You Must Not Miss

by Katrina Leno

  The closer she got to the shed, the more she thought about the world she was about to return to. The world of Ann Marie being released from the hospital tomorrow. The world of Mr. James wanting to help her not fail sophomore year. The world of Brandon Phipp’s party. The world of Ben and the project about Amelia Earhart. The world of Clare and her dead father. The world of Eryn leaving and Magpie’s father leaving and everyone leaving. The world of leaving.

  By the time she reached the not-shed, she was so tired that her vision was beginning to blur. But before she went through, she took the pen out of her pocket and held it in her hand and concentrated with everything she had inside her.

  And when she reached the other side—the backyard of her real house on the real Pine Street, the real pool and the real pizza float half-on, half-off the small swim platform, the real moon glowing above her, just a faint echo of the way the moon had glowed in Near—she looked down at her hand.

  And she was still holding the pen.

  SEVEN FOR A SECRET

  Magpie slept like the dead, collapsing onto her bed with a belly full of Near-dinner and waking ravenous and weak in the early morning. She ate leftover pizza over the kitchen sink—had it really been only two days since she and Clare had stumbled into Near together?—and then took a hot shower, washing her hair and letting the water turn her skin red.

  She sat with the yellow notebook and the Near-pen after her shower, letting her hair drip dry against the back of the couch, feeling the weight of the things in her hand as she wrote a new sentence on an empty page.

  And they all lived happily ever after.

  She placed the notebook in the bottom drawer of her bureau among the winter sweaters she wouldn’t wear for months and months, or maybe never—because Near would not have winter snowstorms. Or if it did, the snow would be warm. Like cotton. Or spun sugar.

  Hither made a noise in the back of its throat.

  Wasting all your energy on warm snow. The uselessness.

  Magpie thought that was the point, that not everything had to be useful.

  She felt better after the shower and the pizza. She packed a bag for Ann Marie, a change of clothes and a pair of socks and sneakers, then she started walking to the hospital. It was three miles away, but they would take a cab home together.

  As she walked, Hither sometimes floated alongside her and sometimes fell behind and sometimes disappeared entirely and sometimes turned into a many-winged birdlike creature and flew above her, casting a wide shadow that shielded Magpie from the sun.

  It did not escape Magpie that a thing casting a shadow must be a thing with some degree of realness to it.

  It was a warm day, and Magpie was happy to have an excuse not to be in school. Even though there were only three weeks left until summer, those three weeks felt like their own eternity. It was inconceivable that they would ever pass. And yet here she was, forced to live through them, to slog through the endless minutes contained within each set of night and day.

  At least she had her own place to return to now. Her own Near.

  She wanted to go back to it—and she would, just as soon as she got Ann Marie home and into bed.

  She wondered more about how time worked between Near and Farther. If she spent years and years in Near, would she return to sixteen when she decided to come out again?

  Are you back on that silly fantasy stuff? You’re not a rubber band; you can’t snap back and forth.

  But she could decide never to come back again. Once she had practiced enough, once she had built up her strength, she could sustain herself within Near for an entire lifetime. Everything would be just how she wanted it. A perfect life.

  “But if I die in Near, what happens? Does my body just appear here again?”

  You ask the most asinine questions.

  But Hither didn’t say anything else, so Magpie thought maybe it didn’t know the answer.

  Asinine or not, her entire life had settled around a new point of gravity. She revolved now, not around the Earth, not around the sun, but around Near and the new place she had created for herself.

  She reached the hospital after almost an hour of walking. Hither became as small as something like a butterfly or a crab (or some cross between the two, because it had both wings and claws) and alighted on her shoulder. She bypassed the front desk and went straight to her mother’s room. Ann Marie was signing paperwork and listening to a nurse’s instructions. She gave a happy little wave when she saw Magpie standing in the doorway but then returned her attention to the forms on her lap.

  Magpie waited until the nurse had left, then she took Ann Marie’s clothes and shoes from her backpack and placed them neatly on the end of the bed.

