All We Left Behind

by Ingrid Sundberg

  At the bottom of the hill, I park outside Lilith’s two-garage estate and pull my blond hair into a ponytail, wondering if my mother’s hair was blond like mine. I can’t remember. When I was three, she swam across the ocean to be with another man, and Dad threw all the pictures of her away. After she left, Dad became the perfect father. He used to take me to Willow Park to ride the unicorns on the carousel or to the seashore to build a castle. He’d tuck me into bed at night and tell me stories about princes and kisses and magic spells. And when my father twirled his fingers in my blond hair, I thought I was Rapunzel with a secret.

  Everyone loved that hair. Even strangers. They all wanted to touch it, crossing streets to give my father compliments.

  “So lovely.”

  “So stunning.”

  “If only my daughter had hair like yours.”

  I liked it when people noticed, and Dad did too. I was his little princess with those long golden locks. It was powerful.

  It could enchant.

  That man tangled his fingers in my hair. That stranger who worked with my father.

  It was a month before I found Lilith in our field. It was that same summer, the summer of fire. I had just turned twelve and the beach-rose bushes that lined the river grew rose hips as fat as cherries. Some were large like crab apples, weighing down the branches until the fruit touched the watery lip of the stream.

  Before the fireworks, that man asked me to walk up the river with him, away from the company barbecue and the red-and-white paper plates. An hour before, he’d been my savior as I sat hunched over a burned hot dog listening to my father drone on and on about percentage points with his boss.

  “D’you play horseshoes, Goldilocks?” he’d asked, holding out two rusty irons. There was dirt on his shirt, and the cuffs were rolled messily at the elbow. “Come on, Goldie, one game. It’ll be fun.”

  I shrugged and said nothing.

  He turned to my father. “Harold, I’m stealing your daughter to play horseshoes.”

  Dad looked up, nodded, and went back to his conversation.

  “It’s easy. All you do is—”

  “I’ve played horseshoes before,” I said, standing up.

  “Great. I knew you’d be brilliant, Goldie.” He dropped the two irons on the table in front of me. “You get the first throw.”

  I beat him three times. Not because I’m any good. My horseshoes kept rolling into the bushes. He let me win.

  I took off my flip-flops and dipped my toes into the stream.

  The creek water was cold.

  He sat on a log and watched me from a distance as I waded into the water with my yellow skirt collected at my knees. It wasn’t until I sat down next to him that I realized we’d gone around the bend and out of sight of the barbecue. We sat there a long time, watching the rose hips dip in and out of the water, and my legs itched where the ends of my wet skirt clung to my calves. The tiny embroidered daisies were soaked through to the skin. I wanted him to say something, to tell a joke, to fill the silence.

  Instead, he spread his fingers wide and threaded them through the silk of my hair.

  “You’re beautiful,” he whispered, his breath on my ear. “Golden.”

  It was the hair.

  “Can I kiss you?” he asked.

  It was powerful.

  His fingers tangled. “Just one kiss, Goldilocks.”

  The air smelled sweet like beach peas and maple, with a light hint of smoke lolling down from the barbecue. His lips were round and smiling, his fingers soft and trapped against my skull.

  He’d been enchanted.

  In all the fairy tales, spells are broken with a kiss.

  Just

  one

  kiss.

  When Dad and I got home from the barbecue, I opened the medicine cabinet and found the scissors. The July heat made me sweat, and the evening was still damp with the smell of canary reeds and fire. But the scissors felt powerful in my hand.

  The zip beside my ear was effortless. The cut was so soft and clean that my hair fell fast and quick. It fell like golden feathers in creek water—spilling its enchantments out, and off, and onto the floor.

  Dad narrowed his eyes when he saw me, as if my lack of hair made me hard to find.

  “What did you do?” he breathed, squinting, like the answer might be visible if he could only turn up the light.

  “I, I—”

  I almost told him.

  But his eyes flicked away to the door.

  “It’s, well . . .” He picked up his papers, tapping them on the edge of his desk before walking up to me. “It’s different.”

