Chapter Text
My sister is getting married.
I know. I received the card, I read these words, even if I would have preferred to hear her voice. My mother let a happy sob escape her lips, the white paper in her hands, shaken by the euphoric movements of her arms, the other hand on her mouth. She's getting married, my little girl, Bella, is getting married, do you realize, Phil?
I took the card from her hands, gently, without her making a move to stop me there. Mom jumps into Phil's arms, surrender by an evident happiness, and I read these words, this news that my sister couldn't tell me. It hurts. Did I miss something again?
Bella and I, as little kids, talked about our marriage as the whole mystery we were both about to uncover together. In front of the love movies we dreamed of, at the age when we can only love them, we thought about the scenery we have been taught to imagine. They were just silly things, but we had created them together – these scenarios, these men or women, these marriages, these dresses, this love. I blink, he dies, I blink, I screw everything up, I blink, Bella leaves, I blink, I fall apart, I blink, I've only become a secondary character in the few life that mattered.
Mom must feel it. She stops kissing Phil's cheek, turns to me, her eyes filling me with a pity I can't stand as she understands the absence, the indifference, the separation of these two little girls who grew apart.
I cut her off before she makes the pain more real.
“It’s fine,” I play with the card, retraces the name of her man I barely know. Edward. He is just a blurry face my imagination plays with, chasing the disappointment away with the unknown features my mind tries to guess. “I’m so happy for her.”
“Right?” Mom smiles. She comes near me, softly, as if she was coaxing a wounded animal, as if she was afraid that I would run away again, as if she no longer recognized me. “Wouldn’t be nice to see her again, sweetie?”
(I don't know who I am anymore, so I can't really blame her. The damage has been done.)
Bella is gone, Bella is getting married, and I learn it from a letter that has crossed the ocean, impersonal, plural and written in words that mean nothing, as a statement of what we became. I understand. I’m not blaming her; I would have done the same – leaving.
“Yeah,” I smile. “Long time no sees.”
Mom smiles, takes me in her arms, kisses my front. She smiles, eyes fulling with something I can’t name. I closed my eyes.
“Lily,” Moms calls. “Bella on the phone.”
She is leaning on the door of my room in which she no longer enters. The bedroom carries memories of death, of arguments, of the chaos I create, of his absence, of his own death, of madness, of sadness too. Mom covered the marks I left on the wall, of the blows and the lamps that I swing; the wallpaper is new, repainted once more, this infinite blue-green, but the memories remain, permanent, insoluble. They cover us like a disaster waiting for sure to bury us again.
I walk forward, getting from the bed he left us, take the phone from my hands, I'm shaking, I want to smoke.
Bella says hello to me, but I think of the weed hidden under my bed, her voice melting behind the anxiety that threatens me with dizziness, as if I were detached from my body, and become the pitiless judge of this cruel world which is ours.
Mom left for letting us privacy. She didn’t close the door because she is afraid that I would let it be closed forever.
“Hi,” I think I say. “You’re getting married.”
“Yeah,” she laughs, I think. I didn’t talk to her since a long time, I have to remember the few memories I have left, of her and I, and how we used to interact, how she uses to be, how she uses to smile and laugh and loved and be happy.
The ones that stick with me however I go, especially when I am thinking how to leave for good. The ones that keep me there, the ones that are slipping away little by little, like thousands of grains of sand blown by a destructive wind bearing his name whose I constantly chasse after.
“Cool. You’re not pregnant, are you?”
“Of course not!”
“Then why are you getting married at eighteen if you’re not pregnant?”
“For love, y’know? That kind of stuff.”
“Don’t you mean the act of making love that result to a pregnancy at eighteen?”
“God, you’re like dad. I’m a pure virgin, Lily.”
“Well, Mary used to say the same thing.”
She laughs. I know. I remember.
“I missed that.” Bella says. “You.”
“Sorry I didn’t call,” my voice is low, Mom is surely listening behind the walls. If I speak louder, I may break. “I was busy with…. stuff.”
“I know.”
In this family, we don't talk. We try to bury things. We have learned not to name them. Perhaps all these silences and omissions will prevent the uneasiness from fully existing. If we try hard enough, it’s like he didn’t even exist and I didn’t lose myself into pills.
