Page 126 of Taking Turns

She nods slowly. “I like telling you things. You tell me things, I tell you things. You’re the perfect Number Two, Quin. Easy to love, just like Smith said. And easy to laugh with too.”

“I like you too, Chella. And if I had my way, we’d stay in this arrangement forever.”

“But we won’t, will we?”

“No,” I say. “It never lasts.”

More sighing from both of us. “What’s all that writing?” I ask, pointing to the ceiling.

“It’s a song,” Chella says. “An old church song. I’ll Fly Away. Have you ever heard it?”

I shake my head. Sick. So sick for not knowing this about the girl I loved.

“I can play it,” Chella says. “She has the record.”

When I say nothing Chella gets up on her knees and crawls over to the record player. Anything is better than Blue Christmas. She takes that record off, plops a new record on, and then starts the music with a loud crackling noise.

Then she crawls back to me and lies back down. Points to the ceiling. “The words are up there. She wrote them all out.”

I follow along with the song, reading her words, dying inside.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” I ask.

“No,” Chella says softly, leaning into me to kiss my cheek. “I don’t think so.”

“That song is about dying, Chella. Whatever this is, whatever reason she had for doing all this. She did it as a goodbye.”

Chella lets out a long exhale. “She left, so that is a goodbye. But I don’t think she left to kill herself, Quin.”

“The song is about death,” I say, too loud.

“I didn’t know her well, Quin. Not at all, hardly. But if there’s one thing I understood about Rochelle, it’s that she’s not a literal person. She’s an artist. A musician. Maybe a painter and a poet. But she didn’t write out those lyrics on the ceiling as a premonition of her suicide. She wrote as them as a memorial to your love.”

“So our love is dead.” That doesn’t help.

“Maybe it’s just a new beginning?” Chella asks. “Maybe she just wanted out of this arrangement? Did that ever occur to you?”

“Then why not tell me?” I ask, turning my head to look at Chella. “Why just… pick up and leave? She knew the rules.”

“Maybe I don’t know all the rules of Taking Turns, Quin. But it’s my understanding that once you walk out, there’s no turning back.”

I don’t answer.

“So maybe she left to end the game and give the two of you a chance to start over?”

“I’m supposed to look for her?” I want to throw up. “And I didn’t. She’s been gone for a month. She could be anywhere. She probably thinks—”

“She probably thinks it’s gonna take a while for you to sort it all out, Quin. So don’t jump to conclusions.”

The song ends and the needle plays endless static as it jumps the open space at the center of the record.

“I think this is over now,” I say.

“Yeah,” Chella says in a low, sad whisper. “I think so too.”

We lie there in the static of nothingness for a little longer. And then Chella gets up and crawls over to the record player again, picking up the needle and turning it off. “Come on,” she says, tugging on my hand. “Let’s go to sleep.”

She climbs down from the attic and I follow a few second later. She’s changing out of her dress and into a t-shirt and shorts. I walk across the hall, into the closet I share with Bric and Smith, and slowly undress until I’m only wearing gray boxer briefs.