I texted Elise as soon as I got home, so excited to tell her about Jack, my anger from our fight largely dissipated in the rush of the last few hours. Maybe it’d been an off night for her, I thought. Maybe I’d misunderstood her. I thought she’d want to celebrate her birthday the same way we celebrated mine, but maybe what she really wanted was a party.
Whatever it was, I could never stay angry at her for long, and I thought that things would just go back to normal.
Me: Where are you?
Me: I have to tell you something omg
She didn’t respond. I was so tired I fell asleep waiting for her.
The call came at three in the morning. “What? Hello?” I answered, barely awake.
“Remy?” Elise sounded like she’d been crying. Elise never cried. Ever.
“Elise?” I rubbed my eyes and swept my hair back, sitting up.
“Can you come get me?” she asked, voice small.
“Just tell me where to go,” I said, already getting out of bed.
“I’m in that strip mall near school,” she said. “Hurry.”
The streets were empty that time of night, giving the town an eerily abandoned feel. Standing in front of the CVS with her arms wrapped around herself, Elise was alone, shivering. I pulled up alongside the curb.
“What happened?” I asked, waiting for her to get in. I didn’t understand where the others had gone, or how she’d ended up there. “Are you hurt?” She looked awful, hair in disarray, eyeliner smeared from crying. It was terrifying seeing her like that.
“I’m fine. But I don’t want to talk about it.” She buckled her seat belt and stared stubbornly forward. “Where’s my car?” She sounded tired but also irritated. Was she upset that I didn’t show up any sooner? It took me a moment to wake up before I sneaked out. Why wouldn’t she just tell me what’d happened?
“It’s parked in front of my house.”
“Okay,” she said, softer this time, and that was when I noticed it.
“You’re drunk.” It was less an accusation and more of a statement.
“Maybe,” she said, closing her eyes. “Please, Rem, let’s just go.”
We remained silent on the drive back. I wished she would just talk to me. I was her best friend. In the ten minutes we spent on the road, I spun through all the things that could’ve happened. She said she wasn’t hurt but she didn’t clarify what that actually meant.
When we arrived at my house, she stumbled inside with me through the basement, careful not to wake anyone.
“Come on,” I said, heading for the stairs, one of her arms slung over my shoulders, half of her weight on me.
“No, can we just stay here?” She collapsed on the sectional, burying her face into a pillow.
“Shhh,” she mumbled. “Sleep now. Talk later.” I was worried but I was afraid of upsetting her, so I just filled a glass with water and left it on the coffee table next to her.
I turned off the lights and lay down, dragging a quilt over me. When I was about to fall asleep, she reached out and touched my shoulder.
“Remy?”
My eyes flew open. “Yeah.”
“Nothing, never mind,” she said, falling silent again.
“What is it?” I flipped over to face her. “You know you can tell me anything.” Please, I thought. Please just talk to me.
She swallowed slowly and turned, our eyes meeting in the dark. “You and me, we’re family,” she said. “Right?”
I nodded, though I couldn’t help thinking about earlier that night, when she’d left me behind for her other friends, when she made me feel like I was a burden.
“That’s all that matters. You and me, just the two of us,” she said, and I decided then that all was forgiven.
“You and me,” I said in agreement, like it was a promise.
When I woke up again, it was almost noon and Elise was sitting cross-legged on the couch watching Kill Bill: Vol. 2 with the TV muted.
“Hey,” she said, smiling at me.
“Hey,” I said, rubbing my eyes and sitting up next to her. “Why are you watching this without sound?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t want to wake you. And I know pretty much every word anyway.” Nudging me over, she shifted to rest her head on my shoulder.
“What happened last night?” I asked quietly. I couldn’t wait to tell Elise about Jack, about us swimming in the dark, kissing under the stars. But I pushed all of that aside for now. “Did someone hurt you?”
“No, nothing like that.” She sighed. “So we went to the football field. Then word got out and everyone showed up. I mean everyone. It was less an anti-anti-prom party and more a prom after-party.”
“That sounds fun?” I said, unsure of where this was going.
“It was, for a while at least.”
The movie continued playing in front of us in silence—the Bride showing up at the residence of her next target, Bill’s brother Budd. She geared up, katana drawn and ready, but before she could even get close, Budd hit her in the chest with a shotgun blast of rock salt. I winced even though it was still on mute.
