Ashes to Ashes

We're all Winners, Deep Inside

2004-11-28T12:34:00.000-08:00

November 28th: Happily Ever After

2004-11-28T12:27:00.000-08:00

Ashley and Ardith had a joint funeral on the fifth of December. That morning I found myself dashing around the house in hysterical tears, screaming and kicking at anything that got in my way.

"April!" I yelled when I tripped over her shoes. She popped her head in from the family room. "Your shoes... Your shoes were in my way..."

April walked in calmly, picked up her shoes, threw them back into the family room, and grabbed me by the shoulders. "You, Colin York, are going to be fine. It’s a funeral, noone’s expecting you to be happy, noone’s expecting you to smile, noone’s expecting you to talk. You’re there to mourn, like everyone else, and to wear black, and to think of all the times you and Ashley and Ardith shared and how they should have lived, and to cry at all the right moments. Because that’s what you do at funerals, and because you’ve always been good at following instructions."

I stared at my sister. "But... But... I don’t want to go anymore."

"Too bad. You’re giving Ms. MacFarley a ride, remember? And even if you weren’t, you’d be going. You’re supposed to be there to support her, you know. She specifically asked that you be there."

"You’re not going to leave me, are you?" I asked worriedly.

"I’m going to be standing right next to you the whole time, crying at the appropriate moments and giving a touching speech right before you." She dropped her hands from my shoulders, took my fingers and squeezed. "It’ll be fine, Colin. Noone’s going to leave and nothing’s going to go wrong." She gave me a quick hug. "I promise."

Over the next few hours we dressed and got ready for the funeral. Alex showed up at the house at twelve seventeen – I knew because I had been staring at the clock in the microwave for nearly five minutes by that point, watching the numbers change –, knocking on the front door. April answered and shooed him into the kitchen, where I handed him a Dr. Pepper and a microwaved mozzarella stick. "Sorry," I said with a sheepish grin. "We don’t have much food around here. Noone’s felt like going shopping."

He tore off a piece with his teeth. "Nah, this is good," he said, still chewing, his words muffled by the bread. "My mom only ever buys peanut butter and wheat bread. Me and my kid brother have wild fun trying to figure out how we can make peanut butter and wheat bread into anything besides a sandwich."

I raised my eyebrows. "Any success?"

"Nah. One time she bought potato chips, though. God, we had fun. Peanut butter and potato chip sandwiches. On wheat bread, nonetheless." He grinned at me, bits of bread and cheese stuck in his teeth, before taking a swig of Dr. Pepper. "Ma’s crazy, sometimes. Says she buys wheat bread because it’s healthy. I don’t know, I think maybe we should get something with vegetables, at least the kid should, he’s still growing and all." He swallowed another bite of the mozzarella stick. "But no, wheat bread and peanut butter it is, every night. If I didn’t love Ma, I swear I’d go on strike."

I grinned at him. "My mother’s a great cook. Guess I’m lucky like that. Lots of vegetables, meat, dairy, fruit, all that good stuff. You and your brother, you should come over for dinner sometime. When we’ve actually gone grocery shopping, maybe." I grabbed a cheese stick of my own off the tray. "Mom loves it when people come over. Noone ever does, anymore. Lily used to bring people over all the time, when she was fourteen, fifteen. We had someone new everyday, didn’t like many of them, but Mom loved it. She lived for it. New people to cook for, talk to, et cetera."

He gave me a thoughtful smile. "Tell me about Lily."

"She was different," I said after a moment. "Really different. You could’ve met a couple million people, she would probably stick out in your mind. Even when we were little, just little kids, she was always the one with the weird ideas that had the adults raising their eyebrows. We had lemonade stands in the snow and built forts out of pillows and had the weirdest games, and she had the meanest, weirdest pillow fights ever. But really, she was just... She was Lily, and I loved her, everyone loved her, except maybe herself. But I think even that was starting to change, in the last days. I think she was starting to feel better about herself, when she came home and came clean with the family."

"Yeah," he said softly. "The way people talk about her, she sounds... I don’t know. Sad. Just really sad."

I stared at him for a long moment. "It’s strange," I said finally, "that you’ve never met her and you can say exactly what I’ve been trying to put into words for months now."

April came in at that moment, grabbed a soda from the fridge, and raised her eyebrows.

"Jackie’s coming in a second. You two ready to go?"

We both nodded. "Well then," April said, taking a deep breath, "let’s go."

We pulled up in front of the graveyard a few minutes later. Jackie didn’t have a lot of money to throw around, so she’d opted out on the funeral procession or a church service. The burial, she said, was going to have to do.

It was casual. Casual and beautiful are about the only words to describe it. Two small caskets sat next to each other, just behind the podium, reminding us why we were there. It was a small group – mostly family of the MacFarleys, and then April, Alex, and me. Anyone who wanted to was invited to speak. Jackie had said before that she wanted both April and I to say a couple words, so when April grabbed my hand and tugged me to my feet and up the microphone, I was expectant but still nervous.

April went first. "Life," she said carefully, "is more than the beating of a heart. A heart can beat, and we can still not fully live. A person can walk, talk, breathe... And still not live.

"Some of us walk through life saying, ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’. We have doubts, uncertainties, that keep us from making the most of our days. We get cold feet, sweaty palms, or perhaps we have other plans, other things to do that are more important, more pressing. Maybe that business contract is more important than calling up someone and making amends. Maybe that history report means more at the moment than telling your father you love him, or taking that hike in the mountains with your little sister that you’ve been promising her since you were sixteen, and never got around to.

"You get around to having lots of plans, things you’re going to do tomorrow, things you could have done today but... Something got in the way. You’re too lazy, or tired, or frightened. You think you’ll have years more, you’re not due to die yet. You’re only eighteen, twenty-seven, thirty-four. You’re too young to die, right? Let me tell you a secret. Eight is too young to die. But look at this casket. Look at it. It holds an eight year old girl who never got to live out her dreams. Noone is too young to die. Noone is immune, or protected, or looked over. The people who have the most to give are sometimes the first to go.

"In life, you’re going to run into lots of people who have regrets. Things they wish they’d done, wish they’d said. You’re going to run into a lot of people who wasted away their life putting things off till tomorrow, like tomorrow was a guarantee. It’s not a guarantee. If you’d asked Ashley or Ardith if they were ready to die that morning, they wouldn’t have said yes. There were a hundred more things they probably wanted to do, a hundred things they hadn’t had the chance to do. And now they’ll never have the chance.

"Maybe at funerals you’re supposed to give speeches about the departed, and how wonderful they were. But I didn’t know either of them that well. That’s my brother’s job. What I do know about is regrets. When you’ve just lost a sister, eighteen years old, you learn a lot about regrets. All the times you could have made up with her for those stupid fights. That hike in the woods I mentioned that I put off for six years, that we’ll never have now. I know a lot about regrets. If Ashley and Ardith were here, they’d probably be telling you a lot about regrets too. How they wish they could have told their mother they loved her one more time. How they wish they could just have made it long enough to do whatever it is they most dreamed of doing.

"Don’t have regrets. Don’t live your life thinking you’ll have another day. Don’t take tomorrow for granted. You’re never too young to die, as I said already... But don’t forget, either, that you’re never to old to learn to live."

There were a lot of surprised glances going around. I don’t think anyone was quite sure how to acknowledge the walking inspirational speech that my sister had become. I think it was Jackie who was the first to clap. Soon there was more applause, and then a couple more people joined in, and soon the whole small gathering was clapping. I caught April’s eye. She wiped it with one sleeve of her black dress and shot me a tiny grin. "Someday soon, Colin, you and I are going on Lily’s walk. In her memory, if you want."

I nodded, stepping up to the podium. "That... That would be great. Let’s go tomorrow."

She smiled. "Let’s go today."

She sat down next to Alex and smiled at me. I looked over at Jackie. She was crying, which I had expected, but she didn’t look too bad. I smiled at her, and she managed a weak smile back.
"Ashes," I began. "That’s what I called her, in the last days. Of course, for us, every days were the last days. I only knew her for two weeks. Not very long, considering. But sixteen years isn’t very long, either. Too short to live. Too soon to die. But I think it’s strange, that I called her Ashes. You know that bible saying? ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’ It’s true. We all return to the earth. We all return to what made us, and it gives us new growth, new life. But in this case, it meant something extra. Because... Ashes, or the girl I called Ashes, is now a cremated body in an urn. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. What we once were, we forever will be."

I took a deep breath. "But maybe that’s not how I’m supposed to talk, giving this speech. I don’t really know – I’ve never spoken at a funeral. Maybe I’m supposed to talk about how amazing they were, but I hardly knew them. I only saw Ardith a handful of times, and Ashley and I only knew each other for two weeks. Maybe I’m supposed to say I wish they’d lived longer, which is true, I do. But... There’s more to it than that. I can say what I wish, or what I would’ve wanted, what they could’ve been or what they were. But those are things that I either can’t change or don’t know anything about. The only thing I can tell you about is... Hope. I can tell you a lot about hope."

I was crying, but I kept talking anyway. I had to. "When you see two young people, young people with a lot to offer and a lot to give, die like this... It’s too much for a lot of people. If innocent kids, kids who haven’t done anything wrong, aren’t spared from death... What’s the point? What are we doing here, when eight year old kids are dying senselessly? What are we doing here, waiting to be next? And we get caught up in those thoughts, caught up in that way of thinking, that way of seeing things. You can think like that for a long time, before you finally give up. But it’s inevitable, if you do. Think like that, I mean. If you do think like that." I was tripping over my words, sobbing, but I kept going. "You can waste away, dying inside while everyone around you is just fine. You can just die away. Or you can step back, and look at things, and you can do what you can to fix them. And a lot of the time... A lot of the time, you can’t change the way things are. You can only change how you yourself are reacting to them, how you yourself are seeing things. That’s where hope comes in. That’s where hope is important. Sometimes, it’s the only way to change things. Sometimes, it’s the only way to get through those really tough times. Sometimes it’s the only thing left. But if you have it, you hold onto it, and it won’t leave you. I’ve figured that out, these past days. Hope is one of those things that doesn’t die, doesn’t abandon you, and doesn’t expire. As long as you have the energy to hope... You have the energy to be."

I stepped down from the podium and went to my seat. The applause came more quickly, that time. Applause at a funeral. I’d never been to one, or at least not in years and years, so I wasn’t sure if that was normal. I didn’t really care, to tell the truth, but I still wondered. It kept my mind off everything else.

The rest of the ceremony flew by. They lowered the caskets into the ground at some point, I remember hardly being able to see it through the flood of tears. But with April on one side and Alex on the other, I was alright. Or I was going to be. I hoped I would be.

A few hours after we got home, I knocked on Jackie’s door. She had moved into April’s room, in the end, and April was sleeping in Lily’s, arguing that she didn’t want Jackie to have to sleep in a dead girl’s room. But I knew April, and I knew that wasn’t her real reason. She just didn’t want someone else owning part of Lily’s memory. She wanted it to stay in the family, for the time being, anyway.

"Come in," Jackie said through the door, her voice muffled.

I opened the door and walked in. "I brought you something," I said quietly, digging in my pocket. I brought out the locket on its new gold chain.

She took a deep, wobbling breath. "Thank you, Colin," she said finally. "Thank you."

I walked over and dropped it into her hand. "Oh, I put something extra inside."

Jackie pried the locket open with her thumb and gasped. "Colin!"

"I found it at your house," I said slowly. "I was going to keep it but... It’s yours. She was yours, more than mine."

She looked up at me, rubbing the hair delicately with her index finger. "Colin, she’s not anyone’s, don’t you see?" She sighed. "Ashley can’t be owned, or bought, or possessed. Peter tried, and look where it got him. She’s too free a spirit for that. She belongs to everyone, but more than anything to herself. She was her own person, Colin. Not mine. Not yours."

"Maybe," I said softly. "Maybe. But I still want you to have the hair."

"No," she said quietly. "No. The hair is yours. You found it. You want it, I can see it in your eyes. I had sixteen years with Ashley. Sixteen years of memories. I have things that were in my purse that morning that she gave to me, made for me. I have pictures from my family’s houses, pictures from their albums and their collections. I have more pieces of Ashley than I could ever fit in this little locket. You don’t have anything. You should keep the hair, really."
I smiled at her. "But... I got a kiss. That was all I ever wanted."

She smiled back. "Let’s let it go, then. Ashley always wanted to fly." She walked over to the window and opened it slowly, popped out the screen, and reached back a hand. I placed the lock of hair in her palm, and she held her closed fist out the window. "Wait for the wind..." she whispered. It was a moment before she let go.

We watched the dark gold piece of hair float off into the evening, and I said a silent farewell to Ashes.

April and I drove out into the mountains that next day, taking only a picnic lunch, water bottles, and a cell phone to keep us company. We found a nature trail she’d heard about from one of her friends and started up it, holding onto the shoulder straps of our lightly packed backpacks and talking.

"Lily and I were planning to do this for years, but we never got around to it. I came up here once, when I was fifteen, with my friend Rochelle and her older brother. Beautiful place. There’s one spot where you can sit on these flat rocks, dangle your feet just above the water... Gorgeous. I’ve always wanted to go back."

I grinned at her. "So let’s go."

She was right. It was beautiful, just beautiful. We sat on a flat, dry rock, the packs in between us, fishing out sandwiches and chips and drinks. "This is good," I said between swigs of Dr. Pepper. "I’m glad I got to come. I wish Lily were here."

"She is," April smiled, taking a bite of her sandwich. "She wouldn’t miss this for the world."
And somehow, though every practical part of me said that it couldn’t be true, I agreed.

Alex came over two nights later for dinner, the night my family finally went to the store. Mom was making spaghetti, one of her best recipes, and garlic bread. Alex sounded surprised when I told him. "People actually eat things like that? Are you sure you’re not having peanut butter sandwiches, and just trying to trick me?"

"Pretty sure," I told him," but if you want, you can double check. I’ll gladly call Mom to the phone."

"Nah, I’m good. Joey’s going over to a friend’s house tonight, so I was all on my own anyway. Ma’s never home for dinner."

"We eat around six, but if you want to see the table setting ceremony and be an active taster of Mom’s bolognese, come at five."

So Alex showed up at five, at the back door this time – I’d coached him over the phone – and the two of us were immediately recruited to set the table. "Knives, forks, spoons, salad forks – don’t give me that look, Colin, I know we’re not having salad and I don’t care – plates, and bread plates. Oh, and napkins. Don’t forget the napkins!"

Alex and I obliged, shooting each other looks across the table. I set out the salad forks with a grin, putting them on the right of the regular forks, instead of the left. It was the kind of thing that would drive Mom crazy. Just knowing that it would actually work, that she would actually notice, was enough to tell me that our family was slowly but surely getting better. Mom’s temper tantrums over little things had always been a part of the family.

We both tasted the sauce before we went up to my room. I thought it was perfect, but Alex suggested more basil. I raised my eyebrows. "Dad’s a chef," he explained on our way up the stairs. "I only see him once a year, but he’s taught me herbs. One week a year, and the man uses the time to teach me about seasoning elements. Go figure."

I grinned and held open the door to my room. "Well, there are worse things to converse with your father about."

We bantered on like that for forty minutes, and before we knew it Mom was calling us down for dinner. Alex almost sat in Lily’s old chair, but April glared pointedly at the chair next to me. "Sorry," she said, "but noone sits there. Not yet, anyway."

The six of us squeezed around the table, a table meant for five, with seven chairs, and said a quick prayer over the food. I stared at the empty chair across from me and felt a pang. Noone jumped for the garlic bread as soon as prayer was over. Noone glared at April, kicked me under the table, or offered to save the leftovers to make bird feeders – as though spaghetti bird feeders would really be an attraction. Lily was gone, really and truly gone, and even with two extra people there it was impossible to fill the space.

We ate in silence for a moment, but soon conversation struck up. Alex seemed to interest my family, especially Dad. "So what do the people in your family work at?"

"Dad’s a chef, out in California. I don’t see him often," Alex said with a tiny smile. "My mother, she works for an insurance company here in town. And me, I get construction jobs over the summer, help pay for football gear and trips and stuff for the year." He took a bite of bread. "Hard work, construction," he added.

My father nodded. "Any brothers or sisters?"

"A brother. Joey. Good kid. Real wild and mischievous. He’s only twelve, though. He’s got time to straighten out. He makes everybody laugh. He’s good at that." Alex smiled.

My father smiled back. "Good, good. Invite him over sometime. We’re always willing to have company."

And we were, I thought, looking around at my family. Without Lily, with Lily, it didn’t matter. We liked people, other people, our own people, people we didn’t know and people we knew better than we knew ourselves. Some families had a knack for communication, or animals, or running some big business with just the four or five of them, parents and kids. Us, we had a way with people, with making them feel comfortable, making them feel like they were are own. That was what Jackie was doing there. That was what Alex was doing there. That’s what Lily’s endless string of friends had done there, years before. Because when you reached out to people, that’s when you found yourself. And if there was anything my family needed, right then, it was to find ourselves.

After dinner, we cleared away the plates and unused salad forks, dirty silverware and crumpled paper napkins. "I like this family," Alex confided as I set a stack of plates on the counter next to April, who was already elbow-deep in dish soap. "You guys have something special. You’re lucky."

"Yeah, I guess." But deep down, I wasn’t guessing. I knew that. I was lucky. I was damn lucky. I had a family that would do anything for me, that would do anything for each other. I had a family that would stay together for a long time, through death and pain and lies and hardships. I had a family that could do the impossible, live through the messes and the rough spots, and still come out with our hearts intact, our heads unharmed, and our arms outstretched. "I guess we are."

I started going back to soccer that week, and April started looking for an apartment. It was a week of changes for all of us, I think. Reconstruction started on the MacFarley house, and within a few days it was already beginning to take shape. Jackie walked over every day and helped build it. She was starting to gain some weight, which made me smile. She looked better when she wasn’t so thin. I wish Ashley could have seen her.

We started planning for Lily’s funeral that week. It was going to be what my mother called a "real funeral", which pretty much meant that it was going to be everything that Ashley and Ardith’s "services" hadn’t been. Mom was adamant about the church part, at least. It would be open casket. I wasn’t sure how to react to that, but I tried to put it out of my mind.

So when the phone rang one December night, when Mom and I were washing dishes and April was sleeping on the couch in the living room, and Headstone Engravers Services asked to talk to my mother, I wasn’t surprised. I just handed over the phone to Mom and leaned against the cabinets, wiping my soapy hands with a dishtowel.

My mother listened for a moment, then turned to me, her hand over the mouthpiece. "They want to know..." she paused, took a deep, shaky breath, and sighed. "They want to have a name for the baby."

I thought for a long moment, thinking. How was I supposed to be expected to do this? How could I name this child, my sister’s child, my deceased sister’s child, the child I’d never met and she had never wanted? The child who had torn my family into pieces, who had in the end meant Lily’s death?

And then again, how could I possibly pass the honor to someone else?

I stared at April, asleep in the living room. I stared at my mother, her eyes teary and bright. I stared at my shoes, which looked decidedly happier than my face in its reflection on the microwave door. And then it was back to April, with her closed eyes and expressionless face. April, my surviving sister. The one who had found the point, the good, in Lily’s death. And then I knew it; I knew what to name the baby.

"Hope," I said quietly. "Tell them to name her Hope."

November 26th: Conscience, Remorse, and Grief as an Independent Beast

2004-11-26T21:04:00.000-08:00

"I thought you’d turn up," Ms. MacFarley said weakly. "I thought you would." She was sitting on a pile of wood in the corner of her old house. "The neighbors are going to help me build a new one, right here... Isn’t that nice of them?" she remarked absentmindedly, pulling at the chain around her neck.

"I wanted to talk to you about something, ma’am," I said quietly, walking slowly toward her. "I think I know who set your fire, and I think I know why. But I don’t want to do anything about it without your permission." I paused, took a deep breath, and pressed onward. "I want nothing more than to see this guy put to justice. But if you want to let sleeping dogs lie, I won’t go against your wishes."

Yank. "Who is it, Colin?" Yank. Yank. Yank.

"I can’t say for sure, understand, it’s just a guess."

Yank. "I know. But who do you think it is?"

"Peter Blackman."

She sat there for a moment, her eyes fixed on me, and then picked up a piece of wood and threw it. "I knew it would be," she said, sobbing. "I knew... I knew..." Yank. Yank. Yank.

"I can’t prove anything, ma’am, understand? I can’t prove anything."

Yank. Yank. "I know you can’t. But I believe you. I don’t want to believe you. I want to believe it was an accident. But it wasn’t, was it?" She picked up another board and tossed it a weak five feet. "I knew that, all along..." Yank. The chain snapped in her hands, and she let loose a long, low moan.

"My sister has some chains, ma’am. I can get you another one, and put the locket on it," I suggested weakly. I didn’t know what to do, but I wasn’t going to give up on her.

She nodded. "That would be nice." I walked a few steps closer and let her drop the locket into my hand. She buried her face in her palms, shaking. I sat down next to her, pulling my legs to my chest.

"My family says you’re welcome to stay at our place, if you like. Until the house is rebuilt. We’ve got an empty room, now that my sister –" My voice caught. "Now that my sister’s gone."

She looked up, her eyes wide and bright and tired. "That would be lovely," she mumbled. "Lovely..."

"I’m sorry about your girls," I said after a moment, stretching my legs out in front of me. The denim of my jeans was already covered in ash.

She sniffed. "I am, too." She sighed. "You can do whatever you like with Peter. I won’t get in your way. But I don’t want anything to happen to him. I don’t want trouble... Maybe an apology."

I rose, patting her on the shoulder. "I’ll try, ma’am. Let me drive you to my house, okay? I’m sure we’ll find some clothes you can wear." She was so thin, after all. And short. Lily’s heroin clothes would fit. I assumed they were around the house somewhere, sent home from detox. "It’s going to be okay."

"Call me Jackie," she said quietly, and stood up slowly. "Thank you, Colin. You’re a good boy."

I took her hand as we walked down to the car, where April sat waiting. I crawled into the back seat and Jackie took the front, pulling on the seatbelt with trembling hands.

We drove the few short blocks home in silence. When we parked in front of the house, noone moved for a moment. "Well," April said finally, smiling at me in the rearview mirror, "welcome home."

April was the one to ring the doorbell at Peter’s house. I’d warned her that his father wasn’t part of my fan club, and she’d laughed. "We’ll find a way to get in, Col. Don’t worry." But I was worrying, anyway, standing on Peter’s front porch. I didn’t think I could possibly not worry, when I was about to barge in and accuse a guy who was obviously capable of hurting me – he’d proved that enough times – of murder.

"I told you not to come back," Jonah greeted us.

April shot him a charming smile. "I’m sorry. My brother and I are here about a school project he and your son are doing together. They wanted to interview me about growing up here in Hill Crest, and how it’s affected my view on the political world," she explained. I gave her a surprised glance. I’d never seen April lie through her teeth before, and I had to admit, she was good at it.

"Go upstairs then," he growled. "But I don’t want any noise, got it?"

We nodded and proceeded past him up the stairs. I opened the door to Peter’s room. He sat in the middle of the floor, staring at a bunch of fanned out photographs.

"Thanks for knocking," he muttered. "I guess you’re here to talk about Ashley."

April gave him a sticky-sweet smile. "Yeah, we are." She sat down on the floor across from him, and I followed suit. She stared at him for a moment, then looked at the photos on the floor. They were beautiful, black and white shots of forests and animals, but mostly of a girl with greasy-looking blonde hair and bruises on her face and arms.

"We used to go out in the woods and take photographs. Hers are the nature shots. I only took pictures of her." He said it without looking at either of us, his eyes flickering from one photograph to the next. "Twisted love, that one," he laughed quietly.

"Why did you set the fire?" my sister asked softly.

I glanced at Pete. I was expecting him to deny it, to scream at her to get out of his room, to tell her that she was wrong. But he didn’t do any of that. "I wanted to make her understand that I was serious. That without her, I would die..."

"But she was the one who died," I broke in.

He gave me a look, his eyes glassy and his face tired. "I know. That wasn’t supposed to happen."
April lowered her head and stared at her hands. "Peter, you have to tell her mother."

"I can’t!" he said quickly. Then he sighed. "She hates me. She’s always hated me. For years now. She’ll put me in jail. She’ll... She’ll..."

"She says she doesn’t want to cause any trouble," I spoke up. "She says all she wants is an apology."

He glared at me. "Of course that’s what she says. But that’s not what she’ll say if I tell her. Then she’ll scream and rant and rave and have me arrested."

"If she does, we’ll say she’s making it up," April said quietly. "It’s us against her. But if you don’t, it’s us against you. And who’ll believe you? Witnesses know you hit Ashley, Pete. You have no choice."

A single tear slipped down his cheek. "Stop."

"You have to," she repeated. "There’s no way around it. You’ve got to tell her mother. You have to apologize. You killed her daughters, Pete. You killed her daughters. You owe her an apology for that. You know you do."

"Stop your fucking preaching!" he squealed suddenly. He took a few deep breaths. "I don’t need to hear this," he said shakily. "Not from you, not from Colin, not from my father, not from myself. I don’t need to hear this." He picked up a photograph of Ashley from the ground. "She kept messing with my head, see? That bitch was always messing with my head." He ripped the picture cleanly down the middle, then doubled the halves up and tore them again, and again, and again until they were just tiny pieces of black and white confetti on the floor.

April grabbed one of his hands. "All she wants is an apology. You took her only family from her, and all she’s asking you for is an apology."

Peter shot her a look of disgust, of hatred, but there was something more, too. Respect? Awe? Fear? He felt something for my sister that I didn’t think he was used to. Something he’d never felt around Ashes and certainly never around me. "Fine," he spat at her. "Fine, I’ll apologize. But remember that no matter how many times you make me say it, you can’t make me mean it."

"No," April said, "I can’t."

They sat and stared at each other for a long time. I stayed on the side, not daring to interject myself into their silent battle. There was something between the two of them that scared me, a competition and a fierceness. It was something I had never seen in April, ever, and something that I had a feeling she very rarely saw in herself.

"Let’s go, then," Pete said finally, sighing, and sweeping his hands over the photos so that, in one quick movement, they were neatly stacked.

April rose to her feet, grabbed my hand, and pulled me up. "Let’s go," she said quietly, and offered Pete a hand.

"I didn’t mean to kill her," Peter said quietly, staring out the window over Jackie’s head. "I meant to scare her, to show her I meant business. To show her that... That I really wanted to elope with her, but I could hurt her if she didn’t... Didn’t do the right things, act the right way. I wanted to show her... I don’t know what I wanted to show her, dammit. But something went wrong, whatever it was." He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his t-shirt. "Your daughters weren’t supposed to get hurt, miss, they were supposed to smell the smoke, get out of there... Live..."

He looked at the pale, willowy woman sitting in the chair across from him. Her eyes were red and weeping, her lip quivering. "But why did you... Why did you have to show her? Why couldn’t you tell her? Why couldn’t you just tell her?"

"I don’t know words. Words don’t work, they don’t... People get angry, people get hurt, words don’t say that. There aren’t words around for that, to say those kind of things, to say, ‘I love you but I want to kill you and I want you to be with me forever or I don’t want you to be at all’. They don’t make Hallmark cards like that, they don’t make words like that, they don’t make flowers or chocolates or pictures or books or anything to say that with."