I don’t want to think about that. Or it’s going to get me again, drown me again.
I speak the first words coming into my mind slitting into different paces whose directions lead to the feelings we bury there and it gets to the stupid name, to the unknow guy I wish I knew about, to the first man my sister loved, to the one she didn’t tell me about, keeping it to herself and others you aren’t family like we used to.
I’m not mad. She left because of me.
“So Edward, uh? Such a nice rich white name.”
I would have left too.
“I knew you would come after his name.”
“Isabella and Edward Cullen. Even your names sound whiter than snow itself.”
“Come on, that’s not that bad.”
“With a name like that I bet he even plays chess.”
“And he does.”
“That’s just getting worse and worse. Why should I even come?”
“To be my bridesmaid, maybe?”
My heart stops. That moment when you think you've heard wrong, the moment when you do not believe your mind and your hearing and yourself, because you are afraid to hear what you want, what you wish without confessing, the desire floating into the back of your mind, almost unconsciously, as you were not even allowed to think such a great thing.
“Wait. Are you serious?”
“Yeah. If you’re okay with this?”
“Shit, yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I know you don’t like crews or attention or people. I didn’t want you to feel… pressured or overwhelmed. I just want you to come.”
“You’re missing me too much.”
“Shut up. Are you doing it?”
“Will I have to wear a dress?”
I like dresses, their lightness, their usefulness, their elegance. But they have become leeches that stick to my skin to suffocate me before I wore it, all the time, I wore it to every competition, to every performance, when I was still playing, when he was still alive, when there were two of us, when the Sundays were full of sounds – shit, shit, I always remember the things that hurt, never what can make me stay.
“You can wear anything you want. Just come.”
“Okay. I will.”
“Okay.”
“And I’ll be your bridesmaid too.”
“Thank you. I only asked you because you were my only option though.”
“I don’t care. Your only friend is your baby sister. You lost.”
She laughs. Light, discreet, as silent as a smile. She never laughed too hard, she always knew how to blend in through the walls, as if she wanted to disappear though them. She laughed softly, always, when we were kids, caught up in the merry-go-round and its slow turns, her hair going up and down, on that gallop white horse, as old as that falling carousel. I pretended to set off to conquer the world which seemed quite crazy to me, worth to be discovered, and he followed me, and Bella, the eldest, Bella, the one who does not speak, the one who does not follow but the one who watches over, she was protecting, behind us, at every step our childlike feet took, ready to catch us if one of us falls.
I thought Bella didn't like woods and greenery and light, but her marriage is made up of a world that I thought was alien to her. Would two years be the time it takes for a sister to become just a stranger? I put my hands in the pockets of my sweatshirt, pull my fingers, stick me closer to Mom, as if I had become one of her shadows, the second ghost of her three children.
She travels between the guests, greets unfamiliar faces with ease, introduces me without too much attention so that I don't collapse under the anguish that takes shape though the sweat inside of my palms, tearing my stomach apart, feeling the nausea in the back of my throat – even if I made sure to not eat or drink to prevent myself to panic over vomiting or wanting to pee to this place I know nothing about and which is massive, whose house has many corridors and rooms and what if I want to vomit and can’t find the toilet and vomit all over me? I want to go home, everyone is so well dressed, knows each other and greet each other with an overwhelming warmth, what I am doing wrong, am I mad to feel all eyes on me? They judge me, gauge me, whisper in a cruel voice the insults that I dread, the flaws that I recite to myself, the faults that I recognize. Maybe I would have to stay in the car, until they leave, until Bella come?
Leaving. Wait, did I turn off the bathroom faucet this morning? I remember coming out of the bathroom, closing the door, but even before, before, before I took the pale pink towel that was still wet, did I turn off the tap properly? If I don't turn off the tap, can the house flood? And the bill, the water bill–
“Wow, Lily. You okay there?”
A hand around my shoulders. The warm voice that rocked me. The worried tone that cannot be said, which camouflages itself with difficulty.
“Dad. Hi. Didn’t see you, sorry.”
