The Words We Keep

In the ambulance, EMTs poke needles into her arms, cover her mouth with oxygen. They use words like nonresponsive and laceration. They look at each other knowingly when they see the scars on her wrists. They have her all figured out.

They ask me questions. So many questions.

How did she fall?

She wanted to jump.

To fly.

History of mental illness?

Bipolar disorder.

She was going to get help.

What medicines is she on?

I’m not sure. Something with a Z, or maybe X?

But she’s not taking it.

Any unusual symptoms?

No. She was doing better.

I was going to fix it.

Any alcohol or drug use?

I don’t know. I wasn’t watching.

I should have been watching.

Anything else we should know?

No.

I grabbed her.

I did this.

Take me away.

Lock me up.

But they don’t take me away. They take her away.

They wheel her through heavy doors that only open with key cards, and I don’t have a key card so I stay on the other side. The waiting side.

When Micah gets there, he dials my dad, and I try to talk through crummy cell reception.

“Honey, honey, what’s going on?”

“It’s Alice.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

I broke her.

I broke everything.

“Lily? Lily, are you there?”

My voice won’t work.

Micah takes the phone. Gives the details.

Dad told you not to see Micah anymore.

How many times will you disappoint him?

“They’re on their way, but they’re all the way downtown,” Micah says. He touches his fingertips to a bloody scrape on my arm. “We should get that looked at.”

I shake my head. “I’m fine.”

He sighs and goes to get us something from the vending machine. A woman across from me bounces a crying baby on her knee. Her eyes dart around the room from an ashen face. An older man hunkered down by the vending machine vacantly watches the soap opera on the ancient TV.

We’re all waiting

waiting

waiting.

A doctor in blue scrubs exits the special key-card area. He kneels by the woman with the loud baby. She follows the doctor through the portal—she’s been chosen.

The rest of us hate her.

“Sorry. It was the best-looking thing in there.” Micah hands me a stale granola bar. I take it but don’t eat. The thought of food makes my stomach roil. It’s already moving in waves, lurching up at the bottom of my throat. Micah puts his arm around me because I can’t stop shivering, and I remember that before Alice climbed that cliff, before the Larkin sisters hijacked the evening, we were talking about him, about his dad, his expulsion.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I was supposed to be helping you tonight.”

“I’ve said it before, Lily. We’re supposed to be helping each other.”

He’s so calm, and so kind, and so freaking perfect that I almost hate him for it. Why does he keep sticking around for this? I pull back and look him in the eyes.

“I get it, you know, if this is too much for you.”

If I’m too much.

“Eh.” He shrugs. “I’ve seen worse.”

“No, seriously, Micah. I wouldn’t blame you. You have your own crap to deal with, and maybe we both have too much baggage, too much chaos, to help each other.” I take a deep breath to steel myself. “So I’m giving you an out. Guilt-free.”

He pulls me back into him. “You’re right. We’re probably terrible for each other. But I’m not going anywhere.”

And even though I know he probably just doesn’t want to be the tool who breaks up with a girl in a hospital, I let him hold me.

“We will finish our conversation. I promise,” I say.

“And I promise, I’m totally fine if we don’t. Not that I don’t love doing a deep dive into my issues.”

He pats his shoulder, and I rest my head on it. We sit like that, his hand on my arm, my head on his shoulder, bobbing up and down with the steady rhythm of his breath, on the waiting side. After forever, a nurse comes in and tells me Alice is stable. I jump up.

“Is she awake? Can I see her?”

“Yes, but first, do you have anything sharp on you?” She puts her hand out like a bowl. “Pens. Bobby pins in your hair. Makeup compact with glass mirrors?”

I shake my head.

“Any iPhone chargers, earphones with cords, lighters, weapons of any kind?”

“No. Why—”

“Standard safety measures after a suicide attempt.”

“This wasn’t a suicide attempt,” I say.

She consults her clipboard. “Says here she has a history.”

“Yes, but—”

“And you said she was trying to jump from a cliff?”

“Yes, well, no, it wasn’t—”

“Then we treat it as an attempt,” she says matter-of-factly.

She leads me through the doors, down a long hallway, and stops outside a room with big glass windows and no curtains. Inside, Alice is lying on the bed, eyes closed, head wrapped in gauze. A security guard stands in the corner of her room, watching her sleep.

“Protocol for suicide watch,” the nurse says, nodding toward the guard. “Now, just to warn you, she was very agitated when she woke up, so we’ve sedated her. Don’t be alarmed if she’s not quite herself.”

As if I know who Alice’s real self is anymore, anyway.

I inch into the room, trying not to be totally intimidated by the man in the corner with his Taser and expressionless face. Alice has a million wires flowing from her—IVs and electrodes and all sorts of medical paraphernalia. A machine beeps in time with her heartbeat. She opens her eyes when I touch her arm.

