Carlo lies splayed out in a large wire cage. As I approach, he thumps his tail and then lifts his head. He knows the sound of my footsteps. He has always been a pretty dog, with the shiny black fur of a Newfoundland and the same breed’s floppy ears, but slender and sleek like a collie, with a long narrow nose. When I open the door to his cage, he pulls himself out and crawls into my lap. He’s too big for this—his limbs spill over mine awkwardly. I can feel his bony ribs and hips pressing into my legs, and I stroke his glossy head.
My grandfather gave me Carlo one summer when I stayed with them. I was six years old, Carlo was six weeks old. Grandpa said we were both puppies. He put Carlo into my lap and the dog flopped down in the circle of my legs. At the time, Grandpa still taught English at Rabbitbrush High, and he chose the dog’s name. He said that Emily Dickinson’s father gave her a Newfoundland named Carlo to protect her on long walks in the hills. I remember nodding as Grandpa told me this. I had no idea who Emily Dickinson was, and I didn’t care what we named the puppy. I only felt so glad to have company—someone who might come with me wherever I went.
“That’s the point,” Grandpa said, “to have someone with you wherever you go.”
“What if Mom won’t let me keep him?” I asked Grandpa, keeping my eyes on the tiny black puppy, the sleek silk of his head.
“Oh, she’ll let you,” Grandpa said, his voice a firm and insistent growl. “She’ll let you, all right.” And I knew that it was settled.
* * *
When we get back from the vet, I tell Mom I’m not hungry for dinner and go upstairs with Carlo. Last summer, during my stay at the private hospital in Durango, I received talk therapy in addition to medication. I felt too awkward questioning the psychiatrist, but Dr. Reisner, the therapist, promised me that Prozac was a weight-neutral medication. I have no idea why I packed on so many pounds in the five months I took Prozac; maybe because I just stopped caring. But with Luke coming back, it feels important to look as much like my old self as possible, so now I’m medication-free, and I try to skip meals when I can. Yeah, I know, not the healthiest way to go. So on school days, instead of eating the lunch my mother packs for me, I pick tansy asters behind the baseball field and leave them on the front porch of Luke’s house. Francine, his mother, used to complain that those flowers grew everywhere in Rabbitbrush except her front yard. Midday, when I’m supposed to be in the cafeteria, Francine is safely at work. I like to picture her, later in the afternoon, coming home to the bouquets. I imagine her bending down to scoop them up and arranging them in the lopsided ceramic vase Luke made for her at summer camp. Sometimes I hope she knows it’s me who leaves the flowers; other times I hope she thinks it’s someone else.
Now Carlo and I sit upstairs in my room, the room where—I suddenly realize—I have never been alone, because this dog has always been with me. There’s a bandage across his belly, but I can see already that the bloat is coming back. I kneel and curve my arms around his body to lift him onto the bed. I expect him to be heavy, cumbersome. It surprises me how easily I can manage.
I crawl into bed next to him. I have been curling up beside this dog forever, since he was barely bigger than my head, and since he was nearly twice my size. This dog has lived with me summers at my grandparents’ house. In winters he has lived with me and my mother in tepees and yurts and tents. He has lived with me in what seems like hundreds of apartments, shacks, houses, and trailers that my mother moved in and out of. He even came with us the four years we lived in the Marquesas on a fifty-foot sailboat.
I don’t remember ever facing the world without this dog. “Sometimes I think you love Carlo more than you love me,” my mother used to accuse, and I would duck my face in apology because I didn’t want her to know that she was partly right. I could count on him to always put me first. Now I am terrified to tell Luke about Carlo, even though he won’t be able to grasp it, and I am heartbroken to face Paul. I lie on my bed, curled around my dog, tracing the extra dark lines surrounding his brown and watchful eyes.
My stomach growls, mournful and deprived. Familiar dog breath envelops my face. Carlo’s nose feels cracked and dry, and I recognize the expression on his face, grim but loving. And I know that tonight—for however many nights—he works hard to stay alive, for one reason, for me. I know I don’t deserve his devotion, any more than I deserve Luke—coming back to me, through my window. But come back he does, which must mean something. Right? Maybe it means I have the right to small hopes, like my dog getting well.
