Page 61 of If Anything Happens To Me

Hayley and I nodded.

“So,” she said. “You see? In a way, he’s trying to help you, too.”

My emotions were wild. I despised Abigail for protecting Fitch, but I also felt sorry for her. I knew that if I wanted to get any real information out of her, I would have to calm down. I would have to stop my brain from crackling with static, from thinking about Matt and how he was involved in this nightmare. I would have to find as much kindness toward Abigail as I could, and try to understand her.

That’s what Eloise would do, I told myself. My smart, clever, kind sister, subversively feisty, intractably fierce, patient only when she had to be, but when she was, no one could shake her. That’s why she was such a great birder—she could sit still behind the hedge and wait forever.

“Abigail,” I said in the gentlest voice I could manage. “Tell me, if it’s not too painful, about what you have.” Should I call it a disease, an illness, a condition? I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t want to offend her. “The thing Fitch is trying to cure.”

It seemed my tone of voice had worked, because I saw the tension go out of her jaw, saw her shoulders lower and her fists unclench.

“Do you really want to hear about it?” she asked.

“More than anything,” I said, and that wasn’t a lie.

“I’ve had this condition since I was born,” Abigail said. “But the symptoms didn’t start showing up until I was twelve.”

And then she described to me and Hayley what it had been like.

It started on the same day she got her first period. Her mother was always so preoccupied with her patients and lecture schedule, she hadn’t really told Abigail what to expect. Abigail knew in a general way, from her friends, that periods were no joke. But when she woke up that morning and found blood on her sheets, she was shocked. On top of that, her belly began to cramp, so bad she had to double over.

For a doctor, her mother could be oddly squeamish. It was as if she focused so hard on her patients, on their medical messiness, she wanted only health and order at home. So Abigail told her mother she was sick with a stomachache and she said Abigail didn’t have to go to school. Fitch seemed weirdly alert—he asked Abigail all kinds of questions. What kind of stomachache? Exactly where did it hurt? Did she feel sick, like she might vomit? Did she have a headache? All she knew was that she wanted to be alone. She was embarrassed and didn’t tell anyone the real reason she was staying home. They finally left, for work and school.

Abigail went into her mom’s bathroom and took a pad from a shelf in the closet. The whole ordeal made her feel exhausted. She went back to her room to change her bed. She pulled off the bottom sheet and put it in the washing machine. She threw in bleach and extra detergent. Then she went back to bed and immediately fell asleep.

“I remember there were thunderstorms,” Abigail said to us. “And even though I was asleep, I could hear the rain hitting the window, so hard I thought the glass might break. And the thunder sounded violent, as if it was attacking the house.” She closed her eyes. “It was the strangest feeling—like I was in a trance, more than asleep, waiting for something to happen. Something awful. The worst thing.”

The trance gave way to dreams. She had the sense of walking down a path between tall trees, into a tunnel made of interlocking branches overhead. It started out warm and beautiful—no more thunderstorm—with sunlight dappling through the leaves. It seemed familiar, and she knew it was the Braided Woods.

The weather changed. It was winter. The trees were bare, their branches coated with ice. The ground was deep with snow. The forest disappeared, and she was in the Arctic. Everything was white, and the glare blinded her. The world was frozen, including Abigail.

“I was a statue,” she told us. “Carved of ice. I couldn’t move. My eyes were wide open but I couldn’t blink. Animals surrounded me—polar bears, arctic foxes, and snowy owls. I wasn’t sure if they were protecting me or were going to eat me. But I knew something was going to happen.”

She got colder and colder. She couldn’t take a breath. Her eyes were wide open. She saw three columns in the distance. They approached her, getting closer and closer. She saw that they were the women in the panels at the Miramar, the hotel her family owned. They wore long white dresses. Two of them were dead, and that’s when Abigail knew she was one of them.

“One of them?” I asked.

“A gene carrier,” she said. “I knew I had the family disorder.”

Later that day, Abigail learned that Fitch hadn’t gone to school after all. He had left the house, pretended to head to Black Hall Middle School, then circled back and let himself into the house. He had sensed that this was about to happen. Even though Abigail was only twelve, and he was only thirteen, he had been studying the family disorder since he first learned about it, when he was nine and Abigail was eight. Their mother had warned Abigail, gently, to be on guard against strange sleep patterns. That if she found herself unable to breathe, she should wake her up.

Fitch had said: “If she can’t breathe, she’s dead.”

“Well,” their mother had said. “Death isn’t instantaneous, dear. There is a warning. And when Abigail feels it, she should call us. Besides, this won’t be a concern for many years.”

“Until when?” Fitch had asked.

“The condition won’t manifest until puberty, if at all,” their mother had replied. “So let’s not worry about it, shall we?”

That day, when Abigail got her first period and the condition manifested right on time, Fitch was prepared. He had been studying medical texts and family histories ever since their mother’s warning.

By then he knew more than anyone, even their mother.

While Abigail stood on the tundra in her dream, a frozen statue surrounded by the Sibylline sisters, Fitch was shaking her and calling her name.

Abigail heard his voice. She felt him throttling her. But she was still a statue, she was still made of ice, she was still dead. The Sibylline sisters were telling her to come with them, they would take her to the peaceful place. She wouldn’t have to suffer. She wouldn’t have to live a lifetime of the nightmare. They whispered their names to her: Athena, Daphne, and Circe.

“Don’t listen to them,” Fitch screamed. “Stay here, stay with me! Breathe!”

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