Her door was open, a pale yellow light blinking inside. This end of the hall was even colder, and my breath came out in white puffs.
As I edged closer, a stale, bitter odor like cigar smoke hit me. A rising sense of dread clawed at my insides.
Someone’s in the house.
I stepped through the doorway, and the wrongness of the scene closed in on me.
My mom lay on the bed, motionless.
Elvis crouched on her chest.
The lamp in the corner flashed on and off like a child was toying with the switch.
The cat made a low guttural sound that cut through the silence, and I shuddered. If an animal could scream, that’s what it would sound like.
“Mom?”
Elvis’ head whipped around in my direction.
I ran to the bed and he leapt to the floor.
My mother’s head was tilted to the side, dark hair spilling across her face, as the room pitched in and out of darkness. I realized how still she was—the fact that her chest wasn’t rising and falling. I pressed my fingers against her throat.
Nothing.
I shook her roughly. “Mom, wake up!”
Tears streamed down my face, and I slid my hand under her cheek. The light stopped flashing, bathing the room in a faint glow.
“Mom!” I grabbed her shoulders and yanked her upright. Her head swung forward, falling against her chest. I scrambled backward, and her body dropped down onto the mattress, bouncing against it unnaturally.
I slid to the floor, choking on my tears.
My mother’s head lay against the bed at an awkward angle, her face turned toward me.
Her eyes were as empty as a doll’s.
FOUR WEEKS LATER
CHAPTER 4
Grave Jumping
My bedroom still looked like my bedroom, the bookshelves crammed with sketch pads and tins filled with broken pencils and bits of charcoal. The bed was still positioned in the center like an island, so I could lie on my back and stare at the posters and drawings taped to my walls. Chris Berens’ Lady Day still hung on the back of my door—a beautiful girl imprisoned in a glass dome floating across the sky. I had spent more than a few nights inventing stories about the girl trapped inside. In the end, she always found a way out.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
I had two days to take this place apart and pack up everything that mattered to me. The things that made this room mine—the things that defined me. I’d tried a hundred times over the last month, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. So I enlisted the only person left who loved this place almost as much as I did.
“Earth to Kennedy? Did you hear anything I said?” Elle held up one of my sketchbooks. “Do you want these in the box with art stuff or in the one with books?”
I shrugged. “Whatever you think.”
I stood in front of the mirror, pulling out the faded photos tucked around the edge: a blurry close-up of Elvis swatting at the lens as a kitten. My mom in cutoffs at about my age, washing a black Camaro and waving a soapy hand at the camera, the silver ID bracelet she never took off still dangling from her wrist.
A nurse at the hospital had handed me a clear plastic bag with that bracelet inside the night my mom was pronounced dead. She found me in the waiting room, sitting in the same yellow chair where the doctor had spoken the two words that shattered my life: heart failure.
Now the bracelet was fastened around my wrist, and the plastic bag with my mom’s name printed at the top was tucked inside my oldest sketchbook.
Elle reached for a picture of the two of us with our tongues sticking out, mouths stained cotton candy blue. “I can’t believe you’re really leaving.”
“It’s not like I have a choice. Boarding school is better than living with my aunt.” My mom and her sister hardly spoke, and the few times I did see them in the same room, they had been at each other’s throats. My aunt was just another stranger, like my father. I didn’t want to live with a woman I barely knew and listen to her tell me how everything would be okay.
I wanted to let the pain fill me up and coat my insides with the armor I needed to make it through this. I imagined the dome from Lady Day lowering itself over me.
But instead of glass, mine was made of steel.
Unbreakable.
I didn’t explain any of that to my aunt when I refused to move to Boston with her, or when she spread out a stack of glossy boarding school brochures in front of me a few days later. I had flipped through the pictures of ivy-covered buildings that all looked frighteningly similar: Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut. In the end, I picked upstate New York, the coldest place—and the farthest from home.
My aunt had started making arrangements immediately, like she was as eager to go back to her life as I was to get her out of mine. Yesterday, she finally went home after I persuaded her to let me stay at Elle’s until I left for New York.
If I ever finished packing.
