She had no answer for them. What she remembered of that moment they could not possibly want to hear:
She was puking at the feet of the redwood trees that lined Elisabeth Avarine’s driveway. Cold sweat broke on her forehead, and although the rain had stopped, the trees dripped on the back of her neck. The air smelled of wet pavement. Someone was holding her hair back. Pulling her up, leading her away from the house. Had her by the arm and was guiding her out toward the street, into the dark and the wet. She didn’t want to. She wanted to lie down, to sleep. The earth reeled beneath her and the house was slanting sideways, tilting on its stilts.
“Come on, hurry, you have to get out of here,” said the boy who held her triceps in his grip.
She dropped her head on his chest. “I just wanna, let’s sit here a minute.” Let her weight sag against his body, pulling him down. “Let’s sit and look at the stars and just rest. Okay?”
The clouds had passed over and stars strained to blink between the redwoods. They were deep inside that dark and winding canyon; branches shielded much of the sky.
“You have to go,” the boy said, his voice panicked.
She laughed. The laughter rolled over her body in waves that picked up speed and power until she felt she would drown beneath them. She was drowning already, doubled over now, gasping for air. (A boy had drowned once, or almost drowned, in the Valley Middle School swimming pool as the rest of the eighth grade had watched—was that right? His fat arms stirring the water, blond head pulsing frantically under another boy’s hand? Was this a true memory, or only a trick of her mind?)
—
After a week of quiet, a nurse knocked on her open door. “Emma? You have a visitor.”
“Come in,” Emma called, relieved. She propped up on her elbows, gritting her teeth through the now-familiar pain, prepared to apologize as soon as Abigail appeared.
But it was Elisabeth Avarine who followed the nurse into her room. Elisabeth was model-tall and perfect, but slouched when she walked. Miss Celeste would have pushed her shoulders to the wall, tipped her chin up with two fingers, told her, Posture, darling, posture. Who will stand you up in this world if you will not do it yourself?
“How are you feeling?” Elisabeth asked.
“Okay, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I know. Still.” She glanced at the monitor by Emma’s head. “Is it okay in here?”
“I guess. The nurses are nice. The food is fucking foul.”
Elisabeth smiled. There was an awkward pause as she looked around the room; she seemed to be searching for something to say. Finally she asked brightly, “Who else has come to visit?”
Emma thought of Abigail, Ryan, Nick Brickston, Dave Chu, Jonas Everett, Lexie Carlton—her circle of friends was wide. She knew they loved her. She hadn’t heard from any of them yet. This thought caught in her throat; she shook her head. “What’s going on at school? What did I miss?”
“You know.”
“Did Damon get in trouble? They told me everyone else was okay.”
“He’s in jail, I think. The police came to my house—they had all these questions—I didn’t know what to tell them.”
“Did your mom flip her shit?”
“It was pretty bad. But good, too, in a way.”
“Serious?”
Elisabeth shrugged.
“That is fucking incredible,” Emma said. “I can’t believe she didn’t murder you.”
Elisabeth reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out Emma’s iPhone. “I almost forgot, I found this in the Red Room—I mean, that’s what we call the guest room.”
The Red Room, Emma remembered: the color of the walls recalled the meat of a beating heart. Emma had perched on the edge of the bed, the down mattress exhaling underneath her. The walls cast pink light on her hands. Ryan Harbinger lay before her, stretching to fill as much space as possible, just like boys like him always did, without even noticing. Above him hung one of Elisabeth’s mother’s art experiments: a grotesque yarn macramé, maroon, that looked like sinews torn and stringing down the wall. Ryan’s eyes were closed and his caramel-colored hair, which usually swept low over his forehead, now fell back to reveal a secret band of untanned skin, and a cluster of tiny, gleaming whiteheads at his hairline that no one, she was sure of it, had ever seen but her. She wanted to pop them, one by one. He opened his eyes.
“Hey,” she said.