But in the bed, now, she felt panicked, unable to fill her lungs with oxygen. She clutched the scratchy hospital sheet, trying to stay in this reality, to keep from rolling away in the next tidal surge. But there was no life jacket. She dunked under again.
Skylar is backstage as Lucy struts down the runway toward the judges. The lights are bright and hot, and Skylar can’t see anything but Lucy’s silhouette. Stumbling. Winding her arms almost like a cartoon character. Falling. Skylar can’t see her eyes, but she knows what they look like: bright, wide, shocked. Then a sound like a crack as Lucy hits the ground.
No, not the ground. A footlight—a sharp, metal sheath around a glass spotlight affixed to the runway, shining up at the girls. The glass shatters as Lucy’s head makes contact. Then nothing. The music stops. The audience is silent, even while the music keeps playing like a broken record. Skipping. Skipping on the image of Lucy’s bruised face. Lucy is motionless. There is blood spreading in a butterfly pattern beneath her, as though she is sprouting wings. . . .
“I didn’t mean it,” Skylar mumbled. The skin at the sides of her mouth was dry and cracking. She brought her hands up to her face, felt the cloth wrapped around her cheeks and chin, the tape by her ears holding the bandages together.
The hospital. Doctors speaking in low voices; she watches her sister through a glass window. Frontal lobe damage. Lucy cannot hold a pencil. She may seem fine down the road, but things will have changed. Lucy’s hand shaking. Her head turning toward the window, looking at Skylar, taking a moment to register who she is.
The machines next to her kept beeping. She imagined them like a lighthouse. If she could just keep swimming toward that sound, against the current, against these hideous recollections, she would be safe. Beep-beep-beep—
Lucy is staring at Skylar, crying. Then she is laughing. Pointing jerkily. “It’s her fault, you know.” Skylar sees the nasty set of stitches across Lucy’s forehead. Like Frankenstein’s monster. Men are taking Lucy away. Their mom is crying, saying her little baby is damaged forever. Skylar is crying too, and the doctors interpret it as heartbreak, not guilt. Lucy laughs the whole time.
That laugh. Where was it coming from? It filled Skylar’s head, her whole body. Like a twittering bird . . . She knew that sound from somewhere. Meg. Meg with the red ribbon around her neck. She laughed like that. Did Meg laugh like Lucy, or did Lucy laugh like Meg? It was impossible to tell. Skylar whimpered. She felt like a child, or a singing doll stuck on repeat. She closed her eyes and pressed her head against the thin pillow. Stop. Shut up. The dreamscape flooded back to her, even as tears began filling her eyes.
Skylar is on a stage with the lights shining too brightly into her eyes. Everyone is looking at her and pitying her and petting her and telling her not to worry, her sister will be okay. It is a lie. She is a liar. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, she says, and no one understands why. You have nothing to be sorry about, sweetheart. Don’t blame yourself.
“I’m sorry!” she cried. All of a sudden Skylar sat up straight in her hospital bed, sputtering and shaking, her bandages soaked with sweat. No longer onstage, but here at the Southern Maine Regional Hospital, in room 17. Alone.
She squinted. Her vision was still fuzzy. No. She was not completely alone. As she looked around, trying to catch her breath and her bearings, she saw a figure standing in the doorway—blond and beautiful, just like Lucy was. Like Lucy had been. She gasped.
Lucy was here. Lucy had come; she had come to make sure Skylar knew she was a terrible person, a horrible sister, a liar. Skylar hadn’t visited her sister once after Lucy got shipped to the “rehab center” for people who had suffered severe brain damage. Skylar had made excuse after excuse until finally it was time to leave for Ascension.
“Lucy? Lucy? Is that you?” She sounded groggy. Maybe now she could explain and apologize. Maybe she could undo the wrongs.
“Hi, Sky-Sky.” The girl stepped farther into the room. Smiling, all curves, with peaches-and-cream skin, the girl seemed almost to glow with an ethereal light. And her lips. Her lips were painted a deep, true red. Or was that blood dripping from her mouth? For a moment the girl looked like someone else. . . . She looked like Meg’s cousin Ali. Skylar gasped and pulled back, feeling her head swaying a little.
The girl smiled again. “It’s me,” she said.
Skylar stared, trying to stay present, trying not to get sucked back into a dream state. The girl—it was Lucy, it had to be—fanned her face with her hand. “It’s hot in here, huh? Come on. We’re leaving. The nurses may not want you to leave, but we do!” She smiled conspiratorially. “I came to bring you to the dance.”