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“You’re Lindsay.”
“No… I… what?” I pushed my chair backwards, my throat tight, everything swimming around me. Paisley reached across the table, and she took my hand.
“Lindsay was too young to be driving. You left it to your older sister, Harper, to look after herself. And when she died…”
“No,” I said, my voice hoarse. I couldn’t see straight anymore. I thought I might fall down, might pass out.
“You thought it should have been you. So… you made it so. And your mother was already forgetting Lindsay existed, so when Lindsay didn’t exist anymore… who was going to notice?”
I stood up, my heart pounding so hard I thought I’d throw up. “I… Paisley, I can’t… I’m sorry,” I blurted. I didn’t know what I was saying. I barely heard myself. I turned, and I—I just—I left. I ran away.
I pushed out the door, stumbling over pavement in a confused, dizzy rush, and I wasn’t sure where I was or what was going on until I was in the park, quiet here in the dark, standing at a stone railing looking out on the nighttime skyline, leaning on the railing and breathing hard.
The wind murmured in the tree branches. The sounds of the city from all around were distant enough through the trees that it was like a far-off sigh, letting go of everything.
Atapcame from next to me as Paisley set down my cappuccino on the wall, leaning against it next to me, cast in the warm glow of the streetlamp, but she didn’t say anything—just looking out at the skyline. My heart pounded, a surreal feeling like I didn’t belong in my body.
Of course, to be fair, I didn’t belong in it. I hadn’t for a long time.
“Why are you following me?” I whispered, clenching my hands on the railing, feeling the coarse stone grinding against my knuckles.
“Because I want you to know I love you.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. She slipped closer, putting a hand on my lower back.
“As Lindsay,” she said, and it dug into me like a hot knife—I whirled on her, taking a step back, bumping into the wall. I had to swallow hard trying to get the lump down.
“I’m not—that’s not my name,” I said, my voice shaking so hard it was barely words.
She smiled, softly, sweetly. I just… I… crumbled. I collapsed against the railing, sinking onto the rough stone floor, and I hugged my knees into my chest, looking ahead at where the grass swayed in the wind. Paisley sat next to me, cupping her coffee in both hands, sipping delicately at it.
It was a long time before she spoke. “Told me yourself, you’d reinvented yourself too. That you were a gloomy kid. Funny now looking back.”
I swallowed. I felt… so… small. Fourteen years old again. Fourteen years old and alone, forgotten, sitting in a dirty bedroom playing with Harper’s toys.
“Nobody’s… called me that name… in a long time,” I breathed.
“Get the feeling nobody said your name much before then, either.” She handed me my cappuccino, which was so… so… sweet of her. She brought it all this way. I cupped it in both hands.
“Harper did,” I whispered. She smiled, sweetly, my way—sweet in all the ways I didn’t deserve.
“What was she like?”
I breathed out, slow, shaky. I was… so glad it was Paisley who found out. Nobody else in the world would make it feel okay. “Better. Than me. It should have been me…” I shook my head. “I’d always wanted to disappear anyway. Always thought it wouldn’t change anything if I… did. Harper wasn’t. She was so… so alive. Had dreams. She wanted to be a baker. Run her own shop. Wanted to live in New York.”
She looked down at her coffee. “So it didn’t matter if they didn’t make you happy. They were Harper’s dreams, so… so becoming Harper meant making her dreams come true.”
“It was just…” My voice was a thin stream through the tears, hot against my face. “I just… wanted to make it okay… wanted to make it up to her. I’d never lived for anything before… I figured what did it matter? I didn’t have any dreams to give up for—to make hers come true instead.”
“And you did,” she said, putting a hand on my arm. “Every one of them, from the sounds of things.”
“But I…” I rested an arm on my knees, burying my face in it and crying, softly, but so much—so much and I couldn’t make it stop. “But it didn’t… do anything. Nothing’s changed. She’s still… gone. And it’s my fault. It’s my fault she’s—”
She put a hand on my shoulder. “Lindsay,” she said, softly, and it was like an electric shock down my spine. I turned back to her, breathless, wide-eyed, jolted out of the tears, and shesmiled softly. “Hey. Lindsay. You were a superhero. Two kids being scrappy fighting in a system they shouldn’t have to be in, and you helped save her so many times already. But even a superhero makes mistakes too sometimes. You were… you were fourteen, Lindsay.”
I didn’t know if I… dared to believe it. It felt too tempting, too easy, too good—this idea that maybe I was forgivable, that we could wipe the past clean. I didn’t think I was allowed to believe it, but I wanted to… so, so badly. I looked back down at my coffee, holding it tight in both hands. “Why was it her, Paisley?”
She mulled it over, looking down at the ground. At length, she spoke quietly. “I guess because… life is small, delicate, fragile. Ready to vanish at any second. Even the ones who shine brightest might have flickered out the next time you see them. And I think that little… fragile… fleeting bit of life we all have is too beautiful to let it go to waste by not really living in the first place.”
