by J. Q. Coyle
“Wait,” I say, because everything’s growing paler and paler. Something is about to unwind in me—something that can’t be put back together.
I can’t feel my father’s presence here. And some part of me is gone, too. I feel dizzy again, staggering. My hand starts to buzz with pain, and I want to tell it to shut up. I’m not ready to go.
Jax looks at me. “What is it?”
I want to ask him if he’s real, if this world exists, but then wind picks up and a flock of birds kick up from a distant field and it’s like their wings take pieces of the dirt, the sky, everything with them until there’s nothing except chaos.…
CHAPTER SEVEN
BREATHLESS, I’M sitting on the edge of my bed, stunned that the blood theory worked. It’s weirdly thrilling. I remember the feel of the seeds against my fingers and Jax’s hand brushing mine. They’ve a stain of some kind, like the most real things I’ve ever felt. I go to the bathroom and wash the blood off my hand in the rusty sink, but I still feel his touch. I’m dizzy, shaking.
I walk downstairs to the kitchen where my mother isn’t icing the cake so much as smothering it. But maybe that’s my imagination. Ever since the talk with the principal, she’s kept a close eye on me. Maybe I’m the one feeling smothered. “What took you so long?”
“Sorry. Got distracted. What can I do to help?” I feel like there’s still static in my ears.
My mother turns and smiles at me, the smile she gives to her patients. She nods to a plastic bowl of chips and a tub of onion dip. “Bring that out to the guests. Say hello. Be respectful.”
I grab the chips and dip and walk into the living room. People are talking about the fallout from the Red Sox, but as soon as they see me, everyone stops. Mr. and Mrs. Butler, who give me a card every year with a five-dollar bill folded inside, are sitting on the love seat, holding Arnie, whose amputation wound is wrapped in gauze. I think of Sprowitz, bashing the dog’s leg. It makes me sick.
Uncle Alex is here, as promised, sitting in the only armchair. He’s wicked fit, tall and broad. His polo shirt looks tailored, and his stiff gray hair is too expensive-looking to be a barber cut. He always smells expensive, too, wearing some cologne bought on another continent.
“Alicia,” he says. “Happy birthday! Hope it’s okay that I brought two of my research assistants. They’ve worked with me a long time.” He points to two guys sitting on foldout metal chairs my mother hauled in from the shed. They don’t seem to want to be here any more than anyone else, glancing out the windows, fidgeting in the chairs—and who could blame them? I don’t want to be here. One of them, with the darker hair, looks familiar to me, but I can’t say how.
“Fine by me.”
The doorbell rings. Jane comes in, letting in a cold blast of air. “Happy birthday!” She’s overly chipper.
“Hi,” I say. I’m surprised to see her. It’s like she’s not really supposed to exist outside of her office. I wonder if she’s being paid to observe me in my natural habitat.
“So glad to be here!” But she isn’t glad to be here at all. Her eyes are skittish. She smiles at Alex and the others quickly, but she seems like she just wants to escape.
We all gather around the onion dip, awkward as hell.
Mrs. Butler tells me how pretty I’ve gotten. Mr. Butler updates me on Arnie. “Three more weeks before he’s all healed up! They say bites are the worst because they tear the muscles and tendons.”
“Bites?”
Mr. Butler nods, dips a nacho. “Yes, some other dog must’ve gotten to him.”
“I thought—I thought you said his leg had gotten crushed somehow.”
Mr. Butler frowns and shakes his head. “No. He was just too torn up to save the leg.”
So did Sprowitz do something to Arnie or not? I can’t think about it, because Mr. Butler wants to know when I’m going to get my driver’s license. “Maybe soon,” I say, but the truth is I can’t shoot for it unless I can figure out how to get my grades up. And what if I flash while I’m driving? Jane asks if I made the onion dip. It’s brutal how little there is to talk about.