Mom has gone somewhere, I look for her, she's not there, I don't know where she stands, I got lost inside my own head, reality escaping from me.
“You look…”
He tucks a brown lock behind my ears. His hands are sturdy and rocky, but they always try to be soft and slow as he approaches us, his children who have run away from him, his children who love him and have left. But my father always knew how to guess me, less since Noah left, but he always knew how to decipher the tense features he taught me to hide – each of them, in this silent, shy family.
“Great.”
The last time he saw me, I was in a hospital bed, bloodshot eyes, dark circles like a huge black lake in which I sunk into, the feeling that my stomach was tearing from the inside; the shaking of my arms, so intense that it prevented me from bringing the glass of water to my rotting mouth, decomposing skin, and I pretend not to hear the cries of my mother and my father, who looked at my body as if it were already dead with transparent eyes, seeing me as the one I was no longer, the one lost in ways she shouldn’t have taken. I surely look great in comparison, because it is difficult for me to look worse.
“Thanks.”
Charlie smiles with embarrassment, and the features of his face look more like a grimace, surely trying to do his best, to speak and to understand, he tries. He gently taps one of my shoulders, looks around him, this ceremony which begins to take place and life, and whispers without looking at me:
“Want to get away from here?”
“Yeah,” I sigh, like grateful relief, a weight lifting off my shoulders.
“Bells is upstairs.”
Dad takes me by the shoulders, like a shield protecting me from the evil that awaits us. I feel the looks, again and again, of these faces that I don't know. Whispers that I may be making up, but they scare me all the same.
My anguish and my panic tell me that they don't put a name on my face, but attributes that come from gossips, from the greed for knowledge and dramatic stories that are not theirs. I am nothing more than the expression of rumors, the only sister of Bella Swan to whom she never speaks, the twin who remains to them, to Charlie and René, the addict daughter of the sheriff who never came there again, in this small part of the world I wish I didn’t belong to.
“Thanks. I like the moustache by the way. And the suit.”
“I like the ear piercings.”
“Should I have wear something else?”
Dad takes a quick look at my oversized sweatshirt and pants, I float in my clothes, the sleeves cover the back of my hands, my steel rings that I collected during the many Sunday flea markets morning we used to go. The high socks, a strong yellow it seems, I am not really sure, Mom chose them for me, take my calves in a comforting embrace. I play with my necklaces sometimes, I bite my lips, play with dead skin, and I am 74% sure that I did turn off the water’s sink.
“You look great,” Dad repeats. He nods at the people we cross paths with, smiling timidly sometimes at us, stopping to share some congratulations for the happiness that this day should hold.
In all this people I begin to memorize the faces, there are a few people with very white skin and very light eyes who hide under the branches of the trees that surround us everywhere. Sometimes, when the summer wind blows too hard, white Arbutus petals lie on the aisle which Bella going to walk on.
Should I be happy too?
I feel lonely.
I wear these clothes so he can be with me, in a creepy and pathetic way to bring him to me without having to be high, but his smell is gone and I begin to not remember how he used to look with these clothes on. In the end, there is only this oversized, impersonal, old and damaged blue sweatshirt, which now has fully become mine.
“I really wanted to melt away with the masses wearing this,” I lie. “But there are way less people than I expected and now I just look like a freak.”
“You don’t.”
“What if I do?”
“Does it really matter?”
“Yeah, because it makes me look like a freak.”
“Lily. Why are you stressing over shitty things like that?”
What surprises me is my father's ability to get to see me when I have become unknown to everyone – even to me and those few memories that I have left. Hazy, I sometimes confuse them with dreams, unable to recognize what is real, past, and images that drugs have created or made up. But that, I know for sure: even with the horrible things I said, the obnoxious things I did, Dad never frames me like a mad beast, ready to escape to forget again. He often struggles for words, clumsy and embarrassed, but he's always been that way. It seems to me. As little as I remember. It's reassuring; the world has turned upside down, as if these thousands of founding particles have crumbled under death and disease and addiction and the evil that brings all ailments, but Dad remains the same in all this chaos. Mom never looks me in the eye, she makes me do tests every time I come home too late, she talks to me like someone else's child; and Dad speaks to me with that hesitation of his own, like an undeniable character trait, and it makes the world a little lighter to bear.
