A Million Miles Away

by Lara Avery

  “The one with the banjos?” Kelsey asked.

  Peter scoffed. “It’s not just banjos.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Peter had come into town to see them, and ended up crashing in Lawrence for a few days after. “I told Michelle I had stuff to do here, but I didn’t really. She started catching on when I told her I needed to visit the Natural History Museum. Like I was that interested in dinosaurs. Yeah, right.”

  Kelsey was suddenly remembering the way Michelle had hung up her phone lately. Holding it in her hands and staring at it with a little smile on her face. Michelle never used to like talking on the phone. Not to Grandma, not to anyone. She must have been talking to him.

  “How long have you guys been, you know—”

  “Seeing each other? Three months. But not often enough. I work a lot. I was at basic. We talk when we can.”

  Peter stopped, shaking his head.

  “Well,” Kelsey said, “she seems crazy about you, so don’t forget about her—”

  “I couldn’t. I love her.”

  She took a step back. Peter froze, plate in hand. It must have occurred to them at the same time: He meant it. She could tell by the way he was standing, breathing, his eyes steady ahead. Kelsey pictured Davis upstairs, asleep. It had taken him a year to say he loved Kelsey. But Peter meant it right now.

  “I’m glad,” she said.

  He broke, smiling at the plate of bacon.

  “I’m, uh—” Kelsey started. “I’m going to go see if the shower’s free.”

  “Nice to meet you,” he called to her back.

  Kelsey waved, taking the stairs slow.

  She could hear Michelle humming to herself through the bathroom door. “If I’m butter, if I’m butter,” she sang. “If I’m butter, then he’s a hot knife.…”

  The water stopped. She could never hit the high notes. Kelsey slipped in.

  “Mitch.”

  Michelle’s voice came through the curtain. “Just because we took baths together does not mean you can invade my privacy.”

  “I just talked to Peter.”

  Michelle’s face emerged, spilling steam and the smell of coconut shampoo.

  “Now I have your attention.” Kelsey handed her a faded beach towel from their trip to Puerto Rico.

  “What did you talk about?”

  Kelsey thought for a minute. “Nothing,” she said. It was usually her job to roll her eyes, but that didn’t fit now. “I like him.”

  “I more than like him. I—” Michelle stepped onto the tile, wrapping the towel around herself. “I don’t know, Kels.” She was lost, grinning. “He’s smart. Smarter than me, even. He’s going to use the GI Bill to go to a good school after he gets back. Maybe he’ll come to Wesleyan, too.”

  “I bet he would,” Kelsey said.

  Michelle had applied early decision, and she’d get in, they were sure of it. Kelsey had always told her sister that she used too much brain space for homework and not enough for avoiding sidewalk musicians on Mass Street. Then again, Kelsey had focused her “academic efforts” on making friends with the weak-willed Geography teacher so she could scrape the 3.0 she needed to audition for the KU dance team.

  Michelle raised her eyebrows as she applied moisturizer in the mirror. “Boy, you’ve changed your tune.”

  “I don’t want to get punched in the stomach again.”

  “But really,” Michelle said, eyes fixed on her sister in that intense way that Kelsey could never duplicate, “what do you think?”

  “I think…” Kelsey sighed. “I think he’s going to be good for you.”

  Michelle did a little victory dance in her towel.

  “So,” Kelsey said as Michelle opened the bathroom door. Kelsey looked around before she whispered, “How is he, you know?”

  “What?”

  Kelsey made a motion she had imitated many times on the dance floor, a motion one might see in a raunchy music video. It was one of Kelsey’s favorite moves.

  Michelle held up her chin, drifting past to her room. “How presumptive of you.”

  “Come on!”

  “We’re waiting.”

  “Waiting until what? He gets back?”

  From below, Peter called, “You ready?”

  Michelle gave Kelsey a look, expecting her to get even for the sucker punch. Kelsey had a good one, too, something about Michelle not sending him off to war properly. Then she thought of Peter standing in the kitchen, loving Michelle and meaning it. Kelsey threw up two peace signs. Michelle mouthed, Thank you. Last night was forgotten.