As I pulled the picture of Elvis off the mirror, another photo fluttered to the floor—my dad standing in front of a gray weather-beaten house with me grinning from his shoulders. I looked so happy, like nothing could wipe that smile off my face. It reminded me of a darker day, when I learned that a smile can break as easily as a heart.
I woke up early and tiptoed downstairs to watch cartoons with the volume muted, the way I usually did when my parents slept late on weekends. I was pouring chocolate milk into my cereal when I heard the hinges of the front door groan. I rushed to the window.
My dad had his back to me, a duffel bag in one hand and his car keys in the other.
Was he going on a trip?
He opened the driver’s-side door and bent down to climb in. That’s when he saw me and froze. I waved, and he raised his hand as if he was going to wave back. But he never did. Instead, he closed the car door and drove away.
I found the ripped sheet of paper on the table in the hall a few minutes later. Sloppy handwriting stretched across the page like a scar.
Elizabeth,
You’re the first woman I ever loved, and I know you’ll be the last. But I can’t stay. All I ever wanted for us—and for Kennedy was a normal life. I think we both know that’s impossible.
Alex
I couldn’t read the words back then, but my brain took a mental snapshot, preserving the curve of every letter. Years later, I realized what it said and the reason my father left. It was the note my mom cried over night after night, and the one she’d never discuss.
What could she say? Your dad left because he wanted a normal daughter? She would never have admitted something that cruel to me, even if it were true.
Swallowing hard, I forced the note out of my mind. I saw it often enough already.
I grabbed a roll of packing tape as Elvis darted into the room. He jumped up on the edge of the box in front of me. When I reached out to pet him, he sprang to the floor and disappeared down the hall again.
Elle rolled her eyes. “I’m glad I agreed to take your psychotic cat while you’re away at school.”
A knot formed at the base of my throat. Leaving Elvis behind felt like losing another part of my mom.
I pushed the pain down deeper. “You know he’s not usually like this. It’s hard for animals to adjust when someone they love”—I still couldn’t say it—“when they lose someone.”
She was quiet for a moment before slipping back into her easy banter. “How much longer do you think this will take? I want to order pizza so it’s there when we get to my house.”
I surveyed the half-packed boxes and piles of clothes scattered around my room. In two days, a driver was coming to pick up the pieces of my life and take them to a school I had only seen in a brochure. “Is it weird if I want to stay here tonight?”
Elle raised an eyebrow. “T
hat would be a yes.”
I stared at my walls, the plaster underneath exposed where I had peeled off bits of tape. “I just want it to be my room a little longer, you know?”
“I get it. But my mom will never go for it.”
I shot her a pathetic look.
She sighed. “I’ll call her and tell her we’re staying at Jen’s.”
“I kind of wanted to stay by myself.”
Elle’s eyes widened. “You can’t be serious.”
I didn’t know how to explain it, but I wasn’t ready to leave. Part of my mom would always be in this house, at least my memories of her. Breaking up chocolate bars in the kitchen to make her extreme brownies. Watching her paint my bedroom walls violet to match my favorite stuffed animal. Those were things I couldn’t pack in boxes.
“My aunt is selling the house. It’ll probably be the last time I get to sleep in my room.”
Elle shook her head, but I knew she was going to give in. “I’ll stay at Jen’s and tell my mom you’re with me.” She walked over to my dresser and picked up the photo of the two of us with our blue tongues, the edges bending beneath the pressure of her fingers. “Don’t forget this one.”
“You keep it.” My voice cracked.
Her eyes welled, and she threw her arms around me. “I’m gonna miss you so much.”
“We still have two more days.” Two days seemed like forever. I would’ve killed for two more hours with my mom.
After Elle left, I peeled the yellowed tape off the edges of Berens’ The Great Escape. I tossed the poster in the trash, wishing I could escape from the cardboard boxes and the bare walls and a life that didn’t feel anything like the one I remembered.
I drifted in and out of sleep, fragments of dreams cutting through my consciousness. My mom’s body lying motionless on the bed. Her empty eyes staring at me. A bitter cold wrapping itself around me like a wet blanket. The sensation of something bearing down on my chest.