You Must Not Miss

by Katrina Leno

  “Should we test it?”

  “How do you think we should test it?”

  “Here,” Clare said. She took Magpie’s hand and led her away from the shed: five feet, now ten feet, now fifteen. They kept their eyes trained on the not-shed, and although it glimmered and flickered in the bright streaming sunlight, it remained there. That is to say—both there and not there. It didn’t disappear.

  “I think it’s okay,” Magpie said.

  “I think I know what you mean now,” Clare said. “How you can feel it.”

  “That the shed won’t disappear?”

  “Yes,” Clare said. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

  “So should we go down there?”

  “I think we should, maybe,” Clare agreed. “Just to see it a little closer.”

  Magpie took one inhale of one breath to imagine what this moment might look like if it were Allison, not Clare, standing before her. Allison would not have had a panic attack. She would not have permitted it. Allison would have stepped through the doorway in the shed and not cried or thrown up; she would have raised her head to the bright, bright sun and laughed. She would have considered herself deserving of this world so spread out and open in front of her. She would have made herself its queen.

  “Let’s go,” Magpie said, and she took Clare’s hand in hers and squeezed it once and let herself feel thankful, for just a moment, that Clare was Clare and not anybody else in the world, especially not Allison. This place did not deserve Allison. And Allison did not deserve Magpie. And Magpie did not need Allison. No—not anymore.

  They set off down the hill.

  The sun of Near was high in the sky, and there was a soft breeze that blew in over the top of the hill and gently swept around them as they made their way toward the town.

  When they had walked for about fifteen minutes, the shed finally winked out of eyeshot. But they knew it was still there, just too far away now to see properly. They could feel it, as if it were some strong magnet set atop the hill, some beacon that was broadcasting its existence and making them feel calmer.

  They were closer to the town now, closer to Near, and the buildings were coming into focus, growing larger in their sight, like in the final descent of an airplane, when the world at first looks dollhouse-size and then gradually becomes real again.

  Finally, just a stone’s throw away now, Clare stopped. Magpie watched her squint. Magpie watched her trying to make sense of it.

  “That playground,” Clare said, and pointed.

  Magpie looked. There was a small complex of buildings on the outer edge of the town, and in between two of them was a playground. There was a bright-red slide, a merry-go-round, a jungle gym shaped like a pirate ship, complete with a flag and ship’s wheel.

  “That’s just like the one at the elementary school,” Clare said. “I take Teddy to the playground on the weekends sometimes. I mean, that’s… that’s exactly like it.”

  “Huh,” Magpie said. She already knew, of course. But she felt it would be better if she let Clare reach her own conclusion.

  “And that building on the other side of it,” Clare said. “That’s our high school. The whole complex. The high school, the middle school, the elementary school, the playground. Do you see it?”

  Clare looked around. Magpie watched her eyes follow the road that led out of the education complex down to a stop sign with a gas station on the corner.

  “And there,” Clare said, pointing. “That gas station.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t you see? This is Farther. Except… it’s not. There’s something different about it.”

  “Well, it’s cleaner, for one thing.”

  Clare turned to Magpie. “Oh. You already knew.”

  “I wanted you to see it for yourself.”

  Clare turned back to the town and pointed out more landmarks. “The mall. The pharmacy. The old mill. Mags, this is crazy.”

  “I know.”

  The town itself—Near—was perfect. As if nothing blemished or faded or worn had ever been let into it. It was unlike Farther in that respect. It couldn’t be anything less like Farther. And yet it was unmistakable. It was and it wasn’t Farther, just like the shed was and wasn’t in Near. Just like so many things in Magpie’s life that both were and weren’t. She had a sister and she didn’t. She had parents and she didn’t.

  They walked closer.

  The cars parked curbside at local businesses were spotless, not one slap of bird shit to be seen. The garbage cans on the corners of the busier streets were immaculate, not a single pressed circle of gum on any of their lids.

