for the closest store, even though the outside was too pink and expensive looking. Why not? What else did she have to do, four days before she died? It sounded like a truth or dare question, the big clich¨¦, the one that came late at night when everyone was tired and drunk and out of interesting questions. What would you do with the last week of your life? Surely she had answered it before, or some variation. She wondered what she¡¯d said. Travel, maybe, or skydive, or say good-bye. She sure as hell didn¡¯t say nothing, but that¡¯s what she wanted to do now. A perky bell and a perkier sales clerk greeted her the moment she stepped through the door. ¡°Hi!¡± she said, and looked critically at Liz¡¯s hips. ¡°Two? Let me show you our jeans, they¡¯re all on sale, this weekend only! Follow¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said Liz. She meant to add a thanks after, but it got lost on its way out of her mouth. She wandered off by herself. It was definitely more of a Kennie store¡ªpreppy jeans and floral cardigans, lace and frills. She felt like she was interrupting a tea party, and the store was too small to really wander through. Liz liked to wander when she shopped. She liked to weave through racks, one earbud in and the other dangling by her thigh, a cup of coffee in her hand. She liked not being watched. ¡°. . . um . . . I¡¯m sorry. I don¡¯t mean to push the issue, but . . . I don¡¯t understand. Why didn¡¯t I¡ªI mean, I just . . .¡± Liz leaned around the dressing rooms and saw an office at the end of the hall. She pretended to examine the discarded and rejected rack, and listened. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± a second voice said flatly. ¡°The decision is final.¡± ¡°I respect that,¡± the girl said, desperate, ¡°but I¡¯d like to know why I didn¡¯t get the job. For future reference.¡± Liz leaned back again and caught a glimpse of a woman behind a desk. ¡°Oh, dear, you just don¡¯t have the image we look for here at L¡¯Esperance.¡± ¡°What image?¡± ¡°We don¡¯t carry anything over a six, dear. We market our clothing lines for people who are, well¡ªshaped differently than you are. How would it look if one of our employees wasn¡¯t even able to fit into our shirts?¡± Silence, then, and the manager added, ¡°I¡¯m sorry, dear. Thanks for applying, but I¡¯m afraid you just don¡¯t belong in our store. But you¡¯ll find something, I¡¯m sure! Best of luck.¡± Liz watched; the girl opened her mouth, closed it, and walked out. Her face was blotchy, and Liz wasn¡¯t sure if it was because she was angry or if it was because she was crying. Liz felt like both herself. The woman followed and caught sight of Liz. ¡°Hello!¡± she said brightly, glancing up and down Liz¡¯s body. ¡°Are you here to apply?¡± Liz looked after the girl, but she was already gone, the bell ringing cheerfully behind her. She looked at the woman and said, ¡°Fuck you.¡± Back outside, holding her coat, she closed her eyes. The wind clawed her arms raw, and the snow stung where it touched her¡ªand she remembered, suddenly, the way they used to celebrate the first snowfall. It was their very own holiday. Did the snow hurt then? She couldn¡¯t remember. Then she got into her car, put her face in her coat, and screamed. Had the world always been like this? Why had it seemed so much kinder when she was younger? Why had it ever seemed beautiful? Liz Emerson looked around and saw that laws didn¡¯t have to be followed if you could get away with breaking them. She saw that snow wasn¡¯t always beautiful. She saw that the past was a dead thing and the future held no promises, and as she leaned her forehead on the steering wheel and closed her eyes, the tears came and it really hit her that she didn¡¯t want to open her eyes ever again. Funny things, aren¡¯t they? People. They only believed in what they could see. Appearances were all that mattered, and no one would ever care what she was like on the inside. No one cared that she was breaking apart. As the sky grew dimmer and the streetlights came on, Liz remembered that there was a party that night, so she did the only thing she could think of. She backed out of her parking spot, bumped into the car behind her, and drove off with the other car¡¯s alarm blaring. She drove past the turn and the hill and the tree, and she held her breath and didn¡¯t dare look. She was afraid that if she turned her head and saw it all in the falling dark, she would go, right now. Alas, she was on the wrong side of the interstate. Instead, she texted Julia. They were going to a party that night. Julia was going to drive. Liz was going to get drunk. SNAPSHOT: SNOW It is snowing. Liz¡¯s mom is taking cookies out of the oven, and her father is setting up the record player by the fireplace. It is their own holiday, the first snowfall, a day in a snow globe, a day to turn off all the lights and pretend the world is being born. Liz and I are outside, and this time we don¡¯t run around like Tinker Bell caught in a storm of fairy dust, we don¡¯t make wishes, we don¡¯t make snow angels. Today, the snow is white and swirling, the sky is close, and the world is so big and beautiful and infinite that we don¡¯t need to pretend. All we know is already perfect. