Zoe Letting Go (26 page)

My head dropped forward like a door on a hinge, and I buried my face in the blanket again. It was wet now; I must have been crying.

“It wasn’t your fault that Elise died, Zoe. Do you hear me?”

Deeper I went, into the blanket.

“Do you hear me, Zoe?”

A hand on my back forced me back to the surface, where I shook my head
No. No.
I did not hear her. “I was the one who made Elise stop eating,” I said. “I made us both do it.”

“It’s not a matter of blame,” Alexandra said. “It’s far more complicated than that.”

But it wasn’t, not really.

“You might have influenced Elise,” Alexandra said, “but—”

“No one else did,” I interrupted.

“No one else did what?”

“Influenced her.”

I looked up. I was starting to see the way things were now, and if I stayed calm and kept breathing, I could explain it all to Alexandra.

“I was the only one who ever influenced her,” I said.

Alexandra waited patiently.
She knew
, I realized. She’d known all along exactly what I had done. The whole story was probably typed out in my file from day one.

That’s what Brooke had seen. That’s why she was afraid of me.

Apologies were useless now, and all I could do was confess. This time, I forced myself to look straight at Alexandra as the words exited my mouth.

When we were finished, she left me alone in my room.

The crying had a trajectory.
First came bewildered crying, then came angry crying, and, finally, destitute crying. For one more day, I was bedbound, barely stirring except to see Alexandra and to attempt the plain meals that were brought to my room. By last night, I felt as though I’d expelled every ounce of water in my body through crying. I was certain that I was all dried up.

The next morning—today—I woke up and got out of bed.
If I don’t get up today
, I thought,
I might never get up at all.
So I slid my feet from beneath the covers, planted them on the floor, and got dressed.

The breakfast room was quieter than it was before, and I was confused to find that both Jane and Caroline were missing from the room. “Where did everyone go?” I asked Devon as I took my seat between Victoria and Haley. Only one of the tables had been set today. A lonely quiet had settled upon the dining room.

“Their session ended two days ago,” Devon explained. “Six weeks from the day they started.”

I dimly recalled what was written on the memo, though I hadn’t returned to it in days. If arrivals at Twin Birch were staggered, it made sense that departures would be staggered, too. I just hadn’t realized how little time was left to go.

“You okay?” Victoria asked. I was slumped in my chair, unable to resist gravity. Did she know what I had done? My body was weak from its lack of activity over the past few days. I looked at Victoria, dreading the idea that she knew the truth about me. If she did, how could she be my friend? How could anybody be my friend?

But she just smiled and cocked her head. “Why so sad? We’re almost outta this dump.”

Of course she didn’t know the truth. Why would she?

“Haley’s next,” Victoria continued. “This afternoon. Lucky girl.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Easy. We leave in the order that we arrived. You must be last, poor thing.”

Of course. I nodded.

“Anyhow,” Victoria went on, “you didn’t miss much while you were sick.”

Sick.
Had Alexandra provided that excuse for me?

“Not true. You missed one thing,” Haley said. “We’re allowed to choose whatever we want for our final meal. I asked for carrot cake pancakes.”

“Which is, of course, my
least
favorite item on the menu,”
Victoria griped. “The marriage of vegetables and pancakes gives me morning sickness.”

I summoned a watery smile as Devon waved us over to the side table. It was odd, being in the dining room without the other girls—who, I wondered, was first to leave?

Since there were only the three of us, we didn’t have to take turns. I’d eaten very little over the past couple of days, and for once I welcomed the sweet, mellow pancakes without anticipating how awful they’d make me feel. As it turned out, they didn’t make me feel bad at all. Just full.

I sleepwalked through the rest of the day, catatonically helping Victoria and Haley prepare for their afternoon pickups. We emptied drawers and folded button-ups and jeans that no longer fit into nylon suitcases. Neither of them asked what was wrong with me—instead, they politely chalked it up to my “sickness” of the previous few days and didn’t get frustrated when I spaced out for minutes at a time. We collected and tossed out bottles of depleted shampoo and conditioner, leaving the bathroom counters depressingly bare. Victoria’s flight to New Orleans was going to leave in the early evening, and Haley was due to be picked up any minute for the long trip back to Arizona. When Haley’s parents’ silver Lexus charged up the driveway at three o’clock sharp, we hugged goodbye and promised to visit each other. I should have cried—Victoria did—but there was nothing left in me to come out.

After Haley’s departure, the house was as quiet as a tomb, and Victoria and I decided to spend the rest of the evening outside on the grass. Classes were suspended, but Devon checked in on us every hour to make sure that we were unharmed. The two of us
lay still, staring up at the trees, not talking much but not sleeping either. Victoria must have sensed that something was up, and she wisely gave me the space to think about it. We sprawled quietly within inches of each other, combing our thoughts in solitude with the reassurance that we weren’t entirely alone. I zoned in and out of the present. Mostly out.

