At the hospital nobody visited except her mother. Nobody phoned. Nobody missed her. Rumors had begun in town. She was crazy. It was all her fault. She was bad luck and should be avoided at all costs. Girls who had been friends with Helene and Shelby decided they had lost both friends. It was easier that way. What was gone was gone.
A week passed, and then two, and soon Shelby stopped counting. She was disappearing inch by inch, vanishing into thin air, and then one day a postcard arrived. The nurse at the desk called Shelby’s name during mail call.
“Wake up, kiddo,” the nurse shouted when Shelby didn’t respond. Shelby was in the TV lounge dozing from the meds they gave her and listening to a talk show her mother liked featuring a group of women who argued about politics and gossiped about famous people.
“Shelby Richmond.” The nurse sounded more annoyed than usual. “Get your ass over here.”
Shelby went over to the desk, convinced it was a mistake.
“Take it,” the nurse said, so Shelby did. “Thank you,” the nurse said sarcastically, since Shelby still wasn’t talking. She hadn’t said a word since she woke up in the hospital the morning after the accident.
On the front of the postcard there was a delicate ink sketch of a family: a mother, a father, and a daughter. But the daughter had tape over her mouth, heavy packing tape. Shelby recognized herself as the girl who couldn’t speak. Her wrists and heart were painted red. Shelby hadn’t expected anyone else to know how she felt, but clearly someone did. There was no return address, no signature, only a scrawled message: Say something.
Shelby wondered if it was a message from a higher power, even though she didn’t believe in such things. She kept the postcard under her pillow. It felt precious to her. She kept it there until the linens were changed while she was in group therapy saying nothing, and while she was out of her room an aide threw it away. Shelby searched through the garbage cans in a panic until she found it. It was perfect, not folded or torn, and she accepted that as a sign as well. Now that she’s back home she’s wised up. She’s started speaking again, a few mouthfuls of words at a time, but mostly she retreats to the basement, which has become her lair, a wolf’s den, the only place she wants to be. She cuts herself in places no one can see. The soles of her feet. Her inner thigh.
Her single bed is beside boxes of books from her childhood: Andrew Lang’s fairy tales and the Misty of Chincoteague series, which turned her into a horse fanatic. She pleaded with her mom to take her to Virginia to see the wild horses in the book until Sue Richmond finally gave in and they spent the weekend scouring the dunes for the ponies that lived on the beach. Shelby can remember how happy she was, though the weather was gloomy and the horses ran from them. She thinks it may have been the happiest time of her life.
The doctors and her parents can call her condition whatever they wish; Shelby knows what’s wrong with her. She is paying her penance. She is stopping her life, matching her breathing so that it has become a counterpart of the slow intake of air of a girl in a coma. She looks at her postcard every night to remind herself of what they’ll do to her if she allows people to know how damaged she is and takes to silence again. They’ll lock her up and then she’ll disappear for good.
She hasn’t seen Helene since the night of the accident. Once, Helene’s dad, Mr. Boyd, who had always liked Shelby, sent a box of candy on her birthday, but she felt too guilty to open it and tossed it in the trash, uneaten. She’s never wanted to see the hospital bed that has been set up in Helene’s bedroom. In some sense she and Helene are still living identical lives, just as they did in high school. Shelby hasn’t even bought new clothes since it happened; she still wears the same boots she was wearing that night, a wad of newspaper stuck inside the right one because the heel is tearing away.