by M Sawyer
Nolin tugged at the hem of her shirt and looked up to see that Drew was looking at her. Something like curiosity twinkled in his eyes. There was a strange softness there too, something that made Nolin feel warm and oddly uncomfortable all at once.
They froze for a moment, then Drew blinked and cleared his throat. “How about I lead so you don’t outrun me, huh?”
With Drew in the lead, they made their way down the hill and fell back into a brisk run on the road. It wasn’t until they reached the house and said good-bye that Nolin remembered how exhausted she was.
Chapter 31
MELISSA DESCENDED THE stairs draped in a too-large beige dress. She hated her work clothes. The fabric felt scratchy and stiff on her skin, crinkling against her legs as she stepped down each stair, rustling against her concave stomach every time she slid her arm farther down the banister.
This was the time she normally left for work, though now there was no work to go to. Still, she would pretend nothing had happened. Nolin couldn’t know.
Nolin bustled around the kitchen, scooping oatmeal dotted with black raisins into bowls, pouring creamy white milk into glasses. Melissa’s famished stomach roiled. As a child, she’d hated oatmeal for its bland glueyness. Now the thought of it in her mouth, moving down her throat, and weighing in her empty stomach sounded like heaven.
Nolin turned with two steaming bowls in her hands and started when she saw Melissa, her eyes wide for a split second. She recovered quickly and put the bowls on the table with two loud clacks.
“Good morning,” Nolin offered tonelessly, not looking at Melissa.
Spittle pooled in the corner of Melissa’s mouth. Her eyes fixed on the steaming bowls. She wiped it away and approached the table slowly.
“I’m late,” Melissa croaked. Unable to resist, she bent over and spooned two small bites into her mouth. It was hot. Her tongue stung. Her stomach roared.
Nolin paused at the sound, a spoonful halfway to her mouth, and stared at Melissa’s middle.
“I can put it in a container so you can take it with you.”
Melissa shook her head, though an unwilling spark of gratitude flared in her chest.
“No thanks, I’ll be all right.” Her spine cracked as she straightened. Melissa grabbed her purse from the back of a kitchen chair and slung it over her shoulder. The movement knocked her off-balance. Her vision swam. She felt Nolin’s eyes on her, but she stared straight ahead and walked down the hall, carefully placing one foot in front of the other before stepping into the cool morning, playing her part, pretending she had somewhere to go.
***
The moment Melissa disappeared down the street, Nolin darted into the garage. Finally, she had a chance to root through the boxes on the shelves, where her curiosity had been tugging her all weekend. Something she wanted was there, information she craved. She didn’t know what exactly, but she’d know when she found it.
The ancient cardboard bulged as Nolin hefted the heavy box down from the shelf. A thin layer of tawny dust plumed in wood-scented clouds that made her sneeze when she folded back the limp flaps.
Inside were faded papers jumbled on top of slim, hardbound books. Nolin slipped one out; it was patterned in ugly green-and-yellow stripes with sketch of a badger baring its teeth and crouching atop bubble letters that spelled “Cromwell High.”
Cromwell was the next town over. Melissa must have attended high school there before Calder had built its own tiny high school.
The style of the drawn badger on the yearbook cover was familiar. It looked like something from a storybook, though it was ferocious-looking, not only by its expression, but an underlying boldness and aggression in the pen strokes. Nolin knew that hand well. The spine creaked as she flipped the book open to scan the title page until she found the words she was looking for.
Cover-drawing contest winner: Melissa Michaels
Her mother had never struck Nolin as one to enter contests or bother with school clubs. Nolin thumbed through pages until she got to the M’s in the sophomore section. She opened to the page where her mother would have been, then immediately noticed one of the black-and-white pictures was scribbled out with angry black pen, pressed so hard that it ridged the shiny paper. Nolin scanned the list of names that flanked the row of pictures.
