Like Mandarin

by Kirsten Hubbard

  I took a deep breath. Maybe that was my mistake. Because at that moment, the wind increased. I felt my throat capture it, my lungs swell with it.

  And all of a sudden, I longed to pretend that nothing had happened. To pretend Mandarin had never betrayed me, and I had never betrayed her back. To pretend that this was one of our spangled, breathless, fucking-gorgeous nights, like the one we spent at the canal, or the one when we liberated the trophies, or even the night of the tri-county pageant, before everything went sour. I needed to hold our magic just a little longer. Whatever it took.

  “Mandarin.” I grabbed both her hands. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “Away. Let’s leave town. Tonight.”

  She shook her head. “You’re crazy.”

  “You don’t have to work later, do you? Will anyone miss you?”

  She glanced down at our entwined fingers.

  “I’m serious, Mandarin! I really want to go this time, I mean it. You can count on me. I haven’t got the modeling pictures back from where I sent the film, but I’ll bring my camera and we can take new ones. On the beach—the beach in California. Or in the strawberry fields. Come and get me at midnight. That’ll give us enough time to pack.”

  Despite her tears, I thought I saw the trembling beginnings of a smile.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah really. We can do this! And not for the people here, but for us. We just made too big of a deal out of it, made it seem harder than it really is. When it’s really just about—”

  “Taking that first step,” Mandarin finished.

  “Exactly!” I exclaimed. “Look—I’ll wait on my front porch at midnight. With two bowls of strawberry ice cream for the road.” I squeezed her hands more tightly. Her wet eyelashes looked like stars. “Will you go?”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding, smiling at last.

  Her smile made me want to dance. Maybe I would have if I hadn’t been balanced at the very top of the Tombs, dizzy with adrenaline, the Bighorn River slogging along many feet below. When I stood, the earth appeared to drop another ten feet. “Are you ready to go?”

  “I’m going to stay here a bit.” She paused. “Grace?”

  I caught my balance at the edge of the boulder before I glanced back.

  “Thanks,” Mandarin said. “For everything.”

  I noticed she was gripping her mother’s arrowhead. For some strange reason, her words plucked at my spine like a winter chill. But I chose to ignore them.

  “So I’ll see you at midnight, all right?” I lowered my feet onto the next rock. “Forget this stupid river. We’re going to see the ocean!”

  When I crawled into the cave, I found it almost entirely dark. I’d never stayed out at the Tombs so late. I could barely make out the Virgin Mary, or the nameless Indian mother, or whoever she was.

  For a second I paused, squinting at the twin black splotches of her eyes, recalling how I used to consider her the perfect mother. Now, in the dark, she just looked creepy. I had an urge to smear my hand across the stone surface. But I didn’t want some prehistoric Native American curse to thunder down upon me. I scrambled out. The wildwinds thrust against me until my feet hit the ground.

  Forty minutes after midnight, I sat with my back against the front door of my house. I had nothing with me but two bowls of melted pink ice cream, cradled on my lap.

  I heard the drone of the summer cicadas, a few crickets, the tick-tick-flutter of someone’s sprinklers. Far off, a dog bayed forlornly. Or maybe a coyote. I didn’t hear what I was listening for: the hum of an engine, the rasp of tires on Pioneer Ridge’s patchy asphalt.

  The street was empty.

  Earlier, after Momma had gone to bed, I’d opened the closet and stared at my clothes. Then I shut the door and paced around, looking at my room from different angles. The stack of shoe boxes containing every worthy rock I’d ever found. The stupid swans peeling from my walls. Grandma’s musty pillows. My camera. My old computer, and the books on my shelves. I could place each one: where and when I’d gotten it, what I’d been doing when I read it.

  At eleven-forty-five, when I’d finally brought the bowls of ice cream outside and sat atop the porch steps, I was ready.

  Not ready to go.

  But ready to betray her again.

  And if it was possible, considering her criteria, ready for her to hate me.