“Christian came,” Elise said, her voice tensing. “We—”
“What?” I was shocked.
She’d said that he wouldn’t be there. But she was only talking about Summer’s anti-prom party—she hadn’t said anything about the party she was throwing on the football field. Had she known he’d be there? Was that why she ditched me?
“What happened?” I asked, wondering if he was back at the house too, if that was why she’d insisted on staying in the basement the night before.
She looked miserable. “I have to tell you something first,” Elise said. “About Christian. And me.” She looked away. “Last night wasn’t the first time we hung out.”
I didn’t immediately understand what she was saying. “Wait, what?”
“I was sleeping over one night, and I went downstairs for a glass of water. He was there too, and at first we just talked. But then—”
I could picture it: she and him in the kitchen, chatting and laughing. Flirting. Maybe even talking about me. What would Christian have said about me? What would Elise?
I knew she had feelings for him. She didn’t acknowledge them after the fundraiser, refusing to admit she liked him when I asked, but she defended him unprompted. And now I was almost certain she wanted to throw that party on the football field because she thought he might come. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to talk to me about it because he was my brother or because she knew I hated him.
But this was worse, so much worse. She’d lied to me. A lie of omission, but still a lie.
“Then what?” I turned to fully face her. She finally looked up, meeting my eyes.
“He told me that he and his girlfriend had been fighting. And we talked about, I don’t even know, and I—” She stared at her hands on her lap. “Then he kissed me,” she said.
Her words sent me reeling. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I couldn’t believe she’d hidden something like this from me. The betrayal stung. We were best friends, we were family. She clasped my wrists, holding on to me tightly. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, okay? I’m sorry.”
Maybe it wasn’t fair, but all I could think was that Elise was mine, the only thing that was mine in a world where Christian almost always got everything, even if he didn’t want it—didn’t want her. She was the only person in the world who had chosen me. We’d chosen each other. And now it felt like everything we’d been was a lie, even though I knew that wasn’t true.
“When?” I whispered, the only question I could manage.
“A couple weeks ago.” She was still squeezing my wrists, not letting me turn away. “It was stupid. I was stupid. And last night, I saw him and he was with his ex and he wouldn’t even talk to me, wouldn’t even acknowledge me standing in front of him. When I tried to talk to him, he turned and walked away without a single word.”
“Let go,” I told her, looking down at our hands. “You’re hurting me.”
“Sorry,” she said, releasing me immediately.
I pulled into myself, drawing my knees up and hugging them with my arms.
“It was humiliating,” she went on. “You were right—he’s an asshole.”
Even angry, I could sense something off about Elise’s story. All of this over a kiss. Maybe there was something she wasn’t telling me. Maybe it’d been more than a kiss.
“I should’ve listened to you,” she said. “I—”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the Bride being bound up and dragged to a pine box.
“Say something?” Elise said, eyes pleading.
I didn’t know what to say. I could tell how upset she was, but how could she not have seen that this would affect me too? She’d kissed Christian and intentionally kept it from me even though she knew how I felt about him. Or more important, how I felt about the two of us. I told her everything. And now I was supposed to just forget about this betrayal because it’d all blown up in her face? Now she told me that I was right about Christian all along, that he was an asshole, and I was just supposed to commiserate with her? Fuck that.
I turned to face the screen and watched the Bride get buried alive. “I know she’s supposed to be this hero or something, but she spends most of the movie getting beaten up.”
“What? No,” Elise said. “I mean, she does get beaten up a lot, but she comes back stronger than ever every single time.” She could tell I was unconvinced, so she continued, “Every superhero needs a villain that is their equal. The stronger the villain, the stronger the hero. Every one of these stories has the hero failing again and again and again but getting stronger each time so that they’re ready for a final showdown at the end.”
I stared at her.
“That’s why you have to be strong,” she said. “That’s why you have to get up every time you’re knocked down. That’s why I love all of these movies so much. That’s why I love this movie so much.”
I turned back to the screen, watched a flashback of a younger Bride training under the cruel tutelage of Pai Mei—suffering but growing stronger. Then, as if drawing on that strength, the present-day Bride punched through her coffin and clawed her way up. I understood what Elise was saying. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.
“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Christian, okay? Are you going to be mad at me all day?”
