Earth/Sky (Earth/Sky Trilogy)

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  “I don’t remember walking back to the house,” I said. I should remember that.

  “That’s normal. You were in shock,” the doctor said. “I’m glad your feet led you home. Do you remember the accident?”

  “Some of it. They wanted me to let them pass, but I didn’t have a shoulder or a rest area to pull over. So they yanked over into the other lane to go around and threw . . . I think it was a beer bottle? A woman threw a beer bottle. Then they hit the front of the scooter . . . and I started spinning . . .” I trailed off lamely.

  Grandpa Jack’s hands tightened on the bar of the bed. “The ranger didn’t get any of their names, and they peeled out when the cops showed. They weren’t from Spooner, and they’d better think twice before coming back.”

  The doctor checked over my leg and had me move it in different directions. There wasn’t much pain. Making a note on a clipboard, she said, “Take it easy for the week and let that heal. Over the counter drugs if it hurts should be enough, and use icepacks to reduce the inflammation. Watch for infection, but I think this will heal cleanly. Are you feeling up to visitors?”

  “Visitors?” My parents couldn’t be here. They were on the other side of the planet.

  “I’ve got a lobby full of horrified Spooner High kids,” the doctor explained. “How about I send in a few to visit while I talk to your grandfather about checking you out of here?”

  I nodded. My room was flooded with people in an instant, London and Savannah, Nash and Diego and Easton. Her eyes red-rimmed, Savannah settled a teddy bear wearing a get-well shirt into my arms. “We’re so sorry! We didn’t see you anywhere, so we all assumed that you must have left the party already.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, uncomfortable to see her so upset. “I had just gone on a little walk to look at the water.”

  “They’ll catch those people,” Nash said angrily.

  “You must think we’re all barbarians,” London said. “Honestly, that kind of thing isn’t a regular happening here.”

  “I don’t think you’re barbarians, it was just some jerks in a van. They weren’t even from around here,” I consoled.

  As Savannah placed more of the stuffed animals on the bed, Easton said, “I went over to Adriel’s house to tell him this morning when they didn’t pick up the phone, but there’s a note on the gate that his family is out of town for the weekend.”

  “The gate?” I echoed.

  “The Graystones have one of the nicest homes in Spooner,” London said. “All the best homes are on the northeast side, private drives and pushed back from the road. Easton and I live just south of that area.”

  A nurse leaned into the room and asked if anyone was willing to load up Grandpa Jack’s car with the bouquets, cards, and stuffed animals. They jumped to help, finding boxes to place everything in and the flood receding as quickly as it had come in. I rested against the pillows with my eyes closed, my mind picking at all that I couldn’t remember from the night. The memories of the party were clear, the flying marshmallows and walking along the reservoir.

  Someone knocked on the open door and I turned to see Zakia and little Lotus. She smiled tentatively and said, “Your scooter is trashed.”

  I laughed. “I figured.”

  “I mean, like really trashed.” She looked both amused and impressed.

  “Okay, Lotus, you saw that she’s alive,” Zakia said. Lotus grinned and darted down the hallway. Coming in, Zakia sat in the chair by the bed and lifted the lid on the breakfast tray. “What, you don’t like hospital food? Is it better in Los Angeles or something?”

  “I haven’t even had a chance to check it out,” I said. He wheeled over the table and made it extend over the bed. On the plate was a slice of buttered toast, some withered-looking scrambled eggs, and grapes that had seen better days. I shook my head and drank the orange juice. Setting down the cup, I gestured to the plate. “Help yourself. You were up half the night.”

  He took the piece of toast. “I’ve never been so happy to not find someone. Then after seeing what was left of the scooter, I figured your body must have been caught in the trees and we’d just have to wait for daylight to find it and bring it down.”

  “Thank you for looking. And for calling my house.”

  “It made me nervous how fast those fools were driving away once they heard the sirens. They junked the campgrounds. My grandfather Barney is friendly with the cops, and they told him there were reports of a group of people doing this at two other campgrounds in the last month. It might be the same group. Just showing up to drink and make trouble.”