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT Forty-One Minutes Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car Liz spent a minute trying to remember the exact wording of Newton¡¯s Second Law of Motion¡ªsomething about acceleration being directly related to the net force and inversely proportional to the mass¡ªso there were only forty minutes left when she decided it didn¡¯t matter. She knew the equation, anyway. Force equals mass times acceleration. F = ma. The unit on Newton¡¯s Second Law was more math oriented than the first or the third, so Liz had managed to get a decent score on that test. This, however, was more of a testament to her ability to push buttons on her calculator than any true understanding, and forty minutes before she crashed her car, she still didn¡¯t fully appreciate the relationship between force, mass, and acceleration. The textbook made the world black and white and drew a very uncompromising line between what was and what could never be, as though everything was already dictated and Liz¡¯s only job was to keep breathing. She wished they had talked more about how all of the equations were derived. She wanted to know how Galileo and Newton and Einstein discovered the things they discovered. She wanted to know how they could have lived in the exact same world as everyone else but see things that no one else did. Forty minutes before she crashed her car, Liz began to think about Liam Oliver, who always seemed to see things that no one else did, and didn¡¯t seem to care that it was strange. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE Thoughts on the Road When Liam first saw Liz¡¯s car, he nearly crashed his own. This was his favorite stretch of highway. Of course the only Costco was over an hour away, goddamn middle-of-nowhere Meridian¡ªbut he enjoyed the trip wholeheartedly because he was driving his mom¡¯s car and using her gas. She¡¯d had to take his sister to piano lessons, so he¡¯d agreed to bag his homework and run her errands. He liked these long, lonely drives. They allowed him to sort out his thoughts, and he had a lot of thoughts to sort out today. He thought about Liz Emerson, and the party on Saturday night. She had fallen asleep against his shoulder, and he had taken her home. There was a patch of trees on his left¡ªhe called it a forest out of pity¡ªand a large slope on the other side, so he could see for miles. He loved this stretch because it made him feel insignificant and necessary at the same time, like everything had a reason. Today, when he looked down the hill, he saw a Mercedes at the bottom, smoking. He thought, That looks like Liz Emerson¡¯s car. He wondered briefly if he ought to call the police or something, but someone must have already, right? He had almost crossed the bridge when he did a double take; his head snapped around, and somehow, through the smoke and the distance, he caught a glimpse of green through the mangled window. He thought, Liz Emerson was wearing a green sweater today. Then he thought, Shit. And then he thought nothing at all. SNAPSHOT: ROLLING We are rolling down an impossibly green hill. Our arms are pressed to our chests, our hair caught in our mouths, tangled with our laughter. Gravity is our playmate, momentum is our friend. We are blurs of motion. We are racing, and we are both winning, because we do not race each other. We race the world, and as fast as it rotates, as fast as it revolves, we are faster. CHAPTER FORTY This is What Liz Emerson¡¯s Car Did It rolled. Sitting on the brown couch, she had imagined her death like this: She veers off the road and down the hill. Her car slides, spins a few times. She hits her head and is gone. Her body is mostly whole when they find it. They¡¯ll take out her organs, and her dead body will be more useful than her living one ever was. It did not happen like that. About a mile before she veered, she had taken off her seatbelt. She had planned to close her eyes, sit back, and let it happen. If she had paid more attention in physics, she would have known that the laws of motion are