Jackie looked down at her hands, her fingers shaking. "My daughter thought you were the greatest guy around. The day she met you, she came home beaming ear to ear, big smile, big laughs, lots of energy, and she said, ‘Mom, I’ve met the greatest guy, I think I’m in love and I’ve hardly talked to him once’. And the first time you fought, she wouldn’t eat or talk to anyone for three days, she holed up in her room listening to breakup songs and used ten boxes of Kleenex. And later, that girl would make any excuses for why you were the way you were, why you were jealous and why you hit her and why you screamed like you did. Football, anger, inferiority complex...." She sighed. "Someone should have seen it. I should have seen it. Colin, he should’ve seen it. This was coming, all along. Looking back, it’s all I can see."

I shot her a look. "How can you say that?" I broke in. "How could you say that I should have seen it? I knew her for two weeks!" April put a hand on my shoulder silently, warning me, but I was angry. "You can’t blame me, not for this one. Lily, yeah, blame me for Lily, blame me for her, don’t blame me for Ashley. Ashley’s not my fault! Look at him!" I pointed at Peter, defiant of April’s shocked attempts to shush me, staring fiercely into Jackie’s eyes. "That’s the guy to blame! It’s not my fault, it’s not... I swear it’s not..."

April took a step toward me and wrapped me in her arms. "It’s not," she whispered in my ear, softly. "And it’s not your fault about Lily, either."

Peter sighed. "Listen, I don’t want this to be about whose fault it is, because Colin’s right, it’s my fault, all my fault, and I shouldn’t... I shouldn’t be asking anyone else to take the blame. I killed your daughters, Ms. MacFarley. I killed them, whether I meant to or not, whether I set out to do it or not. And... It’s not fair of me to expect you... To let me off with an apology. But I’ll give you one, ma’am. I’m sorry, very sorry, for what I’ve done to your family, to you. I’m sorry that your daughters are dead. I’m sorry that I thought... That I thought I could play around with life, when it’s not something for me... For me to play around with." He took a deep, shaky breath. "I’m going to turn myself in, right now. Maybe... Maybe it’ll be the best thing. Maybe if I go to jail, or death row, or wherever, I can at least... I can feel like she didn’t die for nothing. Cos if she hadn’t, I might’ve done it again... And again... And... I can’t think about that. I can’t." He was crying, snot dripping from his nose, his eyes squeezed shut. "I just wish your daughter didn’t have to be the one that made me learn. I wish it could have been anyone... Anyone but Ash..."

"You don’t have to," Jackie said softly.

"Of course I don’t have to," Pete replied quickly. "But I said to Colin and April back at my house that I didn’t have to mean it when I apologized, either. But I did. And... I don’t have to turn myself in. But I will."

Jackie gave him a long, tired look. "You can play the hero for a long time, if that’s what you’re doing," she said warily. "But if you really mean it, if you’re doing this because you honestly feel bad... Then I’m proud of you. Takes a lot of courage to own up to shit." She sighed. "Lot of courage."

"Yeah," Peter said quietly, "it does."

It was in the papers the next morning. Teenage Arsonist Turns Himself In To Police. It didn’t make the front page, but it didn’t get buried too far back, either. He would be tried as an adult, of course. He would’ve asked for it, even if he weren’t old enough. But I couldn’t help but think that he wasn’t an adult. None of us were. We were just kids, messing around, falling in love and out of love, doing stupid things that only something as weird as love could make us do. We were kids, and we were crazy, and we were lonely but we were going to be okay, if we had the chance to be okay.

I hoped for that, for Pete. I hoped he was going to be okay. Sure, he’d probably get the death sentence. And even if he didn’t, prison was going to be bad. But he was different, that last night. He wasn’t cocky, or indignant, or bitter. He was just a guy, a scared guy with a secret. A lot like me.

I went back to school the following Monday. Alex met me at my locker with a big grin and a hug. "What was that for?" I asked, once he’d pulled away.

"For actually showing up. Thought you were dead, man. Thought Pete had gotten the best of you."

I gave him a tiny smile. "It’d take more than Pete to kill this," I said, thumping my chest in the ancient and barbaric gesture of machismo.

Alex grinned, then gave me a sympathetic look. "So I hear it’s been a tough couple weeks. Your sister and Ashley, both at the same time."

"Yeah," I said slowly, quietly. "I knew one for two weeks and one for eighteen years, but they both hurt about the same. Is that supposed to happen?"

Alex shrugged. "I don’t think you can tell grief how it’s supposed to come out. It’s kind of an independent beast."

"An independent beast," I murmured. "I like that."

"Yeah," Alex cracked, grinning. "Me too."

November 25th: In Which Colin Touchingly Converses with his Family

2004-11-25T13:22:00.000-08:00

My mother met me at the door with a lukewarm cup of coffee and a hug. I wrapped my arms around her, squeezing her tightly, and sobbed. "Everyone’s dying," I rasped in her ear, and then I couldn’t say anything more.

She tightened her grip. "No," she whispered, "not everyone. Not you."

"I begged for it, this morning." My declaration sent her into tears, and she pulled away, stepping into a corner of the kitchen, facing the cabinets, away from me. "I didn’t mean it, though," I added quickly – even though I had.

She turned to look at me. "This isn’t fair," she whispered.

"I know."

"My daughter’s dead, Colin," she said after a moment, chewing on her lip. "My baby girl is dead." She looked at her fingertips, at the nails chewed to the point of bleeding, at the raw, pink skin. "Noone should ever have to feel this. It’s not fair. Eighteen isn’t old enough to die. She was supposed to get married, have children, be wildly successful and happy..." She gave a tiny, sad laugh. "Oh, I suppose I didn’t really care about the husband, or the kids. I wanted the successful and happy. The part I never got to have."

I shot her a look, leaning against the wall. "Mom, stop it."

"Oh, why should I? What’s the good? I’ve got one child dead and another who wants to die. You might as well know that I hate this godforsaken house, this godforsaken town, this godforsaken dead dream in the making." She picked up a coffee mug and threw it at the wall. "Ask your father if I ever wanted to move here. Ask your father if I ever wanted to be a stay at home mother. Ask your father if –"

"Stop it!" I screamed. "Stop it, stop it, stop it!" She stared at me, her eyes bright. "You’re only saying that because of Lily, because you think if you hadn’t done everything you’d done up till now maybe she wouldn’t be dead. Well fuck you, Mom, fuck you thinking you know everything, thinking this is all about you and everything you’ve done! It’s not! It’s about Lily being stupid and Lily being brave and finally Lily being dead, and I don’t see your name mentioned in there anywhere, so it obviously can’t be your fault."

We stared at each other for a long time. It was frightening to see my mother, really see her, after glancing past her for all these years. She’d always been the sidekick of the family, the one we went to for advice and help and hugs after everyone else had been exhausted as a comfort. I think she was used to being part of the background, because she seemed unnaturally good at fading into the cabinets as she stood there, eyes shining, biting her lip till it turned white around her teeth and blood red everywhere else. I don’t think she was used to being screamed at, told off, or scolded. I don’t think I was used to screaming at, telling off, or scolding people either, which made the situation doubly awkward and difficult.

"Mom," I said finally, "she didn’t do this just to break your heart."

We stared again. I wondered what I looked like in her eyes. The grieving son with emotional problems, who couldn’t hold in his anger? The naive little boy who didn’t know what he was saying when he talked about love, or pain, or heartache? Colin York, the child she’d thought was hers, thought was a good person, until mourning brought out his worst? Or did she see a reincarnation of her daughter standing there, yelling at her, as noone had yelled at her since Lily was sixteen and about to be sent off to the middle of nowhere?

"I’m not Lily," I said suddenly.

My mother’s eyes grew wide. "I know, sweetie," she said after a moment, laughing a little – the saddest kind of laugh, the kind inserted into a conversation like a punctuation mark, trying to fool the other person into thinking that things are just fine.

"I’m not Lily," I repeated.

"I never said you were," she responded, without the laugh this time. "I know you’re not your sister."

"Mom," I said again, "I’m not Lily."

"Stop saying that!" she exclaimed, pulling out a strand of her hair.

I stared at her earnestly, with her bright, teary eyes and her wobbling jaw. "I’m not Lily."

"How am I supposed to know that?" she asked, her voice strained, and turned away.

I left the room in silence, my heart and feet dragging on the ground.

I knocked on Lily’s closed door. "Daddy?" I hadn’t called him that in forever, but somehow it fit.
"Come on in," he said quietly, in a voice barely audible through the door.

I pulled it open and stepped in, shutting the door behind me. My father was standing in front of Lily’s mirror, staring at himself in the glass. "I never liked this color," he said, sighing, picking at the paint on the wall next to him. "It’s dingy. We should’ve done a couple shades lighter, something... She wanted it black for awhile. We should’ve done it black."

"Painting her room black wouldn’t have kept her here," I said, sitting down on the bed. My father glanced at me, heaved a sigh, and perched on the empty dresser, his eyes closed.

We were like that for a long time, just sitting there in silence. It was a good five minutes before he broke the spell. "Do you know what it’s like to pick up the phone, and hear them say it’s the hospital, concerning your daughter, Lily? And what it’s like to wonder why she isn’t calling herself, what went wrong, what’s happened, but trying to keep your cool because maybe everything’s fine, and she’s just groggy, and they wanted to call you instead?" He took a shaky breath. "Do you know what it’s like to hear, ‘I’m sorry sir, your daughter just passed away under side effects from the anesthesia’, and to have to pass the phone on to your baby daughter so she can talk to the goddamned hospital about her sister, because you can’t speak when you can’t even breathe? And to think to yourself, ‘She’s been doing heroin for two years, she’s survived being a prostitute and a junkie for so long now, she’s survived being pregnant with a heroin addicted child, she’s survived the disappointment of her family and the abandonment of her friends, she’s survived a tragic miscarriage, and in the end, anesthesia, something that hundreds of thousands of people are put under the influence of every year, is what killed her’. And you think to yourself, ‘There has to be a mistake, because my daughter’s too stupidly courageous to die from some heart attack brought on by the damned hospital’s general anesthesia’. But really, underneath all that, the only thought you’re having is, ‘My daughter is dead. My daughter is dead. My daughter is dead.’ Do you know what that’s like, Colin?"

"No," I said quietly, looking at him. His eyes were still closed, his face wrinkled and tired. He looked so old right then, my father. "I don’t know. I don’t ever want to know."

"Noone does, Colin," he told me, his eyes opening. They were bright blue, deep blue at that, and they were bright and glassy with tears. "Noone wants to know what it’s like to die inside. But I know, now. I know." He sighed. "The first time I held her, eighteen years ago, she was lying there just perfectly peaceful, like she was completely above all the excitement of being born. And I smiled and laughed at her, and she stared up at me with these big eyes, and I just broke down and cried. Because she looked so happy, and alive, and I knew she would be the one to change the world." He closed his eyes again. "In the end, the only world she changed was ours."
"You say that like it wasn’t enough," I whispered. His eyes opened, and he looked at me for a long moment. His face drooped wearily, like the very effort of existing was too much for him.

"I don’t know what I’m saying," he said finally. We sat in silence for another few minutes before I rose to leave.

Just as I was about to shut the door he said something that stopped me in my tracks. "I love you, Colin. I don’t know whether fathers are supposed to tell their sons that. But I don’t really care."

I turned and looked at him, with his bright eyes and tired face. "Love you too, Dad."

When I closed the door to Lily’s room that day, I knew I would never return.

I opened her door without knocking. The courtesy of a knock had never appealed to April and I, when it concerned one another. So I barged into her room, sat down on her bed beside her, and pressed the off button on her CD player, all without being invited in.

"Sometimes people are stupid," I said quietly, giving her a tiny smile. "Sometimes they let things get in the way – for example, their self pity – and they say things that they don’t really mean, to people they love, and then they regret them for the rest of their lives. Some people don’t understand that just because you pity yourself, the world won’t always pity you. And then some other people, the lucky ones, have older sisters who tell them so, to keep them from making fools of themselves. The lucky ones have to keep those older sisters around, and so when they do something stupid and awful, like telling said sisters that they should die, they swallow their pride and beg said sisters for forgiveness and a renewal of the lifelong supply of sage advice."

April snorted. "You apologize too well," she sighed, giving me a small smile. "How am I supposed to be angry with you when you apologize so well?"

"That’s an easy one," I grinned. "You’re not supposed to be angry with me at all."

"It’s not fair that you lost two people in less than a week," she said quietly. "It’s not fair for me to expect you to be coherent and okay after that. But it’s not fair of you to say things like that. It’s not fair of you to think I’m not going through a lot of pain, too." She sighed. "Colin, can I ask you something?"
"What?"

"Do you think there’s any way... Now, this is going to sound kind of weird, and mean, but... Do you think there’s any way that Peter had something to do with the fire? Do you think there’s anyway he could have had a part in this?"

"Yeah," I said softly. "Yeah, I do." I explained that I had talked to him, that he had nearly admitted to it, with his babble about it being electric, but that I had nothing to prove that he had been involved.

"I want to talk to him, if you’d let me," she said quietly. "Maybe he would listen, if it came from me."

"I’m going with you," I said immediately.

She smiled. "I was going to ask you to come, anyway." She gave me a quick hug, squeezing me tightly. "It is going to be alright, Colin. It is."

"I hope," I whispered. And when I realized what I’d said, I smiled. There it was again, back and better than ever: hope.

November 23rd: I Don't Want Any Trouble

2004-11-23T20:32:00.000-08:00

I arrived just before the firetrucks. They raced up behind me when I turned onto her street. Smoke was billowing from a tiny vinyl-sided two storey house at the far end of the street. I double-checked the address in my head, insisted that I must be wrong.

I pulled over to the side of the road and let the firetrucks roar past me, the sirens deafening me with their screams. "Oh God," I prayed, "please." In that moment, I had no trouble hoping. My entire existence was suddenly hoping, just hoping... I had to keep hoping.

My eyes closed when the sirens shut off. I could hear shouting further down the street. Lip quivering, heart skipping beats left and right, I slowly opened the car door and rose, walking toward the house. As I drew closer I walked faster, and faster still, then I was jogging, running, sprinting. My lungs gasped for air, my arms pumped up and down, my legs tore through the still morning air. I could see flames, and they drove me to go faster, the body that I loathed, out of shape from the weeks without soccer practice, racing toward the burning structure.

And then someone grabbed, me holding me back, screaming that it wasn't safe, it wasn't safe.

"You don't understand," I said, breathless, in tears. "That's my friend, maybe the best one I have, maybe my girlfriend, even, if she..." I stopped, tried again. "That's the girl that means more than dirt, more than dirt..." I sounded like a raving lunatic. Even hysterical, I knew that. I knew they thought I was crazy, or drunk, or worse. I knew that they wouldn't let me go in. But I wasn't going to give up without trying. There was a chance... A tiny chance...

The man shook his head, pushing me back, looking me in the eye. "You can't go in there, it's not safe."

"But... But sir..." I stuttered. But sir, I'm Corin, and she's Ashes, and there's been a terrible misunderstanding. See, sir, I want her to be happy. She has to be happy! You can't be happy when you're dead, I won't be happy when she's dead...

"Kid, I have to work. Go get in your car and drive away from here, you hear me?" I stared at him blankly. "Do you hear me, kid? You're not dying today. I'm not going to let you die today."
But I have to, I protested in my mind. I have to die, if she does.. I can't lose her. I can't lose another person. Not this week. Not this year. Not this lifetime. If I lose another one, there won't be anyone else. But I didn't say that, though everything in me wanted to. I walked numbly back to my car and watched from a distance.

I saw two guys carry a body out. I couldn't tell from a distance who it was. I prayed that someone else would be behind them, with another body, or better yet, that one of the girls would walk out unscathed, not a scratch or a bruise or a burn or a sputter, weeping but unharmed. I didn't get my wish. There was noone else.

They turned the hoses on the place. The fire was stubborn. It stuck to the beams, the stairs, everything. It was amazing, with the outer wall burnt down, how much of the house you could see. There were the crumbling, ashy pieces of furniture, the skeletons of the rooms, some of which I had walked through only days before, and then there was the spot where the second storey had collapsed into the first, the pile of debris shielding any other remnants of the MacFarley family and their home.

The stairs were almost perfectly intact. They stood, straight up, at the back of the house, burning almost majestically in the night. And then the hose was turned on them, and they were gone too, faded into the piles of soot.

Within fifteen minutes it was over. Two ambulances came. One loaded up the girl -- I still couldn't tell which it was -- and was on its way. The other stayed, assumably for other bodies they might find. No, I scolded myself, not bodies. People. They're people. The firemen, including the one who had held me back earlier, picked through the debris. They seemed especially interested in the spot where the second floor had collapsed. One of them was picking at something, and the others had crowded around him.

That was all I could take. I got out of the car and ran, sprinting like the wind, toward the house. I ran up to where the men were standing, and peered between them. One of them turned and tried to shoo me away, but I wasn't listening and I certainly wasn't going to obey. Because sticking out of the rubble was a clammy hand, and part of an arm. The wrist was exposed, the remnants of a shirt mostly burnt away, charred pieces of fabric clinging to it.

I saw the stitches running up the arm, like they’d been used to stitch up a slit wrist. It was too much to be an eerie coincidence. It was then that I knew it was truly over.

I started to cry right there. Because of Lily, and her baby, and their impossibly unjust end. Because of Ashley, the girl who was worth more than dirt, who was now lying amidst ash and debris. And because though I looked and looked while I was standing there, screaming and crying and shouting her name, cursing at the firemen as they tried to calm me down, because though I searched my soul and my mind and my heart, I could not find hope.

I was whisked away in the second ambulance in hysterics. I pleaded with the EMTs to kill me. They ignored my cries, shooting me up with a sedative. They said it would make me sleep. I mumbled for a moment about how needles had made my sister weak, and being weak had killed her, and how I wished I could die... And then I was gone, somewhere between awake and dreaming, a groggy wasteland where hope was shamed and the only way out was to die.

They kept me in the hospital until three that afternoon. I was crying the whole time I was awake. April was there before the clock struck nine, holding my hand and whispering and sobbing. "It's unfair," she said. "Life's so unfair to you." I agreed. First Lily, then Ashley, and finally my sanity. If there was a God, he hated me. And if there wasn't, I certainly wouldn't mind. I didn't want eternal life anyway. I couldn't even handle the short one I'd had already.
When the let me out the first thing I did was ask about Ardith. "I don't know," April said wearily. "I don't know."

So we got in the car and started the long drive home. April insisted on driving, whispering soothingly to me that I needed my rest. I sat with my feet on the dashboard, my eyes on the road, and bit my lip until it bled. "She broke up with Peter this morning," I said at one point, tears welling up in my eyes.

"Don't do this to yourself," April cautioned quietly.

I sighed, glaring at her, my lip twitching. "I was almost happy for a second. Lily's last wish for me was that I could be happy. Guess that got fucked up." I kicked the windshield, causing the whole car to shake. "Well damn that, I don't even want to be happy anymore."

"Stop."

"Why don't you just go die like everyone else?" I screamed at her. Her face went pale, and her hands gripped the wheel tightly, but she didn't lose control. She just drove onward, toward home. I hated my sister so much in that moment, so much. I kicked the windshield again, and shouted, "Go ahead and die!" But she just drove onward, expressionless and weary as ever
We parked in the driveway when we got home, and she turned to look at me. "I lost a sister last week, Colin. I know it feels like the end of the world to lose someone. You do too. And for now, people are going to excuse your outbursts, saying it's just the grief, it will wear off. But they don't know what you know. They don't know what I know. It doesn't wear off, Colin. It never is going to wear off." She arched her eyebrows, took a deep breath, and continued. "When you're thirty years old, you could still be grieving, and you could still be saying things like what you said to me. But noone is going to want to be around someone who acts like a bratty six year old and says terrible things to people he loves, and noone is going to excuse you for it because you lost a sister and a not-even-girlfriend fourteen years before!" She pounded on the steering wheel. "Stop feeling sorry for yourself."

"Fuck you," I hissed, and pushed open the door. I took off running down the street.

"What's your problem?" April called. "Come back, you idiot. Mom and Dad are going to shoot me. They'll think you ran away."

I turned and looked at her, breathing hard, adrenaline racing. "I have to go talk to someone," I shouted. And then I took off down the street, arms and legs and lungs and heart pumping, the tears drying in my eyes as I ran.

The house had been reduced to a soot encased, rotting structure. If it could even be called a structure, after what the fire had done to it. I walked through it slowly, picking up the few remnants of normal life that I could find – a button, a pen cap, a toothbrush, a quarter – and stuffing them into my pockets, all the while swallowing back the tears that swelled up in my throat. A couple of times I just sat down in the ashes, damp soot soaking through my clothes and chilling me to the bone. I sifted through the debris with my bare hands, looking for something recognizable, anything to tie me to the girl...

I crept over to the place where the ceiling had collapsed, where I had seen her arm that morning. I lifted up the damp wood and pawed through the soot, my hands blackening steadily, my eyes leaking tears and my throat sending a silent, never-ending scream into the damp air. And then my fingers touched something foreign, something soft. Under a mound of insulation, at the very bottom of the pile, was a tiny lock of her hair – dingy, greasy, and dark blonde. I sat back on my heels and stared at it, resting in the palm of my hand, a dirty clump of hair my only connection to the girl who had once been connected to it, to the girl that was worth more than dirt. It was only then that I fully understood that she was never coming back.

I heard footsteps behind me, interrupting my grieving, and turned to look. Ms. MacFarley was strolling toward me, hands in her pockets, her eyes glistening with tears. "Ardith is dead," she greeted me, her voice wobbling.

I stuffed the lock of hair into my pocket and looked up at her. "I’m sorry, ma’am," I said quietly. "I’m so sorry." But that wasn’t what I wanted to say. I wanted to tell her the story of Ashes, the girl who could’ve been anything until she fell for a loser boy who didn’t give a shit whether she was alive or dead. I wanted to tell her that I was in love with her daughter, and wondering if she’d like to give me her opinion on whether that was necrophilia or not. I wanted to tell her that it was all her fault, that if she’d just been half a parent she could have kept Ashley from being so miserable those past years; she could have kept Ashley from Peter. But I just looked up at her and said I was sorry, like I didn’t really mean it, like I didn’t really care at all.

She jerked at the chain around her neck. "Everyone is dead, Colin, my daughters, my husband, everyone...." She looked so sad standing there, crying, her hands hanging awkwardly at her side, a red ring around her neck from her yanking on the chain so often, surrounded by the ashes of the house. "They’re saying..." she began, then stopped. She looked me up and down, several times, swallowing and pulling on her necklace. "They’re saying it wasn’t an accident," she said, softly, quietly.

I stared up at her, at the sad scene that surrounded her, and I realized that I had known that all along. "I have go, Ms. MacFarley," I said quietly, rising, grabbing one of her chubby hands in my own. I turned and walked away through the ashes, leaving her staring after me.

"Where are you going?" she cried weakly, tiredly, and as sadly as I’d ever heard anyone sound.
I turned to look at her. "I have to talk to the man who set your fire," I called back. And then I was gone, stealing through the streets in the afternoon rain, the low rumble of thunder pushing me forward and into the wind.

I rang the doorbell. There was a grumbling noise on the other side of the door, then the creaking of a key in the lock, and the squealing of the hinges as the door swung open. "What do you want? Oh, great, you’re the kid from before. Go home. Peter’s busy. Scat."

"I only need to talk to him a second," I protested, giving him a weak smile and an earnest nod. "Please, sir."

He brightened at the sir. "Well alright, but don’t take too long. The boy’s got homework! He has to do well in his studies or he’ll end up working at a drive through on that highway out past the horse fields."

I had no idea what this guy was getting at, but I nodded. "I wouldn’t want to interrupt a young man’s education, sir," I said softly, then walked into the house, up the stairs, and into Peter’s room.

His desk sat in the corner, on the right wall, near the windows. Peter was sitting on his desk chair, earphones on, drumming his pencil on the desk as he worked on his homework. I shut the door behind me.

"She’s dead, you know," I said loudly.

He reached up and pulled off his headphones. "Huh?"

"Ashley MacFarley is dead."

His face went white, the white of bridal gowns and milk and brand new socks. "No she isn’t," he stuttered. "She isn’t! Someone would have told me!"

"It happened after most people went off to school," I said calmly. "You didn’t mean to kill her, did you?"

"What are you talking about?" he asked shakily. "I wouldn’t touch that house. Yeah, we broke up, but only for a couple days, she’ll come running back... Or she would, if she was alive... It was electrical, Colin, it must’ve been."

I raised my eyebrows. "Electrical?"

"Well, yeah, the fire. Electrical. It happens all the time, in those older houses."

"I told you I thought you killed Ashley, I didn’t say how. How did you know she died in a fire?"

He looked shaken. "My father told me."

"So he told you her house was on fire, but not that she was dead?"

"Yes!" he said indignantly. "You’re just looking for someone to blame for this, because you don’t want to blame yourself." He paused, and a flash of something that could have even been real, true pain flickered across his face. But it was gone as soon as it had appeared. "You can’t accuse me of being behind everything that goes wrong."

"You didn’t mean to kill her," I said again, gently. "You wanted to scare her, show her that she couldn’t get away from her. Show you what you could do, if you had to. But she’s dead, now, and so is Ardith. You’ve taken away one woman’s whole family, you’ve killed your own girlfriend, and you still don’t want to admit that it’s your fault."

"Get out of my room."

"Admit you lit the fire."

"Get out of my room."

"Just tell me. Or tell Ms. MacFarley. Tell your father, Pete. But you have to tell someone. It’ll eat you alive."

"Get the fuck out of my room!" he wailed, and I left, shutting the door quietly behind me.

His father shot me a look from his chair off the hallway when I came thumping down the stairs. "Don’t come back, either. I ever see your face around here again, there ‘ll be some trouble, boy."

"I don’t want any trouble, sir. Have a good evening," I said quickly, and ducked out.

Walking home was one of the loneliest experiences of my young life. Dusk was just beginning to settle in, and it was drizzling, a miserable, maddening, spitting rain. I wanted to say a lot of things to God right then, if he was around to listen. I wanted to tell him that if Peter didn’t confess, I would go insane. I wanted to tell him that I was ready to have a breakdown and it was all his fault. I wanted to tell him to stop playing with peoples’ lives like they were chess pieces. And more than anything, I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself.

But there are some things you don’t say to God, and those were a few of them. So I brooded silently while I walked home through the rain, and – I’ll admit it – I cried.

November 22nd: About Hope

2004-11-22T20:14:00.000-08:00

Sunday dawned overcast and gray. I pulled the covers over my head and curled up in a ball. A quick glance at the clock upon waking had told me that it was only six in the morning, but already I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. Insomnia was quickly becoming my struggle, something I was none too happy about. It had been days since Lily’s death, and I still couldn’t breath quite right. There was something in my throat, blocking me, getting in the way. Sometimes I would see something that would remind me of her, and I would cry. It sounds stupid, but I couldn’t look at peppermints without my eyes misting up.

It was sad to be me, that Sunday. Without a sister, without a friend, without a hope. I’d never remembered feeling quite so low.

I quickly gave up on sleep and crawled out of bed. Groggily, I stepped out into the hallway, and literally ran into April.

She stepped back, rubbing her head, and gave a weak laugh. "Hey, sleepyhead." She reached up and tousled my hair, her lip quivering as she tried to smile. "Let’s talk, okay? I want to talk."
So I returned to my room, settling on the bed. She sat on the other end, across from me, her back against the wall. "I used to be jealous of her," she said, laughing softly and sadly. "I was always the one who could do okay on my own. She needed all this constant attention. She got in so much trouble, but she was so... Interesting, and special. Her teachers would always write letters home about how she was failing their class, but did they know their daughter could write? Oh, but their daughter could write so well, she was a regular prodigy!" She looked down at her hands, flexing her fingers. "I was never a prodigy at anything. I was the one who was just barely good enough."