Last year at this time I was a girl with things to do. I took pictures and drew maps. I played guitar. I babysat three afternoons a week for Genevieve Cummings. I found ways to sneak out and meet the boy nobody wanted me to see. Now it’s all I can do to move through the day, waiting and hoping that same boy will make the unlikeliest and most welcome appearance. It’s been more than a week since I last saw him, and tonight the moon is on the wax. My window stands open, and the air carries in the first thin strands of wood smoke, and the barest hint of snow. I run my hand over Carlo’s rib cage, treasuring its rise and fall, willing that movement to continue. I know what it feels like to stick around because you don’t want to cause someone else pain, and I almost want to tell him that he can go. But then comes a flood of sadness. And I see Luke, running alongside that rushing river.
Downstairs someone turns on a faucet, and from the way the water gushes—not turned off at intervals—I can tell it’s Paul. I tighten my grip on Carlo, and even though I have sworn to give up everything that brings me happiness, I can’t tell Carlo what he needs to hear.
( 2 )
LUKE
The first time I saw Tressa, a hundred butterflies landed on her head. We were four years old, lurking in my backyard next to the bush with big purple flowers. Usually the butterflies hung out on the flowers, but I guess they liked Tressa’s white-blond hair.
Land on my head too! I thought. But they didn’t. It made me jealous, so it was hard to like the way Tressa looked under all those butterflies. But I did. She looked like a girl from a Disney movie. I half expected bluebirds to start flying around her head too. Or maybe a fawn would come out of the woods so she could pet it. Our moms were there talking, but I didn’t listen to them until my mom said that Jill and Katie were Tressa’s sisters too. “But Tressa’s not your sister,” she said.
Looking back it seems like complicated information for a little kid. I remember that Tressa and I looked at each other and frowned. We felt exactly the same thing, which was weirded out but also kind of fascinated.
The butterflies started flying back to their bush. Our mothers kept on talking. It turned out Tressa and I were born on the very same day. This is the kind of thing a kid thinks is amazing. Right? We have the same birthday. Tressa was much smaller than me, barely up to my nose. She had blue eyes. I looked like my mom, which is to say I looked like an Indian. Black eyes, black hair. But me and this little blond girl, we had the same sisters. We had the same birthday.
Before I met Tressa I wished I had a twin like Jill and Katie. Then Tressa showed up and I felt like I’d gotten my own, different kind of twin. I just wished her mom wouldn’t keep taking her away. It bugged me to think of Tressa out there in the world. For some reason I always felt like she needed me, even when we were little.
* * *
She needed me when we got older, too, just like she needs me now, which I’m pretty sure is why I’m still here. I know I didn’t go straight from the river to Tressa’s room but that’s the first thing I remember. Time had passed, but I still don’t know how much. Maybe I climbed up the wall of the house. But I don’t remember that, so I could’ve just shown up at her window.
Once I got inside her room, I could see her sleeping. It felt like I hadn’t seen her in a long time. She had her brow scrunched up like she was concentrating. She looked like she was worrying instead of resting. I wanted to tell her I was there, but I didn’t want to wake her up. So I backed away toward the wall. Carlo must have heard me
because he wagged his tail. His tags jingled and startled Tressa. She sat up.
It’s hard to explain the weirdness of that moment. I can’t really think of a word for it. Me knowing I shouldn’t be there and at the same time thinking, where else would I be? I thought she’d maybe be scared of me, but she just jumped out of bed and ran across the room. It almost felt like the old days, when she’d come back to Rabbitbrush after being away for a long time.
“I knew it,” Tressa said. She hugged me, and for a minute we thought everything was like it used to be, until after a couple minutes we realized that we couldn’t feel each other at all.
“It doesn’t matter,” Tressa said. She grabbed the collar of my shirt. “I don’t care. You’re here. That’s all that matters. You’re here.”
And so that’s when this other life began. Like the old one, what I mostly think about is Tressa. What I want is to get into her room. And when I can’t do that, I concentrate on what I remember about our lives, which is pretty much everything.
