Henry. Henry. Henry.
I basked in the afterglow of Henry all yesterday, even after he left. It got me all the way through Day 8 of my confinement, and I slept right through the night.
I smile as I write his name over and over. I like the shape of the letters, the straight lines of the H’s. But even as dawn breaks on Day 9, that warm thrill of Henry gets sanitized by the too-bright lights and the medicinal soap and the breakfast I don’t want. The hospital closes in and he’s no more than yesterday’s memory and I’m alone. And sitting all alone with no one but myself to judge me, I have in my hands a document that a better person would not open. I struggle valiantly with the morality of what I know I am about to do. But if you end up doing the wrong thing, then you were going to do the wrong thing all along, right? All those near misses of doing the right thing, they don’t count even a little bit, because of how the story ends. The idea that you might count them, and that the chances were a million to one…that’s a fallacy, if you believe in destiny. If you believe in destiny, then the chances were always one hundred percent that you would do the wrong thing.
I run my hand over the cover of Eleanor’s red journal, the twin of my own.
I never could resist an unread book.
You know when you read the back cover of a book and you get so into it, because the idea of the story is so awesome? And even before you’ve read it, you’re super-excited just to get to spend time in that world with those people? That’s about how well I know Eleanor. She is a book jacket: all promise.
But I already feel like I know her so well! She’s that kind of story: the kind that you know was written just for you. I love the idea of Eleanor and her boyfriend sneaking around Paris on boarding school holidays, smoking in alleyways. When I picture them, a whole world springs out of an image: they wear black leather jackets, and her hair is newly dyed in that rainbow of pastels. He doesn’t speak much English, so they both speak French, and when he holds her the spikes on his jacket press into her skin, but she doesn’t mind. I can suffer the joyful sharpness of how it would feel to be held by someone bad like that.
I want to read that life.
I flip open the cover with my eyes closed, and I think hard about not opening them because I know what I’m doing is wrong.
But I open them.
I read a few pages and my stomach turns.
I should have remembered: a book with an awesome premise doesn’t always live up to its cover.
It couldn’t be, I think to myself. This is wrong. So I take out the note Eleanor left me. I flip toward the back, and hold its rough edges to a torn page I find there: a perfect jigsaw fit. I compare the handwriting. I use every trick of reasonable disbelief to try to dismantle the truth, but it’s too late: I know, and I can’t unknow.
The notebook is definitely hers.
Little phrases jump out at me:
No one loves me. I hate school. I would give anything to go to boarding school.
I am nothing. No one. I am invisible.
If I died, maybe I would wake up as someone else.
I can’t feel anything until I hurt myself, and even then I feel nothing.
I read sentence after sentence and everything I know about her falls away until all that is left is Eleanor, who is just like me: a big melodramatic liar, trying to make something important that isn’t.
I pull my green notebook out and open it on top of Eleanor’s. But I’m at a loss for words.
“Day 9,” I write:
I just want to go home.
I think I’m ready. Henry still loves me. He doesn’t know about George. No one does. As long as no one finds out, everything can go back to how it used to be. Even at my most vulnerable, I kept George safe.
I am unsinkable.
But nothing is unsinkable, I remind myself. That thought passing through my brain and onto paper feels like an omen.
Even so, I’m actually excited when the nurses wheel me into Dr. Roberts’s office. I even do some of the wheeling myself. But before I can say anything, she puts one finger up.
“I have to ask you a question that might be a little uncomfortable,” she says. “I don’t want you to feel ambushed, but you must remember, there is a reason you are here. And I would be remiss to simply allow you to continue talking around it. Now, I’ve spoken to your parents—”
“You did what!”
“And I asked them if they happened to know of any of your friends who might be named George. And do you know what they told me? I have a feeling you do.”
And I swear, I can feel my heart stop.
I say nothing.
I didn’t see it coming. You never do, these big things. You remember them, and later it seems like they were inevitable. But that’s just ordering the past into an arrow to the present. Memory makes stories out of time. You naturally destroy the things that you forgot along the way. All the red herrings and alternate worlds don’t live on in memory. They’re lost as the arrow of your story shoots by.
I am always asking after those lost things. Where are the events that are not in the past, present, or future? What happens to all those forgotten thoughts? If no one remembers something, did it even really happen?
I don’t want to remember this.
The world is backing out of my consciousness and pulling away down that long tunnel, like a train leaving me behind. The office where we sit becomes a collection of objects: a pen, a chair, a nail, a desk, a book, a book, a book…I look at my hands. They seem a million miles away.
I can see George, in the phantom way dreams happen. He’s not really there. What would he say? Keep your mouth shut. Don’t you dare answer. Do you want me to die? No, that isn’t it. He’d know it was only an accident. He would know I couldn’t stop it.
But even if it was an accident, it can still be my fault.
“Sadie?” Roberts calls. When I don’t respond, she says, “I know you don’t want to talk about this. Can you answer me?”
I stare at the books over her shoulder and start counting them, since each one I count lifts me higher and farther away. The universe is chaotic, but numbers are peaceful. They arrange themselves neatly in lines and squares, in ways that make sense, in ways that can be understood. I love counting. One. Two. Three…Eleven…One thousand…
George, smiling at Sadie from across the room.
His hands in Sadie’s hair, whispering, “Quiet, darling. Everything will be all right. I’m here. I’m always here.”
Sadie cried in her mind, but her face wasn’t connected to her thoughts anymore. She didn’t have a body, it seemed. She was at once scared and happy. She didn’t understand how it had happened, but her wish came true.
Sadie was with George.
“Sadie. Let’s just sit here for a moment,” Dr. Roberts said, far away. “I’m going to sit here and when you’re ready, you can say whatever you want to say, and then we’ll go on or we’ll stop. It’s up to you. I think you can hear me. Sadie.”
Sadie…
Where is she?