something off in the distance, as if she doesn’t even hear the coiling and uncoiling sound of scissors cutting hair. She holds her chin up, aloof and certain.
Sixteen.
Th
e girl in the mirror is and isn’t Donna. She isn’t the shy Donna, the timid Donna, the afraid-of-everything Donna.
Th
e girl in the mirror is a brave new Donna, a Donna people will have to pay attention to, a Donna who expects attention.
Th
e words she whispers inside have the force of volcanoes.
River. Rushing. Kiss. I’m re-creating myself with words, she thinks. Words inside.
Rose holds up a copy of Life magazine, that old one with the picture of Jackie Kennedy on the cover. She holds it up alongside the mirror, squinting at it hard, like she’s trying to 186
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U N C H A I N E D M E L O D Y / D o n n a make a positive identifi cation, trying to identify that brand-new girl.
“You look just like her, Donna,” Rose says, slapping the magazine down with decision.
Donna looks at Jackie Kennedy and tosses her hair. She feels as sassy as a gull, so free she could spread her arms out and drift upward without any eff ort at all. She imagines herself looking down at that old magazine, which lies fl at on the fl oor, buried beneath a heap of long black hair. Her hair.
“What are you going to wear to the dance, Donna?”
Chickie asks.
Donna imagines herself naked, not needing clothes, warming herself like a mink in the spring sun.
“I don’t really have anything,” she says.
In fact, it doesn’t matter one bit what the new Donna wears, not one bit.
“You can borrow my pink sweater,” Rose says.
“Perfect,” Evelyn says, stepping back to eye the image in the mirror like an artist trying to get perspective. Donna smiles.
Th
e new girl, the one in the mirror, smiles back. She is ready.
In the cafeteria, Donna sits a little bit aside from the others, listening to the clackety-clack of dinner trays and the tinkling of silverware and the way it mingles with the soprano of girl voices, chattering about the dance. She’s wearing the soft pink sweater that belongs to Rose and her own tight black skirt, 187
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y
and she sits there on that hard cafeteria bench in that skirt and that sweater, feeling the curve of her spine as though it were the stem of some new kind of fl ower. She feels distant, not totally there, not totally anywhere.
Amiq’s voice rises above the rest of the noises like a birdcall, sharp and distinct. Never mind what he’s saying; the words don’t matter. Donna is high up on a cliff somewhere, looking down into a billowing green valley, moving to the sound of Amiq’s voice like a birch tree in the wind.
Waiting . . .
She has her eyes closed now. Th
e gym is festooned with soft,
dreamlike colors, and the music, which had been bright rock-and-roll a moment before, has transformed to match the colors—Donna can feel the change in the music with her whole body, like a change in the weather.
Warm s pring rain.
It’s “Unchained Melody,” and the words wash over her, touching something deep inside, something fl uttering and birdlike. Something so exquisite she hardly dares breathe for fear of dislodging it, of forcing it to fl y.
Lonely rivers fl ow to the sea, to the sea. To the open arms of the sea . . .
Dancing with Amiq, Donna feels like she’s fi nally come home. Like there’s nothing else in the whole world except Amiq’s body next to hers, Amiq’s arm around her waist.
How did it come to be like this? She doesn’t know, doesn’t care. All that matters are Amiq’s arms, holding her tight against 188
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U N C H A I N E D M E L O D Y / D o n n a the ebb and fl ow of the hungry music.
Lonely rivers sigh, wait for me, wait for me, I’ll be coming home, wait for me . . .
She isn’t sure what they’ve said, if anything, to bring them to this exact point, but before she even knows what’s happening, she’s following him out into the woods, wordlessly.
She’s never been this far out into the woods before, especially not at night, but Amiq knows the game trails blind, the way one meanders into another, disappearing and reappearing in strange ways, leading them deeper and deeper into the dark heart of the woods.
His feet are like fox feet or wolf feet, following the trails as if by instinct. As if by magic. Leading her in.
“Where are we going?” she asks at last, whispering, even though they’re well beyond the range of parochial radar. Whispering as though they’re in church, as though their hushed breathing is a new kind of prayer.
“Over there,” Amiq says, nodding off into the darkness, as if darkness by itself is a destination.
When he pushes the spruce branches aside, there’s a sudden rushing hole of light so bright, it takes her breath away—a spruce-lined room, lit by moonlight. Th
ey stand at its silvery
center, transfi xed.
“Close your eyes,” he says, and Donna feels a little fl ash of fear—exciting fear. “It’s okay,” he says, and she knows right then that maybe it is okay or maybe it isn’t, but it doesn’t really matter.
She closes her eyes, letting him guide her down onto the damp ground. Th
e dark earth and rotting leaves smell of promise.
