Megan Abbott - The Fever

“She never had a good reason,” she’d said, “For not coming. When everything was happening.”

“Deenie, she offered to come and get you. That’s the same thing,” he said, even though he knew it wasn’t, exactly.

Dropping the shirt into the dryer, she looked at him, the longest look he could remember her ever giving.

“You would have come,” she said at last.

“Yeah,” he said, “but I wouldn’t have known what to say. I would have—”

“But you would have come,” she repeated.

And it was true, and it was something.

The car rattled as he made the turn onto the lake route, the trees giving way to a swath of cloudless sky.

And then he remembered what today was. Lise Daniels’s first day back at school.

“Dad,” Deenie said, turning the radio up as she spoke, rising a little in her seat. “The sky hurts my eyes.”

Lying in bed before dawn, Deenie had heard Eli slip down the hall, the hushed drag of his stick bag against the carpet.

She wondered if Lise was up too. Maybe, over on Easter Way, Lise was nervously combing her hair, covering the violet zag in the center of her forehead, like a lightning bolt.

Or maybe she was doing what Deenie was doing, reading the news article on her phone:

The 16-year-old girl at the center of Dryden’s poisoning case faces sentencing today.

They never printed her name, always called her “the girl.” It made it seem like it could be anybody, any girl who was sixteen, in their midst.

The article said it would probably be probation, some community service. But it would remain on her record forever, just like they always say about everything you’re never supposed to do.

A few weeks ago, Deenie had gotten a long letter from Gabby. It wasn’t about Lise or Skye or even Eli. It was about the things she was learning, and how different she felt. She was changing, she said. But she didn’t say what the changes were. Only that they were big and important.

There would always be things she’d never understand about Gabby. And that was the hardest part. That there would be mysteries impenetrable.

Had Gabby herself even known what she wanted, her fingers tucking Skye’s poison down into the bottom of Lise’s thermos, the same thermos that helped make Lise sylphlike and beautiful, her body so lovely and ready for wonder?

And then there was what Deenie herself had done. With Sean Lurie. And how different it was, and how the same . I want it too. I want what she has too. Why can’t I get that too?

Everyone wanted to be like Gabby. Her bright tights, the streak in her hair, the big glasses she wore when she read in class. Kim Court and Jaymie Hurwich, even Brooke Campos. Everyone.

Deenie wondered where all that frantic energy would go now. Did it just disappear, or did it go someplace else? She wondered about it for herself.

But Gabby was gone and probably wouldn’t ever be back in their school. Probably she would move away, no matter what happened.

So where did all of it go, the things she felt for her?

Because, to her, it was Deenie-Gabby-Lise, snuggled together in sleeping bags, behind the bookshelves in the library, on the soccer field, in the auditorium.

Lise was still there. Today, her first day back at school.

She’d survived poisoning, which led to a seizure, which led to a cardiac event, which led a fall, which led to blunt trauma to the head.

Everyone called her the Miracle Girl.

Deenie’s dad called her Rasputin.

She said she didn’t remember anything about that day, not even the drive to school that morning with her mom. The doctors told her that would happen, and she said she was glad, but it was hard for her to believe about Gabby, and she wasn’t sure she ever would.

“What about the hospital?” Deenie asked her later. “Me visiting you?”

“No,” Lise said. Deenie pictured herself at the foot of Lise’s bed, trying to tell her about Sean Lurie. And we were in his car. And he…or I. Me. It was me. Lise’s gleaming eye. The whistle from her white mouth.

But Lise didn’t remember any of that, either. And the first time Deenie visited her at home, she tried again. A twice-told confession.

“No,” Lise interrupted, shaking her head, her hair oddly changed, a darker blond and not the same texture where it grew back, the center of her scalp where the dent terminated. “No, no. I don’t want to talk about any of it. If I talk about any of it, my mouth fills up.”

“Your mouth?”

“My chest, everything. I don’t know, Deenie,” she said, breathless. “Just stop.”

And Deenie’s dad told her that there could be emotional stuff for a long time, that it was a kind of trauma, and that Deenie shouldn’t take it personally.

The word trauma seemed to cover a lot, a whole world of things, and it was the word they’d always used for Gabby, before what happened to Lise. To Gabby and Lise.

But it wasn’t only Lise’s hair—nothing was the same. Even her walk, the jut of her hip, the weight of her feet on her bedroom rug.

And most of all, it was something in her eyes, like when Lise first collapsed to the classroom floor that day, like something black, like a bat flapping.

Every morning, Eli woke from the same dream. Of riding in the passenger seat of a car and feeling something catch around his ankle, soft, light as air. Reaching down, he never found it.

Sometimes, he felt it when he was awake, in class, or even during a game, sweeping down the rink and feeling, even through his thick hockey socks, the boot of the skate, something both delicate and tight there on his ankle, grappling for him.

He tried not to think much about Gabby.

In a funny way, he was angry, and he didn’t like the feeling. He’d always tried, very hard, not to feel mad at anybody, ever. It wasn’t him.

But there was someone he thought about more than Gabby, every time he walked by the double doors leading to the loading dock. Other times.

The night after Lise woke up, he and Deenie had stayed up late, sneaking beers from the fridge and talking. She told him about Skye, about everything. Or at least everything enough.

He could tell Deenie thought Skye was a monster.

But Gabby won’t tell on her. It’s all Skye’s fault but Gabby won’t tell. So now I can’t.

He didn’t point out that she didn’t have to do what Gabby said. She could do whatever she wanted.

Instead, he just nodded, and nodded, and teased her about slurring her s ’s.

And then she said, I think Skye told me she gave you the jimson to get rid of me. And then she could run away. She knew I would have to find you.

And he thought that part was probably true.

Then they watched Meatballs on cable, which their dad always loved, and Deenie fell asleep and snored just a little.

It was the best night ever.

And they hadn’t talked about any of it since.

Stepping out onto the practice rink, he looked off into the backfield, the ground shorn of all its foliage, and the smell of ashes always now.

His skates hitting the ice, just starting to soften, he thought of Skye out there somewhere.

He’d heard her uncle had contacted the police, saying Skye had called him, collect, but he was already on probation and couldn’t risk any trouble with the law. And besides, he was worried about her out there. She was just a kid.

Sometimes Eli thought he spotted her, a white flash in the corner of his eye.

No one had seen her since Deenie left her in her backyard the night Gabby confessed. The police were looking for her as part of the presentencing, were unsure of her role, if any, in what Gabby had done. They were following rumors, mostly.