Swallowing Stones

by Joyce McDonald

  She glanced over at the window. Tiny rivers of rain streamed down the pane of glass. Four days of this was just too much. The first rainy day, she and Andrea had hung out at the mall with their friends. It had been fun. But by the third day they had all grown bored with the routine and with each other.

  She finally dragged herself out of bed, pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, ran a comb through her hair, and headed downstairs.

  She was standing in the kitchen a few minutes later, buttering an English muffin, when Andrea called.

  “So what’s it going to be? The mall again? Or should we just rent some good movies and pig out on junk food?”

  “Neither.” Jenna stared out the window at the rain. She felt edgy. Maybe the weather was getting to her. “Let’s do something different.”

  “Like?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s just get on a bus and go somewhere.”

  “A bus? You’re kidding. Where would we go?”

  “Anywhere,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. The shore.”

  never in a million years had she really thought they’d do it, but two different buses and two hours later, Jenna and Andrea were walking along the beach in Spring Lake.

  The rain had dwindled to a mist that clung to their hair and dampened their clothes. Andrea wasn’t exactly being a good sport about the whole thing.

  “We could have done this on a sunny day, you know,” she informed Jenna, brushing wet sand from her legs, a futile effort under the circumstances. “Think about it. You go to the beach to get a tan. To meet guys. You don’t go to get your skin shriveled up from being in the rain too long.” She stuck her foot in the water, rinsed the sand from it, and held it up. “My toes look like raisins.”

  “So walk in the sand,” Jenna told her.

  “It won’t make any difference. It’s just as wet.” She stared down at her tanned toes. “They’re turning white. See? They’ll probably all rot and drop off.”

  Jenna let Andrea ramble on, for the most part ignoring her. She was used to Andrea’s melodramatics.

  The cold, gritty foam bit at Jenna’s bare ankles as the girls walked along the water’s edge. She had no idea why she had wanted to come to this place, but it felt right. She wondered if it had something to do with missing out on Nantucket this August. Every summer, for as long as she could remember, her parents had rented a cottage on the island. But her mother had decided to cancel the trip this year, explaining that she would find it too difficult.

  Jenna thought she understood. Even now, feeling the wet sand ooze between her toes, she was reminded of the walks along the Nantucket beach with her father. Maybe that was why she had come: to remember. Because, although six weeks had passed since his death, Jenna still could not make herself believe that he wouldn’t be coming home. Some stubborn part of her continued to think her father was on one of his business trips, and all the logic in the world could not make Jenna stop holding on to this fantasy.

  As she stood by the water, looking at the gray sky blending into the gray water, unable to distinguish between the two, unable to determine the horizon, she tried to imagine the sun rising again and found that she couldn’t. The waves pulled at her feet, sinking them deeper into the sand until they disappeared altogether and her body seemed to be balancing precariously on her ankles.

  “Andi?” She kept her eyes on the gray scene in front of her.

  “Yeah?” Andrea stood next to her, making designs in the sand with her big toe.

  “I have this picture in my head. You know? I’m in a courtroom, and the jury’s just found this guy guilty of killing my dad. And I walk over to the table where he’s sitting with his lawyer. And I look him right in the eye, and I ask him point-blank if he knows what he’s done. If he knows he destroyed three lives that day. Not just my dad’s, but my mom’s and mine. Because that’s what he did. He killed all of us. I want him to know that. And when I can tell I’m finally getting through to him, well … I’m going to pull this gun out from under my sweater, and I’m going to shoot him, right there in front of the whole courtroom.”

  “Oh, God, Jen. You don’t mean that.”

  “Yes. I do. And you can leave God out of it. We’re not exactly on speaking terms right now.”

  “This isn’t like you at all.”

  Jenna turned to look at Andrea. “What’s that supposed to mean? Oh, Andi. Do you really think I’m still the same person I was six weeks ago?”

  “You’re scaring me.” Andrea had backed away from the edge of the water. She stood with her shoulders hunched. Her arms hung at her sides defenselessly.

  “I’m not deranged, Andi. Okay? Just angry.” She stared down at her footless legs. “And sad. Oh, I wish you could know how sad. But you can’t. No one can.”

  Andrea took a cautious step back into the waves, as if testing the water. Then she put her arms around her friend. “I wish I could know, too,” she told her.

  it was late afternoon and raining harder than ever when they got back to Briarwood.

  “I can’t stand these wet clothes another minute,” Andrea said, passing up Jenna’s offer of a soda and heading straight for the path between their houses. “I’m outta here.”

  Jenna climbed the front porch steps, retrieved the mail, glanced through it for any interesting magazines, and was about to toss it all on the dining room table when she noticed an envelope addressed to her. There was no return address, but when she opened it she was amazed to find herself staring down at a letter from Amy Ruggerio.

  It had been over three weeks since the incident in the theater rest room. Jenna couldn’t imagine why Amy Ruggerio, of all people, would be writing to her. And so with intense curiosity she sat down on a dining room chair, forgetting all about her wet clothes, and began to read.

