Wendy’s pictures.
Wendy’s drawings.
Wendy’s school papers.
Wendy’s books.
Wendy’s medical records.
I have no idea how long I’ve been in here. There’s no telling how much longer Ruth will buy me being in that bathroom. But I’ve just been handed a key to my mother’s entire existence, and I’m not about pass it up. I quickly open the one with the pictures first and grab a stack blindly, shoving them down into the purse I’ve now claimed as my own. I bypass the drawings and papers, and I’m about to move beyond the books to the medical records when I notice that the books in question aren’t reading books they’re journals. They’re diaries. With speed I can only assume is fueled by adrenaline, I jerk that drawer open and grab all of them, shoving them into the purse as well.
I’m just about to open the container holding the medical records when I hear my name being called. My heart lodges into my throat, realizing I’ve been caught. Ruth is banging on the bathroom door, and I jump to my feet, knocking over one of the bins in the process, sending a whole box of book reports scattering across my mom’s old bedroom floor.
The commotion sends Ruth running in the direction of the bedroom, and in a moment of panic, I lunge for the double windows and throw them open. Running out onto the balcony that my mother probably once stood upon, I debate whether or not to run or stay. I sling her purse over one shoulder then mine over the other and crawl over the railing.
It’s a short fall, but my life flashes before my eyes anyway, and I lose my breath upon impact. When I come to a few moments later, I am on the ground staring up at Ruth Dewitt shouting at me from the balcony that I’m from the devil, and I need to be cleansed of my sins. She’s calling for an exorcism. She’s practically screaming for a healing from my wicked ways.
All I can focus on are the purses bouncing at my sides as I round the corner of her house and wave my hands frantically while shouting for Elliot to start the car, because I’m one hundred percent sure she’s about to call the police.
Nags Head beach stretches out to my right, and the long pier extends into the waves on my left. Cline is out somewhere in town getting food, and Audrey sits between a couple of dunes as the sun begins to set in the sky The salt water carries in the wind, and I can feel it start to clump in my hair as I walk the edge of the shoreline, waiting.
I just have no idea what I’m waiting for.
She came tearing out of Ruth’s backyard, screaming for us to drive like she was in some kind of bank heist and had half a million dollars’ worth of jewels in her possession. The pure excitement and fear on her face made my heart slam into my sternum, and Cline started swearing, and then, suddenly, she was in the car and the front door was open, and there was yelling and I was driving. Tires squealing. I slammed my head into the top of the car. Cline went flying across the backseat and almost into the back of the Xterra. But all the while, Audrey just held onto the oh-shit handle, a huge smile on her face, and her other arm gripping onto an old bag full of what I now know is a bunch of journals and pictures of her mom.
She’s been in the dunes for over an hour looking through them, and while she’s calmed down, she hasn’t spoken at all, and I’m not sure if I’m supposed to approach her or not. This is what we came for. We figured the beach was the best place to go, so we headed that way, and I’ve been on the edge of the water ever since, hoping the cops don’t show up. They haven’t yet.
Audrey’s face is downcast, partly hidden behind the tall grasses in the dunes and the shadows that are starting to form as the sun sets. Her skin glows orange from the distant burning of the last rays of the sun, and I take in her posture as she sits cross legged and shoeless in the sand. Her long black skirt is bunched up over her knees and covered in soft white sand, her teal v-neck t-shirt hangs open as she reads over the books scattered around her. I’ve walked closer and am staring, like I do. It’s a thing my mom says I’ve done my entire life: I’m a people watcher.
It’s probably why I’m good at making molds and creatures, characters and profiles for games. I catch the subtle things about people that others might just overlook or discount. I store them away, because the little things are what make up the whole of a person.
This girl pulls at her clothes unconsciously, especially around her stomach, like she’s never exactly comfortable in her own skin. She’s wearing a bracelet made of soda can tops and elastic today, and as she reads, she alternates between tucking her hair behind her ears and fussing with the aluminum against her skin. She’s always moving.