  “Five minutes!” Michelle called, and disappeared behind her door.

  “I’m going to miss my flight!”

  Kelsey looked over the railing at Peter, who was now in his camo. “Wow, you’re going now, huh? You’re off to the airport?”

  Peter rubbed his head nervously. “We’ll have to take breakfast with us.”

  Briefly, Kelsey considered going down the stairs to give him a hug. He looked so alone down there. Scared.

  She put as much cheer behind her voice as she could. “Good luck, Peter.”

  He flashed a grateful smile toward her, drifting toward the front door.

  Inside her room, Kelsey lay back down beside Davis, bringing him to her, smelling like sleep. She hoped this Peter thing would work out for her sister.

  Michelle should be so lucky, Kelsey thought. She really should.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was six. The house was spotless, perhaps suspiciously so. Davis had left; Kelsey’s parents had come back. Quiet banging sounded as her father set out plates for dinner and her mother cleared space on her desk for stacks of student papers and giant volumes of constitutional law. Kelsey was trying to subtly move the Buddha statues an inch to the left. Then, after looking at them, she moved them back to the right.

  “Turkey burgers!” her dad yelled. “Turkey burgers or nothing.”

  “No bun for me, please,” her mother called back, bouncing on the large exercise ball she used for a desk chair.

  Kelsey checked her phone.

  Me (12:03): How’d the drop-off go?

  Still no word from Michelle. It took thirty minutes tops to drive to Kansas City International, forty-five if she got stuck in traffic. But it was Saturday. And it had been seven hours since she left.

  Me (2:16): ??

  Me (2:30): Don’t tell me he missed his flight…

  She’s probably being bummed out in a coffee shop somewhere, Kelsey had thought. Then two more hours had passed. Kelsey was checking the driveway every fifteen minutes or so for the 1992 Volvo they shared. The car could have broken down, but she would have called. Even if her phone had died, she would have found a way to call.

  Me (3:52): Pls call when you can, mom and dad are on their way.

  Michelle might have lost her phone, Kelsey figured, but that didn’t explain why she hadn’t come home.

  Kelsey laid it out again, to try to soothe herself through a weird panic that had set in: If—no, when—Michelle came home without her phone, she would have to make a PowerPoint presentation, stating her case for a new phone. Whenever either girl wanted anything expensive, a computer or a phone or a three-day camping pass to Wakarusa Music Festival, the Maxfields made them prove their need in a cost-benefit PowerPoint on the monitor in their mom’s office nook. Kelsey’s sophomore year presentation on the desire for a Coach duffel, which had included animated fonts and a conclusion set to John Mayer’s “Waiting on the World to Change” had really set the bar high, in her opinion.

  Me (4:17): For real Mitch. Where are you?

  Kelsey had cleaned up Hannah’s (or somebody’s) vomit from the basement sink, getting stink all over her cardigan and leggings. She and Davis had rolled the keg to the back of his Jeep, and returned it to Jensen’s Liquor. And finally, she had put the jade Buddhas back in their prized place. Still no Michelle.

  Me (5:23): Not funny.

  Kelsey took a step back, surveying her handi
work. The Buddhas were a relic from her parents’ trip to Cambodia, before they were married, back when trips to Cambodia were rare and cheap and disconnected from modern life, her mother had explained.

  “Kelsey? Burger?” her dad shouted.

  “I can hear you when you talk normally, Dad.”

  “Burger?” he repeated. “Burger? Burger?”

  Kelsey rolled her eyes. “Yes! But without the chives and crap.”

  “And one for Mitch, or what?”

  “Um…” Kelsey hesitated. Michelle should have been back hours ago. She was supposed to come straight home from the airport. She was going to help Kelsey clean. More importantly, she should have been there to tell her own goddamn story. Their parents didn’t know about Peter. What was Kelsey supposed to do? Say that Michelle was probably painting lovesick portraits of a member of the US Army somewhere? Kelsey was starting to get nervous again. “I think she’s at the library or something. Plus, she’s still a vegetarian, Dad.”