“No, it’s whatever,” I lied. I was still mad at her, but I knew it’d be hard to stay mad at her for long. She said she was sorry, and she seemed sincere. She acknowledged it’d been a mistake but now she knew what Christian was really like.
“Good,” she said. “Because you’ve just given me an idea and I need your help.”
Elise’s plan was simple. She’d go to the hardware store and buy liquid chalk markers, the ones that car dealerships used to write prices on the windshield. That night, after everyone had gone to bed, she’d strike.
“It’s just chalk,” Elise said with a shrug. “It’ll wash off.”
She wanted to call Christian out on all the things he’d said to her, how he’d led her on. She planned to mark up his Mercedes, take a picture, and post it on the school’s Facebook page, tagging all the right people. She wanted to humiliate him like he’d humiliated her. She wanted to destroy him. Her other plans had been brilliant but this one seemed to have evolved. This was much more personal, designed specifically for Christian. The golden boy. The flagship child. Student council president, popular at school, going places. It had to be as public as possible.
“It’s what the Bride would do,” Elise said, the excitement in her voice rising. “Actually, no. I’m going easy on him. The Bride’s justice wouldn’t be this nice.”
I questioned her. “Nice?”
She nodded. “This is nothing.”
I was so glad I hadn’t gone with her to the football field then, glad I hadn’t witnessed whatever it was that made her so determined to do this.
“Don’t worry, Remy, I know what I’m doing,” she said. “It’ll be a birthday present to myself.”
“But—” What she was about to do just didn’t feel right. Her plan, while genius, felt particularly vindictive. The price didn’t seem to fit the crime. Cameron and I had been together for a year and he was an asshole when he broke up with me at homecoming. Jae’s girlfriend Dana had cheated on him with his best friend. Christian had kissed Elise once and led her on for a few weeks. It just seemed extreme.
“Oh, I forgot about your text,” she said suddenly. “What’d you want to tell me?”
Jack. I didn’t know how to tell her about him. Our nights had sharply diverged when she left me at Summer’s house. She seemed so devastated by what happened at the party that I felt bad telling her what an amazing time I’d had with Jack.
“Nothing,” I said, deciding to fill her in later. I told myself I was sparing her feelings, but maybe I was just scared to tell her about him, unsure of how she’d react when she was angry like this, if it would only anger her more.
I kept hoping she’d change her mind about the prank on Christian. We spent the day watching movies, going for a drive, and smoking in the car—all the things I’d wanted to do with her the night before. I didn’t mention Christian at all until the drive back to my house late Saturday night when she brought up the plan again, clearly still intent on going through with it.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked her when we pulled into my neighborhood. “I mean, will it really make you feel better?”
She turned to me sharply. “Of course it’ll make me feel better. That’s the whole point. Remember when we pranked your ex?”
“Yeah, but—” I wanted to tell her it wasn’t the same. That Christian was my brother. That we couldn’t just do this, drive away, and never look back.
As much as I hated him, I still had to live with him. And I could get into serious trouble with my parents.
“Why is this so important to you?” I said, growing frustrated. Things were bad enough at home for me, and I couldn’t afford to make it worse.
“It just is,” she snapped.
“But why?” I asked. Christian had been right—Dad was gone for ten days but ultimately returned. The house had recently settled back into a tense quiet, with Mom and Dad avoiding each other, sleeping in separate rooms. One of them leaving early for work, the other coming home late.
I hated that Christian had been right, that they ran on such an awful but predictable loop, but I was also just relieved that Dad had come back.
She parked down the street from my house but left the car running. “Look. I can’t always do something about every single injustice, but when I can, I will.”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“You wouldn’t understand.” The sudden sadness in her voice startled me.
“Wouldn’t understand what?” Elise never hesitated. She was fearless, especially when she saw an injustice.
“Nothing, never mind,” she said coldly, turning firmly away from me.
“Don’t do this,” I said. “No one else is here. It’s just you and me. You know you can tell me anything. Don’t shut me out.” When she didn’t respond, I pulled out her cigarettes and lit two for us, and she finally turned around to face me when accepting one.
“There’s nothing to tell,” she finally said, but she seemed torn, avoiding eye contact and taking frequent sips from her cigarette.
She was constantly circling something she wouldn’t tell me, and I couldn’t take it anymore. “What did you mean when you said you can’t always do something about every single injustice?” I asked. I couldn’t ask her about it directly, so I just wanted to keep her talking with the hope that she would tell me once and for all.