“Hey, girl,” I say as I approach and watch her jump slightly, her head rolling upward to acknowledge me. “Are you from Tennessee?”
She laughs and shakes her head, then closes the journal in her lap and stretches her legs out, letting her skirt fold down a little as she points her toes out. She pats the sand next to her and then wipes her hands off on her knees. “Am I the only ten you see, Elliot?”
“Damnit, you beat me to it.” I sit down next to her and pull my knees to my chest, resting my arms on top of them as I gaze out at the ocean and the last remnants of the sunset.
“There aren’t that many girls on the beach tonight, so I don’t have much competition anyway,” she says with a laugh. Her posture straightens and she holds up the book. “My mom was a badass, Elliot. These first diaries, or whatever, were from when she was super young, like, grade school and middle school. So they’re mostly about friends and stupid shit. A few mentions of Ruth and her being too strict. Nothing really important. But then I got to these …”
I turn to look at the ones she’s pointing to, and she runs her hand over the top of the stack. There are four full journals in the sand and another in her hand. Her eyes are wide, and the breeze from the sea lifts her hair from behind her ears, making it stick out from the side of her head and flutter in the wind. I reach out and tuck it back in and she doesn’t flinch, just stares at me from a few inches away.
“These are from when she was in high school and things got rough at home, I guess. I mean I haven’t read through all of them, and Ruth said my mom was a good daughter before she met my dad, but this says the opposite. My mom ran away and hitchhiked across a bunch of states before she met Patrick. That’s how they got together. She was on her way to a concert.” She smiles so big, and I can see her eyes start to water before she turns her head and tries to be discreet about wiping at them. She clears her throat and looks back across the water. “Anyway. She went from here to Tennessee according to these. But nothing mentions another guy. Plus, these are all dated at the time she met Patrick, and I wasn’t born for another fifteen years.”
“This was about finding out who your mom was, right? Not the guy.”
She doesn’t look at me, just messes with her bracelet again and nods. “Yeah. I wanted to know my mom. That’s all. And this is perfect. We can head back whenever you’re ready. I got what I needed.”
There’s something in the way that she says it that makes me hesitate. “Where did she go first?”
Audrey turns to me, her upper body angled at mine and her eyebrows drawn together, mouth pulled into a frown. “Not far. She spent the first night here, actually. On the beach. Sleeping under the stars. Complained about the sand lice and stuff in the morning.” She laughs and puts the book down in the sand. “Obviously, sleeping on the beach is illegal and you can get arrested for it, so it’s a good thing she didn’t try to do it now.”
I shrug. “Or we could. We could sleep here tonight. Then go where she went next.”
“You want to follow my mom’s trail? You don’t have to do that. That would be weird.”
“Why?” I reach out and stop her from touching the metal around her wrist, holding her fingers between mine. She goes still as we both look down at where we’re touching, and I glance up just as the sun slips beyond the horizon. “When you called that night and we went to the diner, you said you wanted to run away. Maybe it’s in your DNA. Maybe you
need to. Just like your mom.”
“There’s a lot of stuff in my DNA. Doesn’t mean I should just go off and do whatever.” She snatches her hand away from mine and stands quickly, gathering up the books and reaches for her shoes. “It’s all nice in theory, but …”
I stand too and take a step back to watch her wage a war within herself as she weighs the options I’ve presented. “But, what? Come on. Run away with me, Audrey.”
Her stare is unwavering as she chews on her lip. “And Cline. Unless you plan to leave him here.”
It deflates the situation a little bit, but I don’t care. “And Cline. It’ll be fun. Let’s go where your mom went. We’ll start with tonight. Are you in?”
Her hand slips into mine, and it’s the only answer I need.
“We’re gonna get caught and go to jail and die.” Cline is whispering from the backseat like we’re on a stakeout.
“You can speak in a normal voice. We’re inside the car.” Audrey is pretending not to be nervous, but the waver in her voice belies her false bravado. “Also, that’s not how it works. You don’t just go to jail and die. If anything, it would be a holding cell and your mom would have to come bail you out. You’d pee in front of a few guys. Like on TV.”
