The Museum of Us

by Tara Wilson Redd

  But my parents were my best friends.

  And now I can’t trust them at all. Not with this.

  My mom starts redecorating. She moves the generic vase on the generic dresser and inspects the generic medical equipment. She folds generic blankets and rustles generic blinds. I hate it when people touch my things, but nothing of me is hidden in those places, and so it is safe territory for us both.

  Finally, though, I have to speak.

  “I’m sorry about the truck,” I begin.

  “We’re just glad you’re okay,” Mom says. “We brought you some books, some clothes—”

  My mom stops when she sees my face. I know I look mortified. It’s just that I feel my whole chest seize up when I think of them digging through my room. What could they have found? I think of my closet: a total disaster. I can just picture bits of adventures, completely meaningless to anyone else, tumbling across my floor: a broken cassette case, some white gloves, a map of Russia, textile and wallpaper catalogs, and travel magazines. An old attaché case from the Goodwill, its corners exposed under disintegrating leather. My secret world lying on the floor for anyone to see. If you know how to look, there are universes in that closet.

  “We didn’t touch anything,” Mom assures me. She knows me too well in some ways. She opens the bag and starts putting my stuff out on the nightstand.

  “Don’t unpack. I’m not going to be here that long.”

  “Nonsense. We always unpack.”

  It’s a Road Years tradition. Doesn’t that sound cool? The Road Years. That’s how I think of them, even though we never went that far. Anyway, even if we were only staying the night in nowhere Nebraska, all our suitcases got emptied, and the bathroom shelves got filled. Mom was fast: she could have us set up in ten minutes and strike camp in five, all while my dad was still getting his pants on.

  “Anyone been to see you yet?” Dad asks.

  “No, I don’t think anyone knows I’m here. I couldn’t call anyone. I don’t have my phone.”

  “You know Henry’s number,” he says.

  “Yeah, but he’s on the road.” Right after graduation, Henry got a crazy summer gig subbing for a guitarist on a national tour. He’s not even eighteen and he’s already a professional. He says it’ll pay enough to help fund a real album and maybe a tour for his band, Brother Raja, next year. But it sucks: he’s been on the road since June.

  I know exactly where he is, down to the latitude and longitude. I made him a really cool guide to all the places he would see, with maps and local attractions and lots of notes to say I’d miss him. I printed it on my parents’ office printers and sewed it all up like a real book.

  My parents glance at each other in that meaningful way they always do. They’re excellent at talking without saying anything. When they had their radio show, they could be having this whole dynamic conversation on air about the history of Pierce-Arrow hood ornaments and their eyes could be saying, “Did you remember to buy milk?” or “How about spaghetti for dinner?”

  I’ve never been able to crack the code.

  “It’d be fun to have your friends visit,” my dad says. “I mean…Lucie. And Henry.”

  I try not to look hurt. They don’t want me to mess up my tiny little social group. Lucie is the best, the absolute coolest. They can see how even standing near her makes me less invisible. I’m happy to be her sidekick at school.

  And Henry…My parents might love Henry more than me. He came over once and helped my mom sell one of her old guitars on the Internet, and he spent over an hour explaining Craigslist like he was talking to an alien. Henry said he was happy to do it because he got to be near me.

  You don’t get to leave a boy like Henry. He’s literally perfect.

  “Speaking of friends, how’s Old Charlotte?” I ask. My parents look aside. “She’s totaled, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah. She just couldn’t be salvaged after a second accident,” my dad says. Old Charlotte was basically cursed: we’d been driving her when we had our accident five years ago. I sniffle a little bit because deep down I want to believe there isn’t a car on the road my parents can’t fix. But of course that isn’t true.

  “We wanted to save Old Charlotte too,” Mom says, like wanting something is as good as doing it. “It’s okay. We’ll talk about getting a new car when you’re able to drive it.”

  “I’m…not grounded or anything?”

  “Well, no. It was an accident,” my dad says, but he says it like a question, or maybe that is in my head.

  Then it’s like they’ve run out of lines. They look at each other and I realize I should say something, but what?

  The minutes drag on and I know I should be focusing on what is going on. But I am drifting toward George.

  And then, because I am thinking about him, I am lost in him. That’s the trouble with me and thinking.

  “Sadie?” my mom calls softly, nervously, and I remember where I am. I’ve only been zoned out for a second, but she is staring at me like she’s been reading my mind and I feel so exposed and my whole face turns bright red.

  “Sorry, I keep…fading. It must be the medication. You guys don’t have to stay here,” I say. “I’m totally fine.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Mom says. My dad looks at his shoes. He doesn’t like conflict. At the shop, Mom handles all customer-related awfulness, and my dad is responsible for vermin and anything involving scrubbing. They’re very happy with this arrangement.

  “Well, someone has to keep the shop open. You guys can’t hang around here all day.”

  “Those are called employees,” she says with a sass I have clearly inherited. “We can stay.”

  “Why can’t I come home, then? It’s just a broken leg.”