“It just helps me to prevent myself to think about the bathroom’s sink I may have left opened,” I gave up, confess the anxiety that I had, in hope in sharing, it will stop. “But I am 78% sure now that I didn’t. But what about the 22% left?”
We enter a white house with a thousand windows. I feel Dad grabbing my shoulders harder to help me to climb the stairs, to prevent me from falling.
I went lost to this bathroom we shared, with sky blue colors on the walls, with black hair stuck in the pipes because he too had grown out his hair, the second toothbrush he had left, that I begged to not to throw away, with the mad hope that he would come back. The mirror was dirty, I avoided looking at myself, seeing the reflection I dread, this stranger whose features I no longer even share. I looked at my hands, those tiny hands under the clear water, from the mole on my index finger to the scar on the back of my hand (he did it after a violent argument when we were fifteen, by digging his fingernails very strong in my skin, I cried this night, so much, more hurt by his screams and his anger than the blood leaking gently from my skin). The scar is tiny, I may be the only one to notice it now, and I used to look at it with wave of sadness; but now, I care for it like a gift. I took the green towel, still wet, I passed it gently over the kiss he left me. In all these signs, in all these sceneries, is the tap still open?
Dad calls my name.
“You need to trust yourself, kid. It’s not you talking, okay? It’s fear, and anxiety. Did you take your medications?”
When I leave the eyes of the ground that sucked me in, I am on the stairs, in front of a table of twenty hats of diplomas. I say:
“Mom does not want me to take pills anymore.”
The colors are soft, pastels, and I try to guess the lives they had, the heads on which they landed. It is a familiar game that we have always played since small; to kill time, to imagine what we didn't know, to create the answers to that ignorance. “Any kind of them.”
When we saw plane touring the sky, we would bet on the final destination, on the life within, the names it bears.
Maybe Dad is sighing. He tells me to come, saying Bella's name. I finish the steps, take my eyes off the art and the planes and him and the lives we used to invent.
Down the hall, I can't see Bella. Two women surround her and they laugh, one a little louder than the other, with less shyness and more assurance in the joy she brings. Dad clears his throat, and there is Bella, grown up and beautiful and still the same Bella she were when she left. I don’t remember much; but that, I do.
The petite woman pulls away, and Bella looks at me with enough emotion in her gaze that I turn my head and look down at my feet. Dad comes forward, tells her how beautiful she looks (she is), takes her in his arms, kisses her forehead. She whispers shy thanks to him, as if she didn't dare to exist, as if noticing her existence was already too much for her. I'm playing with my sleeves; I don't know if we're still sisters.
I try. Maybe if I try to be the one I remember very little about, we could be a sister again. He cannot come back. I only have one sibling now. I can’t screw everything up a second time, can I?
I raise my head, think of the water that I probably haven't turn off, make a flat sign with my right hand, feeling tense, sweaty hand, shinning with all the lights that come from outside whose brilliance echoes through white walls.
“Yo.”
The two girls I don't know are looking at me, Dad too and Bella too, and I can't help wondering what they might be thinking about this girl with the oversized sweatshirt and oversized bermuda shorts straight coming from the 2000s. They don't talk, keep their mouth shup, but I seem to be able to guess what they're thinking; and no matter if it is only a voice that my malevolent spirit shapes, it remains so painful, real, because so truthful. My psychiatrist says that I project the opinion that I have of myself into the mouths of others; and those opinions, which seem to be the says of others, actually belong to me. Honestly, I think she's wrong. I always had an infallible intuition – to the point of recognizing the moment when he was going to die – so I am totally sure that the voices I am the only one to hear are real.
Maybe that could have made things easier. It didn’t. And Bella left.
But I’m not mad, you know. It’s life. People come and go. And sometimes, they don’t come back. Even if they could. Even if she should have.
My psychiatrist says that I’m angry. She didn’t say against whom, as she was waiting for me to betray myself and pronounce names; but I kept my mouth shup, counting the tiny holes in the ceiling, tapping the tongue against the palate with each tik and tak of the clock. I’m not angry. I may be sad sometimes, but that’s totally a different thing. My psychiatrist could not understand that.
