She sure as hell didn’t say nothing, but that’s what she wanted to do now.
A perky bell and a perkier sales clerk greeted her the moment she stepped through the door. “Hi!” she said, and looked critically at Liz’s hips. “Two? Let me show you our jeans, they’re all on sale, this weekend only! Follow—”
“No,” said Liz. She meant to add a thanks after, but it got lost on its way out of her mouth. She wandered off by herself.
It was definitely more of a Kennie store—preppy jeans and floral cardigans, lace and frills. She felt like she was interrupting a tea party, and the store was too small to really wander through. Liz liked to wander when she shopped. She liked to weave through racks, one earbud in and the other dangling by her thigh, a cup of coffee in her hand. She liked not being watched.
“. . . um . . . I’m sorry. I don’t mean to push the issue, but . . . I don’t understand. Why didn’t I—I mean, I just . . .”
Liz leaned around the dressing rooms and saw an office at the end of the hall. She pretended to examine the discarded and rejected rack, and listened.
“I’m sorry,” a second voice said flatly. “The decision is final.”
“I respect that,” the girl said, desperate, “but I’d like to know why I didn’t get the job. For future reference.”
Liz leaned back again and caught a glimpse of a woman behind a desk. “Oh, dear, you just don’t have the image we look for here at L’Esperance.”
“What image?”
“We don’t carry anything over a six, dear. We market our clothing lines for people who are, well—shaped differently than you are. How would it look if one of our employees wasn’t even able to fit into our shirts?”
Silence, then, and the manager added, “I’m sorry, dear. Thanks for applying, but I’m afraid you just don’t belong in our store. But you’ll find something, I’m sure! Best of luck.”
Liz watched; the girl opened her mouth, closed it, and walked out. Her face was blotchy, and Liz wasn’t sure if it was because she was angry or if it was because she was crying. Liz felt like both herself. The woman followed and caught sight of Liz.
“Hello!” she said brightly, glancing up and down Liz’s body. “Are you here to apply?”
Liz looked after the girl, but she was already gone, the bell ringing cheerfully behind her. She looked at the woman and said, “Fuck you.”
Back outside, holding her coat, she closed her eyes. The wind clawed her arms raw, and the snow stung where it touched her—and she remembered, suddenly, the way they used to celebrate the first snowfall. It was their very own holiday. Did the snow hurt then? She couldn’t remember.
Then she got into her car, put her face in her coat, and screamed.
Had the world always been like this? Why had it seemed so much kinder when she was younger? Why had it ever seemed beautiful?
Liz Emerson looked around and saw that laws didn’t have to be followed if you could get away with breaking them. She saw that snow wasn’t always beautiful. She saw that the past was a dead thing and the future held no promises, and as she leaned her forehead on the steering wheel and closed her eyes, the tears came and it really hit her that she didn’t want to open her eyes ever again.
Funny things, aren’t they? People. They only believed in what they could see. Appearances were all that mattered, and no one would ever care what she was like on the inside. No one cared that she was breaking apart.
As the sky grew dimmer and the streetlights came on, Liz remembered that there was a party that night, so she did the only thing she could think of. She backed out of her parking spot, bumped into the car behind her, and drove off with the other car’s alarm blaring.
She drove past the turn and the hill and the tree, and she held her breath and didn’t dare look. She was afraid that if she turned her head and saw it all in the falling dark, she would go, right now.
Alas, she was on the wrong side of the interstate.
Instead, she texted Julia. They were going to a party that night. Julia was going to drive. Liz was going to get drunk.
SNAPSHOT: SNOW
It is snowing.
Liz’s mom is taking cookies out of the oven, and her father is setting up the record player by the fireplace. It is their own holiday, the first snowfall, a day in a snow globe, a day to turn off all the lights and pretend the world is being born.
Liz and I are outside, and this time we don’t run around like Tinker Bell caught in a storm of fairy dust, we don’t make wishes, we don’t make snow angels. Today, the snow is white and swirling, the sky is close, and the world is so big and beautiful and infinite that we don’t need to pretend. All we know is already perfect.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Forty-One Minutes Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car