“That’s how I would die. I’d hold my pee until it retracted back into my body and I died of sepsis.” Cline hisses the last s at her.
It’s nearly midnight, and we’ve seen a couple patrol cars ride by as well as a local with a flashlight looking for crap left on the beach. But I’m bound and determined to do this simply because it almost feels like we can’t stop now. I didn’t drive all the way to Alabama to get my dad’s old camping gear and then into North Carolina to steal books from an old lady’s house just to stop now.
We wait another fifteen minutes, and once we’re sure everything is clear, I make a motion with my fingers in the dark. Audrey leans over the console and slaps my hand.
“The hell are you doing? This isn’t some kind of Black Ops mission. Plus, the sleeping bags are in the back, so we have to open the car doors and stuff.”
“For once I agree with her. Don’t be a douche.” Cline reaches behind him and wrestles with a sleeping bag before sliding it forward and pushing it between the seats. “Here. Wait. Are there only two bags?”
I look over my shoulder at him and raise my hands in question. “Did you not bring one? What did you pack?”
“I packed clothes! And snacks. A phone charger. My pillow. I thought we’d be sleeping in the car or a hotel or something. Don’t give me that look, Elliot. I wasn’t exactly invited.”
“Then you don’t exactly have a sleeping bag,” I counter.
Audrey sighs and rubs her face with her hands. “He can have mine.”
“What are you going to sleep in?” I’m all for chivalry, but I was kind of counting on having something to sleep in tonight, and I’m sure Cline won’t reject her offer which means I’ll give her mine and be left without.
She grins in the darkness. “Jet pack time in a sleeping bag?”
My mouth drops open, and I slide away from her to the car door. “What kind of heathen do you think I am?”
“We brought an extra blanket. Relax. I’ll give you space. Jeez.” The look in her eyes tells me she’s lying.
Cline opens the door and starts to scoot outside. “I don’t even want to know what kind of weird-ass code that is.”
We all meet at the front of the car and wait to see if anyone is around. When I’m sure the coast is clear, I whisper for them to run, and we all take off at the same time, headed straight for the dunes, white sand spraying up around our feet as we dash toward a dip in the beach. The light doesn’t shine as bright there, and a fence blocks the area off just enough that if we’re sleeping on the ground, it would be hard for anyone to see us.
Breathing heavy and laughing quietly, we slip off our shoes and unroll the sleeping bags. Cline is in his quickly while Audrey and I unzip ours and open it to flatten it out on the moonlit sand. She lets the blanket unfurl, and the wind from the ocean makes it fly out of her hand, so I catch it and bring it back, settling it over us as we lay on our backs beneath the stars.
She stares up at the sky, her chin jutting out from the edge of the blanket and her eyes reflecting the clear constellations above. I wonder for a moment what she’s thinking. If she’s glad that she’s here. If I made the right choice. When her hand finds mine between us and she smiles as she closes her eyes, I have to believe that she’s thinking about her mom and that I did the right thing after all.
I can’t sleep at all lying between Elliot and Cline on the beach under the same stars my mom once slept beneath. My mind races, and my chest is heavy with so many questions that I can’t calm myself down enough to even allow a minutes’ worth of rest. The moment I close my eyes, I’m assaulted with things I’ve done wrong or something I’ve said that I shouldn’t have. Year’s of anxiety plague me in the darkness. Miranda’s face flashes between childhood memories that I once held sacred, and they become marred with her presence even though she wasn’t there.
My thoughts turn to her and her increasing hatred of me throughout the years. I wonder exactly when she was told about Patrick not being my father. I wonder what the precise moment was when she stopped hating me for having his attention and started loathing me for being born at all. Her transition from cold step-mother to functioning alcoholic, pill-popping antagonizer didn’t happen overnight. It was gradual.
