The Echo Sisters
Lizzy was having a very bad day.
Her best friend Abbey had come back from summer break with some new friends. The new group were inseparable, and they ignored and avoided Lizzy all day. At every turn Lizzy tried to introduce herself to the new girls Abbey had met at camp, but they were not interested. And other than saying an unenthusiastic “Hey” back to her, Abbey wouldn’t even look at her, as if eye contact would hurt too much.
Lizzy’s dad could tell something was wrong. He tried to help cheer her up, but he just didn’t understand, even though he said he did. He said something about people changing and part of growing up. Even her favorite ice cream didn’t taste good.
She went to bed early that night trying to forget her day, and not think about tomorrow, but she just kept reliving it over and over, remembering horrible new details each time. She was getting swallowed up in the depression and could barely breathe. She leapt from her bed and opened her window to take a deep inhale of cool night air. It cleared her mind for a moment.
She remembered when she was little that she loved the idea of calling into the trees and faintly hearing her voice repeated back to her. It was magical to her when she was small, she could do it for hours until her dad worried the neighbors would complain. But the magic of the echo was soon explained away by science, and she knew it was just the sound of her voice bouncing off the rock hill that rose up behind the small creek in her backyard.
She used to think it was a game, and she would tightly cover her mouth with both hands immediately after yelling, thinking it would stop her voice from getting back into her mouth. She would wait for the echo to pass, then cautiously whisper something to see if she could still talk. She alway could.
Tonight she wanted to scream. To let it all out and blow down all the trees and knock a hole right through that hill. But she wouldn’t do that, it wasn’t her. And it would just make her dad come in and she didn’t want any more attention.
Instead she simply said hello, just because she wanted to hear someone say it back to her today, just loud enough to get a faint ghostly hello back.
This time of night was perfect. The trees looked like they were floating in black water. The lights from her house and her neighbors were the only real light in the backyard, it barely stretched to the tree line, or it was too scared to go any further. There was the sound of crickets and occasional owls, and the rustling of nocturnal traffic through the leaves, but the white noise from the highway was gone for now, leaving the closest thing to peace and quiet one can get living near civilization.
She yelled a quick “Hey!” reliving her afternoon one last time, but at least the echo sounded friendlier than Abbey’s lifeless response earlier.
The memory made her throat clench and her stomach hurt, she thought she might throw up, and before she even knew it, like a reflex, her stomach muscles tensed.
She closed her eyes.
Her mouth opened on its own.
Out of her stomach erupted:
“WHY?”
She even surprised herself, and listened carefully for her father’s footsteps, unable to hear a gentle voice from the woods reply, “Why what?”
The echo anomaly didn’t register.
She wiped a tear from her eye, and looked around to see if any dinner had escaped onto her bedroom floor.
She did not get sick, but she was now fully drained from her day, and would finally be able to sleep.
She decided today at school she would avoid putting herself in harm’s way. She would not look for confirmation that she had lost her friend. She kept to herself, and ate lunch with another girl she was kind of friends with named Isabell. Isabell had an accent, and corrected Lizzy whenever she said her name without it. She made Lizzy say her name “Eee-Sa-BELL” with a forced unnatural accent and they both kind of laughed at the way Lizzy said it. This would be okay for now, it was already better than yesterday.
She had successfully avoided any traumatic encounters for the whole day, and was proud of her efforts to not set herself up for disappointment.
Lizzy was standing in line to get on her bus when Abbey walked by with her new friends heading toward their bus. One of Abbey’s nameless friends that never introduced themselves walked over to her and stuck a tightly folded note out to her at arm’s length.
Lizzy met her stare, took the note and opened it.
In red pen it screamed at her: DO NOT TALK TO ME! WE ARE NOT FRIENDS! ABBEY!
Lizzy looked up, confused, and simply asked, “Why?”
Abbey just shrugged and walked away.
Lizzy could not believe she had made it through the entire day safely, only to have it ruined at the very end.
That was so mean! Why even bother? It was so not like Abbey, and she suspected that was not her handwriting, but why had she changed so much?
She ran into her house and stomped up the stairs to her room. She jumped onto the bed and roared into her pillow.
Through the door her dad asked, “Again?”