  When I’d made that difficult decision to leave my shoes in my closet and my camera on my desk, it had never occurred to me that Mandarin wouldn’t come. I felt hurt by it, despite the circumstances. But as the minutes passed, ticking toward the end of the hour, I also felt afraid.

  Maybe I can’t be happy anywhere, she had said.

  And that night of my birthday, at the football field: It feels like I’m disconnected.

  And at the river, after the trophy liberation: I’d want to float away.

  I had left her on top of the Tombs, overlooking the river, in that mood. She hadn’t wanted to accompany me down. I should have insisted. Wasn’t Mandarin capable of anything?

  I was so lost in my thoughts, I became aware of the rumbling only gradually, as if it had begun somewhere deep underground and was rising to the surface. I strained against it, prayed for it to quit, but it only grew louder. I scanned the street one last time. Then, cradling both bowls in the crook of my arm, I wrangled open the front door, squeezed through the gap, and kicked it shut.

  In the dark hall, I leaned against the other side of the door with my cheek against the wood, listening to the roar of the mosquito truck. I could smell it, the toxic stink entering my lungs, my blood vessels, and then the truck receded and the roar faded away.

  The phone rang, a shock in the silence.

  Startled, I almost dropped the ice cream bowls, juggling them for a precarious instant before setting them on the floor. I grabbed the phone before it could ring a second time.

  “Hello?” I whispered.

  When I heard her voice, I slid down the front door until I was crouching, my face and fingers and knees folded around the receiver, as she explained what she was doing, and why she had to do it, alone. I tried to convince her otherwise. But already the rumbling was beginning again: the mosquito truck’s second coming. The sound approached faster this time, as if the driver had made a wrong turn and was speeding to correct it, louder and louder, until I could hardly hear her words, or my own reply, my weak effort to change her mind.

  By the time I hung up the phone, the roar had died completely.

  The night was so silent I could hear the motor of the refrigerator. I picked up the ice cream bowls and followed the sound to the kitchen.

  I turned the faucet to hot, held the bowls up high, and poured, watching the twin pink rivers fold into the running water. I stacked the bowls and stuck my hands, then my arms, under the water as I breathed in the steam, purifying my body of fifteen years of wildwinds and mosquito poison.

  “Grace? Are you all right?”

  Momma stood in the doorway. She wore a pale yellow terry cloth bathrobe. Her muumuu was probably still rancid from baby pool water.

  “Who was that on the phone?”

  I turned off the faucet, feeling a weak little flare of that familiar annoyance. Lie, habit compelled me. Deny. She doesn’t deserve to know. But that would take too much energy. “She’s gone,” I said.

  “Gone? Who’s gone?”

  “Mandarin.”

  “But … what …” Momma stumbled over her words. “I don’t understand. Gone? Should we get the police? If there’s still a chance—”

  “It’s too late.”

  I felt hot tears soaking my cheeks, but I wasn’t sobbing. Telling Momma the truth was more of a relief than I ever would have dreamed. Even better than standing up to her. It felt like a giant sigh, a sweet gulp of air after centuries of submersion.

  She had asked, and I had told her.

  For now, that was all I needed.

  As I passed through the living room, the sky i
n the window seemed to glow slightly, as if radioactive, like some momentous event had unfolded just beyond my scope of sight. The cicadas were silent. But like a solitary violinist, one lucky cricket began to play.

  Everybody gaped as I unfolded Davey’s note in homeroom. Kids in Washokey would never learn to stare with subtlety.

  The news of Mandarin’s disappearance had infiltrated the town by Monday. By Friday, the other students seemed to believe my silence was the indicator of some profound information—even though I’d always been that quiet in class. But if I’d discovered anything these past few weeks, it was that a person’s actions could be interpreted in a number of ways, depending on who was watching. Their viewpoints were simply skewed by their beliefs, their prejudices, and their private desires.

  Their personal kaleidoscopes.

  I couldn’t judge them, of course. I was the same way.

  Not bothering to conceal it, I read Davey’s note: I’m sorry about the phone calls. He’d called several times that week, but I hadn’t gone to the phone.