  “You should have that looked at,” I said about the black spot on his arm. “Sometimes they can be cancerous.”

  “What, this?” Zakia looked at his arm. “It’s nothing. Just a friendly neighborhood mole.”

  “I remember the party, and you walking me to the parking lot through the dark. And I remember driving up the incline, and the beer bottle that woman threw. I don’t remember climbing over the side and back to the road,” I said, not knowing why I was saying this to Zakia at all. “I don’t remember walking home.”

  “Is there something about those events you want to remember?” Zakia said with gentle teasing.

  How could I have walked home in the dark like that? In shock and with my famous lack of direction, I should have ended up in Oregon or out to sea. The crowd of my friends returned, London snapping, “Should you really be eating her food?” and Zakia grinning as he ripped off a big chunk of the toast and crunched it loudly. Grandpa Jack came back with a wheelchair and the news that I’d been discharged.

  I wasn’t allowed to walk out. Submitting to being rolled along like an invalid, I got into the mail truck with a dozen hands all extended to catch me in case I fell. Everyone agreed that I should rest for the day, and they’d call or visit on Sunday.

  The music . . . it was completely gone, every last bit of it stripped from my mind except for the knowledge that I had heard those unutterably beautiful chords. I glared at the disco fish when I set it off on my way up the stairs at home, resentful to hear any other music. Then I lay in bed while Grandpa Jack answered the door over and over to neighbors bringing over meals like I was gravely ill or had died.

  My parents called that evening in hysterics. The connection was terrible, but enough information got through to convince them that I was fine and they didn’t have to cut the cruise short and come back. Then it cut out entirely and I set the receiver back in its cradle to fight with the Internet connection. But it wasn’t worth it, and I soon quit to flip around the channels on the television. Grandpa Jack insisted I not help make dinner or clean up after it. He just wanted me to sit there.

  In my sleep that night, I dreamed that I fell all the way to the bottom of the Gap and struck the earth hard. The jolt woke me, and my heart pounded in my chest as I sat up. That was what should have happened, crashing and dying on the ground, yet I was here in my bed. The tree groaned outside my window despite there being no wind. Branches scratched furiously along the walls as something beat onto the roof like a drum. It was a singular beat and then everything was still.

  I should be dead. Right this minute, I should be cold on a table at the morgue. My devastated parents should have been flying back to California, with arrangements made to send my body to Bellangame. There should have been a hole being dug at the cemetery, a heap of fresh earth growing beside it. Yet I breathed, in and out in this bed, twenty-four hours after being run off a cliff.

  Mysteriously, I was alive. Something glinted from moonlight in the tree, and I rose in curiosity. It didn’t occur to me to be afraid, not when technically I should be dead. Opening the window, I reached out to the glinting object caught in the branches.

  It was a feather over a foot long. I turned on the light, which glinted off the points of gold at the tip of every white barb. That was such a harsh word for these downy filaments in my fingers. They trembled at a breeze coming through the window, which I closed with a shiver. Some bir
d must have been perched on the branch just outside, but I couldn’t imagine what species had feathers like this.

  I couldn’t throw out such a pretty thing, so I stuck it into the pencil holder on my desk. Turning off the light and getting back in bed, I lay awake and watched the golden points glint. Then I closed my eyes and tried to force my mind to recall what happened when I spun over the side. The van had clipped the scooter and I’d been spinning so crazily . . . tipping and shooting over the cliff . . .

  . . . music . . .

  Dawn had barely touched Spooner when I drove away from the house in the mail truck after leaving a note for Grandpa Jack that I’d be back soon. If this went as planned, I’d return before he even woke up. I just had to see where I went over with the scooter. That might jolt my memory about what happened afterwards.

  It was far too early for anyone to be on the streets and I drove down deserted Jacobo without seeing a soul. This time I didn’t miss the turn onto Sutter. The truck bounced up and down with the potholes as it wound around the curving road. I didn’t know where exactly it was that I’d gone over the edge, so I watched carefully for a clue.