  “It’s not just a broken leg.”

  “What, and some staples?”

  “Sadie. Come on.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Why do you think you’re in here? It’s because…”

  “Because they won’t believe me!”

  “I knew we should have brought you with us, but you wanted to stay and we trusted you to be responsible enough to do that. You were supposed to be going to Lucie’s! What in the world were you doing?”

  “I wasn’t doing anything! I just went for a drive! This is all a big misunderstanding! Why is everyone trying to turn this into a Lifetime movie?”

  My dad raises his eyebrows and my mom replies with hers.

  Then my dad does the thing he always did when I was little, where he talks very calmly and it makes me feel like I’m the one being ridiculous even if I’m completely right. He says very soothingly:

  “Sadie, we’ll be here when you want us to be. The doctors say—”

  “I don’t care what they say!” I shout.

  “Okay,” he says. “But if you do want us to be here, we’re happy to stay.”

  I settle down. That’s what we do. We don’t want conflict.

  “I don’t want to be any trouble.”

  My parents hang around for an hour or so and we watch TV, like we do at home. We like TV. It’s easy to grow apart watching TV, so that’s our together time. Together is the biggest lie people tell each other: that being in the same house or in the same room means anything at all. You can be sitting all on the same couch and still be totally alone.

  I won’t ask them to come back. But at least they brought some of my own clothes, so now I don’t have to wear those terrible hospital tie-up things. I felt like I was crawling out of my skin.

  Now I have my favorite shirt, which is a Brother Raja T-shirt that Henry gave me. He has the same one, and it feels like holding him. It’s the same elephant design that he has on his ring, which does look amazing when he’s playing guitar. I have worn this shirt into an almost-nothingness. It is the perfect level of used: it has no holes but
barely exists except as an extension of my skin.

  I have my things from home. But I’m still alone.

  Since I met George, I’ve never been alone. If I were at home, I would simply let myself go until I dip into that place of enchantment. In the summers I spent days there sometimes when Henry was away. I used to walk all the way to the art museum just to look at things I’d already seen and dream myself to George. I would pack a lunch and leave before dawn if I could, not coming home until after dark. I had beautiful days when I wasn’t a part of this world at all.

  But without dreams, there’s only wakefulness and the blackness of sleep.

  * * *

  I wake up in the night and I feel chilled all the way through my broken leg. My head hurts in that after-nap way, where your body punishes you for having fallen asleep.

  My journal is lying open across the bed. I must have dozed off with it in my arms. My words are there for anyone to see.

  From what I know of being awake, I prefer to be asleep.

  I snatch it up. I can’t let it fall into the wrong hands, obviously.

  I go to put it in the drawer of the table next to my bed, which I can just barely reach without hurting myself, when I notice a little piece of paper tucked under the edge of the lamp on the table.

  I am absolutely sure it was not there before.

  I reach and reach for it, stretching every bruised and battered inch of my corporeal form, but it is too far. I move my whole body to the very edge of the bed, nearly crying from the strain, and try again. This time, my fingers brush the torn edges of the paper and, letting out a pathetic groan, I grab it.

  I read the words written there.

  I put the paper down, my heartbeat like a drumroll announcing my terror.

  I look at it again. It is real.

  I inspect the note. It is a crookedly torn piece of paper with blue lines, just like the pages out of my notebook. I line up the lines with a page from my journal to make sure: an exact match. Did someone rip this page out of my notebook while I was asleep? I can’t find any torn page to match the edges on the note, just my own redactions I’ve thoroughly torn to bits. But it could have been done while I was sleeping, and the page might have been torn cleanly and ripped later.

  One thing is clear: someone has been in my room.

  I look at the note again, trying to see clues. The handwriting is desperate, scribbled.

  Watch out.

  They will steal your dreams.

  —Your Friend Eleanor

  “Damn,” George muttered. They were sunk low against the wall under the window. The heavy velvet curtains, once capable of turning noon to night, had been mutilated into lace. The lovely floral wallpaper had blossomed with bullet holes. The charming string quartet waltzes of the night before had been replaced by gunshots and screaming, marching orders and sirens. It had been such a nice hotel room. Such a shame.

  George’s tie was a crumpled knot and his white shirt was stained with blood. He kicked open his attaché case and pulled out his cigarettes, lighting two and handing one to Sadie. She took a drag and peeked out the window over her shoulder.

  The police cars below were no problem—their real concern was the Agency. Sadie could hear the small fleet of assassins on the stairs, the clumsy fools. Feet of lead, brains of toxic sludge, armed to the teeth with dirty weapons. They would think nothing of blowing up the building and half the block with it just to end two agents of the Resistance.

  “We’re surrounded,” Sadie concluded. She reached into her holster and pulled out her last bullets: two bright coppery monuments to death looming large in her small hand. She considered the bullets like the scientist she still was. They were simple. Efficient. The idea of dying next to George didn’t seem so terrible, if one had to die. And one way or another, it seemed rather less than optional. At best she might choose the bullet. After all, there were only two rules in the Resistance: do good, and don’t be taken alive.