stronger than any plans she had. On the way down, she was braced against the steering wheel, her foot jammed on the brake. Maybe if she pressed hard enough, she could stop the world from spinning. It didn¡¯t work. Her seat went flying forward, and her leg broke in three different places. The car landed on its roof at the bottom of the hill and slid across the icy grass into the base of the tree. She screamed and tried to find something to grab, and accidentally flung her hand out the broken window, where the car briefly pinned it against the ground and shattered it. The car slammed into the tree, flattening the passenger side, and the force shoved Liz¡¯s head outside. Then everything stilled, and she laid in the nest of glass and stared at the sky. CHAPTER FORTY-ONE Gravity Liam was aware, for once, that there was a party going on that night. It was at Joshua Willis¡¯s house, and (since Joshua was the head senior stoner) it was going to be near the upper end of the wildness gradient. The only reason he knew was because he lived a block away. Gossip reached Liam slowly; usually by the time he heard about parties, they were over. But on that night, in the quiet darkness of his bedroom, he was close enough to hear the screams and laughter. Staring at the invisible ceiling, he wondered what it was like at these parties. He wondered what it was like to get drunk and not care. That night, not for the first time, he yearned to be a part of it. Normally, Liam was quite content to be a misfit. He did not particularly care that he sat in the outer ring of the cafeteria during lunch. He was not concerned with what people said about him. A lot of bullying was indirect and a lot of bullies didn¡¯t know they were bullies, and maybe some of them didn¡¯t even mean to be¡ªhe could see this quite clearly, and it no longer bothered him. He knew who he was. There was a certain freedom in being on the outside. He watched instead of being watched. After Liz had shredded his reputation during freshman year, Liam surrendered to things he had earlier resisted for the sake of appearance. He read Thoreau in public, stopped spending money on uncomfortable clothes, took down his posters of bikini-clad models and covered his walls with song lyrics and quotes. He embraced his weirdness, and it was nice. But sometimes¡ªtonight¡ªhe wanted more. The noise kept him awake until about two in the morning, when someone finally called the police and the party dispersed, and in the silence left behind, Liam heard someone puking. He tried to ignore it, but¡ªGod, those were some awful retching noises. He sighed and got out of bed and pulled his curtains aside to see a figure walking unsteadily through the park, which was really more of an overgrown field with a tetanus-ridden playground, by his house. Dammit. He had to be a good person now, didn¡¯t he? He put on a jacket and went out to investigate. He found Liz Emerson lying on the wood chips, shivering. Liam just stared at her for a moment, wondering what the hell he had done to deserve this, a very drunk girl whom he¡¯d had a crush on since fifth grade, half asleep and all alone beside his house. Almost alone, he thought, and crouched down beside her. Liz Emerson was generally a pretty person, but with her eyes bloodshot and dribbles of vomit still hanging on her chin, she was decidedly not tonight. She was not pretty, but there was something beautiful about her all the same. ¡°Damn it,¡± he said under his breath. ¡°Damn it all. Liz?¡± ¡°Jake?¡± she asked groggily, and tried to kiss him. Liam had spent many hours devoted to fantasies of kissing Liz Emerson, but in none of them had she smelled of puke and alcohol, and in none of them had she believed that he was Jake Derrick, so he declined. He propped her upright and held her by the shoulders when it became evident that she could not sit on her own. ¡°Liz,¡± he said. ¡°Did you drive?¡± ¡°No, silly,¡± she mumbled. ¡°Julia.¡± ¡°Damn it,¡± Liam muttered, looking closer at her eyes. ¡°You¡¯re not high too, are you? God. You are.¡± Liz laughed muddily and tried to get to her feet. ¡°Julia went home ¡¯cause she¡¯s too goody and stuff, an¡¯ I told her Kennie¡¯d take me home . . . but Kennie and Kyle are swallowing each other . . . so I¡¯ll walk . . . s¡¯all right . . .¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Liam, and pulled her up. ¡°Okay. I¡¯m going to drive you home.