Bella either. So I never told anyone. I keep it within, currently waiting for it to kill me. And that’s maybe one of the few things that to not make me sad now.
Bella smiles, relieved and playful and happy and caring and all those things she never could be when he left.
“Hey,” she says, softly, loud enough that her faintly ringing voice reached the emptiness and silence of the room. “You look great.”
It seems to me that I am laughing, but I have lost the habit, the sound seems only a dubious sniffle. “Everyone is saying that.”
I breathe, I don't want to sound depressing, it's the best day of her life. I breathe a little better because Bella laughs, and her laugh sounds like mine, that shy, clumsy sniffle of those who can't say the feelings they bury, the thoughts they keep:
“Cause you’re are.”
“Thanks. You look pretty.”
“I-I…” She bits her lips. Frowns. She lets go in a quick and uncertain and hesitant breath: “I wasn’t sure about the dress actually. I was afraid that the dress would be too tight, or too long–”
“No, the dress is perfect,” I cut her off. She looks up from that long dress she doubts. She's looking at me. I look at her. Those browns eyes we share. I say, slowly, with an articulation I haven't had in a long time, as if the words no longer have meaning and don't deserve to be said, or understood, or listened to: “Everything is perfect.”
It should be. I don't remember what weddings we dreamed of when we were kids, but it must be something as magical and poetic and majestic as that. It’s a guess, and I always have a strong intuition.
Bella suddenly comes near and hugs me. Her frail arms wrap around my shoulders, and we're now the same size. I grew, took a few centimeters that he couldn't have. I lay my head on her shoulder, the soft material of her dress caresses my chin, and I close my eyes. I wrap my arms around her back, I feel her spine behind my hands, I feel a body I haven't known for two years since it left. She smells of lavender, she still hasn't changed her perfume, the same one stolen from Mom in one of the bathroom cabinets. Her features are less childish, more drawn and less thin, but she remains the same Bella. Does that mean she'll leave me again?
“Please, no crying,” a high-pitched voice laugh. “It will ruin the make-up.”
I hear Bella sigh, and I laugh, this time, a true laugh that doesn't tear my throat any less.
The little one's name is Alice. Her eyes are gentle, quiet, but they shine with a certain mischief that makes me feel uneasy. She looks at me with a certain sweetness, so tenderly that her eyes sometimes darken with pity as if she knows; but I don't think Bella told her; in this family, we don't talk about the shames our name bears. Maybe it's the voices playing tricks on me.
She likes to live, she seems to have too much cheerfulness overflowing in this little body; she walks while jumping, she speaks while laughing, she approaches close to you to guide you towards this light which she possesses, which she guides. She is exhausting. Bella glances at me, sometimes, when that joy seems too much for her, too. We look at each other and talk without saying a word. It's something I've never done with her; but still with my twin - the one who left. I smile a little more, and those smiles aren't forced. They remain tiny, but in this room, far from the noise of people and the rumors and the looks and the voices and the water’s sink and the room we shared, time seems suspended; like I finally could follow what was going on without having to be high to make this brick world slow down.
It's reassuring when the world is going the pace you need. You seem to float above the world. For a while, this one no longer crushes you.
Bella applies purple eyeshadow on me. A few straws above my lashes. I don't know how we got there. I just know there was some time left, and that it was an idea from the witch fairy, that I was going to like that eyeshadow, she knew it, she was sure of it, she could just see me with it. The blonde, cold, impartial, distant, whose name I can't remember, rolled her eyes. And they are gone. Mom passed by too. Dad left too. And only my sister remains.
There are only the songs of the birds, the warm sun gently on my wrist, Bella's breath on my face, the caress of the brush under my eyebrows. It seemed to last forever. The calm, the silence, the nothingness. And even forever was not enough.
“Don’t fall asleep on me,” Bella whispers.
I whisper back.
“I will. Deal with it.”
Bella laughs.
“I don’t know what I am doing, by the way.”
“Right.”
“I’m serious. Alice should have done it. She would have done a better job than me.” She runs her thumb on the outside of my eyelid, gently tugging my skin. Her voice is just a whisper dragging words. “So… Don’t complain about the raccoon-like face.”
