The Words We Keep

Kali wins.

She posts a selfie of her and her partner grinning from ear to ear, holding up their photography display with an all-caps caption:

UC BERKELEY: WE’RE COMING FOR YA!

I scroll through the congratulations comments and thumbs-up emojis. Well, that’s that.

I throw myself into everything I’ve ignored while chasing this summer program. I’ll be lucky if Berkeley looks twice at my college application now that my grades and track times have slipped. I spend the weekend doing extra credit for every class. I outline for next week’s history test.

When I finish my outline, I write it again, neater.

And then, once more.

Five times, I write it, making each letter perfect, until my hand cramps and my eyes are weary.

Alice flips on the light. It burns my retinas. Somehow the day has turned to night while I worked.

“You’ve been studying nonstop for days,” she says. “Time to return to life!”

She’s wearing her old clothes. The bright ones. The ones that make her look like she should be on 1940s pin-up calendars. Her dress is cherry red, with white spots and a tulle petticoat that keeps it flouncy. She’s wearing makeup, too. Bright red lipstick that matches her dress.

Alice burns my retinas.

“I know you’re worried about Micah,” she says. “But he’s not languishing in some jail cell or whatever other worst-case scenario you’re imagining.”

“You talked to him?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he okay?”

“He will be. Had to pay a pretty steep fine and got community service for the fight, but he’s home and doing online classes, and he’ll be back to wearing those ridiculous socks in no time. I guarantee it.”

I try to believe her. This is just a blip, a setback. But I keep thinking about his dark room, him staring at the stars on his ceiling, the way he described the nothingness. Is that what he’s feeling right now? Did his mom have to pay his fine? Did he hate himself for it?

“Did you know?” I ask. “About his dad?”

“Yes. You didn’t?”

I shake my head. I guess even Micah Mendez keeps some words hidden.

“Was it depression? Like Micah?”

“Micah doesn’t talk about it all that much, but yeah, I think so.” Alice scooches next to me on the bed. “I know things suck right now. But I also know something that will help.”

“Please don’t say seafoam green.”

“Better!” She claps her hands. “A bonfire party. At the beach. Tonight!”

I shake my head. “I’m pretty sure I’m grounded for life.”

“Dad and Staci went to some fancy dinner downtown, and Margot’s watching a movie. We’ll be back before anyone knows we’re gone.” She holds out a pair of jeans to me. “And Micah’s gonna be there.”

It’s a dirty trick. I kind of hate her for it. But I take the jeans and put them on.

—

The party is a huge, weird mix of people dotting the beach in the moonlight. Across the sand, Sam’s talking to some guy who graduated last year. She starts toward me for, like, a millisecond before she remembers I’m the worst.

I scan the crowd for Micah, but he’s not here, so I take a seat in the sand, half-hidden by the darkness. I lose myself in the flames of the bonfire. Alice is flirting loudly with a guy with a surfer ponytail and an open flannel shirt who looks like a grade-A douchebag. Alice keeps touching his arm. Bro-dude leans toward her, his body language screaming that he’s into it if she is. Spoiler alert: she is. She has reincarnated as the old Alice—loud and bright and up for anything. Why did I let her talk me into coming?

She’s whispering something in the d-bag’s ear, and they’re off, racing down toward the beach, shucking clothes as they go. A splash as they enter the water. A guy somewhere behind me calls Alice mental under his breath.

The darkness conceals Deadman’s Cliff, but I know it’s out there. Did Micah’s father think twice when he stood on the edge? Was he scared, taking that final step into the nothing? Or did the ocean call to him, peacefully, like it once did to me?

And then, like a vision, Micah’s there, watching me. The firelight flickers on his face, casts bizarre shadows under the eyes I know so well. Except, their usual light is gone. His face is pale and his hair is unkempt, and the guilt needles me. I want to run to him, to touch him, to have him hold me, but I don’t know where he is, how he feels about me, about us, after everything that’s happened.

I jump up, only to stand in front of him, awkwardly. “You’re here.”

“I’m here.” He smiles half-heartedly with one side of his mouth, like he’s apologizing for his presence, or mine—hard to tell which. “Alice said my wallowing time was over.”

“Me, too.” I dig the toe of my flip-flop into the sand. “I came by your house.”

“I know.” He shoves his hands deeper into his pockets, his eyes watching my toe.

I reach out my hand to him. “Walk with me?”

He takes it, and my chest fills with hope. We head down to the edge of the ocean, somewhere in the in-between, our toes barely submerged in the cold waves. The breeze blows the ends of his curls.

“So, how did it feel?” he asks.

“What?”

“Kicking Damon in the nuts.”

Through the dark, he smiles slightly, and it helps me breathe, helps me believe he’s still in there.

“Freaking fantabulous.”

