“What happened?” I ask. She looks me in the eyes and it’s powerful, like I can see all the way inside her, and maybe she can see inside me in the same way.
“A couple years ago, after our parents died, I crashed a car into a house and hurt some people really bad,” she says, her voice barely a whisper. I blink at her stupidly. “That’s what I was put away for,” she says, resting her elbow on her knee and her cheek on her palm. “I was there for a year. I just got out when I turned 18. I was on a suicide watch, and under strict observation. But I’m not crazy. I mean, not any more than anyone else is I don’t think,” she says seriously.
“Okay,” I say, kind of honored that she felt she could tell me all of this. She blinks at me with giant dark eyes and I know we could leave it there, but it seems like there’s more, I feel almost like she wants me to ask, like she’s not sure how to tell the rest unless I ask. “Who got hurt in your accident?”
“It wasn’t an accident,” she says, clearing her throat. “I did it on purpose.” It comes out not matter-of-factly or casually but with a purity that shows me, yet again, that truth is important to her.
“Why?” I shouldn’t pry, but I can’t help it. She seems like an enigma to me. Clever and bright, maybe even wise beyond her years, and willing to share it all. I want to feast on it, as if it can teach me so much that I haven’t figured out about myself yet.
“I was trying to kill myself,” she says, picking at the edge of her t-shirt. I don’t know what to say then, and I think maybe I should just say nothing. She keeps going when I don’t and I feel I made the right decision. “I just blamed myself for my parents’ deaths…for the accident that killed them and I…well honesty? I was really mad. There was…I can’t really describe it…a rawness inside me that I just couldn’t explain to anyone, or contain, or control. Does that make sense?”
“You have no idea,” I breathe. She looks at me quizzically. “My parents died in a car accident when I was little…and I’ve always blamed myself.” I confess, and it does feel like a confession as I’ve never said it out loud before, just said it over and over to myself, letting it fester and grow powerful inside me. She breathes in sharply and we seem to understand each other more than ever before. Liesel slides off the couch and fetches a picture frame from a bookshelf nearby. She comes back to me and puts it in my hand. It’s her family, warm and smiling. “These are your parents?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“You look like your mother,” I say, another thing that unites us.
“Everywhere but the height and the booty,” she says laughing. It’s true, they both have beautiful almond shaped faces and dark velvety skin, big dark eyes, and the same wild black curly hair tied up in a bright scarf and poking up and out, but Liesel is thin and delicate while her mother is soft and round, tall and broad, with a smile that looks like it could devour sadness whole. The smiles are especially the same. In the photo Liesel’s mother and a small, wiry, pale professor type – complete with elbow patches on his jacket – are clasping at each other with what I can only describe as pure love. Her brother Ben looks more like her father, the same light skin and sandy brown hair, sweet in the eyes. Apparently none of the family got her mother’s height. “It always kind of bothered me that I don’t look like him at all,” she says, as if reading my mind. “My father, I mean. It’s wonderful, of course, to see her looking back at me in the mirror, but I miss him too, and he’s not there,” she says, taking back the picture and staring at them. It pains me to hear her say what I have felt so many times myself.
“Maybe that’s why your brother looks like him so much then, so you can both always see your parents in each other,” I say, surprised at the insight. She smiles widely, as if I’ve given her some great gift.
“I’d never thought about it that way before,” she says, pausing. “That’s nice.” She says it more to herself than to me. “I’m really lucky to have him. Do you have any siblings?”
“I have an older brother too, Jasper, but we’re…estranged,” I say and the word comes out like I strangled it somewhere in my throat.
“I’m sorry,” Liesel says, looking down and clearly feeling bad for making me feel bad, which is nice, but not necessary.
“I have to ask,” I start, unsure if it’s a good idea. “How does a car accident equal mental institute? You seem really…um…sane…” I trail off. She looks at me, her gaze piercing but somehow not sharp.