I looked at her earnestly. "You also didn’t drive anyone out of their mind. Noone ever had to cry over you, or pray over you, or stay up late in the night wondering if you were still alive. Noone ever hated you because of the games you were playing, or wanted to kill you just so they could stop the heartache, or wrote letters to you that they ended up having to rip into pieces not because they didn’t mean it, but because they weren’t sure if they could talk like that to a sister." She gave me a tentative smile. "Lily was a hell of a person, April. One goddamn hell of a person. But so are you."

April’s lips quivered and twitched into what I guess could be called a smile. "I miss her, Colin. Just living here without her, knowing that she’s never coming back... She was that kind of person that filled up a room, so there was never room for anyone else but her, but I got to liking that, because she was so vibrant and different and interesting and... Lily was just everything that I wasn’t, and I feel so off balance without her."

"Let me tell you something," I said quietly. "Lily loved you like hell. She would have died for you. She would have done anything for you, anything. If she were here now, and you were wherever she is, she would probably be sitting on my bed crying and saying how you were always the serious, insightful person who just amazed people with how sensitive and thoughtful she was, and how she was always jealous of you because she was just the lighthearted colorful clown and you were the person everyone came to with problems, who gave the best advice the world ever saw." I paused to look at her. She was still crying, but she was smiling a little stronger, and she didn’t look so completely sad. "You did balance each other, and you miss her, but that’s not what it’s about. You’re missing the point. So am I. We all are. I don’t know what the point is, but it’s not to miss her. It’s not to mourn her forever and a day."

"I know what it is," she whispered.

"What?"

"You have to hope for something," she said quietly. "You can hope for anything, but you have to hope for something. Or... Or you can just hope. Lily did a lot of that. Just hoping."

We sat there in silence for a long time before I spoke up. "Yeah," I said softly, "I think that’s it."

It was easier after that, for a couple of days. I kept reaching for that hope, the hope that I didn’t truly think I had, but that I knew I had to find. I could see April doing it, too. It was sad to watch her, because she didn’t look quite sure of herself doing it, but I knew she was trying. We were all trying.

I didn’t go to school on Monday. I think Lily’s death had finally hit me at full force, like a brick to the head. Mom didn’t argue at all when I’d said I was staying home. She wasn’t doing too well herself. The night before, Sunday, I had walked into the kitchen to see her standing in front of the refrigerator, crying. When I asked her what was wrong, she took a gulp of air and burst into more hysterical tears. "I promised your father I’d make pot roast, and I forgot to thaw the meat."

That was a pretty good display of our family’s coping abilities, in general. We were alright until something stupid and tiny happened, and then we would lose it. On Monday morning, when I was reading a book in my room, the lightbulb went out. I sat there holding it in my hands for two hours, trembling and rocking back and forth on my bed. It seemed like we were all just looking for excuses to have breakdowns, and they weren’t having too much trouble finding us.
So it was no surprise that when something truly terrible finally happened, on Tuesday morning, November the twenty third, I finally lost it all.

Ashley called me at seven. "I’m sorry," she said breathlessly. "Pete and I just had a huge fight. But that’s not why I’m sorry. I’m sorry because I was an idiot to you last week, and I should have been nicer to you, but I didn’t want to think that you were right. I really did think he was the right guy... The perfect guy... I really did think it, Colin... How could I have been so stupid?"

"Ashes, it’s okay." I could hear her crying. "It’s hard, isn’t it?" I said finally. "But you’re strong, Ashley. You can do this. You can live without him."

"I don’t know if I can," she sniffed. Then she sighed. "Are you sure it’s okay? I was a complete bitch."

"Yeah," I said with a grin, "but I wasn’t so charming myself. Do you want a ride to school? I’ll drop off your sister too, if you want."

"Oh Colin, you don’t need to do favors for me..."

I smiled. "Really, it’s okay, Ashes. I like you, and your sister too, and I don’t think anyone should have to walk in this kind of weather."

I could almost hear her grin. "I like you too, not-so-charming Colin," she giggled. "Seven fifty sound good?"

"Sounds fine to me."

"I’ll see you then, okay? Oh, and I have to tell you something."

"What?"

"I’m not going to get back with Pete. I’m sick of being dirt. I want to be more than dirt."

My grin stretched even wider. "You are much, much more than dirt."

And those were the last words I ever said to Ashley MacFarley.

November 21st: Just Keep On Keeping On

2004-11-21T11:03:00.000-08:00

"Is it true? Is your sister dead?"

"Oh, that’s tactful," I said drily. "Thanks for your consideration, and yes. And while we’re asking subtle questions about the deaths of our family members, why the fuck didn’t you tell me your father is dead?"

Ashley sighed into the phone. "Because it wasn’t your business."

"But it didn’t occur to you that my sister’s death is none of yours?" I sunk onto the living room sofa, staring at the unlit fireplace across from me. "I don’t need you and your pity and your bullshit. And I don’t need you to tell me about what a magical person Peter is. If he’s so fucking wonderful, why does he hit you?"

I saw my mother out of the corner of my eye, peering into the room. I waved her away. "You have no idea what you’re talking about, you idiot," she whispered. "He only hits me when I’ve been stupid. How am I ever supposed to learn what he wants me to do if he doesn’t show me?"

"Oh, god, let me think," I said mockingly. "You could, I don’t know, talk about it? Have a discussion about it? Be somewhat civilized? But that’s crazy talk, isn’t it? Because obviously, such things are easier to understand when he beats them into you."

She laughed. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been expecting her to scream, or hang up on me. But she laughed, a bitter little laugh, and sighed. "You think you know everything about him. You don’t know anything, Colin. You don’t know about his father. You think Pete beats me? You should see what Jonah’s doing to him when he goes home. He’s miserable, Colin. He thinks you’re fucking me, which you probably would be if you had your say, and that’s why he’s always throwing punches at you. His mother ran off when he was six and he hasn’t heard from her since." She laughed again. "Oh, but Colin, you know everything about him. I know you’d never judge him without knowing all the facts."

I thought of a lot of things to say right then, but I couldn’t actually find the nerve to speak any of them. "Just because Jonah hits him doesn’t mean he has to hit you," I said finally, quietly.

"What do you know about it?" she challenged. Before I had a chance to answer, I heard a click. I knew what I had to do. I walked through the family room into the front hallway, grabbed my coat from the coatrack, and pulled a scarf from the closet.

"I’m going out," I called to my parents, and then I was gone.

"What?" An older man, about sixty, with a potbelly and a scraggly gray beard, answered the door.

I gave him a weak smile. "Mr. Blackman? I’m here to speak with Peter."

"Yes, yes, of course you are," he muttered. "Going to go give the boy his drugs, I assume?" I didn’t answer, figuring it was a rhetorical question. The man eyed me, then heaved a sigh. "Go up the stairs and his door’s right in front of your nose. Show yourself out when you’re done."

I nodded, thanked him, and bounded up the stairs. I opened the door to Peter’s room without knocking. The wall opposite where I stood was a row of windows. His bed was under the center one, and he sat on the end, earphones on, his wary eyes focused on me.

"What do you want from her?"

Peter took off his headphones and turned off his Discman. He smiled a slow smile, a serpent’s smile, and cocked his head to one side in mock curiosity. "Why do you hate me, Colin?"

Because you beat her, I thought. Because you make her feel like dirt. Because you’ve poisoned her. Because she wants to die, and it’s your fault. But I said none of those things. "I don’t hate you, Pete," I heard myself say instead. "I just hate the way you make her feel."

He laughed his self-assured laugh, smirking. "I can’t make Ashley feel anything. One man has no way of controlling another’s emotions. She feels what she wants to feel, Colin, just as she dates whom she wants to date. You may resent me because that person isn’t you, but that’s beyond my control."

I stared into his eyes for a moment. He was amused by my anger, I could tell. Just as he was amused by her pain. I clenched my fists, my arms aching with the strain of holding back. I wanted so badly to give him a taste of her pain. But I didn’t move. I didn’t need another fight with Peter. Instead, I grabbed the nearest lamp and threw it. It crashed against the wall and fell to the floor, shards of the lightbulb laying amongst various broken parts. Peter sat bolt upright, his smirk gone. "Stop it, Colin," he demanded. He rose, and seconds later he was in front of me, one hand wrapped around my throat, the other twisting my arms behind my back. "Colin! Stop crying!" His voice was a splash of ice water to my burning rage, but it did nothing to stop the fires. I was embarrassed to be crying in front of him, but there was nothing I could do. I hated him. I hated a lot of people right then, but he was the one who was there, and therefore I hated him the most. I sobbed, hardly able to breathe, and pulled one arm free of his grip. I twisted to the side and punched the wall, my fist plunging easily through the old drywall. Peter knocked me off my feet, pinning me to the ground.

"Are you done?" his voice came, echoing through the hollowness of my mind. Exhausted, I tried my best to nod. He let me get up, watching me as I rose.

"You can’t keep taking shit out on her," I said, my voice trembling. "You can’t keep throwing her on the ground, man!" I could hear myself cracking, not just my voice but my entire being. "You just keep breaking her, over and over, and then you glue her back together and you expect her to be fine! She’s never gonna be fine, Pete. Not after all the shit you’ve pulled."

His eyes were trained on mine, coal-black and intense with his anger. "You think you could do better, Colin? Is that it? You really think you, the piss-poor excuse for a man that you are, could put up with a bitch as wild as that? So I get a little out of it sometimes, have too much to drink, knock the bitch around a little. You don’t hear her complaining, do you? She dun mind, Colin. She dun give a flying fuck, as long as I keep giving her what she wants."

I hated him more, in that moment, than I ever had before, because at the end of the day he was still the one in control. In control of me, in control of Ashes, in control of everyone that mattered. But more than anything I hated him because he knew just how to keep that control. Like the puppet that I was, I swallowed my fear of the answer and put myself right where he wanted me: "What does she want?"

He laughed. It was the coldest, most heartless laugh I’d ever heard. "She wants to be somebody, Colin." He flopped back onto his bed and props himself up on his elbows, again fixing his eyes on mine. "She was nobody before I found her. Just another face in the crowd. And then lo and behold, I showed up. Suddenly she had friends, Colin, real live friends. She had a boyfriend with connections; a boyfriend who was going places. And she was going places too, because good Pete was helping her. Oh, he isn’t perfect," he mocked in a high falsetto, "But he’s the most amazing person you’ll ever meet, Colin! He makes me feel special!"

What killed me more than anything is how much he sounded like her. But I said nothing, as was usual.

"Colin," he says, returning to his normal voice, "You stormed in here asking what I wanted from her, correct?" I nodded stiffly. "I don’t want anything from her. Not a single fucking thing. But she keeps giving and giving, things I never asked her for. And who am I, old Peter Edward Blackman, to say no?" His smirk grew impossibly more snide.

I felt sick to my stomach. How could he think of her like that? How could he take Ashley, smart and beautiful Ashley, and make her sound so naive? I broke my stare, looking instead at my scuffed sneakers on the impeccably clean carpet of Peter’s bedroom.

"I have to go," I told him quickly, and then I ran.

The pebble hit the glass and bounced back at me. I stepped aside and let it fall to the lawn before picking it up again and once more throwing it up. It had taken me nearly half an hour to work out which window was hers. I hoped and prayed now that I hadn’t thought wrong.

She appeared at the window, her face tired. As soon as she saw me she frowned, fumbling to unlatch it. The window groaned as she lifted it upward. "I’ll go open the kitchen," she told me. "It’s around the side. Meet me there."

I ran around the side of the house and peered through a bay window. I could barely make out the refrigerator. I stood there, waiting, in front of her dark house, peering through her window. The moonlight cast eerie shadows on the walls. I ran one finger over the glass. It needed to be cleaned, and badly, but I knew it probably never would be.

Ashley’s face peeked around the corner. I waved. She tiptoed through the dark kitchen and raised the window, biting one lip. The window was level to the kitchen floor, so I was able to hoist myself up and make it through with little problem at all.

"Hey. What are you doing here?" She eyed me warily. "It’s midnight, and I’m not particularly crazy about you right now."

"We need to talk, Ashes," I whispered, closing the window and pulling off my shoes, holding them in my hands.

She raised an eyebrow. "Fine." Ashley looked pretty tired herself, but I didn’t mention it.
We tiptoed up the stairs, as silently as we could, and into Ashes’s room.

She closed the door quietly behind us. "Ardith’s been having bad dreams, and Mom hasn’t gotten sleep in ages." She flopped onto her bed and I took a seat in the chair in front of her window. "I didn’t want to wake her up."

"It’s fine," I said quietly. Then I sighed. "Listen, I came here because I want to talk to you, without either of us running away or hanging up or screaming. I talked to Pete, earlier, and it didn’t get anywhere. I’m trying to understand him, Ashes, and I’m trying to understand you, but... What are you thinking, staying with him? He hits you, Ashley! What kind of insanity does it take to stay with a boy who hits you?"

Ashes stared at me intently. "That’s not fair!" she hissed. "Peter loves me, dammit, more than you ever have! He understands me a hell of a lot better than you! He doesn’t know any better, Colin. His ass of a father never taught him better. You can’t blame him for that! You can’t blame him for acting the way everyone’s always acted to him!" By the time she finished she was shouting, her anger flushing her cheeks bright red.

"Oh, get over him already. You think even more of him than he thinks of himself! So what if his father hits him, you can escape what your family’s done. He hits you and you don’t go around beating people! Obviously there’s something wrong with him, because there are only two people involved here and there sure as hell is nothing wrong with you, except that you’re dating an abusive piece of shit!" It comes out in one long string of words, insensitive and full of held-in rage.

"If there are only two people involved then what are you doing here?" she spat. At that instant, there was a knock on the door that kept me from replying. Ashley’s face went ashen quickly. "Shit," she muttered. "Who is it?"

"It’s Mama, sweetie, are you okay? Is there someone in there?"

Ashes shot me a dirty look. "Nobody, Mom, it’s okay. I was listening to music. I’m sorry I turned it up so loud, I wasn’t thinking. You can go back to bed, okay?"

"You’re sure nothing’s wrong?" Ms. MacFarley’s voice whined, sounding like a scared little girl. I could picture her on the other side of the door, yanking at her necklace.

Ashley’s eyes were sadder than I’d ever seen them. "I’m positive, Mom. Now you get some sleep, okay?"

"Okay," Mrs. MacFarley said. "‘Night, Ashley."

"Goodnight, Mom."

Footsteps sounded down the hall, and finally we heard a door open and close. "Get out, Colin."
I turned and walked away, slamming the door behind me. So much for not hanging up. So much for not running away.

I was home by twelve forty. All the lights in the house were on. I found April sprawled out on the floor in front of the television, watching the Weather Channel.

"Ape?" I said tentatively. She turned to look at me, bags under her red eyes. She wasn’t crying when she first turned around, but within a few seconds she was, silent, simple tears.

She sniffed. "I couldn’t sleep until you came home... I was afraid you were dead."

I stared at her. It was amazing what the day had done to my sister. She was pale, sickly pale, and her red rimmed eyes were swollen, with gaping bags underneath. Something about the way she was looking at me was so frightened and earnest that it made me want to cry, too. "Aw, April... You can’t do this to yourself. You just can’t. She’s dead, yeah, but I’m not, Mom and Dad aren’t, and you’re not either."

"I hate her, Colin," April said quietly. "I hate her. Why did she have to die?"

I couldn’t think of an answer. I walked over to her and sat down. She struggled to sit up and scooted close to me, pulling her knees to her chest. I wrapped my arms around her, holding her shaking body in my own trembling hands. I knew it wasn’t much, but sometimes not much is better than nothing. That’s what I had to tell myself about my sister’s life. It wasn’t long, but not long is better than nothing.

November 20th: I Go On as You Grow Colder

2004-11-21T02:00:00.000-08:00

The instant was over by the time I pulled up in front of Ashley’s house. She and her sister were standing on the front porch, huddled inside tattered coats, gripping each other tightly, faces flushed pink. They ran over to the car when I arrived, and both dove into the front seat, Ardith settling on her sister’s lap.

"Ar–" I started to tell her to move to the back, but a look from Ashley stopped me. "Never mind. Let’s go." I put the car back into gear and turned to the sisters. "Direct me, fair ladies."
And so they did, giggling all the while, because evidently there was something laughable about me that I’d never noticed before. Both of them seemed to, and they snuck looks at me when they thought I wasn’t looking, tittering all the while. Ardith leaned up to whisper in her older sister’s ear a couple of times, which nearly drove me crazy. I wondered what it was about me that struck them as being so terribly amusing.

We pulled up at Ardith’s school at seven fifty three. She leapt off of her sister’s lap and gave her a huge hug. "Bye Ashy, bye Colin. Thank you for the ride." She gave us a nearly toothless grin and disappeared into the crowd of children.

Ashley stared out the window at her, a motherly, adoring look on her face. When Ardith was long gone, she turned to face me. "Onward, Jacques." I drove slowly away from the school, and it was a good five minutes before she spoke. "I love that girl. I don’t know what I’ll do..."
I raised my eyebrows. "What you’ll do? What are you going to do?"

"Oh, I shouldn’t tell you. It’s supposed to be a secret." She smiled, glanced at her lap, and then looked back up at me. She was beaming, her grin stretching across her face. "Oh, Colin, I’m getting married! Pete and I are eloping on December first."

My mouth dropped open, and I was too shocked to maintain control of the steering wheel. We veered into the next lane, bewildered drivers around us sounding a chorus of honks. "Colin!" Ashley cried. I regained partial composure, and drove on until we reached the nearest turn off. I turned into the parking lot of a dark strip mall, parked the car, and looked over at Ashley.

"Are you crazy?" They were the first words I thought to say. At the time they seemed tactless, irrelevant, cruel. But when I look back, that’s the only question I ever asked her that seemed to make any difference at all.

"I don’t know," she said, managing a shaky grin. "But I love him."

He hits you, I wanted to say. But I didn’t. I don’t think it would have made any difference, anyway. Ashley was determined to do it, and the one thing I learned in the next week – the last of her life – was that when Ashley wanted something that badly, she would not let it go.

Peter was waiting for us in the school parking lot. If it were anyone but him it would have surprised me, but in the short time that I’d known Peter, I’d learned that he was more than mad enough to stand for hours waiting for Ashley’s arrival.

He shoved me up against the side of my car when I climbed out. "I told you not to touch her," he growled in my ear.

I stuttered an apology, but he let me go. He turned his attention to Ashley, who had come up beside me. "Hey, baby. Just a week and a half till we can leave. Sorry about the screaming this mornin’, I didn’t mean it." He kissed her, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him close. I looked away. It was one of the very last things I ever wanted to see.

I moseyed up to the school, the lovers behind me in a slow pursuit. Alex, the guy from my English class, found his way over to me as I entered the building. "Hey, Colin."

"Hey," I mumbled, not completely sure of his sincerity.

He smiled, not unkindly. "Sorry about yesterday. I’ve just learned to listen to Pete. You, you never do that. Don’t learn to listen to him. You’re the only guy out there brave enough to fight with him." He edged closer, leaning in. "I’ve heard he beats his girl."

"You’re kidding me," I said drily. "And you might want to refer to her as his fiancé." I knew Ashley wouldn’t be thrilled if the word got out all over school, but at that moment I couldn’t have given less of a shit. I was still feeling like a wounded puppy dog, bashful and bruised and sulky. "They’re eloping on the first of next month."

Alex almost dropped his books. As it was, he did run into a pretty, blonde freshman, who gave him a disdainful look. "Holy mother of god, Pete? And Ash? And marriage?" He let out a long, slow whistle. "That’s just crazy." He paused, the whistled again. "I mean, they’ve been dating since Jesus was born, but... Marriage?" He narrowed his eyes at me. "Are you sure they’re getting hitched? Who told you?"

"Ashley," I said simply.

Alex turned, stopping at a locker, and spun the lock. "Sorry," he mumbled. "Gotta load up." It was obvious that he was mulling it over as he unpacked and re-packed his bag. "So," he said, slinging the pack over his shoulder, "Are you and Ash good friends?"

I managed a tiny laugh. "Nah. We only met about a week ago. I do her favors, she smiles at me, so we’re even." I grinned, and Alex smiled back. "Pete’s crazy though. She could do a hundred times better."

Alex nodded. "Most people could. Pete’s a beast. On the field that’s a good thing, in the real world... It doesn’t work out. He’s got too much anger and not enough places to put it."

I sighed, walking into the science wing. Alex tagged along behind me. "It’s not so much that," I replied in a low voice, "that bothers me. What really gets to me is that she really thinks he’s the best thing for her."

Alex raised an eyebrow as we were jostled around. "Well who is, then? You?"

"We kissed," I confessed, blushing. "A couple days ago." ‘A couple days ago.’ How vague. I could have told him the exact hour, minute, and second, but I didn’t want to creep him out. General statements seemed best in this case.

Alex whistled yet again. "And? Does Pete know?"

I shook my head. "I don’t think so. I hope not. If he does, he’s either playing games with me by not telling me or he’s feeling a sudden burst of compassion. But I’m sure he’ll find out sometime." I pushed my way through a mob of people and to my locker.

Alex was right beside me. "What’re you going to do, man? He’s going to tear your head off."

"I don’t doubt it," I muttered. I pulled my chemistry notebook out of my locker and shoved my statistics gear in. "I just wish something would happen to keep them from eloping, really. That’s my main focus right now."

That morning, walking through the crowded hallways to Gray’s room, a possible new friend by my side, I never dreamed that I would live to eat those words.

Ashley found me by my locker after school.

"You bastard," she growled at me. "Alexander Jacobson was talking to me at lunch. Says you told him Pete and me were eloping." She smacked her gum, glaring up at me.

"Je-Jesus, Ashes, calm down," I stuttered. "I didn’t mean to tell him, I promise. It just came up, and came out, and I don’t know..."

Her eyes flashed. "How could you? I thought I could trust you! I thought you were the kind of person who could keep a secret."

"Listen –" I began.

"No," she interjected. "You listen. I am sick of you. You’re jealous of my boyfriend, you talk about me behind my back, and you expect me to feel sorry for you." She shook her head in disgust. "And then you think that if you kiss me, it’ll shut me up. You thought that kissing me was just going to solve everything! Well go to hell, Colin, go home to hell." She was crying, shaking, and angry. I didn’t dare to touch her, or to speak. Not because of her anger. I could handle that. No, the reason I was so paralyzed was the figure standing behind her. He was big, muscular big, and his hair hung in his eyes. There was something very scary about Peter in that moment, and it only grew scarier when his eyes met mine.

"You kissed her?" he said, his voice a low rumble. I backed away, my jaw quivering.

Ashley turned around and stared at her boyfriend. "Pete, leave him alone." Peter continued to advance, his eyes narrowed, his breathing heavy. "Pete, please!" She grabbed at his arm. He swung her off, flinging her into the lockers. She whimpered, rubbing her side, and bit her lip. "I’m sorry," she mouthed at me.

"I told you, York," Pete hissed, his face glowing red. "I told you a dozen fucking times. Stay away from my girl. But you didn’t listen, did you? You didn’t think I was serious, did you? Well guess what, Colin?" He paused, a sadistic smile spreading across his face. "You were wrong."

I turned and took off running. I knew I could never beat him in an all out fight. But maybe, just maybe, I could outrun him.

I heard him behind me, in hot pursuit. I slammed through the door in front of me, never breaking stride, and into the fresh air. I sprinted up the sidewalk, darting through clumps of people, trying not to notice their stares. I ran and ran, up and around the school, weaving through the parking lot. I saw my car in the distance, its hood barely visible in the afternoon sun. I looked behind me. Peter hadn’t lost any distance, if anything he’d gained a foot or two. I knew it was all or nothing. I could leap for my car and hope I made it, or I could turn around and fight. Either way I’d probably lose. I fumbled in my pocket for my keys, pulled them out, and pressed the button. I raced toward my car, my legs pumping harder than they had in any game of my life. I ran to the driver side door and yanked it open, literally leapt in, and pulled it shut.
But something was wrong. "Oh shit," I mumbled. The seatbelt was stuck in the door. I tried to yank it in, but it wouldn’t come. Peter was on the other side of the door, yanking as hard as he could. I yanked back, pushing the lock down with my elbow as I did, securing all but my own door. "Let go," I shouted through at him. He shook his head, his face red with the effort.

And then the idea came to me. It was a risky move but it was my only choice. The keys lay on the passenger seat beside me. I adjusted myself, then let go of the door with my right hand, grabbed the keys, and stuck them in the ignition. I felt the muscles on my left hand straining. With a gasp I let the door fly open. The suddenness of it knocked Peter against the car to my left, and I used the instant of surprise to put the car in gear and back out of the parking space. I pulled my seatbelt inside and closed the door, locking it with my right hand. I raced out of the parking lot, engines roaring, not bothering with my turn signal. I could see him running behind me, but even he knew he was no match. He stood there, shaking his fist and yelling something, as I turned onto the road.

I knew that I had avoided nothing, just postponed the inevitable showdown. But I had given myself some time to prepare. I spent the night in the basement with the punching bag, beating it liberally. April came down to watch me at one point, eyebrows arched and a strange, somewhat frightened look on her face. At nine o’clock my mother came down to beg me to stop, insisting that I go eat. I complied, with a sigh, acknowledging to myself and to her that I had done all I could do.

But when the battle came, I was unprepared, because it wasn’t a physical fight – it was a battle of the wits. And, as usual, Pete was dictating the rules.

As I waited for the first attack, I made repeated calls to Ashley. Each time Ardith or her mother answered the phone, and each time I was told that she wasn’t home, could they take a message? At first I did leave messages, just little, ‘Call me back, here’s my number if you lost it’ ditties, but after two days of unreturned calls, I took matters into my own hands. I visited Ashley’s house on Thursday afternoon.

"Come in," her mother said tiredly when she saw me at the door. "You’re the boy Ardith’s always talking about."

I gave a sheepish grin. "I’m sorry I’ve been calling so much," I said, pulling off my gloves and stuffing them in my pocket. "It’s just that I want to be sure she’s okay."

"She’s fine," her mother said, yanking at the chain on her neck. I had seen that same gesture on the first day, at the hospital, when I asked her to see my sister. "She hasn’t been the same since her father died, is all. If you’d known the real Ashley, you would never recognize her now."
She sat down on the couch, and gestured to the chair across from her. I took a seat. "So Mr. MacFarley is dead?" She nodded. "Oh, I’m so sorry. It must be hard on your family."

She yanked at the chain again. "Oh, it is. I used to pretend, a lot, that he was still alive, just away on a trip... He went on trips a lot, Frank did..." A single tear leaked from her eye. "Oh, I know I miss him, but Ashley’s taken it the worst. She’s so sad... I don’t know why she always has to be so very sad..."

"I’m sorry," I repeated. I wasn’t sure what else to say to this woman. She seemed ready to spill all her secrets to me, though she knew nothing about me. It made me nervous, but more than that, it made me sad.

"I wear a piece of his shirt in my locket, here," she said, gripping the chain tightly. "He was wearing it when he died. Ashley has one too, but she hasn’t worn it since... Since she started seeing... That boy."

I looked up at her with sudden interest. "You mean Peter?"

