Far From You

21

NOW (JUNE)

The Bishop house has pink shutters and white trim, and an apple tree’s been growing tall in the front yard for as long as I can remember. I walk up the porch stairs carefully, the rail taking most of my weight as I balance the box on my hip.

Trev opens the door before I can knock, and for a second I think my plan will fail, that he won’t invite me in.

But then he steps aside, and I walk into the house.

It’s strange to feel unwelcome here. I’ve spent half of my life in this house and know every nook and cranny: where the junk drawer is, where the spare Oreos are stashed, where to find the extra towels.

And all of Mina’s hiding places.

“Are you okay?” Trev’s eyes linger on the way I’m favoring my good leg. “Here.” He takes the box from me and forgets himself for a second, reaching back for my arm.

He remembers at the last moment and stops, snatching his hand away. He rubs it over his mouth, then looks over his shoulder into the living room. “You want to sit?” he asks, the reluctance in his words ringing through the room.

“Actually, can I use your bathroom first?”

“Sure. You know where it is.”

Like I’d expected, his attention’s already fixed on the box of Mina’s things. He disappears into the living room, and I go down the hall. I pause at the bathroom door, opening and closing it for effect, and tiptoe through the kitchen to the only bedroom on the ground floor. Mina had liked it that way. She’d always been restless at night, writing until dawn, baking cookies at midnight, throwing rocks at my window at three A.M., luring me out for mini road trips to the lake.

Her door’s closed, and I hesitate, worried about the sound. But it’s my only chance, so I grab the knob and slowly turn it. The door opens and I slip inside.

When I thought up this plan, I worried that I might make it all the way here, only to find all her things boxed up or gone already.

But it’s worse: everything is the same. From the lavender walls to that girly canopy bed she’d begged for when she was twelve. Her cleats are next to her desk, stacked haphazardly across each other, as if she’s just toed them off.

The room hasn’t been touched. Mina’s bed’s still unmade, I realize with a horrible swoop of my stomach. I stare at the rumpled sheets, the indentation in the pillow, and I have to stop myself from pressing my hand into where her head had rested, trailing my fingers through sheets frozen in the curled shape of her last peaceful night.

I have to hurry. I drop to the floor and crawl on my stomach under the bed, my fingers scrabbling for the loose floorboard. My nails catch at the wood and I lift it up and away, pulling myself farther beneath the steel framework.

My fingers search below the floor, past some cobwebs, but I don’t feel anything hidden in the nook. I dig my phone out of my pocket and shine it down into the space under the floorboards.

There’s an envelope tucked in the corner underneath the loose board, way in the back. I reach down in the gap of space to grab it, crumpling the paper in my hurry. I’m putting the floorboard back when I hear Trev call my name from the hallway.

Shit. I snap the board into place and push myself out from underneath the bed. I have to bite hard down on my lip when my leg twists the wrong way getting up and pain stabs down my knee. I want to lean against the bed for a second, deal with the pain, but I don’t have the time. Breathing fast, I shove the envelope in my bag without opening it.

“Soph? You okay?” Trev’s knocking on the bathroom door.

I duck out of Mina’s room, closing the door quietly behind me before hobbling into the kitchen and grabbing a glass from the cupboard.

Footsteps. I glance up at him as I turn the faucet on and fill up the glass. I swig the water, trying not to look suspicious. “Water’s supposed to help with the muscle cramps,” I explain, rinsing out my glass and putting it in the sink.

“Still doing the all-natural stuff?” he asks as we make our way into the living room. I sigh in relief; he doesn’t notice that I’m out of breath. One of her books from the box lies open on the coffee table.

“Mostly it’s yoga and herbs. Cortisone shots in my back. Non-opiate pain pills.”

We sit down on the stuck-in-the-seventies couch, a careful amount of space between us. Other than us, the only thing that’s changed in the room is the mantelpiece. All through our childhood, candles and crucifixes had surrounded a large black-and-white picture of Mina’s dad, beaming down at the room. When I was little, spending the night, sometimes I’d watch Mrs. Bishop light the candles. Once I’d seen her kiss her fingers and press them to the corner of his picture, and something sick churned inside my stomach, realizing that we all go away in the end.

Mina’s picture is next to her father’s now. She stares back at me from her mass of dark curls, that sly, secretive smile flirting at the corners of her mouth, her explosive energy just an echo in her eyes.

Some things can’t be contained or captured.

I look away.

“Your mom—” I start.

“She’s in Santa Barbara staying with my aunt,” Trev says. “She needed…Well, it’s better for her. For right now.”

“Of course. Are you going back to Chico State in the fall?”

He nods. “I have to repeat last semester. And I’m gonna commute. When Mom comes back…I need to stay close.”

I nod.

More excruciating silence. “I should go,” I say. “I just wanted to give you the box.”

“Sophie,” he says.

He says it so much like she used to. I know him. Every part of him, probably even more than I ever knew Mina, because Trev’s never bothered to hide from me. He’s never thought he had to. I know what he’s going to ask. What he wants me to do.

“Don’t,” I say.

But he’s determined. “I have to know,” he says, and it comes out so fierce. He looks at me like I’m denying him something necessary. Oxygen. Food. Love. “I’ve spent months with police reports and newspaper articles and rumors. I can’t stand it. I need to know. You’re the only person who can tell me.”

“Trev—”

“You owe me this.”

There is no way I’m getting out of here without answering his questions. Not without running.

Running from Trev used to be easy. Now it’s impossible.

He’s all I have left of her.

I rub at my knee, digging my fingers in the sore muscle between my kneecap and bone. I can feel the bumps of the screws if I press down deep enough. It hurts, doing this, but it’s the good kind of hurt, like a healing bruise. “Go ahead and ask.”

“The doctor who examined her…he said it happened fast. That she probably didn’t hurt at all. But I think he was lying to make me feel better.”

I don’t want to be near him while he does this to me—to both of us. I move to the end of the couch, tilting my body away from him, protecting myself from the onslaught.

“It wasn’t like that, was it?” Trev asks.

I shake my head. It had been the opposite, and he’s known that all along, but when I confirm it, I can see how it breaks him.

“Did she say anything?”

I wish I could lie to him. Wish I could say that she gave a proper good-bye, that she made me promise to watch out for him, that she said she loved him and her mom, that she saw her dad waiting for her on the other side with open arms and a welcoming smile.

I wish it had been like that. Almost as much as I wish it had been over instantly, so she wouldn’t have been so scared. I wish that any part of it could have been peaceful or quiet or brave. Anything but the painful, frantic mess we became in the dirt, all breath and blood and fear.

“She kept saying she was sorry. She…she said it hurt.” My voice breaks. I can’t continue.

Trev covers his mouth with his hands. He’s shaking, and I hate that I agreed to this. He can’t handle it. He shouldn’t have to.

This is mine to bear.

It would be so easy to drown all of this with pills. The urge snakes through me, it’s right below my skin, waiting to lash out and drag me down. I could make myself forget. I could snort so much that nothing would matter anymore.

But I can’t let it take over. Whoever did this has to pay.

Nine months. Three weeks. Five days.

“I tried, Trev. I tried to get her breathing again. But no matter what I did—”

“Just go,” he says tightly. “Please, go.” He stares straight ahead.

There’s a crash that makes me turn around before I can get to the front door. He’s kicked the coffee table over, spilling the contents of the box onto the floor. He meets my eyes, and I throw the words at him to break him, because I want to in that moment. Because he made me talk about it. Because he looks so much like her. Because he’s here and so am I, but she’s not—and that’s so unfair, I can barely breathe through it.

“Still can’t hate me, Trev?”