by Jenn Bishop
Mom nods, already pulling back my sheets, and I see in her eyes how far she is past the point of exhaustion. “The mess can wait till the morning.”
And she’s right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The brick walkway is exactly how I remember it, right down to the loose brick I once tripped over, skinning the bottom of my chin. Yeah, that was a real good look to start fifth grade.
Becca’s house is one of the largest on the block, but it never felt as tall as it does to me this morning as I stand on the front step, reaching up for the brass knocker and holding her shadow box with my other hand.
Sure, I could’ve called first. That’s what the old Emma would have done. Knock, knock, knock. I hear footsteps inside. Someone’s coming. Will be here any second now.
I think about how it felt on the other side, back in Wyoming. That feeling someone had come over to see me, unannounced. Me? Really? Are you sure? Each time Tyler’s face appeared on Delia’s doorstep, that was how it felt.
It never got old, knowing someone was going to show up, actually be there for me, no matter what.
That was the person Becca used to be for me. She was always there. Always. Even when I tried to push her away. Now I need to be that person for her.
The door opens, but instead of Becca, it’s her Bubbe, with her same curly gray hair and huge pearl earrings. She smells like cinnamon challah French toast. “Emma!” she exclaims. “It’s been so long since I last saw you. Rebecca didn’t mention you were coming. Are you joining us for breakfast?”
There’s laughter in the background. Off to the side in the back of the living room, I see them. Four girls still in their pajamas, sleeping bags spread out on the floor. But I don’t recognize any of them from school. Are they friends she made at camp?
Right behind Bubbe, coming down the stairs, is Becca. Her legs are right on the edge of sunburned and tanned. Her normally curly hair is straightened, and she’s wearing a Harvard sweatshirt and pajama shorts, but not her glasses. Did she finally get contacts this summer?
Bubbe heads back to the kitchen, and Becca squeezes past her. “What are you doing here?”
“I… I…” I’m stammering, still holding the box. Do I give it to her now? What will she even do with it? Throw it in the trash? Show it to her new friends and laugh over it? Just Emma O’Malley and another one of her weirdo craft projects. “I’m…” But the “sorry” catches in my throat.
“Who is it?” one of the girls in the living room yells.
“Hurry up, Becs. You’re going to miss the best part!”
Becca stares back at me, waiting for me to say something. Anything. And that’s when I know, know for sure, that I’m too late. Maybe I had a chance if I’d thought of something like this back in June. But it says something—says a lot, actually—to not reach out at all. To leave town entirely for a whole month, never even saying where you’re going.
I abandoned her. Not just once, but again and again and again.
She holds up one finger and then closes the door softly in my face.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I stand there a second longer, not entirely believing what just happened. And then it sinks in.
As I’m fleeing Becca’s house, I trip on that loose brick, tumbling to the ground like a little kid. As I’m going down, I let out a yelp, but nobody comes to save me. The shadow box cushions my fall, but my body crushes the shadow box and it’s ruined, just that fast.
You can build something beautiful—a shadow box, a life—and squash it in an instant.
I pick myself up off the ground. My knee isn’t scraped too bad, but the palm of my hand sure is from trying to stop the fall. Tiny bits of gravel are pressed into my skin, and there’s a light sheen of blood coating my whole palm. I press it to my shirt, but that only makes it sting worse.
I walk down Becca’s driveway, bloody palm prints on my pale gray shirt. I glance back, sure someone has to be watching this in a window. Becca and her new friends, laughing at me. But there’s nobody in the window, only curtains.
I make it to the shady spot beneath the magnolia tree where Becca’s driveway meets up with the sidewalk and dump the smashed shadow box in the trash bin, and that’s when I lose it. The ugliest of ugly cries. Huge sobs rise up in my chest, and I can’t swallow them back down.
