Waves of Light

by Naomi Kinsman

  “Thank you.” I smiled and headed for PE.

  During rehearsal, I touched up the gold flourishes on the music box as I waited for Annabelle. I’d rather do almost anything than spend a half hour with her, explaining how to use the box. But since I’d made it, it would be weird if I asked someone else to help her. Then she’d have yet another reason to think I hated her.

  She gasped behind me. “Sadie, this is beautiful!”

  I turned to face her, half expecting to see a sarcastic expression on her face. But instead, she stared openmouthed at the box. I should have expected a genuine reaction from Annabelle. I’d never heard her use sarcasm before. She was too perfect for sarcasm.

  She reached toward the box.

  “Careful. Some of the paint is still wet.”

  My voice must have been sharper than I intended because she flinched and stepped back. “I’m sorry.”

  “I didn’t mean …”

  She shook her head like it didn’t matter, but some of the light had gone out of her eyes. Her smile was just as bright as ever, though.

  Maybe she really did care what I thought, although I couldn’t imagine why.

  “Do you want me to show you how to use the box?” I asked, hoping the change in subject would make this conversation less awkward.

  “Yeah, sure,” she said.

  I demonstrated how to fold back the false top at the hinges and slide it down into the box, and how to set up the pipes with the curtains so the box looked open. We practiced until we could do the change from closed to open in thirty seconds, and from open to closed in the same amount of time.

  “It’s almost like a dance,” she said as we set the lid down for the last time.

  I checked my watch. “Twenty-nine seconds.”

  “We’ll never have to do it so quickly during the show,” Annabelle said. “I think all of the scene changes will allow for at least a minute. People will be moving on the trails, and Doug is leading the group, trying to make it take five minutes for each walk.”

  “I probably won’t be there to help you during the show, so you’ll have to teach someone else how to do my part.”

  Annabelle looked at me. “Why won’t you be there?”

  “Vivian’s art show is that same night, and I’m planning to go to it with her.” There. I’d finally said it out loud. I knew Ruth would be disappointed if I wasn’t at the play, but they didn’t really need me. My job was finished now. Anyway, I’d feel left out sitting in the audience while everyone else performed.

  “I … um …” Annabelle shuffled from one foot to the other. “I think Andrew really wants you to be here for the show.”

  The last person I wanted to talk about with Annabelle was Andrew. And I had no idea why she’d say something like this about Andrew and me, when she so obviously liked him.

  She dug her toe in the dirt. “When I first got here, all he could talk about was you. And then something happened — I don’t know what. I just want him to be happy again.”

  She looked up at me, and her smile was gone. All the brightness was gone from her face, actually. I could see clearly how much she cared about Andrew — probably a mirror of my own expression. We stared at each other for a full minute, not saying anything, as understanding passed between us. We both liked Andrew. We both wanted him to be happy. Strange.

  “Just think about it,” Annabelle said. “If you’re here, then you should be in the last dance too. Even Penny’s going to be in it. I know having you there would … mean a lot … to Andrew.”

  Through all of this, I hadn’t spoken. Now I forced myself to say, “I’ll think about it.”

  I didn’t want to think about staying for the show. But even if Annabelle was wrong about whether or not Andrew would care if I were here, I knew that my being here mattered to Ruth. And also to Annabelle, in her own way. So I really would think about it.

  But for now, I just wanted to paint.

  From: Sadie Douglas

  To: Frankie Paulson

  Date: Friday, April 27, 6:32 PM

  Subject: RE: Call?

  Sure, I’ll call you tomorrow night after I finish working on the sets so we can work out the details. I can’t wait to talk to you!

  Chapter 29

  Promise

  You’ll never finish this today.” Ruth shook her head as she compared the plans to the faint sketches on the wood. “Good thing my mom said I can stay and help.”

  I gave Ruth a small paintbrush and asked her to start working on the storefront windowpanes. After a few minutes, I went over to check her work, worried that she’d have trouble with the lines. But it turned out that even though Ruth couldn’t draw to save her life, she had a perfectly steady hand with a paintbrush.