  His free hand found a missed curl behind my ear and he rubbed it between his fingers as a shadow washed between us.

  “At least it will grow back,” he said, forcing a smile as if that was all I deserved.

  I became invisible then. Invisible without my hair.

  Kurt

  Smoke hangs in the living room, and Nick Drake’s Pink Moon aches out of the record player. The song’s from the seventies but it’s timeless. Drake wasn’t famous in his lifetime. He wasn’t discovered till after he overdosed at twenty-six. Of course, with a story like that, it’d be just like Mom to adore him. Which she did.

  The record’s scratched. Drake’s voice skips every few rotations, and I look for Dad. Two of his cigarettes lie in the ashtray, but that’s all I see of him. Probably already passed out.

  I love Drake, but this shit’s too sad for the morning. I switch it off and get some OJ.

  I’m drinking straight from the carton when the kitchen phone rings. Mom’s phone. The one she bought at a yard sale. She loved that dangling cord, always twisting it over her fingers, around the index finger, past the palm, and back again. I stare at the cheap piece of plastic but don’t touch it. Only one person calls that phone.

  I wait for Dad to come rushing out of his bedroom to answer it. But he doesn’t. Probably pulled a double shift and is out cold. It doesn’t matter. Nothing he says makes her come home.

  It’s too loud, the ringing. I try to ignore it, but the yellow cord is swinging against my elbow before I realize I’ve picked the damn thing up.

  “Daddy? Is that you?” Josie’s voice is weak, barely loud enough to hear behind a hiss of static. It’s the same half-coked-out voice that leaves messages on the machine, always asking for money, sometimes just crying. I almost hang up and pretend I never touched this thing, only—

  “Kurt?”

  Her voice hooks into me.

  “Dad’s asleep,” I say, starting to pace, only the cord chains me to this square of linoleum.

  “Hey.” Her tone brightens and I imagine her sitting cross-legged on the bleachers at school before cheer practice, her brown hair pulled up in a ponytail. I imagine her smile, soft and easy. Easy in a way nothing about her is anymore.

  “How’s it going, little brother?”

  That’s not what she really says. What she really says comes out mean and angry.

  “Shit, why don’t you call me back?” she accuses, and I want to tell her it’s not me she’s ever asking for in those messages.

  “What do you want?” I ask, and a car alarm goes off in the distance behind her. It makes me wonder where she is now, if she’s still living in that crappy apartment behind Fenway. The one she let me visit after she dropped out of BU, back when she had a cell phone and a number that worked. The place was small, made of cement, with a mattress on the floor and a kitchen faucet that rattled like a jackhammer.

  “I miss you,” she says softly, and I’m not sure if that’s a trick. “D’you hear me? Kurt?”

  Her voice sounds so much like Mom’s I almost drop the phone.

  “Are you okay?” I whisper, and she laughs.

  It’s a mean laugh.

  “Do you think I’m okay?” she says, becoming full-fledged Josie again. “What the fuck do you care? Huh?”

  She waits for me to say something, but this time I know it’s a trap.


  I look down and notice the cord wrapped over my hand. I’ve threaded it over the index finger, past the palm, and back again.

  “Yeah, exactly,” Josie says, and the line goes dead.

  I grip the phone so hard I want to break it. I’m pissed I answered it and let her get in my head. I almost tear it off the wall, but suddenly Dad’s here, standing a few feet away.

  “Is that—?” he asks quietly, hair disheveled, wearing sweats and a hollow expression. I clutch the phone, the silence on the other end pressed to my ear, not sure what to say to him. But all I can see is Josie sitting on that dirty old mattress scratching her ankles. Scratching like there are bugs under her skin.

  “Yeah,” I say finally, not looking at him when he takes the phone. I head for the door and let that silence set in.

  “Kurt,” he calls after me, confused when she isn’t there. But I can’t look at him. I grab my practice bag and am out the door. “What’d she say?” He stumbles barefoot after me, but I’m already climbing into my car. “Kurt, what did Josie—?”