This thing with Becca—I can’t fix it. I was stupid to think I still could. Too much time has passed, and she doesn’t want anything to do with me. And the worst part is that it makes sense. Why would she come crawling back to me after how I treated her? She’s not dumb. Of course she’d move on. Of course she’d find new friends, find her people at Harvard. Of course.
A woman pushing a jogging stroller barrels down the street right past me. She doesn’t even stop to ask why I’m all bloody or try to help. It’s like I’m invisible again, like back at the beginning of sixth grade. How quickly I forgot that feeling.
I reach into the pocket of my shorts for my phone, my palm stinging against the denim. I’m about to call Tyler when I hear something. It sounds like my name, but it can’t be.
“Emma, wait!”
It’s Becca, her flip-flops slapping on the sidewalk as she jogs to catch up with me. “I closed the door to tell them I’d be right back, and then you were gone and—oh my gosh, Emma, what happened? Your shirt. Your—your hand.”
“I tripped.”
“On that brick again?”
She remembers. Of course she does. “You should really get that fixed,” I say with a laugh.
“You’re the only one who ever tripped on it. We always go in through the garage.” We’re both walking in step now, though I don’t know where we’re going. “Why did you come over? I haven’t seen you since school let out. I was starting to think you’d vanished.”
“I’ve been in Wyoming.”
“Wyoming?”
I don’t get it—how we’re having a normal conversation right now, almost as if nothing happened, when something did happen. And that something was all my fault. “Aren’t you still mad at me?”
Becca goes quiet for a second. Old Becca probably would’ve adjusted her glasses or something, but this new Becca doesn’t have them anymore. I wonder what else has changed. A month seems like such a short time, but it can be a long time too. “A little,” she says. “I mean, I was really mad about what happened at Camp McSweeney—”
“Becca, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so, so sorry.” My eyes are smarting again. “I made you this special shadow box—back in Wyoming—to show you how sorry I am, but then I didn’t get to finish it. And then I made one last night after I got back, but then when I tripped, I smashed it. I ruined it. I—”
“It’s okay, Em. It’s okay. I mean, it was weird at first. I thought I’d hear from you sooner, but then, things have been kind of weird between us for a while, right? Ever since you started hanging out with Kennedy and Lucy. Maybe even before.”
She’s not wrong.
“I didn’t get it then. I was jealous. But now, now I think I get it.”
“Get what?”
“I hadn’t met anyone before that I really clicked with, but then at camp this summer, I made these new friends and it was different. Easy. Not that being your friend was hard—it’s just… we didn’t fit together the same way, like how we used to. Sometimes you meet someone and it just makes sense.”
“Like me and Tyler.”
“Wait, did you get a boyfriend this summer?”
“No, no,” I say, laughing at the idea. “He’s a friend I made in Wyoming. Becca?”
“Yeah?”
I know Mom and Dad haven’t given me the all clear yet to tell people what’s going on with Austin, but I know they trust Becca. And after what happened with Austin, chances are they aren’t going to be able to keep this a secret much longer.
“Austin’s sick.”
We’re still walking, but Becca’s steps have halved in length. “With what?”
I fill her in on all that’s
happened between the shoulder surgery and now as we make a big loop around our neighborhood. Maybe Becca and I don’t quite click anymore when it comes to a lot of stuff, but when it comes to Austin, we still do.
“You must be so worried about him,” she says.
“I am.” I don’t know when the worry will ever stop, only that it feels so good to tell Becca about it.
We’re almost back at her house now. I know I can’t keep her out here forever. She’s got friends waiting inside.
“Becca?”
“Yeah?”
“Can we just—”
When you’ve been friends since you were four, there are some things you can say without speaking a single word. And as we wrap our arms around each other, I know it’s not the last time, but also that we can’t go back to the way things used to be. Our friendship has changed, but it doesn’t mean we don’t care about each other. It’ll never mean that.
“You smell different,” I say, and then laugh. “Not that you’re smelly. It’s just—your hair. Did you change shampoos?”