  “That’s okay,” I replied out loud. “Thanks, though.”

  He nodded at me, then scribbled in his notebook again. He ripped out the page and handed it to me without folding it.

  I just wanted to be sure you’re all right, it read. Are you?

  The loudspeaker beeped. I toyed with the piece of petrified wood in my pocket as Mr. Beck began the final announcements of my sophomore year—which was also sort of my freshman year, but who was counting?

  “May I have your attention, please,” Mr. Beck said. There was a definite catch in his voice. “Good morning, everyone, on this … Friday, June fifteenth. It’s a fine day, with the temperature in the low eighties. This is your principal, Mr. Beck, on the last day of school. As you all know, commencement will take place on the football field at four. Seniors should be dismissed following homeroom for rehearsal.”

  He paused, as if searching for something to say. “I hope you all have a splendid summer vacation.”

  As soon as the loudspeaker clicked off, the door to the classroom creaked open. Samantha Dent’s timid face appeared in the gap. Volunteering as an office aide had been her service project.

  “Um, excuse me,” she said. “Mr. Beck would like to see Grace in his office.”

  I glanced at Ms. Ingle. She stood before an old yellow flag, the one with the coiled snake: Don’t Tread on Me. “Go ahead,” she said.

  I dropped my reply to Davey’s note on his desk. Then I squeezed by Alexis. Her hair was pulled back with a headband I remembered from elementary school. For a second, I expected her to smile, or smirk, or even grimace—to acknowledge our history, our years of friendship, inhibited as they might have been. Some demonstration that despite our differences, she cared. But she just looked away.

  I hesitated beside Ms. Ingle’s desk. I’d considered what I was about to do a hundred times in the past week, but I hadn’t actually decided until I set my piece of petrified wood in front of her.

  “You know my service project didn’t turn out the way I’d planned …,” I began.

  Ms. Ingle looked at me quizzically. “Grace, it’s not a problem. You put in far more than ten hours’ effort.”

  “I guess. But … I’ve been thinking. I’ve got this whole entire rock collection, just gathering dust in my room. Maybe I could sort them and label them in a display case, or something. I could give it to Mrs. Mack. Or you could keep it in here. Rocks are history too, aren’t they?”

  “They sure are,” Ms. Ingle replied.

  As I followed Samantha out of the classroom, I pictured Davey blinking at my note. No, I’m not, I’d written in reply. And then, in smaller letters: But I will be.

  Samantha and I walked in silence until we reached the office door. Then, all of a sudden, she stopped and turned to me. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I said. “It’s not what everybody thinks, though. She had a good reason for—”

  “Not about Mandarin. About … you know. The way we’ve acted. Me and Paige and Alexis. To tell you the truth, I’m kind of over them. Ever since Alexis lost Miss Teen Bighorn, she won’t stop bitching about it. I mean, who really gives a shit?”

  That was the most I’d ever heard Samantha say at once. “I sure don’t,” I replied.

  Samantha smiled at my feet. “Hey, so they’ve promoted me to waitress at the restaurant. If you’re looking for a job, we need a hostess. If that’s not too weird.”

  Elk heads flashed before my eyes. Weirder than you know.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe.”

  Samantha headed back down the hall. I heard voices inside Mr. Beck’s office, so I sat in one of the vinyl chairs outside, inspecting the bulletin board in front of me.

  It was covered in butcher paper, faded pink. Card stock borders decorated with dancing pencils lined the edges. Like a proud parent, Mr. Beck had stapled up kindergarten artworks, photos of student athletes at play, reports bound by plastic hinges with red A-pluses on the covers. And right at my eye level hung my All-American essay.

  I stared at it in wonder.

  I recognized the font, the shapes of the paragraphs, as if it had been photographed somewhere inside my brain. Leaning forward, I skimmed it, mouthing the phrases I’d labored to get right. As I read them now, they sounded all wrong.

  We’ve got to take that first step off into the future by ourselves.

  What had I been thinking?

