by Deb Caletti
She proofreads The Taker’s personal expression essay. It’s based on the concepts of Emerson’s “Self-Reliance,” and it’s about how The Taker cured his loneliness at his old school through nonconformity and inconsistency. Separating himself out led to confidence and a sense of superiority that itself felt like an achievement, he writes. It bothers her, the ego in it, the way he builds himself up in his mind to look down on others. But the essay is bold and funny, and she only praises him for that. She feels wary of honestly criticizing him.
And then The Taker gets a car. And when the brakes in the Toyota have to be replaced, and Annabelle is without transportation for a week, he drives her home. He even waits around in their kitchen while she changes her clothes before they head over to Essential Baking Company.
“He still likes you,” Malcolm says that night. Malcolm and Terrence were there working on a science project for school.
“We’re just friends,” she says.
“You’re just friends. He’s not just friends.”
“Don’t be a jerk.”
“His eyes follow you like one of those haunted-house paintings. And when you went upstairs to change, he tried to look at your phone when you got a text.”
“Mind your own business.” Telling people to mind their own business is maybe another Agnelli Curse.
So what if he likes her? It doesn’t matter. She gives in to the fact of it, being quietly adored. Who wouldn’t like being adored, even if it makes her uncomfortable sometimes? She still wishes Will felt that way, even though she hasn’t heard from him since the day at Whole Foods.
“Fuck!” The Taker cries, and slams on the brakes one afternoon as they leave her neighborhood.
Annabelle squeals. He turns the wheel hard and one tire ends up on the curb. She sees it, Hamilton Shiley’s abandoned Big Wheel in the street up ahead.
“Did you think there was a kid on it?” she laughs, as his car bumps back down the curb.
“I couldn’t see! The sun was in my eyes, okay?”
He flips down the visor in a fury. The silence is weird and uncomfortable the rest of the drive. He barely says good-bye to her after they get to her work. It’s strange—sometimes she gets the feeling that he hates her. And not a little bit of hate, but hate. This seems crazy and wrong, after how much he seems to like her. Sometimes, her anxiety makes her too sensitive and she misreads people. Still, one thing is for sure: The Taker can’t laugh at himself.
• • •
It is yet another new morning at the KOA campground in Hayward, Minnesota.
“Annabelle,” Grandpa Ed says. She is not Bella Luna anymore. “We are going home if you don’t run today, capisce? I mean it.”
She is stuck in the middle, and middles are always a swamp of inertia, sucking downward. She can’t go forward, because forward is more miles of self-imposed punishment—flat backcountry roads plus the heat of summer, red T-shirts, and the inconceivable and undeserving support of strangers. Forward means a question-mark future. Forward is Seth Greggory.
And she can’t go backward, because back doesn’t fit anymore. She can’t even imagine sleeping in her old bed in her old room. Who was the girl that slept there? Sometimes, she was anxious, but she was confident, too. She could be cocky; she could feel cute. She could flirt and have fun and dream about what was to come. She was popular. People liked her. She loved her bosses at Essential Baking Company, and the smell of warm pastries, and the way the old people’s faces at Sunnyside Eldercare would light up when she came in. She felt life’s goodness and a rosy hope all around her.
She was naive. She was a child.
Now, she is a specter in running clothes.
And she can’t go backward because there is The Taker on Valentine’s Day, standing next to her locker with two roses. A yellow one and a red one. He holds them out. He smirks, offering a choice.
“You know,” she says.
“Which?” he asks.
“Yellow.”
He gives the red to Josie Green. They would be a great couple. She keeps telling him that. She’s not 100 percent sure she’s glad about the red rose. There’s a dark little kernel that wants him to want her even if she doesn’t know entirely how she feels about him. He still intrigues her. He smiles and jokes, but there’s this depressed, big ego, this overly sensitive thing that is nothing like Will. Still, the rose thing—it reassures her. She’s managing it all. The dials are turned just right. See: There are dials, and she must turn them this way and that to keep things where they should be. See: She thinks it’s a situation she can control, which is almost a guarantee that she’s wrong.