“It’s the straightener,” Becca says. “Do you like it?”
“It looks really pretty.”
Becca scrunches her nose like she’s not so sure. “I think I miss the curls. But it’s not permanent, right?”
“Right,” I say, and I smile.
Thankfully, few things are.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
On the short walk back to my house, I call Tyler and update him on Austin and my makeup with Becca.
Mom’s not back from the hospital with Austin yet, so I let myself in and head to the bathroom to wash off my hand.
“I’m putting you on speakerphone, okay? I’ve got to wash the blood off before Mom and Austin get home.”
“Uh, Emma? The blood? Did you leave something out? Like, I don’t know, a murder?”
I let out a laugh so big it sounds almost like an evil cackle. “Yes, Tyler. I murdered someone,” I deadpan as I pull out the drawer where Mom keeps first aid supplies. “No! I tripped on Becca’s front step, remember? Although, now with blood all over my shirt and shorts, it actually does a little bit look like I murdered someone.”
“Can we switch to FaceTime? I need to see this.”
I click to accept his FaceTime call and then hold back the phone to show him my murderer ensemble. Now that I think about it, I could use it for a pretty scary shadow box. Though I don’t know if a murder box would have a shot at winning that contest. More likely it would lead to a call to the local police.
“It doesn’t look that bad. Though I like your bathroom. Marble countertops? Fancy. Emily Gilmore would approve.”
“Aw, we didn’t get to finish our Gilmore binge.” I wince, dabbing the cut on my hand with a rubbing-alcohol-soaked cotton ball.
“There’s always next summer,” Tyler says. “Maybe if I start doing some chores around the neighborhood, I can save up enough money for a plane ticket to Boston! I could mow lawns, walk dogs, feed cats—well, as long as they’re nicer than Dumbledore.”
“Or we could come to you.” I slap a Band-Aid on my palm. It’s hard to imagine a whole year out, especially when I’m trying to take things one day at a time. But maybe next summer Austin will be doing better and we can fly out as a family. See the buffalo together.
“But then how am I going to get to see Stars Hollow?”
“Ty, it’s not real.”
“You know what I mean. New England! Ooh—sorry, Em. I’ve got to go in a sec. We’re almost there.”
“Almost where?” I ask, suddenly noticing that Tyler’s been in a car this whole time.
“I’m with Grams. We’re going to see my mom.”
There. He means the prison. “When did you change your mind?” I head outside and sit on the front steps.
“When you texted me yesterday about Austin and heading home, it hit me. My mom’s so far away. Anything could happen to her—stuff happens in prison, you know? And I don’t want her to think I don’t love her. It’s not that I’m not mad at her still, but I love her too. That counts more.”
What Mom said last night, about the goodness counting more than the mistakes, comes back to me. “I’m glad you’re seeing her.”
“Me too.”
Just then Mom’s Subaru Outback turns up our block. “Hey, Ty? Mom and Austin are back. I’ve got to go. Text me later, ’kay?”
“I will.”
“Emma, what happened?” Mom exclaims as I click out of my call with Tyler.
“Dude, you lose a fight with a bottle of ketchup?” Austin chuckles, and for a moment it feels like nothing has happened, that he’s the same Austin he was a year ago. Even though I know that’s not possible.
“I’m okay. I just—I tripped.”
“Let me get some bacitracin for you,” Mom says, squeezing past me to go inside.
“I already took care of it.”
“You know, sometimes I forget how much you’ve grown up.” Mom does that little smile and head tilt that makes me think she might cry.
“Mom, stop,” I say, and she does. I head into the backyard. Austin follows me out to the couple of worn-out Adirondack chairs and sits down first. There’s a football resting in one of them, and he picks it up and starts gently passing it from one hand to the other. “You going to tell me what happened?” He gestures to my shirt.
“Do you remember Becca’s kitty blanket?”
“That ratty old thing? Yeah, what about it?”