  Everything was clean, and the air smelled sweet, and the sky above them was as blue as a jaybird, and when they reached the white picket fence that surrounded the entire town, Magpie reached a hand out to open the latch that kept it shut, but Clare stopped her just before she could.

  “Wait,” Clare said, and Magpie waited, and Clare looked back at the hill, which was just a hill now, as plain a hill as you could hope for, with not even the smallest hint of a magical portal on top of it.

  “What?” Magpie asked.

  “Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”

  “We’ve come this far.”

  “Have you noticed that there aren’t any people?” Clare asked.

  Magpie had. And it was one of the best things about it.

  Not a single car was being driven. Not a single person was out walking a dog or checking the mail or finishing up an afternoon jog. The town was as still and silent as Magpie’s own heart. And because it was so familiar to her, she felt at ease, peaceful. She had dreamed and written for six long months of a place where the things that had happened to her had never happened to her—a place where she could decide her own history and her own future. And here it was: Near, a town where she could finally be free.

  “They’re probably all at work,” Magpie said. “Or school. Or sleeping.”

  “It’s the middle of the day.”

  Magpie’s heart fluttered with the sudden realization that if Clare did not come with her, if Clare decided to retreat back up the hill to step into the translucent not-shed that would lead her back to Magpie’s own backyard, Magpie would have to go with her. Because, when Clare stepped back into their world, she wouldn’t remember any of this, and she wouldn’t know where Magpie had gone, and what would she do then? And what if Magpie forgot again, too?

  No—they couldn’t leave yet. She had to see more of it.

  “Would it make you feel better if there were people here?” Magpie asked. Then, lighter: “Even though people are terrible?”

  Clare nodded, a small frightened nod that reminded Magpie of a bunny. Then she said, “People aren’t terrible,” and Magpie was about to argue with her when they both heard it at the same time: the faintest shuffling of feet.

  There, just on the other side of the fence, was a small boy holding a red ball.

  He wore shorts the color of salmon, a white collared polo shirt, a pair of clean white tennis sneakers. The ball he held in his hand looked brand-new, as if his mother had just taken him to the store that morning to get it. He didn’t bounce it, just held it, and he looked at Magpie and Clare as if he was surprised to find himself there. He even looked down at his feet, at his arms, at the ball in his hands, as if he’d only now noticed that he had a body to begin with.

  Magpie did not immediately realize who the boy was, but Clare did, and she wrenched open the gate and threw herself at him before Magpie could even put a hand out to stop her, and she grabbed the boy by the shoulders and shook him hard, her voice panicky.

  “Teddy? Teddy?” she shrieked, shaking him every time she said his name.

  The boy just looked at her, as if maybe he didn’t know his own name, and Clare pulled the ball from him and threw it away and then cupped his face in her hands, and said, “Ringo?”

  The boy relaxed at once, as if his chosen nickname released him from some invisible spell. He smiled, then tried t
o take a step toward his ball, but Clare held him firmly.

  “Ow, Clare! Lemme go!” he complained.

  “What are you doing here?” Clare demanded, her voice rising to a fever pitch. “How did you get here?”

  “Lemme go!” he yelped again. “Lemme go, Clare, you’re hurting me!”

  “How did you get here?” Clare yelled, squeezing his arms so hard that Magpie could see his skin turning red.

  Teddy narrowed his eyes at her, wrenched himself away so fiercely that he fell backward, landing hard on his bottom, scrabbling away like a human crab.

  “I said, LET ME GO,” he shouted, jumping to his feet.

  Clare made to go after him, but Magpie was ready that time, and she grabbed Clare’s arm and held on tightly. Ringo made it five or six feet, then paused. His arms where Clare had gripped him were red and angry. They would bruise. There were tears in his eyes, and he kept glancing at the ball frantically, as if he needed it back, as if it were somehow more than a ball, somehow imperative that he reach it.

