Serendipity's Footsteps

by Suzanne Nelson

  “Pinny!” Ray growled, throwing open the stall door. “What the hell?”

  Pinny grinned, clutching Ray’s duffel and guitar to her chest. “You can’t say no now. I have your stuff. I’m not giving it back unless you bring me along.”

  Ray lunged at Pinny, making a grab for her bag, but when Pinny opened her mouth like she was about to scream, Ray stopped. The last thing she needed was someone bursting in thinking she was assaulting a disabled person.

  “Pinny…please,” Ray said through clenched teeth. “You can’t come. You need to go back to Smokebush. They can take care of you there.”

  Pinny stomped her foot. “No! They can’t. Not anymore. Mrs. Danvers said.” She stared at the tile floor. “I heard her talking to Mr. Sands. They can’t keep me anymore ’cause I turned twenty-one. I can’t go back to school next year. I’ll be too old. I’m a problem now. Mr. Sands says the state doesn’t pay for problems.” She dug the toe of her shoe into a crack, and glitter rained down. “They’re getting me a job at Fricasweet’s. In the food line.” She scowled. “They have bugs in their burgers there.”

  “They do not,” Ray said. Sure, she’d seen cockroaches the size of small cars in Fricasweet’s. But that kind of honesty never did anyone much good. “It might not be so bad.”

  “You work there, then,” Pinny snapped, then sighed. “Mrs. Danvers said I have to live at Horizons Assist from now on, too. Starting next month.”

  “I’ve heard that’s a nice place.” Ray made her voice optimistic. Horizons Assist was a dumping ground for people who had issues that no one else wanted to deal with. She didn’t blame Pinny for not wanting to live there, but what was she supposed to do about it? Not my problem, not my problem was a harping chord in her head.

  “It smells like bleach. They make you sleep on plastic sheets in case you wet the bed.” Pinny wrinkled her nose. “I have Down syndrome. That’s all. I don’t wear diapers.”

  “Fair enough.” Ray laughed. “So tell them you don’t want to go.”

  “I do. All the time. They don’t hear me.” Pinny glared at Ray. “They say there’s nowhere else to put me. If I stay, I’m stuck.”

  Ray considered arguing, but there didn’t seem to be a point. Mrs. Danvers called Pinny “high functioning,” but even so, Pinny had been in high school for the last seven years. She’d get an honorary diploma at graduation, not a real one, and college would never happen for her. Ray had once overheard Mr. Sands comment on how lucky Pinny was that she hadn’t been institutionalized after her mother disappeared. The few foster parents that had tried had only taken Pinny for a month or two at most. The physical therapy, speech therapy, and state assessment meetings had been too much of a nuisance. But after Pinny came to Smokebush, Mrs. Danvers handled everything.

  It was sort of impressive, Pinny’s ability to nail down a truth most people politely denied, and Ray wondered how much Pinny really understood her own life. Of course, there was a lot Pinny didn’t get—like Careena Baddour, for one. Careena knew how to put on the warm-and-fuzzy charade, just like her mother. Careena’s family owned the Pennypinch, a thrift shop in Jaynis, and had a reputation for being some of the most charitable do-gooders in town. Careena always had sugary smiles ready for all the kids at school, but hardly any were legit. Maybe it was her smiles that had fooled Pinny, or the shoes she wore that Pinny adored. Maybe it was the way Careena looked at people, like each one was important to her in some unique way that didn’t have to be spoken out loud. Whatever it was, Careena became Pinny’s object of worship, and Careena milked it for all it was worth.

  It was while Careena was running for student-body president last fall that she glommed on to Pinny’s adoration. Pinny became her most loyal helper during her campaign, handing out VOTE FOR CAREENA buttons and flyers every lunch period for a month straight.

  “Who’s my best girl?” Careena would say, slipping an arm around Pinny in the hallway.

  “I am,” Pinny would respond, beaming.

  She’d pretty-pleased Pinny into believing they were friends. Ray saw how warped it was right away, but to Careena it was a harmless game of master-servant. To Pinny, though, it was everything. Until the day she found out it wasn’t.