Her girls' nights out became more often, bleeding into weekdays. She’d find any excuse to take a pill. Burn her finger on the stove? Pop an OxyContin. Headache from the night before? Take a Vicodin. She had multiple doctors and multiple prescriptions, a mini pharmacy in her bathroom that Patrick overlooked for one reason or another. Lorcet, Percocet, Demerol, and I think one time I found a bottle of Adderall stashed away in there. When she was prescribed the Xanax on top of all of that is when things started to really get bad.
My incident had already occurred, and she knew I was in therapy. She’d been the one to find me, and some nights when I can’t sleep I wonder why she didn’t just leave me there. Her life would have been so much easier if she had. But a diagnosis of depression and anxiety at a young age will color a person’s perception of you. She didn’t side step me and treat me like I was fragile. No, she seemed to come at me harder, like maybe I was just a little cracked and she could fully break me.
Patrick tiptoed around me, ever watchful when he was in the room. But I didn’t say anything to him about what was happening behind his back in his own home. Would he even believe me? Or would he say I was crazy and take her side anyway? It wasn’t worth the risk.
The weight gain from the meds came on quickly and so did Miranda’s ridicule. I’d stopped speaking to everyone after what I’d done. Dr. Stark once asked me if I was embarrassed by it, but I stand firm that I’m not. No one knows except the three of us and the doctors. I stopped talking because everyone I ever knew in my entire life knew Byrdie and she technically didn’t exist. How do you talk to people who don’t even know the real you … when you don’t even know who you truly are?
The silence was first. Then the weight. Miranda put me on this really strict vegetarian diet that she would prepare. Then she went on Atkins and would sit across from me, eating a pound of bacon in the morning, laughing as she stuffed her face. Patrick never saw.
Holidays meant nothing to me anymore. The last few that happened while I lived in that house, they travelled on their own, saying they needed more time together. I pretended to understand. Acted like I didn’t care. I was a teenager and didn’t want to be around them anyway.
Miranda’s mother called often and would send gifts but had nothing to do with me. Once, right before Christmas, as Patrick was in the kitchen getting coffee, Miranda held up a pair of diamond earrings her mother had bought her and sighed. “When you see things like this, does it make you miss having a mom?” she asked, the lights from the tree reflected in her too sma
ll eyes, like she was innocently posing a question that wasn’t going to send me into an anxiety attack right there on the spot.
I spent the rest of the day wedged between my bed and my dresser grasping for a reason to live.
Panic rises in my chest as the memories begin to bombard me, so I slip out of the blanket and move toward the shoreline as the sky begins to grow a bit brighter. I’ve never seen a sunrise over the ocean before, so I set my eyes on that as I count my breaths and swallow down the swelling in my throat. Fingers pressed to my pulse point, I stretch my other hand out and tap out a rhythm of threes and fours until I’ve calmed myself enough to start taking in air. The tears that have collected in my eyes begin to spill down my cheeks and are instantly swept away by the breeze coming off the oncoming waves.
It’s moments like these that remind me that no matter how hard I try or how many things I do, my life will never be easy or what other people consider conventional. I may fight this thing until the day I die. But at least I’ll fight it.
The thing that’s beginning to worry me is that my mother’s journals show no sign of this being hereditary.
Nagging thoughts of this plague me as I shuffle back to where the boys are still sleeping in the sand. Cline’s snoring is so loud I’m afraid he could set off a car alarm. But Elliot is resting on his side, his arm outstretched toward my pillow like he’s been searching for me in his sleep. My chest aches at the sight, so I look away, reminding myself that we’re all here as friends, on a mission to find answers for the sole reason of getting info on me for Elliot’s game. And along the way, I will find the courage to talk to Cline. Then I can go about my life, and Dr. Stark can get off my back about this little Eight Steps to Happiness bullshit she’s been pushing at me for the last year.
Elliot stirs and his eyes blink open once, then twice, before he sits up and holds a hand to his forehead to shield his face from the sunrise. “Hey.”
She Dims the Stars Page 6
