At first it’s ugly and bruised like a bull’s-eye, and then just as suddenly, it’s not. It’s my side, not Kelly’s. It’s my unblemished skin, and Cherish is carving into it.
One two three four fiiiive . . .
One two three four fiiiive, I say as well.
One two three four fiiiive.
She isn’t surprised when I count along; she just keeps carving with the short golf pencil. Four short sticks that streak thin and red around my torso until it reaches the bedsheet, and then one diagonal and deep that cuts across them all and makes sharp jags of my skin.
It’s all right, I think while Cherish and I count. It’ll be my turn after.
I am calm and patient, the way Cherish will be next.
Until the echo separates into other voices.
One two three four fiiiive.
Brianne is nearby. Her wrist sends her hand swaying through the air like she’s conducting our chorus, her thin index finger counting out the beats between the tallies.
I recoil a little, knowing she is seeing this exercise that is meant just for Cherish and me—but I shouldn’t. It’s Brianne, who is like home now, too. She has kept a secret with me.
I decide that she is welcome here, while the thin red streaks run, and for once Cherish doesn’t seem to mind.
One two three four fiiiive.
But there are more, even though I can’t see them. I hear Jerry’s voice, and Tariq’s, and in the distance, I think that I can hear Judge Campbell’s.
There are too many people watching, too many witnesses who are uninvited, but their voices are tangling with Cherish’s and there’s nothing I can do to pry them apart.
Now the tallies hurt. The blood pulls as it leaves the inside of me, and Cherish doesn’t notice or else she doesn’t care.
I don’t want this anymore, but my limbs still move weighted, like they’re struggling underwater, and the numbers come faster until they’re too close.
Onetwothreefourfiiiive.
* * *
—
WHEN I WAKE UP, it’s still raining.
One of the bedroom windows is open, and a breeze too cold for a summer night has swept in to chill the beads of sweat across my chest.
The nightshirt tangled beneath me feels slightly damp, too, and I twist in the moonlight, to see whether the wetness is clear. Whether the side of my abdomen is a scoresheet, and there are rows of tally marks, and streaks of red running toward the bedsheet.
My skin is untouched. The marks that Cherish made are gone, like the chorus of intruders that hovered somewhere around our bed.
On her side of the bed, Cherish is curled around a body pillow, facing away from me, one leg clamped down across the sheet and trapping the other leg beneath it. Our summer quilt that’s only twice the thickness of a sheet is bunched at the foot of the bed, where it always is when we wake up.
I put my hand against her back and feel it slowly rise before I get up and come around.
She doesn’t rouse when I move in front of her.
She doesn’t stir when I sit in a small space she’s left on the edge of the bed.
She doesn’t wake when I tug at her bonnet and tuck one of the cornrows that frames her face back underneath.
I know that she’s still fast asleep when I turn to her nightstand and open the drawer, but I watch her just in case. I lower my hand into the space that housed only two possessions—except I only feel one.
I pat around, but I’m looking inside now, too. I know the journal’s gone.
Cherish has moved her collection of tally marks, dating back to grade school, kept in the journal covered with stickers of our favorite cartoon character so that I would know the marks have something to do with me.
I added one strike, just so she’d know that I had seen it, and she hid it in a new place.
Like I wasn’t allowed to know. Like Cherish needs a secret from me.
All that’s left in the nightstand drawer is the jewelry box that holds her grandmother’s cuff, which Cherish has left for me. She’s taken the journal and the tally marks and left a family heirloom because she must think it’s a peace offering.
I only take it because it’s hers. I lift the box slowly out of the drawer, careful not to scuff it, and then I leave Cherish’s side for a moment while I bury it in the backpack I never had a chance to unpack once school ended.
Then I’m back with her, standing over her side of the bed the way she did in my dream, when I couldn’t see her face because of shadows.
“One two three four fiiiive,” I whisper, and I trace my finger softly on her side. “One two three four fiiiive.”
I only do it twice, and then I retract my hand.
She could almost be Kelly, if she’d buckled into this position because she found it hard to breathe. If she’d fallen this way instead of intentionally curling around a long pillow so that she could fall asleep. She’s quiet the way I made him, and just as helpless, even though she’s so much more at peace.
She doesn’t see it coming when I reach for her. Not quick or hurried, but calm, the way I was outside the gazebo.
I take her by the shoulder and jostle her once.
“Cherish,” I say, leaning closer to her face. “Wake up.”
This time when I shake her, her eyes open, slow and lazy.
“RahRah?” she croaks, and I can’t help but laugh.
The night always heals us. No matter what seems wrong during the day, everything’s okay again in the middle of the night.
“Come on,” I tell her, and I pull her out of bed and across the bedroom.
“What’s happening? Where are we going?” But my Cherish giggles. “Farrah, I think I’m still asleep.”
“Shh.” I hold my finger to my lips and press us both against the wall outside the bedroom door, and now she’s wide-awake, and her grin is spread across the width of her face.
We burst into a run, trampling down the staircase even though we’re as loud as stampeding bulls now. It doesn’t matter. Cherish knows where we’re going, even though this isn’t my house. There are no white birch trees, and no waterfall, but I’ve woken her up in the middle of the night and there’s still her and me.
We leave the kitchen door wide open when we run across the outside dining space and careen into the light rain, the soft grass slick beneath our feet, laughter pealing out of us.
I wonder if Kelly ever made it back onto his feet, or if he hears us. I hope that he’s still broken by the gazebo and that he can hear Cherish and me as we cross the Whitmans’ garden and come to the edge of the pool.