She nodded, wrinkling her nose. "Oh, how I hate him. But she thinks he’s the one. He treats her awful. He even hit her, once."

I stared at her. Her eyes were glazed over and blank, her lips drawn into a frown. I wanted to tell her that her daughter was planning to marry this boy that she so hated. I wanted to tell her that he had hit her many more times than the one. But I didn’t have the heart to say those things. She’d been through enough. So I excused myself and left, ignoring the nagging voice inside of me that told me to go and see Ashley.

I pulled the door shut behind me and stood on the front stoop. The streetlights were on, light pooling on the quiet road beneath them. It was cold, and my fingers numbed as soon as I stepped outside. I removed my gloves from my pocket and pulled them on, then rubbed my palms together. I was still freezing. I began the long trek home through the frosty air, staring at the gray sky and talking to myself.

"She’s got a psychopath for a boyfriend," I mumbled, "and I don’t want to mess with him. But if I don’t mess with him, he’ll keep on messing with her. And if he keeps on messing with her, she could get hurt pretty damn badly. Hell, he could kill her. So I have to mess with him, but I can’t expect to escape him again like I did last time. That was a once in a lifetime thing."

I was contemplating this very predicament when I saw April running under a streetlight some distance up the road, wearing just jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. I ran up to the nearest light and waved at her. "Colin!" she called to me, her voice breathless. "Colin, Colin... It's over... We lost her, Colin, we lost her..."

I could hardly understand her. She was both winded and hysterical, which didn’t exactly help her in her coherency. I nodded and took off running up the street, toward her. When I reached her trembling figure, I wrapped my arms around her and held her shivering body to my chest. "God, April, what’s wrong? Can you tell me?"

"She’s dead, Colin, she’s dead." She pulled away and looked up at me. Her nose was red from the cold and from crying, and cold snot blanketed her nostrils and upper lip. Her eyes were red and puffy. "Colin, oh Jesus Colin, what are we going to do?"

I gripped her arms. "April, it’s okay. Who’s dead? What happened?"

"The doctors said there were complications," she squealed, burying her head in my shoulder. "Complications... Too many complications..."

I pulled off my coat and wrapped it around her shoulders. I was left with just a shirt on, but I hoped that maybe if she was warm, more comfortable, she could talk.

"She’s dead," April gasped, and sat abruptly down on the pavement, shaking and shivering and wailing. I tried for twenty minutes to get her to stand up, but it was no use. Eventually, I scooped her up into my tired arms and let her wipe her nose on my shirt. She must have fallen asleep on the way home, because when I reached the door her mouth was partially open and she was breathing deeply. I rang the doorbell, and for one silent moment I stood on my front porch, my eldest sister cradled in my arms, scared and apprehensive for the news I was sure would greet me.

My mother answered the door a moment later. She looked no better than April. Snot was dripping from her nose and her face was drenched with tears, her eyes swollen and red. "Put her on the couch," she whispered, eyeing April anxiously. I took her into the living room and lay her on the sofa, covering her with the quilt that we always kept on the back of it. Then I returned to the kitchen, where my mother was standing at the sink, scrubbing her hands with a dishrag.

"How much has April told you?" she asked without turning around. I could see her reflection in the window over the sink. Her dark hair, laced with grays, hung limply around her face, and her already pale skin was white and creased. She looked a hundred years old, not fifty two.

I shook my head slowly, taking a step toward Mom. "Nothing. She just kept saying that someone was dead, over and over."

"Your sister," she said. For a second, I didn’t understand. What about April? Wasn’t she going to say anything else? And then I understood. She wasn’t talking about April.

"Mom," I said slowly, biting at the skin on the inside of my bottom lip, "what happened to Lily?"
And that’s when I found out what April had meant by ‘complications’. Lily had suffered a miscarriage that morning. It had drained her completely, but she had seemed fine. She’d called home in that time, and talked to both Dad and Mom. "She was so happy, still," Mom said shakily. "She was the one comforting us. She had just lost a baby, and she was the one comforting us."

It seemed so unfair, what happened next. The doctor entrusted to care for Lily had advised her to have surgery, a uterine evacuation, to make sure things continued to go smoothly. They’d put her under anesthesia at seven that evening. But something had happened, something awful. "Her heart... Her heart was just beating, and beating, and beating, too fast. They decided against the procedure, and they were going to wake her up..." Mom broke down at that point, and she didn’t speak for five full minutes. I watched the clock on the microwave, timing her. It seemed an awful thing to do, timing my mother’s grief, but it was the only thing I could do to keep my own from overtaking. "She had a heart attack. It was too much for her. She was so weak from the miscarriage, and the heroin..."

"Oh God," I whispered. "Oh God oh God oh God. Not Lily, not my Lily..." And then the darkness took over. The last thing I remember was sinking down to the floor of the kitchen, back against the stove, and holding my head in my hands as I sobbed and trembled and ached.

November 18th: Holier Than Thou

2004-11-18T19:52:00.000-08:00

The family seemed more at ease with Lily gone. That night at dinner, the normal familial banter was abundant.

"So, Colin, are you going to soccer tomorrow? You were supposed to go Monday." April stuffed a forkful of salad in her mouth and raised her eyebrows.

I dropped my gaze. "I didn’t feel like it." The complete truth. April didn’t press the issue, but I knew she was watching me. I concentrated on cutting my carrots into tiny pieces, then stirring them into the mashed potatoes.

My mother was watching me too, evidently, because she cleared her throat loudly and shot me a look when I met her gaze. I stopped the mixing, but continued to obsessively cut the carrots. Mom gave up on me, turning her attentions to April.

"Are you going to need the car tomorrow, honey?"

April shook her head. "Nah. I’m going to walk to the store, I think, check out the job applications. Henry said yesterday that they’re hiring." She scooped up a fork of potatoes, stuck them in her mouth, and chewed liberally. "I thought maybe I could start helping with the bills."
Dad shot her a look. "Are you sure that’s what you want?" What he really meant was ‘If you’re messing with my mind, please stop. But if you’re not, I’m going to give you a hug right this second.’

April nodded. "I’ve been thinking about it for awhile. I figure I’m old enough now, I should be helping. I thought maybe I could save up some money, too, and next year I could try being on my own."

"Honey, that might not be such a –" my mother began.

"Mom," April cut her off, "I’m twenty-two. I’m a grown woman. I can’t live here forever."

I knew why my mother didn’t want to let her go. It was because the last time one of her babies left the nest, she came back with a drug habit and a pregnancy. I wanted to say something in April’s defense, to tell my mother that she wasn’t Lily – and for that matter, that I wasn’t either –, but I kept my mouth shut. Sometimes, I decided, it was better just to listen.

"Twenty-two is not grown," my mother said gruffly. "And you can always stay here. You know that. We’re your family. This is your home."

My sister shot her a look. "You’re just afraid that when I go away, it’s going to be just like when Lily went away." I tried to hold back my grin. April evidently didn’t need me to help her out on this one. "I’m not Lily, Mom. Colin isn’t Lily. You aren’t Lily. Dad isn’t Lily. Noone in this house, in this world, is Lily, except Lily herself." She stood up, leaning on the table, her shadow falling over my mother’s plate. "So stop treating me like I’m going to run off and get myself addicted and start whoring myself and get pregnant and fuck up my life."

Everyone’s mouths were open. Mine because I’d never heard April speak like that to our parents. Mom’s because she’d just been told off by her twenty-two year old daughter. Dad’s I wasn’t sure about, but he cleared up that confusion pretty quickly. "Maureen," he said to my mother, in a perfectly even voice, "is our daughter Lily pregnant? And did she in fact work as a prostitute?"

That was it for me. I grabbed a piece of bread off of my plate, wrapped it in my napkin, grabbed my can of Dr. Pepper, and walked away. April sighed and followed me down the hall and into the family room. I could hear Mom stuttering and crying in the kitchen. I flipped on the television, turning the volume up loud enough to drown out her voice.

"Colin –"

"Leave me alone. You’re no better than them. You have this holier than thou attitude that’s really starting to bug me, Ape." I changed the channel, then tore a piece of bread off with my teeth. "Fuck you."

She sat down next to me on the couch. "I’m sorry, Colin. I’m sorry you think I’m like our parents, or that you think that’s a bad thing. I’m sorry that you think I have an inflated ego. But let me tell you something. You’re a lot like them, too. You’re afraid that I’ll be like her, not in that I’ll take drugs or turn tricks or get pregnant, but that I won’t call you for two years and I’ll forget that you’re alive." She reached out and touched my shoulder, and though I thought to shake her off I didn’t have the heart. "I wouldn’t do that to you, Colin. And she wouldn’t either, anymore. I love you, Colin. So does Lily. And neither of us are going to forget you, or abandon you."

I stared blankly at her for a moment, then sighed. "I’m going upstairs." I turned off the television and gathered up my things. I walked up to my room, moved my bread from one hand to the other so that I could twist the doorknob... And stopped.

I can’t say to this day what made me go down the hall to Lily’s room. But something did, and whatever it was that took me there kept me there for hours, staring at my reflection in the mirror across from her bed. I must have fallen asleep eventually, because that’s where I woke up, a piece of bread stuck to my face, at seven o’clock the next morning. My mother was waving the phone in my face, smiling down at me.

I squinted up at her. "What?"

"You have to leave for school in less than an hour and there’s a girl on the phone asking you for a ride."

I grabbed the receiver from her hand. "‘Lo," I said groggily.

"Colin?" Somehow, I wasn’t surprised that it was Ashley’s voice that I heard. "I’m so glad you’re still home. I really need a favor, if you could."

I sat up. "Yeah, Mom told me. A ride. I got it. I’ll pick you up when?"

"No, that’s not all. I kind of need... Could you give Ardith a ride, too?"

I sighed, squeezed my eyes shut, and opened them again. "Yeah, yeah, sure. I’ll pick you up at seven forty, drive her over there, and then drive us to school. Why isn’t Pete driving you?"

"Oh," she said, her tone suddenly flustered, "he’s... He’s not really... He’s not there, to tell you the truth. We had a fight at about four in the morning and he stormed out of his own house. I walked home. I called a couple minutes ago, his father says he hasn’t come back."

My eyebrows rose. "Isn’t his dad worried?"

"Jonah Blackman? You have to be kidding me. He’s more concerned about the cockroaches in the basement than about Pete’s habits these days. I don’t really blame him. Pete’s stayed away for days before. Noone ever knows where he is, or if they do they keep good cover."

"Oh." I peeled off the remnants of the bread from my cheek. "Okay then. I’ll pick you up in a bit. See you."

"Bye."

I groaned, pressing the off button on the phone, and handed it to my waiting mother, who was standing at the doorway. "I have to leave early. Is the ugly one making breakfast?"

Mom smiled. "If by that you mean your sister April, then yes. Pancakes, just for you. I saw her writing ‘I’m sorry’ in blueberries on one of them. Better run down and fetch it. I have a feeling it’s for you."

"She told you we fought?" I pulled off my sock, formed it into a ball, threw it at the hallway floor, and hopscotched over to it. My mother clapped drily behind me.

"No, April wouldn’t do that. But both of you were upset last night, and she fell asleep in your room and you in Lily’s, so obviously there was something up." I tossed my sock at the door of my room, then hopped on one foot to it. "I’ll see you downstairs," Mom moaned.

I opened the door to my room and hopped in. My sheets were still rumpled where April had slept. My sister never had been too keen on making beds. I straightened it out and pulled on some clothes. Then I headed out to see what this ‘I’m sorry’ pancake business was all about.
There were three of them, on a plate, decorated with syrup and sprigs of mint, two pats of butter on the side, a fork and a knife neatly arranged on the sides of the plate. It was already at my seat at the table, beside a napkin and a daffodil from the garden out front. April didn’t say anything when I sat down, but she watched me from the stove, arms crossed.

"Fine, fine," I said, slathering the butter on the pancakes. "I forgive you. But only if you’ll forgive me."

April came over and hugged me. "Screw you, I got up and made you pancakes and now you’re trying to barter with me for forgiveness. Colin Jeffery, I swear you’re going to kill me someday." But she was grinning, and I was too.

"Thanks, Ape," I said, digging into my breakfast. "I seriously have no idea what I would do if I had to cook my own food."

She grinned, walking back toward the stove and the remaining pancake batter. "You’d eat a lot of toast."

I stuck my tongue at her, and she grinned, and for an instant, it seemed like everything was back to the way it was before.

November 17th: A Letter From Lily

2004-11-17T20:13:00.000-08:00

April was waiting on the back porch when I came home. As soon as the car was parked in the drive she was at my door, pulling it open and helping me out. "She’s gone," she moaned, and wrapping me in her arms. "Oh Jesus Colin, what the fuck are we doing?"

"I don’t know," I said. "I wish I knew."

We must have looked weird, hugging on the driveway. April’s short, tanned, sturdy body next to my hulking, awkward frame. Her arms wrapping around my waist, her face at level with my shoulder. My arms around her back, holding her as tightly as I knew how, the few muscles I had managed to acquire over the years gripping her to me. If someone who didn’t know us had looked, they probably would have said it looked like the most clumsy hug they’d ever seen. But clumsiness doesn’t matter sometimes.

Love is weird like that. You can love anyone, or anything. Sometimes it doesn’t quite seem to fit, and sometimes it’s hard to see. Sometimes it hits so hard and so shockingly that it almost knocks you backwards, and sometimes it makes you do crazy things. And it hurts like anything when something doesn’t work out, when there’s some glitch that prevents the perfect family, or the faerytale romance, or the flawless friendship. But no matter how hard it is, or how much it hurts, you need it.

I guess I needed a lot of it that day, on the driveway. I think April did too. So we stood there for a long time, crying and sniffling and cold, and tried to forget that we hadn’t been good enough.

Dear Colin,

I miss you! I haven’t even left yet, really. I’m writing this while I wait for kind Miss MacFarley to get off duty at the hospital. She’s giving me a ride home. Such a sweetheart! I don’t know how I end up being so lucky. I’ve got the best ward receptionist in town, and then I’ve got you and Showers and Mom and Dad of course. Oh, I’m going to miss you, Colin, I really am!

I want to tell you something that I didn’t tell Mom, when we were talking that morning. Sunday, was it? It seems like months back, doesn’t it? So much is happening, to you and me both. Anyway, back to what I was going to tell you. Colin, I don’t want you to make my mistakes, okay? That’s what it is. I know it sounds so simple, and unimportant, but oh! Colin! It’s so very important that you don’t go down my path. It’s a miserable path, all tears and regrets and why’s and wrongness, lots and lots of wrongness. I don’t want this for you. I’m trying to be a better example. That’s why I confessed to Mom, and why I’m going into detox without much of a fight. I want to be your big sister, Col! I haven’t been for so long. The role is kind of slipping. Oh! but how I want to be someone you look up to. I want to be the one you say, "I want to be just like her." Now I’m having to beg you not to be just like me, and... It’s such a mess, Colin, a big fat ugly hairy stupid shitty mess.

Oh Colin, I want you to be happy. I want me to be happy, too, and Showers, and of course Mom and Dad, and your friend Ashley. But more than anything I want you to be happy, because I sometimes look at you and you just don’t look at all happy, not one bit. You look ready to cry half of the time, when I sneak sideways glances, and it makes me want to hug you like a tiny little boy. You need to be happy, Colin. You do. I wasn’t happy, when I was your age, and that’s why I went off and did stupid things and fucked myself up, and that’s why I’m headed to detox almost the same second Mrs. MacFarley drives me home. Well part of why. The other reason is you, really, and how much I want you to be happy. I think I’m getting in the way, me and my smack habit. So I’m going to get clean, Colin, for you and for April and for myself. And for this baby. I don’t even want to think about this baby right now. Oh, I hope I’m a role model for him than I was for you. I hope he never has to cry over Mama’s track marks. Oh! Colin, it’s so terribly hopeless and sad. I feel like that, so much these days. Maybe it’s just being pregnant that makes me that way, but I don’t know about that. Our whole damned family is so hopeless and sad these days! You don’t take an interest in soccer anymore, even. April says you’ve only gone to one practice this past week. That’s not like you, Colin! You’re so good with soccer! Don’t let go of that, please. I let go of all the things I was good at, and look where I am with that.

Not that you’re the only one, of course. April, what to do about Showers? Her eyes make me cry, so tired. She’s got awful bags all the time now. And she’s lost that humorous April sense about her. She just blends in so much, with everyone, fades away. I don’t want her to fade away! April York does not fade away!

Dad’s the worst, though. Mom’s been alright, I guess, better than Dad for certain. She’s just been going about her life, a bit tired but okay. Dad, he’s just so sad and angry but he won’t say. He mills around pretending I’ll get better and then everything will be magically okay, with the family and me both, and the scary and sad thing is that I think he believes himself, sometimes, and I wish he wouldn’t.

The truth is, we’re all so tired and sad these days and I don’t want that, Colin! Not for us! Oh! I remember the days when everyone was so vibrant and happy to be alive. Back before I got stupid. Sure, I’ve always been a little bit dull, drinking peppermint extract and such, but never so foolish as since I went to that one party a long time ago and tried a little something and a little something else, and started messing things up for all of us.

If I had one wish, just one, that could only affect one person, I would wish that you were happy and strong and good again. I think if you could just get yourself back on track the whole family would. But I know I’m in your way! That’s what hurts me! So I’m trying, for you, and for the baby, but mostly for you because I know you and I don’t know the baby and I have something to make up to both of you but I think I might not be able to do it for the kid but I will for you – what am I saying? Oh! Colin, I haven’t a clue what I’m talking about, except that I wish you could love something again. I’ve taken away your faith in the world and I want to give it back. Here you go, here it is, in a nice paper sack. Oh, but I wish that would work. Someone should write a book on how to do this properly, because I know I’ll never be able to figure it out.
Colin, I’m so scared heading into this, but I know I can do it! Mom says I’m not allowed to make calls from the center. But I’m allowed to write to you, and I will, every day.

I’m going to turn over a new leaf, Colin! I am. But it’s frightening. I wish you knew how hard this was. I wish you knew how much I wanted this to work. Believe in me, okay? Please try to believe in me. Because I get the feeling you hardly ever believe in anyone, or anything. I want to be something for you to believe in. I want you to understand what that’s like.

Mrs. MacFarley wants to leave, so I have to go. I love you, Colin! I love you so much! I’m going to get Mom to leave this on your pillow, and when I’m gone you’ll read it, and I hope you’ll understand.

Much much much much much much much much much much much love,
Lily

I folded up the letter and set it back on the bed. "I want to believe in you, Lily," I whispered. And I did, I did! As much as she wanted me to, more maybe. "But I don’t."

I hated it then, how it took so much courage to say the truth, and then when I did... It hurt.

November 16th: If You Love Something, Let it Go

2004-11-16T19:44:00.001-08:00

Tuesday dawned bright and cheerful. I remember that clearly, because the light streaming in through the crack in the curtains fell in a concentrated beam on my forehead. I grunted, turned over, and hugged the pillow, trying to turn off the alarm with my toes.

Someone flung open the door. "Guess who’s back?"

Her voice was the only one that got me moving. "Lily?" I got up quickly, running over to her and giving her a hug.

"Yeah, man, I’m here to pack. But I thought I could say hello. I was going to last night, but you’ve been dead asleep since before I got home."

I rubbed my eyes. "When did you get home?"

She grinned. "Four in the afternoon."

I groaned. "Shit, I think I’m dead. That’s what, fifteen hours I’ve been asleep?"

"Yeah," Lily said, nodding. "Sounds about right. If you get up now, April’s bestowing upon you the honor of driving me to detox. Which I’m not allowed to call detox anymore. Anyhow, she’s called your school and said your sister’s sick and you have to care for her." She paused, and some unrecognizable emotion flickered across her face. "Sick," she mumbled. "That’s what they call me now. I’m no sicker than him, though. No sicker than him..."

I touched her lightly on the shoulder. "Who?"

She shook her head quickly and smiled. "Nobody, Pete – Colin, I mean." She shook her head again, like if she vibrated it fast enough the thoughts would just fly out and go away. "Just nobody."

But I could hear plain as day. I sat down again, patting a spot on the bed beside me. Lily sat somewhat reluctantly, biting her lip.

"Peter Blackman and you go back further than Sunday, don’t you?" I guessed.

She nodded, her mouth drawn down at the corners. "Yeah.... We do."

We sat in silence for a moment, and then she gave me the saddest look I’ve ever seen. "I’ve known that Ashley girl a long time, too. That’s how Pete and I met, anyhow. Ashley. I pretended not to know her yesterday, and I guess she did the same for me... Or maybe she really didn’t remember me. But yeah, I’ve known Pete for years now. Since before I left."

She paused, took a shaky breath, and went on. "We met at a party. Big party. A hundred fifty kids, at least. My class and his. Pete’s a... Senior, this year, right?" I nodded. "So he would’ve been a sophomore. Sounds right. I was a class above him, and Ashley... Would’ve been a freshman. Anyway, Peter and Ashley and I were all at a party. Big party. Everyone was pairing off, ducking behind bushes and couches and everything else. I think there were a couple of people in the bathtub that caused a huge stir when some guy decided to take a leak in the tub." She grinned at me, but I didn’t smile back.

"So I paired off with this somewhat attractive sophomore kid, both of us were very drunk and very impaired and very horny, too, I guess. So this guy and I take a walk, around the neighborhood. I’d been to that house before, I think, it was one of my best friends’ houses – Jenna’s, I think, do you remember Jenna?– but suddenly I couldn’t find my way around. So Pete and I crawled up in some kids tree house and did some shit I’m not really proud of. And then he was disoriented, and we climbed down, and he told me to take him back to Jenna’s house."

A storm cloud passed over Lily’s face. "I told him I didn’t know. I was laughing; happy. I told him it’d be fine, we could sleep in the tree house." She paused. "I said that exactly. ‘We can sleep in the tree house, Pete, we can sleep there... Who cares about Jenna’s, let’s sleep in the tree house...’." She stopped again, and looked at me with sad eyes. A single tear raced down her cheek. "God, Colin, I don’t even remember after that. He was just a monster. He hit me into the street, I guess, because I remember lying there, looking up at him, and not understand what had happened. I thought I’d fallen, I think. I don’t know. I was so confused. I had no idea what to think. And then he shouted at me to be serious. He said his girlfriend was at Jenna’s, and if I didn’t get him back there he’d kill me." She sighed. "And I think he was serious, and I did then too, so I stumbled around. I guess I got lucky, just following the noise, because we did get there. His girlfriend, Ashley – they’ve been together for ages now –, was waiting for us. She was crying, all worried. And he told her to shut the fuck up. I’ll never forget that. She just took it. That’s what I’ll never forget, really. If it had been me, I would’ve thrown a fit. But she just walked off like a puppy with its tail between its legs and melted into this crowd of people. And then Pete turned to me, and said the strangest thing – ‘That’s my girl. You ever see any guy near her but me, you tell me. I’ll kill him.’ And I laughed. I don’t know why I laughed. I believed him, I did... But..."

She stopped talking, and looked me straight in the eye. "You’ve heard my story, Col, but... April says that Ardith ran down the stairs yesterday, crying. Said she saw you kiss Ashley. Did you?"
I turned away. "Lil..."

"Colin!" she cried. "Colin, please... How could you do that? You know what he does to her!"

I turned to look at her. "Do you want a ride to detox?"

She sighed. "Colin..."

I stood up, pulling on a pair of pants over my boxers. "Do you want a ride or not?"

"Fine," she said, sighing deeply. "But Colin, I love you. Remember that. Please."

I pulled on my shoes and opened the door to my room. "Let’s go."

The drive took place in silence. The radio was off, neither of us said anything, and even the road beneath our tires was inaudible. Mom had written a sheet out with directions, so there was no need for discussion, really. But it was lonely. It seemed like there was suddenly a colossal space between Lily and me.

We drove up in front of the Coleman Center at eight fifty six. Lily gave me a sad, wide-eyed look. "Help me get my stuff?"

I nodded, biting my lip, and jumped out of the car.

While digging her things out of the trunk, I took a good look at the place. It was nice looking. It was in the middle of a somewhat woodsy area, lots of trees, leaves blanketing the ground everywhere you stepped. The building itself was a big, wooden, lodge-type structure, with a sprawling wrap-around porch. It looked welcoming, friendly, like the place my sister needed to be. And still I didn’t want to leave her. It felt so much like abandoning her, to put her in this place, a half-hour drive from home. I wondered again why my family wasn’t good enough. I wondered again if we would ever be good enough.

Lily slammed the trunk and picked up a suitcase. I hefted the other two, my arms straining with the weight, and walked painstakingly up the steps. Lily held the door open for me. "You’re the pregnant one," I muttered through gritted teeth as I walked past. It was an attempt at humor, but it ended up sounding wrong, like an accusation instead of a lighthearted remark.

The lobby – at least that’s what I assumed this gaping, bright room to be – was empty. There were couches along the walls, and I saw the yellow corner of a bag of potato chips stuck between the cushions of the nearest one. A potted plant sat in one corner. There were windows all along the back wall, and light came streaming in. I peered through one as best I could without walking across the room. The view was beautiful – huge, yawning mountains and trees as far as the eye could see.

Lily was shaking, gripping my hand. I was just about to shout for someone when a girl came running from one of the doors to our right, dark brown hair held back in a haphazard ponytail, khaki pants bagging around her legs. "Oh!" she said, noticing us. She walked over, smiling. "I was just about to go ask Ned if he’d seen you." She stuck out a hand. "Kitty. I’m in charge of group therapy." I took her hand and shook it. She smiled at me, then turned to Lily. "And you must be the new girl. Don’t worry, everyone’s new around here. They all started yesterday afternoon. But that’s okay, this lasts a month, and I’m sure by Wednesday you’ll be all caught up." Lily gave her a weak smile and took her hand.

"So," Kitty said, bending over to pick up a bag, "mind if I check?"

Lily shook her head, and the woman hefted the suitcase to a couch and sifted through it. She appeared satisfied, smiling and humming to herself, but she started pulling out all the clothes. Lily looked perturbed, and shot me a horrified glance.

Kitty turned around and smiled reassuringly. "Sorry, I didn’t explain. We check to make sure there’s nothing in the lining, too. No point in doing this if you’re sneaking the whole time." Lily and I nodded and smiled, though I was still on edge and Lily was still trembling, and Kitty turned back to her work.

When she had checked all three suitcases and seemed satisfied, she turned around again. I took a good look at her for the first time. She was pretty enough, I imagine. She had dark hair, and big green eyes, and her skin was well-tanned. She was wearing a tight green polo shirt and baggy khakis, as well as a brown stone necklace. From her ears dangled tiny golden stars, a dozen or so on each string, that made a tinkling sound when she moved her head. Just like the building, she looked safe and normal. But I still wasn’t at ease. Once again, I wondered why this peppy Kitty was better for Lily than my family had been. I stared at her for a long time, trying to find it. And yet it wasn’t there to see.

"Okay then, Lily – it is Lily, right?" My sister nodded. "Let’s go, then. We have grouped and therapeutic things to attend to. Your mother faxed us all your forms... So we’re good to go." Kitty turned to me again, and gave me a warm smile. "She’s not allowed to call anyone, but she can write letters, so I’m sure you’ll be hearing from her soon. Have a safe drive."

They both turned and walked away, Kitty’s arm over Lily’s shoulders. I turned to leave, but paused for a minute with my forehead pressed against the door, loathing the warm, acidic tears running like a rainstorm down my face.