¡± She made no reply, only leaned into his shoulder and passed out. ¡°Damn it,¡± Liam said again. He walked a few steps like that, dragging Liz behind him, and then he gave in and picked her up. I am holding Liz Emerson, Liam thought, and then he thought it again because he couldn¡¯t quite believe it. Liz Emerson is in my arms. She was warm, and smaller than he¡¯d thought she¡¯d be. He put her in the front seat of his beat-up LeBaron and briefly considered going inside to tell his mom about his late-night trip across town, but decided against it. She wouldn¡¯t wake up, and he didn¡¯t know how to explain, anyway. ¡°You . . . kidnapping me?¡± Liz mumbled as Liam backed out of his driveway. ¡°Depends,¡± he replied. ¡°Are you going to puke in my car?¡± She did. ¡°Damn it.¡± They drove the rest of the way in silence. Liam knew where Liz lived¡ªeveryone knew where Liz lived. This, however, was the first time he had ever seen her house up close, and he didn¡¯t know why the idea of going inside made him so uncomfortable. He cleared his throat and said, ¡°Liz, do you have your keys?¡± She didn¡¯t answer. Liam turned off the car and asked again in the silence, and then twice more before she finally slurred, ¡°Doooormat.¡± Liam got out of the car, and then went to the passenger side and dragged her out behind him. He climbed the steps with Liz limp in his arms and crouched awkwardly with her propped against his shoulder, and rummaged around until he found the key taped to the underside of the welcome mat. ¡°That,¡± he said, ¡°is depressingly stupid.¡± He heaved both of them up and unlocked the door, and fumbled for a light switch. Inside, the house was just as big as it had looked on the outside; beautiful, he supposed, all clean lines and sharp edges, but lonely, somehow. As he walked through the foyer, it struck him that perhaps the idiotic placement of the spare key was not the most depressing thing about this house, after all. He tried to lower Liz onto a white couch in the living room but ended up kind of dropping her¡ªhe was tired, and Liam was not exactly well off in terms of upper body strength. Then he stood there and looked around, and when he looked back, Liz was untouchable again. This was where she belonged, and he did not. So he left. He was only halfway through the foyer when he heard her. ¡°Liam,¡± she sighed. ¡°Thanks.¡± He hesitated. He almost turned around, stayed with her. Instead, he kept walking, through the high-ceilinged foyer and out the door. He turned off the lights before he stepped into the cold and left her to sleep in darkness. Liam told himself that Liz would be too drunk to remember. On Monday, when she gave no more acknowledgment of his existence than she ever had, he figured that he was right. He wasn¡¯t. When Liz woke up, she ran to the bathroom and puked. After, she leaned against the toilet and put her head against the wall, and she thought of him. She wondered. Why. She was tired. Gravity pulled at her more aggressively than usual. When she closed her eyes, she could feel it, dragging her deeper, deeper. I would have pulled her back. I would have saved her from falling, but she didn¡¯t see my hand. CHAPTER FORTY-TWO Thirty-Eight Minutes Before Liz Emerson Crashe d her Car Gravity. That was the ultimate force, wasn¡¯t it? The last acceleration. And then the crash. Maybe, she thought, he sees something that no one else can see. In me. And then she laughed. She didn¡¯t really understand gravity, but then she didn¡¯t really understand Liam either. She drove and remembered his eyes in the light of the ridiculous chandelier, the odd grace of his fingers, the way he called her stupid without scorn. They were very hazy, the memories, and she supposed that was her own fault. Alcohol and pot¡ªshe didn¡¯t remember much of that night, but she remembered Liam. It was ironic because she had other, much clearer memories of Liam that she would much, much rather forget, and never would. But she supposed that was her fault too. CHAPTER FORTY-THREE Glances Julia and Kennie sit with Liz¡¯s mom. Both of them watch Liam, and both of them are trying to keep the other from noticing. ¡°I hope my mom doesn¡¯t come back,¡± Kennie says quickly to Julia, when Julia catches her glancing around the waiting room again. ¡°She won¡¯t,¡± says Julia. ¡°Doesn¡¯t she have a church meeting or something? I¡¯ll take you home. I don¡¯t know where my keys are, though.