That’s when James stopped coming home most nights. He couldn’t take the embarrassment of being married to the town kook, but he knew that if he filed for divorce he’d end up getting burdened with Lily. No court would grant Samantha custody of a minor with as many medical problems as Lily had, and James didn’t like sickness, either mental or physical. He didn’t file for divorce or involve the legal system in any way because he knew he would end up with more responsibility. Instead, he just stopped showing up.
Lily filled a bucket with soap and water and opened the garage door so she could let out the fumes of the cleaning goop while she scrubbed. Even the non-toxic stuff her mom bought at Whole Foods still irritated Lily if she was around it in its undiluted form for too long. Ten minutes later, her eyes were watering from the chemicals so badly she could barely see. She ignored them. She had a party to go to, damn it, and after everything that had already happened that day, a couple of leaky eyes weren’t about to stop her. Another twenty minutes later, she was mostly done with the Jeep, when she heard Juliet’s car pull into the driveway and park.
“You know what? The way the clay’s all flung out like that, it almost looks festive,” her sister said from the garage door.
“I’ll be your best friend if you check on Mom,” Lily said, wiping her hair off her damp forehead.
“Fever?” Juliet crossed the garage to Lily. Her giant brown eyes were rounded with concern. Lily edged away from her sister’s smooth, cool hands before Juliet could touch her face.
“Just warm from all this exercise,” Lily said.
Juliet cocked her chin as she judged Lily’s health. The gesture accentuated the heart shape of her face, and as she pursed her naturally red lips with worry, Lily thought, as she always did, that Juliet’s mouth looked like a heart inside a heart—a small red one inside a larger, pale one. Lily knew most people considered her sister a bit plain. Juliet dressed conservatively and never wore makeup or styled her straight, mousy-brown hair. But to Lily that stuff was irrelevant. She thought her sister was the prettiest girl she’d ever seen.
“Check on Mom. I’m awesome.” Lily turned Juliet by the shoulders and gave her a playful kick on the rump to get her to go inside.
When Lily finished, she found her sister sitting in bed with their mom, taking her pulse. At twenty, Juliet was already a registered EMT and moonlighted at a hospital to pay her way through Boston University. Sometimes it seemed like everyone closest to Lily had decided at an early age that it would be a good idea to go into medicine—probably because at some point they’d seen paramedics fighting to keep Lily breathing. That kind of experience tends to leave a lasting impression on a kid.
“How is she?” Lily whispered when her sister looked up. Juliet tilted her head to the side in a noncommittal gesture before easing herself off the bed and taking Lily out to the hall.
“Her pulse is racing. Which is kind of hard to do when you have two hundred milligrams of Thorazine and an Ambien in you.”
“Is she alright alone?”
“She’s fine for now,” Juliet whispered, her big eyes downcast.
“Did she say what’s bothering her?” Lily asked. She took Juliet’s arm and led her down the hall to her room.
“She’s paranoid.” Juliet sighed as she sat on Lily’s bed. “She said another Lillian was planning on taking her Lillian.”
“That’s—” Lily stopped, overwhelmed.
“—the way she explains her hallucinations to herself,” Juliet finished for her. “The hallucinations aren’t wrong if they really happen somewhere. She isn’t crazy if there are multiple versions of people and multiple worlds that only she knows about.”
“Yeah.” Lily agreed reluctantly. Something about this explanation bothered her. She knew her mom made stuff up, but how had she known about Miranda nearly starting a fight with her in the hallway? It hadn’t happened, but it almost had. It certainly could have happened if one or two things had worked out differently. “But it’s spooky how close to true her lies sound sometimes.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“And it keeps getting weirder.”
“Schizophrenia is a degenerative disease.”
Juliet said things like that sometimes. It wasn’t to edify Lily, who already knew the ins and outs of their mom’s condition. It was to remind herself that no matter how much of a nightmare all of this seemed, it was still considered normal in some textbook somewhere. Feigning normalcy didn’t help Lily much. Cracking a joke usually did, though.
“Ah, schizophrenia. The gift that keeps on giving.”
Neither of them laughed, but they both smiled sad
ly and nodded in unison. It helped to have someone to nod with. That’s how Lily and Juliet survived. A textbook answer, a bad joke, and a sister to lean on, and so far they’d managed to keep their dysfunctional little family from going completely down the drain.
“So what’s all this about a party?” Juliet asked.
Lily sat down next to her sister. “It’s the only one I’ve been invited to since junior prom. Which I missed because I got sick,” Lily said quietly. Juliet wanted to interrupt. Lily took her hand and kept going before her sister could argue. “Look, I know what’s happening to me. I know that soon I won’t be able to go to school anymore. I’m out of time, Jules. And it’s okay. Well, no, it isn’t okay, but I’ve accepted it at least. I just want to go to one high school party before I’m stuck inside a plastic bubble for the rest of my life.”
“So. Tristan’s taking you,” Juliet began cautiously.
“Yeah.” Lily looked down, smiling softly. “And I’m pretty sure we’re going as a couple.”
“But he doesn’t care if you don’t go to parties. You know that.”