“Well, honey, you can make the pizza tonight.” They liked to make their own pizzas, it was usually her favorite dinner. Her dad would have a cheese pizza ready to bake and she could put on any toppings she wanted which her dad would lay out in cute little bowls.
He took a lot of pride in getting it all ready for her, so it made her even sadder to tell him she didn’t want any.
She laid there, staring at the ceiling fan, trying not to think about anything.
She did her homework, but she didn't remember what it was about.
She could smell the pizza her dad made. Lots of garlic.
She walked outside to her back patio in her pajamas, carrying a book she didn't plan on reading. It was a nice night, cool enough to scare off the bugs, but pleasant to feel on your skin.
The grass in the backyard never grew properly due to all the worms. Their tiny worm mounds were everywhere. Little towers that looked like they were made from bubbles of mud. Her dad was always complaining about them.
She sat curled up on a bench and blankly stared at a page of her book and read the same sentence three times. She looked out at the trees, as if they knew what she was thinking.
“What?” she accused the trees.
“What?” a voice not her own echoed back.
She wasn't too bothered by this, it was kind of funny to her at the moment. She had just misheard it.
She let out a long hello like she was talking to someone far away.
In return she received a short hello, in a pleasant, calm female voice, definitely not her own.
Lizzy stood up.
“Hello?”
“Hello, again”, the voice said, amused.
“Where are you?” asked Lizzy nervous, scanning the tree line for her stalker.
“I'm in my backyard, where are you?” the woman said, not too bothered by all of this.
“Well, I'm in my backyard, so one of us is in the wrong backyard,” Lizzy informed the darkness.
“Why can't I see you?” ordered Lizzy.
“Why can't I see you?” retorted the voice, mimicking Lizzy’s voice.
Lizzy stopped, was that an actual echo?
“Just kidding,” said the disembodied voice, “echo humor.”
“Are you making fun of me? You picked the wrong day!”
“No, I'm not trying to,” the voice sounded concerned as this conversation was taking a turn.
“Then come out!” demanded Lizzy.
“You come out,” the voice equally demanded.
This stalemate wasn't going anywhere. Lizzy was losing interest in this game and started to go inside.
“Okay, goodnight creepy person in my backyard, please leave now or I will call the police,” was Lizzy’s final threat.
“I’m not doing anything but standing in my backyard talking to a little girl stuck in a tree,” the voice did not sound worried.
“Then we can both tell the cops and see who they believe.” Lizzy turned to go back inside.
There was a silence. Maybe the woman finally gave up.
Just as Lizzy reached the door the voice threw out a final, “Okay, well, good luck getting out of there.”
“You too,” Lizzy was surprised she replied so quickly and naturally.
Lizzy closed the door, but then quickly stuck her head out again, “What's your name?” she yelled, unsure why she was even bothering.
“Beth,” said Beth.
Lizzy locked the door.
Lizzy was so distracted by her night she never even thought about her drama at school. She floated through the day focused on the ghost voice in her backyard. It was all hers and only hers. Cooler than anything that had ever happened to anyone at her school ever.
She didn't tell her dad, he had been watching TV and had no idea what had occurred.
She didn't feel like this “Beth” was a threat to her or her house, but definitely a mystery that deserved more attention.
When she got home from school she immediately ran to her backyard to scan the trees in the daylight and see where this person could have possibly been hiding.
Nothing, just the same lattice work of trees ending in the same rocky hill. The other side of the hill was a drop off that lead to another neighborhood down below, but way too steep for someone to climb up in the middle of the night just to scare a little girl.
She attempted to get Beth’s attention through hello’s and hey you’s, but nothing came back except the same old echo you were supposed to get. She even threw a rock into the trees just to see if it would disappear or come back or something else crazy. At this point, anything was possible.
Lizzy went back inside to help her dad cook dinner. Tonight was salad night. They could put anything they wanted on it, as long as it was healthy and “salad-y,” but they each got to choose an ingredient that other claimed they didn't like so they were forced to try new things. Her challenge ingredient tonight was mushrooms, and she chose green olives for her dad.
She wanted to tell her dad all about the backyard, but it all sounded so crazy, and she had no proof, and no idea if it would happen again. She needed to get more information tonight.
