The Second Life of Abigail Walker

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  She lay back on the bed and tried to read. She still thought the book had too many boring parts, but she’d learned how to skim over them to get to the good stuff. She liked how brave the people on the Lewis and Clark expedition had been, traveling into unknown territory, trying to make friends with the Indians. And she liked thinking about George Shannon. She thought if she’d been on the expedition, they would have become friends. She wouldn’t even have minded getting lost with him all the time. It would be like an adventure inside of an adventure.

  “Abby, come down here! I want to talk to you!”

  Her mom, Abby knew, was standing at the foot of the stairs, her hands on her hips. Abby had stomped off, and stomping wasn’t really allowed in her house. It wasn’t nice.

  “You’re going to that sleepover, Abby!”

  Abby thought about George Shannon sitting all alone on the prairie, the coyotes howling in the distance.

  Watch out, George, she wanted to call out. They’re getting closer.

  “Can’t wait until tomorrow night!” Kristen chirped to her on the bus the next day.

  Abby looked out the window. She looked at the field, the once-green field now fading into brown. She wondered where the fox was. She looked at her hand, the skin perfectly smooth. She wondered if there’d been a fox at all.

  “You are very quiet,” Anoop told her at lunch. “Not that you are particularly noisy at other times. But today, you have hardly said a word.”

  Abby looked at him. She looked at Jafar. Could she tell them the truth? Would it make sense? It was worth a try, she supposed. Besides, she might as well find out if everyone thought she was crazy. “Would you believe me if I told you someone was out to get me?”

  “You?” Jafar looked incredulous. “But you’re nice.”

  “I would believe it,” Anoop said.

  “What?” Jafar exclaimed. “You’re crazy!”

  Anoop shrugged. “I know what I know. People are cruel, girls especially.” He turned to Abby. “No offense. But I have noticed your friends no longer speak to you. Why is that?”

  “Because I told them they weren’t my friends,” Abby admitted.

  Anoop considered this. “Then can you blame them for not speaking to you?”

  “I guess not. But I wish they would just leave it at that.”

  “They have plans to hurt you?” Anoop looked concerned.

  “I think so,” Abby said. “I mean, maybe not physically. But they’re going to do something to me. They’ve already smeared yogurt all over my locker. Who knows what they’ll do next.”

  “Then let us help you.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything you can do,” Abby told him, and then she laughed. She didn’t know why she thought it was funny, but it was. She was eleven years old, a kid. Too young to have problems where no one could help. But what could she do if the only people who believed her were other kids?

  Anoop looked confused, and Abby smiled at him. “If I think of anything you can do to help, I’ll tell you,” she assured him. “But for now I guess I just have to deal with it by myself.”

  Anoop nodded. “I understand.”

  When they met Marlys in the computer lab, they all took out their latest lists. Discoveries had been made. Jafar had learned that the wolverine had at least three other names: skunk bear, carcajou, and quickhatch. Marlys reported that the Western tanager was actually considered to be a member of the cardinal family and had been officially reassigned. It was not naturally red, but turned red from the bugs it ate, which in turn were red from the plants they ate.

  As a rule of thumb, Anoop told them, stay away from grizzly bears.

  They all nodded at this wisdom. Abby yanked a loose thread at the hem of her T-shirt. Could Matt be helped by knowing these things? Would it make him better? Really help him finish his poem?

  Did it help just knowing someone wanted to help you, even if they couldn’t, not really?

  Abby looked at her friends. Her friends. Yes, she decided. It did. Later that afternoon, sitting behind the oak tree among the wild weeds, she called to the fox, who she felt was somehow responsible.

  “Thank you,” she called out.

  And again, “Thanks.”

  she thought she might have to search for days, but no, there he was, sitting beside the girl’s chair in the field, almost as if he’d been waiting for her.

  Together, the fox and the dog wove their way through backyards and under bushes. They darted across the road and wound their way to the creek, wading across, and then climbing the steep hill. At the top they stopped and looked over a meadow. In the distance, a man was riding a tall, golden-brown horse. As a rule, the fox kept her distance from larger animals, but the dog nodded his head in the horse’s direction, and the fox followed him into the field.