  Ray’s gut twisted now as she thought about Pinny and Careena, and the dance-team tryouts. A speaker crackled to life in the ceiling, announcing boarding for the bus to New York City, and Pinny’s eyes bored into Ray’s.

  “I’m like you. Trapped.” Pinny walked toward the door. But when Ray hesitated, she turned back. “You’re taking me with you. You know you are.”

  The certainty of her tone made Ray shiver, as if Pinny knew this was part of a debt that Ray needed to pay for all the times she’d stood by and watched, doing nothing.

  But it was impossible for Pinny to know that. It was only the guilt scritch-scratching at Ray’s brain, the guilt that she thought she’d be escaping. Turns out, it was following her around in a pair of purple Keds.

  —

  Ray shoved her duffel under her feet, then folded herself into the window seat, tucking her legs up so they crossed over into the seat next to her. It was a silent signal to Pinny, a DANGER: LIVE WIRE warning. But Pinny either didn’t get it or chose to ignore it. She sat down, her marshmallow hip swallowing Ray’s toes.

  “Watch it!” Ray yanked her feet free.

  Pinny shrugged. “Sorry.”

  Ray frowned, swiveling toward the window to avoid Pinny’s persistent, questioning eyes. She was in no mood for socializing when all the cash left in her wallet was a measly thirty bucks. The rest had bought their two bus tickets. Without Pinny butting in, Ray could’ve gone all the way to New York on that money. As it was, they only had enough to get them to Nashville. Just fifteen minutes in, and her plan was imploding. Typical.

  The bus rumbled to life, then pulled away from Jaynis with a fanfare of spewing gravel. Pinny smiled and heaved her backpack into her lap. It bulged unnaturally, crammed with the countless “treasures” Pinny kept inside. She wore it so much that it was basically an extra limb. “Want to play Go Fish?” she asked.

  “No,” Ray snapped. Shame swept over her and she added, “Maybe later.” But that sounded insincere.

  “Okay.”

  Her relief was only temporary, though, because Pinny pulled out her Polaroid instead. Ray groaned inwardly, knowing what was coming. Pinny dipped toward the floor, taking mental inventory of all the shoes in sight. She fixed her stare on a pair of orange espadrilles, worn by a woman two rows back.

  “Pinny,” Ray started. “I don’t think—”

  Too late. Pinny was out of her seat.

  “Hi,” Pinny said to the woman. “Your shoes are so…joyful. Can I take their picture? For my Shoe Hall of Fame.”

  “Uh—um,” the bewildered woman stammered. “Sure.”

  Pinny clicked her camera, then smiled in satisfaction at the developed photo.

  “So,” she said, whipping out a pen from her pocket. “How did you two meet?”

  The woman blinked, then laughed, her bewilderment replaced with delight. “At a flea market in El Paso. It was love at first sight.”

  In her professional reporting tone, Pinny said, “Tell me all about it.”

  Ray held her breath, watching the woman’s face for the tolerant smile that masked the underlying annoyance, a signal that Ray’d have to bring Pinny back to her seat. She’d seen the same look cross others’ faces before, Careena Baddour’s in particular. When Pinny wasn’t in class at school, she was on her knees in the hallway or the quad, snapping photos of kids’ shoes. She might not get algebra, or the periodic table, but Pinny got shoes. On any given day, she could rattle off which king outlawed red heels, how many shoes Imelda Marcos owned, and a whole host of other random shoe factoids. Since Ray only had one pair of shoes, she escaped the Pinnyrazzi. The rest of Jaynis? Not so much. Careena, especially, had an enormous collection of shoes that Pinny found irresistible. At first, while Careena’s campaign for student-body president
was going on, she’d smiled at Pinny’s photography as if it were the finest form of flattery. But once she won the election, and Pinny had served her purpose, Careena’s patience with her ran out. Ray’d witnessed it herself one day while she waited outside Principal Tate’s office for yet another lecture on ditching.