After helping clear the table and wash the dishes, Lizzy was walking out back to read (but really to solve the mystery of the talking trees), and her dad warned her to be careful walking in the back, all the nightcrawlers (another name for big juicy earthworms) in the moonlight were making the backyard super creepy. Oh dad, Lizzy laughed to herself, you have no idea.
As it started to get dark, Lizzy pulled her robe tighter and tried to get their new “neighbor’s” attention. It was the same time as the other night just as it got a little cooler and a little quieter.
“Beth!” was followed by nothing out of the ordinary.
“Hey Beth!” and in return she got a fleeting repeat of her own words.
“Here BethBethBeth,” taunting her like a farm animal. Still nothing.
“I knew you weren't real!”
“Well I feel real,” answered Beth in a smirking tone. “And I can't yell back at you if I don't know your name little girl.”
“It's Lizzy, and I'm not little, I'm eight!”
“Fair enough, eight year-old Lizzy. So here we are again, what now, Lizzy-Beth?”
“Why did you say that?”
“What?”
“Why did you call me that?”
Then it struck her. It all made sense. She knew who Beth was and why she was here.
“Beth!”
“Yes, are you okay?”
“Beth,” Lizzy took a deep breath, “are you my mom?”
“What? No, I... why would you say that?”
“Well, my mom died when I was really little, and I don't really even remember her, and I’ve also had this thought that if we somehow met now we wouldn't even know each other. So I thought maybe you were my mom talking to me from Heaven.”
Beth was stunned into silence at the weight of what her little friend just revealed. “Wow. Lizzy, I wish I could make all of that true. I’m sorry to hear that. I know what that’s like, my dad died when I was a little girl.”
“But I made it, just like you will. Do you know how I know?”
“How?” said a disappointed Lizzy.
“Because if I can do it, you can do it. There is a fable, or fairytale, about where the word “echo” comes from called The Echo Sisters. They were twin princesses, daughters of King Echo, forced to marry princes who lived on opposite sides of the kingdom. They were trapped in towers in their castles and would never get to see each other ever again. They discovered that if they spoke into their mirrors in just the right place, at just the right time, their voices found a way to bounce all the way to the other’s mirror, and since they were twins, their reflections made it seem like they were talking to each other through their mirrors, and they were able to help each other escape, and they encouraged each other every night by saying: If I can do it, you can do it.”
“And that’s what I think we are. I called you Lizzy-Beth because my mom calls me Lizzy-Beth. I think we are the same, Lizzy. We are both Elizabeth Patchett. Just different. I can’t explain it, but I think I am an older you, but here our dad died instead of our mom. I still visit my mom at our old house, and there is still nothing I enjoy more than sitting in the backyard to read for a while, just like you.”
“But why is this happening, why can I talk to you?”
“No idea. Meant to be, I guess. Maybe we needed each other. I’m trying not to think about it too hard, I’m not sure we’re supposed to know. And I know your mom, our mom, isn’t there, but I have known our mother for 36 years, and her favorite advice about being a good person is to be the person your younger self needed. So I guess I get to do that, literally.”
“I can’t be your mom, thinking about that makes my head hurt too much, but I could be like an older sister, and if you need anything, I’ll be here, wherever here is.”
“Wow, we’ll be the weirdest extended family ever,” Lizzy said
“Ever!” Beth agreed emphatically.
They both laughed.
“Okay… Me,” joked Beth, I have to go back, but we'll talk soon okay?”
“Okay, bye... Me.”
Just then her dad came out the back door.
Lizzy ran to him.
“Dad! Dad! You will not believe this! There is a voice that comes out of the trees, and at first I thought it was my echo, but then it turned out to be some random lady, but she was nice, and then I thought it might be Mom from Heaven, but then she said no, turns out that she is me when I get older, but not really me, a different me, and you’re dead instead of Mom, and now we're friends, or sisters, or something, and we’re going to talk to each other through our magic backyard!”
Her dad’s face did not change as he took a moment to process all of the fantastic details of his daughter's over-the-top story.
“If there’s one thing I’ve always hated about this backyard it’s all the wormholes.”
THE END