I smile, I try.
“I won’t. Did you see how I am dressed? I lost this right.”
Bella laughs.
“I like the socks. You were always so fearless. Only you could pull an outfit like that.”
“Really? Cause I was feeling stupid.”
“That’s new.”
“I felt like a freak people kept watching and gossiping on.”
“Why do you care? You never cared about that. Before, and after. You know. That’s stupid… But I was always kind of jealous of you. For that. You didn’t care where you were going, you would just go.” She removes the brush from my face, I hear her let out a light breath before the brush returns to my skin. I hear her, she whispers, as if she was telling me secrets, in a whisper, fascinated, maudlin, forbidden. “You always acted like you had no fear.”
Maybe it really is about secrets.
After all,
“I don’t really remember.”
By my side, there is no one anymore.
I don't take my eyes off Mum, and when I lose her in the crowd and her childlike excitement that pushes her to discover the others, I turn to Dad who seems to be careful to stay close to me. Dad doesn't talk much. We talked about Bella and how beautiful she was. How he didn’t cry when he accompanied her to the altar. We talked about my next days at his place, where I will stay for the end of the summer. I didn't touch your room, that's what Dad told me. I didn’t move a single thing.
It remains the same, as if we had never left.
I smiled, sincere, grateful. I had to beg Mom not to throw away all his things, but Dad kept them, without me to ask him, even though Dad had very few of them. Keeping the little things make me believe that he still exists. It relieves me, I feel less alone and lonely too. I’m not used to be alone, I know. There's a black hole inside me since he left, slowly devouring me little by little, nonstop, like a soft, slow death. The pills have filled this hollow coffin which roots within. And it felt good, really good, to disappear into this unfair world for seconds. It could have been only two seconds, but they remain rare and valuable to stay there. I can’t stay there sober. I want to smoke.
The bride and groom come to greet us. Bella kisses me again. She seems happy. Does she also notice the lack, the absence? I never imagined my life without him, I always took him for granted, as an infallible part of my life. We don't talk about him, as if they're afraid to revive the dead. But it may be one of the most important moments of her life and he is not there. Bella, do you feel it too?
I need to smoke.
This loneliness?
The weed is a compensation for the pills I didn’t manage to find. Her husband talks to me, says polite words to me that I return with difficulty. He's staring at me with those golden pupils, his brows knitting together, and I wonder what his name is. I forgot. Bella smiles from head to toe. She enjoys happiness, her wedding ring that sparkles in all these lights. She clings to his arm as if he was about to leave; and I hide behind Dad. Her rosy mouth, thin as a line, opens and closes at a concerning speed. Shit. I think she was talking to me.
“Sorry, what?”
Bella doesn't seem to mind my absence, nor his. She tries to take my wrist, get me out of my cage.
“I want to introduce you to the Cullen.” She gently slides her hand around my arm, speaks to me obediently. “Edward’s family. They are very nice.”
I blink. I feel Dad’s hand behind my back, pushing me to leave, pushing me out of this world that I can't stand.
“Okay.”
Bella smiles at me, but it's not a real smile; just an embarrassed and shy face, the one we give in this family. Her eyes seem hopeful. This may be the first time in two years that she expects something from me. And I don't want her to leave. Sometimes the girl named Alice calls her sister. It's not fair, but it's my fault. The errors have accumulated, I have to sweep them away in a false return, in a fake happiness I can play.
Bella is my big sister. She takes my arm and walks beside me. It's not the same thing. I don't think that's enough for me to stay. I don't think it can fill the black hole. It’s already too huge, important, like a grave already dug.
The Cullens are beautiful enough to seem unreal. I stare at them, and I wonder if I'm high. Looks like I haven't smoked today, but they look like dangerous dreams, deceptive perfect faces. Now, looking at Edward, my sister's husband, I realize that he is as handsome as the others. Alice too, and the blonde girl too. I hadn't paid attention to it earlier; I think I was somewhere else.