  “When is she going to give that up?” Kelsey heard her father mutter. It had been a few months on and off. The family’s interest in meat was a matter of personal pride to Kelsey’s dad, whose restaurants were called Burger Stand and Local Burger.

  Kelsey flipped back to the texts she had sent her sister.

  Me (6:05): Told em you were studying. You owe me one.

  “Ha-ha!” Kelsey’s mom let out a laugh. Michelle always said their mother’s laugh sounded like the mating call of a tropical bird. She was reading through one of her students’ papers. “Listen to this one: ‘In a unitary state, the constitution will vest ultimate authority in one central administration and legislature and judiciary, though there is often a delegation of power or authority to local or municipal authorities.’”

  Kelsey glanced at her mother, her dark, graying hair shooting out from her head in thick waves. “Funny, Mom,” Kelsey said. “So hilarious to all of us.”

  “Good one, M,” her dad called from the kitchen. “We don’t know why that’s funny, but as long as you’re happy.”

  Her mom was no longer listening, now making wide strokes with a thick red pen on the essay.

  “Order up!” Kelsey’s dad yelled. “TB, 86 bun, side of Brussels.”

  “That’s me,” her mom said, standing, putting the pen behind her ear. When the girls were younger, and her dad was just starting out, they used to pretend every dinner was at the Burger Stand. Michelle would make menus with crayon, and Kelsey would walk around in her princess dress, taking everyone’s order.

  Her mom paused next to Kelsey at the mantelpiece, staring.

  “Did you move the Buddha statues?”

  “Huh?” Kelsey’s heart beat a little harder. “Yeah. I was dusting.”

  “Right.” Her mother gave her a pat on the back.

  The three of them stood around the counter, chewing.

  Her mom stabbed a Brussels sprout with her fork. “Michelle’s out studying, you said?”

  Kelsey coughed. Instead of answering, she took a sip of water.

  “Rob, can you call her?”

  Kelsey’s dad wiped his hands on his jeans, fishing for the phone in his pocket. Her dad always looked unnatural with the phone up to his bearded face, with his bushy caveman eyebrows. Silence. The sound of muted rings as he listened for an answer.

  “You’ve reached the voice-mail box of Michelle Maxfield.”

  He hung up. “Hmm.”

  “Hmm,” her mother echoed. “What’s she working on?”

  Kelsey snapped, “How am I supposed to know?”

  Her mother’s eyes got wide. “I don’t know, hon, I was just asking.” Her parents looked at each other. They were beginning to suspect something.

  There were two possible scenarios: Michelle would either walk in the door any minute, or she would come home much later, probably with a new dreadlocked friend who smelled like the Kansas River. No, wait. Kelsey held her breath, not looking at her parents.

  There was a third option: Michelle wouldn’t come home at all. She would call them from Canada or somewhere, where she and Peter had eloped to a cabin or a commune or something.

  Oh, God, Kelsey thought. Michelle’s recent hush-hush. Peter’s pensive, smiling good-bye. What if they took the car and ran away together?

  While her parents chatted back and forth, recounting their trip to the vineyard, laying out their schedules for the week, Kelsey’s stomach started to turn.

  No. She could totally shrug this off. She wasn’t her sister’s babysitter. Michelle would come back soon, right? But Kelsey couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Something was really, really wrong. While her parents were distracted, she tried Michelle’s phone again. Nothing.

  Me (6:37): ANSWER ME

  Me (6:39): PLEASE

  “Kelsey,” her mom interrupted. “No texting at the table.”

  “I’m trying to get ahold of Michelle,” Kelsey said, and then she swallowed some spit. Her mouth was starting to get dry.

  “I thought she was studying,” her mom said, deadpan. She raised her eyebrows at Kelsey. She knew. She always knew.

  Kelsey’s father drummed the counter with his fingers, which was a bad sign. “Is this another boy thing? It’s another boy thing, isn’t it?”

  “She distracts herself,” her mother murmured, shaking her head. “She always has to distract herself.”

