Standing Sideways Read online

  Table of Contents

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  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  A Note to the Reader

  Also Written by J. Lynn Bailey

  Copyright © 2017 by J. Lynn Bailey

  All rights reserved.

  Visit my website at www.jlynnbailey.com

  Cover Designer: Hang Le, www.byhangle.com

  Editor and Interior Designer: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, www.unforeseenediting.com

  Proofreader: Julie Deaton

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For Jason and Michael.

  Separated by heartbeats, bonded by eternity.

  And,

  For Mr. Joe

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  46

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  A Note to the Reader

  Also Written by J. Lynn Bailey

  About the Author

  “To be gravely affected, one does not necessarily have to drink a long time nor take the quantities some of us have. This is particularly true of women. Potential female alcoholics often turn into the real thing and are gone beyond recall in a few years.”

  —The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

  Tracy and Poppy are worried about me.

  It isn’t because I haven’t said more than ten words in the last thirty-three days to Tracy. And it isn’t because my food consumption, according to Poppy, is like a rare sighting of the nene bird on the island of Maui. Of course, some would beg to differ that the nene bird is quite common to the locals and Maui visitors. Though, if you ask my dad or any immediate member of the Stone family, it’s unusual, almost extinct and elusive, as we have yet to see the nene bird on Maui in the month of March during the last eight trips we’ve taken.

  It’s about Jasper’s shirt.

  “Liv, you haven’t taken…his”—she can’t bear to say his name—“shirt off in weeks.”

  Last week, it was two weeks. Tracy, my mother, pointed this out then, too.

  With my earbuds balled at my side, I look at Tracy, unsure of what she expects me to do because, at this point, I’ll do anything to shut her up.

  I’ll go see Dr. Elizabeth again, I want to say even though I kicked her out of the Jasper Grief Recovery Plan—unbeknownst to Tracy.

  I’ll pretend to burn his AC/DC shirt. Because this shirt is the only shirt that still has his scent.

  “Liv, I’m worried.” Tracy sits down on the couch next to me. The grooves, the tracks that represented a smile at one time, are deeper, more pronounced, making her face look long and heavy. The dark circles under her eyes reflect sleepless days. Tracy is on night shift, a nurse, at Redwood Memorial Hospital. In my defense, it’s a faded AC/DC shirt I found in Jasper’s hamper the day he flew down to Los Angeles to visit our dad. I was about to wash it.

  Biting whatever’s left of my thumbnail, I look at my phone to see if there’s a return text from Simon, but Tracy’s hands catch my eye. I want to say, You could use some food, Mom. You’re shaking. But I don’t.

  Poppy is staring out the front window of our old Victorian, her dyed flaming-red hair and tight curls perfect. She turns to face Tracy and me. “She’s right, you know. You really ought to take Jasper’s shirt off. And eat something, for God’s sake, child.” Poppy looks back at her daughter, her eyebrows furrow. Tracy’s bottom lip starts to quiver, and I roll my eyes—maybe partly because I’m annoyed, but also because I don’t know how to fix this. This is the third time I’ve seen Tracy’s tears.

  “Mom.” But the word comes out rushed, hurried. As if she’s the last person I want to be with right now. And maybe this is true, too.

  Tracy shakes her head, as if trying to free us from our tragedy, placing her fingertips to her lips. Poppy glides across the room to Tracy, and she places her hands on her daughter’s shoulders, kissing the top of her head. “Your mother’s worried, Liv.” Poppy’s voice is calm, quiet. She continues to tell me my promiscuity with Simon James isn’t the right way to get through this and how sex won’t heal my heart. She tells me I’ve never acted like this and that this isn’t me.

  Things I already know.

  I want to argue with her. Tell her she doesn’t know what she’s talking about because she’s never been a twin. But I don’t for two reasons.

  1. You never argue with the matriarch of the family.

  2. I don’t want to freak Tracy out.

  The last time I answered Poppy in front of her, she called the psychiatrist she works with at her home at ten o’clock at night.

  Poppy, my grandmother, has been dead for nearly five years.

  The pain is coming back again, this time from my chest. Not a hurt pain, but an ache, like my chest is about to crack open and explode with tears because I’m too prideful to allow them to leak from my eyes. I know it’s time to take the white pill that’s in my pocket.

  Jasper used to fix things between Tracy and me. He used to be our words. The words we couldn’t speak to each other.

  I take my earbuds and push them into my ears as the ache deepens. I turn my music up, praying the bass will push me to Jupiter or Pluto—a solar system visit involving three hundred sixty-five days of stars and planets.

  Anywhere but here.

  Away from this couch.

  Away from Tracy.

  Leaving Belle’s Hollow for good.

  Maybe I can live in space where gravity is a pastime and my tears won’t be able to fall.

