Anna North - The Life and Death of Sophie Stark

“Jacob wants me to get a publicist so they can tell me what to say to questions like that,” Sophie said when the writer brought up Allison. “But I’d probably still forget and mess up, and then they’d get mad at me. I guess what I want people to know about Allison is sometimes you see someone and it’s like, ‘There, that’s the face, that’s what I’ve been looking for all this time.’ And then everything they do becomes interesting. It’s not always the face, though — it could be the way they move, or the way they stand, or even just one of their ankles. It’s like someone walking over your grave when you meet that person, and after that it’s the best feeling, like fitting puzzle pieces together.”

The writer asked if she was talking about movies or love.

“It’s hard for me to talk about love,” she said. “I think movies are the way I do that.”

I remembered when I’d told Sophie I loved her. We’d just had sex and we were lying in her bed looking at each other. She looked like a fighter naked — she was so skinny, but her arms and her belly and thighs were hard with muscle. She was using her hands to measure my chest. Her hands were little and red and chapped, and I wanted to hold them in mine and let them heal, but she slid them out and kept measuring.

“Your chest is wider than three of my hands,” she said.

“You have three hands?” I asked, but she was serious.

“Does it feel weird?” she asked me.

“Does what?”

“Does it feel weird to be so big?”

I hadn’t thought about it, but now that I looked back, I could remember how things changed when I was thirteen, fourteen, when I grew. Not just girls liking me or my dad’s friends joking about how I could beat them up now. I remembered feeling different. I used to swing my arms around when I was by myself just to feel how heavy they’d gotten. When I ran I felt the new length in my legs. I felt dangerous. I didn’t know how to say any of this so I just said, “I guess it did at first, a little. Now it feels normal.”

“Stand up,” she said then.

I was confused. I thought maybe there was a bug in the bed.

“Why?”

“I just want to see you.”

I reached for my clothes.

“No,” she said. “Like this.”

And so I stood naked in front of her. It had been years since I’d felt embarrassed taking my clothes off in front of a girl — I was always looking at them, thinking about what we were going to do. But I was embarrassed then — I could feel my face getting red and my chest too. I was worried about how I looked to her, my hairy legs, my balls. Then she said, “Stand up straight. You’re beautiful. Stand up straight.”

At first I was offended. “Beautiful” made me think of a male model or something, the kind of person my dad wouldn’t respect. But then there was nothing about Sophie my dad would like; none of my family or my friends would have anything to say to her. It made me feel special that I had something nobody else knew about. She wanted me in a way nobody else would understand. And even though she never used the word, I thought she loved me. I pulled my shoulders back, and I didn’t feel stupid anymore. I felt like I was doing something great, even though I wasn’t doing anything at all.

When I got into bed with her again, I was tingling all over. I put my arms around her and felt her back against my stomach, and I whispered that I loved her. She didn’t say anything, so I said it again, louder. The room got so quiet I could hear the crows calling in the parking lot and the trucks on the highway. Then she turned around to face me.

“My grandma died when I was eleven,” she said. “And my brother, he cried and cried. I didn’t cry at all. Afterward my brother asked me, didn’t I love her? And I said of course I loved her, I thought about her all the time. And he said, then why wasn’t I sad?

“And I didn’t have an answer for him. It was like if someone asked you how did you know blue is blue. And ever since then I’ve been scared, I guess, when people talk about how they feel. I never know if we mean the same thing.”

Now I think she was being honest, which is more than I ever did for any of the girls I was with before her. I told CeCe I loved her every day, even while I was sleeping with Sophie. It came easy to me, telling girls I loved them, but I never thought about what it meant. I’m still not sure.

After I finished the article I looked up Annie the schoolteacher on Facebook. She was blond and had kind of crooked teeth and she looked really happy and normal. Her account was public and so I could see all the messages on her wall saying it was too soon and they knew she was watching from heaven. I didn’t read them all; I just scrolled through them to the messages she’d gotten when she was alive, like, “Had so much fun w you and TJ and Sara loves her new Barbie so much!” Or, “Was so great to talk, never forget you are the smartest and bestest friend.” Just from looking at the normal silly things her friends and family said to her, I could tell she was a kind person with a nice life. After I read all her Facebook messages and read them again, I wrote Sophie for the third time.

Dear Sophie ,

I don’t know if you’re getting these e-mails. You might have someone who reads your e-mail for you and tells you which ones are important. If you do I’m not sure that person would think this is a very important e-mail. But if you are reading this, I want to tell you another thing about my life, which is that I was in a car accident this year. I am doing a lot better now and will probably go back to work soon, but the accident has made me think about my life in some ways. It’s hard to explain but I guess what I’m asking is, remember when we were first talking and you asked me to prove I was interesting? I guess I’m wondering what you thought and what kind of person you ended up thinking I was. Would you say I was a good person? I know it’s a weird question, and it’s been a long time, but if you could take a minute to think about it, that would mean a lot to me .

Talk soon,

Daniel

Lauren signed me up for an appointment with a therapist. She said she was worried about me, staying up so late and spending so much time on the Internet. She showed me a pamphlet the nurse had given to her when I was discharged, explaining that people who had been in accidents might get depression or posttraumatic stress. She had a whole stack of pamphlets I’d never seen before, which made me feel like a kid, like the adults were talking about me after I went to bed.

I wasn’t stressed. I didn’t have a leg anymore, and that made me feel like a freak, but it didn’t make me nervous . I wasn’t sure if I was depressed. I played and replayed the accident over and over again in my head — the headlights, the woman lying in all that brightness, the man screaming. The pamphlet on posttraumatic stress said therapy could stop people from reliving the traumatic event, but I didn’t want to stop. I knew it was important. But I agreed to go because Lauren wanted me to — I wanted her to be happy and not worry.

The therapist was a nice man with a beard and a round face. His office had a houseplant and some paintings of beaches and sailboats. He was burning one of those scented candles. I felt big and clumsy like I was going to break something.

First he asked me questions about myself and my family, and then he asked me a lot of questions I answered no to. Did I have nightmares? Did I have intrusive thoughts about the accident? Was I afraid it would happen again? Did I have panic attacks? Did I have thoughts about hurting myself or someone else?

Then he asked me how I felt about the accident. I didn’t know how to answer because I was still trying to figure out how I should feel.