  “Wallace!” the man called out, and slowed the horse to a walk. “Where’ve you been?” He slipped off the horse, holding the reins in his right hand, and walked toward them. The fox looked around for a bush, a clump of weeds, anything to hide behind. But the field had been recently mown. Big bales of hay stood here and there, casting round shadows. The fox had nowhere to go, so she stayed where she was, standing perfectly still.

  “Who you got there with you, boy?” the man asked, coming closer. “You find yourself a friend?”

  And then he stopped. Opened his mouth, closed it again. Whispered, “A fox?” A grin broke out on his face, and he turned to the dog. “Wallace, you found yourself a fox. Probably the only one for twenty miles.”

  The man came even closer. He kneeled down to get a better look. The fox wanted to bolt, but one glance at the dog told her that would be a mistake.

  “Look at you,” the man said. “I’d say you were a red fox, except you’re a little more brown than red, and you’re on the small side.” He paused, thought for a moment. “Now, you couldn’t be—Vulpes velox? A swift fox? No, no way. Not here. That’s a prairie fox. A desert fox.”

  The fox took a step back. Her breath had become fast and shallow. The man’s face, so close to her now, she knew it—she recognized this face. She saw it every night, saw it when she was up in the air, when she was falling into the flames, and the soldier beside her—

  Was the man in front of her.

  He looked older now. When she’d seen him in the sky, both of them thrown into the air by the explosion, he’d looked so much younger, barely grown. Now lines flared from the corners of his eyes.

  How had he survived? They’d flown so high.

  The fox’s legs gave beneath her, and suddenly she found herself on the grass. She’d fallen from the sky into a field. And the soldier—this man—had fallen into a field too.

  They were safe.

  “I can’t believe it.” The soldier leaned forward to look in her face again. “I can’t believe you made it.”

  The dog issued a brief bark, then turned and trotted back in the direction they’d come from. The fox lifted her face to the man. He laid his hand on top of her head, and then he let her go. She followed the dog back down the hill. When they reached the creek, the dog stopped, turned, looked at her. The fox waited for him to say something. Would she understand it? Did they share a language?

  But the dog didn’t speak. He nodded to the creek, and the fox knew it was time to cross back over, return to her field. On the other side, she stopped to shake the water off her fur. Turned to look back. The dog was still there.

  He nodded once. Stay close to her.

  And then he trotted back up the hill.

  you’re the first one here!” Kristen announced when she opened the Gorzcas’ front door Friday night. “Why don’t you go ahead and take your stuff to my room? Everybody else should be here soon.”

  Abby nodded and trudged up the stairs with her sleeping bag and backpack. The only way out is through, she told herself. She’d get this night over with and figure out a way to never have to do it again.

  Kristen’s room was at the end of the upstairs hallway. Right bef
ore school started, Mrs. Gorzca had painted large pink and brown polka dots on two of the walls, the ones without windows. Kristen’s bedspread had the same design, and her curtains did too. Abby put her things down in front of the brown velveteen love seat across from Kristen’s closet and sat down to get the full effect of all the dots. They were nice, she thought. Cheerful.

  Then she noticed the small round table made of white plastic to the right of the love seat, next to the wall. A plate filled with Kit Kats, Snickers, and Reese’s Cups—all of Abby’s favorites—sat at its center, and Abby pondered whether or not to eat one. Her candy supply had run dangerously low, but ever since she’d been bitten by the fox, she hadn’t wanted candy so much. Every once in a while, sure. But not every day. She hadn’t thought of that until now. That was strange. Different.

  She looked at the shiny wrappers. She’d had dreams like this, candy everywhere, and nobody to say no. There were so many, no one would notice if she took one. Besides, she could use some fortification. This was going to be a long, miserable night. She grabbed a Snickers bar from the plate and tore into it. She didn’t want to be caught eating. Taking big bites, she chewed fast, then shoved the empty wrapper into her pocket.