November 15th: The Price of a Kiss

2004-11-15T20:57:00.000-08:00

I walked in the door and dropped my backpack onto the floor of the kitchen. I headed immediately for the refrigerator. When my head was deep inside, sniffing at an open container of bologna, I felt a tug on my shirt.

I pulled myself from the depths of the fridge. "Yup?" I inquired, taking a bite out of a piece of bologna. It tasted okay. I slammed the refrigerator shut and turned around.

I must have done a double take, because the little girl looked scared. "Sorry," she said quickly, taking a step away. "Did I scare you?"

"Ardith," I said, as gently as I could, "what are you doing here?"

She blinked at me. "Ashley had school and Mama had work. So Ashley found your number in your school’s directory and called your sister, and she said she’d watch me while they were gone."

"Why don’t you have school?"

She sighed, as though I were incredibly unintelligent. It seemed to me this girl was a lot older than she looked. "Because everyone else is going to the ice rink and I don’t like ice rinks. Mama was going to take the day off but she couldn’t get it because the hospital doesn’t have enough people working there, and she has to work double shift all the time anyway. Mama’s always working. And when people ask her to work for them, she always says yes, and she’s very very tired when she gets home, and we’re not supposed to bother her unless it’s an emergency. Ashley said so."

I nodded, taking another bite of meat. "Right then. What are you and April up to?"

"We’re playing hide and seek. She’s hiding." She nodded enthusiastically. "That’s what I was going to ask you. Do you know where she is?"

I shook my head. "Try behind the TV," I said, winking. "She always used to hide there."

Ardith nodded, turned, and then looked back. "What are you doing home early, anyway?"

I shrugged. "You know what it’s like to have the whole school talking about you?"

"Oh," she said, nodding. "Yeah." She looked like she was going to say something else for a moment, but then thought better of it. "I’m going to go find April," she told me.

I nodded. "Have fun." Then I dove back into the refrigerator, looking for something that would settle my stomach. Either the bologna had hit me fast and hard, or there was something else giving me this nauseous feeling.

I tried not to think about it as I dug into a bag of carrot sticks and wandered out into the family room.

April and Ardith were sitting on the floor, playing catch with a red bouncy-ball and talking.

"Mmm, she’s moody," Ardith was saying. She looked up when I walked in and gave me a tiny smile. "Good afternoon, Colin."

I raised my eyebrows at April, but she just shook her head quickly. I gave her a smile of my own. "Good afternoon to you, too, miss."

"What are you doing here, anyway?" April asked. "Truancy is bad, Colin. Shame."

I shot her a look. "I skipped lunch to go see Lily, and I didn’t want to go back."

"He says the whole school is talking about him," Ardith interjected. I shot her a look. This girl was starting to annoy me.

April raised her eyebrows. "Oh really? What’s up, Colin? We need to talk, anyway. Sit down."
I took an uncomfortable seat on the arm of the couch. "Peter and I had a fight. Again."

She let out a slow whistle. "Colin, hitting him isn’t going to do anything. I’m serious. He’s stronger than you are. We both know that. What got you started, anyway? Did you say something?"

"He called Lily a..." I glanced at Ardith. "He talked trash about Lily. I can’t let him do that, Ape... He’s bad enough to Ashley. He’s not going to mess with her. Not after yesterday."

She sighed. "Colin, hitting him isn’t helping her. You know that, right? Hitting him isn’t helping you, or Lily, or Ashley, or anyone else."

"I just want to..." I stopped. I didn’t know what I wanted. Not really. I could pretend I did, pretend that I knew exactly what it was that I needed and wanted and desired, but I truly didn’t had no idea. I wanted everyone to be happy, maybe. But even that wasn’t enough. "I hate him," I said finally, closing my eyes. "I can’t tell you how much."

"I hate him too," Ardith spoke up. I opened my eyes and looked down at her. Her slender, grubby white face was expressionless. She was toying with the ball in her hands, digging her fingernails into it. "He hurts Ashley. But she won’t make him go away. She says he’s nice afterward. She says..." She paused, looking from me to April and back, as if trying to decide whether she should tell us. She must have figured we were trustworthy, because the next words out of her mouth were, "She says the best day comes right after he hits her, because he’s all puppy-dog-eyes and apologies and promises. And she knows that for that one day, she’s safe. I think that means a lot to her, being safe." Ardith stared at her hands. "I don’t think she’s safe, though, ever. Not with him around. I don’t think I’m safe either, or you," she said, looking at me. The look in her eyes terrified me. She’d appeared so emotionless most of the time that I’d seen her, and suddenly her facade was lower and the complete pain in her brown eyes was scary. I had the sudden urge to hug her, but I shook it off quickly, averting my gaze.

April shot me a look and mouthed ‘later’ in my direction, then wrapped a pale Ardith in her arms. I trudged up the stairs to my room, slammed the door, and flopped on my bed. I could hear the girls talking downstairs, possibly about me, but at the moment, I didn’t have the energy to care. Not about the skinny little girl with big brown eyes. Not about her older sister, bruised up and exhausted. Not about my own sister, sleeping in an understaffed hospital...

And while I was thinking, I suddenly realized something. I jumped off the bed and ran out of my room and onto the stairs.

"Ardith," I called, "where does your mother work?"

I don’t know why it meant so much to me that I’d met Ms. MacFarley. Maybe it was that she was another link between our families. Maybe it was that I had now seen the woman who undoubtedly meant so much to Ashley. Maybe it was that I knew then what was going to happen, of all the grief that she and I were to share. But I don’t really think there was any real reason. It was just the inexplicable excitement that springs forth from otherwise meaningless incidents during periods of great stress.

I was lying on my bed pondering the mystery when there was a knock on the door. I figured it was April, deciding that it was now ‘later’. So I didn’t pay any special attention to the person who stepped in, until I felt the bed dip beside me. April would never have sat on the bed. I turned to look at my visitor.... And almost fell off the bed.

"Hey," I said, sitting up straight and smoothing my clothes. "School’s over?" I twisted to look at my clock.

She shook her head. "I have independent study at the end of the day. I get off at 2:13."

I raised my eyebrows. "Lucky. I have it next quarter. Third period. You can’t do much with third period independent study."

"Aww, poor Colin," she said, grinning. "You could go to the library. Do your homework. Actually study during independent study. Weird idea, huh?"

I grinned. "Yeah, wild. Who would do that?"

"I don’t know."

We sat in silence for a moment. And then something crazy happened. Something I will never be able to forget. Not only because of what happened, or because of what it meant then, but also because of what it would come to mean, down the road. At that moment, I kissed Ashley, and she kissed back, and I signed her death warrant.

We were pretty passionate by the time Ardith walked in. She gasped, which was what alerted us in the first place. We pulled apart, staring at her. "Ashley..." she began, then took off running.

Ashley gave me a look, tears welling up in her eyes, and bit her lip.

"I have to go," she mumbled. "I...."

I nodded. "Go," I said. She followed after her sister, footsteps pounding down the stairs.
I wasn’t sure what to feel then. Amazement was part of it – I’d just kissed Ashley MacFarley.
There was some fear in it too – I had a feeling that kissing his girlfriend could be classified as fucking with Peter. There was also anger. No, no, there was no anger. I’m confused. The anger came later, when I realized what my stupidity had cost me.

It didn’t cost me just my dignity, or a limb, or an eye. It cost a life. Not my life, maybe, though I sometimes wish it had been. No, it cost more than that. It’s scary, to look back, afterward. Because you can see the moments before, when you could have done something different, something to prevent the horrors that eventually took place. Moments where if you could have shown some tact, you could have saved her life. Oh, I wish I’d had more tact that day in my bedroom. I wish I had the sense to show some tact.

The truth is, kissing Ashley cost me Ashley’s life. And I will never forgive myself for that, as long as I live.

November 14th: The Consequences of Our Actions

2004-11-14T20:14:00.000-08:00

It was Monday morning, and Lily was still in the hospital. Mom was keep a vigil by her bedside, and all of us were hoping against hope that she would be okay. The doctors said the fact that she hadn’t passed out was a good sign. They recommended detox as soon as she was out of the hospital. I smiled when I heard that. So we had been doing something right, after all.

I left for school with the problems of the world on my mind. Ashley’s problems. My sister’s problems. My family’s problems. And even my own problems, which were becoming increasingly indistinguishable from everyone else’s.

I parked the car in the student parking lot and got out. I fetched my bag from the passenger’s side and slung it over my shoulder, then began the short walk to the school building.

Hill Crest High isn’t the world’s newest school. I think it was built some time back in the 1950s. Back then it was an all-boys establishment, and it went kindergarten through twelfth grade. In the 70s they changed it to a coed school, and new buildings were made for grades kindergarten through eighth sometime in the late 80s. April says that Hill wasn’t meant to be a high school. All the water fountains are kind of low, built so the smaller kids could reach them, and they bulldozed the old playground to extend the parking lot. But it’s not a bad place. It’s a lot nicer than some of the schools I’ve seen, and the administration isn’t too anal unless you do something truly awful.

I pulled open the door and stepped inside. The air conditioning was obviously still on, though it was mid-November. Earl, the maintenance guy, was notorious for pumping in cool air through early December and not turning off the heat until late May. Noone really liked the maintenance man. Supposedly he was awful to the lesser janitors and he hated kids almost as much as some of them hated him. His car was always getting keyed, but noone did anything about it. I don’t think even the principal and staff much cared for Earl. Makes you wonder why the guy was still working there.

My locker was about as far across the school as you could get from the main entrance. It was also about as far as you could get from Gray’s homeroom, which was right near where I was standing. I sighed and began the walk, pushing my way through the crowds and muttering apologies. The truth was, I was a bit of a loser. Noone really bothered me, but noone really talked to me, either. I had my share of "friends", but I was on the fringe of every group, barely hanging on. People were always saying I was to intense for them. Whatever that meant.

So I was surprised when I heard someone shouting my name. I looked up, shaking my hair out of my eyes. Peter Blackman stood by a gunmetal grey locker, wearing a mocking grin. "Colin! Hello, hello. How’s your sister doing? The sassy one?"

"She’s fine," I mumbled, trying to walk past him. He blocked me, his grin quickly turning into a tumultuous frown.

He grabbed my arm and held me against the door to the locker next to his. "Tell her to shut her mouth, York. Tell that bitch to keep her mouth shut."

I furrowed my brow. "If you’re angry about what she said, you deserved –"

"I’m not," he cut me off. "I’m pissed that she called Ashley’s fucking mother, frail old lady MacFarley, and told her that her precious baby girl is getting knocked around by her big bad boyfriend."

My eyes were wide. "She did?" He nodded, his eyes flashing, and I suddenly wanted to run home and scream at my sister. Just how stupid was she? Was she trying to kill me? "Damn it, Pete, I’m sorry... I didn’t know, I swear. I wouldn’t have let her call."

He shot me a sinister, wild-eyed grin. "Oh yeah? You scared of me, York? That’s what it is, isn’t it?" He tightened his grip on my arm, gritting his teeth. "You should be. And your stupid bitch of a sister should be scared, too."

I couldn’t think of anything to say. I had the urge to scream, loudly and endlessly, but I kept my mouth shut. I knew he could kill me. I knew it. And I knew he would, if he felt like had to.
Oh God, I hoped he never felt like he had to.

"Oh," he said, letting go of my arm and giving a maniacal laugh, "and tell your other sister that I hope she’s still as good a fuck as she was when she left."

That did it. I could let him threaten me. I could let him threaten April. I could let him threaten the whole damn family, really. But he was not going to mess with Lily. Not after I’d come so close to losing her. Not ever.

"Fuck you!" I shouted at him, lunging for his throat. I tore at it with my fingernails. His eyes were wide, and I knew I’d startled him. It took him a second to get himself straight. Then he pulled at me, his hands wrapping around my neck and squeezing, choking me. I knew he could easily break my neck. He was big, Pete, and though I was big too I was nowhere near as muscular and well-built as he was. He pushed me off easily, two guys coming out of nowhere to hold my arms.

"You don’t touch God," one of them whispered in my ear. I looked up at him. I couldn’t remember his name, but I recognized him. He was in my English class. He’d always seemed nice enough. But he was on the football team too. I guess they stuck together. I guess they had to. Noone else was good enough for them. "And Pete? Pete’s God, as far as this place is concerned. Fear him. Respect him. Do not ever, ever mess with him."

"This is my third fight in three days," I hissed. "I’ve already messed with him."

The guy’s eyes grew wide, but he didn’t have time to say anything else. Pete was screaming at him. "Are you going to have a motherfucking conversation with him, Alex?" So that was his name. I remembered it then, coming back to me in bits and pieces. "Do not fuck with me, Colin. Do not even think about fucking with me. I will kill you. I will kill your whore of a sister. I will kill your whole fucking family. And I will kill Ashley. Mark my words."

I was too shocked and in pain to say anything. He knew how to hurt me. He knew just where to swing. I realized that then, for the first time. He was trying to push my buttons. And it was working.

I wish that I had listened to him, then. Maybe if I had taken his threats seriously, I could have done something. Maybe if I had taken his threats seriously, she would still be alive.

I didn’t go to lunch. I don’t know what possessed me, but I couldn’t bear to sit around and listen to people talk. So I did something crazy, something I’ve never done before. I went out to my car and I drove away.

I didn’t know where I was going. I was just going somewhere. I figured that I would lead myself wherever I was meant to be. So when I pulled up in front of the hospital, I wasn’t too surprised.
I walked up to the front desk. "Do you know where I could find Lily York?" I asked.

The woman made a face. "Do you know what she’s here for?"

"Heroin overdose."

Her eyes went wide. "Oh, that girl. She’s in ICU, last I checked. You immediate family?"

I nodded. "Her brother."

The woman pulled open a drawer and rifled through it until she found a piece of paper. "Go up to the fourth floor," she instructed, nodding to the elevators on our right, "and talk to the desk."

I thanked her and darted to the elevators. A smiling, very-pregnant woman held the door for me. "What floor?"

"Fourth," I said, giving her a weak smile in return. She pressed the button, still smiling to herself, and leant against the wall, humming.

I stepped off when we got to the fourth floor and walked up to the desk. "Excuse me?"

A redheaded, exhausted-looking receptionist stared up at me. "Can I help you?" She yanked at a thin gold chain around her neck.

I nodded. "I’m here to see my sister. Lily York?"

The woman picked up a clipboard and rifled through some papers. "Your name?"

"Colin."

She nodded. "Second room on your left." She turned back to whatever she’d been doing when I came, not bothering to see where I went or what I did. For all she knew, I could go visit everyone on the ward. Not that I ever would. I headed for the second room on my left, just like I’d been told. What a good puppy I was.

The door creaked when I opened it. A deathly pale Lily lay on the bed, her black hair fanned out around her head in a way that made her look like she was on display in a morgue. Only she had machines everywhere, making a low humming in the background. "Lily?" I said softly.

There was no response. I walked over to her bedside and sat on a little plastic chair. "I miss you," I said, running my fingers over her cheek. "And I’m sorry. I love you. I guess... I guess you got worse, from when we brought you here. They said this morning you weren’t in a coma. Maybe it’s different now? Noone wants to talk to me, really. This is a pretty silent ICU. Though I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been to one, before."

"We’re understaffed," a voice came from the door. I turned around. A woman in a white coat smiled at me. "She’s not in a coma." I felt tears form in my eyes, partly from relief and partly from... I wasn’t quite sure. "Oh, kid, she’ll be fine. She got here quick enough. She had a reaction to some of the medicine we gave her, that’s all. She spent six hours throwing up this morning. She’s exhausted. We’ll move her to a regular ward later today, we’re just running out of rooms there." She paused, then smiled. "And the baby’s fine."

I was so relieved I couldn’t possibly tell her. "Thanks," I said finally, getting up. "I guess I’ll go."
She nodded, holding the door open for me as I shuffled past her and out of the room.

I should have gone back to school. But some insanity in me pushed me toward home. And if anyone asks, that’s why Ashley died.

November 13th: Secrets and Lies

2004-11-13T16:14:00.000-08:00

If it had happened exactly as I had planned, the day would have been leaps and bounds better. As it was, it quickly became one of the worst of my short life.

We all piled into the car, Ashley and I in the backseat, April driving, and Lily riding shotgun. Lily was twitching, as was usual lately, and laughing too much. Ashley, bless her, didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow at my sister’s somewhat strange behavior. I wanted to hug her for that. Not that I would have argued against hugging her for any other reason.

We got to the restaurant Lily had in mind within ten minutes. It was a Chinese place, a buffet, and there were only two other cars in the parking lot. I ran ahead of the others and held open the door, flashing Ashley a smile as she walked through. She didn’t seem to notice, walking on ahead rubbing her bony white hands together for warmth.

The place was dingy. I couldn’t help but wonder just why Lily had led us here. As if she could read my thoughts, she spoke up just as we were seated. "The egg rolls here," she sighed, in that ever-so-slightly exaggerated tone that I was getting used to hearing, "are divine. I’ve been wanting to go here since I got back into town."

We ordered drinks – tea for April and Lily, coffee for me, and "I’m fine, thanks" for Ashley. The three of us shot her a look when she said it, but left her alone until our waiter had left. Then April and Lily started in on the stand-in mother routine that I had become so accustomed to over the years.

"Why don’t you want anything to drink?" April asked, drumming her fingers on the table. "Aren’t you thirsty?"

Ashley blushed madly and looked down at the cracked Formica table. "I’m fine, really. I don’t want to be a pest..." She began to make a figure eight with her finger, concentrating on the task as though her life depended on it.

"Honey, ordering a drink is not being a pest. Ordering a drink like a singing telegram, while forcing one of us to be your partner in the tango, and then pouring said drink on Colin’s large head, that’s being a pest. But I doubt you were about to do that, mostly because you don’t seem the type and also because I’ve never seen anyone do something quite so strange in my life," Lily remarked, grinning.

But her jest went right over Ashley’s head. If anything, she appeared even more flustered. "I’m sorry, I didn’t really think I was pestering you, wrong word I guess. I meant, it’s just so nice that you’re driving me around, I really don’t want any other favors."

"One, a beverage is hardly a favor, and two, if we didn’t want to chauffeur you around, we wouldn’t have picked you up in the first place," April said quickly. Ashley blushed even redder and bit her lip, staring at the napkin in her lap.

I think she was just about to say something when the waiter came with the rest of our drinks. My sisters made a huge show of offering their tea, and when April kicked me under the table, I offered some coffee too. But Ashley waved off our offers, flushed and stuttering.

April ordered for her, after consulting with Lily in a whispered conversation. "The blonde and I will have the buffet," she informed the waiter, flashing her biggest grin. Lily and I said the same, and with a smile he was off, obviously pleased that he wouldn’t have to worry about food for us.
We made our way to the buffet, which was on the far wall of the restaurant, Lily making jokes and jabbing me in the ribs when I didn’t laugh, whining how ‘that was supposed to be funny’. I flashed her a weak grin after the second time that happened, along with a dry, "I didn’t notice".

She stopped after that, turning her attentions to April and the tray of egg rolls.

Ashley and I found ourselves next to each other in front of the raman noodles. "You didn’t tell me your sisters were so..." She trailed off, unable to find the right adjective.

"Flamboyant? Out-there? Odd?" I grinned. She smiled weakly back at me.

"Yeah, I guess those work."

When our plates were full, we headed back to the booth. "I do like them, though," she said abruptly, as we were sitting down. I glanced back toward the buffet across the room and rolled my eyes at my sisters, presumably fighting over the last egg roll.

"Mmm?" I mumbled, shoveling a fork full of fried rice in my mouth.

She smiled weakly. "Your sisters. I like them. They’re... Nice. I wish I had an older sister."

I raised my eyebrows. "You don’t. Trust me. They’re crazy. Lily loves vicious pillow fights and April bakes cookies at four in the morning."

Ashley gave me a strange look, but I didn’t have time to add anything before my sisters arrived. "Oh, shut up. It’s my last day here," Lily mumbled.

April looked about ready to hit her, but kept her hands to herself. "I gave you half," she said finally, then sighed. "You already had two, anyway."

Lily glared at her but said nothing, chewing sullenly on a bite of her precious egg roll.

We ate for ten full minutes in silence, our eyes flickering over one another’s faces and then back down to our plates. Finally April looked at Ashley and gave a pleasant smile. "So, do you have any brothers or sisters?"

Ashley smiled. Obviously April had hit on one of her favourite subjects. "Yeah, I do," she said, her eyes lit up as if there were a candle behind them. "Ardith. She’s eight. She’s at home right now with..." Her face suddenly went ashen, her eyes growing wide. "What time is it?"

I glanced at my watch. "One seventeen."

"I have to go," Ashley said, rising quickly and knocking her thigh on the edge of the table. "I really have to go. It’s not safe... She can’t be alone... Not with him around."

The three of us rose too, abandoning our food. Lily didn’t even take another glance at her beloved egg roll. "Where do you live, sweetie?" April asked her, putting an arm around Ashley’s shoulder. "We’ll drive you."

Ashley protested, her eyes wild, insisting that we sit down and eat, she could walk. But April shook her head. "It’d take you hours to get there, probably. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Come on, let’s go."

Lily pulled on her coat and I pulled out my wallet and tossed a fifty on the table. I didn’t have time to figure out how much the meal had cost. If nothing else, the waiter would get a nice tip.

We sprinted out to the car, Lily lagging behind, looking exhausted. April jumped in the driver’s seat and told Ashley to get in the front, so she could guide the way. Lily and I climbed in back, and she lay down on the seat, her head in my lap. Her breathing sounded shallow, her pupils were just pinpricks. "Colin, this isn’t good," she whispered.

I stroked her hair. "Ardith will be fine, Lil. Stop worrying. Ashley doesn’t need us to worry."

Lily shook her head. "No, that’s not it. I feel... Colin, I’ve seen people like this. Like I feel now. This isn’t good. Not at all."

I look down at her, leaning closer. I didn’t want the other two to hear our conversation. "What do you mean?"

"Colin," she said, holding her hands in front of her and staring at her fingertips, "Colin, they’re blue."

I felt something deep inside of me break. "Lily, what are you talking about?" I looked at her hands. She was right. Her fingertips were blue.

"Colin, I think I took too much. I took more than usual, because of this morning. Colin, I have to go to a hospital. I have to. I can’t die." She looked panicked, an emotion I’d never seen my sister wear. "Colin," she pleaded, her breathing labored, "if I die, so will the baby."

I had to make a choice. It was Lily and the baby or it was Ardith. I knew that if I made the wrong choice, I would lose two people, either way. If Ardith got hurt Ashley would never be able to live. But if Lily died, the baby would die with her.

"April, we need to go to a hospital," I screamed suddenly. She gave me a startled look in the rearview mirror, but I only nodded. Ashley turned around in her seat, and as hurt as my mother had looked that morning, Ashley was fifty times worse.

But April didn’t question me. We were already going over the speed limit at the moment of my outburst. Now my sister was driving like a maniac, honking at anyone who wouldn’t get out of her way. "Colin, if you don’t have a good reason, I will kill you," she hissed between gritted death. I didn’t say anything. I was too busy staring at my other sister’s face, her lips taking on a bluish tint, her breath more bated than if she’d just run three marathons without stopping.

We drove into the hospital parking lot and I scooped Lily into my arms. "April, open the door!" I screamed. She obeyed, jumping from her seat and coming around back. I rose from the car seat with difficulty and ran toward the doors to the ER.

"Colin," Lily gasped, "I love you."

I didn’t even respond. I just pushed open the door and ran in, panting for breath, my arms straining with the weight of my sister. "Help," I said weakly, my voice a stage whisper. "Help me."

Lily was admitted almost right away, and the doctors began to work their magic. They were none to pleased by the idea of a heroin overdose, but they faced it with grim determination. As soon as she was situated, I joined April and Ashley in the waiting room.

No questions were asked. April gave me one quick hug before we darted out the doors, ran through the parking lot, and dove into the car.

We were on the road again within minutes. Ashley was whimpering in the front seat, mumbling directions and hugging her knees to her chest. April was gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles were white, her eyes focused intently on the road.

We finally pulled up to a little yellow house just a couple blocks from Peter’s and three or four from my own. Ashley bolted from the car, shouting a thank you over her shoulder. April turned the engine off and sat there for a moment before slowly getting out, a look of grim determination on her face. I followed her up the walk and to the front door. It was still open.

We heard footsteps to our right and ran toward them. Ashley was darting down a short hallway, flinging open doors and screaming her sister’s name. "I can’t find her," she said when she saw us, her voice hollow.

Suddenly there were more footsteps, different from Ashley’s, thundering down the stairs at the end of the hall. A skinny girl with big brown eyes stared up at Ashley. "What’s wrong, Ashy? Am I in trouble?"

Ashley scooped the girl into her arms. "No, Ardi, of course not. I’m sorry if I scared you." She put her sister down and stared her intently in the eyes. "Has Pete been here?"

Ardith looked petrified. "Uh-uh." One frail finger reached up to touch her sister’s eye. "He got you bad," she whispered in awe.

Ashley winced at the touch, gently removing the girl’s hand. "Yeah," she said softly, "he did." She turned to face us, giving us a weak smile.

"We’re fine," she said, her lip trembling. "We’ll be okay. I’m sorry about Lily. She’ll be better won’t she?"

I shrugged, but April nodded enthusiastically. "Of course she will." She sighed, looking at Ashley’s bruised figure. "If he shows up, call us."

Ashley nodded. "I will." She looked down at Ardith. "Thank you," she whispered.

We showed ourselves out. When we were back on the front lawn, April gave me a huge hug, her arms squeezing me tightly. "I hate this," she whispered in my ear.

I nodded. I hated it, too.

"She’s where?" my mother gasped. We were sitting in the family room, each doing our own separate thing. April and I were reading, Mom knitting, and Dad was watching a football game.

Or at least, that’s what we had been doing, until April dropped our bombshell, and Mom had dropped her knitting needles.

"The hospital. She said she’d call when we were supposed to give her a ride home." I knew what April was doing. She was trying to downplay the fact that our sister had overdosed on heroin by focusing on things like rides and location. It was a technique she’d used on all of us, at one time or another.

Unfortunately, Mom recognized it. "Yes, but why is she in the hospital?"

April gave her a weak smile. "Because she overdosed?" she suggested.

Dad, who’d been ignoring the discussion through this point, shot April a look. "And when were you planning on mentioning this?"

April shrugged. "I just didn’t want to spring it on you until you were relaxed."

Mom looked ready to say something, but she must have thought better of it. So Dad picked up the torch. "Are you two on drugs yourselves? Did you not think we’d want to know about our own daughter’s overdose?" His voice was rising, both in volume and intensity. "Did you not think that Lily is just as important to us as she is to you?"

"Of course we do! But –" Dad cut her off with an angry look.

"I’m leaving," I announced quietly, rising from my seat and starting up the stairs. Everyone watched me, but noone said anything until I was at the door to my room.

"Colin, wait," April protested weakly, but I was sick of waiting.

I’d always thought my family was near perfect. Loving parents, loving kids. But suddenly I was seeing us in a whole new light, as a family of secrets and lies. I didn’t want to be a part of that.

Little did I know then that soon, I would harbour the biggest secret of all.

November 10th: What You Want

2004-11-10T19:53:00.000-08:00

Lily and I spent the next four hours lying around my room, listening to the radio and reminiscing about our early years.