Alexa Mitchell
Just above that, the name Melissa Michaels was printed. To the left of the scribbled-out picture, a much younger version of Melissa smiled without showing her teeth. Even in the fuzzy picture, her eyes sparkled with mischief. Her long hair was brushed smooth. She didn’t have her fringy bangs or glasses. Her face was much fuller, her cheeks a flush of dark-gray dots. Without the name and unmistakable pointed nose, Nolin wouldn’t have recognized her.
Nolin squinted and held the page close to her face to examine the scratched-out picture. She could see only the outline of dark, curly hair. The entire face that had been inked into oblivion.
She browsed the extracurricular pages and was surprised to see the same apparition of her mother with that coy smile gazing at her from the creative writing club and the studio art club, painting backdrops for the school production of The Sound of Music, and voted “Most Creative.” Nolin was even more surprised to see full hips, a curved waist, a figure teenage boys would have ogled in the hallway between classes, and absolutely no hint of self-consciousness in Melissa’s stance. On the contrary, the teenaged Melissa angled her hips and shoulders to accentuate the curves, something Nolin could never imagine her doing as an adult.
Every so often, there were more scrawled black patches where a face was scribbled out, leaving only a mane of curly dark hair that almost faded into the pen scribbles. Always Alexa Mitchell—in the group photo of the track team, on the spread reserved for the science club, holding out a beaker in one photo and, in another, leaning over a glass tank with a coiled-up snake inside, dropping food into its den. Without the face, she could have been a teenaged Nolin, in tee shirts and jeans, wild hair, and a slim, boyish body.
Nolin hadn’t attended high school. Sometimes she thought about how it would have been. Would she have been involved in science or art? Would she have run cross-country or received awards for athletics or academics? Part of her had no interest whatsoever in clubs or awards; at the same time, she fantasized about collecting medals and certificates to hang on her bedroom wall, about running her heart out on a track with her proud parents cheering in the stands.
This Alexa person made her believe it could have been possible. This is exactly how it would have looked.
Nolin reached the end of the book and picked the yearbook from the following year. She flipped to the M’s in the junior pictures.
Melissa Michaels, now with bangs, the same coy smile and a glittering chain around her neck. Next to her, a scribbled-out photo of Alexa Mitchell.
Again, Nolin swiped the pages aside, pausing on the inky patches. Alexa, voted “Future Einstein;” Alexa, cross-country champion; Alexa, holding a trophy and standing next to a science fair exhibit about genetically modified seeds. Then there was Melissa—not in quite as many photos, Nolin noticed—painting sets for Fiddler on the Roof, bending over an illustration board with a pen poised in her hand in the art club.
Something stirred in Nolin’s memory, a sensation she was getting used to. She pinched her eyes shut and took a deep breath, rummaging through her mind to bring that memory to the surface. Alexa. She’d heard about her before. She could hear the name spoken aloud in her head, in her father’s voice. The taste of chamomile tea…and the dark feeling of guilt deep in her gut.
Her father had told her about Alexa, Melissa’s best friend that died when they were teenagers. She remembered now. Nolin’s stomach backflipped as she looked down at the page to the scribbled-out face. Alexa died not long after those photos were taken—two years at most.
But if they’d been best friends, why had Melissa scribbled out her face? Had she done this before or after Alexa’s death? Did they have a falling-out? So
mething told Nolin that asking Melissa would be a bad idea.
Nolin picked out the third book and flipped it to the M’s in the senior section. There was Melissa again, her face thinner, her hair not quite as shiny, and the sparkle gone from her eyes. There was no Alexa.
Nolin thumbed through the rest of the seniors, then the juniors and sophomores in case Alexa’s photo ended up somewhere else by mistake. Nothing. Nothing in the M’s. No scribbles. Nothing in the extracurricular pages, of Alexa or Melissa. Alexa was nowhere in the yearbook at all. Nolin supposed there was a chance she’d moved away or transferred schools, but Melissa’s drawn appearance in her senior photos and the absence of any other images of her told Nolin that her life had taken a downturn.
Alexa had already died.
She turned pages until she came to the last one, or at least where the last page should have been. The page was missing, with only one jagged fragment of the top corner remaining and the top of a printed letter showing an I or a J. Nolin ran her finger along the edge of the rip, no doubt in her mind that it had something to do with Alexa.
