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“I’m here for you, Bella. Unload away.”
I had kept a secret from my family. In a rare moment of honesty, or maybe drug-induced truthfulness, Lucy had told me she was tired of living. The pressure put on her to excel had taken a toll on her. Going to school was a blessing and curse; she got out of the house, away from Lillian, but in school she was constantly badgered about her God-given talents.
“You’re not taking full advantage of your capabilities,” they’d tell her. “You could do so much better. You should be in college full-time now, Lucy. Why are you wasting your time partying?”
Taking drugs and hanging with that group of people was self-destructive, and she knew it. I made the tough decision to tell my parents she was in trouble. But either I was too young to properly convey the seriousness of it or they chose to stay in denial. They didn’t get her help, and within a week, she was dead.
I never said,She was tired of living.
I blamed myself. I went through the scenario that my betrayal had pushed Lucy over the edge. No one had looked into the possibility that the overdose was intentional, as far as I knew.
“Do you really think you had that much influence over her?” Flynn asked. “I doubt she was thinking of anything that night except getting as high as she could. She wasn’t thinking about anyone but herself.”
That hurt. I would have to rearrange my entire way of looking at it. If Flynn was right, Lucy hadn’t been thinking of me. I wasn’t important to her because she was a selfish teenager.
“Wow. I’ve never been angry with her,” I said. “I was always mad at myself. But right now, I’m furious with Lucy.”
I bowed my head and cried, listening to Flynn’s wisdom. Finally, I got myself under control.
“You need to forgive yourself,” Flynn continued. “It’s sad that your parents weren’t able to do more, but they aren’t completely to blame. It sounds as though serious mental illness complicated her substance abuse. You’re right, she needed professional help. So many people in power failed her—the school, her therapist, everyone who had anything to do with her.”
He tried to comfort me, and soon his soothing voice and wisdom helped.
“Can I come to you?” he asked.
“I’m sitting in my car, watching the boats.” I gave him the cross streets.
“I know that parking area. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Okay. I’m sorry I’m being high-maintenance.”
“You’re not. I’m the high-maintenance one,” he replied, making me laugh but not for long.
While I waited for him, I imagined Lucy sitting next to me. I told her about Flynn, about the accident where I had supposedly saved his life.
“I couldn’t save you,” I said to the air. But I could savehim.
And then, unwanted, the memory of finding her dead body flooded over me. I had been out late at candlelight Midnight Mass. She had refused to go despite it being something we had always enjoyed attending together.
My parents left early for Christmas Eve dinner with the seven fishes held at my grandparents’ home on Gratiot, Margo with a boyfriend. Rocko and I went together, stopping by Anthony’s Pizzeria on the way home. The fishes weren’t enough.
I didn’t want to go for pizza and felt certain, an itch down in my soul, that something wasn’t right. For months, slowly, our spiritual attachment, or shared DNA, or whatever it was that had bound Lucy and me together had deteriorated. But that night, it had returned.
“We need to get home,” I said to Rocko. “Something’s wrong.”
I bowed my head again. It wasn’t a vision I wanted to see, and I pressed my eyes shut, but tears dripped off the end of my nose.
Rarely it came to me in my dreams—my twin, her skinny arms together, hands clasped over the side of her bed. Her reddish blond hair fanned out over her face like a veil. We both have—had—pale freckled skin, and hers was deathly.
“Oh, Lucy.”
Quickly moving the hair from her face, I knew she was gone the second I saw her, but I was determined to breathe life back into her. I dropped to my knees at the side of the bed, shaking her, then blowing a puff of air into her mouth. I tried to straighten her in the bed, but too awkward for me.
I screamed for my brother. He ran in, and we dragged Lucy off the bed and onto the floor so we could do CPR together. Cradling her in my arms, I was shocked at how almost weightless she seemed. Another issue that had been ignored by my parents—Lucy’s weight.
“She’s so skinny!” Rocko cried.
We both knew CPR; it was one of the few worthwhile things we had learned at school. I wanted to do it but was paralyzed. He gently pushed me aside.