“Let’s just forget it,” she said. “We don’t have to do the prank.” She sounded pained.
“What?” I was relieved, but more worried than ever. Elise was not one to change her mind, just like that. Elise was not one to back down, ever.
“Let’s just go to my house,” she said. “My dad probably won’t be back until late tomorrow.”
“But it’s your birthday,” I said, saddened by the thought that her father wasn’t home, like he had forgotten.
She glanced at me like she could read my mind. “Trust me, him not being home is the best birthday present he could give me.” Then without another word, she started the car. Elise never wanted to talk about her father, never wanted me to run into him, but I still didn’t know why.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, knowing that it clearly wasn’t.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” she said in a tone that ended the conversation, pointedly looking away.
That night, we went down to the river behind her house. It’d been dry the last few months and the water was low, quiet and soothing. We smoked one cigarette, then two, as the dark sky opened up and revealed a scattering of stars.
“I’m sorry Christian was such an asshole,” I said, breaking the silence.
“It’s not your fault,” she said, sighing. “It’s just bad luck.” At my questioning glance, she shrugged. “Everyone likes to pretend they have control over their lives, but none of us really do. Sometimes shit just happens, sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it.” That didn’t sound like the Elise I knew. The Elise I knew didn’t back down, didn’t throw her hands up in surrender, not ever.
“What’s wrong?” I asked again.
“Nothing,” she said, getting up. “Come on, it’s getting cold.”
I followed her back inside and up to her room, where we climbed into bed, neither of us falling asleep.
“I’m so tired,” Elise said, sitting up. “Not sleepy. Tired.”
I pulled myself up too, propping myself on one arm and tucking my feet beneath me.
“I’m tired of everything.” She was staring straight ahead to the opposite wall, back against the headboard, chin resting on her knees, arms hugging herself.
I didn’t speak, didn’t ask questions. The second I said anything, I risked her shutting down. It’d been like that all day: start-stop conversations, me asking her what was wrong only for her to fall silent.
“How are you not exhausted too?” she asked softly. “How are you not sick of the bullshit? Is life just one long line of wanting something you can never have?” She was talking about Christian again, I thought. “Of being forever trapped?”
The sadness in her voice shocked me. She’d always been so strong and in control, so sure of herself and of her future. I drew confidence from her by just being near her, drew inspiration from her every moment of every day. The night before, with Jack, jumping into the dark water and kissing under the moonlight—I never would’ve done that before I met her.
“Sometimes I don’t know if I’m going to make it,” she said with so much sincerity it scared me.
“What do you mean, if you’re going to make it?” I said. I’d never heard Elise say anything like that before.
“Out of here,” she said. “Out of this town, this state, this life.”
“Oh,” I said, relieved.
“Don’t you ever worry that this is it? That this is the one shitty life you’re going to have and there’s nothing you can do about it?” This didn’t sound like her at all. The Elise I knew was determined to make her mark on the world. She wasn’t worried about having a shitty life.
“Is this because of Christian?” I asked. “Because he’s not worth it. And you don’t have a shitty life.”
“It’s not because of him,” she said. “Well, it’s not just because of him.”
“What happened?” I crossed my legs so I could sit up straight, and she finally met my eyes.
“I know I always act like I know what I’m doing, but—” She took a deep breath. “But I don’t.” She held my gaze, and it was like I could see into her soul. “Don’t tell the others, but most of the time I have no idea what I’m doing. I just think about the person I wish I were and try to act like her. Fake it till you make it, you know?” she finished with a sad laugh.
I didn’t want to believe her. Maybe this was just a bad day, an aberration. All her confidence and swagger—that was the real Elise. But then I thought of the times Elise invoked the Bride. She wanted to be just as badass, just as tough. Just as impossible to defeat. It’s what the Bride would do. When she didn’t know what to do, the Bride was the one she turned to, the source of her courage.
“You know you never have to fake it around me, right?” I said. “You know that I love you, right? You never have to pretend to be anyone but yourself with me. Never.”
“Remy, I—” She burst into tears.
I didn’t know what to say so I scooted closer, put both hands on her shoulders and squeezed.
She pulled away, wincing.
“Sorry—” I said, worried I’d hurt her somehow.