  She suddenly felt ravenous, as though she hadn’t eaten for days. She shook a pair of Reese’s Cups from their package and finished them off in four bites, then grabbed a Kit Kat and used her teeth to tear the paper.

  As she split the candy bar in two, she heard somebody giggle. There was a rustling in Kristen’s closet, and somebody else said, “Shh.”

  Abby went cold all over. Or hot. It was a weird sensation of freezing and burning up at the same time. The Kit Kat fell to the floor, and Abby looked at it. Maybe if she kept looking at it, this moment would stretch and stretch, until her whole life was just this moment of staring at the brown candy on the brown rug.

  Another giggle came out of the closet.

  “I know you’re in there,” Abby said flatly, picking up the Kit Kat bar from the floor. What should she do with it? Eat it? She wanted to eat it, but she knew she shouldn’t. Not here. Not in front of them. She looked around for a trash can but didn’t see one, so she put the candy back on the plate. “You can come out now.”

  Georgia and Rachel burst out of the closet, falling over each other. “Careful!” Rachel yelled. “You’ll break the phone!”

  “We got it! On video!” Georgia crowed to Abby, holding up a tiny cell phone. “We’re going to post one of you pigging out on YouTube!”

  So they finally figured out what to do, Abby thought. Took them long enough. She felt oddly calm, as though she no longer existed in her body, but floated outside of it. She noted that Myla, Bess, and Casey weren’t here. Maybe they’d had enough, Abby thought. Maybe they were nice after all.

  Kristen burst into the room. “Did you get it?” she squealed. Georgia held up the phone triumphantly. “Oh, my God! I can’t believe it! That is so awesome!”

  Abby stood up. “I’m going.”

  Kristen walked over and pushed her back down on the couch. “Oh, no you’re not. What are you going to tell your mom? That you’re a little piggy? She’ll put you on a diet before you have time to blink. And what will your dad say? We can send him the video as an e-mail attachment. I’m sure he’d get a big kick out of it.”

  Abby sat perfectly still. She felt trapped. Was trapped.

  “We’re going downstairs to eat pizza,” Kristen informed her. “The candy bars are your dinner. We’ll let you know when you can come out.”

  The girls left the room, laughing and pushing into one another. Abby stared straight ahead. She breathed in deeply through her nose. She thought about her starfish collection.

  She started to cry anyway.

  Stop it, she told herself. Just stop. But she couldn’t stop. She thought everything had changed, but nothing had. She wasn’t different at all. She was still a girl who stuffed herself with candy bars, a girl everyone else laughed at. Nothing new about that. Stupid, fat Abby stuffing her mouth. No wonder people hated her. She deserved it.

  Stop it.

  Abby spun around. Who said that? She walked over to the closet and looked in. Empty except for Kristen’s clothes and shoes and two tennis rackets. She went to the window and looked out. There, in a patch of silvery moonlight, stood the fox.

  So she hadn’t imagined the fox after all. She opened the window. “What should I do?” she called out, and the fox looked at her with what seemed to Abby sympathetic eyes.

  The wind answered with a sudden rustling of leaves. A crow answered with a loud caw, caw. The fox looked at her for a long moment, as if waiting for Abby to answer her own question.

  Abby nodded. “Okay.”

  The fox slipped into the shadows. Abby closed the window.

  She grabbed her sleeping bag and backpack from the floor in front of the love seat. She thought about grabbing the rest of the candy from the plate, but she didn’t really want it now. She went down the stairs, opened the front door, and left without saying good-bye.

  “Where are you going?” Kristen yelled after her from the front door as Abby trundled down the driveway. All the medium girls leaked out of the house and onto the sidewalk. “You can’t go home! We’ll send that video to your dad!”

  Abby stopped. She put her bags down on the driveway and turned around. “And then you’ll have to explain it to your mom—and my mom, for that matter, won’t you? What you were doing making a video of me like that. You’d be doing me a favor. My mom thinks you’re my friend.”

  “Well, your dad’s going to think you’re a fat pig!” Kristen shrieked.

