The Half Life of Molly Pierce (18 page)

I got into a fight with Clancy. Hazel overheard me tell him—
You’ll all be better off without me
. I drove to the warehouse. I sat with the pills in my hand and I was about to put them in my mouth. I had decided—all at once. Put them into your mouth all at once and then take the water and swallow them. I had decided. I was about to do it.

I woke up hours later. Three hours, four hours. I was sitting on my bed. I was sitting cross-legged on my bed with my homework spread out in front of me. I was halfway through a history assignment.

I was here. I was alive. I was still, somehow, alive.

My parents came into my bedroom.

My father was quiet. He stood near the door. My mother had been crying. I could tell; her eyes were red.

She said, “Molly. Hazel told us what you said.”

She said, “Molly, do you really feel that way?”

She said, “How could you possibly feel that way?”

I was so confused. I wanted to ask her—Mom, how did I get here? Where have I been? What time is it and where have the last few hours gone and, yes. Yes, sure, I meant it. I meant it and I want to die and I tried to. I tried to, really, but somehow I ended up here.

The next day they asked for my help at the bookstore. We got into the minivan. They drove me to Alex’s office.

He said, “Call me Alex. I’ll call you Molly.”

He said, “Do you sometimes feel hopeless?”

“Do you sometimes feel lost?”

“Do you sometimes feel like it’s not worth it? None of it? Nothing at all?”

I said—yes. Yes to all of the above. Yes to everything. Yes, yes, yes.

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I
wonder—How much was she like me?

Some nights did she stay up crying under the blankets we shared, wondering how just living and breathing and showering and brushing our teeth and combing our hair could be this fucking hard? Some nights did the walls of the house press in on her until her skull cracked and her brain squeezed together and her memories poured out of her ears? Some nights did she think, If I just had the guts to do it. If I just had the guts to take a bottle full of pills I would be okay. All these people, they would be better off without me.

I wonder how we are the same and I wonder how we are different.

But I guess I know already.

We’re different because she didn’t take the pills.

She didn’t take the pills. She held them in her hands and I felt her gratitude—this rush of
happiness
—this blur of color as she took over our body and as she . . .

As she saved my life.

She saved my life.

And then Lyle. She gave the pills to Lyle. I guess she let him think he’d saved her. I guess he always thought he’d saved her, even though she told him. Even though she tried to explain to him—no, dummy. It wasn’t you. It was me. It was me all along.

And she’s probably gone now.

She’s probably gone.

Upstairs, I take the photographs out of the shoe box and tape them to my wall in chronological order. Mabel as a baby. Mabel as a toddler. Mabel decorating a Christmas tree. Mabel riding a bike.

It’s so obvious now.

This little girl, this isn’t me. This isn’t me at all.

And I think she’s gone but then suddenly she isn’t.

She’s still here.

She has more to show me.

In the ambulance Mabel bursts out of me like a wave, and Lyle knows it’s her but he’s almost dead and all he can do is turn his eyes and look at her.

“Lyle,” she says, “what the fuck did you do?”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“You can’t die,” she says. “You’re my best friend. You can’t leave me.”

“You’ll have Sayer,” he says. Even in death his voice is full of bitterness.

“Don’t do that now,” she says. He’s only seen her cry once before and her crying is what undoes him.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I just wanted to see you.”

“Don’t die,” she whispers. “You can’t die, okay?”

They want to put a tube into his mouth but he pushes them away. He says, “I’m so happy I met you.”

They try to save his life.

In the hospital she calls Sayer with Lyle’s cell phone and she says, “Sayer. There’s been an accident. I’ll call back in a few minutes but it won’t be me. Don’t call me Mabel.”

When Sayer gets there, she comes out again and they sit holding each other in the private waiting room and it’s Mabel who asks for the sedative. She can feel me unwinding inside her and she knows it’s too much for me. The blood and the boy on the motorcycle and my sweater. She’s the one who asks for the sedative.

Then in the graveyard.

Lyle’s funeral.

They’re lowering Lyle’s body into the ground and Mabel takes Sayer’s hand and he holds her and he cries and when he is done crying she says, “I can’t do it anymore.”

And I guess he’s always known. Because he doesn’t seem surprised.

“You should know her,” she says. She holds his hand. “I won’t be upset. She’s like me, really. We’re almost exactly the same.”