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y
“Keep your eyes closed and lean back,” Amiq says, and she lets him lean her back, her heart pounding, fi ghting the urge to pull away. His voice says trust me and more than anything else in the whole wide world she wants to trust Amiq.
She imagines a wild spring river, shattering the ice in the darkness that surrounds them.
“Now,” he says. “Open them.”
She opens her eyes and looks straight up into the impossibly star-fi lled sky. “Oh!”
Th
e moon is huge. Th
e moon is everything. Th
e moon
with Amiq eclipsing it, watching her with such dark intensity, she knows he’s going to kiss her and he does—so softly it makes her feel like a fl ower opening in a warm rain.
When the kiss ends, she shivers involuntarily.
“You’re cold,” Amiq says, his voice protective. “Wait.”
She watches the way he moves, stretching out his whole body, catlike, looking for something in the bank of spruce branches. Something he knows is there. Something hidden.
A half-empty bottle of vodka.
He takes a deep sip, off ering it to her, and she tries it, too, even though it scares her worse than anything. Th
e heat of it
burns her throat, making her sputter, making her warm. He laughs softly.
She imagines that she’ll always remember the way he traces his fi nger along the edge of her throat right then, tugging tenderly at the slender chain, pulling the medallion out from beneath her sweater, still warm from her breasts, holding it tight in the palm of his hand as though warming 190
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U N C H A I N E D M E L O D Y / D o n n a himself on it.
He studies it carefully, then looks directly at her. Th ere’s
a question in his eyes. It’s a question Donna wants to hear, a question she’s afraid to hear. She looks at the little medal, lying in the palm of his hand, wishing she knew the right answer.
“Saint Christopher,” she says, “the patron saint of travelers.”
&nb
sp; “I’m a traveler,” he whispers. And then he drinks the rest of the vodka in one long gulp and leans over, kissing her. But this time the tenderness is gone, replaced by something else, something hard and demanding. Something darker than the river below, and burning like vodka.
Something that has nothing to do with her, nothing at all.
He isn’t kissing her anymore—that’s what she realizes all of a sudden. Th
e vodka has gotten in the way and it isn’t her
at all. It’s only his idea of her—slurred and generic—a quiet girl named Donna who’s easy to look at. And his idea is all mixed up with her own idea of a brave new Donna, doing the kinds of things the old Donna never did. And both Donnas are mashed up together into something that has nothing to do with her. Nothing at all.
She pulls away from him.
“No, baby,” he pleads. “No.”
She stands up, brushing the pine needles off of Rose’s pink sweater.
“We have to go back,” she says.
But she doesn’t go anywhere, because suddenly, there’s a 191
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sound.
“Amiq? You here?”
It’s Luke, standing there in the clearing, looking at Donna and then at Amiq.
“Th
ey sent me to fi nd you,” Luke says.
Th
e way he says it makes Amiq sit up slowly, like he doesn’t want to but has no choice.
“What happened,” he says.
“It’s your dad,” Luke says. “Th
ey called. He took off ten
days ago. Traveling inland. Can’t fi nd him.”
“Drinking,” Amiq says, looking at Donna, dead sober now.
Luke shrugs. “Looks like it.”
Amiq glares off into the dark woods.
“You know—,” Luke starts.
“Shut up,” Amiq snaps. “Just shut the hell up.” He glares at Luke. Glares at the whole, dark world. “He’s probably sleeping it off in a cabin somewhere. My old man’s tough as a wolverine.”
Donna looks at the empty vodka bottle. Amiq looks at it, too.
Off in the distance somewhere, kids are still dancing. A door opens, and music drifts through the trees like smoke.
“Why do the birds go on singing . . . “
“My old man can survive anything,” Amiq snaps.
Anything.
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A Weak Spot or a Secret Strength
MARCH 12, 1964
LUKE
—
Luke is in the woods, lying on the sun-speckled ground, trying not to think heavy thoughts—trying not to feel the kinds of things heavy thoughts always make him feel—but it’s impossible, because thinking and feeling are roped together now, roped together with something heavy. As soon as he starts to think, the hurt rises to the surface like a dead body, and as soon as he is reminded of the hurt, he can’t help but think the kind of thoughts that make it worse.
It goes round and round like that. Like a dog chasing its tail.
He’d been boxing that morning with Sonny, and that had helped. Father Mullen had been watching, the way he always watched, and they were boxing just like Father had taught them to. No mercy. Luke’s body had been fl exed hard as a fi st, his mind focused, his feelings turned off . Th
at’s what Luke
liked best about boxing. To box well, you had to turn your feelings off .
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y
Now, lying on his back in the piney woods, he takes a deep breath and tries to make himself feel, again, the cold control of a boxer. Make his mind forget everything else, even that one thing that had happened after they fi nished boxing.
