She wouldn’t let me go when I tried to get away. When she told me about the neighbor right after she and Dad got married.
I threw up when she told me that I had his eyes.
Nothing was real after that. Not Mom cleaning up my sick or me letting her go inside without a word of protest and accepting the ginger ale she brought back. Not her soft lips on my cheek or her words—no longer poisonous—that she was going to give me some time.
Then there was only the sound of her heels clacking against the concrete, growing quieter as she left.
I don’t know how many hours I sat like that.
My eyes were dry when I opened them, when I pushed up from the filthy floor and went inside. The pantry door was open. Soup cans and boxes of pasta were scattered on one shelf. My bag of half-eaten Fruity O’s was lying on another next to a jug of laundry detergent and a couple rolls of duct tape. And next to that was a little box of baking soda.
I snatched it from the shelf and headed for the bathroom. The master bathroom. The one I’d helped Dad fix as a surprise for Mom when we moved in. I ran my fingertips across the creamy countertop and up the periwinkle walls.
I sat on the closed toilet sprinkling baking soda into the tub as the faucet gushed warm water. I slid off my dress and lowered myself into the water until only my nose and the top of my head were exposed. The tub was big enough that I could extend my legs completely, my toes tipping forward to rest on the far end.
I inhaled deeply and sank under the water.
No sound. No light. With the water all around me, I was floating and felt almost nothing. The water was opaque from the soda. I felt like I was in a cloud. All white and fluffy and weightless. I couldn’t see any of the purple-blue paint that I’d helped roll on the walls. I wished I could stay like that forever. No pain. No nothing. Just warm and peaceful.
Even as I formed the thoughts, the pressure of my filled lungs began to build. I tried and failed to keep a bubble from escaping my lips.
Then another.
And another.
The pressure ebbed, but even that respite was brief. As soon as my lungs deflated, they ached to be filled. I sank farther down. I wasn’t ready to leave that all-encompassing warmth.
I thought of the little girl who used to live behind us in our old house. Her name was something like Angie or Angel. I don’t remember, because her family lived there for only a month. Less than.
I think she was four when she drowned in their pool.
I was only a few years older, but I remember my parents being really upset about it and enrolling me in swimming lessons soon after, even though I already knew how to swim. And when I finished, Dad still wouldn’t let me swim in our pool by myself. Ever. I never minded, because I always had more fun swimming with him anyway. Mom never once went swimming with us. Something about the chlorine bothering her.
I used to wonder about Angie or Angel and what it felt like to drown. I’d try and hold my breath underwater as long as possible and imagine breathing in water instead of air. Not like when you choke while drinking something, but actually breathing water. Before it killed you, wouldn’t it feel nice? Like this same warm floating feeling of being suspended in a tub, but on the inside too? I’d never wanted to find out before.
I thought about it then. Not the drowning and dying part, not really, but the oblivion? I thought about that.
I wouldn’t be able to hold my breath much longer. Already it felt like I’d lived an entire lifetime without air. I wasn’t scared. The tub was long but not especially deep. Only inches separated my mouth from the surface. I could reach it in less than a second if I wanted to. But right then, I wanted the warmth more than I wanted the air. I wanted it so much that I opened my lips—not letting the water do more than bathe my tongue, my teeth, my mouth. I wondered.
I sat up suddenly, gulping air into my lungs, my legs bent up tight to my chest and my cheek resting on my knees.
Breath after breath after breath.
I stayed like that in the tub long after the warmth left the water. Long after my fingers and toes went pruney. Long after the skylight showed that the sun had set and the bathroom became dark, too dark to tell what color was on the walls.
CHAPTER 28
Dad never let me turn the thermostat down past 79 degrees, but even with the heat pressing in from outside, I still shivered when I got out of the tub. I stood up and took Dad’s old gray bathrobe off the hook. Technically, it was my robe since I’d bought him a new one last Christmas, but in my head it would always be his. I’d washed it half a million times so it was wearing thin in places, but it was also the softest fabric on the planet. Every time I slipped it on I felt nothing but a whisper drifting over my skin.
It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t.
She was a liar.
There was no way. I would have known. Dad would have known. He’d never have endured everything she put him through if it were true. If I weren’t his. He could never love me the way he did if I was the result of her cheating. And he did love me.
I spun to the mirror and I searched for him. For Dad.
You have his eyes.