  She pulled the brush down in one long, steady stroke, biting her lip as she worked.

  “Ruth, that’s perfect,” I said.

  The storefronts needed a little flair here and there, but mostly they were time-intensive because of all the borders, which needed straight edges.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you could paint perfectly straight lines?”

  “I didn’t know,” Ruth said, laughing as she picked her brush up off the board. “So this is going to help?”

  “So much,” I said. “Dad’s picking me up at four o’clock. When do you have to go?”

  “Mom is shopping with the twins and said she’d pick me up around two. It’s noon now, so I’ll call and ask her to come a little later.”

  After Ruth called her mom, she came back with her iPod and Penny’s portable speaker from the office. Once she was sure Cameron had gone for the day, she pulled up her favorite playlist, and the two of us sang along as loudly as we could. I almost didn’t want to talk. Right now, singing with Ruth, I could pretend everything that had happened these past few weeks was all in my imagination. Ruth and Andrew and I were all just like we’d been before, Frankie hadn’t moved, Mom was getting healthier all the time at the spa, and Vivian was working in her art studio. I could pretend my life hadn’t collapsed around me.

  “Thanks for watching my dance,” Ruth said, breaking the silence between songs.

  “You’re amazing,” I said.

  She tossed me a you-don’t-have-to-say-that smile and started singing along with the next song.

  “Why don’t you ever sing for Cameron?” I started on the bakery sign’s gold lettering.

  “Singing used to be my own thing,” Ruth said. “And then, I met Cam. Since he’s got the band, it just seemed weird to sing for him. I mean, if I sang for him and he didn’t like my voice and then … you know? Whoops!”

  She’d been gesturing with her paintbrush and white drops had fallen onto the door. “I’ll fix that, don’t worry.” She went to look for the brown paint.

  “It’s over there,” I said, pointing to a cup on the table.

  She brought the cup back with another brush and a paper towel. She rubbed off as much white as she could and started painting over it with the brown.

  “You can’t keep your voice a secret from him forever.”

  “Yes, but it’s blown out of proportion. Cam really wants to hear my voice because people have told him I can sing, and now I’m afraid I’ll disappoint him. If he’d just accidentally heard me sing once a long time ago, it would be no big deal. You know what I mean?”

  I finished the last gold swirl on the old-fashioned E at the end of Shoppe, and dunked my brush in the water bucket.

  “Yeah. I guess the longer you don’t talk about something, the harder it is.”

  “Speaking of …” Ruth said, cleaning her own brush. “Have you and Andrew talked?”

  “Sort of.” If an argument counted as a conversation.

  Ruth went back to her white windowpanes, and I moved on to the lamps, which I’d drawn to look like iron lanterns hanging off the buildings.

  After a few more minutes, Ruth said, “Annabelle told me you’re thinking about going to New York next weekend.”

  “I was going t
o tell you—”

  “Oh, no. It’s okay. I’m not saying you shouldn’t go … It’s just that I agree with her — Andrew would want you to be here.”

  I stopped painting. “You talked about me and Andrew? With Annabelle?”

  She stopped painting and looked up at me, her eyes wide with worry. “It wasn’t like that. She said she thinks Andrew is upset and that maybe he misses you. She’s worried that by being here, she’s causing problems for him. I think last year, when she got sick, maybe she felt more for him than he felt for her. I didn’t realize she had those kind of feelings for him, or I would have said something …” her voice trailed off, and I could see she felt like she was digging herself a hole.

  I wasn’t sure how to help her out of it. “Ruth …”

  Ruth sighed. “Now it’s my turn. It’s not okay, not really. Isn’t that what you said to me? I’m really sorry, Sadie.”

  Suddenly, the whole conversation seemed ridiculous. Ruth and I were tiptoeing around each other as though we were both made of glass. “You don’t have to keep apologizing for everything.”

  “Sor—” Ruth began and then stopped.