They all present themselves with a benevolent calm, a warm gentleness. They don't try their hands or make any gesture to approach or touch me, which I appreciate. They stay a reasonable distance away, and I don't have to pretend, pretend, try to rescue an already ruined reputation. Bella introduces me: and they tell me they've heard a lot about me, and if I don't believe it at first, I pretend I do – deep down, I don’t want to. Because if that were true, that would mean that Bella didn't forget me when I was in the hospital, in rehabs. And she still didn’t come back, which makes things even harder.
There is a moment of silence after the introductions are made, which makes me uncomfortable. To fill the void, I say without thinking:
“Thank you for having me here. I heard it was your house. Nice one, by the way.”
The woman who is called Esme and who covers all her loved ones with her gaze immediately lets go of me, as if it were obvious, with a gentleness that jerks me:
“Of course,” those golden eyes, like her son, are almost indecently tender. Few look at me like that. The others, they left. And those who remain are obliged to love me. So I'm a burden for most of people. But Esme, who seems to have a heavy heart, covers me with an immense kindness I don’t deserve. “You’re always welcomed here. You’re part of the family now.”
She lets out a laugh to lighten these words filled with meaning and a love that I don't deserve. I smile, I grimace, I put my hands in the pockets of my sweatshirt, I mustn't cry, I tug on my wet fingers. Fuck.
“Thank you,” I lower my head, stare at my feet hidden through a veil, and stammer apologies.
I think I'm saying the word toilet, but I'm not too sure. I have to go smoke. I cross the chairs, the tables, this place of happiness and exchange and everything that hates me, and I have to go get Mom's purse, go behind the house and maybe I could–
“Elizabeth.”
Fuck.
“Oh, hi,” in front of me, there is the man of my childhood. He still has mischievous black eyes, a tricky grin, and a look that seems to know everything about you. “Billy.”
We spent whole days at his house, Noah and I, with two young people our age whose names I can't remember. Bella was with Jacob all the time, playing with the mud and sand of the sea. Jacob only paid attention to Bella, so the four of us got together to make up games of our own. I no longer remember the games and the rules. Only their faces, his laughter. Hazy. But they leave, the more time passes, and I think that I'm starting to have little by little no reason to stay.
“Look at you. Aren’t you all grown-up now.”
The last time I came was three years ago. We often came, Noah and I, during the holidays. Summer or not. Bella didn't like the city, while we felt like we were in a parallel world, like a corner of the universe that no one has yet discovered. In other words, it was always fun to come here. Honestly, I haven't changed so much in three years. Maybe I've gained weight, scars on my cheeks and sunken dark circles, but my face remains the same. My hair is longer, but it's still dry, damaged, and split ends. Well, maybe I have changed. I do not know. I do not remember. I feel like the me of three years ago is a different person, as far as I can remember. A different, foreign, unknown girl who seems to belong to a dream that escapes me.
“Well, I could say the same about you.”
The mischief in his eyes intensifies.
“Are you saying that I am getting old?”
“Your words.”
He's laughing. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes are crumpled, as proof that time passes and waits for no one. Papa comes behind Billy's chair, says smiling:
"Stop bothering my daughter, will you?"
Billy rolls his eyes. It's a childish scene that lives again before my eyes. I recognize it, this one, we bet on it, Noah and me. On the winner of these false battles.
“Watch out, Charlie. You are being a real daddy-hen.”
“I am not!”
“He is.”
A woman says. She is very beautiful, very black hair, long down to her back, smiling eyes, brown skin. She looks at me, says:
“I'm Sue. Sue Clearwater.”
I don't know who she is. I claim. I lie. Every day.
“Oh,” I try to smile. Torture. “I see. I'm Lily.”
“I know.”
Shit, I wonder what she knows. What a label she puts on my forehead. I want to enter a bubble, a hole, dig his grave and bury myself inside.
“Elizabeth, how long are you staying?”
“Until the end of summer.”
Charlie seems content of my answer, he plays with the edge of his thin glass, traces the glass with his fingertips.
“I'm sure the boys would dream of seeing you again. Embry and Quil, remember? You used to spend a lot of time together.”
Oh yes. They are the ones. Big smiles, endless jokes. Life was a game and he was a gamer. Maybe I was too.
“Yes, why not? If they want to.”