Uncle Alex brings up college, which he’s offered to pay for. “In a couple years, high school will be in your rearview mirror. You’ll make us all proud.” Even though I know Alex means well, it just reminds me that my own father isn’t here saying it.
After a few more minutes of chatter, I decide to give them a break. “I’ve got to make a call.”
“Oh,” my mother says, walking into the room. “Are you expecting some friends?” It’s her greatest hope, that a group of guys in khakis and button-downs will show up with a few girls wearing braces, and we’ll complain about SAT prep, maybe even sing a song about it, in harmony—the things her own childhood was lacking.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say. This will get me out of the house, since the reception on my crappy phone is best in the backyard. “Hafeez had this thing, but it might end early.” Honestly, it’d be cruel to subject him to this depressing glimpse into my home life.
“We’ve got plenty to eat,” she says.
I grab my jacket, walk out the sliding door, which doesn’t really slide anymore; it’s more of a jerking door. I pretend to make a call, in case my mother is watching from the kitchen window, and when I glance over my shoulder, she is.
I walk across the small deck into the yard, cordoned off by a sagging chain-link fence. I hold the phone to my ear and pace. It’s cold and damp. The sky is a bruised gray.
Even though the hallucinations can scare the hell out of me, I wish I could have one now. I’d like to be somewhere, anywhere else, but especially in Jax’s world. It feels so good to know his name, like I have a piece of him that won’t go away.
I glance back to the house. My mother’s no longer watching, so I shut the phone on my fake call, shove my hands in my jacket pockets, and sigh.
And then I hear my name, a man’s voice, calling to me in a hoarse whisper.
“Alicia.”
It’s coming from behind the rusted-out shed in the back corner of our small lot.
I walk toward the shed slowly. It’s not Hafeez but still I say, “Hafeez?” because that would make sense in a way.
No answer.
I walk all the way back to the part of the yard blocked by the metal shed. I turn the corner. “Hello?”
And there, tall and thick shouldered, a little roughed up and wrung out, is my father.
Ellington Maxwell. In the flesh.
I take a step back, instinctively. I’m too stunned to think of what to say. I don’t even feel anything at first. I just take him in: thick head of dark hair, graying sideburns, stubbled jaw, faded jeans. Wool jacket, pilled at the elbows.
For a second, I have the impulse to shout for my mother. When I was a little kid, she taught me to shout for help if approached by a stranger—and, well, my dad is a stranger. I feel like my father has broken not just the restraining order but also some unspoken trust by showing up. One thing I could rely on him for was his absence, and now he’s even messed that up.
But I’m not a kid anymore. And this is my father—a man I haven’t seen since I was three years old, but then again, I just saw him a week ago—on the ship and on the speedboat.
I finally feel something like love, but it’s so twisted up inside of me that it could be fear.
My father and I stare at each other.
Then he glances back toward the house.
My heartbeat speeds up. I have to say something. I have to use this time to get answers out of him, but what are my questions? I start to panic. Here is this man who dominates my mind, even though he’s been completely absent—someone I want to know but am terrified to become.
My father looks bent, exhausted, but happy to see me. He might even be a little nervous himself.
“You’re here.” It’s the only thing I can think of.
“You look beautiful. You’ve grown up.” His shoes, leather ones that aren’t warm enough for the weather, are cracked at th
e toes.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” I say, thinking of my mother telling me the reason why she got the restraining order. They needed borderlines. I still don’t know why.
“I know I shouldn’t be here,” he says.
This isn’t going well. Now that love and fear feel like anguish. I’m finally meeting my father again and we’re going to fail at this. We don’t know how to be father and daughter. “Maybe you should leave,” I say, not wanting him to go. “It’s a party.”
I look at the neighbor’s caved-in aboveground pool, our shed—mottled with rust. I imagine my mother walking to the shed to get the metal folding chairs and then walking back to the house. Was my father here then? Watching?
“I know it’s your birthday. I want you to have this.” He holds out a present—a small thing wrapped messily in comic-strip newspaper.
