The fridge light brightened the kitchen as she opened the door and reached for a covered plate on the top shelf. Greta peeled back the plastic wrap, knowing she couldn’t risk the beep of the microwave. Even cold, the lasagna still smelled delicious. After drinking two glasses of water, she grabbed a fork on the way to the living room and then settled in one of the armchairs facing the window. So easy to watch winter this way—observing the pristine white through a pane of glass. She could wade out into it, she thought—it wouldn’t even feel cold.
“Feeling better?”
Greta fumbled the plate, nearly dropping it into her lap. Elgin, reclined in the other chair, smiled through the glow of streetlights.
“Yes, I had a…long nap.” She cleared her throat and took a bite. “Thanks for this.” Then her heartbeat picked up and the lasagna stuck in her throat. They were alone—Elgin just a few feet from her, wearing only a bathrobe.
She put the plate on the end table between them, keeping the fork hidden in her hand. Get out of here, her body told her. He’s fine. He’s harmless, her mind answered.
Elgin nodded, looking satisfied. He turned back to his snow observation.
She clutched the fork. If he moved at all in her direction, she’d stick it in his knee. She’d scream for Ash. Only her body was frozen. You’re not staying here for free. The thought overpowered all the others. He’ll want something from you. For a few minutes, they sat in silence, both completely still—inanimate objects. Elgin didn’t even look her way. Greta thought of Ash sleeping close by and started breathing again, her heartbeat slowing closer to normal.
She moved to the edge of her seat but didn’t run. “What… what are you doing out here?” Greta couldn’t think of another way to say it.
“I’m waiting for spring.”
How very Elgin, sitting in an armchair, literally waiting for spring. “You have a few months,” she said.
“It doesn’t look like it”—he cocked his head—“but every day we rotate a little closer to the sun. It’s coming.”
He was right about it not looking like spring. More like the inside of a diamond mine. An unholy blackness. It had always been February. That a garden once grew there, that they swatted mosquitoes, sunburned red rings around their necks—all an elaborate dream. An implanted memory. It would always be February.
When Greta didn’t respond, he added, “Eleanor and I liked to put in the garden early. I could never talk her into waiting until after the May long weekend.”
Maybe Elgin did feel it, a gradual shift every day. It comforted her.
Then he said, “Since Eleanor left us, I don’t sleep well at night.”
Left us. She’ll be right back. Greta nodded. “Did Alice tell you we lost our mom to breast cancer too?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.” His voice barely made it past the fern leaves on the end table between them.
They sat without speaking for several minutes, watching a few chiseled flakes pass through the circle of porch light.
“For me,” Greta said, “it’s not so much the sleeping as the waking.” Her heart and breath had slowed to normal now, her brain processing thoughts again. Elgin hadn’t even turned in her direction.
“Yes, the waking.” He knew. “For one blessed moment,” he said, “you’re a blank slate. Then your mind looks around, bends over and picks up that bag of misery to carry around another day.”
Bag of misery. That daily three-second shift from peace to distress.
“And willing the mind not to only makes it happen faster,” he added. “It runs, in that case.”
She gave a soft laugh. “Yes.” The luggage they never lost.
“Though,” he mused, “sometimes I wonder.”
“What do you wonder?”
“I wonder…if this is the dream, and that’s reality. Perhaps we’re dreaming now.”
“Why do you say that?”
Elgin turned back to the window, studying the stark black and white of night. “This can’t be it. I won’t accept it. I refuse it, in fact.” Grief hardened his gentle voice. “Impossible that this is the real world.”
Greta wanted to say something comforting, like this was the real world but beauty still existed, or remind him to think of what he still had—Alice, his health and whatnot. It’s what she’d been trained to do, to fill absurd, painful spaces with polite phrases. But his words sunk into her skin and fit so well. Elgin was right. This had to be the dream. Unacceptable as reality. Totally unacceptable.
She rejected it too.
