Legacy
Page 18
And my heart starts racing.
I threw it all away. For two months I’ve been hiding from that, pressing it down, elbowing it out of my mind, distracting myself. I dropped out of school. I ran away from my mom. I’ve spent all this time telling myself she doesn’t care, but now, alone with myself, I can’t keep that lie going. I know that isn’t true, or at least it isn’t the whole truth. The whole time I’ve been pushing away this dull panic, and now it forces its way through.
I look west across the mountains, and in the distance I imagine I can see Tacoma. I can’t, of course; it’s way too far. But if I squint hard, I can see where the buildings start, and I imagine my house that I don’t know if I can go back to, the world I came from.
It’s weird: for the first time, right now, when I think about my mom, I don’t only feel angry. She still did everything she did. But I guess since Aaron died, I understand it more. It’s hard to know what to do when in one single instant your entire world changes, the center of it just suddenly gone. It makes a vacuum at the core of you; you feel like something has to fill it or you’ll stop breathing.
I always thought that she was punishing me somehow. Like somewhere inside, she knew it was my fault that Andy died, and everything that happened after was my penance. But now I’m not so sure it was my fault. It’s like when Sage said, I can’t let you go up there, Alison, and I knew it wasn’t about her letting me or not. I chose to come up here. It wasn’t up to her. She couldn’t have stopped me, even if she tried.
Even if I could have said something, even if I should have, Andy got in that car himself. He made his own decisions. I was just fourteen; it wasn’t up to me. Maybe nobody was punishing me.
Maybe all this time I’ve been punishing myself.
I want to tell my mom the truth. That I didn’t stop him, and that it wasn’t my fault. I want to tell her that I need her to get better somehow, that I can’t do that work for her. That I’ll never replace him. That I’ll never fill that space in her, and I shouldn’t have to. That I need her to figure out how to see me, here, right now, because I’m still breathing, and I’m part of things, and things go on.
I don’t know if she can do it. But I know that if she doesn’t, it’s not my fault.
Whatever I do after this, it doesn’t have to be penance.
* * *
• • •
The next day I wake up, look at the notches I’ve been carving in the platform, and I realize: this is it. Today is the last day on Cascade’s permit. It’s the last day that they have. My heart starts pounding: if they’re coming up, today’s the day they’ll do it. If they don’t, we will have won.
I sit, high up and still, all day. I’m watching for climbers, for trucks; but I’m also memorizing it, the curves of the mountains, the slant of the hills, the way the light turns the leaves into a million shades of green. Wherever I go next, I want to take this with me.
Halfway through the day I run out of space in Aaron’s old journal. I dig in my backpack, searching for some scrap of something, the back of a notebook to write down the rest of this day, and as I’m rooting through, I find it. That folded-up letter from Antioch. The edges are frayed and there’s sap on one side of it—it’s stained and sticky and a mess—but it’s there.
I open it up. Dear Alison: We are thrilled to invite you to join the Antioch community. That familiar knot twists inside me—knowing someone wants me, and knowing I can never say yes. But then I think, Never say yes. That’s what I thought before.
But I thought a lot of things before. I thought Jeff knew more than me; I thought I couldn’t do anything. I thought the bad things that happened were my fault, and that the black hole was the only thing that was real. I thought I didn’t want anything. That there was nothing to want. I was wrong about all of that. Maybe I’m wrong about this, too.
I don’t know how it would work. There isn’t money. I can’t pretend that’s different; that’s just real. But if my mom got them to give me Andy’s UCSB scholarship, maybe I could get someone to give me one of my own. To the place I want to go to. Someplace that’s mine.
I unfold the pages. Smooth out the torn edges. And then I rip the cardboard cover off of Aaron’s spiral notebook, and I lay it on the platform, and I start writing. Dear Antioch. My name is Alison. I can’t afford tuition at your school, but I want to come there. I’m writing this to you from a platform on a tree. Here’s why.
I know it’s midnight from the voices: a cheer from the direction of camp wakes me up. They didn’t come in. They’re not coming in. It’s over, and we won. I sit up in the sleeping bag, look out at the sky. Stars stretch above the mountains, the horizon invisible in the darkness, everything outside me one big open thing.
My hand grips the envelope tight; it’s addressed and stamped already. Tomorrow I’ll take apart this platform, put my pack on, hold tight to Legacy as I scale down. I’ll put my feet back on the ground. I’ll keep that envelope close to me while I hug everyone here goodbye, and in town I’ll find a mailbox, and after that the roads will open up in front of me, and there will be things along them that I can’t imagine yet; I’ll know where I want to go, and I’ll make a way to get there.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Nothing happens in the world without community, and Legacy would not have been possible without the support of countless people. My greatest thanks goes to the radical kids (and adults!) of Earth First!, who have been putting their bodies on the line since 1979 to protect the irreplaceable beauty and wildness of the earth. It’s easy to take the health of the planet for granted—but we cannot survive unless nature survives, and I am grateful to the activists who put themselves on the line to protect the earth for all who inhabit it. I’m also grateful to the water protectors, #NoDAPL activists, and all Native activists who were on this land first and who continue to stand up for the health and integrity of this land in the face of almost unimaginable opposition. Thank you to the giant redwoods of Northern California, which gave me my first experience of true awe. Thank you to David Miller, Jonathan Matthew Smucker, and the Minnehaha Free State for sparking my sense of wonder and hope way back when, as well as for your commitment, work, and ideas that continue to be crucial in the fight for the world we know is possible. Thanks also to Han Shan for that same fighting spirit and for the many research assists along the way. I deeply appreciate the support of Jen Besser and Arianne Lewin, who shepherded this book at Penguin from the time when it was just an idea, and to my agent, Joe Veltre, who has been with me since my first book. Big, beautiful thanks to my parents, Art and Donna Blank, who instilled in me from birth the understanding that we all share a responsibility to speak truth to power and co-create a more sustainable and just world. Thank you to my awesome sister, Tasha Blank, who gets all of the things this book is about, and who helped spark the idea on an epically magical forest hike. Thank you to my amazing husband, Erik Jensen, who supports me gorgeously in every single creative endeavor, and to our incredible, inspiring, fierce daughter, Sadie, who gives me something to fight for.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
—Margaret Mead
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jessica Blank wrote the YA novels Almost Home and Karma For Beginners, and is an actor, writer, and director for film, television, and theater. With her husband Erik Jensen, she wrote the plays The Exonerated, Aftermath, and How to Be a Rock Critic, as well as the film version of The Exonerated. They adapted and co-directed the feature film version of Almost Home, slated for release in 2018. You can find her at www.jessicablankcoaching.com
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Jessica Blank, Legacy