He was dancing back and forth, Sonny’s movements like a shadow of his own, both of them waiting for the other to leave an opening. Both of them closed. Luke’s fi sts coiled up so tight against his face they felt spring-loaded. Sonny sway-ing back and forth like a bear.
Luke could feel the punch, simmering deep inside, his feet shifting into place, his eyes locking onto Sonny’s. Winding up. But just as his arm left his side, Sonny shoved a sudden jab. Luke hadn’t even seen it coming. Sonny was just too fast.
Luke’s return caught Sonny square in the nose, all right, but before he could fi nish it off , Sonny threw another punch.
A perfect uppercut, shoving Luke right up off the fl oor and slapping him down like a fallen tree.
Sonny was left-handed, like a polar bear. In the heat of the match, Luke had forgotten and been caught off guard. Twice.
He fell into Sonny hard, and they both went down and it was over, Sonny sitting on the fl oor, and Luke shoving himself upright, wiping blood from his nose. Both of them grinning and breathless.
It felt good. Like together they’d whipped something.
Something important. Like they’d been working together, trying to move something huge, and it had suddenly broken loose and rolled away.
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A W E A K S P O T O R A S E C R E T S T R E N G T H / L u k e
“Short match,” Father said. Father Mullen did not like short matches.
“Sonny’s got a mean left hook,” Luke said, giving Sonny a sideways grin.
Sonny stood up, reached down, and grabbed Luke by the wrist, pulling him up, grabbing him hard. And that’s when it happened.
Mullen was saying something, and Sonny was saying
something else, and Luke understood that maybe he was supposed to be saying something back, but he couldn’t because all of a sudden his ears were echoing and the sound of their voices was receding.
We lived in the dark that time, underground. We lived underground because it was too cold on the surface, too cold to even go outside, some days. Th
e leader had to test the cold fi rst, licking a spot on his wrist and sticking it up and out the door, past the thick layer of mastodon skins, sticking it out for just a second to see how fast the spot turned white with frostbite. Testing to see if it’s too cold to search for meat that day. Th
at’s how we lived.
He saw it clearly.
Th
en he snapped back into the conversation, staring at Sonny and Father Mullen, who were still talking about boxing as if nothing unusual had happened.
I know this because I was there, Luke thought suddenly. I was the leader, testing the safety of the frozen world with my own skin. I was there.
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“Your opponent will always have a weak spot,” Father Mullen was saying. “Remember that.”
Now, lying on his back in the woods, Luke thinks about this from all angles, his eyes still closed, his wrist stinging.
My wrist is a weak spot, Luke thinks. Or maybe it’s a strength, a secret strength.
Or maybe it’s both.
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Our Story
MARCH 1964
“Look, Father.”
Junior put the newspaper on Father Flanagan’s desk. It was wrinkled, like dirty laundry, but the headline still rolled across it, sturdy as a tank: “Project Chariot Still On.”
It was the front page of the fi rst issue of Tundra Times, a newspaper covering Native news statewide. Th
e editor was
Junior’s uncle. Junior had been saving it for just the right moment, the moment when he would have enough nerve to tell Father about the stories he wan
ted to write, now that they had started a school newspaper.
“Th
at’s very interesting, Junior,” Father said.
Father obviously didn’t know much about Project Chariot. Project Chariot was interesting the way a bear about to tear into somebody’s gut is a concern.
“Th
ey were going to do a nuclear blast up north,” Junior off ered.
“Ummm?” said Father, erasing a mark in his grade book.
Junior’s words did not carry the kind of force he wanted them to carry. Th
ey never did. Junior picked up the paper
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and shuffl
ed to his desk in the back of the class, where
he sat between Sonny and Amiq, an easy place for a person like Junior to disappear. He imagined a tape recorder rolling, the words he wanted to say, loud and clear and inescapable.
“Th
ey were going to blow it up,” Amiq said.
Junior frowned.
“Blow up what?” Sonny said.
“Cape Th
ompson, right south of Point Hope,” Amiq
said.
“What?”
Amiq leaned over next to them like he was sharing a state secret. “Blow it right off the globe,” he whispered. “With a bunch of A-bombs. Bigger than Hiroshima.”
Luke turned around to look. Some of the other kids turned around, too, wide eyed.
Bombs?
“Right where we always hunt,” Junior added, wishing he’d been the one to make them look.
“Operation Plowshare,” Amiq said, leaning back onto his chair with a smug smile. “Th
at’s what they call it.”
Junior looked at Amiq, annoyed. How come Amiq always had to know everything about everything? And how come everybody always heard what Amiq said but barely even noticed when Junior said the same thing? And to make matters worse, Amiq was right, too. Project Chariot had been part of a government program called Operation Plowshare.
“You know, plow- share,” Amiq said, emphasizing the 198
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