Paper Valentine (6 page)

Behind me, I can feel Lillian moving closer. The air around me seems to buzz with icy static and I must look sort of petrified, because right away he starts shaking his head, a white-blond glow outside my window. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t scare me. I mean, I was startled. Just . . . why are you in my tree?”

He shrugs, but his face is blurred by the screen and I can’t see his expression. “I heard you from down in the yard. I just thought you sounded like maybe something was wrong.”

I concentrate on my voice before I answer, keeping my back very straight and my face calm and innocent and curious. “Why would something be wrong?”

“I don’t know. Last year—” He sounds awkward and starts over. “Last year, you started looking sad.”

The hairbrush feels heavy in my hand, turning into a stone. Behind me, Lillian is standing so close I can almost feel the chill of her in my own blood, like our skins are running together, getting all mixed up. “I’m okay.”

He doesn’t say anything, but suddenly I like so much that he climbed up here just to check on me. I reach toward the window, almost meaning to touch his hand. As soon as my fingers brush the screen, though, he jerks away.

“See you around,” he says.

I listen to him rustle down through the branches until he’s gone.

Then I cross to the bed and sink down onto the rug, pulling the sheet with me. On the floor, with the sheet over me, I sit with my knees pulled up and my head on my arms. My heart is beating in huge spasms, but under the sheet is safe, like I’m the ghost and Lillian’s the real live girl.

“Hannity,” she says, from somewhere above me. “Are you really all squishy over Finny Boone? He’s a total delinquent.”

I don’t answer. The word
delinquent
is sort of right. Finny is a troublemaker and a lighter-thief, and probably a lot of other things, but those parts aren’t everything. He’s also the boy who cared enough to bring my bracelet back, and once, when I was very sad, he stood up out of his seat and pulled Connor Price off me.

Lillian reaches down and twitches the sheet away. The shadows around her eyes are deep purple. “You really, truly like Finny Boone? Oh my God, I thought you had better judgment.”

Her voice is mocking, and I flop down so I’m lying at her feet. Me and her, staring at each other in the dim rainbow light.

I’m choking on all the things I never could say when she was alive, at first because she was always Lillian and I was just Hannah and then later, when Trevor got bad, because I was supposed to be strong and supportive—because I didn’t want to do anything to make it worse. This whole list of bad, forbidden things: Never say,
Be reasonable
. Never say,
You’re too thin. Never say, Eat a goddamned Twinkie and I’m not stupid, Lillian! Chewing up food and spitting it into your napkin isn’t fooling anyone! Why do you have to control everything? So you don’t run the universe. So what? So the world is big and scary and chaotic. You know what? Deal with it. I do.

I never said those things, and when they bloomed in my head like huge, toxic flowers, I pushed them down again. I did everything I was supposed to. I nodded and listened and never bullied her. I went to her house after school and made crochet arm warmers and shared pieces of my bagels and my granola bars, because if it was mine, then it wasn’t the same as her eating it.

I did everything I was supposed to, which is such a lie. Whatever thoughtful, comforting things I said, whatever effort I made, it wasn’t enough. She died anyway.

And if I go downstairs now, Decker will be in the kitchen making paella, and Ariel will be standing on the corduroy ottoman and singing “Mamma Mia” and “Girl Anachronism” for our mother. There will be a broken Alice in Wonderland bracelet waiting out on the steps, because Finny Boone might be big and quiet, but he isn’t stupid, and I spent the last four months of tenth grade looking sad.

Lillian is blocking the door, standing over me, with her cadaver’s jaw and her sunken, bloodshot eyes. I take a deep breath and yank my sheet out of her hand. With the fabric draped over my head, the light looks dim and I can barely see Lillian at all.

I open the door and walk right past her.

PAPER HEART

CHAPTER SIX

O
n Tuesday morning, I wake up late and can’t remember if there’s something I’m supposed to be doing. The sunlight makes a crisp yellow square on the wall.