  Dear Jenna,

  I’m the person who was with you in the rest room a few weeks ago when you weren’t feeling well We never introduced ourselves, but I knew who you were from your picture in the newspaper. I wanted to tell you how sorry I was about what happened to your dad, but it didn’t seem like the best time. So I thought I’d write you a letter instead.

  I just wanted you to know that I understand what you’re going through. I lost my dad a few years ago, too. Not just my dad, but my mom. They were in a car accident. I was seven when it happened, but it could have been yesterday; the pictures in my mind are that vivid.

  I remember how angry I was. So angry I didn’t talk to anyone for almost a year. For weeks I didn’t even let myself cry, because that would be admitting my mom and dad weren’t going to come back. I think I honestly believed that as long as I didn’t cry, they’d come tiptoeing into my bedroom one night, tuck me in like always, and tell me I’d been having a bad dream. But the nightmare never went away.

  Then this one day I was playing at my grandfather’s desk, pretending I was his secretary, and I started rummaging through the desk drawers looking for an envelope for a letter I’d written for him, and there was this plaster cast of my hand that I’d made for my mom in kindergarten. I’d painted it bright pink. I still don’t know how it got there. Maybe my grandfather was saving it for me or something. Anyway when I turned it over, I saw my mom had taped a little strip of paper on the back. She’d written: “Amy’s hand, age 5. I love this child more than life itself.” I don’t know why she wrote that on there, of all places. But I’m glad she did. Because it was as if she was sending me this message, you know? I think that was the first time I realized she really wasn’t coming home. And I just put my head down on that desk and sobbed my heart out.

  It must seem like I’m rambling on here. I’m sorry. But I just wanted to share this with you, because you seem like such a nice person, and I thought it might help to know you weren’t alone. If there’s ever anything you need, or if you want to talk, just remember I’m here, okay?

  Yours truly,

  Amy Ruggerio

  Jenna blinked, then stared up at the lighting fixture that hung over the dining roo
m table. She had no idea what to think of Amy’s letter. They hardly knew each other.

  She read the letter again, and then a third time, trying to understand. And when she began to read it a fourth time—because now she couldn’t seem to make herself stop reading it—she noticed that wet spots were blurring the words on the paper. It took her a moment to realize these were tears. Her tears. The first real tears she had been able to cry since her father had died. And there was nothing she could do but put her head down on the table and let them come.

  14

  that night Jenna’s dream took on a strange new dimension. She still struggled with the tangled vines, still fought like a crazed tiger to keep from being sucked deeper into the forest, but this time, just as she had begun to gnaw through one of the vines with her teeth, she felt someone’s hands—strong, competent hands—on her shoulders. When she turned around, she found herself staring right into the face of Amy Ruggerio.

  She was so startled, she almost forgot that the vines were still dragging her where she didn’t want to go. Then Amy cupped her hand around Jenna’s elbow, and as she did, the vines fell away from Jenna’s legs and waist. Now she really was moving forward. Amy was guiding her right toward the Ghost Tree, and Jenna wasn’t doing anything to stop her.

  She might have gone all the way into the forest if a loud thump on the roof hadn’t awakened her. Sitting up in bed, head cocked, ears poised, trying to identify the sound, Jenna waited. She thought she heard a light scuffing sound, but she couldn’t be certain. It was still pouring outside. She wondered if the sudden thud had been a broken branch landing on the roof, the scuffing sound only a squirrel or a raccoon.

  She scrunched down between the sheets, staring up at the ceiling, as if she expected whatever was up there to come crashing through the plaster at any moment. But when the sound did not come again, she fell right back into her dream.

  the mist was so thick the next morning that for a moment Jenna thought she was still trapped in the dream. She stood on the deck, holding a mug of hot tea, and squinted into the fog. Tiny beads of moisture clung to the fine hairs on her arms.

  At least it had stopped raining, although there was still no sign of sunlight. It didn’t matter, though. Andrea would still want to go to the pool.

  Jenna sat down on the top step and leaned against the railing. She could not stop thinking about Amy Ruggerio. And she really had tried; Amy was not the type of person you thought about for any length of time, or so she believed. But Amy’s sudden appearance in Jenna’s dream disturbed her.

  She wondered what her friends would say if they knew about Amy’s letter. Probably make a big joke about it. She hated to admit it, but the whole time Amy was being so kind to her in the rest room that night, Jenna had been silently praying that no one she knew would come through the door. Thinking about that now, she felt a deep shame, not just for herself but for the way things were. It was all part of the code. No one would even dare change the rules. If they so much as tried, they’d find themselves on the outside, alone. Like Amy Ruggerio. And that was the last place Jenna wanted to be right now.

  She took a sip of tea, and when she looked over the rim of the mug, she thought she saw someone standing at the end of her yard near the path that led into the woods. But as she squinted into the mist the shadowy form darted deeper into the brush. She was trying to convince herself that she was seeing things, that her stupid dreams were finally getting to her, when a voice said, “Who was that, I wonder?”