  The door opened, and a twosome of beaming parents stepped out, followed by Mr. Beck. I noticed he had dyed his white roots black, probably for graduation. The cheap pigment had stained his forehead in several places.

  “Good morning, Grace,” he said.

  “You wanted to talk to me?”

  He nodded. “Yes, but I thought instead of talking in the office, we could take a walk. How does that sound?”

  It sounded pretty embarrassing, if anybody saw us. But then I glanced again at Mr. Beck’s ridiculous bulletin board: the photographs, the dancing pencils, my essay. And I thought of the time I’d seen him eating alone at the Buffalo Grill. And I decided I was sick of being embarrassed.

  “It sounds fine,” I told him. “Just one thing first …”

  I reached out and ripped my essay from the wall.

  We passed through the empty halls in silence, stopping by an open window that overlooked the playground. I spotted Taffeta, wearing a white sailor dress. She and the other kindergartners were lined up in two rows on the sunny lawn, arms linked.

  They were playing Red Rover.

  I felt pressure building behind my eyes, so I turned to Mr. Beck.

  “Before anything else,” he began, “I was wondering … would you like to talk about Mandarin?”

  “With you?”

  It took Mr. Beck a moment to regain composure. He smoothed his tie, his ponytail, his mustache. “Yes, yes, I see why you wouldn’t,” he said at last.

  “No offense.”

  “We do our best, you know,” he said. “But … we just don’t have the resources of a larger, city school. It’s not the first time this has happened.”

  “Not the first time what has happened?”

  “That a Washokey student’s run away.”

  Run away?

  Mandarin had run away. I supposed she had—but the words had the wrong connotation. Mr. Beck probably suspected her of fleeing an abusive father, or running off with some man she’d met at the bar. To escape a stifling town. He’d be right about the last part.

  “Red Rover, Red Rover! Send Annabelle over!”

  I glanced back out the window. Far beyond the kindergartners, the seniors had started to congregate on the football field for graduation rehearsal.

  “The other matter I wanted to discuss …” Mr. Beck cleared his throat. “You didn’t send in your paperwork for the leadership conference.”

  I bit my lip. Momma had signed the papers the day after my birthday. But instead of sending them in, I’d stashed them between the
pages of my pageant album. “How did you know?”

  “The conference directors called me yesterday. There was a waiting list to attend the conference, you see. They had to fill your spot with a student from a different school.”

  “Oh,” I said. It stung a bit. But I had to admit—“Leadership: the Musical” just wasn’t for me. “You mean Becky Pepper’s not going?”

  “Well, Becky Pepper wasn’t the winner.…”

  “Red Rover, Red Rover! Send Christopher over!” A round little boy ran at the opposite side but couldn’t break through the other kids’ arms. He latched on to the outermost of their ranks.

  “… and so, the grant’s still yours,” Mr. Beck was saying.

  I glanced at him. “The grant?”

  “From Kiwanis and 4-H. It was supposed to fund the conference. But since it’s too late for you to attend, we can gift it to you in a savings bond, like your other one. Or maybe they’d let you use the funds for a different trip. It’d have to be educational, of course, to fit the criteria. In the meantime, you might start thinking about where you’d like to go. You’ll need a chaperone, of course. I’m sure Ms. Ingle would be interested.”

  Mr. Beck reached out as if to pat me on the back, but wavered. I saved him by catching his hand where it hung in the air and shaking it.

  “Are you sure you can’t tell us where Mandarin went?” he asked hopefully.

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”

  The ends of his mustache appeared to droop.

  “Red Rover, Red Rover! Send Taffeta over!”

  I looked out the window as my sister flung herself into the barricade of children. For a moment I thought she wouldn’t break through, but she did. Cheering, she grabbed the hand of another little girl, and together they ran and rejoined Taffeta’s side.

  Maybe Mandarin had never completed a community service project. But she’d definitely left an impression on our town. Some of it good, some of it bad. All of it transcendent. I saw it now, watching the children laugh as they threw themselves at the other side in an attempt to burst through, break free. Nothing could be more Mandarin than that.