“Do you ever feel like we’re stuck in the part of a movie where we’re getting beaten and it feels like we’ll never succeed?” she asked. “I mean, I know we’re not in a movie, but you know what I’m talking about, right? The part where the odds feel insurmountable and you’re exhausted and running out of hope and”—she hiccuped—“and somehow you’ve got to go on?”
“I do,” I said, but I didn’t understand what this had to do with Elise.
“If I tell you something will you promise not to tell anyone else?”
I nodded. This was it, I thought. The moment she’d finally, finally tell me the thing she’d been alluding to for months.
“Promise,” she insisted.
“I promise,” I said. She’d been there for me and I didn’t want to let her down.
Elise took a deep breath, like she might lose her nerve. Then she pulled her shirt off and turned on the bedside lamp. Sweeping her long hair aside, she angled herself and shrugged off one of her bra straps so I could see it: a patch of sickly green skin—a healing bruise.
“What happened?” I asked, completely shocked. I didn’t know what she was going to tell me but never in a million years would I have thought that this was it.
She let her hair fall and pulled her strap up before slipping back into her shirt. “What always happens. My father.”
It all came back to me then, what she’d said New Year’s Eve.
Your parents suck. But they’re not that bad.
There are gradations. All they do is argue with each other and throw the word divorce around once in a while.
You’re lucky, in a lot of ways.
All this time, she’d built a wall of silence around her father, a barricade to protect herself, but once she chipped away the smallest opening, it all crumbled, the dam breaking.
“This is nothing,” she said, slipping back into her shirt. “A few days ago, he shoved me. I lost my balance and caught my shoulder against the corner of one of the kitchen counters.”
“Oh my God.”
She pulled back into herself against the headboard, and staring off at the other wall, she began to name some of the things that her dad had done to her over the years.
“When I was eleven or twelve, he picked me up from a sleepover and slammed my head into the window—twice—for wearing red lipstick. Told me I looked like trash.”
She spoke softly, almost monotonously, like she was listing off items on a menu.
“When I was eight or nine, he shoved me so hard my face slammed into the leg of a chair when I fell. It’s how I got this scar,” she said, touching the scar above her left eye. I’d always wondered about that scar and assumed it was from a childhood accident. And then I thought, with growing horror: Had there been other things I overlooked?
“Whenever he gets angry and can’t reach me right that second, he’ll grab whatever’s nearby. A coffee mug. A frying pan. He once pulled the biggest, thickest hardcover book off our shelves and flung it at me over and over again, then when he got tired, he picked it up and beat the shit out of me with it.”
It was scary, hearing her recount such violence in a muted voice, like she was talking about someone else. Like it was too painful to talk about herself.
“And what’s worse, he always tells me after that it hurts him more than it hurt me, that he only hits me because he loves me.”
Silently, her tears fell one after the other as the sobs wracked her body. I’d never seen her cry like this before and it terrified me, even though I didn’t want to admit it. Elise was the strong one, Elise always knew what to do.
I wasn’t the strong one.
I didn’t know what to do.
“Sprained wrist, dislocated shoulder, more bruises than I can count over the years. One time it got so bad that I went to stay at a friend’s house for a week until he came and literally dragged me out kicking and screaming.” I began to cry and soon I was sobbing too. “He threw me into the car and fought with her parents out on their lawn. They called the cops. And I thought maybe I was saved. But the police came, took one look at me—healthy and unhurt because I got to have a whole week away from him—and let him take me home. Said something about referring the issue to social services. But they didn’t. Because no one ever showed up. And that was when I realized if the cops weren’t going to do anything about it, no one was going to do anything about it,” she said.
“Why didn’t they?” I cried, shocked. They were police officers—they were supposed to do something, protect her.
She tried to wipe her tears away but they kept coming. “The cops believed my dad because of course they did. Who were they going to believe?” she said as more tears fell from her face.
“How could they?” My heart broke for her, for the girl who didn’t get the help she needed.
“TV shows and movies almost always show the police as these heroes, but sometimes they’re not. I’ve read that a lot of cops hit their own partners and children. And they’re the ones who’re supposed to protect people,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s been a long time since I’ve pinned my hopes on being saved by someone else.”
We stayed like that for a while, crying together on her bed. Overwhelmed, I found myself pulling away from Elise, afraid to touch her. It was too much to process, the ground beneath us fracturing. Everything we had before seemed like an illusion now broken by the awful truth.