• • •
Grandpa slams out the door of the RV. Annabelle is alone. The Taker film plays. It is March of last year. Her birthday. There are only three months left of her old life, though she has no idea. The clock is ticking.
She is carrying her tray in the cafeteria. She finds all her friends at their table. She spills her water into her salad.
“Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, please,” Zander says. He looks at the cafeteria ceiling. How many times has this film played? Hundreds.
“Yeah, like, don’t tell her it’s a cake or anything,” Zach Oh says.
Kat lifts the cake from under the table. Happy 17th, Belle Bottom, the frosting reads. “Ta-da,” Kat says.
And then Sierra complains about the frosting, and then they all sing, substituting insults for her name. And then Kat gives her the Moleskine. She says, “Now we’re twins.”
And then, other things happen.
After not hearing from Will for months, she gets a text: Thinking of you today. Miss you, Pip. She is so happy. He uses her love name, and her heart is filled with joy.
And then, something else.
The Taker is standing by her locker after school. A gift bag hangs from the crook of his finger.
“Be-elle,” he sings. It’s his new name for her. She doesn’t mind. Half the kids in her elementary school called her that.
“What’s this?”
“Open it.”
She moves the tissue paper around. The bag is pretty. So pretty that it makes her nervous. It’s pink and black with pink tissue paper shooting from the top. It’s the kind of wrapping that’s been carefully chosen, not the wrinkled tissue in a Christmas bag that Zach Oh might give.
Inside, there’s an envelope. She opens it. Two tickets to see the punk band Uncut at Neumos.
“Since, you know, the Clash isn’t around anymore.”
“Wow,” she says. “Thank you.”
Two tickets. It’s awkward. She assumes he expects to go together. Is this a date?
He reads her mind. “They’re for us, but it’s a group thing? My friends Lucy and Adrian and Jules are going, too.” The Taker recently got a job at the QFC on Mercer, and Lucy and Adrian work in the deli section with him, and Jules is Adrian’s girlfriend. Annabelle has never met them, but she’s heard the stories about Adrian’s band and how he and Lucy find gross stuff in the chickens sometimes. She never wants to eat a deli chicken again.
“Oh, that’s awesome,” she says. “That’ll be fun. This is too much, but thank you.”
She hugs him. He is trying to grow a beard, and the soft hairs brush her cheek as he hugs back.
“Happy birthday, Belle,” he says.
• • •
“Stop, stop, stop,” Annabelle says. It’s useless. She is in the middle of the film about The Taker, she is in the middle of her run, and there is nowhere to go but forward. Saint Christopher seems to look at her sternly from where he hangs. Annabelle gets up to pee. Grandpa is still gone. She pours a cup of coffee and doesn’t drink it. She stares out at the same trees and the same jigsaw piece of sky of the KOA campground in Hayward, Minnesota.
Her phone buzzes and spins in a circle on the table. It’s a text from Gina.
Call me.
She is too tired to talk to anyone. When she opens her mouth, lava flows out. Her bones are steel girders, anchored i
n cement. Her arms are bird wings pinned down with rocks by mean boys.
Now her phone rings. Mom again.
Why didn’t she strand them someplace with no Wi-Fi? Somewhere back in Montana or the Badlands? Here, they’re in the middle of nowhere with a signal that blazes five fiery bars on her phone.
Ring, ring.
Ignore.
Annabelle shuts off her phone, but it buzzes with emergency. She does not have the courage or faith not to answer. She has bad-image flashes that come from years of Gina spouting stuff that might go wrong, and flashes that come from real stuff that did. Things can change in an instant.
“Mom?”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m all right, are you all right?”
“Seth Greggory called.”
Annabelle’s stomach drops like a failed elevator, and then crashes.
“Annabelle?”
“I’m here.”
“I thought I lost you.”
She has no real answer to that. “What did he want?”
“He wants to make sure you’re on track for coming in on September twenty-second. He wanted to remind us that the calendar is fixed.”
It is horrible, the thought of him and September. Annabelle feels sick.
“Annabelle?”
“I’m here.”