  “What are you doing here?” Clare asked, her voice panicky again, her breathing jagged. She turned to Magpie. “What is he doing here?”

  “How should I know?” Magpie asked, and when she was sure Clare wouldn’t go after him again, she released her arm and watched Clare crumble a bit into herself, folding up smaller, hunching and scared.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” she said.

  He shrugged, and said, “What do you mean, Clare? I live here.”

  “You don’t live here, Teddy; you live somewhere else.”

  Ringo laughed a short, easy laugh that echoed strangely through the otherwise quiet town. “Who’s Teddy?”

  “Ringo,” Clare corrected herself. “Ringo, fine. Just come with me, okay? We need to leave.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Ringo said. “You can’t make me go anywhere.”

  “Ringo—” she said, and Clare took a step toward him and he took a step back, the perfect mirror image, just a half second out of time.

  “I’m hungry, Clare,” he said. “Are you coming home for dinner? Daddy made spaghetti.”

  And the word hung on the air.

  Daddy…

  And Clare took a breath that did not end.

  And the boy flashed a quick smile. A mean smile. And then he darted forward and grabbed his ball, clutching it to his chest as if he could finally breathe again. “You know what I think?” he said. “I think I don’t want you to come home at all. I think I want to eat all the spaghetti myself.”

  And he stuck his tongue out at her.

  Quick, like a snake.

  And he turned and ran and disappeared between two houses.

  And Clare sat down in the grass and put her head between her knees again.

  Magpie let Clare cry and shake on the grass; this panic attack lasted longer than the one on the hill. Or perhaps it was a continuation of the first one. Perhaps all panic attacks were connected, never-ending, just ebbing and flowing for all eternity.

  Magpie waited.

  Clare howled and sobbed, and Magpie understood her howls and sobs to be the kind that stemmed from loss—the loss of a father who had not, as it were, shot himself in the family garage but who had had the decency to do it somewhere just ever so slightly out of reach.

  Magpie had experienced plenty of loss, but her losses were still alive and walking around—Allison and Eryn and Magpie’s own father, who had broken the secret code and showed up to a house where he was no longer welcome.

  And Ann Marie.

  Not gone but gone anyway.

  Not there but there at the same time, moving through the house with veins clumsy with alcohol. Refusing to eat Jell-O in a hospital room and sending grown-ups to check on Magpie, as if Magpie had ever needed checking up on.

  And then Clare stopped crying. She leaned back on the grass and wiped snot from her upper lip and flattened her short hair against her scalp, and as Magpie realized she would just a moment or two before she did, she left.

  Out the gate.

  Away from Near.

  Up the hill.

  “Clare!” Magpie said, and ran after her, pausing only for a second to make sure the gate was closed behind her. “Clare, wait!”

  Clare was fast when she wanted to be, and Magpie had to run to catch up with her, and by the time she did, they were both out of breath, and Clare’s face was dry and red and resolved.

  “This place isn’t real,” she said. “You put something in my pizza.”

  “I put something in your—what? Clare, we didn’t even get the pizza yet.”

  “You drugged me. You’re real fucked-up, you know that? Everything they say about you is true,” Clare said. “Even the stuff about your father. Allison told everyone. He fucked your aunt and you walked in on them and you’re so sick you probably liked it.” Her mouth was filled with venom in the shape of words. She spit them out at Magpie one by one. She pulled her arm away when Magpie tried to grab her, then she took off running up the hill, and Magpie struggled to catch up to her, but the distance between them grew bigger and bigger as they went.

  Clare kept going up and up, and Magpie kept going up and up, albeit a lot slower, and when she finally reached the shed, Clare had already gone through.

  Magpie turned to survey the small town again. Her town. Her Near.

  It was still there, and Magpie knew that it would be there for her whenever she needed it, and she knew, somehow she knew, that this time she’d remember it. And she knew she would come back. Again and again and maybe—maybe one of those times she wouldn’t leave.

