by Meg Leder
I feel gross and sad and anxious and complicit and then sad again.
I try to shake it all off, looking up from my laptop.
Even though it’s getting pretty dusky, next door, Mrs. Edwards is working on her garden, planting marigolds in neat lines, Mr. Edwards puttering behind her on the lawn mower, still. I honestly don’t know how there’s any grass left to mow at this point.
From the other side of our screen door, Mustard lets out a mournful meow.
“You know you can’t come outside right now,” I say to him. “It’s getting too dark.” He blinks slowly at me, his tail swatting impatiently, and then he sees a moth batting against the porch light and he makes a weird little yip noise.
I go back to reading Em’s latest e-mail.
Park, either you still don’t want to talk to me, or the entire city of Cincinnati, Ohio, has fallen into some weird alternative dimension where e-mails can’t be sent or received. I’m going to assume it’s the latter because you know I love you and I’m so sorry if I made you mad and I just want good things for you, okay? Okay.
So yesterday Matty and I decided we’d had enough of lovely ol’ England. We had brunch with Tamsin, and then she and I said good-bye at the train station (so romantic). After that, Matty and I hopped on a train to Wales and then got on a boat. Guess where we are now? IRELAND! We’re in Dublin tonight—tomorrow we’re taking a bus across the country—we’re going to some place called the Dingle Peninsula. (Every time I say it, Matty snickers under his breath.) Evidently, they have a dolphin living there that everyone calls Fungie (terrible name, no?). And cliffs and hiking and old ruins. And the hostel we’re going to stay at is haunted!
It’s been cool traveling with Matty—it’s nice not having to share rooms at hostels with strangers—though he never wants to go shopping with me. I miss you pretty much all the time, but that’s one of the times when I miss you the most.
How are things going with everything? Have you told your family about the internship? I’m thinking of you.
Miss you, xoxo, Em
She’s right. I don’t want to talk to her. It’s unfair and unreasonable, but it’s so much easier to ignore the pangs of guilt about the lies when someone isn’t pointing them out to me.
At least it was until tonight. Now that Charlie knows, things are going to get even harder.
The pool of dread in my stomach stirs right as a horn honks.
Finn’s truck is idling in front of our house. He’s leaning across the passenger seat, looking at me through the open window.
Despite my mood, I smile. “Hello, Finnegan!” I yell, and I see him frown at the name.
Mustard meows behind the screen.
Mrs. Edwards sits back on her feet, squinting in Finn’s direction, trying to make out who it is in the twilight.
I wait for him to say something.
“Um, yeah, so do you want to hang out?” he finally says.
I look at the blinking cursor of my screen and then back up at the only person besides Ruby who knows my secrets right now.
Correction, the only person besides Ruby and my brother.
I slam my laptop shut. “Give me a second.”
I see Mrs. Edwards purse her lips and shake her head, standing up and going inside.
When I push the door open, Mustard tries to wrap himself around me, but I shoo him to the side, earning a bite on my leg.
“Little jerk,” I say to him as he stalks out of the room.
I leave my laptop on the coffee table and grab only my purse and keys, locking the door behind me.
• • •
Finn’s truck rolls to a stop on the side of the road.
When I hop out, I’m greeted with evening. It’s cooled off now that the sun’s set, and the world around us is musty with goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace, itchy with nettles and weeds. Finn heads toward the left, parts the brush in front of us, holds it to the side for me.
I pause. “What if there are snakes?”
Finn shakes his head. “No snakes.”
I nod and step forward.
We’re in front of a large fence, one that stretches to the right and left of us, as far as I can see. On the other side is a runway lined with blue lights. There’s a tower at the end of it, more flashing lights behind it.
“The airport?”
He nods.
“But isn’t this trespassing?” I ask.
“Not on this side of the fence.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. Not trespassing. No snakes. You’re not going to break your leg. It’s not a survivalist cult compound. Trust me.”
I flush red.
He settles down on the grass facing the runway and then lies down all the way, cradling his head in his hands. I hear him humming softly—Taylor Swift again—and I give in, lying down next to him, my hands fretting at the corner of my T-shirt.
“I’m sorry I worry so much,” I finally say. “I don’t mean to. But it’s like my brain can’t stop.”
He waits for me to say more.
“I used to think it started with Charlie being sick. But even when I was little, I worried about stuff. I worried about getting bit by a spider or Charlie leaving me behind. I worried about there being ghosts in the basement. I worried about getting kidnapped by the helium people.”
“The helium people?” Finn asks.
“Yeah. When I was little, Grandma McCullough told me this story about gravity people and helium people that totally freaked me out. Being a helium person sounded like the worst fate ever.”
“Why? What’s a helium person?”
So I tell him the story of the little girl who was made of gravity, who spent all her time on the ground being safe. And how she met another little girl of helium, who spent all her time flying in the sky.
“I realize the point is that the gravity girl’s fear gets the best of her, that she’s missing out on the world around her, that she’s holding her new friend back. But when I was little, I was convinced she was doing the right thing by not letting go.”