Chapter 32
NOLIN SHOVED THE heavy box back into the shelf. Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She opened it to see she had a text from Rebecca.
I’m in town. Where are you? I’ll take you to lunch.
Nolin’s heart leapt with joy. Suddenly, she realized how much she missed Rebecca. She thumbed her reply:
I can meet you at that burger place on the edge of town. Do you want to meet now?
Nolin didn’t want Rebecca to see the house. For some reason, those two things needed to stay separate.
Rebecca’s reply came almost immediately.
Yes. I’ll see you there.
Until she turned the key of her old blue Corolla, Nolin hadn’t realized how desperate she’d been for an excuse to leave the house and her mother’s strange mysteries. When the house disappeared behind her and she felt the warm spring air rustling her hair through the open window, she almost forgot the secrets she was unraveling and the lurking presence that followed her in those silent moments in the house.
Rebecca’s red Camry was waiting in the parking lot of the burger joint. It was uncharacteristically dirty, probably from the long, dusty drive from the city. Nolin pulled up beside it. Her car sputtered as she turned off the engine.
Rebecca was sitting alone at one of the booths with her back to the door, her head tilted downward. At first, Nolin thought she was looking down at a book or her phone. When she rounded the booth to sit down, she saw that Rebecca was only looking at the blank tabletop, her hands clasped together, one thumb absentmindedly picking at the peeling black polish on her other thumbnail. She glanced up at Nolin, then returned her gaze to her hands.
“What’s wrong?” Nolin asked. She slid into the booth across from Rebecca.
“Eli had a stroke,” she said, her voice gravelly.
Nolin’s mouth suddenly went dry.
“He’s okay,” Rebecca went on. “He’s decided to sell the mortuary, though. The graveyard, the whole thing.”
Nolin’s jaw tightened. On some level, she’d known this was coming. Eli was old. He was always worrying. Hadn’t Rebecca told him for years that his stress would get to him? It was only natural that he’d want to sell the mortuary and retire once his health caught up to him. What about her little room in the attic?
Then she remembered the plane ticket she’d bought only a week earlier. She’d be leaving for Alaska in just a week. Until that moment, she’d forgotten all about it. She still had no idea what she planned to do there, just that it had felt right in the moment. She wouldn’t be going back to the mortuary anyway, but to have that door close behind her made her feel rootless, transparent, like she didn’t belong anywhere.
“So...” Nolin said hoarsely, “what’s going to happen?”
“The mortuary’s been in the family for a long time,” Rebecca said, “but I always told Eli I didn’t want it. There’s no one else now, at least no one else that we talk to, that Eli would ever consider trusting. He’s decided to just sell. It won’t take long. He’s had some guys from the city pushing him to sell for years. I’m not planning to stick around, though…I think I’m done.”
“Done?”
“It doesn’t feel like my place anymore.” Rebecca shrugged and flicked a shred of black nail polish off the table. “I’m actually thinking of going back to med school, or maybe graduate work in biology. I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”
Nolin imagined Rebecca in a slick hospital with her tattoos poking out of the sleeves of a white lab coat, being with people all the time. She knew it had been her dream once. Nolin couldn’t picture it now.
“That’s great,” Nolin said.
“I’d be moving away,” Rebecca said. “I don’t want to go to school in Maxfield; they don’t have the programs I’m looking for. You’re welcome to come with me, of course, but it’s up to you. You can do whatever you want.”
Nolin nodded. The hope and excitement she’d felt when she booked the flight had mostly crumbled into anxiety, but she was going to get on that plane. She’d made the decision. When she got there, she’d figure it out.
“I might travel a bit,” Nolin said. “I’ve barely been outside the state. I need to see what’s out there. I can’t make decisions if I don’t know what my options are.” She stared at the table as she talked, but she felt Rebecca watching her with her gentle eyes. Nolin knew she understood. “I actually bought a plane ticket last week. I forgot to tell you. I’m going to Alaska.”