And so I tell him. About what happened at Camp McSweeney, but also what happened before and after. How maybe my friendship with Becca is kind of like the kitty blanket. I still need it, even though it isn’t everything it once was to me.
Maybe it isn’t just that I was outgrowing Becca this year but that she was outgrowing me, too. This summer we both made new friends. Even if Tyler is two thousand miles away now, I know he’s there for me, just like Delia is for my mom. And he gets it, everything that’s going on with Austin. Probably more than Becca ever could.
“I hope people still aren’t making fun of her when school starts.” I pick at some flaky paint on the chair.
“You think people will still remember?” Austin leans back in the chair. With his longer hair, he doesn’t look so much like star-quarterback Austin anymore. But he doesn’t look like he has problems with drugs either. I guess there’s a lot you can’t tell just from looking at a person. “In September? Em, middle school moves waaaaay too fast for stuff like this. Trust me, it’ll feel like a blip by the time you’re back in school. Everyone will have moved on over the summer. There’ll be five billion other things to care about.”
“Really?” It’s hard to imagine at first—all I can think of are those last few days at school and the endless meowing. But then I think about this summer and how much can change in just a month.
I don’t know what I was thinking, imagining we could go back to the people we used to be. Like the buffalo. They came back from almost dying off, but it’s not like things went back to the way they were before. They couldn’t roam the plains anymore. There were too many people. The whole country had changed.
You can never really go back.
And even if I could, would I want to?
Would I really want to be the Emma who’d never been friends with Kennedy and Lucy? Who’d never met Tyler? The Emma who’d never traveled two thousand miles by herself and lived in Wyoming for the summer? The Emma who’d never saved a buffalo?
I don’t want to be that Emma again, even if I could.
Is that true for Austin, too? Or does he want to go back to before, even if it’s impossible? There’s so much I haven’t asked my brother. So much I want to. All summer long, I couldn’t. But now he’s right here, in the chair next to me.
“Austin,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Why did you—” I start and stop. He’s looking right at me. One hundred percent at me, like how he used to. “Sorry. It’s just, I don’t understand why you would do dru
gs. Your life before, it was perfect.”
“Perfect?” He laughs, and then his eyes shift to something off in the distance. He sits there so still that for a second I think maybe I shouldn’t have said it. Maybe after what happened the other day, it’s too soon.
He chews on his lip, and I worry he’s going to cry or lash out at me. Something. But he doesn’t. He says, so plainly, “Nobody’s life is perfect, Em. If there’s one thing I learned at rehab, it is definitely that. But I don’t know.… I don’t think there’s one why. At least for me. There are a lot of reasons, and I’m still—I guess I’m still untangling them. If that makes any sense.”
Even though I’m not entirely sure what Austin’s saying, I nod. Because he’s finally being honest with me. He’s telling me his truth.
But maybe there are some truths you can’t tell with only words.
“Hey, Austin?”
“Yeah?”
“I need to run inside and get something, but can you stay right here? I’ll be right back. It’ll only take a second.”
“Sure, Em.” He’s still holding that football in his palms when I leave him to get my sketchbook.
I think I know what to make for that art contest.
* * *
WHERE WE USED TO ROAM
EMMA O’MALLEY
AGE: 12
MIXED MEDIA
* * *
When Delia and her family returned from Yellowstone, she mailed my stuff back to me. Three big boxes of the mess I’d left behind in my room: all the stuff Tyler and I had found and then some. And of course my Becca box.
The idea came together as I talked to Austin that morning in the backyard, and right away, I knew which box made the most sense. I found it in the entryway closet, way up at the top. The shoebox that used to hold Austin’s football cleats.
Once my stuff arrived from Wyoming, on the inside of the box I glued pictures from those magazines Tyler and I had found at Goodwill: images of the plains and the beauty that once belonged to just the buffalo and the Native Americans. And in the center I tacked that portrait drawing I made last November in art class. The one of Austin.