* * *
Here in the after-Luke I can watch the whole thing like a movie whenever I want. Look. There’s Tressa’s mother. She’s sixteen. Her parents, the Earnshaws, have lived on their cattle ranch for three generations. I’m surprised that Hannah looks pretty perfect, not rebellious at all. What I see is a pretty girl, a good athlete, a straight-A student. Captain of her softball team.
Nobody knows better than me about growing up in Rabbitbrush. Your whole life happens outside. They strap skis and skates to your feet as soon as you can walk. When I think of being a kid, I think of hiking, rafting, skating, skiing, rock climbing. Hannah’s life looks pretty much like mine. She does every wholesome thing you’d expect from a kid growing up in a small mountain town. Not like me, she doesn’t do anything you’d worry about.
Hannah graduated from Rabbitbrush High. It still had a prom back then, and her date was my dad. Afterward they both went to CU, and then they moved to Telluride, and Hannah got pregnant. They had the twins but didn’t get married for more than a year. “About time,” Mr. Earnshaw said when he made his wedding toast. Jill and Katie were there somewhere, toddling around on the hill.
Tressa’s grandfather looks really young, making that toast. It kind of blows me away. I don’t see a single gray hair on his head. Pretty soon he’s going to sell his cattle and almost all his horses, plus a bunch of land. But for now he’s got more than four hundred acres, and cows grazing on the hill.
I can’t stop watching that wedding. I stare at Hannah, trying to figure out if she looks anything like Tressa. By the time Tressa was a teenager her hair’d turned brown. But Hannah always stayed blond. Also she’s taller than Tressa. I think Hannah’s beautiful but not as beautiful as Tressa. If Tressa heard me say that, she’d laugh and call me a liar. Not many girls will admit to being pretty. Once I had a girlfriend named Kelly who admitted it. Hannah would have. But not Tressa.
* * *
After the wedding my dad and Hannah came back to Rabbitbrush. Hannah lasted six months. Then one morning she just took off. After my dad went to work she sat down at the kitchen table and wrote him a letter. She left it lying flat on the table and then drove the twins over to her parents’. Hannah told her mother she’d be gone awhile but she didn’t say how long. She didn’t say, Mom, I need to disappear for eight years. She just said, “I need a little time to myself,” then drove down the driveway and kept on driving.
I’m sorry, she wrote in the letter to my dad. I do love you. I just can’t do this right now.
Before the river I’d heard about that letter but I’d never seen it. Now I can look over Hannah’s shoulder while she’s writing it, and I can look over Dad’s shoulder while he’s reading it. There’s nothing in there about the twins so he figures she took them with her. I watch him drop his face into his hands. To me he looks like a kid, even though he’s older than I’ll ever get to be.
Dad looks too young to be anyone’s father. He looks too young to pour himself that glass of whiskey. After the first glass he starts drinking from the bottle. By the time Hannah’s mother calls to ask when they’ll pick up the girls he’s too drunk to go and get them. I can tell from the look on his face that he’s scared. Probably he thinks he’s way too young to be a father all by himself to two little girls who’re still in diapers.
And that’s where my mother comes in.
( 3 )
TRESSA
I have an appointment to speak with Mr. Zack, the college adviser, which presents a problem. Luke’s mother is the guidance counselor, and her office sits in the same little block of offices by the principal, just a few doors down. Part of me wants to see Francine more than anything else in the world. She was always such a good listener. If I didn’t have to avoid her but could walk straight into her office, I would tell her about Carlo being sick and how worried I feel. But I know how much she hates seeing me, how the sight of my face is like a billy club at the back of her knees. By far the worst thing about school is the risk of inflicting myself on Francine, and that’s saying something. So much about school is awful.
For one thing, I don’t really know anyone. My class has graduated. And even if they hadn’t, I barely spent two years at Rabbitbrush High before Luke died, and I never got close to anyone else. All of Luke’s friends were also friends with his ex-girlfriend Kelly, so even if it hadn’t been for my social lameness, it would have been hard to break in.
“I don’t understand that,” Dr. Reisner said last summer in therapy. “Why couldn’t you make friends on your own?”