"Remember when you were six, and you stuck a peanut up your nose?" She grinned at me. "I was sitting in my room, and from all the way up there I could hear you screaming, ‘Mommy, Mommy, get it out, get it out!’" Lily was lit up like a Christmas light, laughing, and I grinned sheepishly at her from my perch on the bed, hugging a pillow. "You two almost had to go to the hospital, but then you had a sneezing fit and it got loose enough for her to get it out with tweezers."

I stuck my tongue out at her. "At least I never drank half a bottle of peppermint extract at my twelfth birthday party on a dare." My sister’s eyes grew wide, and she gave a challenging grin.
"Oh, you remember that, do you?" I teased her, smiling wide. "Do you remember how you started shrieking so loudly the neighbors called the police before they called over here to ask what was wrong?"

She stood up quickly and walked over to me, grabbing the pillow out of my arms. I reached behind me on the bed and fetched the other, holding it firm in my hands. "Too late, kid, I’m going to beat you in the most severe way this pillow can stand."

I held my own weapon above my head to protect myself from the blows. It blocked out my view of anything above Lily’s shoulders. I watched as her arms lifted the pillow as high as she could reach, preparing to be hit....

The door flung open at just that moment. "What the hell?" questioned a cautious voice.

"April!" we both screamed at more or less the same time, then, shooting one another grins, we attacked her.

We finally surfaced for air, battered and giggling, five minutes later. We sat in a line, leaning against my bed, gasping for breath. "Well," April finally said, grinning, "that was one hell of a pillow fight."

"Mmm," Lily nodded, trying to look relaxed, but there was obviously something bothering her.

We sat in silence for a few minutes, staring at the wall and sneaking occasional glances at each other. Lily was beginning to twitch and was cradling her head in her hands, rubbing her temples. She rose abruptly, mumbling something about having to go to the bathroom.

April waited five seconds before creeping to the door. She opened it a crack and peered out. "Shit," she whispered, closing it as quietly as she could. "The bathroom door’s open. Hers isn’t. It was when I came up here. Damn!" she exclaimed suddenly, pounding her fist on the carpet.
"She’s not going to be able to survive detox. She’s going to come back here, crying, and Mom and Dad are going to let her. If they just knew about that fucking kid, about what she was doing to it..."

I shot her a surprised glance. "You haven’t talked to Mom today, have you?" I guessed.

"No." She gave me a strange look, narrowing her eyes. "What do you mean?" She raised one eyebrow, staring at me intently.

"Mom –" I began, but I hadn’t even gotten the whole word out when April interrupted me.
"She knows, doesn’t she? Lily told Mom." April’s face went ashen. "Dad said she just had a headache," she mumbled, more to herself than to me. "How..."

I gave her an apologetic smile. "She overheard Lily and I talking through the bathroom door. Lily ended up telling her everything."

"Holy shit," April muttered, but before she could say anything else Lily came back into the room and took her old seat, between April and I.

"Let’s go get lunch," she suggested. "It’s almost noon, and I’m hungry."

April nodded silently, and I shrugged. "Sure, why not."

Lily grinned. "I love you people."

When she turned around to leave, April and I exchanged a quick look. This wasn’t the Lily we knew. There was something wrong, and I figured it was only a matter of time before the cheerful, outgoing facade dropped.

April insisted on driving. "You’ve got too much on your mind," she told Lily. She turned me down as well, only half-joking when she said that, "Lily is anxious enough right now." That stung, but I said nothing. We didn’t need any more arguments, not on Lily’s last day.

Lily gave April directions, making side-comments and jokes all the while. I sprawled in the backseat, legs stretched out, eyes closed. So I was startled, more than anyone else, when the car jolted to a stop.

I rubbed my head where it had hit the plastic of the car door. "Gentle, kids." I sat up, gripping April’s seat. "Hey, Ape? I know you’re a bit whack, and all, but why are we stopped in the middle of a random residential street?"

April shot me a glance in the rearview mirror. "Check the porch of the house to our right, smartass."

I turned to look, did a double take, and peered at the figure. I was amazed that April could remember the face of the girl she’d only briefly seen at the hospital a full week before. "Let me get out," I said quickly, then scampered from the car before either of my sisters could object.

Ashley was standing outside a closed door, banging on it with her fist, saying something in a frantic shriek. Her clothing was disheveled, her sleeve torn, and I could see bruises up and down her arms. Her right eye looked swollen. She flinched when she saw me. "Colin, go away. Please." Her voice was pleading by firm. I didn’t listen.

"What’s going on?" I asked through the door. I saw a flash in the window next to me, and Ashley whimpered. I heard the sound of a lock in the door, cursing as it slipped, and then the clattering sound of the door opening.

"No..." Ashley murmured, stepping to the side of the porch, out of sight.

A figure came flying at me, its fist digging into my chest, a massive tennis shoe pounding on my rib cage. "What the fuck are you doing here, York?"

Wincing in pain, I looked up into the angry face of Peter Blackman.

April’s reaction time was quicker than I’d thought. She was on the porch, screaming at Peter and shoving him up against the wall, before I knew what had happened. Lily’s frail body came running after her, taking the steps slowly, and I felt my sister’s cold hands clasp my shoulders.

"You fucking dicklick. What do you think you’re doing to my baby brother?" April was screaming. "Is that how you greet all your visitors, or just the ones who are better than you?" She was strong, but not strong enough to hold him with her arms alone. He was struggling to move, his muscles bulging under his shirt, his face red. April grabbed his groin and twisted, slamming him back against the wall.

"You do not move," she hissed, "unless I tell you to move. Now answer my question. What the fuck were you doing to Colin?"

Peter mumbled something about how I was always getting in his way. April kneed his crotch, hard. "I don’t care if he fucking put up a roadblock in front of your car every day, no, every time you stopped at a motherfucking traffic light. You do not touch my brother. You do not, you will not, and if I ever catch wind of you doing it again, I am going to come here and beat the shit out of you." She let him go, which I thought was stupid. Did she really trust this asshole not to body slam her the first time had the chance?

But to my surprise, he didn’t take a step toward her. Their gaze never breaking, Peter retreated through the front door and slammed it shut. I heard the scratching of the key in the lock again. April let out a sigh.

"I’m going to have sore arms for days," she commented to me, grabbing my arm. "Let’s go."

"Wait," Lily whispered, "what about the girl?" Ashley was huddled in one corner of the porch, facing the side yard, arms wrapped around her torso.

I sighed. "Let me talk to her."

I walked across the porch in three long steps. "Ashley..." I began.

"Leave me alone," she sniffed. Then, in the quietest of whispers, "I just wanted to get my jacket... I didn’t mean to cause trouble. I didn’t want to, I swear." She spoke in a sing-song, all the while crying silent tears. "I’m sorry if your sister got hurt. Nobody was supposed to get hurt. Nobody but me."

I wanted to cry myself, watching her. "Corin wants Ashes to be happy," I said finally. "And I want you to be happy." I touched her lightly on the shoulder. "Ashley, he’s not going to change."

She wiped her nose with her sleeve, still not looking at me. "He might."

"He won’t," I promised.

Her finger gently brushed her cheek, a perfect teardrop glistening on her fingertip as she pulled it away. "He asked me to marry him, and I said no. That’s why he’s angry."

"You’re sixteen years old. You don’t need to marry anyone."

She sniffled. "Maybe he’d be better, if he knew that I loved him. If I married him, he’d have to realise. Right?"

I shook my head. "He’s not going to get better, Ashley. And no matter how much you love him, he’ll never love you back. No matter how many ways you try to show him, he’ll never give you what you want."

"What do I want, Colin?" She finally turned to look at me, her eyes red and her lip quivering.

"You want to go to lunch with my sisters and I, and come home with us, and get some ice for your eye, and have me drive you home. And then you want to sleep, and go to school tomorrow, and you want to be able to pretend nothing happened."

She gave me a halfhearted smile. "I do," she said softly. "That’s exactly what I want."

[Sorry about the cut-off!]

November 8th: The Truth of the Matter

2004-11-08T21:02:00.000-08:00

Lily’s last day began at six in the morning. I woke up to the sound of her retching. I thought about going back to bed, but I decided her final hours with us were worth rising for.

I got out of bed and pulled on socks, then padded down the hallway, yawning. I knocked on the bathroom door. "It’s Colin."

Lily grunted. I took that as permission to go in. I opened the door and took a seat on the counter, staring at her back and trying not to look at the toilet bowl.

My sister looked up and wiped her mouth with her sleeve. "Jesus got a Last Supper, I get this bullshit." She grimaced.

I couldn’t help but laugh. Only my sister would think to say something like that. "Eh, suck it up," I got in before Lily bent over the bowl again.

We sat in silence – silence meaning without conversation in this case, since Lily’s periodic vomiting certainly wasn’t silent – for at least a half an hour before Lily stood on wobbly legs, clutching at the walls, and stumbled to the sink. She turned on the tap and splashed water onto her face, then, sopping wet, looked up at me and grinned weakly. "Starting Tuesday I’ll have morning sickness and withdrawals at the same time. Just imagine the possibilities."
I laughed, flinging open the door, and stopped dead in my tracks.

"Lily Theresa?" In sixteen years, I had never heard my mother sound quite so shocked and hurt.

We had a lot of explaining to do, that became obvious within a few seconds at the kitchen table. The realization was helped along by our mother’s cliche proclamation of, "You’ve got a lot of explaining to do."

So Lily explained, and for the first time, I heard the whole story.

When Lily had left almost two years before, she’d been angry. Angry at our family, for making her go, and angry at herself for letting us know enough about her habits to make us think we had to send her away. She vowed at that point that she was going to get ten times worse in Idaho, where our grandparents lived, and they’d be forced to send her back.

Her plan didn’t work quite the way she’d anticipated. She did get worse, though not all that much. She got into crack and Ecstacy, a few steps further along than her former pot-smoking, and was heavy into the club scene for awhile. "My fake ID almost broke from being used so much," she cracked at one point, but her smile faded when she looked at Mom. Anyway, she had gone off with any stranger who wanted her at that point, and had no idea what happened half the time. She hardly ever went to school and was constantly in trouble for truancy until she started going out with a doctor’s son, after which point the school would attest to her developing numerous stomach ailments that kept her from her studies.

Lily says she felt bad about using her "boyfriend", who she explained was hardly even a boyfriend because she slept with about half the town, but at that point she was too far in to care. She said this boy had lots of money, which she borrowed freely to spend on her growing drug use. Which made her feel doubly bad, but not bad enough to stop.

At one of the parties she attended, she ran into another girl, Renee. Or at least she called herself Renee, though Lily wasn’t quite sure that was a real name because she always seemed to have to think before she responded, which seemed strange. Anyhow, Renee took Lily into the bedroom at a party with a few other people, and they sat around on the bed and floor talking and passing around a joint. They all got bored pretty quickly, Lily said, and she barely even feeling high off the joint, which seemed mild compared to what she’d become used to. So when one guy, who called himself Scott, and seemed to be Renee’s boyfriend, pulled out a couple needles and some junk, she’d been all for it.

Some of the other people at in the room had been wary of the drug. One said his brother had died using it, and had left the room immediately. But everyone else stayed, though a couple of them seemed a little nervous. Some people pulled out their own needles, which surprised Lily – she hadn’t known anyone walked around with needles in their pockets. When she asked Renee later, she said people only took them to hardcore parties, and kept them at home the rest of the time. Anyway, Lily had taken a needle that Scott offered her, a little frightened by the comment that the guy had made earlier, about his brother’s death, but ready to try anything.

She said it was the most amazing thing she’d never experienced. The high had crept up on her and then it was on full force, eating away slowly at her senses. "It was like if you turned acid inside out," she described, as if we would know what that was like. "Because acid knocks you off your feet, powerful hallucinations, big and bright and loud. Heroin was different. Not the opposite exactly, but it was strong in a really mellowed way, like you knew you were higher than you’d ever been but it wasn’t nearly as obvious." She said that after awhile everyone in the room was too buzzed to sit around and talk anymore, and they left to wander around the party aimlessly.

She didn’t go into too much detail about that night, but she did say that she slept with at least six men, and felt up a couple of girls besides. "God, I couldn’t get enough. Not of sex, just of feeling. Feeling everything. I wanted to touch everything, because everything felt so different, and new, and awesome. Sometimes on other drugs I’d been so horny I couldn’t see straight, but this wasn’t like that. This was just wanting to experience, and feeling everything so completely and fully. It was amazing, but it was scary, because I wasn’t sure people were meant to be so wrapped up in just being."

Lily stopped for a minute at that point, staring down at the table and tracing the wood grain. Mom looked about ready to cry, but she was holding in her tears pretty well for the moment. Finally Lily began again, saying how she returned to another party the next night, where she’d heard Renee would be. Within a few days she was following Renee around like some "stupid puppy", never more than five steps behind her. Over the next six months she honed her skills at finding smack, going wherever she knew it would be. She found out that Renee wasn’t the only one in the fairly small town, there were others too, lots of others. She never went to school anymore, and never went home, just passed out at whatever house the party was in, woke up groggily and hid if she had to, even if it meant a long night in the neighbors’ bushes, and then took off for the next party that evening.

She went on like that for a year. That was when people stopped being so generous with their heroin and started telling her to get her own. She didn’t have any money, and her "boyfriend" was out of money, or at least sick enough of giving his life savings to her to pretend he was out of money. So three months before she came home, she started turning tricks in Boise.

"God, that was terrible," she said, sniffing. "That was the damn worst thing I’d ever had to do. But you made a lot of money damn quick. I charged maybe fifty for a blow, a hundred for a fuck. Some girls down the street would do you twenty for whatever, but guys said I was pretty enough that they’d pay the extra. Plus they said I was a good fuck, knew what I was doing." She bit her lip, crying freely now, and wiped her nose on her sleeve. "It’s awful, being reduced to that. A good fuck. Like that’s all I can do right. It was funny, because I kept thinking over and over how I wasn’t even good enough for my own father anymore, but I was good enough for all these men in minivans who probably had kids of their own. And then I couldn’t think of that anymore, because imagining that Dad was anything like those men made me feel worse than I ever did in the worst of bad trips."

She said it was sometime in the first couple of weeks that she got pregnant. "I didn’t know for a long time, because I’d dried up from all the shit that was going on, I don’t know if the drugs did it or if it was just me. I found out in a clinic to get tested for HIV, when the asked me if I wanted a pregnancy test too I said sure, why not. I wish I’d said no, though I’m sure I’d know by now. When I got my test results the first thing I did was call April. And I guess that’s how I got here."

All of us were crying by that point. We must have been a strange sight, three people sitting, sobbing, around the table, staring at the clock as it ticked its way to seven seventeen and beyond. It was ten minutes before Mom finally spoke, and when she did it was in a soft, hushed tone.

"So the baby... Is it damaged?"

Lily looked at her miserably, her pasty face wearing a sad expression. "Or something like it. The doctors say it’s almost definitely addicted. Not even an almost, really, I just say that to make myself feel better. But yeah, it’s a junkie like its mother... They don’t know about other damage. There’s supposed to be some test for that, but I haven’t been to a doctor since I broke up with Robbie – the doctor’s son – two weeks before I left Idaho."

Mom stared at her sadly. I knew what she was thinking, or at least part of it. She was thinking, "Two and half months into being a mother, and Lily’s already killing my first grandchild." She was thinking, "I can’t believe I sent her away. I can’t believe I sent her into that. I can’t believe we were so stupid, to think that she would get better there." She was thinking, "My baby is wasting away in front of me, and I can’t help her." She was thinking, "I wish I hadn’t heard her this morning. I wish I hadn’t asked." She was thinking, "If this girl were not of my own flesh and blood, I would hate her now for everything she’s done to me."

She was thinking, "This is what I’ve brought into the world."

Or at least that’s what I imagined she was thinking, but it might not have been, because the first thing she said when she stood up at seven twenty one that last morning of Lily’s stay at home was, "Colin, have you studied for your chemistry test tomorrow?"

It was strange, to think that the world hadn’t stopped all chemistry tests to take into a account my world falling apart.

November 7th: Sugar Cookie Medicine

2004-11-07T20:48:00.000-08:00

Sleep eluded me that night. I lay in bed, listening to the crickets chirp, still angry with myself for everything I’d done wrong those past few days. I stared at the clock, watching the glowing red numbers change.

I heard someone downstairs, clanking metal, at 3:56. Exhausted and frustrated, I stumbled down the stairs and toward the noise, into the kitchen.

April looked up from her position by the oven. "Oh! Colin! Hey. I was just baking cookies."
I rubbed my eyes, which were bleary from my long, fruitless attempts at sleep. "What are you doing making cookies at four AM?"

April blinked several times, as though she had something in her eye. "You know," she said finally, slowly, "I have no idea."

I stared at her. Her eyes were red, like she’d been crying, and she was still wearing the same clothes she’d worn yesterday. She looked about as bad as I felt. I looked from the bowl of cookie dough on the counter to her tired face. Finally, I cracked my knuckles and pushed up the sleeves of my sweatshirt. "Can I help?"

She nodded. "Grab a spoon."

I pulled a spoon from a nearby drawer and went over to stand next to her. She moved the bowl of dough between us, smiling weakly as she dug out a hunk of dough with her spoon and began to mold it with her hands into a perfect ball.

"Sugar cookies," she said finally. "They heal everything."

I smiled feebly at her, trying not to cry. So that’s what this early-morning baking session was about. Of course, that was what everything was about, those days. It was like our worlds revolved around Lily and her problems.

"Colin..." she said, quietly, breaking my train of thought. I looked over at her, and saw she was crying, a stray tear dripping onto the dough as she set it down on the cookie sheet. "Colin, it’s worse with Lily... Than we thought. It’s going to take more than detox, see? Detox isn’t going to wave its wand and make it all better."

I shrugged. "I knew that," I said. "I’m not an idiot. I don’t think she’s going to go in and suddenly become clean, walk out without any baggage, and come home and be the old Lily again."

April was full-on sobbing now, and she gave up on her baking to lean against the counter, covering her face with one hand. "Colin, it’s more than the heroin now. That’s only the beginning."

"Huh? What do you mean?" This talk was scaring me. I’d never seen April like this, so anxious and depressed.

She took her hand away from her mouth. "Colin, she’s pregnant."

I dropped the spoon I was holding, and it clattered to the counter. Some of the dough flew up at me, sticking to my clothes.

Slowly, I reached for a rag and wiped it off. I turned around and left the kitchen, walking quietly but swiftly. April didn’t call me back, but I heard her opening the oven as I ran up the stairs and to my room, where an exhausted sleep found me as soon as my head hit the pillow.

It was Lily’s first weekend at home, and her last before she headed off to detox. Suddenly signs of her pregnancy were everywhere. Her clothing was looser than it had been before she went away, for one. She spent a long time in the bathroom in the mornings, and refused breakfast. And I suddenly began to find her at the refrigerator at odd hours, looking for one specific food item (it changed every time) that she said was the only thing she wanted to eat.

April must have told her that I knew, because she never told me herself. She just came into my room that Saturday night, crawled into bed next to me, pulled my headphones off, and whispered, "My baby’s a fucking junkie." She laughed after she said it, not an amused laugh but a bitter one, a ‘oh what a wonderful world this is’ laugh.

I set my CD player on the floor and scooted over to make more room for her. "What are you going to do, anyway? Are you keeping it?"

"Giving it up for adoption," she said immediately, then laughed again, the same laugh as before. "At least that’s the plan of the day. It changes at least twice a week."

I smiled weakly. "How far along are you?"

"Two and a half months, about. I don’t show, really. I just look kind of bloated." She sighed. "Mom and Dad are going to kill me."

"No they’re not," I assured her, sitting up a little. "They love you Lil, we all do."

She tried to smile. "Yeah, I guess. They’ll still be damn disappointed, though."

"Lily, if – no, WHEN -- you get clean, those two are going to be prouder of you than they’ll ever be able to say." I put my arm around her and gave her a quick squeeze. "I just wish you would believe in yourself as much as the rest of us believe in you."

It was bullshit fit for an after-school special, but I had something to make up to Lily after the night before, when she had reached out for my support and I’d turned on the television. Lily didn’t seem to believe it, really, but she smiled nonetheless.

"God, I hope I make it. And I hope it doesn’t kill me, or junior here." She patted her belly, biting her lip.

I smiled down at her, my first real smile in a long time. "Junior and you are going to be just fine."

I don’t know how long we lay there in silence, but I think we both drifted off to sleep. I woke up at one point during the night to the sound of the door shutting quietly, and when I looked down she wasn’t there anymore. It was strange to think that when I’d held my older sister in my arms, I’d actually believed for a moment that it would all really work out.

[even later] November 6th: There are No Ditches

2004-11-07T01:08:00.000-08:00

I would have been content to sleep on the couch that night if it meant not having to see my sisters till morning. But I knew that wouldn’t work, because Mom and Dad would surely return through the back door and see me in the living room. So I knew my only real option was to go up to my bedroom, even if it meant passing through the family room, where both of my sisters sat. Hopefully if I kept my head turned, they wouldn’t notice the blood.

I had no such luck. The second I set foot into the room, April jumped up and ran to me. Lily was close behind. "Oh my God," Lily breathed. "Your nose!" April gasped. Both of them forgot their argument then and fussed over me, running back and forth from the kitchen with wet rags and bandages. I sighed, staring at my feet, as my hopes of a quiet escape lay dead on the ground.

When they felt I was sufficiently adorned with bandages, the girls sat me down on the couch and settled into the chairs on either side. "So," Lily began, "what happened?"

I thought of telling the truth, about how Peter had come to the door angry over my talking to Ashley after he told me not to, about how he dragged me outside and beat me up in what could never be called a fight because a fight implies some sort of resistance, about how I suddenly understood how it was possible to feel pure hatred for someone you hardly knew. And then I thought sanely, and realized I could never be honest with my sisters about the night’s events. They would track Pete down and savagely kill him. And as much as I hated the guy, I didn’t want to get Lily and April too passionate about hurting him – I didn’t want to see either of them hurt, or in trouble with the law.

So in the end, I told some lame story about how Peter and I had been taking a walk and I’d he’d fallen, taking me down with him. We’d rolled into a ditch, so I was bruised all over, and somewhere along the line I’d hit my nose pretty badly on a rock. When I’d finally reoriented myself after the fall, Pete had been nowhere to be found. April was ready to believe it, which I hadn’t expected from her. She’s usually level-headed and perceptive enough to know when I’m telling an outrageous lie. Lily looked doubtful and suggested we call Pete’s parents.

"No," I protested, "it’s fine. His dad was waiting around the block from our house, he said. I bet he found the car and left."

"Why did he leave you down for the count, though?" Lily mused. She still didn’t sound like she was buying it. "What kind of friend is this guy?"

"He’s not really a friend," I said. "More like a friend of a friend. Not a very good friend, either. He just wanted my advice on something. I think he was in a hurry. He had a football practice, I think."

A still dubious Lily shrugged. "Well, go up to bed before Mom and Dad get home. They’d kill the two of us for letting you get hurt. You’re fine, right? No internal bleeding?"

"No, I’m fine, I promise," I said earnestly before I figured out that Lily was joking. I mentally kicked myself. Way to look okay, York. "I think I will head up to bed. I’m tired."

Without a protest, I went up to my room and shut the door behind me. I flopped onto my bed. I knew it was only a matter of time before Lily found a hole in my story, but I couldn’t worry about that until it happened.

I stumbled into homeroom with a splitting headache and collapsed at a desk. Gray looked up from his morning paper, sitting at his desk across the room, and grinned at me. "Rough night?" he called.

I grunted in response. If only he knew.

I was almost asleep when a panting figure burst through the door. "Colin, we have to talk," Ashley gasped.

"I don’t want to talk to you," I mumbled. Not only because I was tired, or sullen, but also because my lip was swollen from the kick in the face last night.

"Corin, Ashes thinks you’re very beautiful too, and she wants to live happily ever after, but she can’t. Because the big burly nickelback who wouldn’t hurt a fly doesn’t hurt flies, he hurts people, and he hurt Corin last night and Ashes is sorry, she’s so sorry." She was sobbing, gasping for breath, but she didn’t pause. "Corin, Ashes hates this man, Ashes wants to get away from him, but he loves her, can Corin understand that? He loves her, and she loves him, and she just can’t up and leave, he’d kill her, he’d kill Ardith, and Ashes... She can’t do that."

Her jaw was trembling, her expression desperate. I knew she needed me to understand. I knew she needed me to say that it would be okay, I understood she couldn’t leave him. But to hear her say those words, to hear her say that she thought I was beautiful but she couldn’t leave Peter because he would kill her little sister... It was heartbreaking. And with a broken heart, as well as bruised ribs and a swollen lip, I wasn’t sure I could be the person she needed me to be.

"Corin thinks he gets it," I responded, even if I didn’t think I got it at all. "Corin doesn’t want Ardith or Ashes to get hurt. But Corin wants Ashes to be happy, and it hurts him to see her with this other guy who doesn’t treat her how he should."

She grinned hugely and wrapped her arms around me. My body screamed in pain at the pressure but I said nothing except a tiny whisper of, "I want you to live happily ever after, Ashes."

Ashley pulled back and looked at me. "I will," she promised with a weak, sad smile. "We both will. It’ll just take time."

She turned and walked away, leaving me to rest.

It seemed I saw Peter everywhere I turned that day. When I walked down the hallway, he was either in front of me or behind me. When I stood in line for lunch, he was somewhere on the line with me. When I ran to my locker to get a book just before sixth period, he was standing down the nearly empty hallway, staring at me.

I felt like nothing I could do would be private. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t talking to her, maybe. Or maybe he just wanted me to know that he was watching, waiting for me to slip up. So I was on my "best behavior" all day, tip-toeing around him and obeying all his demands.

When I finally arrived home that day, it was a relief to be away from him. His car had followed mine the whole way, even when I turned onto my own street. When I stopped the car and got out, he waited at the end of the block, just out of the way enough that noone would think he’d was watching me. Despite the distance between us, I ran the length from the car door to the back door of the house. As soon as I was inside, I locked it behind me.

My parents were sitting on the couch, heads close together, talking. When I came in they looked up guiltily, but all privacy was forgotten when they saw my face.

"What happened to you?" Mom gasped. I shrugged, not wanting to give my explanation again. I went into the kitchen and dug through the refrigerator. Eventually I unearthed an orange from the produce drawer. I grabbed a napkin and a plastic knife and started up to my room.

"Wait just a second," my mother beckoned. I turned impatiently in the doorway to the family room, praying that if she asked for my story I wouldn’t screw it up.

But alas, she decided not to make me suffer. "Never mind, Colin." I turned to go, but she cleared her throat, and I spun around again. "If you ever want to let us know, we’ll be around," she said after a moment, then turned to look at Dad again.

I ran into the family room and bolted up the stairs. Once safe inside my room, I sat on the floor, back against the bed, and waited.

Lily didn’t disappoint me. She walked in, breathless, two minutes later. "There aren’t any ditches in this neighborhood," she accused.

I played the fool. "Huh?"

"I said, there are no ditches in this neighborhood," she said angrily. "You said last night you fell in a ditch." She had her hands on her hips, needle marks fully visible on her forearms. Her black hair, with its newly dyed roots, hung in her face. "What’s going on, Colin?" she asked finally, sitting down with her back to the door.

So I told her the truth. Not the whole truth – I didn’t tell her that Peter beat on Ashley, because that would have been too much. I just told her that I’d gotten into a fight with Peter over a girl, and he’d ended up kicking my ass.

She nodded when I was finished. "I thought you’d been fighting," she said. Then she leaned her head back, closing her eyes. "But there’s something else, Colin. You wouldn’t have lied to us if it were that simple."