“Huh,” Finn says, his voice doubtful. “That’s a pretty shitty story.”
I laugh, surprised. “Don’t hold back.”
“Come on. The gravity girl was terrified. I don’t blame her for holding on to the helium girl. Sure, it might not have been the best thing, but she was just a scared kid.”
A jolt of surprise runs along my arms like static electricity.
“No offense to your grandma or anything,” he adds quickly, propping himself up, anxious he’s overstepped.
“None taken. Really, it’s okay.”
He flops back down, clearing his throat after a minute. “When I was a kid, I was scared of the dark.”
This time I wait.
“Johnny used to tell me he saw our mom outside the windows at night when it was raining, and she was all bloody and broken from the car accident, and her teeth were sharp and pointed like a vampire’s.”
I make everything in me go still, the words I want to say, the way my hand wants to reach out to his.
“At first, anytime it rained at night, I’d try to man up and stay awake, because I wanted to see her, you know? But then I’d lie there, thinking more about it, and the thought of those teeth? Scared the crap out of me. I’d close my eyes and my whole body would freeze up, and I was too much of a baby to even go to the bathroom. I wondered how I’d ever see my mom again if I was scared of the dark. But I still couldn’t open my eyes.”
His words remind me of the first time Charlie was in the hospital for an extended stay. I’d wake up, convinced I heard him on the other side of the wall, and then I’d remember he wasn’t there, and then I’d stare at the ceiling, unable to move, wondering what was in his room instead.
Fear is so lonely making.
“Every time, I somehow managed to fall asleep anyway. And then I’d wake up in the morning needing to pee like no one’s business, and outside, everything looked normal, like the night bef
ore was never real, like my mom had always been gone.”
“Did you ever see her?” I ask.
“Johnny was just screwing with me.”
“I know, but maybe she was still watching over you, without the scary teeth, you know?”
Finn shakes his head. “No. The moment her car hit that telephone pole, she was gone.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“I don’t really remember her. Johnny insists there was nothing to miss, that she was just as much of an asshole as the rest of us.”
I suck in my breath. The grass is itchy against the backs of my legs, and I can hear Finn breathing next to me, see the rise and fall of his chest.
“But you’re not an asshole,” I say, my voice soft. I nudge him gently on the shoulder with my hand and he nudges right back. He stretches his arms farther behind his head, and the corner of his T-shirt hitches up. Even though the light is dim, I can still make out his skin underneath, the way it’s entirely covered with faded yellow bruises.
“Finn,” I say under my breath, half sitting up, and his smile fades as he jerks the T-shirt back down.
“It’s fine.” I hear the note of exasperation in his voice.
“I know I don’t know much about boxing, but are you supposed to get that hurt?”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“But what if your organs are hurt?”
“Parker, my organs are fine, okay?” he snaps. “Stop worrying about everything.”
I flinch, wishing my brain were different.
But what if he’s really hurt?
After a few seconds, Finn clears his throat. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t the right thing to say.”
I turn my head to look at him, but his eyes are closed, and I can see the kid in him, face scrunched tight against the dark, against a ghost of a mom with teeth.
“Okay,” I say. “But will you just be careful when you box? Please? Now that I found you, I don’t want to lose you again.”
As soon as I’ve said it, I wonder if I’ve said too much, but Finn nods, inclining his head slightly, so it’s angled against my shoulder.
“Okay,” he says.
From the distance, I hear an engine and realize it’s coming from the runway, and it’s getting closer, and then I see lights heading our way, getting bigger and brighter.
“Here we go,” Finn says, and there’s something in his voice I haven’t heard before, something bright and untarnished, something new and vulnerable.
I watch as the lights get closer, see the airplane taking shape against the black of the sky behind it, see the enormity of it like it’s going to run us over, like it’s going to run our hearts into the ground.
Right then, Finn carefully twines his fingers in mine, giving my hand a gentle squeeze, and I realize maybe what we have isn’t exactly just friends anymore, but then the engine is roaring, the wind force pushing our hair off our faces, and the plane lifts off right in front of us, its nose rising into the night above us, and then the rest of it, leaving the earth, and for a second it’s so close, I could put my free hand up and touch it, all of gravity holding me close as tons of steel take flight, light as helium.
Thirty-Nine
MY ELBOWS ARE BENT, resting on my knees, and I’m pushing everything I have into the mound of red-brown clay in front of me. One side is uneven, the heel of my palm bumping into it every time it passes under my left hand, leaving a brief phantom space right after. But I wedge my right hand hard against it, pushing gently with the left, until it’s smooth and centered on the wheel.
Maybe it was the little bit of creative confidence I got from painting with Finn in the tunnel last week. Or maybe it’s just all the extra practice I’ve had on the wheel. But the past few times I’ve tried, I’ve managed to center the clay. And each time it happens, I feel this rush of satisfaction, that I’ve wrangled the heaviness into something grounded and steady.
I start to form the lump into a bowl.
Carla is bustling around behind me, taking pots out of the kiln, making small sighs of appreciation as she notices the way her new batch of glazes is settling.