“I want you,” he insists. He tries and pulls her closer.

“You never really had me,” she says. “Just a small part Molly let you borrow.”

“I had you,” he says. “You’re you. Mabel, I love you.”

“You’ll love her, too. You’ll be good for her. You’re kind.”

Then Alex’s office. Mabel takes over languidly, spreading herself throughout my body like she knows she better enjoy it because it might be the last time.

“Hey, Alex,” she says. They get along better now.

“Thought I’d be seeing you.”

“I have good news,” she says.

“Oh?”

“It’s almost time.”

“What made you decide?”

“Molly. It’s always Molly.”

“How will you do it?”

“She’ll tell you all about it.”

“All right, Mabel. I trust you.”

“So you’ve said.”

She smiles but it’s not real. It’s not a real smile.

“Are you all right?” he says.

It has been six days since Lyle’s death.

“Am I all right,” she repeats. Her eyes blur momentarily out of focus and she inhales deeply through borrowed lungs. “Not really.”

She goes home. She pretends to be me and nobody notices but Hazel. Hazel winks at her and Mabel winks back.

In my room, she pulls out a piece of paper. She sits down at my window seat and she curls her legs up and she writes very slowly. Very neat.

And then she gets up. She lifts up a corner of our mattress. And she slides the paper underneath.

She walks through the house like a ghost. Sometimes she thinks she would be better off without a body. Better off floating and diaphanous and thin.

She finds Hazel downstairs on the couch, watching TV. She goes and sits next to her and puts her head on her shoulder.

“What’s wrong, Mabel?” Hazel says.

“Tell you later,” she says.

“Want to watch TV?”

“Yeah. She has to call Alex when she wakes up. Don’t let her forget.”

“I won’t.”

They were always sisters.

When nobody knew her name, there was always Hazel.

In my bedroom I look at the photographs of Mabel.

It’s like looking into a fun house mirror; the face reflected at once so similar and so distorted.

Looking at her face, I can almost feel her.

I get off the bed and stretch my legs. Lift up one corner of the mattress and feel around until I find it. The folded piece of paper.

I sit down at the window seat where she wrote it.

I can almost feel her. But she’s leaving. She’s melting back into me. Sealing the cracks in between us. Making us whole.

Her handwriting is different from mine.

Smaller, careful letters formed with deliberate, even strokes.

The way she writes my name is nothing like the way I write my name.

Holding the letter, I know she’s gone for good.

I don’t feel like something has left me.

If I couldn’t feel her, at least I thought I’d be able to identify her absence. Identify some sort of hollow in the space she occupied. I look in the mirror for pieces of my face that resemble the girl in the photographs, but I find nothing. She’s gone.

Like identical twins. When you know what to look for, they cease being identical.

All I have is what she’s left me with. The photographs. The letter. The memories. Sayer.

Everything she’s kept hidden from me.

Everything that belonged to her and not to me.

Relinquished, now.

The final admission of guilt sitting in my hands. My hands are shaking. Mabel’s letter hums like a motorcycle engine.

The warehouse.

Lyle.

I can remember holding the pills in my hand and I can remember giving them to Lyle as if I was the one who had done it.

She stole my death from me. My suicide. She’s gone now and I’m the one forced to stay and live here without her.

If she hadn’t shown up in the warehouse that day, where would I be?

I would have taken the pills.

I would have done it.

And knowing—

That’s a fucking awful feeling.

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G
ood days, bad days—and more often than not—days that fall somewhere in the middle.

Sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s impossible and sometimes I am walking down the hallway between the bathroom and my bedroom and I don’t even know how I got here. I don’t know how I ended up here. I don’t know how I wake up every day and get out of bed and take a shower and brush my teeth and put one foot in front of the other.

It’s like sometimes I can’t remember. It’s like sometimes I do things, I do all the things I’m supposed to do, but on the inside I’m just barely functioning. I am just barely managing. I’m just faking it. I am only faking it—
this life
—and one day someone is going to look at me and they are going to know and then maybe they will put me away somewhere because I don’t deserve any of it. Mabel is gone but I think she should have stayed and I think I should have been the one to fade away, disappear, sink into the depths of our body, into a tiny wedge where no one would ever, ever find me. She could have Sayer again. She is happier than I am; she deserves this more than I do.