I was angry now. Not angry that she was questioning me, or even angry at her. I was angry with myself for coming up with two bad stories. But I focused that anger on her, letting the heat and passion that had been dead in me for so long now rise to the surface. "There’s nothing else, dammit!" I shouted. "I told you the truth, now get out of my face! Do you think I’m proud of having a stupid fight, Lily? Do you think I’m any more proud of that than you are of your drug habit? Fuck no!" I knew I’d taken a cheap shot by bringing up her heroin, but I couldn’t help myself. These days she was such a vulnerable target. "Get out of here Lily," I said finally, my tone disgusted. But it wasn’t her I was disgusted with. It was myself.

She rose and left the room silently, closing the door behind her. Just when I thought she was gone, she opened the door again, quietly.

"Quit lying to me, Colin," she said softly, and then she left again.

I cried acidic tears and pulled my knees to my chest. Then slowly, carefully, I began to peel my orange.

Noone felt like eating a family meal that night, so for the first time in York history, none of us showed up. We headed sporadically to the kitchen, each grabbing something to eat and taking it to another room of the house. I ate early, because I had soccer at six. So it was no surprise when I returned home from practice and found Lily at the table. It was around eight thirty.

I said nothing as I passed her and walked into the living room. I heard her rise, scraping back her chair, and her footsteps followed me. She took a seat on the couch and I could see her staring at me as I flicked on the TV.

"Aren’t you going to take a shower? You stink something awful." It was an attempt at humor, but I wasn’t particularly amused. Practice had left me sore, and my day had left me sorer, so I wasn’t in a mood for Lily’s jabs at comedy.

I shook my head. "I’ll take one later," I muttered. I channel-surfed in silence for a few minutes, listening to Lily chomp on dry granola a few feet away. I had never realized before just how loud the chewing of dry granola can be.

"I don’t want to go to detox," she said finally. I looked up, surprised. I hadn’t thought she would say anything that didn’t involve our argument. Maybe I had underestimated Lily. Maybe she wasn’t such an awful person.

I flicked off the TV. "I don’t want you to go, either," I said, playing with the fabric on the arm of the chair.

Lily watched my fingers. "I mean, I’m getting better about it all on my own. Just being here makes me better. Being with you and April and Mom and Dad makes me better. I’m only shooting up twice a day anymore." She made it sound like a huge accomplishment. Suddenly I felt sick to my stomach, and I didn’t want to know how many times a day she’d used to poison herself before she came home.

"You think you’ll get clean there?" I asked. I think the question had been sitting on all of our minds for awhile. I might as well be the one to ask it.

Lily shrugged. "I hope so. I miss not needing it. But withdrawals, they’re awful. I don’t know if I can do it, Colin," she said, her voice almost a whisper. "I don’t know if I can make it that far."

I didn’t know if she could, either. But I didn’t say so. In fact, I didn’t say anything. I just flicked the television set back on, pretending that I couldn’t see the hurt on my sister’s face.

[later] November 6th: What happens in Fight Club STAYS in Fight Club.

2004-11-06T22:54:00.000-08:00

The second most awkward dinner in history took place that night. Lily was pale and looked ready to fall asleep in her food; April was sawing into her pork chop like she was out to kill the poor pig again; Mom was expending quite a lot of energy trying not to look at any of her offspring; and Dad was expending quite a lot of energy pretending that our family wasn’t in complete chaos. And of course there was me, not expending much energy at all staring down at my meat and poking it with my spoon.

Unlike our last awkward family dinner, noone tried to make conversation. We were all too wrapped up in our own problems – and each others’ – to use any energy on polite banter. It was a huge effort for me, and I was sure for the other four, to even show up at a family event.

So when the phone rang in the middle of the meal, everyone rose. April ended up the only one not to sit down with a sheepish look on her face. She ran to get the cordless from where it sat by the couch in the living room.

"Hello?" She listened for a moment. "I’m fine, thanks. Yeah, he’s here, but he’s eating. Can he call you back? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Dad, can you get me a pencil and paper?"

My father looked relieved to have something to do, and scurried around the kitchen like a paranoid mouse.

Lily stared across the table at me, her eyes vacant. I smiled weakly, and she managed to twitch the corners of her mouth upward in response. My eyes darted over to my mother, but she was still engrossed in her food. I wondered if she was using more calories worrying about what to do if she made eye contact with one of us than she was taking in eating her rubbery pork chop, but I decided not to conduct an experiment.

Dad returned to the table, having accomplished his mission, and took a big, overzealous bite of his food. He almost spit it back out, I could tell by the way he held his napkin to his mouth, but decided not to. Mom was usually a good cook, but lately I guess she’d been too tense to worry about food. Dad’s eyes darted around as he chewed laboriously, as if to see if anyone had noticed his discomfort. He shot me a slight smile when he saw me looking. I didn’t smile back.

April sat back down, but unlike Dad she didn’t make any move to eat. Instead, she turned to me. "That was some guy named Peter. Says he wants to talk to you. He left his number." She took a sip from her glass of water. "It sounded pretty urgent."

I had an idea of what the call was about. I smiled feebly at April across the table. "I’ll call him back tonight sometime," I promised. But I knew I wouldn’t keep that promise. I didn’t need to listen to Pete yell at me over the phone. He’d undoubtedly let his opinions be heard at school the next day, whether I called him back or not.

As it turned out, I was only half-right. He would let his opinions be heard, but it would be long before the bell rang the next morning.

It was about 9 o’clock when the doorbell rang. Lily was watching the television screen again, knitting something with bright green yarn. April was sprawled out on the couch in the living room, her headphones on, reading Pride and Prejudice for what I’m sure was the tenth time. Mom and Dad had gone out to the store, or at least that was their excuse. I had the sneaking suspicion that they were out somewhere talking about us, about what to do with our family.

I was in the kitchen at the time, leaning on the counter, eating a bowl of cereal and reading over my notes on the Constitutional Amendments.

April was the one who got the door. I heard her in the front hall, laughing and talking to whomever it was who’d shown up. I looked up when I heard them approaching my post, a smile on my face ready for whichever of April’s friends had shown up this time.

I wasn’t prepared to see Peter Edward Blackman standing front of me. It wasn’t a welcome sight.

April grabbed her novel and Discman and left the living room, I suppose to give us privacy.
Pete watched her leave, then walked around the room divider and grabbed my arm, hard. "We need to talk, buddy. Where’s the closest door outside?"

I jerked my head to the back door on my left. He dragged me to it, flung it open, and shut it behind us. Grabbing my throat, Peter pinned me to the wall of the house.

"Did I tell you to stay away from her?" he hissed. "I could have sworn that I did. So how the hell did you manage to upset her this afternoon, if you were staying away from her like I told you?"

I stared into his eyes. They were the eyes of an animal, wild and cold. I remembered reading somewhere that you should never look a strange animal in the face, or it would attack. I looked away, over Pete’s shoulder and onto the deserted street.

Peter wasn’t happy. "I said, how did you get Ashley’s panties in a knot if you haven’t been going near her?" I still said nothing. He squeezed my throat harder, his other hand holding my wrists above my head. "Answer me!" he barked.

"She called me," I sputtered, struggling to breathe. "She wanted to talk. You were at practice. I said something stupid. I’ll apologize, if you let me. You won’t have to hear about it anymore. And I’ll never take a call from her again, I promise." I was pleading with him now, begging him for my life. But something deep inside me knew that no matter what I said, he would do the same thing.

He lifted me a couple inches off the ground and dropped me again, twisting my arms above me. "She says you were talking about me, calling me evil. You jealous, Colin? Are you jealous of me?" He was breathing hard, his grip on my throat ever-tighter. "Are you trying to steal my girl, Colin?" I gave no answer. He let go of me completely and stepped away. In that split second, I had the opportunity to run.

But I stayed.

And because I stayed, I was able to experience the pain of the punches that he pounded into my chest, knocking me to the ground in two swift strikes. He stepped on my groin, grinding the heal of his sneaker into it. I let out a gasp, still struggling to breathe. He kicked me in the face. I felt my nose bend to the side, and I swore I heard it creak from the effort of not breaking.

Peter stepped away and grabbed my arm, pulling me up. He slammed me against the wall again and resumed his old position, holding my throat and hands, one knee on my chest, pinning me to the side of the house. "When I say not to talk to my girl, you don’t talk to my girl. Capice, York?"

I couldn’t nod, and I certainly couldn’t speak, so there was no way for me to respond to him. But he must have been satisfied by my silence, because he stepped away, then turned around and walked down the street. Only it wasn’t really a walk, it was more of a swagger, as though he knew he’d won.

For the first time in my life, I felt true, honest hatred.

November 6th: The Thrill of the Fight

2004-11-06T20:27:00.000-08:00

I don’t believe we’d ever had a family meeting before that night. Information was passed on through private conversations. So it felt even more awkward than it probably would in the first place to be sitting on the couch with Lily, April in a chair across from us, and Mom and Dad sitting unnaturally straight-backed in the two brown leather recliners.

"Colin," Mom said finally, "did you give Lily heroin tonight? Between dinner and when I walked into your room?"

I shook my head, but didn’t explain. I didn’t want to incriminate April, even if it would mean getting me at least partially out of hot water.

I didn’t have to worry. "I did," my sister spoke up shakily. My parents turned to her, raising their eyebrows. "I gave her a needle. She needed it. She’s not in detox yet! We can’t expect her to get clean suddenly. And if we do, don’t expect me to watch it."

I looked at Lily, who was being talked about like she wasn’t there. But then, she looked like she wasn’t there, too. She had a distant, faraway expression on her face, and her eyes were cast down, watching her fingers play with the hem of her skirt.

My mother’s voice was shaky when she said, "Okay, then. That’s settled. Now Colin, can you tell us why you were keeping Lily’s drugs for her? Or is that all April’s fault, too?"

I knew my answer had to be short, sweet, and provable. Mom was angry, I could tell that much by the very careful, quiet way she spoke.

"I stole it from her last night, after I left the dinner table. Not to use it, just to keep it away from her. When I got home from school today, she asked where it was. She’d already asked April, I guess, and had reached the conclusion that I was the one who’d taken it." I paused to catch my breath. "I told her no for a long time before I told her yes. The only reason I went and got it was the same was what April just said – I don’t want to have to see her suffer. You can’t expect me to be able to do that."

My mother sighed, then turned her attentions to Lily. "Is that true?"

Lily didn’t respond.

"Lily," Mom said sharply, and my sister sat up straight on the couch, jolted out of her daydream. "Is what Colin just said true?"

Lily looked over at me, her eyes pleading for me to tell her what she should say. I wanted to be able to tell her, but I knew if Mom caught me it would be like an admission of guilt. So, desperately, I faked a sneeze, then nodded my head vigorously as if trying to shake whatever it was away.

"Yes, of course," Lily managed, still somewhat dazed. "Colin wouldn’t lie, would he?" She pulled up one sleeve and ran her fingers lightly over the needle marks.

Mom sat back in her chair, seemingly relaxed for the first time since Lily had arrived. We sat there for a long time, watching her but pretending not to. I could feel Lily shivering next to me. I watched the hands of my watch turn around the glowing face. It was only then that I realized none of the living room lights were on.

Finally Mom sat up, her posture perfect again, and attempted a tight-lipped smile. "Lily," she said quietly. Lily looked at her, her expression pleading and exhausted. "Lily, you start detox on Monday."

I focused on April, crying silently across the room. I knew if I looked at Lily even once, I would fall apart.

"I don’t want to talk about it," I said, slamming my door in April’s face.

She banged on it, once, twice, three times. "Colin, open this fucking door or I’m going to just have to yell through it."

I sat down, leaning against the door, tears running down my face. "Start yelling."

I heard her sigh, but there were no more words. After about ten minutes, I thought she might have gotten up and left, though I hadn’t heard any footsteps. I opened the door one cautious inch, peering through. The coast looked clear....

I was suddenly slammed into the wall, full force, sandwiched between it and the door. April slammed the door behind her and took my former position leaning against it. "I’m not leaving until you tell me what I’m supposed to do."

It was then that I realized that April felt just the way I did – angry, confused, and the slightest bit crazy. "God, Ape, I don’t know," I mumbled, rubbing my head with my hand. "Maybe detox is what she needs, you know? Maybe that’s the only thing that’s going to work. We’re sure not working."

She looked like I’d just slapped her. All the color drained from her face. "But..." She paused, squeezed her eyes shut, opened them, and tried again. "But why aren’t we working, Colin? Why will detox work and not us?"

I rubbed my teary eyes with my right hand and thought about it. I’d asked myself that question so many times, but I’d never been able to find the answer. Somehow, though, it came to me this time.

"Because we love her, April."

She stared at me for a moment, her eyes wide, then got up and left the room.

The next day I didn’t bother to look for Ashley at school. I wasn’t so stupid that I couldn’t figure out when someone was avoiding me. It felt lonely, walking my normal route through the hallways instead of moseying past her locker, hoping she’d look up and say hi.

So after the long day, I was extremely surprised to hear her voice on the end of the phone when I picked it up.

"Hey, Colin."

"Hi!" I began the walk to my room with the cordless phone in hand. I didn’t want to be interrupted by another outburst of melodrama from my family. "What’s up?"

I saw Lily sitting in front of the television in the family room, staring at the blank screen. The damned thing wasn’t even on. I wondered what she was thinking about, sitting all alone on that grimy leather love seat that always felt the tiniest bit moldy. I wondered if she was thinking about detox, about being clean, about whether or not she could do it.

I hoped she could do it. But somehow I wasn’t convinced.

"Not much," Ashley responded. "Mom’s at work, again, and Pete’s at football practice, and Ardith is at a friend’s... So I’m alone. And bored. And counting on you to make me not bored."

I laughed, ascending the stairs. "That’s kind of a tall order, don’t you think? But I’ll try. How would you like to be entertained, my lady?"

She laughed. "Tell me a story. A happy one. Where everyone lives happily ever after," she said in a sing-song.

I opened the door to my room and closed it behind me. "Once upon a time," I began, "there was a beautiful princess."

"What was her name?" Ashley asked, still in a little girl voice.

I grinned, falling back onto the bed. "Ashes. Her name was Ashes. This princess has the perfect boyfriend – he was a football player, big and burly, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly." I wanted to play to her fantasies of Pete. I didn’t want to hurt her because of some stupid not-quite-faery tale. So I continued. "She had another friend, too, named Corin, and he thought she was an amazingly beautiful girl." Ashley laughed, a tad nervously, but though I sensed the tension I didn’t stop. "One day, the princess was bored. So she called up Corin on the telephone, and he told her a story."

"What was the story about?" she asked, playful again.

"It was about when things don’t always end happily ever after, because people who you don’t think would hurt a fly hurt something a lot more important." Suddenly I didn’t care about the tension, or about playing into her fantasies. I wanted to tell her the truth, my truth, the truth of who Pete was. "It was about how beautiful girls shouldn’t let themselves get hurt by other, bigger people."

She sighed. "Colin, stop. I don’t want to hear it. Why do you have to be just like everyone else? Pete loves me. He’s stupid sometimes, but when he thinks about it he always feels terrible. And he always apologizes, always, and he cries sometimes. He really is sorry, Colin. And he really does love me." She sighed again, breathing hard. I thought I heard her crying a bit, but I wasn’t sure.

"I’m not just like everyone else, okay? I just want you to be happy. And you deserve more than this guy, Ashley, you deserve –"

"What?" She cut me off, her voice bitter. "What do I deserve? My friend Corin, who things I’m amazingly beautiful? Grow up, Colin. Why are you so jealous? Why is everyone so jealous?"

I sat up on the bed, pounding my fist into it. "I’m not jealous of him, Ashley. At first I was. But not anymore. Why would I want to be a guy who beats on his girlfriend? And he does, doesn’t he? He beats you."

"Colin..." she said, her tone shaky and spiteful at the same time.

"What?" I demanded.

"Fuck you."

Before I could get another word out, she had hung up.

I lay on my bed for a long time, tears running down my cheeks, trying to decide whom I was more angry with: Ashley or myself.

November 5th: Heroin Girl

2004-11-05T23:06:00.000-08:00

I set my path to go by Ashley’s locker the next morning. I don’t know if I just wanted to tempt fate, or if I just hadn’t taken the warning Pete had given me seriously. Either way, I found my way there ten minutes before the bell was set to ring, both arms hanging on tightly to a spiral notebook.

"Morning," I said, tapping her on the shoulder. She tensed at my touch, turning around quickly to face me. She smiled weakly, her eyes darting around nervously as if she expected some masked men to walk up right behind me and grab me.

"Hey, Colin!" The corners of her mouth twitched. "Pete says he talked to you last night. Said the two of you have a real understanding. He really is glad that you forgive him about yesterday, it means a lot to him... To both of us, actually." She slammed the door to her locker shut, still looking tense and nervous. "Listen, I have to go," she said quickly. "See you."

She darted off down the hall before I could say another word. I watched her back disappear down the corridor, frowning. There was something wrong with this picture. Something very, very wrong.

I looked across the crowded cafeteria, scanning the huddled groups of people for Ashley and Peter. I couldn’t find either of them. I must have looked at the occupant of every seat twice, and still there was no sign of them. It made me edgy, though I wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe I was still disturbed from this morning, from Ashley’s jumpiness and her allusions to the apology I’d never made. Maybe I was still upset with Peter for being the person I wanted to be. Whatever it was, something didn’t seem right when I couldn’t find them.

I burst out onto the lawn, thinking maybe they had come outside to eat – though I doubted it, judging by Peter’s outburst the day before. There was no sign of them anywhere. I took off at a trot to search the student parking lot. But when I reached it, they were nowhere to be found.
I was scared then, more than anything. Scared to death that something terrible had happened, though I couldn’t think what. I’d seen Ashley just that morning. Nothing too awful could have happened since then, could it have? I wasn’t sure.

I don’t think I would have been so nervous if it had been anyone else. And I mean anyone else – any and all other crushes I’d had over the years included. Ashley was the most neurotic, insecure person I had ever met. And Peter was beginning to seem a bit too controlling, a bit too demanding. It wasn’t a healthy relationship for Ashley at all. I didn’t want her to be lost, least of all with him. I wanted to know where she was, to be able to see her and keep an eye on her, to make sure he didn’t hurt her.

I spent my lunch period in the parking lot, leaning sitting on the curb and nibbling an egg salad sandwich that April had made me take, siting eggs as a good source of protein and saying I looked pale lately. Every time someone walked past I jumped. I laughed when I caught myself doing that, saying to myself, "And I think Ashley is neurotic." But it wasn’t really funny at all.
About as funny as the war zone I returned home to find.

The house was quiet. Now, my family isn’t the largest out there, but between the five of us we make a fair amount of noise. So it was always surprising to enter the house when it was completely still and silent. It just didn’t seem right. Especially not that day, a day when Lily and April were both supposed to be home.

"Hello?" I called into the emptiness. There was no answer. I took a step into the kitchen, setting my bag down by the back door.

Suddenly I saw a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye. I jumped, turning towards it and peering into the living room. It took a moment for my eyes to recognize the figure seated there. It was Lily , perched on the corner of the couch. I flicked on the light and walked into the living room. From there I could see that her face drained was completely of its colour and her eyes were bloodshot.

"Where have you hidden it, Colin?" she asked softly. Her knuckles were turning white from gripping her knees. She was so thin she could almost fit her whole hand around one. It was the saddest sight I had seen in a long time. I turned away.

"I asked where you’ve hidden it," she spat, her voice bitter and stronger than before. "Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, Colin!" She was angry, seething angry. A single stream of tears flowed down her face. "Colin," she said again, quietly, "please let me have it back. I’ll give you anything, anything at all, if you’ll just give it back to me."

"What makes you think I have it, Lily? Have you asked April? Have you asked your parents? Or do you just assume it’s me?" I knew it was wrong to lead her on, to make like I didn’t have it, but I didn’t see myself as having much of a choice. I couldn’t bring myself to give it back to her. It hurt too much to think of that, of putting the very thing that had ruined all of our lives back into her hands.

Her lip quivered. "Colin, I don’t want to play games with you, okay? I know April doesn’t have it. I know Mom and Dad don’t have it. I know you have it. Give it back, please give it back."
I wanted to cry, seeing her like this. But I wouldn’t let myself, couldn’t let myself. "I can’t, Lil. I can’t." I bit my lip and stared up at the ceiling. I saw her rise, shakily, and stumble towards me.

Her icy fingers suddenly gripped my arm. "Colin," she pleaded. I focused on her face, on her tired eyes brimming with tears, and felt I was going to vomit. "Colin, it hurts. I can’t do this. I need it, don’t you understand? You can’t just hide it from me. I can’t get clean, Colin. It hurts too much, being clean." She was incoherent in her need, her eyes flickering as she changed from pleading for my sympathy to demanding that I give it back. But I couldn’t, didn’t she understand that? I couldn’t put the poison back in her hands.

"Lily, stop it. Please. You can do this, you can get clean, people do it every day." I suddenly felt just as desperate as I imagined she might have, though for me it was opposite reasons. "Lily, I want you to be happy, can’t you see that? I want you to be happy, and to live without it, to be able to live without it. I don’t want you to be this way without it, shaking and cold and weak and hurting. I want you to live, Lil. You’re not doing that right now. This isn’t living. I promise, living doesn’t hurt this much..."

Her freezing arms wrapped around me, holding me close. I remembered her hug just two days before, so strong and confident. That wasn’t the way it was anymore. She operated on a different system without the drugs. She was like the ghost of Lily, a cold and empty spirit.

"Colin," she whispered in my ear, "please."

If she’d given up, I could have held my ground. But that last please was so pathetic, so pained, that I knew I couldn’t keep it from her. "I’ll be right back," I murmured, guiding her to the couch. She curled up in a ball, trembling with the pain. I ran down the hall and up the stairs to my room, desperately trying to dig the bag out from behind my bed. I heard the door creak open as I struggled to pry the bed away from the wall. I assumed it was Lily, following me. "It’s okay, Lil, I’ll have it out for you in a second, go lie down," I said soothingly.

"Thanks, but I’m good. I’m not really into drugs."

I knew from the first word that I was in trouble. April’s tone was angrier than I’d ever heard. I turned around slowly, the ripped plastic bag full of supplies in my hands, caught with Lily’s dirty laundry.

I heard the argument start downstairs as soon as my parents got home. April’s screaming could be heard above the dulled voices of the other three, shrill and sharp. Even from my bedroom I could hear her, and I could even catch a few distinct words – "heroin" and "Colin", mostly. The discussion seemed to be centering upon the idea that I was hiding Lily’s drugs for her and not from her. I had the urge a couple of times to fling open the door, run downstairs, and set things straight, but something in me told me to wait.

Lily stumbled into my room at around ten o’clock, as I pretended to focus on my statistics homework. I turned my chair to face her and she leaned against the wall by the door and sank down.

"I just shot up a few minutes ago, in case you were wondering. April snuck me a needle. Not something I’d expect, but she’s surprising sometimes." Her voice sounded as exhausted as she looked. "God, Colin, I’m so sorry. I’ve gotten in you in deep water, haven’t I?"

I shrugged, though inside I was fuming with her. She had, hadn’t she? She’d completely blown it for me. Suddenly I was the enemy, I was the source of this terrible problem. I was the evil that drove Lily to her habits. I might as well have been the anti-Christ, for all that my family thought I had done. But I put on a calm voice, if only for Lily. "It’s okay, Lil. I’ll be fine. It’ll blow over. It’ll all work out okay, don’t worry."

I couldn’t believe that was even coming out of my mouth. Of course it wouldn’t be okay. How could it be? My parents thought I was some evil, drug-dealing psychopath. My sister thought I was a liar and an evil, drug-dealing psychopath. And my other sister, what did it matter what she thought? She was a neurotic junkie who had trouble dealing with real life. I couldn’t count on her opinion to bring me much good.

"You’re lying." She didn’t sound like someone fishing for assurance, accusing people to see what they’d say. She really believed her convictions. And what could I say? She was right. I was lying. It wasn’t going to be alright, I had just thought it myself. I didn’t even believe what I was telling her, and yet I was hurt when she accused me of lying. How dare she! How dare this smack addict point out my character flaws!

Just as I was getting really worked up, I heard a knock on the door. "Come in," I grunted.

The door flew open, and Mom stepped in. "What’s going on, Colin?" she asked gently. Then she saw Lily, looking what surely was leaps and bounds better than she had just moments before. I’m sure she guessed that Lily had gotten her fix.

The cloud that passed over her face at that moment was only the beginning of the storm that was to come.

November 4th: Pumped Up

2004-11-04T19:43:00.000-08:00

"Hey."

I turned around and smiled, though I didn’t feel much like smiling. "Hi Ashley." I closed my locker and started off down the hallway. Even Ashley wasn’t enough motivation to converse.
But she didn’t want to be shaken off. She fell into step with me, walking down the hallway.

"Listen, I’m sorry about yesterday. Pete said he thought you were uncomfortable. So, if I did make you uncomfortable or anything, I’m sorry."

I shrugged. "Nah, I wasn’t. Don’t worry about it, okay? I just have a lot of crap on my mind."
"Mmm," she replied, nodding. "Hey, let’s you and me do lunch alone today. Pete can sit with his football buddies or something. I want to get to know you better."

I almost fell over. That may sound cliche and stupid, but this time it was actually true. My feet were suddenly in the way of each other, tangling up whenever I took a step. "Sure," I managed, paying close attention to my footwork. "That sounds great."

She grinned. "Alright. Hey, maybe while we’re at it you can tell me some of that crap that’s sitting on your mind."

"Maybe," I said, smiling weakly.

I didn’t mean it, but somehow it happened anyway.

"And then last night, she comes in and we talk about it... And suddenly I’m not seeing it like before." I sighed into my can of Dr. Pepper. "She’s not any different, really, except she’s a lot sadder than she used to be. I don’t want this to get any worse, but... I don’t know what I can do." I sighed, looking down at the lawn beneath me. Ashley and I had decided to eat outside, because we both thought we could use the fresh air. "Besides," she’d added when I proposed the idea, "it’s beautiful out in the autumn."

Ashley looked at me earnestly. "Wow. You really do have a load on your mind." She sighed, biting into an apple. "How long’s she been doing junk?"

"Three months, give or take a week or two."

She whistled through her teeth. "That’s not good, Colin.... That’s really not good. Has she been in rehab?"

I shook my head. "That’s what my parents are going to try next." I picked up my soda can and took a long drink. "Is it wrong of me to say that I don’t think it’ll work?"

Ashley looked at me sadly. "No, not wrong. Honest, maybe. Not wrong."

"Then call me honest and pray for me," I muttered.

She drummed her fingers on the grass. "Have you ever asked her why she started, way back when?" Ashley’s eyes were intent on mine, but despite her fierceness she still appeared that she was ready to cry any minute. "Maybe if you could figure that out... Then you could figure how to make her stop."

I raised my eyebrows. "That’s actually not a bad –"

I was cut off by Pete’s harsh voice. "What are you doing here, Ash? Why aren’t you inside?" I could tell he was trying to sound like he wasn’t angry, but he wasn’t doing a very good job.

Ashley immediately went red. "Oh gosh, Peter, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. You aren’t mad, are you? Come on, let’s go inside. Colin doesn’t mind, does you Colin? Let’s go eat inside." Her voice was strained, and the tears that had been apparent to me throughout the period suddenly spilled down her cheeks.