  “I’ll just have to live with that,” Abby told her. She picked her bags back up and headed toward the street.

  It was two weeks until Halloween. A few weeks after that it would be winter, and the birds would fly south. Would the fox go south too? Abby didn’t think that animals other than birds migrated, but the fox was so small and delicate, it seemed too fragile for winter. Where would it find food?

  Abby stopped. She stood in front of the yard across the street from her house and stared. There was a sign. How had she not noticed the sign? She’d been too upset, she supposed, about having to go to the sleepover. That would be the only way to explain how she’d missed the FOR SALE sign where the mailbox once stood.

  For sale. If she had money, she’d buy the lot, and she’d live there. She imagined living in her chair by the oak tree, the red cooler by her side filled with grapes. She could spread a tarp over the tree branches when it rained and drag out the old beach umbrella from the garage on superhot days, for extra shade. But what would she do about going to the bathroom? Abby snorted. What a life. She crossed the street to go home. She thought when she got inside she might call Marlys and tell her what happened. Would Marlys laugh when Abby told her about how she ate that candy like a starving person?

  No, Abby knew that she wouldn’t. Marlys wasn’t against anyone, especially not Abby.

  Abby crossed the street to her house and ran up the stairs to the front porch. She had the helium feeling again, the dance-around-in-circles feeling. The world was a new and undiscovered place, filled with horses and foxes and pronghorn deer. And friends. Friends along for the expedition.

  november. abby sat in her chair behind the oak, knowing that without the weeds, she wasn’t so hidden anymore. She looked around her. She couldn’t believe the weeds were gone. And the flowers. Even the robins had flown away. When they came back next spring, would there be a new house standing here?

  She pulled her sweater tighter. It was getting cold.

  A car door slammed twenty feet away, and Anoop’s voice called out, “Abby, are you there?” She turned to see him standing at the edge of the lot, peering around. When he saw her, his face brightened. “There you are! You are hidden behind the trees!”

  “Well, not so hidden that you didn’t see me,” Abby said, getting up from her chair. “Did you wear sneakers, like I told you?”

 
Anoop walked toward her. He was dressed in jeans and a heavy sweater, a ski cap pulled down over his ears. “My athletic shoes are only for PE. But I have hiking boots that I got for summer camp last summer.” He stuck out his leg and pointed to his foot. “See?”

  “Your grandmother let you go to summer camp?”

  “We told her it was computer camp,” Anoop said with a shrug. “We did not mention the rock-climbing aspect.”

  Abby folded her chair and leaned it against the tree. “Did you bring the poem?”

  Anoop held out a manila envelope. “Yes. It is typed. I now owe my sister two weeks of dish washing.”

  “Two weeks? Boy!” Abby wondered if that was a high price for twenty pages’ worth of poetry? Twenty pages was a lot, but poems were skinny. “I could come over and help, at least on weekends.”

  Anoop shook his head. “For our dishwasher, you don’t even have to rinse the dishes. It is all very easy.”

  They walked to the fence at the back of the lot. “Are they still getting the horse today?” Anoop asked as they climbed over. “I am eager to see the new horse. My great-grandfather was from Marwar, and he rode a great Marwari stallion. This is according to my grandmother. She is telling me everything about our family’s history, so that I won’t forget.”

  “Did you tell her about seeing the horses today?”

  “You are kidding,” Anoop said. “Or else you are quite mad.”

  Wallace was waiting for them on the sidewalk. “That dog looks as if he is expecting us,” Anoop observed.

  “He is,” Abby said.

  They ambled down the path to the creek. Anders was waiting for them, on their side of the water. The week before, Abby had gone to the creek and there he’d been, sitting on a rock, like it wasn’t a big deal that he crossed on his own. “We decided it was time to expand the safe perimeters,” Anders had explained. “Matt said it was okay for me to come across if I wanted to.”

  That was the day Matt had left for the VA hospital. “A room finally opened up,” Mrs. Benton had told Abby when she and Anders reached the farmhouse. Her eyes were red, but there was something softer about her, Abby thought, like maybe now she didn’t have to be so strong all the time.