She loves you, say the dead girls. You didn’t know.
And I didn’t, but now she puts her palms on my face, looks long at the wound in my side. She and Ian offer their hands. I reach through growth rings. My hand breaks through the bark to grasp theirs, holding on tight while they pull me back into the world. The earth is soft, almost warm. Birds sing and scatter across the tin sky.
“Remember,” asks Eve, “our footprints in the mud?”
Words overlap, clutter my mouth. I can’t speak, but if I could I would say, “Eve, my friend.”
Chapter 31
Nyetta
“Are you sure you want to do this?” my mother asks.
“Yes!” I say. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
She crinkles her forehead. She thinks the ritual Eve and I made up is too morbid. She wonders if I might crack up or go crazy and start talking to ghosts again. If only she knew what I almost did. She should make an appointment with April, then talk to Hallie, who thinks the plan sounds great because she understands these things, for all her yoga and rose quartz, and weaving and baking bread. I think she must know about trees and girls. Someday I will ask.
My mom’s still unsure about letting me kayak to the Three Sisters with Ian and Eve. I use the words April gave me to help convince her it will be a “good experience.”
“It’s my way of saying good-bye. Of honoring Lark and letting her go. She would like this. And remember . . . Ian’s on the crew team and he practices on the river all the time. And he’s a Red Cross lifeguard. And Eve will be there, too. And we’ll all wear life jackets, of course. And don’t forget I can swim.”
She disappears into her office, closing the door. I huddle against the wall in my room, listening. She’s dialing the handheld, and I can tell by the rhythm she’s calling my dad’s cell. For some reason they’ve decided to act like friends. I’ve even heard her ask about Hallie and the boys. Her voice is too soft to hear, but in a few minutes she hangs up and comes into my room.
“Okay,” she says, “you can go. But I’m going to drive you there and wait on the dock until you come back.”
Finally it’s Saturday, and we drive to the boathouse, the old-fashioned one with the dark green shutters, the one you can see under the arches of Key Bridge.
I run through the boathouse, sending echoes. Paddles and oars, dinghies and rowboats, sloops and canoes hang on the walls and rest on old planks of wood. Outside, the sun pours down on the dock. It creaks and groans when I step on it.
“There they are,” says my mother.
My hand shoots up to wave at Eve and Ian. They’re carrying a sleek silver kayak to the end of the dock.
My mom makes us eat a snack before we go. She’s made sandwiches and pours little cups of hot chocolate from a thermos. We stand in a circle, taking little sips. “You aren’t going near Great Falls, are you?”
“Not at all,” laughs Ian. “It’s going to be an easy trip. There’s hardly any current today. No wind. Look how flat the water is!”
He points to the river. Diamonds of light speckle the surface. The trees on the Virginia side are bright green with new leaves. Weeping willows bend over boulders and lean to the river.
Ian sets the kayak in the water, holding it steady while Eve and I step in. Then he pushes us off and slips in behind me, and we’re off, paddling in sync, making our way downstream. I’ve never been in a kayak, never been so low in the water before. I can touch the top and peer down to the muddy bottom. Dark birds with bright eyes, mallards and geese, float between rushes. They’re too scared to come near us but too curious to fly away. Blade-shaped grasses undulate in eddies. Clouds of gold silt flash and disappear. Sometimes I see rotting trees at the river bottom, their roots draped with filmy green algae. If I happened to touch it, I think I might faint.
“I would hate to go swimming here,” I say.
“No way,” says Ian. “Not here. But farther down, there’s a great swimming hole with deep, clear water and a little beach off to the side.”
We paddle along, pulled by the current to the Three Sisters. They’re bigger than I thought; rockier, too. The river laps against the islands and swirls. Ian steers us to the middle island, the one with the scraggly tree. He jumps out with a lead of rope that he ties to a branch that’s wedged between boulders. Eve jumps out next, then the two of them give me a hand to help me find my footing. We scramble along, sliding our hands between cracks in the rock and pulling ourselves up. When we’re at the top, I get that same unattached, airy feeling like when you’re standing on top of the roof of a car. All around me are the sounds of the river.
Eve opens her hand, and there’s the little china bird, the lark with the open mouth, singing. I pull mine out of my pocket, the one with the outstretched wings. The roots of the maple tree spread over the rock and spill into the cracks. They’re dappled with lichen and moss like the boulders they cling to.
“I’ll put mine here,” says Eve, and she rests it on a pillow of moss. I put mine next to it.
Maybe they’ll stay there for years and years. Maybe they’ll leave with the wind or the storm. Lark can choose. She’s watching. She’s happy to see her little birds are there.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Lori Newsome, Celia Leckey, Carla Johnson Boucher, Tory Sievers, Joanna Cotler, Laura Geringer, Kim Merrill, Maria Alden, Francesca Lia Block, Sofie Fier, and Susie Terasaki.
About the Author
Tracey Porter is the author of TREASURES IN THE DUST and A DANCE OF SISTERS. Her most recent novel, BILLY CREEKMORE, was named to Oprah.com’s Kids’ Reading List, compiled by the American Library Association. For the past twenty years she has taught middle school at Crossroads School in Santa Monica, California.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Also by Tracey Porter
Billy Creekmore
A Dance of Sisters
Treasures in the Dust
Copyright
Lark
Copyright © 2011 by Tracey Porter
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Porter, Tracey.
Lark / Tracey Porter. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When sixteen-year-old Lark is murdered, she, her childhood best friend, Eve, and a girl she used to babysit, Nyetta, find themselves facing hard truths about their lives and seeking a way to move on.
ISBN 978-0-06-112287-3
[1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Murder—Fiction. 3. Grief—Fiction. 4. Family life—Virginia—Fiction. 5. Supernatural—Fiction. 6. Arlington (Va.)—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.P83395Lar 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010021959
CIP
AC
* * *
EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062080110
11 12 13 14 15 CG/RRDB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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