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  I killed my own mother.

  I'm suddenly sobbing and Hope is patting my back, and saying something, but I can't even tell what. I have no idea what she's saying, and I can't even think about it, not now. I can't be her guardian. It's my fault she needs a guardian at all.

  I don't know how long I'm crying, and I don't know what Hope says while I am. I do know that eventually, Dr. Brasher comes back into the room.

  "Is everything okay?" he asks.

  I manage to choke back my sobs and try to pull it together. I haven't even asked Hope whether she wants me as a guardian, and I'm beginning to think I'm not fit.

  "I need a few more minutes, please," I say.

  He turns toward Hope, clearly looking for some indication of what’s going on. She nods too, and he steps back out.

  "I asked them to bring you in here because I needed to ask you something." I glance up at Hope and just looking at her big blue eyes makes me want to cry again, but I don't. I can't, not right now. I'm not sure how long we have, and I need to know what to ask for.

  "I'm going to admit that it was my fault there were drugs in the car," I tell her. "I can't let you take that from me. I have to own up to it."

  Hope shakes her head violently. "No, you can't. Promise me you won't."

  "I have to. It was so brave of you to take the blame, but it's not fair and it isn't right. Even if you're willing to do it, I can't let a lie like that stand."

  "It's already done, though. There won't even be charges once I turn eighteen. They weren't going to do anything at all, except that I wouldn't tell them anything about where they came from.” She mumbles. “I didn’t know where they came from to tell them, anyway.”

  "I'm doing this, Hope. It's the right thing to do. It might not be on your record, but as an athlete, you’ll forever have to answer questions about drug use and drug charges. Are you sure this won't follow you?"

  She bobs her head. "I'm sure. And even if it does, that’s what drug tests are for. I don’t care."

  I think about Hope peeing in a cup while someone stands behind her watching. I shake my head. "I care." I take her hand. "If I’ve learned anything from all this, it’s that lies come back again, even well intentioned ones. I’m petitioning the Court to let me be your guardian. I can’t be a good guardian if I let you lie for me.”

  “You won’t be my guardian at all if you don’t!”

  I shake my head. “Then I shouldn’t be. The more I think about it, I wonder whether I’m fit anyway. It was my mistake, and I'll fix it myself. But what I needed to ask you was whether you even want me for a guardian. After what happened to Mom, after I..." I wipe away an errant tear. "I doubt they'll even approve me, not after all this, but if they do, we could stay together for the rest of the school year and all summer. Do you even want that? Be honest. I can take it if you don't."

  Hope hugs me again. "Of course I do." She pulls away.

  “Who knows? Maybe they’ll believe me when I tell them I threw those drugs away, and that it was a mistake I'll never make again, but if they don't, well at least you can stay with the Boones, and you’ll be fine."

  "Wait," she says, "what about Yale?"

  I tilt my head sideways. "What do you know about Yale?"

  "I know you didn't get in, but that you wowed the debate coach from Yale so much, they offered you a scholarship."

  "How do you know about that?"

  "Mason told me," she said.

  "He did?" I stomped down on a bit of irrational jealousy. I see him every day at school, but he hasn’t said whether he’s doing an application for Yale and I haven’t asked.

  "I see him at swim team every day, Lacy."

  I think about how Hope is willing to risk her future for mine. The same girl who, not two weeks ago, refused to step back and let me date a guy she liked. She's changed. "The thing is, Yale wasn't an option a week ago, and if it goes back to not being an option again, then so be it."

  "You say that now, but the point is, if you let this stand, you can go. But if you tell them everything, maybe not."

  I think about it. She's right. I’ll probably have a record after this. They could actually convict me of a felony. They've already put Hope on probation and she's entered a plea. I didn't ask her to, but maybe it’s for the best. I could take care of her, be her guardian, and be a good sister to make up for all the bad if I just change a few lines. No one has to know, except for me and her.

  But that's enough.