The spell was interrupted when Victoria’s ride to the airport arrived. We sat up, brushing wisps of grass from our pants. Victoria’s face was already crumpling at the prospect of saying goodbye, but I stopped her.

“You’re fine,” I said. “You’re doing so well.”

And you’re better off without me
.

“We’ll talk a lot?” she asked, her eyelashes matting together with wetness. “Every day?”

“Whenever you want,” I lied.

Victoria nodded, and then she did something surprising. She hugged me. At first, I didn’t know what to do and stood there stiffly, my arms at my sides. But then I did something that surprised me, too. I hugged her back.

We walked silently inside to fetch her suitcases. Angela spoke with the driver for a few moments, double-checking that he knew the correct airport and terminal at which to deposit his passenger. Victoria climbed in and waved bravely from the backseat, pressing her other hand against the glass. The face framed by the window looked different than it had a few weeks earlier. The puffiness was gone, and though Victoria still looked precarious—like a glass vase so breakable it makes you nervous just looking at it—she also looked beautiful. Sweeter, somehow, and more innocent.
I waved back as the car picked up speed, smiling as I said a different sort of goodbye.

I turned and walked back inside, wondering when my mother was scheduled to pick me up.

And then there was one.

My suitcases were packed;
I had nothing left to do. I walked downstairs. I had one more question to ask Alexandra.

I found her in her office, working over some notes. “I have something to ask you,” I said from the doorway.

“Come in,” she said. “What about?”

I sat down on the sofa, unsure of how to phrase my query, and doubtful, besides, about whether Alexandra would even know the answer.

“The photos on Caroline’s dresser,” I said. “The ones that she arranged in a row—”

Alexandra nodded, signifying that she knew what I was talking about.

“I’ve been wondering the whole time who that was.”

Alexandra put down her pen. “You didn’t ask Caroline?”

“She wouldn’t tell me,” I said. “Was it her brother? Her nephew?”

“Neither,” Alexandra said.

“Then—?”

“The pictures were of Caroline.”

The next question was obvious, so I asked it. “Why?”

“Caroline would be able to tell you better herself,” Alexandra said, slowing to plot her words carefully. “My sense is that the photographs reminded her of a time when her life was uncomplicated. When she was small and happy, with nothing to weigh her down.”

I nodded.

“Why do you ask?” Alexandra asked.

“Just curious.”

That was all I wanted, so I said goodbye to Alexandra and went to bring my suitcase down from the bedroom. A car churned gravel in the distance, drawing closer to the building. My mother. I thought about Caroline’s photos as I dragged my things down the hallway. In the end, what she’d wanted was to bring her old self back to life. I understood.

Travel does funny things with time. It starts as soon as you step on the plane or in the car, and it doesn’t stop there. When you’re away from home, time stretches and bunches like taffy: A week can feel as long as a month or as short as a day. You never know. You can’t predict it. That’s why I keep a journal when I travel—not so that I can preserve my memories for the future, but so that
I can stay oriented in the present. Otherwise, forget it. I’m lost on arrival.

I consider coming to Twin Birch a kind of travel. It’s not a remote destination by geographic standards, and I didn’t have to get on a plane to come here. But in other ways, it’s a faraway land. The currency is different and the accommodations foreign. Neither of those things matter much, though, when you dig down to the core of it. No. The beautiful thing about travel is that it promises change. Real change. You can go on vacation and come back a new person. Maybe you change; maybe you just look at things a different way.

In a way, that’s what happened at Twin Birch. I am not the same Zoe that I was six weeks ago.

By the time my mother came to pick me up, my bedroom was empty. Clothes were folded and packed away. While she took care of arrangements with Angela downstairs, I lifted one of the sole remaining personal objects from beneath the bed and held it in my hands. In the lilac evening light, it shone an unearthly shade of white. My name was printed on the front of the manila envelope in big block letters.
ZOE.

I reopened it, running a finger beneath my name. Then I pulled out the stack of smaller envelopes contained within. The handwriting was recognizable but askew—like a photograph that somebody had Photoshopped just slightly. The envelopes were neither stamped nor postmarked. None had been read.

My suitcase was downstairs, zipped, and waiting by the door. Soon enough I’d hear the familiar sound of car wheels churning
over gravel—although this time, I’d hear it from the passenger’s perspective.

I reached beneath the bed and pulled out the box, removing its lid to survey the supplies within. Unsurprisingly, they were diminished from their original abundance. The container had initially been heavy with paper goods: practically a portable stationery store. Now, there were only a few envelopes, a sheaf of note cards, two stray pens.
How many words had I put down?
I wondered. Add it all up and you’d have a record of our friendship. Elise and me.

A story about two girls.

She would never disappear, I realized. And neither would I.