  “Thank you so much for coming. You took tired,” Ann Marie said.

  Magpie didn’t want to say what her mother looked like (a person who had brushed a little too close to the cold jaws of death, for starters), so instead she just smiled and shrugged. “I guess I didn’t sleep well last night. Just excited to get you home.”

  This was the exact right thing to say; Ann Marie’s eyes grew wet with immediate tears, and Magpie averted her gaze. She always thought it was best to pretend not to notice when other people cried, and her mother was no exception to this rule. If anything, her mother was the reason for this rule.

  “Pull the curtain, will you, Magpie?” Ann Marie asked.

  So Magpie pulled the curtain shut around the bed to give her mother privacy, and she did her best not to watch as Ann Marie stood up slowly. In the hospital gown, her mother looked the skinniest Magpie had ever seen her. She looked as if she had lost half of herself sometime during the past six months, as if, when Magpie’s father had left, he had scooped up pieces of his wife and carted them away, never to be seen again. She slipped the gown down over her shoulders, and Magpie couldn’t help but look at her mother’s breasts to make sure they weren’t the same sick blue they’d been when she had found her, half-dead, on the bedroom floor.

  As Ann Marie raised her shirt over her head and gingerly slipped into it, as she pulled on a fresh pair of underwear and stepped into the khaki shorts Magpie had brought her, Magpie couldn’t help but feel a rush of affection for her mother. Maybe this was what Ann Marie needed to never drink again. Maybe this brush with death was the final straw. Maybe Ann Marie would blanch at the smell of vodka now. Maybe she would get sick just thinking about the medicinal sting of it sliding down her throat.

  Should Magpie have poured all of the half-full bottles down the sink before she’d left the house? What were you supposed to do when you went to the hospital to pick up an alcoholic from a particularly gnarly binge? Were you supposed to destroy all the evidence? Were you supposed to burn down the house? Were you supposed to create a new life for them, one devoid of the memories of all their many, many fuckups? Was Magpie singularly responsible now for her mother’s new, sober life? Was she required to build a world that did not revolve so heavily around the alcoholic-beverage industry?

  “Sweetheart, I asked if you could pass me those sneakers,” Ann Marie said.

  Magpie passed her mother the sneakers, and Ann Marie slipped them on and began to lace them.

  Bunny ears, bunny ears, playing by a tree…

  That was how Ann Marie had taught Magpie to tie her own shoes. Magpie had a vivid memory of being in kindergarten. The teacher, a woman with short curly hair, had a sneaker made out of wood. Laces the color of Granny Smith apples. One by one, the students came up and tied a bow. After every success, Magpie felt her inevitable failure settle on her shoulders. She had always worn Velcro. What sense did it make to perform the complicated loop and swoops required for tying laces when she could simply slip her foot into the shoe and place one Velcroed section on top of the other and—voilà—done.

  But she was sent home with a note, and although Magpie couldn’t read the note, she imagined now that it said something like Your underachieving daughter must learn how to tie her shoes before entering the first grade beca
use that night Ann Marie sat her down on the living-room carpet and handed her a sneaker, and said, “Bunny ears, bunny ears, playing by a tree…”

  Magpie couldn’t remember the rest of the rhyme.

  Had Ann Marie been drinking that night? When had she stopped drinking the first time? Magpie had always had a terrible memory for unpleasant things; her brain erased the past in bits and chunks.

  Except for now.

  Because she could remember the past six months in excruciating detail. Every minute of every day.

  “I swear, Magpie, you look like you’re in a different world,” Ann Marie said. She placed a cool hand on Magpie’s cheek. Then she frowned. “It’s Monday, isn’t it? Oh no. I’ve made you miss school.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s basically over.”

  “I can’t believe you’re going to be a junior. My little girl.”

  “Let’s get going.”

  “We should make an appointment to get your learner’s permit. I can teach you how to drive. When I was your age, I loved to drive. Your father and I would go driving for hours.”