  “Mr. Tate, you know how much I like Pinny,” Careena had said sweetly to Principal Tate. “And if it were just once in a while, I’d never say anything. But she follows me in the hallways between classes, taking pictures the whole time. Yesterday…she followed me into the…girls’ bathroom.” That part was whispered in a tone of perfected embarrassment. “It’s just an uncomfortable situation for me. I mean, isn’t it sort of about my privacy?”

  “Exactly,” Mrs. Baddour said, ever ready to come to her daughter’s defense. “Of course children like Pinny should have every opportunity to interact with other students. But surely there’s a more…appropriate way to go about it.”

  “Right,” Careena seconded. “Why can’t she take her photos in the nursery?”

  Principal Tate cleared his throat, and Ray couldn’t resist glancing around the door to see Careena turning crimson under his gaze. “Surely, by ‘nursery,’ you don’t mean Room 305?”

  Some of the kids at school referred to the special-ed room as the “nursery,” but no one, until Careena, had ever said it aloud in front of the principal. Ray snickered as Careena, the ultimate queen of fakery, sputtered an apology. “No…I didn’t mean—”

  “I hope not,” Principal Tate interrupted. “I expect the student-body president to be an example—”

  “I am!” Careena blurted. “You know I don’t think of it that way. But I’ve heard other kids call it that so much, it sort of…slipped out. I’m sorry….”

  “I agree with you, Mrs. Baddour,” he said curtly. “Pinny’s skills should be afforded a better venue. Which is why I’m appointing her to the school newspaper as a staff photographer. We’ll print one of her photos in each issue.”

  Careena walked out of the office wearing a tight but appeasing smile, and Pinny was left alone to take her photos. Though sometimes, outside of school, Pinny’s zealous picture taking was still met with testiness. Thankfully, Ms. Orange Espadrilles seemed happy to share her story while Pinny wrote notes at the bottom of the photo.

  Ray sat back, relieved to have Pinny occupied with someone else for a change.

  She scoured her insides for patience, but finding nothing but frustration, she gave up with a sigh. Sometimes she had moments where she could step outside of her skin and see herself as a stranger might. In those moments, she hated the ugly sarcasm in her voice. She hated her scowl and smoldering eyes.

  But this hardened face was her armor. It helped her slip through days unnoticed. Whole weeks, even. Most of the time, it worked. Most of the time, it kept others distant, minding their own business. It was why kids at school said hi to her in the hallways but never invited her to hang out. Why, at Smokebush, Mrs. Danvers had given up insisting she participate in movie marathons and game nights. Everyone felt some degree of fear around her. Except Pinny. If Ray refused a movie, Pinny came knocking with soggy popcorn. When Ray got arrested for shoplifting a skirt, Pinny offered up one of her own. If anything, Ray’s moods made Pinny more insistent, like Ray was Pinny’s personal improvement project. Ray had banked on Pinny realizing at some point that she was damaged beyond repair. But here Pinny was, trailing her again.

  Ray leaned her forehead against the window’s cool glass, watching a lemon-haloed sun inch above the pines. She remembered another face she’d had once, a softer, kinder face. She’d discovered it last summer when she met Carter for the first time, and then again when she’d found the pale pink shoes at the Pennypinch. If she tried, really tried, she could probably call that face to the surface. She closed her eyes, drifting back to that day last summer when she’d given in to her softer self, when the air had thrummed with cicadas and her lake had rippled with whispers, calling to her to come.

  —

  Her lake was nestled half a mile back from Smokebush, surrounded so thickly by pines that when Ray first discovered it, she felt she’d unearthed an ancient, untouched place of enchantment. Looking back on it, maybe she had. Because when she’d slipped off her shoes and dipped her feet into the water, the pain that was always there, sawing her nerves ragged, suddenly left. The water was the balm that drew her to the lake, and she claimed it as hers alone. The lake was Ray’s one reason for staying at Smokebush as long as she had. First, because of the lake itself, and then, because the lake was where she could find Carter.

  Ray never came to the lake without her guitar. It was the lake that taught her the music. It took her years to learn it, years of listening, of playing on her guitar what she heard in the water. The water had a rhythm, bubbly eighth notes tripping over rocks and half-note waves shushing the shore. She didn’t know the names of the notes, but she understood how to draw them out of her guitar, matching its tones with those of the water, the birds, and the wind.