  “She wasn’t calling for me!” I interrupt, glaring at him. His lips purse together angrily, but I don’t care. He can sit by the phone all day and wait for her to call back. Deserves as much. “It’s your mess,” I snap. “You fix it!”

  His face goes dark, but I peel out of the driveway and don’t look back. I point my car toward Emerson High School, crank up the music, roll down the windows, and drive. The radio plays that metal shit Conner loves, left from the last time he was in my car. The song’s a bunch of screaming assholes grinding the bass, but it drowns out the thought of Josie at the other end of that phone line. Josie having dropped out of BU. Josie living in that shitty apartment in Boston with some hookup she met at a bar. It makes me want to punch something or someone, or just knock out all the colonial rich-kid mailboxes I have to pass on my way to school.

  I turn up the music and let it pound me instead.

  * * *

  At school I duck through the hallway and keep my head down. Conner is standing by my locker with some girl I don’t know, and I don’t want to deal with him. I slip down the west hallway and skip it.

  I consider going to Coach’s office for a pass, but halfway down the corridor I see her. Button-down shirt. Blond hair. Her hair is up now, not down like at the party. It suits her. It makes her easier not to notice.

  My feet slow as I watch Marion pile her books up one by one, and it strikes me that she’s not the kind of girl I would ever pay attention to. She’s good-looking, sure, but smart. The kind of smart that outweighs the good-looking part. The kind of smart you can see in her posture and in the upturn of her chin. Like life is easy and she’s better than you for it.

  Annoyance shoots through me and I have to resist the urge to go over and mess with her. To not lean against her locker and mention how I couldn’t stop thinking about her wet, dripping body. I’d love to watch her face if I said that. That would get the smart to quiver right on out of her.

  Not that it’s the smart that scares me. Not that she’s the type of girl who could—

  “Medford!”

  I spin to see Conner walking up with that girl I don’t know. “This is Sarah,” he says, half winking and all teeth.

  “Sarah.” I nod, checking out the rest of her. Bleached hair. Tight jeans. Some chunky necklace that would look better in a magazine. Conner waits for me to react. She’s cute, but I’m not sure what he’s up to.

  “Sarah was at the bonfire the other night,” Conner says, watching me like that means something.

  “Uh-huh?” I stare at him.

  “And she’s a blonde.”

  “Wow, did you figure that out all on your own?” I mock. “Or did you need her to help you?”

  Conner narrows his eyes, playing detective, and Sarah flips her hair like it might turn her hair more blond.

  “And she likes to swim,” he says.

  “Does she?” Suddenly this makes sense. I steal a glance over his shoulder to Marion. Thankfully she has her back to us. “Blondes. Swimming. You on some crazy goose hunt, Conner?”

  He grins like he won a prize.

  “Wait, what is—?” Sarah’s not quite following, her mouth hanging half-open, and I want to smack Conner for being a shit.

  “Sarah, I don’t know what he told you,” I say, trying to apologize, “but don’t believe a word he says. And please, as a personal favor to me, go tell all your friends he has a small dick.”

  Conner points at Sarah, and using his amazing powers of deduction, he says, “So not this one?” I roll my eyes and walk away. “Hey!” he calls as I start up the stairs. “Whoever she is, she’s blond. I know that much.”

  I spin around to deny it, but Marion’s staring at them.

  At me.

  I stumble on the step and Conner waves a finger in my direction like that was an admission.

  “Blond hair, Medford.” He laughs, and I kick myself for hesitating. “I’ve got witnesses.”

  Marion’s eyebrows pinch together and I don’t know what to make of her. I drop a shoulder and head up the stairs. Conner hoots as I turn my back on them and tell myself he doesn’t know anything. Blond hair isn’t much to go off of. And there’s no way I’m telling him about Marion. Especially with her right behind him. Not that she’s a secret. Not that she’s anything.

  Before the top of the stairs, I check down the hall for Marion, but what I see is all I wanted to see in the first place.

  Empty hall.

  Marion

  The afternoon sun shimmers in chemistry, sending silver light streaming through beakers of glass. Kurt’s chair sits empty three stations behind me, and I haven’t seen him since this morning, when he disappeared up those stairs without a second glance. When he shows up, will he look at me? Speak to me? Do I exist as anything more than a shadow splashing into the water behind him?