  George glanced over. He was making the same calculations.

  Destiny had plucked her out of the lab, out of the top of her class at MIT, and into this network of betrayal and deceit: the war under the surface of every country, every city, every street. And George hadn’t even wanted her. Not at first. “Don’t send a physicist to do a spy’s job!” he had shouted. “Be patient with him,” Control had told her. “He’s young, but he’s the best.”

  How things had changed. That night at the Metropol after she’d saved his life, the way he had looked at her. Those deep blue eyes: a boy of loneliness and mystery. She studied him now, and she knew he wasn’t afraid to die. And after accomplishing so much, after living so much, neither was she. She wouldn’t have traded it for a hundred years in a lab.

  Falling stars. That’s what they were: burning bright and over too soon. But they’d been stars. What more could two people ask for in this crazy world?

  George glanced sideways at the gun in Sadie’s hand as another bullet shattered the chandelier. He slowly blew a ring of smoke and watched it float toward the ceiling. The door cracked and splintered as the agents outside worked to break it down.

  He reached out without a word and took the pistol from her. She barely felt the gun leave her hand. Sadie took one last drag and put out the cigarette. She handed him the bullets.

  “We might still make it out,” George offered feebly. She heard the barest hint of weakness, that vulnerable spot that only she knew. He conducted some legerdemain of bullets and chamber. His fingers barely trembled.

  “You know we can’t risk it,” Sadie said. He reached out and grabbed her, holding her tight.

  “I love you,” George said, the muzzle of the gun pressed into her hair. She closed her eyes. The world went silent as they retreated into this final still frame. They wanted to want something else, but they knew that this, here, was perfect.

  “I know,” Sadie replied.

  BANG.

  * * *

  BANG BANG BANG.

  “Sadie, get up,” her mom shouted, knocking on the door. “You’ll be late for practice.”

  “I am up,” Sadie shouted back. “I just had my headphones on.”

  For her thirteenth birthday present to herself from George, she’d installed a lock on her bedroom door. It had been easier than she’d thought: all those homeschool shop classes playing with hammers and screwdrivers had been worth something after all. It had been a new world of blissful locked safety. Her parents had tried reasoning with her, and had shared several eyeball conversations over this matter, and she presumed many more behind closed doors. Now there was an extra key in the kitchen. But they always did prize inventiveness, and the lock stayed.

  Sadie opened the door. Her mom’s fist was poised for another BANG. She was wearing a T-shirt for Webster Groves High School, one from when she’d gone there herself. Orange and black were unflattering on everyone, but especially did no favors in her family.

  Middle school hadn’t been over two days, and already she had to go to cross-country practices for the high school team.

  “I’ll be up in a minute.”

  “We’re so excited! Dad made you breakfast! First practice for our big high school girl!”

  “You know they let everyone on the team, right? Like, it’s not even a team. It’s literally running in circles like a hamster.”

  “Hamsters run on wheels.”

  “Or like aquarium fish. Who can’t remember where they started.”

  “That makes even less sense. Work on your analogies before you surface. Homeschoolers are supposed to be better on verbal tests.”

  “I’m not homeschooled anymore, though. Those are public middle school analogies. Sadie is to cross-country run as fish is to tank circuit.”

  “Oh, stop being such a spoilsport. You love school. And you’ll love cross-country. Remember all those 1
0Ks we used to do? It’s just like that.”

  Sadie glanced at the floor. Her laundry was full of shirts from those races. She’d almost grown out of them, but she had them in every possible color, for every possible cause and holiday. When she’d been younger it seemed like there was one every other week. Her parents had a whole matching set, but they couldn’t really run anymore. Theirs had become oily auto shop rags.

  Sadie watched as her mom hobbled back up the stairs. Before the crash, she would have raced up from the basement.

  Sadie shut herself in her bedroom and got dressed. All around her house were little reminders of the life that had been ripped out from under them: her parents’ crooked walks, the way they drove so carefully, Old Charlotte herself. Everything around her brought back memories that tingled at the edges of her mind. She felt like the only person in her house who could see memories in every magnet and mug. To her parents, walking by these things every day made them invisible. Sadie couldn’t help but see. She shook the thoughts away.

  And her mom was wrong: Sadie didn’t love school. She’d never been lonelier in her whole life.

  “Well, not with me around,” said George.

  Sadie smiled. That much was true.

  * * *

  The track wasn’t far, but her parents insisted on dropping her off, and in one of the flashier cars they were working on. They waved like mad people as they sputtered off in a semi-functional Model T. Everyone stared.

  Sadie used to like it when everyone admired their cars. Her parents were always happy to talk shop with any interested passersby. They’d hand out cards, advertise their services. But that had been before the crash, when she hadn’t had to go to school. Since middle school, everyone her parents talked to might be someone else’s mom or dad. It wasn’t like they were far away in Kentucky, Ohio, Nevada, anymore. They weren’t strangers here in St. Louis, they were neighbors.