I tried to explain that I’d shown up at enough strange schools not knowing how to do the right things, and wearing the wrong clothes, and saying the wrong things. In a way it hurt most of all in Rabbitbrush, which was the one place in the world I should have belonged. But by the time I came back here to stay, I had never even owned a pair of mittens. I didn’t know how to ski, or snowboard, or ice-skate. I could try my best to learn but could never catch up to the kids who’d been doing those things since the age of three. I would always be clearly not a native. This is truer now than it has ever been, because everybody knows the whole story about Luke and me, and how everything that happened was all my fault.
It’s one thing to resign yourself to life, another thing to actually have to live it. With Carlo so sick, all I want to do is hold my breath until I can escape school at three thirty. I don’t want to have to sneak down the corridor to Mr. Zack’s office. Francine’s office door is propped open, and I wish I could make myself invisible for the millisecond it will take me to pass by it. Luckily, within a few feet of her door, I get the feeling her office is empty. I don’t glance sideways to confirm this. I just scoot past as quickly as possible, and land in the chair across from Mr. Zack with a sigh of relief. A too-loud sigh of relief, because Mr. Zack looks at me with an extra dose of concern, and I realize then that I should have knocked.
He doesn’t say anything about that, though, any more than he lets himself stare at my wrists, which are covered by the long sleeves of my cotton turtleneck sweater. Instead he goes right into talking about my academic situation. Last year I took three AP classes, and this year I am taking three more. Even though the school didn’t let me graduate, they are giving me credit for all the classes I took last year, so that when I finally get to college, I’ll be that much closer to my sophomore year.
“You can stick with your deference at CU,” Mr. Zack tells me, “but why not also do a couple more applications and see what happens? You might end up at a better school.”
“CU’s a good school,” I say, slumping in my chair across from him. I pull my turtleneck up over my chin. If I could, I’d wear it up to just below my eyes, my hair spilling down and covering the rest of my face. Hidden.
“It’s good enough,” he says. “But maybe you’d be happier at a small liberal arts school. Your grades and SATs are very strong. You won that photo competition last year. That’s something new for your application.”
I do
n’t say anything. Last year, when Luke and I were applying, it seemed so stupid that I had a stronger shot at more prestigious schools. Luke was better than me at almost everything. He was better at guitar, and sports, and making friends. Better at just generally living in the world, which is probably why he never bothered too much with schoolwork.
“That photography contest is coming up again,” Mr. Zack says. “Have you thought about entering?”
Last year I won that contest with a close-up of a mule deer munching on the blue mist spirea behind Paul’s house. I’d been going through a phase of just carrying the camera with me, and got a lot of great wildlife shots. Now the camera sits in my bedroom closet, on the top shelf, high enough so that I can’t see it when I open the door. Its battery has likely been dead for months. There’s nothing I want to record. But since saying all this would just alarm Mr. Zack, I tell him, “Sure, maybe I will.”
He goes on listing colleges. “Stanford is a long shot, but it wouldn’t hurt to try. Or Colorado College, if you want to stay in state.”
“Aren’t those superexpensive?” I ask. My inflection rejects the suggestion, even though just yesterday I got an e-mail from Isabelle Delisle—the only friend I managed to collect during all my mother’s years of wandering—who, coincidentally, told me that she planned on applying to these very schools.
Mr. Zack shifts his shoulders. In addition to his duties as college adviser, he coaches the ski and lacrosse teams—both of which Luke competed on. As I watch Mr. Zack gracefully tilt back in his chair, I think how he must miss Luke too, and I wonder if it’s hard for him to sit here talking to me. If it is, he does a good job covering it up—looking straight at me, his brows kind and quizzical, challenging my financial worries. In a town of modest incomes, my stepfather is known for his wealth. I consider pointing out that Paul is not my father. But of course Mr. Zack knows that, as well as he knows that my grandparents have kept themselves afloat for years on the money they made selling pieces of their land to the Nature Conservancy. They would gladly empty out their bank accounts and sell more acres to send me wherever I want to go.
Meet Me at the River Page 2
