The Words We Keep
: Chapter 9

Alice isn’t any more Alice when I come into our room after packing tomorrow’s lunches. At dinner, she said about two words, despite Dad’s best efforts to get her laughing and Margot’s litany of questions about Fairview. Luckily, Staci and Dad filled the silence with chitchat while we chomped on some tofu concoction, trying way too hard to pretend tonight was just like any other night.

“Sorry I left such a mess,” she says, standing in the middle of the room, looking at the piles of half-finished projects.

“It’s fine.” I scoot back on my bed to lean against the wall, pulling out my planner. She picks up the graduation picture of her and her best smile, shakes her head, and puts it in a drawer.

“Did you make my bed?”

Sixteen times.

“I wanted to help.”

She nods, studying the room like it’s been a lifetime instead of two months. “What’s with Margot’s cape?”

“She’s been reading Mom’s books. She’s waaaay into it.”

Alice pulls pajamas from her drawer. “Harmless cosplay, or full-on psychosis?”

“Unclear.”

“What about Dad? He looks old. Well, older.”

“He’s—”

exhausted

“—fine. We’re all fine.” I add this last part even though she didn’t actually ask about me.

She nods and heads to the bathroom, but stops at the threshold, staring at the tile floor.

“You okay?” I ask.

She looks at me like she’s surfacing from an alternate dimension, and I want to tell her she can share her monsters with me, and I’ll tell her about mine and how I’m scared, every single second, that she’s going to hurt herself again. How I might shatter if she does.

“Fine,” she says before stepping in and closing the door. The shower beats out a steady rhythm, and I double-check to make sure the box of blades is still under my bed.

I’m busting through tonight’s Spanish review when Dad appears in my doorway, his reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose, his eyes tired.

“You still up, Lily pad?”

“Yep.”

He sits on the bed next to me and hands me half a chocolate chip cookie.

“Life’s too short for tofu,” he says, smiling. “Besides, you only YOLO once.”

I take the cookie even though I’m not hungry.

“Dad, seriously. The slang is not your friend.”

He laughs lightly and looks toward the bathroom, where the shower’s still going.

“How long has she been in there?” he asks, checking his watch.

“Not too long.” I almost tell him about the box of razors under my bed, anything to make him look less worried about what Alice could be doing behind closed doors.

His eyes rove over her side of the room, where her blue duffel bag sits on the floor, still packed, like it’s standing at the ready.

“How does she seem to you?” he asks.

Muted.

Broken.

“Different.”

He nods, his eyes never leaving Alice’s bag.

“Dad.” I clear my throat. “With bipolar disorder, is it, like, treated? Like it’s gone? Or, I mean, what if—could she—”

He pats me on the thigh as I stumble over the memory of the Night of the Bathroom Floor.

“All that matters is she’s going to be better now.” He holds my hand, squeezing it three times, his unspoken signal for I love you. “You leave the worrying to me, all right? That’s my job, and I take it very seriously.”

Just above his temple, a patch of white hair matches the shoots of gray in his beard. His brow is furrowed, forming a strong crease right in the middle of his eyebrows. Alice is right, he looks older. For all his dad jokes, all his unrelenting efforts to make everything okay, he’s worried.

“I’m in the running for a poetry contest,” I blurt out. Dad looks up and smiles, momentarily erasing the crease in his forehead.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Winner gets a scholarship to a Berkeley summer program, and Gifford says I’d basically be guaranteed a spot freshman year.”

Okay, so I embellish a little, but it’s worth it because Dad fist-pumps into the air, his wrinkles morphing from worry to smile lines, and I breathe a little easier.

“A Golden Bear just like your old man!”

Before I can stop him, he breaks out into a rousing, but whispered, rendition of the school’s fight song, and even though I don’t need all this fanfare, I’m glad I’ve made him happy—for a moment. And I know, more than ever, that a win is exactly what this family needs.

When he’s finished his ode to his alma mater, he pats me on the back.

“That’s amazing, honey. Really. Just amazing. Berkeley on the horizon, and you’re still gunning for the state finals, right?”

It’s the first time he’s asked about my running since Alice left. Before, he always wanted to hear about my times and would put all my meets on his calendar. He still tries to get there when he can, but I guess he’s got bigger things on his mind now than me running in circles.

I nod. “Got a real chance this year.”