  I grinned at her, and she grinned back. Suddenly, I remembered painting with Frankie just a few weeks ago. I dipped a finger in the paint bucket and drew a streak down Ruth’s forehead and nose.

  “Wha—” Ruth started, and then she dipped her own finger in paint and returned the favor.

  Soon, we were flipping paint back and forth and laughing for real. Who cared if the doors were a little splattered? Ruth was back.

  “So are you? Going to New York, I mean?” Ruth asked, as we wiped off our hands and faces with paper towels.

  Ruth kept her head down, focusing harder than necessary on the towel in her hands. Of course she didn’t want me to see her expression. She knew if I saw her face, I’d see how much she wanted me to stay, to watch her in the show; but she wanted me to decide on my own, for my own reasons.

  “I’m not sure,” I finally said, because I didn’t want to lie to her anymore. “I really want to see Frankie, and it sounds nice to get away … from everything. But I don’t know. When I saw you dance, I started thinking maybe I do want to be here. For you. Not for Andrew or Annabelle or anyone else. But for you.”

  She looked up at me, finally, and I saw the expression in her eyes that I’d expected: A mixture of hope and hurt and sadness.

  “I feel …”

  “Sad,” I finished for her. “I know. I am too.”

  “Can I teach you the dance?” she asked as she set down her towel. “Just in case? I promise it won’t take long.”

  I raised my eyebrows at her. “I’m not much of a dancer.”

  “I’m not much of a painter, and look what I just did.” She pointed to the finished windowpanes and then reached out a hand to help me to my feet.

  I put my brushes in the water to soak and then grabbed her hand. “Just promise to go slow.”

  Chapter 30

  Catch the Wind

  No barking when I’m on the phone, Higgins.” I was going to use the hands-free earpiece for our phone so I could cut out leaves for Vivian’s art piece while I talked to Frankie. Higgins sat next to me with his tail wagging and his tongue hanging out. “I’m serious,” I said sternly, but he only wagged his tail harder.

  I scratched his ears and dialed Frankie’s number.

  “Hello!” Georgiana’s voice trilled.

  Even over the phone she was overwhelming. I paused mid-cut to form my response. “Um, hi, Georgiana. It’s Sadie.”

  “Sadie, darling! Frankie is expecting your call. And I hear you’re coming to stay with us again.” Georgiana’s heels clicked and I imagined her striding up the stairs and down the hall to Frankie’s room.

  “Yeah, well, um, maybe,” I said.

  “Here she is, darling.”

  “Hey, Sadie.”

  In the background, Georgiana said, “Say hello, not hey, Francesca. Manners.”

  “Tell me you’re coming to see me,” Frankie said as Georgiana’s footsteps faded away.

  “Still bad, huh?” I liked watching the leaves pile up, glad that Ruth and Bea and Lindsay were now cutting out leaves too. Maybe, fingers crossed, we might finish enough of them before Vivian had to leave for New York.

  “You know, she never gets mad at me. No matter what I do, she always uses that same tone of voice. If she’d just yell once in a while …”

  “Vivian is almost finished with the exhibit. Dad went over to help her with the cement pour, and I guess she’s been working round the clock. We’re helping with the leaves.” I waved one for emphasis. “I’m cutting them out right now.”

  “I want to help too,” Frankie said.

  “Perfect! I’ll send you fabric and wire, express mail, so you can glue them into strands of ivy. We need at least a thousand more.”

  “Who else is helping?”

  I sighed. “Ruth, Bea, and Lindsay.”

  “So,” Frankie said. “You okay?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I should be okay. I mean, I worked things out with Ruth, and I understand now why everyone was protecting Annabelle … I should be happy but I’m just not.”

  “How’s your mom?” Frankie asked.

  “Not good.”

  Frankie waited and I continued to cut, wondering what I wanted to say. Finally I said, “I’m afraid I’m going to be like this — crazy — for the rest of my life. Every time I think I’ve worked my life out, it falls apart again.”