“I bet,” he says. “I know I’m not supposed to say this, but damn, it felt good to hit that guy.”

I follow Micah’s gaze out to the ocean, where the water meets the night. He’s still a million miles away.

“Do you hate me?” I ask.

“No.”

“But you got expelled, Micah. It’s not fair. It’s—”

“It’s life.” He stoops to pick up a piece of sea glass and chucks it hard. It lands somewhere in the nothingness.

“But I know Damon did the graffiti. He still has the spray-paint can, and if we could prove—”

Micah shakes his head. “No one wants to hear it. I’m Manic Micah. I’ll always be Manic Micah.”

My hope deflates slightly. “Don’t say that.”

“You thought it once, too.”

“But now I know you,” I say, trying to bring him back to me. Back from wherever he’s gone that feels so far. I grab his hand as he winds up another piece of sea glass.

“I know your lips move when you read.”

I kiss him on the cheek, slide my fingers through his, my heart pounding.

“I know that you love your mom more than anything. And you want to make your dad proud.”

“Lily, don’t,” he says, his voice breaking in the wind.

“And that you believe in a world better than this one,” I say, standing in front of him, pulling his body next to mine. “And you make me believe it, too.”

He pulls away. “I was wrong. And for a second there, I forgot. I let myself believe that the whole world could see me like you do.” He lobs the glass into the black. “And the worst part was my mom’s face. Disappointment, but also like she wasn’t surprised. That’s what killed me—not the expulsion or the police charges or any of it—but that look.”

A flash of lightning illuminates the horizon as a drizzle starts, sprinkling raindrops onto his cheeks as he talks. He’s staring toward Deadman’s Cliff as he hefts a rock from hand to hand.

“My dad’s name was Charlie. He married my mom in college. Studied engineering. He was brilliant and sarcastic and had the greatest head of black hair you’ve ever seen. But do you think anyone talks about any of that?” He shakes his head. “He was the guy who jumped off the cliff. That’s all they’ll ever see.”

I reach out to him again, take his hand. “You’re not your dad.”

“So I tell myself every time I stand on that stupid cliff. But even if I convince myself, I’ll never convince everyone else. My dad will never be anything other than his weakest moments, and neither will I. I should have known better than to think it could ever be different, that I could go to college or be any sort of normal.”

The rain wets his hair, and I watch a droplet roll down one of his curls, cling for a second, and then fall.

“So, what? You’re just giving up?”

“I don’t have much choice here, do I? This is why I shouldn’t make plans. Because whatever I do, the past gets in the way. And no matter how hard I try, the monsters always find me. Why try?”

The rain’s falling harder now, sending people scurrying from the beach. Someone touches my arm.

“You’re Alice’s sister, right?” asks a girl I don’t know.

“Yeah. But we’re kind of in the middle—”

“We can’t find her.”

“What do you mean, you can’t find her?” Micah says.

Bro-dude’s here now, too, wet and stumbling over his words.

“We were in the water—both of us—you know—messing around”—he shakes water from his hair like he’s a puppy—“and, like, she was there and she was, like, talking all fast, and then she was gone. Just took off.”

My heart speeds up. The beach is dark, so dark that I can only see a few feet in every direction. The moon is a fingernail sliver, barely lighting up a narrow streak on the water and nothing else.

“Why didn’t you follow her?” I say, scanning the beach. Searching the darkness for her. “How do you just lose somebody?”

Bro-dude lifts up his hands, innocent. “Look, man, I don’t even know her. She’s not my problem.”

My knees start to buckle. I hang on to Micah, who passes me off to the girl before he waves to some guys and heads down the beach, cell phones out like flashlights. They shine them into the water.

I run to the ocean’s edge. My fear freezes me between the land and the sea. Don’t be in the water.

Everyone is searching now, up and down the beach, flashlights flicking out like searchlights across the waves. A group of girls Alice went to high school with huddle around me, telling me to calm down, that she’s probably fine, that she’s probably hooking up in a dune somewhere. The three girls laugh in unison. Alice is one big joke.

“She’s not fine!” I yell. “Don’t you understand? She’s bipolar. We need to find her.”

The girls stop laughing.

“Bipolar?” one says. “Is that when you hear voices?”

“Or have multiple personalities or something?”

“No, I think it’s when you’re, like, crazy-happy one second and suicidal the next.” They all look at me. “Oh my gosh, do you think she did this on purpose?”

Micah’s voice rings out from the darkness.

“Over here!”

I shove my way past the idiot trio and run down the beach, abandoning my flip-flops in the wet sand. The rain falls sideways, hard and stinging as I run through it toward the cluster of lights.

When I reach the group, they’re all looking up.

Toward Alice.

She’s perched, partway up Deadman’s Cliff, on a slick wet rock, wearing nothing but a bra, underwear, and a smile on her face that scares me.