  Jasper used to say our mom and I were too much alike, and that was why we couldn’t communica
te.

  I look to Tracy to see if she’s allowing the tears or if she’s pushing them back, like me. She’s catching each one with her fingers. She’s been working a lot of overtime since Jasper passed. I guess she does it for the same reason I do what I do—to forget our new reality for just a moment.

  My phone chimes and it stops my music. It’s a text from Simon. Transitory relief meets my chest and the pain subsides because I know relief is coming soon.

  Simon: Meet u in 5. R spot?

  “Got to go.” I stand, sliding my phone into my pocket, praying Tracy doesn’t say something like, Please don’t go. I need you. Because I have to go. I have to leave her here in her pain because I can’t handle life on life’s terms right now.

  Thank God she doesn’t say anything.

  I pause at the door, wanting to turn around and stare back at her, but I can’t. Instead, I listen to the silence, her world and mine, and turn to face the outside. I bet she’s stroking her coffee mug, her eyes transfixed on Jasper’s chipped mug that reads, Jasper Stone, Grand Teton National Park, that Poppy bought both of us when she and Grandpa vacationed in the Grand Tetons. Tracy’s nails, the chipped red paint reflecting great patient care and maybe lack of love for herself—wrap around the S and the E of Jasper’s name on the mug.

  Between us, the silence grows, making me feel more invisible than I have since Jasper and I were kids. Jasper was always her favorite. And it was all right for a long time. Besides, I was closest with Ned, my dad, until he decided one day, three years ago, that he found his twenty-four-year-old transplant secretary from Los Angeles more alluring than his family. Transplant in our area means, not born and raised in Belle’s Hollow. Ned told us he was moving to Los Angeles. Who does that? Walks away from his legal practice and leaves his family behind to pick up the pieces? A dick. I used to call him a douche until I found out that douche was defined as a shower of water.

  That, he is not.

  Maybe that’s why I’m still mad at Jasper for leaving for Los Angeles. He was trying to right our dad’s mistakes, trying to see his point of view. If Jasper had never left for Los Angeles, this wouldn’t have happened. This thought alone makes my insides run hollow, my throat grows cold, and the emptiness stick to my insides like black tar.

  I make my way through town on foot and casually shove the white pill in my mouth. I walk up toward the green belt that surrounds Belle’s Hollow. Our town was built inside a redwood forest on a hillside that slowly meanders down toward the ocean. Population: 5,000.

  Jasper and I were raised here, explored every inch of Belle’s with curiosity and love for the gentle giants. You couldn’t do anything in Belle’s without the entire world knowing. Just like when my dad was caught with his girlfriend in Breck’s Tavern’s restroom. Gloria Randall was there with her friends, Nancy Boeing and Stacy Lynch, who witnessed the whole thing.

  My mom was pulling a double for Macy Landry who’d just had twins.

  Nice guy, huh?

  I hit Stop on the music as I approach the wall of trees and peer into darkness. It’s just past four thirty p.m., but in the redwoods, it’s always dark at their trunks.

  “Hey.”

  I hear his voice and feel his hands come around my sides from behind. His nose nudges between my earlobe and my neck. The way he does this isn’t soft. I know this has nothing to do with the sex we’re about to have; it has everything to do with two people grieving for the same person.

  “Nice shirt.” He turns me around, pushing my waist-length, light-blonde hair to the side. A “dancer’s figure” is how Tracy has always referred to my body. Where my breasts just barely fill an A cup and my hips are nothing but bone. I think it was her softer way of saying, Shaped like a boy.

  Simon was Jasper’s best friend.

  After Tracy and I returned from Los Angeles, Simon and I ran into each other at Green’s Pharmacy. He didn’t look good, and I know I resembled something of a well-spun piece of blonde cloth with snakes for hair and flames of fire in my eyes, like some sort of Greek goddess, though an ugly one—whoever she is.

  Somehow though, I feel closer to Simon than to anyone. Not that he and I are friends. In fact, I’ve loathed him at some points in my life. His sarcasm I want to smack right out of his head, and I’m pretty sure I did when we were ten.

  He’s the bad boy who lives disguised under sheets of armor—lanky, simple brown hair, blue eyes, and a few freckles on his nose. Nothing glaringly obvious indicates that his parents are almost nonexistent. That they might or might not work under the table as trimmers for the Steins and that they might or might not be using a white substance that keeps them up for days at a time to get their work done.

  Tracy would have adopted Simon long ago if he had agreed. He’s the boy who is always on the brink of a good decision, but in the last minute, he never pulls through. Like his body should be littered with ink, maybe a teardrop from his eye—though I don’t think he’s ever murdered anyone. No, I take that back. I know he’s never murdered anyone. He’s the boy who should smoke cigarettes behind Bob’s at lunch and break. But he’s never gone that path.