If you can get your times down.

He scans my bed, all my textbooks and notebooks and flash cards, like he’s seeing them—and me—for the first time in ages. “You’re not pushing yourself too hard, though, are you?”

I shake my head, but for an instant, I wish I were young again, that he’d tuck me into the spot just below his shoulder, next to his heart. And he’d tell me it’s okay, and I’d believe him because he’s my dad and dads don’t lie.

Maybe I can tell him. About the bad thoughts and the panic that keeps surging through me and how I’m sitting at the top of a roller coaster, waiting for this massive drop that never comes. How I’m 99 percent sure I’m as messed up as Alice.

Yes, I’m going to tell him. Even though his eyes are tired and one more disappointment could kill him, or at least maim him. But we’re all the walking dead around here anyway. What’s one more flesh wound?

I breathe deeply. The words form on the tip of my tongue.

Ask me again.

Ask me how I’m doing.

Just ask.

I’ll tell.

But he doesn’t ask. Instead, he says he’s proud of me and stands up, eyes lingering on the bathroom door for a second as the water turns off.

He kisses the top of my head. “What did I ever do to deserve such a perfect daughter?”

My chest deflates. I swallow my words.

I hide them deep behind my ribs, tucked neatly by my heart, with all the other words I keep.

—

Alice returns, hair still damp, and gets into bed without a word.

I disappear, too, into the pages of my notebook, still trying to think of a poem because even though Micah says he’ll help me, I have serious doubts about this whole muse-discovery plan. On my hand, the Winnie-the-Pooh sketch he put there stares at me, and I can’t help wondering about Manic Micah. How many of the Underground rumors are true? And why did he offer to help me?

And what, exactly, was I thinking? That a boy with monkeys on his socks and a super-sketchy past can help me with this poem?

Help me write something good enough to save this family?

Something that tells us who you are, Gifford said. Something real.

Real is a stranger with short hair and scars on her arms sleeping across the room from me. Real is me sitting on the bathroom floor, staring down a list of crazy.

Reality is too real.

My brain can’t focus with the lump formerly known as Alice across the room. She’s perfectly quiet, but I know she’s there. Seven quick steps, one flying leap, and an eternity away.

In the dark, the monsters come calling.

You should be able to write this poem without Micah’s help.

You should be able to talk to your sister.

You should

should

should

should

The shoulds pile up like so many cars on the highway that screech and skid into each other, unable to stop. With Alice across the room, sucking up all the oxygen, they’re louder than ever. I end up in the bathroom, staring at a row of medicines in the cabinet with long names and harsh consonants. Each one is labeled with Alice’s name. Each one shouts its orders: take exactly as directed. take with food. take twice a day.

eat me!

drink me!

trust me!

Tell your doctor right away if you have new or worsening depression or suicidal thoughts. May cause dizziness and drowsiness and an irrational impulse to chop off all your hair. Don’t operate heavy machinery. Or be anything like the person you’ve been for the last eighteen years.

I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly. Maybe a clue? Some crystal ball. What can you tell me, little white label? What’s Alice’s future? What’s mine?

But seeing her medicines makes my skin too tight. Makes my breath catch in my lungs.

I slam the cabinet shut. My face looks like Dad’s in the mirror. Same wide jaw and green eyes. Same purply circles under them. My long brown hair is straighter than Alice’s, but still has a hint of Mom’s frizz.

I stare until my face goes fuzzy. Like when you say a word too many times. My face loses its definition.

Loses its meaning.

My eyes focus on a few stray eyebrow hairs. My hand fumbles in the drawer for my tweezers.

The hairs pinch as they leave my skin.

One. Two. Three. One more.

The hair breaks, leaving a small stub. I dig the tweezers in until blood beads on my skin. But I keep going.

Deeper.

Deeper.

It stings.

But I control the hurt.

A little deeper.

And…got it.

In the mirror, my cheeks are flushed.

I wipe the pinpoints of blood from my eyelids.

Not a single hair running wild.

Perfect.

LogoLily’s Word of the Day

locuration (n) The process of slowly losing your mind, like a frog in a boiling pot of water who doesn’t notice the heat until it’s too late, so you’re left watching yourself boil because it all happens so slowly, so imperceptibly little by little, unwanted thought by unwanted thought, until BAM!

You’re cooked.

From Spanish locura (crazy)