I’m lying there with my chin on the edge of the mattress and my pillow wadded up under me when Ariel comes tiptoeing in, holding her hands behind her back. “I have something for you.”

I roll over but don’t raise my head. “What is it?”

She turns her palms up to show empty hands and smiles slyly. Then she jumps on me, hugging me around the neck and pressing her face into the top of my shoulder.

I laugh because I can’t help it. We wrestle together, rolling around until I’m flat on my stomach with the comforter wrapped around my legs and the sheets in a mess on the floor.

Ariel is lying flopped across my back. “When you get dressed, you should wear your big boots,” she says, playing with my hair.

“Is that right?”

She nods and flips over so she’s staring up at the ceiling, still holding on to my hair. “We need you to look menacing.”

“Ow, don’t pull. What are you talking about, menacing?”

She thumps down next to me and pushes her face close to mine. “So when you walk me and Pinky to school, no one will come and snatch us.”

I have a drowsy feeling that my mom has put this idea into her head. It’s not the kind of thing Ariel would come up with on her own, and she doesn’t even look particularly worried about it, but then, Ariel never looks worried about anything.

We lie side by side, staring past each other. I think I see Lillian watching from the closet, but when I turn my head, she’s gone. Morning is the only time when Lillian is really truly ghostly. Practically nonexistent.

“You have to get up,” Ariel says into the silence. “Pinky’s almost here.”

“That’s right, Hannah.” The voice that comes drifting out of the closet is a ghost voice, the way Lillian in the morning is always a ghost Lillian; the sun shines through her, making her seem pale and faraway. “You just need to figure out how to look menacing.”

I lie transfixed, staring into the closet like a bird staring helplessly at a snake.

“Get up,” Ariel says again, pulling at my arm. “Or we’re going to be late.”

“I am. I will.” The way I say it is just a little off, not bright enough somehow, and I take a deep breath, trying to channel Old Hannah, who always had an easy laugh and something whimsical to say. “I was just watching how the sun looks on the wall. When you squint, it looks like a window to a secret yellow place—like a fairyland,” I say, shooting Lillian a dark look, even though I can barely see her anymore.

Ariel lets me go, turning to see. “Really?”

“Yeah, try it.”

She lies with her cheek resting between my shoulder blades. “It does,” she says, and the tone of her voice sounds like she’s humoring me, but it doesn’t matter. The weight of her head is sort of nice, and for a second, it’s just the two of us, lying there together, looking at that bright yellow square.

When I come downstairs ten minutes later, Decker is sitting at the kitchen table, sorting through the mail.

“What are you doing still home?” I ask, taking down a bowl and a box of cereal. We have five kinds, but three of them are cornflakes.

“Money day,” he says, which means he’ll spend most of today driving around in his truck with the air conditioner on, harassing contractors to pay him.

As I pour myself some shredded wheat, he gives me a long, doubtful look but doesn’t say anything. I’m wearing a sleeveless minidress made out of a heavy-metal T-shirt from the thrift store, which is the most menacing thing I own. The dress is black, with slayer angled across the front in pointy silver-glitter letters. It would probably be more menacing if the scalloped trim around the neckline and the armholes weren’t pink. Decker just looks at me, and I can’t tell if his fixed stare is because of the outfit or something else. His eyes are too serious. If it were the outfit, he’d just say something.

“What?” I ask, trying to sound unconcerned, like he’s not freaking me out.

Decker shrugs and shakes his head. He’s picking at his arm, touching his four-color sleeve tattoo. “Nothing. Just you be careful out there, okay?” Then he pushes back his chair. “I’ll take off pretty soon here, get back maybe around two. Three at the latest.”

The way he says all this has a false easiness to it, and it occurs to me that maybe my mom has been after him too, reminding him to remind us of how the world is actually dangerous.

Out in the hall, the doorbell rings, and Decker goes to let Pinky in.

* * *

“We should do some new portraits before school starts,” Kelly says when I come into work. “I could set up some really dramatic lighting, and maybe do some fun makeup.”