¡± She looks across the room, though her keys are in her pocket. And so it goes. Julia is tempted to go over and finally apologize for what they did, but why should Liam listen to her? Kennie, on the other hand, remembers all the horrible things she¡¯s said about him and starts crying again, because she doesn¡¯t remember exactly when she turned into such an awful human being. Liam stares ou the window. CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR Thirty-Five Minutes Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car They had acceleration, she, Kennie, and Julia. They had mass. They goaded and mocked and multiplied each other, and so they had force. They were the catalysts, the fingers that tipped the first domino. They started things that grew into other things that were much greater than themselves. A touch, a nudge in the wrong direction, and everyone fell down. CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE Falling On the first day of fifth grade, Liz was sitting on the swing beside Liam¡¯s at recess, falling and flying. Her hair fanned out behind her and her eyes were closed, and that was what had caught his attention, her closed eyes. She looked a little bit silly and very much alive, and Liam couldn¡¯t stop watching. Liz, on her part, was aware that the boy beside her was watching, but she loved swinging too much to care what he thought. She loved the wind hitting her face and the brief moment of suspension at the top of the arc and the falling sensation that was magnified by the darkness of her eyelids. She imagined that she was a bird, an angel, a wayward star. At the height of the arc, she let go. And she flew. Liam watched with his mouth hanging wide open, expecting her to crumple on the asphalt and die tragically before his eyes. She didn¡¯t, and when she walked away, Liam¡¯s heart followed. The year after, they started middle school and chose electives for the first time. Liz and Julia chose choir. Kennie and Liam chose band, which was fine, but they both chose to play the flute, which was not. Liam became the first boy in the history of Meridian to sit in the flute section, and he didn¡¯t mind because he was damn good. Kennie did mind, because Liam was damn good, better than she would ever be, which meant that she would be stuck in second chair for the rest of her life. On the second day of freshman year, Kennie stomped out of band fuming about how Liam was a kiss-ass and a dick and totally full of himself, and Liz, tired of her crap, interrupted to say, ¡°Then do something about it.¡± Kennie stopped short. ¡°What?¡± Liz shrugged. ¡°You always complain, but you never do anything about it. So let¡¯s do something about it.¡± The plan fell into place very quickly after that. CHAPTER FORTY-SIX The Ruining of Liam Oliver There were three phases. Phase one took place during lunch on the first day of their freshman homecoming week. The inner ring was empty, because they were all standing in the hallway, waiting to vote for the homecoming court. The outer ring stayed put. What was the point? Everyone knew Liz Emerson would win, and probably Jimmy Travis. Whatever. Too much trouble, making crowns and shit, they told themselves. The only way any of them would ever make it onto court would be if Liz Emerson herself made it happen. For freshman homecoming, that was exactly what she did. She told everyone to vote for Liam Oliver, the only boy to play the flute. The guys laughed and threw the word gay around, and the girls shrugged because they couldn¡¯t care less which boy was voted onto court. Liam was in band, fingering through ¡°Fate of the Gods,¡± when Dylan Madlen, the senior class president, came on the intercom to announce the court, and Liam nearly dropped his flute when he heard his name follow Liz Emerson¡¯s. For a wild moment, he thought that this was the beginning of something¡ªmaybe the money he¡¯d spent on new clothes hadn¡¯t been a waste. But then he looked around and everyone was sniggering, and reality set in. Well. What an exquisite joke. He stared at his flute, at his warped reflection, and he didn¡¯t look up again until the bell rang. They executed phase two the next day, during sixth hour. Liz had a fake pass to the guidance office, and she used it to get out of geometry. Kennie left Spanish to go to the bathroom and met her under the stairs. Julia took a little longer¡ªit had taken some convincing to get her out of honors biology at all¡ªbut eventually she showed up, and together they headed for the band room. ¡°Idiot,¡± Liz said to Kennie as they walked through the deserted hallways. They looked ridiculous¡ªthat day¡¯s homecoming theme was the seventies, and they were all in neon leggings and oversized windbreakers. ¡°How the hell are you going to explain why you were in the bathroom for half an hour?¡± Kennie frowned. Her face was barely visible under all her teased hair. ¡°Digestion troubles?¡± ¡°Feminine needs,¡± Julia suggested. ¡°Say you had to go find a tampon or something. Jacobsen¡¯s afraid of women.¡± ¡°Ooooh,¡± said Kennie, perking up. ¡°Can I borrow a tampon?