But it’s all background noise, because to my astonishment, for the first time since I started this, the clay in front of me is doing what it’s supposed to do.
I feel a knot of tension in my shoulders, but the rest of me is assured, my fingers lifting up and out, the curve of clay following my lead, walls rising.
“Not bad at all,” Carla says, and I look up at her, startled. She points at the clay in front of me, clicks off my wheel.
Sometime in the past half hour, I have managed to shape something shapeless into a bowl, high and small and not nearly big enough for salad but maybe okay for some ice cream.
“Huh,” I say, looking at it, still dazed. “It’s kind of crooked around the top. And the bottom is heavy.”
“That’s what trimming is for,” Carla says.
“I don’t love this bulge in the middle. I guess I didn’t wedge it enough.”
“Parker, you threw a bowl.”
I wipe my clay-covered hands on my apron. “But it’s not—”
“Stop,” Carla says. “You did this. It’s yours. Not to get all hokey, but you gave it life—you found its shape.”
I look up at her, a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.
“That is kind of hokey,” I say.
Carla rolls her eyes, shaking her head. “That bowl doesn’t suck,” she says.
“It doesn’t suck,” I admit, looking at the weird crooked thing I made sitting on the wheel.
“And it’s yours.”
“It’s mine,” I say.
And it is. It’s something I made with my two hands, something that didn’t exist in the world before me, something that wouldn’t exist without me.
And for those ten to twenty minutes I was shaping it, my mind was quiet. My hands were steady, strong, my feet solid against the ground.
It’s a terrible bowl. I know that.
And there’s still trimming to get through, which means that I might cut a hole through it or not trim enough. Or glazing: I could pick an ugly color. I might put on too much, and it will run, the pot sticking to the kiln. I might not put on enough, leaving bald spots. The pot might crack under the heat.
I know these things too.
But I think about the day I got my Harvard acceptance, how it felt like a house landed on my chest.
I think about the first day of my internship, how I was too terrified to even get on an elevator.
And I think about now, how I feel like I belong at Carla’s, how I made something that has nothing to do with my parents or Charlie or cancer or Harvard.
I made this.
It’s a terrible bowl, and I feel prouder of it than I did of my SAT scores and Harvard scholarship combined.
I take a wire and slide it under my creation, then use the silver spatula to wiggle the bowl off the bat and onto a piece of particleboard, taking care to tuck plastic around it, keeping it safe until the clay is dry enough to trim.
Carla helps me find a good spot for it on the shelf.
“By the way, I meant to tell you, I finally talked with the volunteer coordinator at Wild Meadows,” she says. “Alice isn’t coming back for a while.”
“Is she okay?”
“They think she had a stroke last week.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling a little crack in my heart, thinking of Alice’s hands fluttering over the paintbrush. “I hope she’s okay. I’d been researching some things to try with her.”
Carla nods. “That’s a good idea, Parker. You know, I took some art therapy classes back in college. I still have a few of the books, if you want to borrow them.”
“Yeah, actually that’d be pretty cool.”
Carla nods toward the clay, and I go over and grab another chunk and start wedging it on the block. As my hands move through it, kneading it, working the bubbles out of it, I wonder if I should tell Carla about Finn’s bruises. B
ut then I remind myself of how I overreacted with Charlie at Kings Island, how I worry too much.
“Do you think it’d be okay for me to visit Alice? Maybe tomorrow afternoon?” I say instead, turning around to look at her.
“Sure, yeah. I bet Alice would welcome a visitor. I can make a call to Nancy, the volunteer coordinator, to see if it’s okay. I’ve got that conference in Dayton tomorrow, but it’s fine with me if you close up for the day. I can text you.”
“Thanks,” I say, nodding. “I’d like that.”
Forty
THE NEXT MORNING, I brace myself and press the doorbell, then step back, my Converse kicking the concrete like a nervous habit.
It’s overcast and muggy, the sky expectant with rain, like it would take one wrong word for it to just let loose.
Carla texted me last night, giving me the go-ahead to visit Alice, but I realized I didn’t want to go by myself. Plus, I needed a car.
I hope it’s okay that I’m here. What if Johnny answers the door? What if Finn’s too busy? What if he’s tired of bailing me out whenever I need a car?
But then the door opens and he’s there, wearing an Alice in Chains T-shirt and his usual cargo shorts, feet bare, hair tousled, like he just woke up.
He gives me a small smile.
It’s natural and easy, a smile that shows the gap between his two front teeth, and right then it moves over me like the sudden introduction of light into a dark room, everything making itself known in the new brightness.
Being with Finn is about more than needing a car.
When I’m with Finn, I can be myself.
It’s like talking with Ruby or being at Carla’s. No one’s expecting the valedictorian, the healthy sister, the responsible daughter, the future doctor.
They’re just expecting me.
The simple realization makes me want to cry with relief.
“Parker?” He steps outside, shutting the door behind him, shoving his fists in his pockets. “How’d you know where I live?”
“Internet. Hey, can you drive me somewhere right now?”
He waits a second, to see if I’m going to say more, then nods. “Just a minute.” The door shuts behind him.
