7

SHADOWS LOOM SO THICK in front of my eyes that the numbing sting in my arms and legs that always seems to follow a memory is the only thing that lets me know I’m back in the present. But the pain is nominal compared to the residual anxiety I feel. Aimée’s suspicions were right; I wasn’t alone on the bridge, but what I saw wasn’t the whole story. Pieces were missing, buried deep in my subconscious. I struggle to regain the use of my hands to rub my eyes clear.

As I wade in the haze, I try to recall the tenor of his voice or some small gesture that will let me know who I was with, but the harder I try to remember, the faster the light creeps in, bleaching out the murky bits I have to work with.

Once my eyes refocus, the first thought I have is of Ethan. He saw me! But he isn’t here.

My house is as silent as the night outside its darkened windows even though everyone is sitting together on the sectional in the living room. Dad’s clicking through the three hundred channels we get, but the TV is on mute because Mom is curled up next to him with her eyes closed. He’s rubbing slow circles on her back and glancing down at her lovingly. I gawk at my parents cuddling. I can’t remember the last time I saw them hug or kiss, much less touch, besides bumping into each other between the toaster and the kitchen table.

When I first introduced Ethan to my parents almost three years ago, my dad teased that he and Mom had met in their freshman year in high school, too, which made me feel like I was on track with some predestined plan. However, in the past few months, I’d heard my parents argue over everything from who forgot to pay the water bill to which brand of paper towels was more environmentally friendly. The more they argued, the less I believed I was on track with any sort of plan.

Joules is sitting with her legs spread in a V, stretching while she does more homework: Social Studies this time. Shaw is slumped next to her, aimlessly thumbing the dial on his iPod. The whole family’s together now that I’m here.

I walk past Joules’s side of the couch and make a motion with my hand like I’m flicking her ponytail. With my eyes closed I imagine the smooth, slightly crunchy texture of her moussed curls. The gesture feels so automatic, so normal. I hesitate at the ottoman where Mom’s feet are daintily crossed at the ankle. Her breath is shallow and steady as she sleeps. I could reach out and … I keep my distance. After the dust-pain thing that happened with Joules and Dad, I won’t be attempting to touch anyone who can’t see me anytime soon.

Mom sniffles and shifts so her head rests in Dad’s lap. He switches the remote to his other hand and combs his fingers through her long curls. His eyes have purple shadows under them; so do Mom’s and Shaw’s. Joules is the only one in the family who doesn’t look like the living dead.

Ha! So funny, Cassidy. Undead humor. Lame.

The phone rings, and Mom jolts awake. Joules picks it up from the coffee table.

“Hello?… No, this is Joules Haines. May I take a message?”

After she hangs up, Dad asks, “Who was it?” His voice is a gravelly whisper.

“Someone named Mr. Mueller. He said for you to call him. I wrote down his number.” She tears off a corner of her homework and hands it to Dad.

He rubs his stubbled face. “Joules, I needed to speak with him. He’s the funeral home director.”

“Oh.” Her entire face frowns, even her button nose looks sad. “Mom told me to take messages unless it was Grandma calling to tell us when her flight arrives.”

Mom sits up. “I only meant to screen calls from the reporters.”

Dad turns so Mom can see his disapproving expression. “We can’t avoid them forever, Tessa.”

“There’s no reason we should feed into the media’s exploitation of our daughter’s drunken suicide.”

Joules breaks in. “Cassidy didn’t do that to herself.”

I give her an appreciative look. “Thanks, Jouley-bee.”

“That’s kind of you to think of your sister, Joules, but we can’t be sure of that.”

“Then how can you be sure I’m wrong?”

“She can’t,” Dad answers flatly.

Mom purses her lips and leans back so she’s crammed into the armrest, not touching Dad. This is the parental duo I know. I kind of wish it didn’t, but their arguing comforts me somehow. “I’m only saying this is difficult enough to deal with in private without involving the media.”

Shaw exhales a loud breath, pulls out his earbuds, and stares up at the ceiling. “It was just a phone call. If you two are going to go through this every time the thing rings, we should unplug it.”

“And what about the school?” Dad says to Mom as if he didn’t hear Shaw. “The sooner we pick up her things, the better.”

Mom gasps like he has personally insulted her. “Why don’t we all go over there first thing tomorrow morning, Rodger? We could contribute to the assembly on teen suicide.”

“Jesus.” Shaw stands and paces the room with disgust visible on his face.

Dad turns his head away and grinds his teeth.

“I’ll clean out Cassidy’s locker,” Joules offers in a tiny voice that still manages to sound stronger than our parents’ yelling. “Shaw can drive me. Right?”

Shaw gives Joules a weary head shake, then slips out the back door. Mom reaches for him weakly, silently calling him back. He shuts the door behind him.

Dad sighs. “No, Jouley, you don’t need to do that.”

“But I know the combination. Cassidy told me once and I never forgot.”

Mom and Dad exchange strained looks, and Mom moves to sit beside Joules. “Aimée already offered to do it. You stay here with us, okay, honey? Your dad can call Mr. Mueller back tomorrow and the school can wait.”

“Tessa—” Dad starts back in, but Mom cuts him off.

“They can wait. Everyone can goddamn wait.” The words get caught in her throat. Her head falls into her hands and she starts to sob.

I know I should feel bad for her, but I’m too disappointed in her for falling apart in front of Joules and accepting that I’m capable of taking my own life. She should know me better than that. She’s my mother.

Something visceral tugs me away from her, away from my house. It pulls me through the back door the way my brother left. I follow Shaw’s footprints in the snow across the backyard and through the thicket of trees separating my house from the next subdivision. I’m sort of glad it’s pulling me to him, like he needs me to comfort him instead of the other way around like it used to be.