“Yes, let’s,” I say, lacing my fingers together and propping my chin on my hands, elbows stuck out in imitation of a 1950s pinup pose.

Over by the register, Lillian mimics me, flopping herself down on the counter with her arms splayed out, elbows jutting. I make sure to keep my eyes focused somewhere to the right of her, like I’m not looking at anything.

Kelly loves high-concept shoots, but the truth is that it’s been a while since I’ve liked having my picture taken. It always makes me feel like I’m being magicked into someone else, and then I don’t even know how I look anymore.

* * *

Some days I’m pretty, and some days I’m not, and once, for three hours and forty-five minutes, I was beautiful. But that was a long time ago, at the eighth grade dance, and I wore a blue dress that I’d made from a McCall pattern after I fixed the serger, and Jason Forrester really, really liked me. I mean, he liked me so much that it wasn’t just hypothetical. I could actually tell.

I let Ariel put my hair up in a fancy braided bun that she’d just invented, and I didn’t even mind that it was kind of lopsided or that the ends stuck out, because it looked almost intentionally messy. It looked the way girls’ hair looks in magazines sometimes—like their lives are so wild and glamorous that their hair is constantly getting tousled. I wore makeup, and everyone kept looking at me in this confused, startled way—like they’d never known before that I could surprise them.

And I know it’s what you’re supposed to want, but it scared me.

Lillian laughed because I was so awkward, and because usually she was the one who made people stare. She was the beauty, with her sweet fairy-tale face and her long black hair. And then, not.

I was no one, barely even a real girl. I’d had to alter the pattern to make up for the fact that my waist was 22 inches and my bust was 26.

Even shoes and blouses were a problem, and shopping for swimsuits was embarrassing, but Lillian never made fun of me. She already wore a real underwire bra and the kind of jeans that you don’t buy in the kids’ section. She said I was lucky. That I was so delicate and tiny.
Like a pixie
, she said, but I knew that 26 inches wasn’t something to want. That’s not even the size of a real person.

The blue dress was the best thing I’d ever made, covered in pleats and flounces, with a tulle overskirt. My mom helped me with the flounces because the fabric was fragile and stretchy, which made measuring tricky, but I did everything else myself.

Before the dance, we got ready at my house, but we went to Lillian’s to meet our dates. I never minded that. I knew it was because she didn’t have a sister to be loud and sticky and mess things up or a dog to shed all over everyone, and because my house wasn’t as nice as hers. And that was just how it was.

“Lillian,” her mother said when we stood in front of the gas fireplace for pictures. “Honestly, honey. I don’t know if you should be wearing those kinds of dresses anymore. You’ve just got a little too much going on in the chest area to be wearing spaghetti straps. Don’t you want to wear your black one?”

As if Lillian hadn’t just spent four hours trying on every single dress she owned, looking for the one that didn’t make her look fat. She was smart and stubborn, but her mother was the voice of authority. Mrs. Wald was so well-meaning and so picky, and she was always right.

In her room, Lillian sat slumped at her ruffled vanity with the oval mirror in front of her and the black dress spread out on top of her quilt, but she didn’t change right away. She just looked at herself, and I sat on the edge of her bed and didn’t remind her that Connor and Jason were waiting for us.

“You can wear my bow,” I said, running my fingers over the black dress. “It will look better with the flower pattern than it does on me.”

Lillian just stared into the mirror.

I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to tell her that her mother didn’t mean she wasn’t okay just the way she was. She had this expression on her face like she’d lost at something, and I thought,
How awful to never be allowed to fail.
I took the bow out of my hair and saw that she was crying a little.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It wasn’t true about the straps. You look nice.”

She just shook her head and cried harder.

“If you don’t stop,” I said, “you’re going to wreck your makeup.”

And she pinned her hair back from her face with the bow and stopped crying, but it was already too late. All her happiness was gone. Her face looked numb and empty, like all the joy and the excitement had run out of her.