  Simon James is your normal-looking boy with moments of clarity, which, I think, has kept him in a good position not to go to prison. And I think Jasper helped him stay on the right path—until now.

  Every time we touch, I feel like he needs this as much as I do.

  First, in the beginning, it was just our tongues that became entangled. It was simple and easy. And comforting. But, for some reason, we just needed more. Then, things progressed quite quickly.

  Fingers pushing.

  Arms squeezing.

  Tongues everywhere.

  And, now, we meet here four times a week to have sex.

  I feel him harden against my stomach, and I look into his eyes. He’s been crying. Since Jasper died, I’ve never seen the evidence that Simon James, resident bad boy/not bad boy, cry, but I’ve seen the aftermath. I don’t ask if he’s all right because I know he isn’t.

  I’d gladly give up my therapy appointment for Simon. I’d give up my therapy appointment with Dr. Elizabeth for him if I knew he would go. If I knew it would help. I’m not even sure his parents have come out of their drug-induced coma long enough to know that Jasper is dead.

  His dull blue eyes, plagued with bad memories, prove the bright blue is sitting back, hidden behind the bruises that he carries underneath his clothes. The ones I see. And the dull blue tells a different story than what comes from his mouth. The darker story. The one he pretends Jasper and I don’t know, the one he doesn’t want us to know.

  Simon would have an excuse.

  I fell down the stairs.

  I burned myself.

  I ran into the wall.

  Unbeknownst to me, he’s already laid a blanket down. Part of this whole song and dance makes my stomach creep up into my throat. Simon has never done something like this in the two whole weeks we’ve been sleeping together. Like he’s trying to make this a romantic thing. But it isn’t. Not to me. It’s an existential need. And sex seems to be the momentary cure, even at the risk of losing Simon as a friend. Even if it is at the risk of his girlfriend, Whitney Patmore, finding out. Even if it is at the risk of losing my dignity, my self-respect, or anything logical that goes along with casual sex.

  I don’t care.

  I need to be fixed.

  Catching his scent, pheromones launch into the air like arrows and attach themselves to me. I pull his lips to mine as he lowers me down onto the blanket.

  Not that I can’t see myself with Simon. I guess maybe I can—in a different life. Maybe.

  While he puts the condom on, all I can think about is how much better I will feel once we’re in the act. It takes all my thoughts, all my pain, away. But I know the sorrow, the guilt, the fallout from all this will follow. It always does. It will come quick and hard, and I’ll wish I hadn’t done it. I’ll wish I’d have made a better decision. I’ll leave Simon with the intentions of never meeting hi
m again.

  But come the morning, the bitter, painful monkey of despair will bite me again, and I’ll feel like I don’t have a choice.

  And the whole sick cycle will begin again.

  When I get home from my trail-of-bad-decisions escapade, the walk of shame and remorse in tow, Tracy has gone to work. In the kitchen, on the oven, is a plate of food and a note.

  EAT!

  LOVE, MOM

  I grab the plate of food and pop it in the microwave. I lean against the counter and pull my phone from my back pocket. Cao has texted me seventeen—no, wait, eighteen times. Another just came in.

  Cao: If u don’t text me back, I’m calling the police.

  Me: I’m fine.

  Since we were three, Cao Smith has taken on the role of best friend and Belle’s Hollow’s resident ninja. Stan, her father, is the karate instructor in town, which makes it a no-brainer that Cao has every color belt, including the black.

  Ed Sheeran-obsessed, closet chain-smoker, valedictorian nominee, Caltech bound, she’s an overachiever with an outspoken way about her. She also has no idea about Simon. Part of me wants to tell her. I don’t want to keep this black hole of a secret, like it’s a nasty, dirty hush-hush that no one would believe because of how I carry myself. How well I play the character. That makes me feel more like a liar than thirty seconds ago. She’d probably laugh in my face. And then she’d cry because I had lost my virginity and didn’t even tell her.

  My phone chimes again.

  Cao: K. See you tomorrow morning. P.S. Tomorrow will be great. Love u.

  Tomorrow will be my first day back at school. I’m a senior at Belle’s Hollow High. The therapist, Dr. Elizabeth, convinced Tracy it would be the healthy thing to do.

  I don’t much care for Dr. Elizabeth. She does this thing with her lips when she’s listening to me. She shoves her lips into her mouth and slowly pulls them out. She does this three times in a row, and then she stops. A minute later, she does it again. Three times. Then, stops. And there’s a brown mole she has just above the left side of her mouth. When she does the mouth thing, it makes the mole move, and I can’t focus. It’s distracting. I want to ask her if she’s had the mole looked at by Dr. McGoldrick. I’m sure they’re colleagues. I’m sure they’ve met before. I’m sure he’s seen it on her face. We live in such a tiny town, so—scratch that idea. I’m sure the mole is fine.