  “Do you have everything?” Magpie asked. “We need to call a taxi.”

  She led her mother out of the room to the elevators, and when they reached the front lobby, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed the number of the local cab company. She had quickly memorized it that morning because it was the same digit seven times.

  They waited outside on a bench.

  It was a sunny bright-blue day, and Hither was scrounging around in the dirt for something—was it eating bugs?—and Ann Marie had her head turned up to the sky, letting the sunshine fall onto her open face, warming her skin, so when she placed her hand on her daughter’s hand Magpie almost recoiled, it was that hot.

  “Don’t you just love summer?” Ann Marie asked.

  And Magpie did, or she used to when summer smelled of chlorine, of vinyl pool floats, of a time before—

  “Mags?”

  A shadow and a voice were thrown over Magpie as someone familiarly shaped walked up to the bench. Magpie shook her hand out from under her mother’s hand and shielded her face from the sun. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw Ben standing in front of her dressed in pale-blue hospital scrub pants with a scrub top covered in rainbows.

  “Ben?”

  “Mags! It’s you. I thought it was you.”

  But then, inevitably, Ben saw Ann Marie, and his expression clouded over with something like worry—for just the briefest of moments—before he caught himself.

  “Do you… Are you…?” Magpie could not seem to finish her sentence.

  “I volunteer here on Mondays and Wednesdays,” Ben supplied. “During my study periods. My parents are big on volunteering.”

  And because Ann Marie was staring, and because it was becoming more awkward not to introduce her than it would be to introduce her, Magpie put her hand on her mother’s knee, and said, “This is my mom. Mom, this is Ben. We go to school together.”

  “Ben. It’s so nice to meet you,” Ann Marie said, and when she raised her hand to shake Ben’s, Magpie noticed that it shook a little, as the body often shakes whenever you deprive it of something it is very used to getting. She hoped Ben didn’t notice.

  “Likewise, Mrs. Lewis,” Ben said. “We missed you at lunch today, Mags.”

  “She’s my escort,” Ann Marie said proudly, patting her daughter on the arm. And that one word—escort—lingered on just a beat too long for some reason, floating around in the air like fog.

  And then the taxi pulled up, and the moment was over.

  Magpie helped Ann Marie into the car, then she dipped her head into the back seat, and whispered, “Just give me a sec, okay?”

  Ann Marie winked and nodded, and said, “Don’t mind me, sweetheart. Don’t mind me, Mags.” And Magpie wanted to both punch her in the face and kiss her at the same time.

  She straightened up and swung the door closed, not quite latching it, just enough so Ann Marie couldn’t eavesdrop. Then she turned back to Ben.

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said, just as he said, “I’m sorry.”

  And then they both paused for a minute and laughed nervously and didn’t know what to do with their hands.

  Barf.

  Magpie had almost forgotten about Hither. She spotted it now, shaped something like a human, strutting back and forth behind Ben as if it were putting on a show.

  She did her best to ignore it.

  “You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” Magpie said. “This is a free country. Or at least a free hospital. You know.”

  “Still, I just… I wouldn’t want you to think…”

  “Think what?”

  “I dunno. That I was following you or something.”

  Magpie laughed. “I don’t think you followed me to the hospital, Ben.”

  “Well, good. Then my plan is working.”

  The most delicately awkward silence.

  If it had been weird seeing Ben outside of school the first time, it was definitely weird seeing him now, in those scrubs, with a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses pushed up onto his hair, with the certain swagger of someone who is confident in this space. Magpie never wanted to feel confident in a hospital. That sounded awful.

  And she knew she had to tell him the truth. She had already told Clare, and it would be too risky to try to lie now. So she said, in a voice hardly above a whisper, “She was admitted. For—”

  “It’s none of my business,” Ben said quickly. “I’m actually late. I’ll just… see you tomorrow?”