I stop where Shaw’s tracks end and follow the faint buzz of music echoing among the spindly, leafless trees beyond the trail. I tiptoe toward the sound even though I could stomp and scream and Shaw wouldn’t even blink.

He’s sitting cross-legged on a small hill that’s somehow managed to stay clear of snow, shivering because he didn’t bother to grab a coat when he stormed out of the house. His dusty brown hair is longer than I remember, but then again, he hasn’t been home in over a month—busy at college, avoiding the daily scream fests between Mom and Dad. He lifts two fingers to his mouth and sucks in until the end of the cigarette he’s holding burns red. Smoke billows around me as he exhales.

“Shaw!” I yell without thinking. My brother does not smoke! Guilt fills me. I’m sure this is a grief-induced habit, caused by my death. Then he exhales perfect donuts of smoke that probably take years to learn how to do, and I ram my hands into my hips, shaking my head.

I’m mad even though I have absolutely no right to be—the transmigratory have no place to judge—but this is my National Honor Society older brother. My community-service role model. This is vice-less Shaw. Maybe he wasn’t any of those things after all. Maybe that’s merely how I chose to see him.

I climb up onto a fallen log that’s propped diagonally above where he’s sitting, dangling my feet beside his head, and let the sounds from his headphones clarify in my ears. I recognize the high-pitched vocals. It’s an older band—from when Mom and Dad were in school—that he always used to listen to in the car when he drove me home from school or wherever.

He finishes his cigarette, snuffs out the butt, wraps it in a tissue, and stuffs it in his coat pocket. There’s the environmentally conscious public policy major I know. Another shiver shakes him, but he doesn’t head back to the house. He remains sitting, bobbing his head to the beat of his music.

I saw him here once before, the summer after he graduated high school. Aimée and Madison and I were in a Wicca phase—don’t ask—so we spent a lot of time in the woods under the tree house my dad had built me in second grade, lighting candles and pretending to believe we could bewitch Will McPherson into asking out Madison. We were lying in a patch of heather, pointing out pictoric clouds, and Shaw showed up all puffy eyed. His girlfriend had broken up with him because she was going off to college in California. We hid so he wouldn’t see us. I remember promising myself I would never break a boy’s heart like that.

Images of flirting with Caleb in Mrs. Wirlkee’s class flood my mind: passing notes, deciding to put my hair up so I’d have to turn around to search for a hair tie in my backpack when all I really wanted was to catch one of his casual smiles directed at me. I shake the images out of my head, refusing to believe they’re real.

After what seems like hours, Shaw stands and walks up the trail toward the house. I wait for the pulse that drew me out here to urge me to follow my brother again. Instead I feel it yanking me in the opposite direction, farther into the trees. I jump down from the log I’ve been sitting on—float is more accurate, actually. I fall with the grace of a feather. I raise one pointed foot to my knee as if I’m balancing a fouetté rond de jambe en tournant. It hasn’t occurred to me until now that I probably weigh about as much as a feather.

My feet stop, from some predestined will, in front of a towering maple tree. It’s the one that holds my tree house. I lift my hand to the worn slats of the handmade ladder that’s nailed to the trunk. My initials are still visible on the bottom step. I trace the uneven letters with my finger: CEH. Above them, on the next step, I trace the letters CAT. Cat? Placing my thumb over the capital A, I realize they’re initials too. I yank my hand back when I remember whose: Caleb Aaron Turner. My best friend when Dad built this for me.

My hands sink into the tree as I attempt to climb the ladder, and I stumble through it, barely catching my balance on the other side. I let out a small laugh because this reminds me of the first time I used the tree house. I had my mom call Caleb’s mom to invite him over, and he dared me into rock-paper-scissoring to see who got to climb up first. I was so mad when he won, until he turned to tell me how easy the ladder was to climb and fell ten feet to the ground.

When I straighten, I’m standing inside the tree house. I peek out the window, wondering how I managed to get up here without climbing, and see a pair of black Vans dangling over the ledge. I pull my head back inside and glare at Caleb. “Why are you up here?”

He responds by swinging his feet. I stare at his untied white laces tangling in the breeze, wondering why he asked me to be his project partner. I draw my eyes away to check out the tree house.

It’s been years since I’ve been up here, but it looks exactly the same. The milk-crate tables and the ratty old striped rug in the middle of the oblong space. Even the drawing I made of two dogs dancing Swan Lake is still tacked to the wall behind the paper airplanes that Caleb hung from the roof with my dad’s fishing line. The floor is littered with damp leaves, but other than that, the place is in pretty good condition. I kick at a pile of brown leaves and wonder if Caleb’s responsible for how well kept my tree house is.

I bend down to examine a Tic Tac container that’s fallen out of his hoodie pocket near the undisturbed pile of leaves I kicked at. It’s full of white ovals that are just flat enough to distinguish from the fresh mints that should be inside. He picks it up, flicks open the top, and pops a handful of pills into his mouth like they’re candy.

“I take it those aren’t prescribed to you,” I chide. “You have to be kidding me that you came up here to get high while I’m—”

“You should have gone home early,” Caleb mumbles, interrupting me.

“When exactly are you…” My mind strays mid-sentence, distracted by images that fade before faces reveal themselves. A chill rolls down my arms. His brown eyes turn black, then blue like mine, and I can’t be sure which color is true because they’re all blending in the water dripping from my hair.

Caleb closes the top of the Tic Tac container and the click echoes through the woods like the clap of an oar on rough tides. It carries him away. Then it’s cold, and he’s back. And I’m … I’m not dead yet. But I want to be.