Postcards for a Songbird

by Crane, Rebekah

  “The truth,” she says. “It might break it a little more at first, but a clean break eventually heals completely.”

  “And you know this from experience?”

  “No one avoids heartbreak.” She gives me a knowing look.

  “Do you miss Lizzie, too?”

  Olga smiles genuinely. “You know me—I like drama. This house has been too quiet lately. I want the noise back.”

  With that, she leaves.

  Later that night I stand in Lizzie’s doorway, staring at the walls, and all I see are the places I messed up painting the forest. The inaccuracy of the butterflies. The drips of dried paint along the floorboards.

  This forest is no replacement for a real one. One that smells of grass and dirt. One where late-night mist settles near the ground, making everything cool and damp. One where leaves rattle in the breeze in the summer and change colors in the fall and die in the winter, only to bud again in spring.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket.

  Luca: Look outside ur window

  I head back to my room, look out the window, and see him standing in the driveway. A rush of pure happiness, edged sharply with guilt, washes over me. I’m ashamed I’ve avoided him. And yet here Luca stands.

  Luca: Hey

  Me: Hey

  Luca: You haven’t texted me back

  Me: I know

  Luca: Is it because I smell bad?

  Me: Nah

  Luca: Am I a bad kisser?

  Me: No

  Luca: I know

  Luca: It’s the nose ring

  Me: I love ur nose ring

  Luca: Then what?

  What if I’m imagining all of this? Convincing myself that Luca needs me? What if Chief is right, that lust has made me blind? And I don’t know how the story ends. That scares me. I feel completely uncovered with Luca, vulnerable. Only a crazy person would expose herself to that. But maybe that’s the point. That’s what I want to type, but I can’t find the courage to. Luca texts again.

  Luca: Mkay I’ll go

  He starts to leave.

  “Don’t go!”

  The truth is, I’ve missed him every second of every day since the last time I saw him. And that feels worse than vulnerability.

  Luca smiles and presses his finger to his lips. He holds up his phone and texts again.

  Luca: Does that mean I’m allowed inside??

  I tiptoe downstairs as quickly as possible. Luca comes in the back door while Olga sleeps in the living room, snoring on the couch, though I wonder if she’s faking it. Has Olga been awake this entire time, secretly standing watch when I thought she didn’t care?

  If she is awake, she doesn’t stop me from taking Luca upstairs.

  “How’s your head?” he asks once we’re inside my room and the door is closed. He moves to touch me, but I back away. A surge of visible pain flares in Luca’s eyes. “What’s going on, Wren? Did I do something wrong?”

  “No,” I say quickly.

  “Then what is it?”

  Wilder’s window seems to scream at me. The light is off, but his words of caution echo loudly in my head. And yet . . . the doctor told me how fickle the mind is. It can’t always be trusted. But some days it’s hard to fight against it.

  I close my eyes and feel the beat of my heart.

  “I think I’m in love with you.”

  Luca’s exhale is audible. “I can see why this might be a problem.”

  “You can?” I open my eyes.

  “Yes.” He is smiling. “But you don’t have to worry. It’s not a problem for us.”

  He takes my face in his hands, the nearness of him like a heat wave I was desperately longing for. “Because I am in love with you, too, Wren Plumley.”

  “You are?”

  “I am.” He says it as if he’s uttering a fact. The sky is blue. The grass is green. One plus one equals two. Luca loves me. I know it’s true.

  “Will you stop avoiding me now?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I run from everything, remember? But I’m not doing that anymore. And I’m not going to do that to you. Do you believe me?”

  And I know in my heart, I do. “Yes.”

  Everything feels better with him here—my head, my heart. My white walls seem to brighten and melt, as if I could run my hand along the paint and feel warm water. It feels humid and warm in my bedroom for the first time ever.

  Luca sits down on the bed. I do the same, inviting the electricity of nearness to wrap around us. More heat. More melting. Puddles begin to form on my wooden floors.