  Jenna looked up to find her mother leaning against the doorjamb, eating an orange. She was already dressed for work, although Jenna suspected it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet. So her mother had seen the person, too.

  Jenna shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Her mother stepped out on the deck and leaned against the railing. “It looked like a boy, didn’t it? A teenager.”

  Jenna thought about this for a minute. The person appeared to be wearing cutoffs and a T-shirt and had short dark hair, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was a boy. In fact, with that description it could have been Andrea, although Jenna knew it wasn’t. “I’m not sure,” she said finally.

  Her mother went back into the kitchen and returned with a mug of steaming coffee. She ran her hand over the cushion on the lounge chair. Finding it damp, she chose to lean against the railing again.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this,” she said, picking her words carefully. “I wouldn’t want you to worry. But something strange is going on around here.”

  Jenna frowned. “Around here? Around our house?”

  Meredith Ward took a deep breath and set her coffee mug on the railing. “Come on. You have to see this for yourself.”

  Jenna followed her mother upstairs to Jenna’s bedroom and watched as she opened one of the windows that overlooked the front porch. Then Meredith slid the screen up, hiked up her skirt, kicked off her high heels, and started to climb out onto the roof. But with only one knee poised on the sill, she stopped. She seemed unable to move.

  Jenna stared at her mother. “Are you okay?”

  Meredith shook her head. “Sorry, I can’t seem to bring myself to go out there. The roof, it …”

  “It’s okay, Mom. Just tell me, then.”

  Her mother backed her way over to Jenna’s bed and sat down. “Go look at the gutters.”

  Jenna peered out the window. “Okay, I’m looking. Now what?”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “They’re clean, for heaven’s sake. Someone cleaned out the gutters. They’ve been clogged for weeks. We had a regular waterfall gushing off the roof the other day.”

  Jenna wondered when someone could have gotten on the roof without either her or her mother hearing anything. But then, neither of them was home much during the day. That was probably when it had happened. “Maybe it was Mr. Krebs.”

  “I don’t think so. He’s a little old to be climbing ladders and cleaning gutters.”

  Jenna thought of the sounds that had awakened her the night before and told her mother.

  Meredith merely nodded. “I heard something, too.”

  “You think this person did it last night?”

  Her mother shrugged. “It certainly looks that way.”

  Jenna felt a tingling along her spine. “Maybe it seemed like a nice thing to do, but why did this person have to go sneaking around at night?”

  Her mother began to pull at a loose thread on the hem of her skirt. “There’s something else.”

  Jenna sat down in her desk chair. She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to hear more.

  “Someone’s been weeding the flower beds.”

  “This is just too weird.” Jenna glanced over at the window as if she expected to catch the culprit still out on the roof.

  “Disturbing is more like it.” Her mother was trying to break the loose thread she’d been working at, but it only grew longer. “I don’t care how thoughtful this person thinks he or she is being. The truth is, it makes me feel vulnerable. Especially after what happened to Charlie.”

  Jenna tried to shake off her own growing uneasiness. It was bad enough that a bullet could suddenly drop from the sky and change your whole life. Now she had to worry about strangers sneaking around her house at night. Wasn’t there anyplace left where she could feel safe?

  “I suppose I should notify the police,” her mother said, crossing the room and picking up her shoes. “Let them know we have a prowler, or trespasser, or whatever, around here.” She gave one last tug at the loose thread that had been annoying her. “Oh, now look what I’ve done.”

  The hem of Meredith’s skirt was sagging in the front. She glanced at her watch. “Thank goodness I still have time to change.” She slipped her shoes back on and headed out the door, leaving Jenna to wonder about this latest unsettling turn of events.

  judd Passarello’s party was all anyone talked about at the pool during the third week of August. With school looming
only two weeks away, everyone suspected this would be the last big party of the summer. Groups of friends would still get together at each others houses. The parties would not cease completely. But the truly awesome parties, the memories of which sustained them through the school year, were coming to an end.

  “My parents are best friends with the Passarellos. Judd and I practically grew up together,” Andrea said one afternoon while they were at the mall buying school clothes. She had been trying all afternoon to convince Jenna to go to the party with her.

  But Jenna was skeptical. “Then how come I never hear you talk about him?”

  They had stopped at the cosmetics department of Macy’s, and Andrea was brushing a light coating of blush on her hand to test the color. “Well, it’s not like I hang out with him or his friends or anything.”

  “That’s my point.” Jenna still wasn’t sure she could handle parties yet, and she was looking for any excuse she could find.

  “What?” Andrea looked indignant. “We still know each other. Our families are friends. He’s not going to turn us away at the front door, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She held out the hand with the blush on it. “What do you think? Too much rose?”

  “There won’t be anyone there we know,” Jenna argued. “It’ll be mostly juniors and seniors.” Then she added, “Too much rose.”

  Andrea wiped the blush from her hand and tried another color. “Sure there will. Everybody’s heard about this party. You think nobody’s going to try to crash it?” She shook her head. “I bet half the school shows up.”

  They wandered over to a display of perfumes. Andrea sniffed at one bottle without spraying. “Mmm … smell.”