“I don’t want anything from you.” But I know what I’ve said isn’t true. “Not anymore.” This feels a little more honest, but not much. When I was little, I wanted him around so badly that I seemed to carry that wanting with me everywhere. I tried to stop as I got older, knowing it was useless. He’s here. He wants to give me a gift. I can’t make it easy for him.
I stare at the ground—my mom’s trowel wedged in the frozen dirt—then I make myself turn, start to walk back to the house. It’s a test. Will he follow me into the middle of the backyard or will he stay hidden, like a coward? What’s he willing to risk?
When I turn back, I see he has followed me, standing where anyone could see him, the present tucked under one arm.
“Alicia,” he says. “You ever get a feeling that there’s another version of yourself? A better version, maybe?”
Is this his attempt at an apology? “Shut up.” I say it without even thinking. I’ve been angry at him for a long time.
“I wish I was a better person,” my father says. “I keep one version of myself hidden away—the good one who’s tried to do the right thing.”
“I wish I knew that version of you.”
“You know me better than you think.” He offers the present again. “Take it and just promise me you won’t toss it.”
I walk up to my father like I’m going to take the gift, but I don’t. “You left us. You abandoned us. Can’t you pretend to regret it?” It’s like all I want to do is hug him but I can’t cut through all the sadness and anger.
“I have infinite regrets. I love you. And…” He looks up at the house, and I look, too. No one’s at the windows. “I remember the first time I saw your mother. I knew I was looking at the face of the girl who’d break my heart in a million ways—still, it was worth it.” He offers the gift again. “Here.”
This time, I take it. I look at the newsprint. Ziggy. The Far Side. Do they still run these cartoons? It’s oddly shaped and small enough to fit into one of my jacket pockets.
“They’re going to be out here any minute,” he says. “Listen to me. Something’s going to happen to you. When it does, you’ll know it.”
I try to laugh this off. “A lot of things have happened to me,” I tell him. “What are you even talking about?”
“When this thing happens, you’ll have some real power, Alicia. You need to get off the meds, stop trying to mask the truth of who you are.”
How does my father know about the pills? “I think you’ve given up the right to give fatherly advice, don’t you?”
“You’re right.” My father rubs his jaw, the edge of a tattoo peeking out from under his shirt sleeve. And there’s more of it—branchlike tendrils wrapping around his wrist and neck. And those scars on his left hand, lots of nicks. He tries again. “This isn’t going to make too much sense now, but that world, where you saw the boy—it’s real. Jax is real.”
I take a quick breath that’s so cold my lungs burn. I only told Jane about him. Did my father talk to Jane somehow? But, no. I didn’t know his name when I talked to her about him. “How do you know about Jax?” I manage to ask. I’m shivering, more from nerves than the cold.
He doesn’t answer. He’s urgent now, his face taut with emotion. He glances at the windows again. “Tell Jax’s mother that if her world starts to die, I mean really die, she has to get the atlas out. I probably won’t be able to help.”
“I can’t tell her anything.”
“Why not?”
“She’s dead,” I say.
“Jesus.” My father’s eyes fill with tears. He stares at the sky, then locks eyes back on me. “There’s no one to get him out. If that world dies, he’ll die with it and the atlas will be lost.”
“I’ve got to go.” I assume he’s high though he doesn’t really look it.
“Don’t tell anyone Jax exists, Alicia.”
“Well, he doesn’t!” I tell him. “They’re not real people! They can’t be!”
“You’re wrong,” my father says, shaking his head like he’s fighting for patience. “You’re not crazy. And you have to get away from here, from Alex. You can’t trust him. He thinks I stole something from him, but I never did. And Jax has a powerful gift. You might have one, too—a different one. But you’re both too green, too young.” He’s muttering to himself for that last part more than talking to me. He seems shaky, nervous.