“Grandpa called me a few minutes ago. He’s sitting in some diner eating pancakes. But he’s at his wit’s end. He says he’s planning on turning around and driving home. And I was thinking . . . You’ve been seriously depressed there, honey. The anniversary, that fucking deer . . .”
“Twenty-five cents,” Annabelle says for Malcolm.
“I really think you should come home. It’s the right thing. You don’t need to be out there doing this. You can take it easy for three months. Just . . . rest.”
“Rest isn’t restful.”
“I did something. Don’t be mad.”
“What?”
“I ordered a cap and gown. Just in case. Come on, honey. Come home. You’ve done enough.”
Silence.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to go to that ceremony with your friends? To sit with everyone and reflect on what you’ve all been through?”
“I’m not coming home,” Annabelle says.
“So many people want to see you. I put new sheets on your bed. Your room is waiting for you.”
“I’m finishing.” Much to her surprise, she suddenly means it.
“If you insist.” Gina sighs. It occurs to Annabelle that the sigh is just a little overdramatic. And Gina’s words hit her worst buttons. Annabelle wonders if she’s a victim of reverse psychology. Agnelli Curse, Gina-style. What has gotten into her mother? Is she now, by some saintly, heavenly miracle, in favor of this run?
“Did you even really order a cap and gown?” Annabelle asks.
“Oh, sweetie, I gotta go—Aunt Angie’s on the other line. Burst pipe at the office. Drink lots of water, you hear me? And Grandpa said he’s going to start meeting you halfway, now that it’s summer, right? You need to refill the bladder, when it’s this hot. And wear your bright clothes. It’s hard to see in the glare.”
• • •
Annabelle dresses. She pulls back her hair, which is growing long again. She eats two bananas and a bowl of muesli. She reviews the route. She leaves a one-word note for Grandpa Ed:
Fine.
She leaves the RV. Wow, she realizes how warm it was in there, now that she gets a fresh hit of June air. She looks around at where she’s been the last few days. It is shady, with lots of trees. There will be other dark places, but she’ll never see that particular one again.
To leave this town, Loretta takes her down Main Street. Hey, there’s the quilt shop. There’s Nick’s. And there’s Abigail’s. All of the places she’s heard about from Grandpa. And, wow, look. There’s Grandpa Ed himself, sitting at the counter, cutting a stack of pancakes with the edge of his fork.
She runs past. She waves. A split second later, she hears him calling.
“Go, Bella Luna! Go, go, go!” She looks over her shoulder. He’s practically jumping up and down in his old-man pants and polo shirt. A woman in an apron, Abigail, maybe, raises her arm and shakes it in encouragement.
It is clear right away that she’s been lying in bed for days, because her muscles are tight and her joints creak like the wheels of an old shopping cart. Her lungs throb, but maybe that’s just her heart, urging her to flee.
September twenty-second. Seth Greggory.
Some silly water park with kids in red T-shirts? So what. Talking to a few students at one of the top universities in the nation? Big deal. Facing junior reporters and articles in major newspapers? Practically a birthday party. At least in comparison to the real terror that awaits. She can’t truly outrun her future, but you can’t tell her body that. Inside, those workings are ancient. The brain shoots fear and the heart speeds and the blood pumps. Our ancient, animal nature says: Bolt when you see danger coming. It says: Race across the forest floor when you see the man with the gun. It says: Bound across the highway when the truck is coming at you.
Sometimes, 2,700 miles aren’t nearly enough.
24
When the good people of the Silver Springs Golf Club in Ossian, Iowa, hear that Annabelle Agnelli, the girl who’s crossing the USA after that awful tragedy in Seattle, is running right through their town, they have a big dinner for her at Bambino’s restaurant. Bambino’s is where many of the town’s big events, both somber and celebratory, are marked. Tonight, parking the RV won’t be a problem. They can park anywhere in town they please. The golf club, the post office, Bambino’s lot, the Ossian City Park, wherever.
As soon as Grandpa Ed hears the word Bambino’s, he starts rubbing his hands together, expecting cannelloni and handmade pasta, ravioli; cannoli for dessert. He has his dress shirt on, the black one with blue stripes, and his fancy trousers. Little curvy lines of Acqua di Parma are coming off of him like heat waves in a desert.