  She took a deep breath and stepped into the shed that was and wasn’t there. And with every step forward she took, the shed became more there than not there until finally it was fully there, and the grassy green hill was almost fully not there, and Magpie put her hand on the door of the shed and pushed through to her own dark cricket-chirping backyard.

  Clare stood in front of the shed, bathing suit on, eating a piece of pizza.

  “Took you long enough,” she said. “Did you get them?”

  “Get what?” Magpie asked. She was feeling a bit light-headed; it was hard work to hold on to a memory that was doing its best to flit away from you.

  “The chemicals, duh,” Clare said, and rolled her eyes and laughed and had another bite of pizza. “You said you were getting the chemicals for the pool, remember?”

  “Right,” Magpie said, smiling because—she had done it. She had remembered Near. And Clare hadn’t. And everything was fine. “I think they’re actually in the garage. I just realized.”

  “Well, hurry up! And have some pizza. I want to go swimming,” Clare said.

  Magpie remembered the things Clare had said to her as they ran up the hill.

  They were terrible things.

  Allison had told everyone what Magpie’s father had done.

  You’re real fucked-up, you know that?

  But that wasn’t Clare now.

  Clare now was eating a piece of pizza so quickly she kept dropping bits of cheese down the front of her bathing suit, yelping and laughing when they burned her skin, fishing them out and flicking them on the grass. Clare now would never remember what she had said to Magpie in Near because Magpie would never let her into Near again. She understood now that it was for her. It was for her and no one else.

  And her heart sang and her feet hardly touched the grass and she went inside to get herself something to eat.

  FIVE FOR SILVER

  Clare woke up early the next morning and called her mother to come pick her up.

  “We’re going to the outlets,” she explained, running Magpie’s comb through her hair. “Otherwise I’d stay later. Thanks for the pizza.”

  “Thanks for coming over. You really saved me with my dad,” Magpie said.

  “Anytime. Go back to sleep! Text me later.”

  Magpie let Clare outside and locked the door behind her, then she went back into her bedroom and got her ye
llow notebook and sat cross-legged on her bed holding it.

  The things Clare had said to her in Near echoed somewhere in the back of her mind. She opened up the notebook and removed a pen she had tucked into its spiral edge and wrote on a blank page: Nobody will be mean to me, and I will have someone who knows me as I know myself and who wishes me only happiness and who will never betray me.

  She tucked the notebook under her pillow, leaned back, and closed her eyes.

  Clare hadn’t meant those things. Magpie knew that, she really believed it—Clare had just been scared and panicking and overwhelmed. But in that moment on the hill, Clare had been so much like her, like Allison. The way her face had contorted in anger. The way she had picked her words to do the most damage.

  Magpie tried not to think about it, to make her mind blank, like a sheet of paper. She felt exhausted still, and after a few minutes, she fell back to sleep, and she spent most of Sunday in bed with her curtains drawn tightly and her door shut. Finally, in the late afternoon, she got out of bed and changed into her swimsuit and moved out to the backyard.

  It was a muggy day. Magpie felt tired and lethargic, the kind of exhaustion that comes from spending too long lying in bed not sleeping, just wasting the hours till night.

  She lowered herself into the pool all at once, ducking underneath the cool water and using the ladder to hold herself at the very bottom.

  When they were younger, Magpie and Eryn would go into the pool after dinner when the heat from the day had settled thickly over the backyard and the sun was low enough to cast long shadows over the water. They would stay away from the black parts of the pool, irrationally afraid of what they couldn’t see, invisible hands that would pull them underneath the water and trap them there to drown. They would stay in the pool until their fingers wrinkled and their eyes turned red from the chlorine and their heads sloshed so full of water that their mother would have to soak cotton balls in rubbing alcohol and squeeze them into their ears to evaporate it. They would stand shivering on the pool deck, sharing the same towel, their hair tangling together, and the whole world shrinking down to just the two of them, just this pool.