  I can't do it, because it would eat at me. Every single day. Some lies are too big. They're so big they consume your life. Like our mom lying to us. It obviously ate at her like a cancer. Maybe it caused her headaches, or worsened her depression. At the very least if she'd told us, we would have known to stay clear of drugs entirely, no matter what. She could have taken medication, too, if she hadn’t been so afraid of it, and if we knew what happened with Dad we might have seen her aversion in another light and pressed it. Who knows?

  She didn't tell us though, because she never trusted us with the truth. She's gone, at least in part, because of her own lie.

  When Dr. Brasher comes back inside, I don't send him away, not this time. "I'm ready." I look at Hope sadly, and I pray that this doesn't destroy our lives even more, but I can't let her take this bullet for me.

  This time, I'm prepared for him to know the ending of my story. I'm ready to revise my ideas about the future to exclude New Haven if I have to, and I'm ready to own up to my mistakes. Ignoring the things I did wrong landed me in this mess to begin with. I open the laptop and slide it over to him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Hope

  It takes Dr. Brasher quite a long time to read whatever Lacy wrote. I don't know whether he reads slowly, or whether she’d just written an awful lot. Knowing her, she probably wrote like a million pages. When he finally finishes, he doesn't look at either of us. He closes the laptop and exhales loudly.

  I glance at Lacy, and she shrugs. She doesn't know what he's thinking either.

  "The drugs had nothing to do with you, Hope?"

  I shake my head.

  "Why did you tell Principal Skinner they were yours?"

  "I’m a minor. I didn't want Lacy to go to prison."

  "You didn't know about her deal with Jack, though. As far as you knew, the drugs were hers."

  I nod.

  "And you still told the police, the principal, everyone, that they were yours?"

  I nod again. "Lacy has a bright future, Dr. Brasher. She shouldn’t go to prison for felony possession, like Principal Skinner said she could if I told."

  Dr. Brasher leans back and laughs.

  "I don't see what's funny about this," Lacy says. She's wearing her, 'watch out or I'll kick your butt' look.

  "Lacy, you've been scared to admit this, that you spoke to Jack about letting him put his drugs in your car, and even gave him your key?"

  She nods. "Yes. I know it was wrong."

  "But you never took the drugs he gave you?"

  She shakes her head. "No, I didn't, but I gave him a key. I told him he could store them in my property."

  "You did, and aiding a criminal is a serious issue, but it's not a felony, not under these circumstances."

  "It's not?" she asks.

  He shakes his head, and my chest feels so much lighter, I wonder that I don't float up in the air like a birthday balloon.

  "Oh good!" I say.

  "The real crime," Dr. Brasher says, "is that I’ve written up my recommendation to the Court. I was going to tell them that there wasn't a strong bond between the two of you, and that you might complete your grieving and finish the school year better alone, in separate domiciles."

  Lacy's mouth drops open and I feel just as shocked.

  "I love my sister," I say.

  "I can see that," Dr. Brasher says. "I can see it clearly now that I know the whole story. I'm going to recommend the Court perform a drug test on your hair, Lacy. It should show only one usage of Adderall,
and if it does, I’ll recommend they drop charges and allow you to be placed as your sister Hope's guardian. You will almost certainly be required to testify against the boy who asked you to hold the drugs for him."

  Lacy's smile fills the room, and my heart soars. "Really?"

  "You obviously have a deep bond, one that matters. After something like your mother’s passing, you need those bonds more than ever." He walks over to his desk and shuffles some papers. "Unfortunately I can't do anything about it tonight. Hope, you'll need to return home with the Boones, but if the judge agrees with me, you two could return to your home as early as tomorrow night."

  I feel like the world is spinning around me. No record, no foster care. The future is wide open, and maybe Lacy will be okay, too. I want to dance and sing. Of course, when I sing it sounds like the seagull in The Little Mermaid, so I don't, but I want to.