  I could feel Frankie thinking across the phone line, and then she said, “Do you remember the church we went to on Easter Sunday? And what the pastor said?”

  “Yeah, who could forget?”

  “I think she’s right, about life being a series of transformations. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. My life keeps going up and down and up again. Sometimes when I draw, I feel hopeful. You told me those tiny moments of hope matter, remember? But there doesn’t seem to be one fix-everything experience.”

  I remembered how I’d felt swinging with Frankie. I’d known that life couldn’t stay so good forever, but I’d wanted to hold on to that feeling of being fully happy. Maybe I was trying so hard to hold myself together that I’d kept myself from both the bad and the good. Maybe I couldn’t get back to being happy if I didn’t let myself fall apart a little too.

  “Did you know that a caterpillar totally disintegrates inside its cocoon before reshaping itself into a butterfly?” Frankie asked.

  I smiled into the phone. “How’d you get so smart?”

  “About butterflies?” she asked.

  “I thought I was helping you with the whole scavenger hunt thing. Turns out you’re the one helping me.”

  “I should listen to my own advice,” Frankie said. “It’s a lot easier to help everyone else.”

  I laughed. “No kidding.”

  “So … are you coming to New York?” Frankie asked.

  “Maybe,” I said. “I want to.”

  “I want you to, too,” she said.

  I finished a leaf and set it down. “I think I need to draw now, Frankie.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll be drawing too.”

  I hung up the phone and took out my sketchbook, turning to the picture of the locked box. I hesitated.

  Do I really have to?

  The picture stared at me from the page, fresh and clear: A messy knot hidden away inside a locked box. The key to the box, just waiting to be used.

  It’s time.

  One time, Pips and I had gone to a rock-climbing wall and climbed all the way to the top. To get down, you had to lean back and let go, letting the rope hold your weight as you kicked off from the wall. Turning to a blank page and, opening myself up to what was inside that locked box, felt like letting go at the top of that wall. Would the rope hold me?

  I started to draw — quickly, so I wouldn’t think too much. First, I drew myself. I was caught in a net, but busily untangling it, trying to free m
yself. I turned to the next page in the sketchbook, knowing that something bigger was about to come — willing something bigger to come. Mom’s face came first, and then her body, curled up, motionless in a net just like mine — only her net had trapped her.

  I turned the page, hoping for a new image. I couldn’t stop Mom from being tangled up. Nothing I did or said would make any difference. Like the wind, I couldn’t control anything that happened outside of me — I couldn’t even control how I felt about it. I could only control my own choices. I thought about Ruth, about the way she’d looked when I’d watched her dance.

  On the next page, Mom appeared again. But this time, she stood facing the ocean, her arms flung wide. I stood beside her in exactly the same stance. We’d stood this way many times before back in California, trying to catch the wind. Since we’d lived so close to the ocean, we’d go to the beach two or three times a month, rain or shine.

  Mom would say, “Sades, let’s go catch the wind,” and we’d pile into the car, just Mom and me.

  She could still catch the wind, even though she was sick. But even if we lived in California now, she wasn’t likely to lean across the table and look at me with that old sparkle in her eye. In a way, I understood now, having felt darkness press down on me, making me feel like I’d rather lie in bed all day rather than do just about anything. But I also knew that the only way out of the darkness was to give something — even something small. I needed Mom, and maybe she’d forgotten that.

  I’d forgotten — or maybe I just hadn’t realized — that Vivian needed me. Viv and I had promised one another that no matter what, we’d give everything to our art, pouring all of the exhaustion, anger, loneliness, and fear into something outside ourselves. We weren’t pretending to be perfect; but knowing that if nothing else, we were giving one another a gift. And we helped each other simply by keeping our promise.

  Yes. The word rippled through me. Yes.

  I’d pretended with Mom for a very long time. But maybe it was time for me to tell her how much I needed her.

  I set down my sketchbook, took a deep breath, and headed down the hall to Mom’s bedroom.