Peter made a grunting noise that sounded incredibly animalistic. "I don’t care whether or not Colin minds. Why are you around Colin so much, anyway?" He grabbed Ashley by her wrist. "Come on, we’re going inside. Get your stuff."

"But –" she started, but her cut her off with a fierce look.

"I’m sorry," she whispered to me as she picked up what remained of her lunch. "It’ll blow over, I promise." But from the look on Peter’s face, I doubted that it ever would.

I finished my lunch alone on the grass, trying not to think about what had just happened. But everything I could find to think about seemed to connect with Ashley.

"Are you okay?" It was Ashley’s voice, the very last I expected to hear when I picked up the phone.

I shook my head quickly. "Yeah, I’m fine... Are you? Are things okay with you and Pete?"

"Um, yeah!" The happy tone she was using sounded forced. "Yeah, he was just really anxious about the game tonight. After the rain check last night, he’s not sure he can get himself pumped up again."

The excuse didn’t fit. Why would a rain check make Peter angry with his girlfriend? What was the connection? But I said nothing. Maybe it was just the football-anger I had thought of the day before. Maybe Ashley was right.

"Oh," I said. "Okay. Does he do stuff like that often? Yell and things?"

I thought I heard her sigh. "Well, sometimes, but he always makes up for it. Roses and candy and cards and the rest. He’s real sweet, Pete. He wouldn’t hurt a fly."

Somehow I wasn’t convinced.

We talked for a few more minutes about school and home. Just when she was getting into the story of her little sister, Ardith’s, school play, I got a beep from call waiting.

"Give me a second, okay? I have another call." I switched over, hoping it was important enough to be worth interrupting my conversation for.

"Leave her alone, Colin."

It took me a moment to recognize the threatening voice. "Peter?"

"Yeah, it’s me. Leave Ashley alone. She doesn’t like you. Stay away from her, or you’ll get hurt. It’s that simple."

I was just about to ask him to repeat that when I heard him hang up.

I sat in shock for a moment before switching back to Ashley’s line. "Hey, sorry about that."

"Oh, it’s fine," she said. "Is everything okay?"

I thought for a moment about telling her, I really did. I wanted her to know. I wanted her to find out that Peter was a threatening jerk. But I couldn’t say that to her, could I? She wouldn’t believe me, and Peter just might carry out on his threat if he caught wind of what I’d been spreading around. On the other hand, what if noone ever told her? What if she stayed with this guy, married him even, and never found out that for years he’d been pushing other guys away from her?

"Colin?" She sounded worried. I had to say something.

"Yeah, of course. So, tell me about Ardith."

The dinner scene that night was tense. Lily was sitting at one end of the table, as far from April as she could get. I was in the middle, to the right of April, shoved against the china cabinet. Mom and Dad sat on the other side, stern faces staring at something above my head.

"So," Mom said, putting on a cheer just as fake as the one I’d heard Ashley use earlier, "who wants some chicken?"

I watched as the plate was passed around. Lily glared at April when our parents weren’t looking, and April flipped the bird in return. Lily’s eyebrows raised, her mouth opened to say something, but then she decided not to. Mom kept one eye on Lily and one on her food, and Dad did the same with April.

Even if they hadn’t heard the screaming match earlier, anyone would know at this point that Lily and April were arguing.

After ten minutes of everyone chewing silently, April tried to strike up a conversation. "So, Colin, how was school?" she asked.

I shrugged, my eyes focused on my meal. "Wasn’t bad. There’s a big football game tonight everyone’s stressed about. I can’t go though. Too much homework." The truth was, I hardly had any homework, but I wasn’t about to show up if Peter would be there – which, being on the team, I was sure he would.

"Oh, that’s too bad honey. Maybe you can make the next one," Mom said gently. I smiled testily. I knew why the conversation was on me as well as they did – because noone wanted to talk about Lily and April. I wasn’t thrilled by the attention, but I didn’t much want to be caught in the middle of another argument, myself.

I shoveled some chicken into my mouth and turned my attentions to Lily. She had always been pale and scrawny, but now she looked more deathly and thin than she ever had before, and more tired too. It was sad, what the heroin had done to her. She wore long sleeves to cover the needle marks, and it was obvious that she was conscious of them by the way she kept pulling her sleeves down to cover her whole arm. She needed to re-dye her roots (she’d been coloring her hair black since she was in the eighth grade), but I guess when you’re constantly worrying about getting a fix you don’t worry too much about whether or not your hair is slightly off-colour, so I knew I wouldn’t say anything.

I looked over at April. She was tanner than Lily or I, with dark brown hair and chocolate eyes. She wore too much makeup sometimes and her hair was always hanging in her face, but she was generally pretty. She’d put on some weight these past few years, too, but it didn’t show much in her face. April had always had a thin face.

Her eyes rose and caught mine, and she raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows. I shook my head, turning my eyes away. I could feel that she was still watching me, though.

I scraped back my chair. "I’m going to go get started on my homework," I announced. My family nodded almost in unison, the only thing they’d seemed to do as one in weeks.
I headed upstairs, but I didn’t go to my desk immediately. Instead, I stopped in Lily’s room. I pulled out her sock drawer and dug deep inside. She’d hid things in the same place since our childhood. Sure enough, I felt a plastic bag under my fingers. I took it out and picked it up, not wanting to look inside. I knew if I let my eyes fall on the needles that my fingertips felt, I would have a nervous breakdown then and there. So I took the bag, without looking, to my room, and shoved it into the hollow space I carved out in the back of my bedside table long years ago.

I knew that what I had just done would cause an uproar. But I had no idea just how huge that uproar would be.

November 3rd: Confessions

2004-11-03T20:47:00.000-08:00

I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know why I remember that so clearly, but I do. I remember sitting on my bed, wearing a cheap white t-shirt and a pair of boxers, and staring at the moon. And though I don’t want to, I also remember that I cried.

It wasn’t just that Ashley had a boyfriend, or even that said boyfriend was also a charismatic, well-rounded, perfect boyfriend. It wasn’t that Lily was on whatever she was on, or that she was home. It wasn’t that April had finally cracked open a little bit, had finally let me inside of her head. And it certainly wasn’t just the frustration that came from my insomnia.

No, it was a little bit of all of those things. And something more, a creeping loneliness that I couldn’t get rid of. In all my life, I had never before felt so lonely. It was hellish, sitting there by myself, knowing that I would always be alone. I realized for the first time that night what a saddening, draining emotion loneliness is.

The knock on my door saved me. I knew even then that it had saved me, though from what I couldn’t tell you. Myself, perhaps. My own thoughts were my biggest saboteur these days, the thing that stood firmest between me and my happiness. Being startled out of them was a blessing, though I wasn’t entirely thrilled with who stepped in when the door creaked open.
"Don’t worry," Lily whispered through the dark, "I’m sober. I’m not here to fuck with your head, Col. I wanted to talk. Like before."

Lily had never been as close to me as April, that much was obvious. But before she’d gone wild, we’d always had a good talk every once in awhile. It always struck me as odd, because during the day Lily was always so bubbly and cheerful. It was only during our midnight discussions that I saw the deeper, more serious side of her. I would never have admitted it to her, but I looked forward to talking to her. I’d missed that while she was away, more than almost anything else.

I nodded, though I knew she probably couldn’t see me. "Yeah, me too."

I heard her sit down on the floor near my bed. "I don’t think you’re too thrilled that I’m home," she said, straight off. I sat back for a moment, stunned. I was so used to the tip-toeing that my family had been doing around the subject of Lily that hearing her invite a conversation on the subject was a shock to me.

"I’m scared that you’re home," I said finally, trying to be careful with my words. "Not of you. I’m scared that... That we won’t be good enough to help you. That all this crap you’ve been doing is going to get worse. That you’re going to do more. Having you here is like a constant reminder that... Maybe we’re not good enough. Maybe I’m not good enough."

What I heard next was something I’d never expected. There was a choked sob from near the door, then a little girl voice saying, "Is that what you really think, Colin? That all this is your problem? Do you think that I’m a problem?"

"I don’t!" I said quickly, too quickly maybe. I paused for a second to collect my thoughts. "I don’t think you’re a problem, Lily. I don’t think that it’s my fault, either. I do think that you have a problem, and that maybe I’m contributing to it." I sighed. "Lily, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. I love you, okay? That’s what I’m saying. And I want you to be happy, I want you not to need this anymore."

I waited for a response, but none came. So I went on. "Lily, I’d give you anything to make you stop. I would. I would die to make you happy, if that’s what it took. But you’re not letting me know what you need to stop. You’re not letting me know what I can do." I felt the night’s earlier tears returning to my eyes. "I want to help you, but I can’t, and it scares me."

Neither of us spoke for a long time. I had a feeling that I wasn’t the only one crying in that darkness, though. I watched the numbers tick by, glowing red on the digital clock at my bedside.
"Its not even fun anymore," she said suddenly, rushed, like she had to get the words out before they were lost. "I used to say, ‘Oh, I want to have some fun tonight. Maybe I’ll get a little high.’ Now it’s not ‘I want to have fun’. It’s ‘I’m bored’ or ‘I’m sad’ or ‘I had an amazing day’ or ‘This hurts’. I feel like everyone else has all these different responses, one for everything, a coping method or whatever for every feeling. But all I have is smoking, shooting up, whatever the way is to get the drug of the day." There was more sobbing. "Oh, Colin, I have no idea what to do with myself. I want to get help, but when I stop it hurts everywhere, not just in my body but in my head. And I want April to understand but she doesn’t, and neither do Mom and Dad, and the only people who seem to understand what I feel are my pals at Grandpa and Grandma’s who are just as far in as I am." She let out a long, shaking breath. "This used to be fun. Not just the drugs, but the living too. I used to love waking up in the morning, that feeling that I was alive. Now I just want to die, all the time; I want to disappear."

It didn’t take long for me to come up with a response that time. "I don’t want you to disappear, Lil." And then I rose from the bed and felt my way to her, sitting near the door. I gave her the tightest hug I knew how to give and when she fell asleep with her head on my shoulder, I didn’t bother to wake her.

November 2nd: Return of the Prodigal Daughter

2004-11-02T21:01:00.000-08:00

I felt like an idiot sitting alone in the cafeteria, which felt lonely without the chattering of my peers. I craned my neck around a giant stone column to see the door. I watched for what felt like hours, though my watch told me it was only six minutes, and felt my elation slipping out like a balloon every time the door swung open and Ashley didn’t walk through.

I’d just about given up on her when someone tapped me on the shoulder. "Hey Colin." I turned my head with a jolt, surprised by the sudden greeting, and relaxed when I saw that it was Ashley.

"You snuck up on me," I laughed. I could hear my heart beating, and knew it wasn’t all from the surprise. "I was looking for you." I screwed open a bottle of Dr. Pepper and poured some of the soda down my throat.

She grinned. "There’s a back door through the kitchen. Pete’s aunt’s the cook, so we always go through there." I struggled not to cough my soda back up. For a second there, I had almost forgotten she had a boyfriend. There were no worries of that anymore as she lifted her arm and waved to someone across the room.

A handsome, grinning guy lumbered over to where we sat and passed me to kiss Ashley. "Hey babe," he said, grabbing the chair next to her and sitting down. He then turned his attentions to me. "Hey! You’re that soccer-boy she was talking about." He stuck out his hand, and I noticed that even his fingers looked muscular. "Pete Blackman. Peter Edward if you’re my grandmother. Which unless I’m mistaken, I don’t think you are."

I nodded stupidly, slipping my hand into his firm grip. "Uh, no, I’m not," I stuttered after a moment. I was truly bowled over by this guy. I’d wanted to hate him right off the bat, because it would have been easier to pity myself if I could only loathe Ashley’s boyfriend. But in truth, he was likable. Incredibly likable. And that, more than anything, bothers me now – my first impressions were so far from the truth. I fell for what he wanted me to fall for.... Just like Ashley.

But back then I knew nothing of Peter’s secrets and the frights to come. So I ate my cold slice of pizza in peace, listening to Ashley and Pete banter on about who was going to win the big game that night between Hill and our main rival, Lincoln High. I’d never seen anyone with quite as much adrenaline as Peter. When he talked about Lincoln, his fists pounded the table, as if the poor dented plastic was the chest of one of the players. I’d never understood the violence of football rivals when it came to off the field banter. It was like they couldn’t turn the anger off.

It seemed somewhat dangerous to me, that aggression, but I shut myself up with another bite and a good look at Ashley’s face.

She had a tiny mole above her lip, right under her right nostril. It contrasted hugely to her skin, which looked as though she hadn’t seen sun in years. Her silvery eyes sparkled when she was happy or interested, and when she laughed they crinkled at the corners. When she was serious, her forehead creased in concentration and her haphazardly-plucked eyebrows drew together. Her face expressed her emotion so freely. That attracted me, though I couldn’t tell you why. It was something so rare anymore, when everyone seemed to wear masks.

Peter’s hand tapped mine, snapping me out of my thoughts. "Hey, Colin, what do you think?"
I must have looked as confused as I felt, because Ashley smiled and explained, "Pete wants to know if you think we should change our mascot." She paused, then mouthed, "Say yes."

"Um..." I stalled. "What to?"

"Anything but a llama," Ashley said, rolling her eyes. "I keep telling him, who but us would dare show their faces when known as the Hill Crest Llamas? But this boy won’t listen to reason and evidently has no sense of pride."

I saw Pete’s mouth twitch and his nostrils flared for a second, but the apparent anger was gone as quickly as it had come. "Llamas are perfectly respectable creatures, Ashley. And their football team kicks ass." He pumped his fist in the air out of what I assumed was sheer Llama pride.

Ashley grinned. "Mmm, well, the nickelback does, anyhow." She leaned her head onto his shoulder and closed her eyes. I felt uncomfortable suddenly, like there wasn’t quite as much air around as I needed. It took me a second before I realized that there was nothing truly wrong with me – I was just jealous. I hated the envy I was suddenly seeing in myself. It wasn’t right. I was already changing because of this girl, and I hardly even knew her.

The bell rang before I could do or say anything embarrassing. Pete lifted Ashley’s head off of his shoulder and took her hand as they rose in perfect unison. If I hadn’t been sitting right there watching it, I would have sworn that it was a scene from a badly-scripted teen movie. As it was I stood, exchanging good-byes with Pete and Ashley, threw my trash away, and said a prayer for my sanity as I headed to my next class.

If I had known then what I know now, that day would have been uncomparably different. But maybe its best that things happened the way they did, at least at that point. If I had known in the very beginning that we would lose Ashes, I may never have let myself get to know her like I did.

I slammed the car door. "Drive," I commanded. April didn’t ask, just took off down the street.

"What’s up?" she asked when we were a safe distance from home. A safe distance from Lily’s car in the drive, out of storage for the first time in months, and her suitcases on the front porch.

"I think you know." I toyed with the handle to the glove compartment. "Noone told me Lily was coming back, that’s what." I grabbed a pad of paper and slammed the compartment shut.

April let out a long, whooshing breath. "It’s just for a month. Trial period and all that." She turned out of our neighborhood onto the main road. "It’s not going to be like before, Colly. I won’t let it be like before, and neither will Mom and Dad."

I tore a piece of paper from the pad and ripped it in half. "Yeah? All three of you will? And where does that put me?" I concentrated on my fingers as I spoke, tearing tiny strips from each piece of paper. "Why am I the only one in this family not in on these sort of things?"

"You’re in high school, Colin," April sighed. "You’re not supposed to have to worry about how to keep your older sister from her drug habits or whether she should come home from the middle of nowhere for a month or whatever." She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel as we waited at a read light. "Don’t be in a rush to grow up, Colin. It’s not that much fun."

I turned in my seat to face her, still ripping up the paper. "I don’t care about fun, okay? I just want to have a say in who lives in our house. I want to have a say in what happens to Lily." I rolled down my window quickly and threw the homemade confetti outside. April made a face at me, her lip quivering slightly, and I knew she was trying not to scream at me. I didn’t care. I wanted an explanation, a good one, and I knew she was the only person who’d ever give me an honest answer.

It came, finally, after fifteen minutes of her driving too fast and breaking one traffic law after another. "After what happened with Lily, Mom and Dad aren’t crazy about the idea of the teenage portions of the family making decisions. She fucked it up for you, okay? Lily fucked it up." She accelerated for seemingly no reason, right in the middle of the street, and braked fast as we neared a stop sign. "It sucks, you being after her. You’re not going to end up like her, Colin. I know that. Mom and Dad know it, too. But they’re not sure. They didn’t think Lily was going to end up the way she did, either. They’re just being careful with you, watching out for you. But they have to watch out for her at the same time."

She sighed again. "Colin, Lily wasn’t any better out there. She landed herself in the hospital with alcohol poisoning last week. That’s the real reason she’s back. She wasn’t getting better, and we missed her. So we brought her back, for the time being. If she doesn’t stay out of shit this month, they’re sending her to a treatment center. I didn’t have a say in that one."

I sat, silent, as April turned around in someone’s driveway and began the drive back home. We were almost on our street before I spoke again.

"It’s not that I don’t want her back. I do. I want it more than anything. But I don’t want this to be like before. I don’t want us to go through that shit again."

April nodded, biting her lower lip. We were turning into our driveway when she finally replied, in a choked voice, "I don’t either, Col." She stopped the engine, but neither of us moved. We stayed completely still until Lily ran out to greet us twenty minutes later, smiling and hugging me so tightly I thought I would suffocate.

I smiled and laughed and hugged back, pretending all the while that I didn’t notice the needle marks on my sister’s frail arms.

November 1st: Let's Start at the Very Beginning

2004-11-01T21:04:00.000-08:00

If in the beginning I had known all the horrors that were to come, had known the look of a body mangled by fire and the horror of sirens sounding in the midnight darkness, I never would have dreamed to call her Ashes. Now all that I can do, watching this blood run down the drain, is wonder what I could have done to stop it.

The death of Ashley MacFarley was only the end of the story. It began in November of my sophomore year, long before I knew the stench of burning human flesh or the shock of being singled out as the one who could have stopped it. It began the day I met Ashes, a day I’ve tried time and again to forget.

It could be coincidence that she tried to slit her wrists the very same day that my eldest sister April accidentally cut herself chopping carrots for dinner. It could also just be chance that we both happened to be in the emergency room at the same time. And I imagine it could also have been a coincidence that she happened to have a smile on her face at the very moment she looked up and met my eye.

But if you ask me, none of it was a coincidence. Everything that happened between Ashes and myself was a miracle, starting from that very first moment.

She looked down almost as quickly as she had looked up, concentrating on the stitches in her arm. The doctor before her was talking to her, holding her left hand in his, and she was nodding. Her grey eyes were focused on the stitches in her milky skin; her hair hanging limply over her shoulders. She looked both childlike and ancient at the same time – innocent, yet wise beyond her years.

When the man ceased in his talking she nodded a final time and stood. She looked up and caught my eyes again, her lips curving into a smile. She walked over to me as I watched the nurse put liquid stitches on my sister’s finger.

"Hey," she murmured, looking at the floor. She cracked her knuckles one by one, her eyes concentrating on her foot sweeping back and forth over the floor before her.

I turned from my sister’s hand to look fully at the girl. She was thin and deathly pale, her body disappearing in the huge black cargo pants and grey t-shirt she wore. Her dirty blonde hair hung in her face and her shoes were scuffed. She looked like the kind of girl you see all the time on TV, the misfit who doesn’t quite understand how the world works.

I stared at the top of her head. "Hey," I replied.

She stuck out her hand, the stitches on her wrist a glaring reminder of her instability. "Ashley," she said, clearly this time. I took it in my own, noticing how cold and bony it felt.

"Colin," I responded. She smiled, the same haunting smile as before, and nodded.

"I go to Hill," she said softly. It took a second for the words to register. When they did, I gave her a doubtful look. Could this girl I’d never seen before really go to my school? "I’ve seen you around," she added, her face flushing. "You play soccer, right?"

I nodded, blushing myself. "To tell you the truth, I –" my confession was cut short by April’s voice. "Let’s go, Colin."

I smiled apologetically at the girl. "I have to go. See you around." I turned and followed my sister, not looking back.

"Someone’s got a girlfriend," April muttered as soon as we were out of the hospital. "What’s up with that chick anyway? Looked like she cut her wrists straight through."

I shrugged, turning my eyes to the asphalt. The truth was, this Ashley girl seemed interesting. I was kind of sick of my sterile, predictable little world. It was nice to meet someone different. "I dunno, Ape," I said, grinning as she swatted at me with one hand, a predictable reaction to my use of her hated nickname. "She’s different, you know? Good-different and bad-different at the same time." I gestured with my hands to the parking lot and the busy road beyond. "I mean, everyone in this town is the same old thing. She doesn’t seem like that."

April fished in her pocket for the keys and shook her hair out of her face. "Jesus Colin, do you want to get a room or something?" She yanked open the car door and climbed inside. I did the same. I looked over at her as I buckled my seatbelt and she grinned at my sullen look. "I’m kidding, kid. If you feel something with her, go after her. Hell, you’re not so bad." She put the car into gear and backed slowly out of the space. "If she doesn’t want you, her loss."
My eyebrows raised so high I thought they’d fall off my forehead. "Was that a compliment, Ape?"

She winked at me as she turned onto the main road. "Nah. Just the truth."
I turned my head toward the window and closed my eyes, hoping that she couldn’t see me smile.

*** *** *** *** *** ***

The next day I prowled the halls in the morning before homeroom, looking for Ashley. A couple times I thought I saw her, but when I saw the girl from a different angle it was never her. Finally I tracked her down in the science wing, pounding her fist furiously into her locker.

"Need some help?"

She jumped, her eyes going wild. I grinned at her. She put one hand to her heart when she saw me. "You scared me," she breathed, smiling in spite of her apparent shock. "Sure, you can try if you want to. I don’t know how you’ll get the damned thing open though. Thirty four, twenty five, two." She watched my fingers dial the numbers on the combination lock. I yanked at the door. It stuck. I braced myself against the locker below hers and pulled with all my strength. I felt something stretching, but didn’t want to humiliate myself by letting go.

There was a bang, and then I was on my backside. Ashley was standing above me, hand over her mouth, laughter leaking out from between her fingers. "Here," she said, holding out a thin hand. I took it and stood, grinning sheepishly. I bent to pick up her books, trying not to let her see my steadily reddening cheeks.

"I’m so sorry, Colin," she giggled. "I really am, though. I didn’t mean you to hurt yourself."

I turned and grinned at her. "Eh, it was nothing. These things are beasts. Hill could afford to fix them up."

She nodded. "Who’ve you got for homeroom?" She grabbed two books from her locker and shoved one in before slamming it shut.

"Gray. He’s a bitch if we’re late, but otherwise he’s not so bad. How about you?"

She shrugged. "St. John. She’s nice enough, I guess. Sucks that you’ve got Gray, my boyfriend had him for Chem last year and his grade in her class nearly got him kicked off the football team." She smiled, but I looked at my feet. There was a boyfriend? Why did she have to have a boyfriend? I could have kicked a locker with the sheer unfairness of it all, but I held in my frustration.

"Who’s your boyfriend?" I bit my tongue as soon as I’ve said it, knowing that I should have avoided the topic. I was sure she’d think I was a bit obsessive, or worse, just after her for a date.

But she didn’t seem to think either. Her eyes lit up at the mention of him. "Peter Blackman. You know him? He’s the sweetest guy I’ve ever met. He buys me roses and sends me cards for no real reason, and he’s always so concerned about me and how I’m feeling..." She trailed off, smiling almost to herself. "Sorry," she said suddenly, her voice returning to normal. "I can go on for hours when it comes to Pete." She glanced at her watch and her eyebrows raised. "We have two minutes till the bell, and I have to get up to the third floor." She smiled, her lip twitching a bit, and readjusted her books in her arms. "I’ll look around for you. What lunch period do you have?" She walked slowly backward as she talked, glancing quickly over her shoulder every couple steps to make sure her path was clear.

"Fifth," I told her. I prayed to any deity that would listen that I’d uttered the right answer.
Her smile quickly turned to a grin. "I’ll see you there, then. I switch from fourth starting today because Pete pulled some strings...." She left off again, glancing at her watch. "Anyway, meet me then, I’ve got to go. Bye, Colin!"

Then she was gone in the sea of people, and I was left the only one on the hallway knowing just why I was grinning like an idiot.

*** *** *** *** *** ***

"Mr. York? Would you like to enlighten us?"

I looked up and into the face of Coach Harris, Hill Crest’s resident psychopath. I only know of his perturbing side because I’m on the soccer team, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have realized it quite yet. In class he was nice enough, all the kids liked him fine. On the field was another story.

I shrugged. "Not particularly." I wasn’t exactly the class’s biggest smartass, but I did alright. Harris’s class was fine for attitude, as long as you knew not to take it too far.

"Mmm, that’s too bad. You’re practically Confucius some days." He moved on to the girl next to me, and I relaxed back into my chair again.

I’d been thinking about Ashley all morning. The way she smiled. The way she laughed. The way she hit things when they didn’t work. The way she didn’t ever look quite right but it seemed like the awkwardness was just an outfit she was trying on, like she normally was graceful as could be. The way she giggled at all my stupid jokes. The way her hand had felt in mine when she pulled me up. The way she had a boyfriend.

We were going to have to do something about that last one.

Admittedly, I wasn’t the type to steal someone’s girlfriend. I’d never stolen anything before, except gum from April’s purse a couple of times. And I doubted I was good-looking and charismatic enough to pull it off. Still, I couldn’t push the thought out of my mind that maybe Ashley would see something in me that she didn’t see in Peter, this amazing football-playing boy that bought her flowers for no reason...

Oh, who was I kidding anyway? I didn’t seriously think she would bother with me. I wasn’t quite that delusional. I was just daydreaming, and I was sure that was all it would ever be.
I wasn’t raised to be the girlfriend-thief that I suddenly wanted to desperately to become. My parents were good people, first of all. And they loved their kids. April, Lily and I meant the world to them, more than the world maybe. They let us know it, too. They made it perfectly clear that the three of us meant everything. They also made it perfectly clear that they expected a hell of a lot from us, all of us. Lily hadn’t really respected that, I don’t think. When she was a freshman in high school she got into drugs and dated half the grade. I guess she was my model for what not to do with my life. Mom and Dad sent her off to live with my grandparents just after her sixteenth birthday. It hadn’t quite felt the same at home, since, to be honest. April and I just couldn’t fill the space the way we want to.

April was another reason I wasn’t the type. Since I was about five she’d taken a liking to me that I’d never been able to shake. Not that I wanted to, granted. But I knew I could never do anything like what Lily had done, if only because it would tear her apart. If it was possible, April loved me even more than our parents did, though she had a harder time showing it. That’s why her compliment in the car had made me beam so much – compliments from April were like August snowflakes.

But despite all the moral reasons I could never steal Ashes from her boyfriend, I knew the biggest one lay in my looks. I wasn’t attractive in any sense of the word. I had curly black hair that was too dark for my pale skin, a sprinkling of freckles, and I was burly but not athletic enough to carry the burliness off. I always looked awkward no matter how I stood, like I was too big for my surroundings. Granted, Ashley wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous herself, between the greasy hair and the stitches on her arms. But she had some sort of poise that I didn’t, and that was what kept us so completely separate.

The bell rang just then, shocking me out of my musings. Harris waved goodbye, shouting something about homework. I wasn’t paying too much attention. It was two minutes till the start of fifth period, and though I tried for a moment to convince myself otherwise I knew I wasn’t at all ready to see Ashley again.

*** *** *** *** *** ***