Ash stood over her, nudging her with his foot. “Are you still sick?” Black morning and streetlights showed through the crack in the curtain.
Blank slate. For one second, just her and Ash, like every morning for seventeen years. Then her mind bent over and picked up the bag of misery. It spilled over into her arms, slid down her legs, suffocated her with its weight. Mom. Roger. Patty. Gone. Money. Jobs. Alice. Cancer. Elgin. Dylan. Rachel. Cabin. Water fountain. She lay flat on her back and felt it press her body into the sagging air mattress, struggling for air.
“I’m not going to school anymore, Ash.” No point in this pretense.
He twitched like he’d been shocked. “What are you talking about? We graduate in four months.”
“I’m done.” Every word she spoke carried weight off her body. To give in to those words, concede, walk away—that allowed her to breathe. She actually felt happy. No, elated.
“Why are you saying this?” Ash’s voice tightened.
“I’ll get a job. You go to school. I’ll finish at some point, maybe in the fall.” Dylan, Rachel and Matt would’ve graduated and moved on by then. It was a small price—practically nothing.
Ash looked down on her, his eyes just sockets in the dark room. “I’m not leaving here without you.”
Her gut clenched. Could she make that decision for him too? Was he bluffing? “Okay. That’s your call.”
He stood beside her for another minute before walking out and slamming the door behind him, probably waking Elgin. After the vibration settled, she padded to the kitchen. Sunrise glowed over Elgin’s garden boxes in the backyard, rounded in snow. She made two pieces of toast, a fried egg and a cup of tea, then pulled over a kitchen chair to face the window above the sink. The mug warmed her hands as she watched the orange and pink burn away the deep blue of night. She missed this every morning—rushing for the bus, dodging through windowless hallways.
Elgin got up around noon and found her on the couch, playing a game on her phone. After their conversation the night before, it felt okay to be there. She still watched him walk by, though, not too close to her.
“Still not feeling well?” he asked, rubbing his porcupine hair. Today’s shorts were white with sporty gray stripes down the sides, still ballooning around his plucked-chicken legs. His undershirt hung in a misshapen U around his neck.
“A little better today,” Greta said. She would watch for the right time to explain her plan.
Elgin shuffled to the kitchen and turned on the coffee maker. “I got a check in the mail from your dad yesterday, by the way.”
“You what?” She bolted upright.
“He mailed me a check. No note or letter with it, but it’s enough to cover rent with a little left over. After Alice cashes it, I’ll ask her to bring the extra back for you two, for incidentals and such.”
Greta meant to answer him, to say thank you, but her mind started scanning all possible meanings and outcomes before she could speak. Roger hadn’t sent the check to her and Ash directly—probably because neither one had a bank account—but he must’ve guessed they were still living there. He was thinking about them? In Whitecourt, he’d tried to tell them he’d send money. But what about Patty? Either she’d softened her “silver platter” stance or he’d done it secretly, which explained the rushed check in the mail and lack of a note. What did it mean?
Ash tried to walk into their bedroom after school, but the door whacked against the dresser Greta had pu
shed in front of it, although Elgin hadn’t even spoken to her all afternoon. After she slid it aside to let Ash in, he gave her a look and asked, “Is there something I should know about Elgin, Greta?”
She shook her head, flopping back on the air mattress. “Just being…careful.” Paranoid. When he didn’t look away, she added, “I feel safer when you’re around. By myself…” She didn’t finish the sentence. Her logical brain wasn’t scared of Elgin at all—an aging philosopher dressed as an eighties track star—but sometimes the other part took over.
Ash closed the door and leaned back against it. “I dropped all my classes,” he said.
Greta sat up, her hand sinking into the mattress and tilting the book shut. “You did what?”
“I dropped my classes and joined yours. I’ll go with you. Every day.”
“But you already took French. Those credits won’t count.”
“Yeah, the guidance counselor seemed pretty annoyed. I told him I didn’t get a high enough mark the first time…and I want to be a French teacher.”
