What if Papa’s right and the subconscious is not made out of symbols and messages and meaning that needs to be deciphered; what if it’s just chaos and nonsense? What if there’s nothing inside us but dust and specks, and we keep trying to connect the dots because we’re desperate for a path? But what if there is no path? Maybe we’re all just specks floating in space, infinite and vast and alone.
I sit up in bed, wondering if anything I think I remember about last night is real, or fake, or something in between. Maybe I was here all night, watching TV with my parents. Maybe the sickness I feel in my body is not a hangover but a freak summer flu. Maybe no one is dead and no one is in trouble.
Maybe I am going crazy. Maybe I have always been crazy.
I look at my phone again: Please come over. I try to read meaning between the letters. Was this a message sent in haste as police cars showed up at Ivy’s gate? Is she getting hauled away in handcuffs right now? Am I already too late?
Or is she sitting up in bed like I am, wondering what happened last night, wondering if her dreams are real?
Does she need me to hold her? Will she turn around this time and face me? Will she be gentle? Will she just let me love her?
I’m coming, I text back. I get dressed fast and brush my teeth. But when I get outside, my car is gone. Maybe Papa drove to work today instead of getting a ride to the ferry from Daddy.
I walk down the hill in the smoky air, and by the time I get to Ivy’s house, I think I will never be able to get the burning smell out of my nose. It is permanently absorbed in the membranes still chapped and raw from the week of excess with Ivy and Ash. I should have worn a mask. Pain shoots from my nostrils through my sinuses and into my eyes, like thick needles sewing through my cartilage and flesh.
There are no cop cars at Ivy’s. Her mom’s car is gone. Everything is still. It could be any other day, not a morning after someone may have died. Maybe I had a bad dream and I can’t tell the difference between that and my real life anymore. Maybe everything I think is just meaningless neural garbage that I believe is true.
When I get to Ivy’s room, the first thing I notice is a suitcase standing upright next to the bed, the handle raised, the strap of her purse wrapped around it, ready to go at a moment’s notice.
I can tell she hasn’t slept. She’s still in the yellow dress she wore yesterday. Her eyes are red and swollen, like she’s been crying, and her skin is covered with a crosshatch of dried blood from scratches all over her body. She looks at me, and for a moment I see a terrified young girl. And I know, definitively, that last night was not a dream. Someone innocent died, and we are all responsible.
Ivy glances at her phone as I crawl into bed with her. She sighs as she sets it on the nightstand and lies down with her back to me as I put my arms around her. She smells sour, poisoned.
“Ash still hasn’t called me,” she says. “He must be sleeping. He was so tired.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What can I do? I have to keep waiting. I can’t leave without him, can I?”
I remember seeing him through the window last night, Tami’s arms around him. I remember seeing how well they fit together. Why had I never noticed that before? Why had I always assumed he was too good for her?
“But what if he’s not coming?” I say.
“He probably has to handle some things before we go.”
“What if he’s staying here?”
“He’s not staying here.”
“Have you called the police yet?”
Why aren’t they here yet? How hard is it to track down the owner of a car that looks like a spaceship? Is Vaughn’s life that low of a priority for them?
Ivy just sighs again and rolls over to face me. “I’m going to miss you, Fern. After we leave. Maybe you can visit us after we get settled. You should. When you’re on a break from college. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? The three of us, on a beach, all of this, gone?” She waves her hand in the air limply.
“Okay,” I say. Her hair is wild and tangled. I pick out a twig, a gum wrapper, a small piece of moss. I try to pat it down, but it won’t be tamed.
“Keep doing that,” Ivy says, closing her eyes. “That feels good.” So I keep petting her hair, like she’s a young child needing to be soothed by someone trustable and sturdy, needing someone to keep telling her that magic is real even though she’s old enough to know better.
Everything is quiet for a while. I assume Ivy’s asleep, so I close my eyes to join her, but then she speaks: “You know I had another job besides acting. You figured it out.”
“Yes,” I say.
She rolls over to face me. “This one producer, the one who gave me my breakout role in The Cousins, he liked to introduce me to his friends. I think he got off on that more than anything—distributing me.” Her voice is monotone, emotionless. “That was years ago, but every time I’m with someone, it feels like the same thing over and over again. It’s like my soul leaves my body. It makes it easier. They use me like a tool. I am a tool.”
“You are not a tool,” I say. Her eyes are just inches in front of mine, but I know she doesn’t see me. She is looking straight through.
“But Ash was different. He wasn’t using me. We had this perfect container of time, this perfect little island where nothing could touch us, where who we were in the real world didn’t matter. It was just us on the beach talking and singing and sometimes just lying there in silence, and for once in my life I didn’t have to perform, and for once in my life I wasn’t powerless. And when it got dark, when he couldn’t see me, I still felt like I existed. Do you know what I mean? I didn’t plan to love him. I saw him on the beach that first day and thought he’d be a nice fling. I wanted to use him. But he was perfect. Everything was perfect. My soul didn’t have to leave. It was the only time in my life I wasn’t terrified.”
I don’t tell her what I’m really thinking, that she has every reason to be terrified. There is no island remote enough to keep us safe.
“Ash isn’t afraid of anything,” she says. “Have you noticed that? He lives in a world where nothing can hurt him.”
I don’t say, “Except Tami. He’s scared of Tami.”
“You should see some of the stuff he wrote me. He’s a poet, you know? For a while, we were writing multiple times a day. I would check my messages constantly. I would wake up in the middle of the night and do it. Then after a few weeks his notes started coming less often, and they got shorter and colder until one day he said he was in a serious relationship with someone who made more sense. He said I was just a fantasy, that we’d never survive in the real world. He picked the real world over me. Do you have any idea what that feels like? To be un-chosen? To just dissolve?”