“Lily,” she whispers. She turns toward me, and I can see the side of her head, bleeding through the gauze.

You did that.

“Alice, I’m here. And I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

She fades out again, but I stand by her bed, listening to the beep of her heart, inhaling the antiseptic smell of the room. She wakes up twice and doesn’t know where she is.

“You’re in the hospital. You fell,” I tell her. “You’re going to be okay.”

Is she?

When the nurse says it’s time for a catheter change, I touch Alice’s arm again to let her know I’m leaving. She wakes, confused, until her eyes focus sharply on me.

“Lily, Lily, you need to listen. Listen to me.” She pulls me close, a panic in her eyes like I’ve never seen. “Promise you won’t let me disappear again. Don’t let me—”

She mumbles something, but I can’t catch it all before she fades. Then her eyes open suddenly, wide and terrified, looking straight at me.

“Help me,” she says, exactly like she did on the bathroom floor all those months ago—small and scared and just…less. “Promise.”

And even though I feel as helpless as I did that night, I squeeze her hand.

“I promise.”

—

In the waiting room, the nurse tells me to go home.

She puts her hand on my shoulder. “Get some rest and come back in the morning. Nothing’s going to change overnight.”

“I can’t—I’m not leaving.”

The nurse pats me.

“Honey, we’ll take good care of her. I promise. The best thing you can do for your sister right now is get some sleep.”

I nod. She walks back through to the Other Side, and Micah puts his hand on top of mine.

“I’ll drive you.”

I shake him off. “I’m not leaving.”

“But you just—”

“I. Am. Not. Leaving.”

Micah sighs and leans forward, his head in his hands. He looks like hell. I can only imagine what I look like.

“Lily. She’s right. You need to go home. Your parents are coming, and Margot sounded terrified when I called your house. She needs you.”

“Alice needed me!” I say, my voice escalating involuntarily. The nurse behind the desk watches me like I’m a bomb about to explode.

I knew something was off. I knew the symptoms.

Abnormally wired. Check.

Exaggerated sense of self-confidence. Double check.

Unusual talkativeness. Checkity-check!

“The redecorating and the videos and the talking so fast. I should have done something,” I say, pacing back and forth in front of the key-card door. “I should have made her get help. Right then.”

Micah watches me weave between the hideous green chairs.

“Lily, this isn’t your fault.”

“Isn’t it?” The truth comes bubbling up, unstoppable and ugly. “I was mad at her, Micah. For being her, for using up all of Dad’s money, for being the black hole that sucks me in, time after time. I might as well have pushed her off that cliff.”

The old dude by the TV stares at me. I’m better than any soap opera.

Micah grabs my hand, which is clawing at my side, and he wraps his arms around me. “It’s not your fault,” he says again. I bury my face in his shoulder. The tears I’ve been holding back since we got here erupt—heavy, unrestrained sobs that fill the waiting room. I leave a streak of tears and mascara and pathetic on his shoulder. I try to pull away, but he only holds me closer.

“It’s not your fault.”

“I should have helped her. I could have stopped her. I knew she wasn’t taking her medicine. I knew.”

Micah holds me tighter. “Don’t you think I wonder all the time if I could have done something differently to make my dad stay? If we could have loved him more or better—been more or better? That maybe he’d still be here? But I can’t think like that. You can’t think like that. She climbed that cliff, Lily. You didn’t do this.”

Didn’t you?

“But it’s not just this time. Don’t you get it?” I say. “That night, in the bathroom. I knew something was wrong with her before I went out running. I knew. But I didn’t want to look. I pretended like I didn’t see the marks on her skin, didn’t notice that she was acting strange. I didn’t even answer her text. She needed me, but I wasn’t there. Do you know where I was?” I don’t wait for an answer. “I was running. I was outside, trying to shave another second off my time. I was running while my sister was trying to die.”

Micah brushes the hair that’s come loose from my ponytail out of my face.

“You couldn’t have known.”

“And then, you know what I did after?” I laugh, even though none of this is funny. Except maybe it is. Maybe it’s all so freaking hilarious. “I made the bed, Micah! I made it and remade it because the sick part of my brain convinced me that if I could just make that bed, make it perfect, then she would be all right.”

Micah holds me again, so tight, I can barely breathe.

“But she’s not all right,” I whisper into his shoulder.

“It’s not your fault,” he whispers back.

My shoulders shake against him as he rocks me.

“It’s not your fault.”

Ridgeline Underground

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LARKIN SISTERS SNAP AT BONFIRE

95 comments

Girls gone wild, psycho edition. I am 100 percent here for this.

They’re not crazy, dumbass. Bipolar does not equal crazy.

Crazy is as crazy does

Guys. This isn’t a joke. These girls are messed up. They need help.

OMG. I was there. Lily totally pulled her sister down! That’s straight up cold!

I hope she’s OK! Prayers to you, Alice!

Total attention whores. World would be better without them.