  “So . . . I’ve never been in a girl’s room before. It’s very . . . white in here. Not that I know anything about it. The only rule at my house was ‘Don’t break down any door or knock over any walls.’ And you know how good I am at following the rules. My bedroom hasn’t had a door in five years.” Luca scans the room again. “I’m a little afraid to touch anything.”

  I scoot closer to him. “Don’t be.”

  And he smiles. “Is that an invitation to get this room a little dirty?”

  That’s what my room needs. Dirt so something can grow. A place to plant a life. A real life. With trees that don’t just climb the walls and stop where I choose but that reach their branches out the window, beyond our house, grabbing for more.

  I’m done questioning and worrying. Nothing can grow out of anxiety except more anxiety.

  “Don’t move,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”

  I peel myself from him and go down to the basement, where I put all my paint supplies the day after Lizzie left. Easels and brushes and container after container of paint are stacked at the bottom of the stairs, untouched for months. I couldn’t even look at them.

  Luca hasn’t moved. When he sees my load, he helps, setting all the paint and supplies on the floor.

  “What should we do now?” Luca asks.

  I open a tube of tangerine paint—a color I used to make Lizzie’s butterflies—and squeeze some onto the tip of my finger, letting it run down my skin like hot wax before falling to the floor. Luca and I both watch the orange settle on the wood. The first speck of color in a white room. But it’s not enough.

  “We paint,” I say.

  My tangerine-covered finger smooths the surface of Luca’s warm cheek, leaving a streak of color on his flesh. A devious grin pulls at his face, and I think, This paint brings life.

  “This could get dangerous,” he says.

  I put a streak of lapis, the color of the twilight sky in Lizzie’s frozen forest, on his other cheek.

  “It’s about time,” I say.

  It starts with a simple line of green. Luca’s hand leaves a gentle stroke across a white wall that travels toward the floor, leaving a drip on the floorboard. Sometimes that’s all it takes—one person to walk into the nothing and leave his mark. A mark of love. And my room grows from there.

  Silently color exhales all around us. Not just on the walls, but on the floor and my bed. No place is off limits. No pattern to follow. Just unabashed being. Now.

  Luca and I work slowly at first, quietly, so no one can hear. But once more color coats the walls, it becomes addicting, insatiable. As the world sleeps, we come alive in my tiny room. And I can’t stop.

  I swirl and spin, letting my brush find the walls and the floor and the air, with no care as to where it all lands. Paint dangles from my hair, my fingers, my nose. I shake everything off, not caring where it goes, wishing I could scream, and yet unwilling to threaten the moment. I don’t want it to end. Luca watches me as I shatter and color spreads all over my white room.

  And then it’s his turn.

  All the heartache. Of losing his grandma slowly, teasingly, inch by bloody inch. Of fear. Of running away when life gets hard. Of skipping the hard parts and only coasting through life. It all pours out of him.

  In a life where control seems fruitless—where people’s memories turn on them and leave, where love can be cast into darkness at the mind’s re
quest—to paint a blank canvas is to rage against the loss of it all.

  Luca is wild, and it’s beautiful. Tangible. I could touch him right now, and it would be as if his soul was in my hands.

  When the walls drip with paint, the white barely visible, I turn my gaze toward my ceiling. I swear I feel cool water dripping on my cheek, the last of the avalanche’s snow starting to melt.

  I climb onto my bed, paintbrush in hand, and jump, swiping a slash of cadmium yellow across the ceiling. My brush is a knife, and the ceiling bursts open, air flooding in, the night stars coming to watch the color show.

  Luca jumps on the bed, too. With each slash of color, more of the ceiling withers away until not a drop of water can be felt, only open sky. It’s like breathing for the first time after crawling and digging out of the avalanche.

  The excitement has me so distracted, it takes a while to realize my head is pounding. My body is exhausted.

  I crouch down on my bed, the pain becoming too much.

  Luca stops immediately. “Are you OK?”

  “No strenuous activity,” I say, heaving. “I forgot.”

