“What did you eat that made you sick?” Ruby asks me.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Taco Hell.”
“You went to Taco Hell?” Ruby asks. “But you declared them dead to you after they gave you that smooshed seven-layer burrito.”
Her eyes are little slits through her glasses. She studies me across the table.
She sees everything, that one.
After dinner, Mom and Levi go on their usual walk that lasts so long I end up standing at the window staring out at the darkness wondering if they were eaten by bears. I go to my room at the end of the house, a tiny space that barely fits my twin bed and dresser, but has a window looking out onto an enormous, lovely oak tree hung with Levi’s birdhouse collection. I lie on my bed. Ruby’s music bleeds through the halls, bouncing off the wood floors. This house has high ceilings and was only half-furnished when we moved in. Levi’s a man with money and a fine house but no taste and no things to fill it. That’s where Mom stepped in.
The album Ruby’s listening to is one I turned her on to, YesNoMaybe, a dark dance-pop band that I was super into last year. She is obsessed. It’s all she listens to and, at this point, she has soured me on it. Tonight, though, the sound of it makes me more sad than annoyed. I feel like a failure of a sister, failure of a daughter, failure of a suicidal person, and here at Mom’s I have to hide it and pretend everything is normal when really I’m falling apart. Or trying to put myself back together, I guess.
Ruby puts the album back to track one and I wipe my tears away, get up, and go down the hall to knock on her door. There’s a sign on her door that says “DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE.” She can’t hear me because she’s cranked the music so loud. I open the door and she’s on her laptop on her bed. Her hamper is overflowing with black clothes. She’s drawn cartoons of sad-looking girl robots that cover the wall above her bed. Seventh grade has not been easy on her. Our parents split, she lost the county spelling bee championship, one of her best friends moved to Colorado.
“How many times are you going to listen to this album?” I ask from the doorway.
“I don’t know, billions and billions.” She doesn’t look up from her computer. She’s clearly playing a game. “So, you tried to kill yourself.”
I close the door. Takes seconds for me to locate my tongue. “Mom told you?”
“Pffft. I knew she was lying about food poisoning. You have a stomach of steel. Remember when you drank all that expired eggnog?”
I sit next to her on her bed. “I thought it was supposed to be tangy.”
“Plus all I had to do was go on Mom’s laptop and read her history to find about a jillion Google searches all asking what to do when your daughter attempts suicide, and whether a bottle of Tylenol damages your liver, and what the chances are you’ll try again, and yada yada yada.”
“What are my chances?”
“Good.”
“That’s a relief.”
“I mean, chances are good you’ll try again. Suicide risk is thirty-seven percent higher for someone who attempted in the last year. Then again, nine out of ten people who attempt suicide don’t ever end up actually dying by suicide, so you have that going for you.”
“Sounds like Mom’s not the only person who’s been Googling.”
She doesn’t answer.
“So, you know. What do you think?” I ask.
“I think it’s pretty stupid of you.” I can hear the anger in her voice, even though she won’t meet my eyes and keeps clicking her computer keys.
“You’re right, it was stupid.”
“I mean, what, you were just going to kill yourself? Without asking for help, or telling anyone, or explaining why? I don’t get it. I mean, what’s so terrible about your life?”
Ruby’s right. There’s nothing terrible about my life. I’ve thought this many, many times. And that almost makes it worse—that I’m this miserable, and I don’t even deserve this kind of misery. I’ve got a good, fortunate life. I waste it.
“I don’t, either, honestly,” I answer. “I just felt—I felt alone. I felt like I was . . . in pain. I wanted it to stop.”
“Dumb.”
“I won’t do it again.”
“Yeah, okay, I’ll be over here not holding my breath.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“You were going to leave us,” she says, finally looking up at me over her laptop screen. Her eyes are shiny. “You were just going to, like, leave us in the most selfish way possible. I looked up to you.”
Looked. Past tense. I suck in a breath.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her.
“You know what, it’s fine.” She goes back to her computer. “There are more bacteria in a centimeter of my intestines than people who have lived and died in the whole world.”
“Is that supposed to be . . . comforting?”
She shrugs and puts her headphones on. Conversation over, I guess.
This thirteen-year-old girl used to be a shy brainiac who spent her time obsessed with her microscope and exploring nature and reading stacks of paperback books about little girls who solved mysteries. Now she’s this angsty teen who blasts dark pop music and stares at her laptop. And doesn’t look up to me anymore. I wish, for a moment, I had succeeded in my attempt, and then in the next moment, I wish I had never tried.
I leave her room quietly, my cheeks burning, and realize what I really want—more than anything—is for my little sister to be proud of me again.
Mom comes into my room that night after the girls and Levi are asleep. I spent almost an hour researching and ordering a stack of memoirs on bipolar disorder, and now I’m watching a show called Is Love Blind? about blindfolded people who get married to strangers. Marisol’s watching the show at her house at the same time and we’re texting back and forth about what a gorgeous train wreck the whole thing is. I put my phone down when Mom sits next to me on the bed.
“Let’s talk about your future,” Mom says.
I still have nine days before I return to school. Yes, I’m counting. I groan and pull my blanket over my head. She pulls my blanket off and flashes her tarot cards in the air.
“Oh, that talking about my future,” I say, sitting up. “Okay, way better.”
Mom sits next to me and shuffles the cards.
Late nights have always been our special time because we stay up later than everyone else. She wears men’s flannel pajamas and her hair is in a giant bun on the top of her head, her makeup is faded and ready to be scrubbed off. I mute the episode. The sound of the shuffling cards is a purr.
This is our first time alone since I was in the hospital. I can’t help but feel like I hurt her feelings by staying at Dad’s instead of her house, even though she swore she understood. My mother’s not one to ever show her wounds.
“I’ve missed you,” she says.
“You too.”
“I’ve worried.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
“I mean, you can only watch so much reality TV before losing touch with your own reality.”
“Maybe you’d consider going back to school earlier than we discussed?”