¡± ¡°You don¡¯t actually need one, stupid,¡± said Liz, stopping in front of the band-room door. ¡°Now shut up. Let¡¯s go.¡± Liam had study hall this hour, and more often than not, he used it to practice his flute. Liz, who had never played an instrument in her life, found it difficult to believe that he was actually practicing. And since he wasn¡¯t practicing, he was definitely doing something else¡ªhopefully something monumentally and hilariously embarrassing. She was going to catch him at it. ¡°Come on,¡± she said unnecessarily to Julia and Kennie, and they snuck inside. The practice rooms were along one wall of the band room, and in the far one, someone was playing. They peeked through the narrow window. Liam¡¯s back was to them. He was playing his flute. They waited five, ten, fifteen minutes. Liam kept playing his flute. ¡°This is stupid,¡± Liz finally whispered. Except she didn¡¯t really mean it. She wasn¡¯t bored. She listened to Liam play and was mesmerized, because it was so obvious that he was happy. It made her remember that there had once been a time when she was in love with the sunshine and the wind and each brief flight. It was like watching the sky change colors, his playing. And then it made her jealous, because Liz Emerson was never at peace like that. Not really. Not anymore. Very suddenly, Liam stopped. They dropped to their stomachs with their breaths sucked in¡ªbut Liam hadn¡¯t seen them. He was just fixing the music stand, or he was trying to. ¡°Damn it,¡± Liz heard Liam mutter. ¡°Just . . . pull . . . out . . .¡± Kennie stifled a snort against Liz¡¯s shoulder. ¡°That¡¯s what she said,¡± she giggled. And there it was. The brilliantly, monumentally, hilariously embarrassing moment. Liz pulled her phone out of her pocket so quickly that she nearly elbowed Kennie in the face. She pulled up her camera app, angled the lens at the crack beneath the door, and pressed the record button. ¡°And here,¡± she whispered, ¡°we see Liam Oliver in his natural habitat, enjoying the primary pastime of his species: playing with his flute.¡± Liam walked past, the bottom of his jeans worn, his Converses on the brink of falling apart. That was all they could see, really, but that was all they needed. There was some banging, and Kennie giggled again. ¡°Come on,¡± came his muffled voice. ¡°A little higher, damn it.¡± And then he actually grunted, and not even Julia could keep from laughing. The camera shook as they pressed their faces in each other¡¯s shoulders, trying to keep quiet. There was a dull crash¡ªLiam had lost his balance and fallen against the wall, but it didn¡¯t look that way on camera. Kennie gave a half giggle, half hiccup, and on the other side of the door, Liam froze. But by the time he looked out the window, they were gone. Liz sent the video to her entire list of contacts. By the end of the day, it seemed like everyone had seen it. Someone had put it on Facebook, and someone else had uploaded it to YouTube. At her locker after the final bell, she saw people laugh when Liam walked by in the hallway, and Liz turned away, because it made her feel weird, somewhere deep, when she saw his bewildered face. Still, she went home and prepared for phase three. Liam Oliver is a pervert. Liam Oliver is gay. Liam Oliver is in a threesome. Liam Oliver gets turned on by inanimate objects. Liam Oliver chewed on the lead paint of his crib as a child and is therefore permanently fucked up. Liam Oliver will screw anything. Those were the more appropriate rumors. Phase three should have been an easy victory. Of course, everyone said that the football game would be too, and by the end of the first quarter, they were down 14-0. All of Meridian was packed onto the bleachers, soaking wet and screaming. The air smelled like rain and fish¡ªthe booster club always held a fish fry before the homecoming game, and tonight the sky was made of scales and oil and losing. Liz stood on the rickety bleachers, stomping and jumping and screaming, dressed in nothing but a sports bra and shorts and paint. To her right, Julia was the only one in the student section who was sitting, her arms crossed tightly over her chest because the rain was making her bra half-transparent. To her left, Kennie was gripping Liz¡¯s arm with all her strength, because Jenna Erikson had fallen off the bleachers earlier and broken her leg. Kennie pressed herself into Liz¡¯s side and whined that the rain would wash Riley Striver¡¯s name off her stomach before he could see it. Liz didn¡¯t care. The JAKE DERRICK on her stomach had long since turned to watercolor. But it was worse when the rain finally stopped. The fog was thick and it trapped the lights, and at halftime, after the