  “For alcohol poisoning,” Magpie added quickly, in the vein of someone pulling a bandage off a deep wound. She winced as her blood spilled and pooled by her feet. Or was that Hither? Turned red and imitating a puddle?

  “I’m sorry,” Ben said.

  “She’s getting help,” Magpie assured him. “It was an accident.”

  “Of course.”

  “She’s not, like…”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well. I should probably go. To get her home.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow, though? Or I could, you know, get your homework for you if you’re not going to be in.”

  Magpie had to exert a certain amount of effort not to laugh. She had not done homework in such a very long time.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll be there.”

  Ben smiled, then he hugged her, a quick hug with no real advance warning so Magpie was left ambushed and unsure of what to do with her arms.

  You could try hugging him back.

  Right. That made sense.

  She hugged him back.

  It was nice hugging Ben. He smelled like spearmint. Gum or mouthwash, maybe.

  Did you just say he smells like mouthwash?

  When they pulled away, Ben gave her a funny salute, then walked into the hospital. Magpie opened the door to the back seat of the cab and slid in next to her mom. She closed the door quickly behind her because she did not want to share a car with Hither.

  It turned into a dragon and spit fire at the windows.

  The cab driver pulled away from the curb, unaware of this.

  “So,” Ann Marie began, attempting and failing to sound only moderately interested. “Ben, huh?”

  “He’s just a friend,” Magpie said.

  “He’s pretty cute.”

  “I guess so. I hadn’t really noticed.”

  “I’m glad you’re meeting new people, sweetheart. You know how much I love Allison, but it’s good to have more than just one friend.”

  Because Allison had been it for years. The beginning and end of Magpie’s social circle. The only person Magpie went to the movies with, ate lunch with, did her homework with, invited over for sleepovers. The only person period.

  Well.

  Not anymore.

  Magpie wondered if she should tell Ann Marie that, if now was the time to let her mother in on the little secret that Allison and Magpie
had not spoken for six months after the Big Terrible Thing That Magpie Did.

  And she almost did tell her.

  But then she looked at her mother and saw how frail and tired she looked. The big dark circles underneath her eyes. The blacks and blues at the crook of her arms where the IVs had been inserted. The broken nail on the ring finger of her right hand. When had she broken that nail? When she’d fallen? When she’d vomited down the front of herself? Before or after that?

  So Magpie bit her tongue instead, and said, “Ben’s pretty nice.”

  “And Clare,” Ann Marie remembered. “I’ve never met Clare, either.”

  “Clare and Ben are friends,” Magpie said. “We sit together at lunch.”

  “Sweetheart, that’s so nice. We’ll have to have the two of them over for dinner sometime. I could make something, or we could order in. Do you know if they like Chinese food?”

  “I dunno. Probably.”

  And as if the thought of ordering Chinese food had exhausted her, Ann Marie let her head rest against the seatback and closed her eyes.

  And a thump from the roof let Magpie know that Hither had landed on top of the car.

  Can’t get rid of me so easily.

  The next morning Magpie found her mother awake before her and cooking breakfast, humming to herself as she flipped an omelet at the stove.

  This was so shocking to Magpie as to be confusing—was she dreaming? Was she hallucinating? Had she crossed into Near without realizing it? But upon closer inspection, it really was Ann Marie, not Near–Ann Marie, complete with blacks and blues and dark circles still painted underneath her eyes.

  But there hadn’t been an egg to speak of in the refrigerator, not to mention orange juice and sliced cantaloupe, both of which now sat on the kitchen table.

  “Mom?”

  Ann Marie jumped a little, then laughed and turned off the burner. She slid the omelet onto a plate where another one already sat waiting. “I hope I didn’t wake you. I was up early and thought I’d do a little grocery shopping. I hope you’re in the mood for eggs.”

  Was Magpie in the mood for eggs? She honestly couldn’t say. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d had eggs, and here was Ann Marie crossing to the table and sliding the newer, piping-hot omelet onto a plate with three slices of melon and a golden-brown piece of toast.