  "One last thing." Dr. Brasher hands Lacy a file folder. "I pulled these a few days ago. That's your father's arrest record. Your mother had to post bail quite a few times for him. The last time, she didn't go to post bail. She went to identify his body. I can't imagine how hard that would have been, or what agony she suffered trying to do the right thing by the two of you. Addiction runs in families. She was probably terrified you two would eventually follow the same path. It ate away at her, and combined with her depression, well. Make sure, for her sake, you don't ever get involved in any form of drug use."

  Lacy doesn't speak, and neither do I, but I think Dr. Brasher can tell we’re listening. I don't intend to ever walk that road. I wish my mom was here to see that.

  "It's not your fault, you know."

  I look up at him. He's talking to both of us.

  "There's nothing either of you could have done that would have saved her, not at this point. You couldn't have been expected to know the clinical signs of depression, not at your age. I included her medical records in that folder as well. You'll see she was diagnosed on two separate occasions, but refused to take any medication. Wherever she is now, I will promise you one thing, and you need to believe me. She would not want you to carry around that guilt."

  Whether she wants it or not, I don't know. I do know that I can't quite erase it, but I’ll make sure I keep my eyes out for anyone else in the future. And I’ll badger the crap out of them to take their medicine, every day if I have to.

  “But if I hadn’t told Jack he could store those drugs.” Lacy shakes her head.

  Dr. Brasher takes a step toward her. “Your mother didn’t even listen to the voicemails on her phone before she died. She had no idea any of that happened. Sometimes depression worsens for no reason at all. It’s a medical condition, Angelica, and it was not your fault. Not a bit of it.”

  A tear runs down Lacy’s face then, and she leans forward and hugs Dr. Brasher. She practically whispers the next words. “Thank you. For your patience. For your understanding. For everything.”

  He smiles as we leave. "Keep me apprised of where you go after graduation," he says. "I'm really interested to know."

  "I will," Lacy says. "I've got a new application for Yale to finish tonight, now that it looks like I might be going after all."

  The Boones are waiting outside, matching looks of concern on their faces. They're good people; they just aren't my people. I hug Lacy tightly before I let her go and head back to their home with them. That night, before I go to bed, I check my email. I haven't checked it in over a week, and I have a lot of junk mail. I never should have signed up for People magazine's updates.

  The most recent email isn't junk, though. It's from Lacy. "Finished a first draft of my admissions letter. Tell me what you think." I click on the attachment.

  Dear Admissions Board:

  I used to think that who we were was somehow a product of our essence, something you might call a soul. I thought that people were who they were, and you couldn't change them. This past week has altered my paradigm. I now realize that our lives are nothing more than a sequence of decisions, all of them small, but they send ripples out all around us. They weave together to form the fabric of who we are. If I choose to eat two pieces of toast every morning, and I consume healthy vegetables and fruits, with meat in moderation, I will likely be thin and healthy my entire life. If instead, I choose to eat Snickers bars for lunch, and wash them down with a soda, I’ll likely become sickly or weak. It won't happen overnight, but little by little, day by day, my health will deteriorate. Sometimes we make decisions so incrementally that we don't even realize where they’re taking us.

  A few months ago, I applied for admission to Yale. I applied to many places, but your school has always been my top choice. I received a rejection from you a little over a week ago. Following that letter, I made a sequence of bad decisions, and the result was that my life began to spin out of control. I can't pinpoint exactly when it began, but I know I shouldn't have let a drug dealer store his stash in my car. I shouldn't have gotten in a huge fight with my sister over a guy we both liked. I definitely shouldn't have stayed up all night working on a project, and then contemplated taking prescription drugs improperly the next day to compensate for my exhaustion. All of those things were bad choices, potentially ruinous ones, but the decision that impacted my life the most last week, the one that got me thinking about all of the repercussions of each choice we make was one I didn't even make. Notwithstanding my helplessness, I've agonized over it, I have wailed, and moaned and yes, I have even cried. Buckets of tears, if I'm being honest.