band show ended, Liz shook Kennie off and made her way down the bleachers with the rest of the homecoming court, shoebox in hand. She held it carefully¡ªLiam¡¯s crown was inside. The freshman girls cheered for her as she crossed the track to the field. Liz could hear Kennie¡¯s scream above them all. The boys were yelling too, but not for her, and they weren¡¯t cheering. Liam was behind her. His falling-apart Converses squished in the mud, steps mirroring hers. And suddenly that was all that mattered¡ªher feet and his feet and the distance between them. It was like a dance, and the music was made of the screams of their classmates: step, gay, step, pervert, step, faggot. It hurt her ears. She wanted to turn around. She wanted to take his hand and pull him . . . where? Where would she have led him? She glanced over her shoulder, and he looked away. They reached the center of the field and took their places in line with the other court members. At the front of the court lineup, Kate Dulmes laughed when she saw Liam and nudged Brandon Jason, and Brandon made an obscene hand gesture while the principal dug through his pockets for the list of their names. ¡°Hey, Liam,¡± Brianna Vern, one of the sophomore representatives, said, leaning out of the lineup to smile at him. ¡°Nice of you guys to join us. We were just talking about how much easier it is to be a boy than a girl. Like, you guys don¡¯t have periods or anything. And, I mean, you love your body parts.¡± ¡°Dude, she¡¯s right,¡± said Matthew Derringer. He was the other sophomore representative, and one of Jake¡¯s best friends. Liz wasn¡¯t sure why, but she always had to fight down the urge to hug him when he was near. Lean in and wrap her arms around him and knee him in his unsuspecting balls. Hard. ¡°I do love my body parts. I reward ¡¯em. What about you, Liam? When was the last time you rewarded that flute of yours? Just now, on the bleachers? Thought I could feel them shaking.¡± The fog. How it magnified. The laughter. The screaming¡ªgay pervert faggot gaypervertfaggot. The digging, Liz¡¯s fingernails against palms, teeth, and lips. And the silence. Heavy heavy heavy silence. Somewhere in the fog, the principal announced Kate and Mike as king and queen. The crown Kate had made for Mike was heavy and elaborate and beautiful, and his for her was from Burger King. There was a pause and furious clicking as the parents took pictures. Someone complained that they should move the crowning back to the dance, when everyone was dressed up, though no one listened. The names continued. Junior representatives, sophomore. Liz¡¯s eyes flickered to Liam. She wondered if he had watched the video¡ªwatched it all the way through. ¡°Your freshman representatives: Liz Emerson and Liam Oliver!¡± Liz drew her crown from the shoebox. She had gone online and bought the cheapest, crappiest flute she could find. Jake had cut it to pieces in his metals class, and she had hot-glued it back together in a rough circle, and now she pulled it from its nest of tissue paper and offered it to Liam. His face. Why did you come? She wanted to scream it. Why the hell did you come? Idiot, you goddamn idiot. You knew this would happen. You knew what we would do. What I would do. You deserve this, she tried to think, but couldn¡¯t. You brought this upon yourself. There was a lump in her throat, and she wasn¡¯t sure why. He stared at the crown for a long time. He stared while fuzzy cheerleader shapes unfurled a big paper sign: MERIDIAN HOMECOMING, GO FIGHT WIN! He stared while Nick Braden tripped while running back onto the field and the rest of the team went down on top of him. He stared while the crowd booed. He stared while the football coach finally lost his temper and began to scream at the court to ¡°Get your asses off the field!¡± and the team to ¡°Get your asses together!¡± It was killing her, his silence. She took a breath to break it wide open, and then he finally looked up. Here Liz was supposed to say something, something horrible, and smile to show all of her teeth, but the only word she could remember was his name. She tried to say it. She couldn¡¯t. After a moment, he took the crown from her hands, dropped his own shoebox at her feet, and walked off the field. Liz stared after him, her throat closed and her eyes strangely full, and then she looked down. The lid had fallen aside when the box hit the ground, and she could see the tip of a crown. It was beautiful, and suddenly, she knew. That¡¯s why he came. To give her the crown. The mud splattered her knees as she dropped down beside the shoebox¡ªit was cold, and the coldness spread. She reached for the crown, pushed the tissue paper aside. Wire and gold leaf and metallic spray paint, twisted and braided and looped. It looked impossible, and she touched the edges to make sure it wasn¡¯t. She spun around. ¡°Liam!