  I open my notebook and hope he skips class.

  “Do anything interesting this weekend?” a male voice asks, and I turn to sun in my eyes.

  “Sorry?” I say, raising my hand.

  “This weekend,” he repeats, haloed in light. It’s my lab partner, Abe. “Do anything interesting?” He sits down beside me and light bounces off his curls and for a second he looks like a knight in a Waterhouse painting, eyes and armor shining perfectly.

  “Define ‘interesting.’ ”

  “Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll?” he offers, tapping his thumb against my chemistry book. “Or maybe a cheap movie? A good book?” He flashes me his adorable boy-next-door smile, and I flush, happy he chose me to be his lab partner five weeks ago and we’re talking again. I swear I smell apple in the air, and my eyes fall to his neck, where iridescent hairs glow like dandelion fluff. It reminds me of freshman year, when we sat under his apple tree and I made a wish before covering him in dandelion seeds. Just one wish before he kissed me with tiny parachutes in his hair. It was my first real kiss, nothing fancy, nothing uncomfortable; just two kids studying math under the apple tree in his backyard, learning the geometry of two and one.

  “I’m boring,” I say, finding my eyes on Kurt’s empty chair.

  “Did you go to that lake party?” Abe fishes, and I doodle in my notebook, trying to decide if I should tell him I went or not. Not that it should matter if I tell him. We broke up ages ago; we aren’t anything anymore. It’s been two years of silence since I went Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on his heart and we broke up. I don’t want to say the wrong thing and mess this up again. “I heard Lilith talking about it this morning,” he continues, and my pen gets slippery as I realize I’m glad he wasn’t at that party. That he didn’t see me in that water with Kurt. “Lilith said something about bonfires and—”

  “Swimming?” It slips out and he looks up surprised.

  “You went swimming at the party?”

  “No, I just—” I stumble, flustered by how much I don’t want him to know about this, and not sure if that means I still like him. The last thing
I should be thinking about is us as an us. Only sometimes, I find myself wishing on invisible seeds and catching him stealing looks, like right now, like maybe, possibility . . .

  “I, um . . . I heard some people went swimming,” I continue, but then the classroom door opens, distracting me.

  Abe follows my gaze, and I hate that he’s noticed. But now I’m staring at my notebook and I don’t know why I’ve covered the page in so many stars. I feel the heat of Abe’s gaze, but my pen keeps on blotting out the ruled lines and white.

  I don’t look up as Kurt passes.

  I don’t want to admit that he unsettles me in a way I’m sure Abe never could.

  I focus on the page and trace the outlines of the stars over and over, so I don’t have to see Kurt look away and pretend he doesn’t know me. Or worse, have him look into me, where he can see just how much I want to smell the lake in his hair.

  * * *

  In gym class we’re sent outside to run the fitness trail around the school. The ground is covered in pine needles the color of rust and the air smells like mulch. Lilith lingers behind me, flirting with the four boys on the path near her.

  Abe is one of them.

  I could be a quarter of a mile ahead by now, but I’ve slowed to eavesdrop on Lilith, letting the orange needles stick to my sneakers. The fog hangs on the branches like tufts of cotton candy from the county fair, spun with weightlessness, and my mind drifts to Abe’s fingers as we sat on the Ferris wheel freshman year, his lips stained sugar blue. His thumb rubbed the elastic strap of my bra, and my insides went queasy with the idea of him touching me, like he had the night before. How I didn’t tell him not to. How I wasn’t sure how to outline an invisible boundary, or if such a thing could even be drawn.

  Abe didn’t say anything about Kurt in chemistry class, and I’m thankful I’ve been able to avoid both of them. Not that I know what to do with either. Kurt doesn’t look at me, and Abe, Abe is like the echo of something I started and ran away from before the fog could stick. Before the whisper of hands could ruin.

  Kurt would be better. Kurt’s a clean slate. His hands are distant, pumping through the water, less intimate.