“I don’t know what I—” He breaks off. “You don’t look—”
Don’t tell me what I look like. I fumble to open the door, don’t coordinate enough at first, to get out of my own way. I squeeze my eyes shut and then I open them and I put all I can into making myself sound steady.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Don’t follow me.”
I step outside, closing the door behind me but he catches it, holds it open. I wish he wouldn’t. He doesn’t follow me, but I feel his eyes on my back, on the awkward, uncomfortable way I’m carrying myself, trying to move in spite of how sore my body wants to believe it is.
When I’m outside of Ibis, I get a text from him.
WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT WHAT THAT WAS
And then I know what I need to do.
I head for Swan’s. Tracey is shocked to see me and tells me I look awful. We sit in her office, where it’s too hot and the fluorescent lights above us make my head hurt. I tell her I need to quit. I tell her there’s too much school and missing girls. She tells me she understands but that it could’ve waited, that Swan’s is the last place I need to be right now. She seems to want to say more, but doesn’t.
“There’s always going to be a place for you here,” she says. She frowns. “There’ll be some people pretty sad they missed their chance to say good-bye.”
“I have their numbers,” I say.
She gives me a hug and tells me to check my apron pockets before I leave. I find a few hair bands, a bracelet that must have slipped off my wrist at some point, and a crumpled napkin, with black markered numbers on it. I shove it all into my pockets.
It starts to rain on the way home. I’m drenched by the time I get there, cold, shivering, but not numb. I feel the prickling of my skin, the way it has me.
“Romy?”
Todd was in the recliner in the living room, but he’s on his feet by the time I’m at the bottom of the stairs. He takes one look at me and gapes. I feel wet strands of hair stuck to my neck and face. My shirt clings to me.
“Where the hell did you come from?”
“Where’s Mom?” I don’t know if I want her close or the assurance she’s far away.
“She wanted to take the flowers for Penny over to the funeral home herself.” Todd peers at me. I’m dripping puddles onto the floor. “You okay? Where were you?”
“I’m fine.”
I drag my feet upstairs and lock myself in the bathroom. I start a bath, running the water as hot as it will go because I want to stop shivering. I let the water get dangerously close to spilling over while I strip out of my clothes, avoiding the mirror. I turn the tap off and step into the bath without testing it first, letting it burn. This. This is what pain feels like when it’s happening now and I beg my body to know this difference.
It won’t listen to me.
I lower myself in, but that ache persists and I can’t. I can’t. I open my legs, resting the outside of my knees on either side of the tub. I put my hands in the space between, exploring with my fingers, pulling skin apart, half expecting it to feel the way it did then.
It doesn’t.
This isn’t then.
But I can still feel it.
I lean my head back and cover my face, let the water get cold around me. I wait until I’m shivering again before I pull myself out. By the time I’ve dried off and crawled into bed, I’m sweating. I lick my lips and they taste like dirt. I pull my sheet up over my head and cover my body. Her body. I wish I didn’t have a body.
when i open my eyes, the house is quiet and I blearily wonder why Mom let me sleep past my alarm when I remember they’re burying Penny today. Her ashes.
I get out of bed slowly and make my way downstairs. No sign of Mom or Todd, but there’s a note.
Errands in Ibis, back before dinner. XO, Mom Even though I just woke up, sleep is the only way I can think to turn myself off again, so I lay on the couch and between the inhalation of one breath and the exhalation of another, the sound of the car comes round but that almost seems too soon. But then I hear a knock.
“Anybody home?”
I open my eyes.
“Romy?”
I get off the couch and make my way into the hall, thinking I’ll just check, I’ll just peer through the front door and see if it’s really him, and if it is, I’ll walk away, but Mom and Todd left the door open, laid the view out for Leon through the screen, so I can’t hide. He sees me. He looks so together, and I’m—not.
“We have to talk,” he says.
“No.”
“You just quit,” he says. “You owe me an explanation…”
I don’t say anything.
“Please.”
I hear it, his need. It’s hard to shut myself off to it, when I said that same word to him yesterday and he answered. I do owe him something: I need to end this, I think.
I hesitate and then I open the door. He steps inside. I keep my eyes on the wall just behind him because I’m afraid to look him directly in the eyes. This already hurts. Like every time my heart beats, it makes a bruise.
“Did I do something wrong?” he asks. He sounds so uncomfortable. “Because all I know is one second, you’re there—we’re there—and then you’ve got this look on your face and then you’re pushing at me, like I’m—”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“Then why can’t you look at me?”
The bitter urge to cry closes in on me.
“You didn’t do anything, Leon.”
“I think I triggered you.”
“What?” I let out a breath, something that wants to be a laugh, something to make him reconsider what he said enough to take it back. But it’s weak and it gives me away. I know what that word means, but he shouldn’t. “What, you think you know something because—”
“Because what?” he asks. “Why can’t I know something like that?”
“Because you don’t know anything.”
“Romy—”
“Stop. You don’t know anything.”
And he says, “Romy, I’m sorry.”