“Look, Jax is going to need your help and you might need his. Promise me you’ll try to get him out of that world. And the atlas…” His voice trails off and his expression tightens like he’s trying to do a complex calculation in his head. He’s clearly worried about Jax and this atlas, and the possibility of losing both.
Maybe my dad’s a madman, but what really scares me is that little bits of what he’s saying make sense to me—and probably only me. “You’re crazy, right? I don’t believe anything you’re saying.” I’m trying to sound like I’m accusing him, but my voice has gone soft. “Everyone’s always told me that you’re not right in the head.”
I can feel the panic spreading in my chest. But the thing is I want to believe that there’s some better version of myself, like he said. I want to be that person, and it feels like life or death—an ending or a beginning.
My father puts his hands on my shoulders, and this time he’s smiling a little, mostly in his eyes. He’s trying to be reassuring. “Just please trust me. After this thing happens, you’re going to find out I’m not such a stranger after all.”
“What’s going to happen?”
My father opens his mouth to say something, but just then the sliding door bumps open. My mother calls my name. By the time I turn, she’s already seen my father. She looks stricken. She grips the railing of the deck. Her breath fogs the air around her.
“Francesca,” my father says.
“You.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, but it carries in the cold air. I expect her to be angry, afraid, but I see something else, too.
My father takes a step toward her; she shakes her head once, and he stops. I feel dizzy from the sight of them together, the way they’re looking at each other.
“This is the end of me, Francesca,” my father says. “I’m the only one still free.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I came back because she needs me. Can’t you see that?”
“She needs a chance at a normal life. Can’t you see that?”
My father looks at the ground. My mother covers her mouth. She looks like she’s about to cry. And then I get it in the way she tilts her head: she still loves my father. Alex calls her from inside the house.
“Go,” she says to Ellington. “Now. Hurry!”
My father grabs my arm. “I never took anything from Alex that belonged to him,” he says quickly. He turns to go, but it’s too late.
Alex steps outside, sees my father, asks my mother if she’s okay. “Did he hurt you?”
“You know I’d never do that,” my father says.
Alex glances at him and back at my mother.
She shakes her head, the wind whipping her hair. “I’m fine.”
Jane comes out,
too, hugging herself in the cold. Her eyes land on Ellington and her face stiffens with surprise. I think of what I overheard her saying: He’ll come for her.… He’ll risk everything. She was talking about my father.
Alex’s research assistants lumber out onto the deck. “What’s going on?” one of them asks.
My father grabs me and hugs me. He whispers, “You’ve been in those other worlds. They’re real. You can move between them. You’re a spandrel, Alicia. A spandrel.” And then he pulls back and takes in my face. “I am, I am, I am. You are, you are, you are. Make your own map.”
I’m breathless. A spandrel? What does that even mean? And he’s quoting part of a Plath poem, one of my favorites. How does he know how much I love those words?
And in this moment I know that he’s telling the truth. There’s something going on that I don’t understand; there’s something bigger here. In this moment, I trust him. That’s all I know.
Then my father releases me and walks backward, his arms open wide. “Hey, I was just going,” my father shouts to Alex. “No need to get physical.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” Alex says. “You know the rules.”
“Screw you and your rules!” my father shouts, and he looks flushed with sudden anger.
Alex calls to his assistants, “Get him out of here,” and, just like that, they charge down the steps.
My father says, “You think I’m going to run? I’m right here.” There’s something brave and stupid and strong about my father, something that I can’t help but admire.
And then, as if it comes from some old instinct, my mother shouts, “Run, Ellington!”
My father looks at her, his expression sad and heartbroken. He doesn’t run. He doesn’t even brace himself.
The assistants are young and fast, and within seconds one of them tackles Ellington to the ground, twisting an arm behind his back and shoving his face into the ice-crusted ground.
“Lay off!” I shout, running over to them. “Stop! Leave him alone!”
Alex walks toward me and blocks my view of my father, as if protecting me from something I shouldn’t see, but my father takes it as a threat.