  “I don’t know where she is,” Kelsey said. Even though it was the truth, she still didn’t feel any better. If this was as serious as it felt, maybe she should tell her parents the whole story. She’d been gone eight hours. It was serious, right?

  Kelsey’s mother took on a lawyer’s tone. “What did she say this morning?”

  But what if Michelle was just fooling around somewhere? She would come home to an interrogation about Peter. Everything had been so good before she and Peter had left. Michelle would never trust Kelsey again.

  “Well, she said—”

  The chime of a doorbell. Kelsey stopped. Her parents turned their heads. No one used the doorbell except for UPS and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

  When her mother opened the screen, a policeman stood there, his hands crossed in front of him. Sounds from the outside filtered into the house; cars passing over the brick road, insects buzzing.

  “Can I help you, Officer?”

  “Is this the home of Michelle Maxfield?”

  Her mother took a second to answer, the shape of her body so small in the door, next to the policeman. “Yes,” she said.

  Kelsey’s dad reached for his daughter, found her hand.

  “You may want to take a seat. There’s been an accident.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The day of Michelle’s funeral, cars lined the road in front of the Maxfield house. People moved in and out, standing on the front porch staring into space, watching oak leaves fall and collect on the yard. A pile of coats gathered in the front hall.

  Inside, Kelsey moved through the crowd, holding the hand of her six-year-old cousin, Tabatha. Kelsey’s classmates and friends, Michelle’s friends, their relatives—all muted their conversations as she passed.

  This funeral field of mutters and quiet music was the most activity her house had seen in a week. She and her mother and father had slept in shifts, three or four hours at a time, giving one another quiet hugs in the hallway if they were to pass, before returning to sleep.

  Kelsey hadn’t looked any of her friends in the eyes. She hadn’t really spoken to anyone that day, either, except to Tabatha, for some reason. But her parents had asked her to do this.

  Tabbie was wearing shiny buckled shoes and a black velvet dress. She didn’t quite understand what was going on, just that Michelle was gone, and that she should be sad. Kelsey caught glances of her practicing an exaggerated frown, her little cheeks turning red from the effort.

  Kelsey stopped at the fireplace, one jade Buddha on each side of her head, her hair pulled up in its typical, tight bun. She had changed out of her dress into blac
k jeans and a gray sweater.

  “Everyone,” Kelsey said, still holding her cousin’s hand. “I’m supposed to tell you that there are food and drinks ready in the kitchen.” Their eyes stayed on her, waiting. “Thanks,” she added.

  A few people, mostly students that hadn’t even known Michelle that well, trickled toward the food.

  Kelsey had never been to a funeral before. She had only ever seen them in movies. She thought everyone would be in tears. Instead, only a few people were crying—not counting a couple of babies, who didn’t know why. She wasn’t one of them. She thought there was going to be a coffin lowered into the ground, and that it would be raining and gray. Instead, they had all stood outside the funeral home on the bright, cold day with Michelle’s burnt remains in a gilded tin, like a take-out box.

  She thought she would have a moment with the body, bending over Michelle’s waxy face looking up at the ceiling forever.

  Instead, once they confirmed her identity with the coroner, her parents had decided not to look at her sister again. She had only had a few cuts. After the Volvo had veered off K-10 on her way home from the airport, the bleeding had mostly been internal, the doctors said.

  Kelsey thought she would weep and moan and clench her fists, like her mother had done when she first heard the news, like she had been cut open.

  But she couldn’t do any of that. Even if she wanted to, Kelsey couldn’t feel a thing.

  She took a seat, putting Tabbie on her lap, wrapping her arms around the little girl’s velvety body.

  Kelsey heard someone, probably a teacher or an aunt, say, “What a beautiful photo they chose for the memorial.”

  It was her school photo from last year. Michelle had hated that picture. Her mermaid hair had covered the straps of her tank top, and everyone had made fun of her for looking naked. But there weren’t a whole lot of photos to choose from; most of the ones their mom and dad had around the house were of Kelsey and Michelle together.