I felt guilty, angry at myself for all the things I’d said before, things that had seemed harmless at the time but now were insensitive at best. I should’ve been listening when she was talking about how there were gradations of horrible. I should’ve known it’d come from a dark, dark place. My childhood, with all the fighting and neglect, could never compare with what she’d gone through—what she was still going through.
Elise wiped away her tears with the back of her wrist and sniffed. “For the longest time I thought it was my fault. He told me it was my fault, every time. I was useless, I didn’t appreciate how hard he worked to feed me, how my mom had left him with this—this burden. He said I was stupid and would never amount to anything, just like her. She came from this fancy family, she’d been a fucking debutante, he said. Never worked a day in her life. He told me I had to toughen up if I wanted to survive. That he was trying to make sure I didn’t end up useless like her.” She began to sob then, covering her face with both hands.
“But the thing is,” she continued, breath hitching, “it had nothing to do with me. It never did. It didn’t matter if I was the perfect daughter or not, because nothing was ever going to be enough for him.”
“Oh God, Elise,” I whispered, the panic rising, threatening to pull me under. The room felt too small all of a sudden. I wanted to get out. I just wanted to escape this entire conversation. I didn’t know how to comfort her. I didn’t know what to do.
“When I got older, I saw the pattern,” she said. “If he was having a bad day, he’d make sure I’d have one too.”
Elise needed me. I had to snap out of it, be strong like she was, do what she would’ve done for me. Instead I was paralyzed.
She cried harder. “Sometimes I think he’s right.”
That jolted me out of it. “What? No!”
“You know how in movies you just know things will be okay? That the good guy will win the day, that the setbacks, as awful and insurmountable as they seem, are just that: setbacks.”
She looked at me expectantly and I nodded slowly.
“I wish I had that certainty,” she said, turning away from me, shoulders shaking. “I wish I knew I was going to be okay.” She looked up at me like I had the answer to her question, like I could tell her definitively that she was going to be all right, that she’d triumph over any and all obstacles, that she was unstoppable. No one had ever looked at me like that before. Had ever needed me like that.
She trusted me, I realized, and I wanted to be worthy of it.
“I think you do know,” I said quietly.
“I do?”
“Yeah,” I said with more confidence than I felt. Fake it till you make it, that was what Elise had said. “And maybe we know that the hero will win the day, but they don’t. You don’t know how things will turn out now, but I do.” I scooted closer and laid a gentle hand on hers. “I’m watching the movie of your life right now and I’m telling you that these are just setbacks. I know nothing can stand in your way.” It’s what she would’ve told me, but more than that, it’s what she needed to hear.
She stared at me for a moment before nodding slightly. “You’re right. We’re the heroes in this story, born of tragic circumstances, yes, but also strong enough to overcome them. We’ll win the day,” she said, like ultimate triumph was in the stars for us. She dried her eyes and managed a watery smile, laughing a little at herself.
“Feel better?” I asked, taking both of her hands in mine and giving them a small squeeze.
She nodded. “They’ll be shouting our names one day,” she promised, like we’d be conquerors marching through the streets. “You and me.”
I laughed too, relieved she seemed to be feeling better. “Okay.”
“It’ll always be you and me,” she said, and I nodded.
We believed our wounds made us special. We believed what didn’t kill us made us stronger. We believed our tragedies were romantic.
At least that was what we told ourselves. But that night, it was beginning to sound less like an inspirational motto to live by and more like something we had to tell ourselves to survive.
I told Elise I knew how things would turn out, that I knew she’d triumph, but the truth was that I had no idea. It’d shaken me to the core, hearing her talk about her father. I had wanted so desperately to know what was going on with her, but now that I did, I only felt more helpless. I wanted to be strong enough for both of us, but I didn’t know if I could.
“He hasn’t always been awful,” Elise told me later that same night. I was lying next to her in bed, halfway asleep.
“Hmm?” I said, my eyes still closed.
“I’ve always wanted a dog but my dad’s allergic,” she continued, voice barely above a whisper. “For my birthday one year, he took me to an animal shelter and spent the day with me playing with the dogs there. He was so puffy and red when we left.” I could hear a smile in her voice.
“We were never allowed to have a pet,” I said. “Too messy, too much work.”