  “Lie down.” Luca edges me back on my bed, splattered paint everywhere, and brings a pillow behind my head. “Just close your eyes for a second.”

  My room hums. Luca’s fingers run over my forehead and into my hair, gently stroking my scalp.

  “Does this feel OK?” he asks.

  The pain eases. He’s pure magic. I nod slowly. Luca settles next to me.

  “Luca,” I whisper. I look into his warm brown eyes. Eyes the color of earth. “I want to exist with you, before it’s too late.”

  And so I kiss him. There is no more waiting. He’s next to me now, and tomorrow he might not be. Because happiness doesn’t last, and memories fade, and seasons change, and a forest that never dies isn’t ever truly alive to begin with.

  I kiss him until the walls melt around us, until heat fills the cold room, until a bird that lived so long in painted trees flies away.

  I roll on top of Luca, needing to feel him completely underneath me.

  “Wren,” he whispers, our mouths still touching. “Your head.”

  “It’s fine,” I say. “Better than fine.”

  Luca tucks my hair behind my ears. “Are you sure? I don’t want to hurt you.”

  I answer with a kiss that dissolves into more, into not only my lips doing the exploration, but my hands and my hips. If Luca needs me to convince him, I will. With everything that I am, I’ll give us a memory to hold on to.

  This is real. This is what I want. I’m not afraid anymore. I’m strong.

  Soon our clothes are scattered all over the floor, covered in paint, but Luca and I are focused on covering each other now. His lips travel to my neck, my ears, my collarbone. My bare chest breathes with his. Skin to skin. Life to life.

  And as Luca and I create something new together, trees begin to sprout in my room, flowers burst from the floorboards, petals unfurl into brilliant colors, butterflies float through the air. Grass softens the surface beneath us. The sun warms everything from skin to sky. And the forest grows and grows and grows, with more light, more color, more warmth than I’ve ever experienced before. Vines tangle around us, holding us close, pressing every inch of us into one. Lips, hips, limbs. Everything is moving. Everything is breathing. Everything is alive.

  And for the first time in my life, I hear a bird come through my open window, soaring, floating, flying, singing a sweet, friendly song that catches on the wind. I can hear it, if only in my heart. And I know I’m finally home.

  Woman with a Parasol—Madame Monet and Her Son, 1875

  Dear Songbird,

  I know you’ve told me before that Monet is a genius, but now I get it. Sometimes, we’re too close to a situation to really see it. Up close, all we notice are individual brushstrokes. But once we back up, the entire painting becomes clear. We can see how the artist methodically placed each stroke of color to build a story.

  It’s time to take a step back and look at the picture.

  I love you,

  Lizzie

  Wren Plumley

  20080 21st Ave.

  Spokane, WA 99203

  34

  THE DIRTY PAST

  A whisper is worse than shouting. Words softly spoken hang in the air, unlike words screamed, their impact felt but fleeting.

  Lizzie left on a whisper. Hushed words barely audible, lost in the night. Surface pain wants to be loud. It throbs. It screams. Like a child who wants attention. Like a small paper cut that hurts worse initially than a broken heart.

  But old pain, deep pain, pain that settles into your bones, goes silent—it hides, just like the past.

  Lizzie was hiding something when she left. I know it now, deep down inside my core. She stole out of the house on the wind, quiet, because she didn’t want to disturb me. She wanted to carry the secret away safely. But commotion followed, and it soon became chaos—my life was tossed into the air and left to land on its own in a new form.

  Lizzie knew she would get me to do a handstand somehow. I just didn’t expect it like this.

  Chief doesn’t yell when he sees my room. The whisper is worse.

  “What the hell happened?”

  “I’m concussed,” I say. That doesn’t work on Chief. “You said I should start painting again, so I did.”

  “I meant a canvas. Not your room. You’ve destroyed it.”

  “I think it looks good.” Chief won’t see the masterpiece, because I didn’t make it for him. I painted for me. “Why did we move from Boise?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Why did we leave?”

