Whatever she needed, because I knew exactly what Leo had meant about Lisa needing people.
My sister and I had been born with this same curse: Someone to take care of, someone to take care of me, an inescapable desire for codependency. Another song lyric. I wasn’t happy with it, it needed work, but that was basically the gist of why I didn’t fuck around with my time or with people.
Lisa didn’t look up as I approached, so I said, “Hey,” not hiding my smile.
From now on, all my smiles belonged to her.
Her eyes flickered up, and then dropped just as fast to the bowl of what I now saw was cereal. She straightened her back, closing the magazine and clearing her throat while I studied the bowl. Note to self, she likes Lucky Charms.
“Abram,” she said, swallowing, tucking hair behind both her ears. “Good morning.”
Immediately, I heard the guarded, distant, and particular quality to her voice. But it was the particular that resonated like an out of tune piano. I ignored it, eager to remove that barren landscape between us.
“Good morning, Lisa.” I leaned my elbows on the island, making my tone ironically formal and bending at the waist to bring us eye level. “And how did you sleep last night?” I hoped this would make her blush. She was so very exquisite when she blushed.
She didn’t blush but she still wouldn’t look at me. “I, uh, didn’t sleep very well, honestly.” Lisa lifted her chin but not her eyes. “We should talk.”
I frowned at the persisting particular quality to her voice, my eyes moving over her. It was at least eighty-five degrees outside and she was dressed in a baggy black hoddie and yoga pants. On her feet she wore socks and she’d stuffed her hands into the pockets of her sweatshirt. She was also wearing a lot of makeup, darker than usual, like the day she’d come home last week.
“Are you okay?” I dipped my head to one side, hoping that would encourage her to meet my eyes, hoping she’d let me take care of her.
Someone to take care of, someone to take care of me.
I couldn’t shake those words. Spending time with Lisa, they resonated in a new way, one that was 3-D and in color, with softness and wonder and not just black ink written on a white notebook page.
She didn’t meet my eyes, instead speaking to my forearms. “You have been very nice to me. Thank you. This is a difficult time, and I’m going through a lot, so I’m sorry if I’ve been acting weird.”
As she spoke, I felt a chill. Something was . . . wrong. Her voice continued to hit the wrong note over and over.
Mystified, I said, “No need to apologize. You haven’t been acting weird until just now.”
Her eyes cut to mine and I started, flinching back and standing. What the hell? The chill became a sense of freezing dread I couldn’t explain. Something was most definitely wrong. I couldn’t identify the problem, but there was a problem.
“. . . Lisa?” I asked like a fool, but—seriously—what the hell? This wasn’t her. Her eyes were different. Not the shape or color or size, and yet unquestionably different. Lisa was there, but she also wasn’t, like she’d been possessed. Or she was absent. It was freaky as hell.
Her eyes widened for the briefest of seconds, and then her lips flattened, her gaze moving to the closed magazine. She picked it up. She stood from the stool, glaring at the wall behind me, looking irritated and therefore the closest to acting like herself since I’d walked in.
“Look.” Her voice was hard but also soft, quiet; I prepared myself for a whisper since she was visibly upset; an odd quirk I’d noticed about her, when she was upset, she always whispered. “Why are you doing this?”