Greta barked a laugh. Ash, a teacher? He mostly avoided kids. Humans in general. And schools. And speaking.
“What about art?”
He shrugged. “I’ll take it another time—maybe when I’m unemployed and going through an existential crisis in my twenties.”
Greta lay on her back and filled her lungs. “Ash, you didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I did,” he snapped. “I told you I’m not leaving you behind. It’s just you and me…and kind of him”—he motioned to the kitchen and then across the street—“and him.” Interesting. So Elgin and Nate stood on the periphery of their dysfunctional circle too.
“Will you have enough credits to graduate?”
“Barely.”
“You idiot.” She craned her neck forward to see him better, grinning.
“You’re welcome.”
“Thank you.” Then she scrambled to face him, almost forgetting. “Ash, Dad sent a check to Elgin yesterday.”
“He did?”
She watched his face, his mind probably running in the same directions as hers. “What do you make of it? It covers rent and a little bit extra for us.”
He stared past her, his eyes unfocused. “Not sure. It takes some pressure off anyway. Maybe now Alice will stop coming around for her pound of flesh.”
At that moment Elgin knocked and poked his head inside. “I nearly forgot to ask you,” he said. “Now that your dad is sending money, I won’t have to rent out the basement. Did you”—he stammered over the words—“want to move back down there? It’s still going to be chilly for another month or two.”
Ash and Greta looked at each other for a second. “Nah,” Ash said.
Greta paused. They could be back in their own space again—no dresser shoved against the door or old man legs. Still, when her body was calm, she felt, in some inexplicable way, safe with Elgin. His slow shuffling around his plants, or puttering in the kitchen, dreaming of an alternate universe where his wife was still alive. And just to have someone to care if they’d eaten supper or were warm enough at night. She looked from Ash to Elgin. “I think we’re good here, if it’s okay with you.”
“All settled then.” Elgin nodded and closed the door behind him.
The next morning rocks tumbled in her belly, but they didn’t crush her. Ash hovered like she might fall over.
In social studies, Greta sat right in front of Angus, the force of Ash at her side erasing Angus completely. She silently dared him to say something. She didn’t even have to look at Ash—she felt him. Solid. Like that night, abandoned at the cabin.
She’d shuffled backward, looking in the direction Rachel had gone, afraid to miss their return, stumbling over the uneven ground. The mobile home of garden gnomes and pink flamingos the only light in the entire world. Maybe someone there. Greta had swiveled around, streaking for the shack, nighttime snapping at her heels. Everything not touched by that single porch light conspired against her.
She’d hammered on the door. Another human—that’s what she needed. Another living being in the dark. Greta cringed at the racket of her knocking, a beacon for everything hiding in the shadows. She pounded again, checking over her shoulder, then slumped against it. Nothing. Entirely alone.
Greta tried to sort out her mind, her beating heart scattering every piece of clarity. Roger thought she was at Rachel’s house. Who would find her out here? She’d smash a cabin window. She’d make a bonfire. She’d walk to the highway at first light. And the cold? Even after Roger’s nagging, she’d only worn a stupid leather jacket instead of a real winter coat. And what about food? Water?
Greta’s fingers brushed the hard corner of her phone in her jacket pocket, her relief a flare of light. People lived out here for months at a time—there had to be cell service. She pulled it out. One weak bar. She exhaled, dizzy.
Who to call? Her first stupid thought was Rachel. She closed her eyes. Roger would come for her. But then so many questions. He’d make her live at home until she was thirty. Only one person for this job. He’d be the one closest to the phone anyway, probably watching TV.
Greta made the phone call and then waited nearly an hour, huddled on the steps of the cabin with all the lawn junk. If she stepped out of the light, wild animals, shadows, the boogeyman would snatch her. At one point she heard footsteps and turned round and round in a frantic circle, the phone light bobbing. But then nothing. Bushes rustled. The wind? Fear wrapped everything in a cold ball inside of her.
