“How are they…” Elody adjusts her glasses and licks her lips. “Do they know why?”
“There was no note,” Mrs. Harris says, and I swear I can hear something go around the room: a tiny exhalation. A breath of relief. “I just thought you should know.” She goes to Ally and bends over, kissing her forehead. Ally pulls away, maybe in surprise. I’ve never seen Mrs. Harris kiss Ally before. I’ve never seen Mrs. Harris look so much like a mother before.
After Mrs. Harris leaves we all sit there while the silence stretches out and expands in huge rings around us. I feel like we’re all waiting for something, but I’m not sure what. Finally Elody speaks.
“Do you think…” Elody swallows, looking back and forth from one to the other of us. “Do you think it’s because of our rose?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Lindsay snaps. I can tell she’s upset, though. Her face is pale, and she twists and untwists the edge of her blanket. “It’s not like it was the first time.”
“That makes it even worse,” Ally says.
“At least we knew who she was.” Lindsay catches me staring at her hands, and she places them firmly in her lap. “Most people just acted like she was invisible.”
Ally bites her lip.
“Still, on her last day…” Elody trails off.
“She’s better off this way,” Lindsay says. This is low, even for her, and we all stare.
“What?” She lifts her chin and stares back at us defiantly. “You know you’re all thinking it. She was miserable. She escaped. Done.”
“But—I mean, things could have gotten better,” I say.
“They wouldn’t have,” Lindsay says.
Ally shakes her head and draws her knees to her chest. “God, Lindsay.”
I’m in shock. The weirdest part of it all is the gun. It seems so harsh, so loud, so physical a way to do it. Blood and brains and searing heat. If she had to do it—to die—she should have drowned, should have just walked into the water until it folded over her head. Or she should have jumped. I picture Juliet floating this way and that, like she’s being supported by currents of air. I can imagine her spreading her arms and leaping off a bridge or a canyon somewhere, but in my head she starts soaring upward on the wind as soon as her feet leave the ground.
Not a gun. Guns are for cop dramas and 7-Eleven holdups and crack addicts and gang fights. Not for Juliet Sykes.
“Maybe we should have been nicer to her,” Elody says. She looks down like she’s embarrassed to say it.
“Please.” Lindsay’s voice is loud and hard in comparison. “You can’t be mean to someone forever and then feel bad when she dies.”
Elody lifts her head and stares at Lindsay. “But I do feel bad.” Her voice is getting stronger.
“Then you’re a hypocrite,” Lindsay says. “And that’s worse than anything.”
She gets up and shuts off the light. I hear her climb back on the couch and rustle around in the blankets, settling in.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she says, “I have sleep to catch up on.”
There’s total silence for a while. I’m not sure if Ally’s lying down or not, but as my eyes adjust to the darkness I see that she isn’t: she’s still sitting there with her knees drawn up to her chest, staring straight ahead.
After a minute she says, “I’m going to sleep upstairs.” She gathers up her sheets and blankets, making extra noise, probably to get back at Lindsay.
A moment later Elody says, “I’m going with her. The couch is too lumpy.” She’s obviously upset too. We’ve been sleeping on this couch for years.
After she leaves I sit for a while listening to Lindsay breathe. I wonder if she’s sleeping. I don’t see how she could be. I feel as awake as I’ve ever been. Then again, Lindsay’s always been different from most people, less sensitive, more black-and-white. My team, your team. This side of the line, that side of the line. Fearless, and careless. I’ve always admired her for that—we all have.
I feel restless, like I need to know the answers to questions I’m not sure how to ask. I ease off the couch slowly, trying not to wake Lindsay, but it turns out she’s not sleeping after all. She rolls over, and in the dark I can just make out her pale skin and the deep hollows of her eyes.
“You’re not going upstairs, are you?” she whispers.
“Bathroom,” I whisper back.
I feel my way out into the hallway and pause there. Somewhere a clock is ticking, but other than that it’s totally silent. Everything is dark and the stone floor is cold under my feet. I run one hand along the wall to orient myself. The sound of the rain has stopped. When I look outside I see the rain has turned to snow, thousands of snowflakes melting down the latticed windows and making the moonlight that comes through the panes look watery and full of movement, shadows twisting and blurring on the floor, alive. There’s a bathroom here, but that’s not where I’m headed. I ease open the door that leads to Ally’s basement and grope my way down the stairs, holding on to both banisters.
As soon as my feet hit the carpet at the bottom of the stairs, I fumble on the wall to my left, eventually finding the light switch. The basement is suddenly revealed, big and stark and normal-looking: beige leather couches, an old Ping-Pong table, another flat-screen TV, and a circular area with a treadmill, an elliptical machine, and a three-sided mirror at its center. It’s cooler here and smells like chemicals and new paint.