How to End a Love Story(75)

Helen knows the word suicide hadn’t occurred to her yet—that would come later. Even as she fumbled with the empty battery compartment of Michelle’s Hello Kitty clock to retrieve those little knotted plastic bags full of powder, Helen thought it was still possible everyone was wrong, that the body they’d found on Route 22 in that terrible accident wasn’t Michelle’s. If they’d known, why would her parents have to ID the body? Or maybe it was Michelle, but she wasn’t dead-dead—didn’t people come back to life in ambulances all the time, in TV shows?

Either way, Helen remembers feeling like the world’s best sister as she combed through all of Michelle’s favorite hiding spots and flushed all evidence of anything that might suggest substance abuse problems down the toilet.

That was when she remembered the last words they’d said to each other.



It was after dinner, less than six hours ago. Helen had been sitting up in bed, Facebook stalking her fellow classmates in the incoming Dartmouth Class of 2012, as if knowing enough about them would allow her to astral project herself three months into the future, when this suffocating house and everyone in it would be nothing but a distant memory. Michelle had come in to curl her hair, because Helen’s mirror was better than hers. She had plans to sneak out to a party—Helen didn’t approve, but Helen never approved. Michelle wanted to borrow a necklace, and Helen said no.

“But it’s just for a few hours,” Michelle said.

“Assuming you don’t lose it, like you lose everything,” Helen muttered, not looking up from her laptop. “The answer’s no. Popo gave me that necklace. I’m bringing it to college.”

“The only reason I don’t have a necklace from her of my own is because she died before my sixteenth birthday,” Michelle said.

“Bummer for you,” Helen said. “Get out of my room.”

“You’re always so mean to me,” Michelle complained. “And I do nothing to you.”

“Well, I won’t be living here soon, so you won’t have to suffer much longer, will you?”

Michelle was silent for a beat. Then, cruelly: “Sometimes I wish you weren’t my sister.”

Helen looked up from her laptop at last.

Freeze it right here, Helen always wants to tell whoever’s playing the film reel of her life. But the scene continues relentlessly: “Well, I was here first and I never asked for a sister. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have one.”

Michelle stared at her mutinously, jaw working on some response that never came. Helen remembers feeling a stab of regret, but—hadn’t Michelle started it?

Then Michelle yanked the hot curling iron from the wall and hurled it across the room at Helen.

“What’s wrong with you?!” Helen shouted, dodging the hot metal.

Michelle ran out and slammed the door shut behind her.



Helen remembers opening Michelle’s laptop and the screen being a little blurry—she must have been crying, though she doesn’t remember crying—as she deleted a secret folder full of Michelle’s favorite erotic Lord of the Rings fan fiction. Michelle didn’t write any fan fiction, as far as Helen knew, but she liked annoying Helen by reading the saucy sections out loud whenever she wanted Helen to leave her alone. Michelle was annoying like that. Michelle was too annoying to be dead.

She opened Michelle’s internet browser history, with the intention to clear it of any porn or incriminating drug-related searches. And she remembers what she found.



“what is the likelihood of survival if hit by a car at 55 mph for a 95lb female” 1:38 a.m.

“what happens when you die medically” 1:39 a.m.

“10-Day Weather Forecast Dunollie NJ” 1:41 a.m.



It felt more like finding a noose than a note.

Helen remembers thinking viciously, I’ll never forgive you, if this is all you left behind.

She didn’t delete it just in case it was. She scanned the room for anything obviously intended to be read in this situation.

Nothing.

The silence in the room became eerie.

Helen remembers convincing herself then that searching for a physical note was silly. Of course Michelle wouldn’t have done that, of course it would have been too old-fashioned for her, of course if she’d written any kind of suicide letter, she would have done so on her laptop and left it somewhere to be unearthed digitally—in her email drafts or in a password-protected file buried deep enough on the hard drive that only Helen would know how to access it.

Of course Michelle wouldn’t have left this earth without getting the last word, even if it was just one final fuck you to the only sister she’d ever had.

Helen remembers being impressed by her own sense of regained calm as she copied the entirety of Michelle’s digital legacy onto a hard drive to be searched thoroughly, exhaustively, at a later date.

Once she was sure Michelle was really dead.



Grant wants you to know what happened after he left the funeral.



He remembers stepping outside into the humid, gray summer afternoon, with Helen’s voice still ringing in his ears. She wants you to leave, now. He remembers a choked, horrible lump in his throat, and a burning in his lungs, and thinking he absolutely must not cry while he was still visible to anyone inside the church. He didn’t want to be seen lingering about the premises, as if he didn’t understand perfectly what she’d been saying. Leave. Now.