Annabelle is nervous, but she is trying to do what Dr. Mann suggested after their now-weekly phone session—to listen to what people are saying and not what she fears they are saying. To be aware of other feelings inside besides guilt. And look, there is a sign out front, which someone made with poster board and fat markers: WELCOME, ANNABELLE! OSSIAN LOVES YOU! There is a group of blue balloons, huddled together like nervous middle schoolers. What the people of Ossian are saying is that they care, they care about her, not what she is guilty of, and she exhales. She exhales, and what she feels is . . . a little pleased.
Bambino’s is in a brick building right next to the fire department. The parking spaces in front of the place are all taken, but there’s a spot saved with orange construction cones and blue crepe paper. Lit Budweiser signs are in the window, and inside, there’s a pool table with a huge stained-glass Budweiser lamp hanging above. The far wall is decorated with enormous cutouts of football players. Grandpa Ed grunts his disappointment—there are no red-and-white checkered tablecloths, no smells of garlic and butter, no juice glasses of Chianti. But the owner, a warm blond woman with a big smile, comes to greet them, and the room is full of people—firefighters from next door, a thin boy from the Ossian Bee, the president of Luana Savings Bank, and the staff of Casey’s General Store, Becker Hardware, and Creative Corner Salon. Everyone is so nice. They pat Annabelle on the back, and ask her questions that she doesn’t mind answering, and they tell her that God is good. Grandpa Ed repeats his favorite joke, that he’ll be the one running across the country next year.
The food arrives, and it is not pasta and veal pounded thin, but creamed chicken over biscuits, and hamburger steak and gravy with peas and rolls and mashed potatoes. This isn’t Seattle food, and she realizes again how food and so many other things are different all around the country. One of the men from the Silver Springs Golf Club makes a toast, and there’s the sound of clinking beer bottles. Annabelle drinks a Pepsi in a plastic cup. Her cheeks are warm from food and
good feeling.
After the meal, there’s the hush of a surprise, and then someone turns out the lights, and the owner of Bambino’s, Sue, appears in the doorway with a cake. On it, there are lit candles, like it’s Annabelle’s birthday. The good people of Ossian start to sing. Happy graduation to you!
“We heard you’re missing yours at home today,” Sue says. The cake has a mortarboard on it in blue icing. Now she understands why there’s blue everywhere. Annabelle chokes up. On the phone this morning, she told her mom and Malcolm that she didn’t want to think about her graduation, that she wanted this to be like any other day, but now she’s overcome.
“This is so nice. I don’t know what to say.”
Sue saves her. “Blow out the candles, sweetie, make a wish, before we eat wax cake.”
Annabelle does. Her wish—well, it’s private, but it involves peace and love for everyone in those graduation seats at home, and for everyone not in those seats.
She can’t believe all these people and what they’ve done for her. Annabelle’s heart actually aches. And then one of the women from the Silver Springs Golf Club approaches. She has closely cropped brown hair, with little tendril curls framing her face. She’s wearing jeans and a serious brown cardigan with a white shirt underneath, the tips of the collar fanned out like crisp paper airplanes heading opposite directions.
She grips Annabelle’s hands, and stares hard into Annabelle’s eyes. “I just wanted to say . . . I’ve thought about you every day since I heard about you. My daughter dated a boy like that in college, and if she didn’t end up changing schools, who knows what might have happened. Pardon my French, but . . . that fucker.”
• • •
It happens again when she arrives in the village of Warren, Illinois. This is two and a half days after they watched the Casino Joe’s fireworks show on the bank of the Mississipi River in Dubuque, Iowa. Warren, Illinois, was a stagecoach stop in 1851, according to Grandpa Ed’s tireless Google research. The library—where Annabelle eats sandwiches from Hixter’s Bar and Grill with six members of the Warren Township High School track and field team and the Warren Township librarians—sits across from the railroad track. It’s right near the water tower, which is emblazoned with the word WARREN.