¡± There was no answer. ¡°You,¡± the football coach roared, marching toward her. ¡°You have three seconds to get your ass off the field, or I will carry it off.¡± Later, Meridian would lose the game 49-2, and Liz Emerson would slip away from Kennie and Julia to run all around the football field in search of Liam to say . . . something. She didn¡¯t know. Anything. Everything. But while she was pushing people away and peeling them apart, she saw a ziplock bag sticking out of a stranger¡¯s pocket, and she took it because she was too tired to keep looking. CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN The Effects Liam didn¡¯t go to the dance, but it didn¡¯t matter. Surely it was okay to laugh. It was funny. A nerd had been voted onto court and had gotten caught . . . practicing. And besides, no one really got hurt. Liz, Kennie, and Julia went to the dance and grinded on the sweat-slippery floor, and then they went to parties and got drunk and forgot all about it. On Monday, Liam quit band. When the teacher tried to change his mind, he threw his flute against the wall and walked away. Many people guessed that Liam cried when he watched the video. They were wrong. Liam watched with no emotion whatsoever. No one guessed that Liz cried when she watched it. After Liam quit band and left his dented and ruined flute behind, she watched the video again and again. She deleted it and cried because she couldn¡¯t do anything. She couldn¡¯t drag the video back from all people she had sent it to, or all the people they had sent it to. She couldn¡¯t take it off the internet. She couldn¡¯t put Liam¡¯s flute back together. So she didn¡¯t try. CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT Thirty-Three Minutes Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car Liz thought about Liam Oliver in terms of Newton¡¯s Second Law of Motion. Mass. Liz managed to gather an enormous audience. The video spread like a virus. Towns an hour away knew about Liam Oliver. Kids would stop him at Walmart and ask, smirking, about his flute. Acceleration. There was no unit that could accurately measure the speed, the potential and kinetic energy, of gossip. It made sound look like a tortoise. It made light look like Kennie¡¯s crippled grandma. There was a strange addiction in the act of spreading a rumor, relishing someone else¡¯s pain. No one could resist. Force. Liz. She looked around and saw all of the broken things in her wake, and then she looked inside herself and saw the spidering cracks from the weight of all the things she had done. She hated what she was and didn¡¯t know how to change, and half an hour before she drove her car off the road, she saw that despite all of that, she didn¡¯t have enough force to stop the world from turning. But she had enough to stop her own. After Liam, there were others. There was Lauren Melbrook, who began dating Lucas Drake after he dumped Kennie. They were a cute couple and they made Kennie cry. So one morning that January, Liz, Julia, and Kennie woke up early to spray-paint SLUT across the snow on Lauren¡¯s front lawn. They took pictures, uploaded them to Facebook, and tagged Lauren in all of them. Lucas Drake dumped her on the very same day. There was Sandra Garrison, who told Mrs. Schumacher, their Algebra II teacher, that Liz had copied off her test. Mrs. Schumacher believed her, but Sandra had no proof, so Mrs. Schumacher let it go, but Liz (because she had, in fact, cheated on the test) felt it necessary to spread a rumor that Sandra Garrison was pregnant. Being a stress eater, Sandra did indeed gain weight after the rumors made their rounds. Liz later spread a follow-up rumor that Sandra had aborted her baby, which marked the death of her already nosediving social status. There was Justin Strayes, who had made fun of Julia¡¯s strained relationship with her father. Liz planted a small bag of pot in his locker on a day the drug dogs came. There was an enormous investigation, and Justin ended up missing quite a bit of school to appear in court. When he came back, no one would look him in the eye. It was okay to experiment. It was not okay to get caught. Justin had gotten caught, and now no one talked to him except the stoners. They all became numbers in Liz¡¯s metaphorical body count. CHAPTER FORTY-NINE Twenty-Nine Minutes Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car Liz wondered why Lauren Melbrook had never spray-painted HYPOCRITE across her lawn.