  My mom chose to end her life two weeks ago today.

  At one point, I partially blamed my sister. When I learned more about the circumstances, I shifted all of that blame to myself.

  On several occasions, I’ve been furious with Mom for leaving me. After the benefit of a few weeks’ thought on the horrible, tragic decision my mom made, I've come to the conclusion that the only person we can blame for any decision is the person making it.

  I am to blame for fighting with my sister. I am to blame for bad judgment in letting an acquaintance put illegal substances in my car. I am to blame for almost taking amphetamines, but in the end, I threw the pills in the garbage. That's the same thing we must do with our guilt over other people's decisions and our own mistakes, every time the guilt resurfaces. Sure, I might have recognized the signs of my mom's depression and prevented her death if I’d been less caught up in my own problems, but I didn't. I could have caused her less stress in the past week, if I'd known what the results would be, but we cannot live our lives out of fear of what may happen. Sometimes the consequences of our decisions spiral far beyond our ability to predict.

  Of all the things that went wrong in my week, I'm to blame for all but one. I refuse to accept the blame for my mother's mental illness and the horror that followed. What I promise to bring to Yale, if Mr. Zane convinces you to accept me, is an ability to make each decision now, small though they may seem, with the attention I know those decisions deserve. I hope that with my unique perspective, I can help other students to learn to do the same. It would be my distinct honor to debate on Yale's team, if your esteemed institution will have me.

  Sincerely,

  Angelica Shelton-Vincent

  I type a reply right away. "Lacy for President. :)"

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lacy

  Time still confuses me.

  Some things go on and on. For instance, an hour at the dentist drags on forever. The two weeks leading up to Christmas lasts for months, and the hour my mom used to make us wait to open presents while she made breakfast stretched into eternity. Conversely, when we went to Disneyland, a day passed in a snap. In timed tests, the sixty minutes fly by.

  Some days when I wake up, I feel like my mom should be smashing her snooze button, or sitting in the kitchen, hunched over a cup of coffee. The grief slaps me right in the face, fresh and new. Those days are hard. Other days, it feels like I’ve been so long without her that I've forgotten what she looked like. Those days are the hardest.

/>   No matter how much time passes, I feel a familiar pulling at my heart every time I think about her, which I do often.

  I still wonder sometimes whether she'd have survived if I'd been born a few weeks earlier. After all, I would have graduated a year before and never even met Mason. If Hope had been born a few weeks later, she might have been on the junior varsity team, and she might not have caught his eye. If Mason had shown up just one day later, he wouldn't have come with me to that tournament when Drew was late, and we might never have dated. He'd already have been securely smitten by Hope at that point, and I'd never have tried to mess with that. Sometimes I wonder whether my mom would still be alive if Principal Skinner hadn't put the parking lot attendant on alert for anyone going outside during school hours, Dr. Brasher’s reassurances she never saw the voicemails notwithstanding. The only answer I can find is that, no matter how many seconds we scraped together, I'll never know what would have happened.

  My mom might still be alive, or she might not. Either way, I can't let other people's agency impact the choices I make today. And I want to make every second I have count.

  Which means, when my alarm goes off at six am, I don't hit the snooze button. I groan and roll out of bed. My feet land on Moby's tail, and he yelps with displeasure. That wakes up Hope, of course, and she rubs her eyes.

  "If you hadn't insisted we get a dog, we could be in the dorms," I grumble.

  "You still could have. I'm at Gateway Community College, remember? We're living here so you can room with me, not because of poor little Moby." She leans down and rubs him, then blinks several times. "What time is it?"

  "Your first class isn't for hours yet," I say. "Go back to sleep."

  "Good luck at your meet," Hope mumbles.

  I don't remind her it's a tournament. Some things are just hardwired. Mason still calls tournaments meets sometimes, too. I take a shower and pick my favorite suit, a charcoal grey with pink pinstripes. I just got it back from the dry cleaners.