  Around another two turns and it was screamingly obvious with the skid marks. There were even shards of brown glass from the thrown bottle still on the road. Doubling back to the last rest area, I pulled over and parked. It would have been smart to bring a jacket, but I’d gotten up with a single purpose in mind. Rubbing my hands over my arms for warmth, I hurried along the road. There was no traffic going in either direction.

  The bottle struck down . . . I swerved to avoid it just as the van yanked back into the lane . . . it had happened too quickly. The blow, the tipping, the spinning . . . I followed the skid marks and tried to recreate the accident. It felt like I’d spun a dozen times, but that part had happened only in my head. The road wasn’t wide enough, and the marks showed I’d spun only once.

  The black marks went to the edge of the road and over. Hesitantly, I looked down. The angle was about seventy degrees. Treetops were far below, and no scrub grew on that sharp drop down to them.

  There was nothing for me to have caught, and nothing there to have caught me. The drop was rock and dirt, nothing more. Even if I’d snagged one of those rocks jutting out, I couldn’t figure out how I would have hauled myself back up. They were widely spaced, and it had been dark. And I’d been going forty miles an hour over the side, which would have shot me out farther from the edge.

  I inhaled, thinking this life of mine was over. That was a death drop beneath me, a hundred feet down to the treetops, and perhaps another hundred feet through them to the hard forest floor. People didn’t survive falls like that. But here I was, cold and shivering on the road instead of cold and still in a coffin. I went back to the broken glass and walked the skid marks a second time. I had no explanation.

  Could this be heaven? Maybe it was, me believing that I’d survived when in truth I hadn’t. If heaven was Spooner, California, I was going to be mightily disappointed. I walked back to the mail truck and drove home, pinching myself at the red lights on Jacobo since dead people shouldn’t feel pain. It hurt.

  Someone should have seen a bloody girl walking that distance! With everyone rushing to the road to look, they would have passed me staggering home. I parked the mail truck in the driveway and went inside, my brain circling on this. I could have gone some other way, yet with Spooner streets the way they were, I doubted that I would have found my way to the house. Grandpa Jack was still asleep, so I threw away the note and fixed some breakfast.

  The day was full of visitors. Very few of them came without a plastic-wrapped plate of food or a bowl of soup. I sat on the love seat under a blanket as the living room filled with more flowers and balloons. The coffee table was covered in plates of cookies and brownies. A cop dropped by with questions about the specifics of the van, but I didn’t have much to tell her. It was dark and had happened too fast; I hadn’t gotten a glimpse of the license plate or seen a bumper sticker. The destroyed scooter was being examined for evidence.

  “Starting to look like a florist shop in here,” Grandpa Jack mumbled. Even the cop had brought a little bouquet from the station.

  Nash arrived at lunch and stayed for hours, sitting on Grandpa Jack’s recliner and greeting everybody like it was his place. I smiled and talked, but really just wanted him to go. Fortunately, Kitts came to visit and redirected some of his attention. Someone knocked in the late afternoon, Nash rushing to get it and turning back with a gorgeous bouquet of orchids in a pink vase. The flowers were pink and white and magenta, and absolutely stunning. Plucking out the card, he started to open it. I motioned for the card with some irritation and said, “May I?”

  “It is hers,” Kitts said with equal annoyance.

  “Ah! From the Graystones,” Nash said obliviously, passing me the opened card. I took it in aggravation and read the message. That was all it said, to Jessa, from the Graystones in elegant script.

  “These aren’t from the florist,” Kitts said about the orchids. She looked at the back of the card when I set it on the table. “Wow, they came from Yunner’s.”

  “Is that good?” I asked.

  “They beat Spooner’s Flower Power hands down! Yunner’s is in Quilling. That’s a little south of here.” Checking over the flowers with an expert eye, she said, “No defects. These are beautiful. My boss tries to sell orchids in pots for home growers, but she can’t even grow them herself. She overwaters something fierce.”

  In the evening, I pleaded exhaustion. Kitts got the message and quit the scene. Stuffing a cookie into his mouth, Nash said, “Hey, do you think next Friday you’d like to go to the movies rather than swan dive off a cliff?”