Ash pulled up, hunched over the wheel of Patty’s rusty Honda Civic. She waved her arms, limping down the road to meet him. He parked and jumped out, the engine still running.
“Greta!”
She held herself back from hugging him, clinging. Even her sore ankle was numb now. Exhaustion nearly knocked her over—holding everything in so tight. She fell into the passenger seat and breathed in the warm air, the cloying peach air freshener, her eyes closed.
“Greta, what the hell is going on? What is this place?”
She ignored his eyes on her. “Just drive. I’ll explain.”
Ash watched her for a second before sighing, turning the car around and heading back the way he’d come.
“Patty will lose her freaking mind, you know,” Ash said, “if she finds out I’ve taken her car. You’re lucky they had a few drinks at bingo and wouldn’t wake up for an earthquake.”
Greta nodded, her eyes still closed.
“And I don’t even have my full driver’s license yet. Did you think of that? I’m taking the bus for the rest of my life if I get pulled over.”
“Thank you, Ash.”
Where the dirt road met the highway, he put the car into Park. “I’m not moving until you explain”—he motioned to the cabins, trees, lake—“this.”
“I came out here with Rachel and some other people.”
“And? Where are they?”
“Rachel thought I got a ride with someone else, and someone else thought I got a ride with Rachel.” She kept her eyes shut tight. It felt unnatural, lying to Ash.
“They left you?” he shouted.
“Not on purpose.”
“I don’t care ‘on purpose’ or not! They left you!”
“Please, Ash. Just let it go. Promise me you won’t say anything to Rachel.”
“I will not promise that! What happened here is not okay!”
What happened here is not okay. Little did he know. Greta rolled her head to face the window.
When she didn’t respond, Ash added, “Tell me you’re not going to hang out with them on Monday like nothing happened.”
“No, Ash.” She talked so low, she wasn’t sure he heard. “It’s over.” Over. Over. Over. Over. How could it be anything but over?
She held on tight all the way home, cracks spidering through whatever was holding her together. Through the door and into the unlit basement, Ash replacing Patty’s keys and tiptoeing behind her. Held tight as she said goodnight a
nd thank you. In her room, in bed, she sobbed. Her pillow pressed against her mouth.
She had followed Rachel, Dylan—all of them—taking whatever crumbs they threw her way, believing they would lead somewhere wonderful. Somewhere outside that basement suite and who she was there. Then she’d realized there was no trail, nothing offered. She had never moved at all.
TWELVE
Greta tried to shake the memory away, smiling at Ash as he thumbed through the social studies textbook. They didn’t speak as they moved to their French class. Half an hour into the lesson, the principal made an announcement over the PA system, calling all classes to the gym for a school-wide pep rally. The senior boys’ basketball team was headed to regionals the next day. “Bring your school spirit!” he crooned.
Ash arched an eyebrow at Greta and visually dismantled the PA speaker. “Let’s stand near the door,” he whispered. “Five minutes in, we both have to go to the bathroom—for a long time.”
Greta followed at his shoulder to the gym, ushered by Madame Dubois and her hawk eyes. Through the double doors, some of the class broke off to fill the small spaces in the bleachers. Other students sat along the sides of the court or leaned against the wall. Ash staked out the exit, the gym teacher standing sentry. Greta felt Ash’s arm twitch against hers. A pep rally of any kind would be water torture for Ash, each waving banner one drip closer to insanity. And this one would stink of Rachel and her cronies.
Ash and Greta leaned against the wall by the gym office, not far from the exit. Greta focused on the feet lining the base of the bleachers, shoes of every shape and color. The last time she’d sat in the gym and watched Dylan and Matt play, everything had been different. Now her eyes swept the bleachers, checking for Rachel twirling her black hair. There, in the top row, on the opposite side of the gym, Rachel sat with Sam, Priya, Chloe and some new faces. If things had been different—if Greta had been different—Greta would be there too.
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