“It’s the first thing I’m going to do when I turn eighteen,” she said. “I’m heading to the nearest shelter for a dog.”
“That sounds awesome.”
“It can be ours,” she said, shifting toward me.
“Yeah?” I said, blinking sleepily in the dark.
“Yeah,” she promised, and I fell asleep dreaming of the life we could have one day.
• • •
In the middle of the night, I woke from the cold, turning to find Elise missing. Wrapping the blanket around me, I slipped out of bed to look for her.
“Elise?” I called out in a whisper that seemed to echo through that big house. In the dark, everything looked haunted as I wandered the hall. She was in the master bedroom, both doors to the smaller balcony wide open. “What are you doing out here?”
She turned around, cigarette in hand, hair fluttering in the wind.
“I left something out earlier,” she said. “About my dad.”
“What?” I asked, confused.
“My dad.” She took a big breath before continuing. “He always says he’s sorry, every time. And the weird thing is most of the time, I believe him.”
“You do?” I joined her, leaning over the ledge on my elbows.
“He cries and begs for forgiveness. It’s hard to explain. He promises me he’ll never do it again, and even though he’s broken it a million times, I still believe him when he swears it’ll be different. Is that fucked up?”
I lit a cigarette and released a stream of smoke, trying to clear my mind.
“It’s like, I know it’s not true, but I can’t help but hope. And sometimes it is true, at least for a while. Before this”—she lifted the bruised shoulder a little—“it’d been almost two months. It’s gotten better since we moved here. All the money my grandparents left me helped, dating The Realtor’s helped.” That’s what she still called her father’s girlfriend.
“There are gradations,” she said. “And it could be worse. It could always be worse.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You know my mom left when I was a kid. She just packed up her things and never looked back.” She flicked her cigarette over the ledge, watched as it spun out of view. “She never hit me or anything, but sometimes I can’t decide what’s worse.”
“What do you mean?” The stars were out in full force that night, the sky clear, the moon dark.
“I don’t know. In the end my dad stayed. Maybe that counts for something.” She sounded lost in thought. “That has to count for something, right?” It was shocking to hear her talk about her father like that. Why was she trying to redeem him?
“You’re defending him?” I said, so confused. I pulled back, rewrapping the blanket around me.
“No,” she said carefully. “I’m not defending him, I’m just saying—forget it.”
“What?”
“It’s easier, isn’t it, to just run away? Like my mom did, like your dad’s always doing.” Elise was completely still, her eyes piercing. She was saying that her father wasn’t a complete monster and that was hard for me to comprehend. What he did was unforgivable. She’d been so clear about it the night before but now she sounded uncertain.
I pulled her lighter out and began flipping the top up and down absently, letting the swoosh and clicks comfort me. I still thought of it as hers, then.
“My mom didn’t have to leave me behind. She could’ve just left my dad,” Elise pushed on. “She didn’t have to, but she left me anyway.”
I struggled to understand how her mom’s actions could excuse her dad’s violence, but she seemed so sure of her conclusions that I didn’t push back. The silence and smoke surrounded us, the cold night numbing my fingers as I held on to my cigarette, unsure of what to say, how to help her.
“You know what I learned, Rem? Love isn’t enough. Love doesn’t make people stay.” Her voice was rising, her words growing rushed and uneven. “Do you know what makes people stay? Need. My mother left me behind because she didn’t need me.”
“What’s the difference?” I shook my head. “Love, need, it’s all the same. You love someone, you need them,” I said, but doubt crept in, my heart faltering.
“You could say it means the same thing. Or you could say that true love is pure need.” Elise sounded so wise beyond her years, like she had all the answers.
I remained quiet, confused.
“I need you, Remy,” she said softly. What she was saying: I love you.
After a moment I said, “I need you too.” What we were saying, together: love is to need and to be needed. Love is truest, strongest when you need each other, when you can’t live without each other. Anything less is ephemeral. Anything less risks heartbreak.
We needed each other. What we had was true love.
We were misfit toys who didn’t belong anywhere. And then, for the first time in our lives, we belonged somewhere. We belonged to someone, to each other. Home wasn’t a house. It wasn’t on a map. Home was a person and for me, that person was Elise. We were a little family of our own making, and I thought nothing could stand in the way of that. Back then, I never thought I’d want anything else.