Honestly, I'm not even sure they would recognize me – let alone like me. They'll probably have to hang out with me. Maybe Dad had Billy convince them not to leave me alone in this familiar place I used to share with Noah. The truth is: in their eyes, I just became a depressed, addicted and sorrow burden who lost her twin that now they have to watch out for. Out of pity, out of obligation. I just feel really sorry for Embry and Quil. And for everyone who had to deal with me.
I hate myself, sometimes.
After the drugs. When you are not high anymore and you suddenly became aware of your own selfishness. You just have to bear the uncanny monster you turned into and it’s unbearable. So you take drugs again. To forget. To stay a little bit longer there. To be somewhere else.
Where is mom’s purse?
“I have a son, too. About your age,” Sue looks at me softly, her very dark eyes narrowed in her kind smiles. She reminds me of Esme, in a way; she doesn't seem to pretend to like me; it's seemed sincere, she doesn't force herself to pretend.
But the thing is, I don't want people to feel they have to like me. Embry and Quil probably won't like me, Bella probably found a better sister in Alice's cheerfulness, Dad and Mom have to love me until I would turn eighteen and have to take credits for my own actions. Noah would probably hate what I became. And I don't blame people for not liking me; I kinda don't care. It's not something I think about. For the most of the time. Maybe you hate me right now. I’m sorry. I wanted to give you and everyone the right impression. I just want to smoke a little.
She scans the room with her eyes. “I don't know where he is, but…” I feel sorry for him too. “Seth! Come here for a second.” For Seth. “He is maybe a bit younger, but he is really sweet.”
“A nice kid,” Dad adds. He nods as if to give some conviction to the apparent kindness this guy, Seth, carries. “I’m sure you guys will get along.”
I nod my head. Try to smile while taking a deep breath. Did Mom get her bag out of the car? Maybe I should look for Phil to get the keys. Shit, he's going to ask why and walk me to the car. If he puts the keys in his shirt he left on the chair, I could easily get it. But if it’s within of his pants’ pockets, I am screwed.
I hear a voice, warm as ray of sunshine, saying strongly coming, Mom, in a rather childish voice, as if it hadn't witnessed the chaos of the world.
You are probably wondering: why did I hide the drugs in my mother's bag? The riskier it is, the more you succeed. Mom watches after me while I pack my suitcase and she check it thoroughly once I'm finish. On the other hand, she doesn't pay attention to her belongings. And her bag has enough pockets so that I can stuff things in it that she won't check for. Yeah. Don't thank me for the advice.
The guy approaches like a tornado, he fills the room with sounds and colors. He greets my father with a nod, a silent smile. He doesn't seem to deserve spending time with me. I'm not sure I can compete with his sheer joy.
I believe Sue introduces me. I heard my name and Billy adds the name Elizabeth like his own name wasn't William and he wanted to be called Billy. I look at Sue, her lips moving gently, and out of the corner of my gaze I think Seth is nodding. Shit, I forgot. My palms are wet, my tongue heavy, my throat tight. I should say something now, right? Like, nice to meet you shit? The problem is that I either care too much or I don’t. Sometimes, I feel too much. And it’s awful. So I try to keep it inside, silent, inexistant. But where are we now? Should I say something? I look at my feet to remember. Where we are from, where I am, the words I should say. The whispers behind my back. There are. Going from Bella's high school friends, the name drug addict keeps coming out of their mouths. Wait. Does everyone know?
Before my eyes, a brown hand is stretched out. With oval nails, elongated and slender fingers, round back, virgin skin. I stare at it. I think I take one of my hands out of my pocket.
Maybe I was too stupid to hope for secrets. Hiding myself behind my parents were not enough.
My hands are sweaty from fear, anxiety, lack, addiction, weed in my mother's bag, whose whereabouts I don't know. It's embarrassing but my body is moving towards his, and it's too late for me to take my hand back and stuff it in my pocket. I try to look for his disgust, judgement, in a corner of eye, when my hand comes into contact with his, very warm, pleasantly burning. I see an honest smile.
When our eyes meet, I forget the abyss that has taken possession of me, the void within. As there is only the nothingness surrendering us.