We went back upstairs, and Lillian’s mom drove us to the school. We went inside and stood in the cafeteria along with everyone else. And maybe Jason Forrester liked me, but he was too nervous and awkward to stand next to me with the music blasting through the speakers and Lillian acting like anyone who came near us needed to be shot.

I didn’t care. I didn’t even really know how to slow dance, even if he had gotten around to asking me. I was waiting for Lillian, watching to see what she would do, always ready to let her show me the way.

Connor didn’t ask her to dance, though, and neither did anyone else. I thought maybe it was because of how Lillian had basically ignored him in the car the whole way over, and because she looked ready to set fire to anyone who got close, but she thought it was because she was fat.

“You can dance with me,” I said.

She shook her head, avoiding my eyes. “That’s stupid. I mean, we’re not little kids anymore.”

Over by the refreshment table, Connor was standing with Jason and Max Sodermeyer, flicking the roasted peanuts from the pretzel mix at all the couples shuffling past.

“Lyle,” I said, reaching for her, holding out my arms. “Dance with me.”

I thought she would turn away, but then she reached for me too, collapsing into me like a building coming down.

We stood in the corner of the gym, with the reflections from the mirrorball trickling over us in silver coins of light. I put my arms around her waist and held on, held tight like we were magical girls in a story, or like I had a big sister. She rested her head on my shoulder, and I knew she was crying, but I didn’t say anything. The song was one from an old TV show. It was happier and brighter than the moment, but I didn’t care that the soundtrack to our evening was bouncy and all wrong. I was just glad to be with her.

Even when things weren’t okay at all anymore, and she got sad and sick and awful, I was always just so glad to be with her.

Eighth grade was a long time ago, but it’s what I want to remember.

I was pretty and skinny.

Lillian was beautiful.

* * *

When officers Boles and McGarahan come in at lunchtime, Kelly beats me to the counter to write up the order.

“What’s up?” she says, reaching for the forms. Her smile looks warm and friendly, but her hands are nervous, skittering across the counter.

McGarahan is watching her in a long, meaningful way, like if he stares hard enough, she’ll understand without his actually saying anything.

“We’ve got the film for the Miles homicide,” says Boles, who tends to lose patience with things like etiquette and beating around the bush. He gives her five rolls of film and two sets of special instructions.

The whole time, McGarahan keeps up this constant stream of conversation, like if he just keeps talking, everything will be fine.

After they leave, Kelly sits down to print the order, and I do my best to stay busy. I sweep the main aisle and the floor behind the register—all the places that aren’t anywhere near the printer.

Lillian is just as restless, pacing back and forth between the counter and the door, while Kelly works on the order. She’s clicking her way through the second roll when her face changes.

I put down the broom and go into the back.

In the little office, I sit on the edge of the counter and stare at the workers’ compensation poster on the wall, thinking about Cecily. I think of the version of her that I saw on TV—the wide, goofy smile, and the way she will never get her braces off. The counter is cold against the backs of my legs. Lillian sits next to me, hunched over with her hands clasped between her knees.

After a minute, she leans into me, resting her shoulder against mine like she used to when I was upset about something. “What are you doing back here?”

“Nothing,” I say, without looking away from the workers’ comp poster. It shows a guy lifting with his back, red arrows of pain shooting out from his spine.

“You can’t keep acting like this,” Lillian says, and for the first time in months, it’s like she’s actually trying to be nice. “Tragedy isn’t this evil thing that came from outer space. It’s just there, you know. Along with everything else.”

I don’t answer. The fact is, she can say that because she’s not the one who lost everything.

“That’s not true,” she says softly. “You know that’s not true.”

When Kelly comes into the office, I think that maybe she’s come back to get me, but when she sees me sitting on the counter, she looks surprised. She’s carrying the police photos in their brown paper bag and then she does something really strange. For the first time ever, she doesn’t just tuck them under the front counter with the rest of the orders. Instead, she locks them in the little floor safe, like they’re an ugly creature that might get out.