The Death of Us Read Free

friend of his.
    Xander takes a left too sharply, tense. Speeds through a red light and crosses the other bridge, the narrower one. I don’t want to look at the main bridge, the one the car went off, but I crane my neck. The flash of police lights. Boats below. Four of them. I imagine her under water,struggling to breathe, trapped in the car’s metal embrace.
    Callie would like that image. Man, would she ever.
    Xander hustles down a residential street at seventy K. Too fast. But go faster. Hurry. He’s making a right on Main, past Callie’s house. I see through the window, although I wish I hadn’t, her baby brother, Cosmo. Held in someone’s arms. Screaming.
FOURTEEN DAYS EARLIER
Ivy
    “Still messy?” says Callie.
    “Who, me?” We’re in my bedroom, unpacking my clothes and trying to fit everything into a space that’s still plastered with posters of boy bands we used to adore. Stuff is all over, clothes piled everywhere, magazines, my brand-new laptop—
thanks, Kevin
—eReader, old photographs. There’s one of me and Callie. I hold it up.
    It shows the two of us hugging like crazy,beaming at the camera. For a moment, I’m there, Callie’s hair splashing in my face, the smell of her shampoo and raspberry lip balm. Callie’s dad took the shot just before we went for that walk.
    I say, “God, we’re gorgeous.”
    “Whatever.” She smiles, though.
    I show her a different photo of the two of us sunbathing in her yard, and say, “Your hair looks good your original colour, you know.”
    “You sound like my dad. I like it like this.”
    “At least let me paint your nails over.”
    “What, you don’t like dark blue?”
    “I like the colour but it’s chipped.”
    “Now you really do sound like my dad.” Callie looks out the window. “You can see my front door from here. Look, there’s Mom and Cosmo. They’re going for coffee with these baby twins. Mom’s really into the whole baby thing.”
    “Is she?” I glance out. Her mom is pushing a stroller down the street, facing away from us. She walks like Callie—slightly stiffly, her shoulders up. She never liked me. She writes about love and compassion in her picture books, but I never saw much evidence of that. Maybe this time around Ican convince her I’m a good person. I say, “What’s Cosmo like? I wanna meet him.”
    “I dunno. He cries a lot.”
    “If you won’t let me paint your nails, at least stop staring out the window and help me with this, will you?”
    Callie stands beside me as we wrestle an extra clothing rod into the wardrobe. Once it’s in place, we hang my dresses. She bends over to start unpacking the last of my gigantic suitcases and pulls out a dress with tiny straps. “Wow,” she says. “It’s like a spiderweb. Is it silk?”
    “That old thing? Have it. I never wear it anymore. I wear white. Can’t you tell?” I glance at the row of dresses we’ve just hung. All of them are white or cream.
    “Really, I could have it? It’s beautiful.”
    “Stuff weighs you down, right? Time to start over.”
    Callie says, “You sound a little sad.”
    My left shoulder lifts and drops. “Sorta.”
    “Come on, you can trust me,” she says. “You know that.”
    “I was in love with this guy in Kansas City.”
    Something opens in me, like a hole where a tooth used to be. I probe it and feel the absence.
    She says, “Kansas Pearl? You lived in Kansas City, then?”
    “That’s where we were for the last year. Before that, San Francisco—Mom even tried to fire it up with my dad. Online. Just for a few months. You can imagine how that worked out.”
    “Not good?”
    “We don’t have to pretend.”
    “Don’t we?” Callie suddenly won’t catch my eye.
    “You never told, right?” I say. “Not Kevin? Not even your mom?”
    “Course not.”
    “I knew you probably hadn’t told Kevin or he wouldn’t have us back.” Callie was always loyal—you can see it in her, like you can in a horse. I mean that in the best way—a