  It was Carter who, last summer, taught her the names of the notes and how to read them on a page of printed music. The first time she saw him, she wasn’t sure he was real. She came through the trees, and there he was, in her lake, dipping and spinning like a water sprite, spraying shimmering droplets behind him. His dark hair was slick, his muscles sleek, his skin golden in the sunlight.

  He looked young enough, maybe nineteen or twenty. But compared to the gangly, pimple-pocked boys she’d let undress her under the bleachers at school, he was a god. As she watched, he caught sight of her, then smiled broadly, as if he’d been expecting her. Of course he hadn’t. He’d thought all along that the lake was his. But that was until the water brought them together. Or at least that was how she used to think about it.

  “Who dares trespass on my sacred lake?” he said. She smiled then, too, because his voice had the most perfect pitch she’d ever heard. A voice you’d want lacing your dreams.

  “I should ask you the same question,” she countered. “This lake has been mine for the last seven years.”

  He climbed out of the water and shook himself off, then stretched out on a rock with a satisfied yawn. “Well,” he said. “This lake is my cure, so I can’t give it up. But maybe we can work something out.”

  “Your cure?” she repeated, watching the water running off him in rivulets.

  He nodded. “My cure. For nightmares, memories, and monotony.” He closed his eyes, tilting his face into the sun. Then his eyes flitted to her feet, where the scars shone wormy pink. A question flickered across his features, but he didn’t ask it. Instead, his gaze came to rest on her face. “And your cure is…?” he finally said.

  “Music.” She stared furiously at the ground, not understanding why she’d blurted out such a private truth to a complete stranger. But there was an openness about him that made honesty easy, which was a first for her.

  “Music,” he repeated. He nodded toward the guitar. “Go on, then. Let’s hear it.”

  Ray’s heart unhinged. She’d never played in front of anyone, only in the cleaning closet at Smokebush, where no one would hear her. Or out here at the lake, where only the birds and squirrels could laugh. Still, she found herself strumming the strings, compelled to play for him, even through her embarrassment and stumbling fingers.

  “Now I know we can make a deal.” He leapt off his rock and, before she could protest, swooped up her guitar and played a lick that took her breath away, his fingers prancing over the strings. He handed her the guitar with a complacent grin. “You let me swim here. I’ll give you free lessons.” He held out his hand. “Deal?”

  She hesitated. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him, or that she didn’t want the lessons. She trusted him more than any other person she’d ever met, even though that didn’t make any sense. And she wanted the lessons. No, she hesitated only because of how much she already wanted to put her fingers in his. It was frightening, but she shook his hand. She took the
exhilarating heat that shot through her and tucked it away for safekeeping so she could call it up in the darkness of her bedroom whenever she wanted to after that, and she wanted to most every night.

  “I’m Carter Hennley,” he said, sliding his hand out from hers.

  “Ray,” she said.

  “Have a seat.” He patted the rock beside him. “Lessons start today.”

  That was how it began, their summer afternoons by the lake. They always swam first, and then, when they were deliciously cool and tired, the lesson came. They never talked about their lives outside of the music. Their conversations were barre chords, riffs, chicken picking. Although she would’ve liked him to, he never touched her, except to correct her fingering on the guitar strings. Most guys would’ve stared at her chest, squeezed tight as it was into her too-small Goodwill bathing suit. Not Carter. She’d never spent time alone with any guy who didn’t have his hand up her shirt or down her pants in record time. But the slightest brush of Carter’s hand against her fingertips was more electrifying than anything those other guys had ever done to her. Because of that, she wanted to please him, more than she’d ever wanted to please anyone in her life.

  She practiced picking until her fingers first bled and then formed happy little calluses she marveled at. Slowly, she learned how to read the notes on a page and turn them into music. For years, she’d plucked blindly at the guitar, composing pieces that never sounded quite right when she played them. Now her fingers memorized positions, gliding through the notes, until she could play all the songs that wove in endless ribbons through her head. When they swamped her head, she could finally free them…writing them out onto walls, bathroom stalls, her music notebook, whatever was handy.