She finally looked up at Rebecca, who looked back with a soft smile, eyes twinkling behind her glasses. “Good,” she said. “You need to go somewhere.”
A middle-aged woman in a red polo and visor approached their table with a tray piled with two wrapped hamburgers, two steaming cartons of fries, and two tall fountain drinks. She set it down on the table and walked away without a word.
“I ordered you a mushroom burger,” Rebecca said. “Sorry I didn’t wait. I figured you’d be hungry when you got here.”
Nolin unwrapped her burger eagerly. Rebecca’s intuition was spot-on, as usual. Nolin was very hungry, even though she’d eaten breakfast.
They ate in the same comfortable silence that they enjoyed during their long nights on the couch with stack of books and a pot of tea split between them.
Everything will be okay, Nolin thought as she chewed her burger. Her stomach filled with its warmth and weight. It was almost as good as sleep. Once she’d eaten the whole burger, she almost felt that she could sleep dreamlessly.
“So,” Nolin said, “you really didn’t have to drive all the way out here.”
Rebecca shook her head and nibbled on a fry. A few loose curls swayed. “I needed a drive. And I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Nolin was hoping the conversation wouldn’t turn that way. “I’m fine,” she piped automatically.
“Hey, have you slept at all? You look exhausted.”
Nolin didn’t answer.
“You can come home, you know,” Rebecca said, her voice softening. “You don’t owe her anything.”
Nolin wanted so badly to agree. Rebecca was right, but if Nolin left now, she would never feel right again. “She’s my mother,” Nolin croaked, her insides wrenching.
Rebecca sighed. “Nolin, I think you need to finish up whatever you’re doing here and get out. Come back home. We’ll get you to a doctor. You can’t go on like this. You’re not functioning.”
“I’m fine!” Nolin snapped. Dry pain tingled in her throat, as if her words had clawed their way out. “Just… I’m fine, okay?”
“No, you’re not,” Rebecca said. “You’re exhausted. At least get yourself a sleep aid or something. Listen to me. You are not thinking clearly. Do you understand that?” A hardened tone crept into her voice, a sternness she usually employed with Eli when she told him to take time off or learn to manage his stress. “Sometimes, these kinds of relationships are bet
ter from a distance. A significant distance, in this case.”
Nolin sat with her hands on the table. She stared at her crumpled burger wrapper, spotted with grease. Suddenly, the burger didn’t sit so well in her stomach. Far from feeling pleasantly satisfied and grounded, she felt she might be sick.
Rebecca’s voice dropped lower. “This won’t end well,” she said. Was that pleading in her voice? Nolin didn’t look at her.
“I can’t leave until it’s over,” Nolin said tonelessly.
“Until what’s over?”
“I don’t know.” Nolin shrugged. “I’ll know when it is. When it feels right, I guess. But if I leave her like she is, I’ll never forgive myself. I’ll always think about it. That’s how it was when I left the first time, and I won’t leave now until I’m sure it won’t follow me.”
Rebecca shook her head. “I get that, but this is just going to hurt you, Nolin.”
Nolin shifted in her seat. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she said flatly.
Rebecca sighed and sat back. The vinyl seat squeaked. “Fine. But I don’t think this is about her; I think it’s about you. Your mother’s an adult. She might not act like one, but she can take care of herself, or someone else can. It doesn’t have to be you, Nolin. Letting her suck you dry won’t make you feel better.” She sipped her drink until the last drops scraped through the straw, then plunked her cup on the table.
Nolin squirmed in her seat. Rebecca was right. Leaving or staying. No matter what she chose, it would rip her apart.
Rebecca finished her food in silence, and they left. The outside air felt hot and smothering compared to the air conditioning in the building. Outside the restaurant, between their cars, Rebecca wrapped her arms around Nolin and pulled her in tight. Nolin stood still for a moment, then returned the embrace. Rebecca rarely hugged Nolin, but now her arms were tight around Nolin’s shoulders. Her loose curls tickled Nolin’s face.