  “I got a job in Spokane. Don’t change the subject.”

  “You had a job in Boise.”

  “The police department in Spokane was a better fit for a single father.” Chief keeps his eyes trained on the splattered walls. “I don’t know how I’m going to fix this.”

  “It doesn’t need to be fixed.”

  “You can’t live in a room like this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a complete mess.”

  “My life is a mess, and I live in it. What’s so wrong with that?”

  Chief doesn’t appreciate that. “We need to fix this. Put it back into working order.”

  “Stop saving me.” That gives him pause. “I’m not the victim here. I did this myself.”

  Chief is serious when he says, “If you’re not the victim, that means you’re the criminal.”

  “Cuff me.” I hold out both of my arms. I know what it feels like to be bound and unmoving. Handcuffs are just a physical representation of my life before this summer. I don’t need hands to kiss Luca anyway.

  Chief huffs, exhausted. He needs his beers, and sleep, and to watch someone else solve a Wheel of Fortune puzzle. My mess has screwed up his predictable morning, but I won’t apologize.

  “Do you miss Boise?”

  Chief groans. “Stop with the questions about Boise.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s in the past.”

  “And yet it affects the present. Maybe if you talked about it. Let the truth out—”

  “Stop!” Chief yells, clearly overwhelmed. The whisper follows the shout. “I don’t want to talk about it.” He murmurs so softly, I think maybe I’ve imagined it. “If you want to be treated like a criminal, so be it. You’re grounded. Again. This time no phone. No computer. No leaving the property. For a week. Jails don’t always come with bars, Wren.”

  He takes my phone and laptop and leaves. But the past remains.

  The mess that Chief sees is a masterpiece to me. It’s the first real thing I’ve ever painted for no one but myself. And now I’m itching to paint more.

  Luca’s impression is still on my bed and ingrained in the floor, but he’s gone. He left in the early hours of the morning, when the sun was just starting to show. We watched from the floor as the first rays hit the colors splashed on my walls. />
  “It’s brilliant,” Luca said.

  But my mind was burning with a question. “When you look at me, what do you see?”

  “Hotness.” I shoved him playfully. “What? That’s my answer. You’re hot.”

  He saw my strength before I did. Maybe Luca could see my aura, too. Sometimes we’re too in our heads to know what’s true. Maybe all these years, I couldn’t see an aura because I didn’t want to. It was easier to believe something was wrong with me than to just be me.

  “I mean it,” I said. “Do you see anything?”

  “Hold still,” he said. So I did. I lay on the floor as Luca hovered over me, his hands skimming my entire body just centimeters above the skin, so I could feel his heat but not his touch. Shivers ran down my arms and legs. I’d never felt anything like it. For all the kissing and touching, the anticipation was more intense.

  Luca let his mouth dangle over mine tauntingly. “I do notice something.”

  “What?”

  It felt like we hung, suspended in the air.

  “Love,” he said. “I can feel it.”

  “I can feel it, too.”

  And then he kissed me like I held the energy he needed to get going. Then he tiptoed out of my house, leaving me breathless and happy. His aura matched the rays of sunshine in the sky as he swam through the air on his skateboard.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. My reflection was barely visible through all the paint. My black hair hung tangled and knotted, and color was streaked all over my skin and clothes, but I looked closer. And I saw it.

  Like a sheen on my skin, like a layer of sweat or the heat from a sunburn, a dim aura glowed shamrock green, fresh and alive.

  Luca was right. The first signs of love had grown on me through the night.

  Now even Chief’s whisper can’t ruin how I feel. He can tell me to clean up. He can paint my walls himself. He can throw out my stained sheets and ruined clothes, but I’ll know what was there—what grew in my room the night Luca and I painted my walls and found meaning in ourselves.

  You can lock a criminal up for life, but there are some things no one can steal.

  I touch my swollen lips and still feel Luca’s mouth on mine. Lying back on my bed, I stare at the ceiling. It’s perfect.