  “That would be great,” I said, “a big group of us!”

  He flushed. “I kind of meant . . .”

  I knew what he kind of meant, and I was thoroughly uninterested. Getting up to head for my room, I said, “We’ll have a lot of fun.” Hopefully Nash wasn’t going to be one of those guys who pestered at a girl like a gnat until she gave in and said yes. He was cute enough, or he would be with a haircut, but he just wasn’t my type. Even without the belching introduction, I wouldn’t be interested in him.

  God, had it only been a week since I came to Spooner? It felt like an eternity as I walked to my locker the next morning. Progress was slow since everyone wanted to stop and chat about the accident. Riding off a cliff was one way to become popular. Even teachers stepped out of their classrooms to say hello and check me over. At the door to first period, Mr. Rogers shook my hand with his other hand clasped over the back of mine. Swine flu. It was just a matter of time.

  Everyone rushed to open doors and Nash tried to carry my backpack. At lunch I went to the nurse’s office to take off my jeans and tend my road rash in privacy. The dressings had bunched up uncomfortably over the morning. Beneath them, the skin was pink and angry down the outer side of my left leg. It wasn’t oozing much, but the doctor wanted me to keep it covered in gauze for a week. Redoing the dressings, I asked the nurse for an icepack. Then I leaned on the wall and ate my lunch in solitude with the icepack pressing to my leg.

  Tired of people, I pleaded pain to get out of fifth period. But there was nothing to do without a cell phone. By the time the next bell rang, I was returning the icepack and going out the door. Even shaking Mr. Rogers’ hand was better than staring at the white walls of the nurse’s office.

  Adriel arrived at class seconds after me and walked wearily down the aisle to our back table. He looked frighteningly tired, like he’d gotten no sleep over the weekend. There were gray rings beneath his sunken eyes and the pallor of his skin made him appear ill. All of the color was in the blue of his eyes and the threads of gold woven through his dark blond hair. As he sat, I asked, “Are you feeling all right?”

  He said politely, “I want to say bad weekend, but yours was worse.”

  “Hey, I’m here,” I said. “You should go home.”

  “I’ll be o
kay.” Turning away, he unloaded the binder from his backpack.

  Frustrated at how he ran hot and cold, I said, “Look, could we start over? I’m Jessa Bright. I don’t know what you don’t like about Zakia. He’s just a friend of mine. If this is going to be a really long semester of uncomfortable silences and you disliking me, I’ll go ahead and switch seats with someone. Let me know.”

  Students came in slowly, since Mr. Rogers was running an errand to the office to make copies. Adriel’s hands stilled on his binder, and he closed his eyes briefly. Then he turned and smiled, sweeping me away with its sweetness. “Hi, I’m Adriel Graystone. I don’t mean to dictate your friends, and I know what century it is. You just shouldn’t trust too easily. People aren’t always what they seem.”

  “I don’t trust too easily,” I said. “But Zakia is just a homeschooled boy who lives in the Gap.”

  “That’s what you’re allowed to see. I won’t say any more about it, and I don’t want you to switch seats. I don’t dislike you at all. You just . . . you remind me of someone I lost a long time ago.”

  Intrigued, I said, “Who?”

  “Just a girl. She had eyes like yours, a really vivid russet. Did you like your orchids?”

  “I love them,” I said, embarrassed that I hadn’t started off our conversation with thanking him for those.

  Students flowed back and forth between the buildings, Nash appearing among them to wave enthusiastically through the window at me. I hid my grimace and Adriel smiled with his eerie ability to sense how I was feeling. “You’re not into him.”

  “No.” I wanted to know more about this girl that he had lost, but it was rude to ask when he hadn’t offered more information. It was clearly very private and painful to him. “How is your brother?”

  “He’s going to run soon. I can feel it coming. Maybe Wednesday or Thursday. So I’m getting the bags ready for the drop points-”

  “The what?” I asked. The bell rang. The teacher still wasn’t back, so everyone in the room just kept on talking.