What I Carry

by Jennifer Longo

  “Text me!”

  I held my phone aloft.

  At the women’s shelter booth, Francine and her pals were giving out candy and letting kids pet Terry Johnson, who was wearing devil horns and not looking real pleased about it.

  “Sorry, buddy,” I whispered to him.

  “Francine,” one of the pals sang, “is this your new girl?”

  Francine smiled up at me apologetically. “This is my foster daughter Muiriel, yes.”

  The pal took my hand. “Well, Miss Muiriel, you are a very lucky girl. I hope you appreciate that,” she said, and winked. Or got something caught in her eye. Couldn’t tell.

  Francine blanched. “Muiriel isn’t lucky, Eileen, she’s entitled. To at least one good parent. I’m lucky this wonderful creature agreed to come stay with me. Look, ladies, Sean is John Muir!”

  A melty, tingly warmth poured over me, and the ladies nodded and smiled in a way that told me they were used to being schooled by Francine.

  She smiled up at me, flowers painted all over her face, poor Terry Johnson squirming on her lap.

  “Here,” I said, and handed her a vampire cookie. “From Kira, frosted today.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart. You two go have fun now,” she said. “Midnight, okay?”

  “Midnight,” I croaked through my swollen throat.

  Sweetheart. Easy. Like it was what she always called me.

  And I did not mind.

  Sean took my hand. “Don’t want to lose you in the crowd is all,” he said. “Safety first.” I gave in and held his fingers tight in mine.

  He was not wrong about the island’s deal with Halloween. A million little kids raced around blocked-off Main Street, and it made me feel better. Familiar. I yelled at them to slow down their running, tie their shoes, pick up that wrapper they dropped.

  The Salishwood booth was all about Sean and me showing taxidermied owls and mice to the kids who came by, and I sat on a stool applying temporary tattoos to little arms and faces.

  “Glad you came?” he asked.

  I nodded and reached into the bag to put a shortbread vampire in his mouth. “So good, right?”

  He nodded, chewing and grinning at me in the dumb beard, which I reached out to straighten.

  “Young love,” came a voice from the crowd, and then Natan emerged, leering in a vape cloud, the stupid pipe jammed in the corner of his mouth like he wished he were a nineteenth-century British detective. Bun stringy and high on his head, his usual Teva sandal situation on his feet but wearing a wool sweater and a batik wrap skirt, which, good for him smashing patriarchal clothing norms but then negating that with his vape-free arm wrapped tight around a pasty, waifish girl, lank blond hair to her waist. She took a hit off the vape pipe and gazed, glassy-eyed, up at Natan.

  “Hey there, my wee protégé. How’s the Halloween lovefest going? You two sneaking in a make-out sesh?”

  I felt Sean’s entire body tense beside me.

  “Hello,” I said, extending my hand to the waif. “I’m Muiriel.”

  “HarmonyOceanJustice,” she said.

  Of course.

  “Having a good Halloween?”

  Natan smiled and lifted Harmony’s hair from her shoulders and answered for her. “We’re just riding the autumnal high of Gaia’s beauty,” he said. “Hook us up with some sweet ink?” He picked up the temporary tattoos, sat on the stool beside me, and pulled his sweater off his bare shoulder. “Right about here, I think, Muiriel.”

  Sean hopped over the table, slapped a tattoo on Natan’s shoulder, and whacked him on his back. “All set, man. See you at work!”

  Natan smiled at me, stood and put his arms around Harmony, and steered her into the crowd to infect it with his patchouli stench.

  “I’m sorry, you guys know him?” Kira shout-asked, still watching Natan’s retreating height as she made her way to us through the crowd, her arms full of bags of broken but still delicious ghost and jack-o’-lantern cookies.

  “Salishwood,” I sighed.

  “Someone needs to tell that girl to never go with a hippie to a second location.”

  Sean shivered. “I feel like I need a shower.”

  “Thanks for taking the bullet for me,” I said.

  “Of course. He’s so gross. I’m sorry I didn’t…I don’t know, punch him in his vape hole?”

  “We can’t resort to violence,” I said. “Sadly. Jane would side with him, and we’d get fired. But I appreciate the sentiment, and I would happily join you in the endeavor.”

  “Me too,” Kira said, and took over tattoo duty, drawing on the kids with markers—This is art!—and I sat beside Sean, wishing so badly I could hold his hand under the table.

  When the moon was high and the candy-hyper kids were gone, the three of us walked home on the waterfront along the docks, sailboats bobbing in the harbor.

  “Elliot said he was going to come by,” Kira sighed. “Guess he was busy with Tiana. Or Katrina. Or both.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “That’s stupid. He’s stupid if he’s with her.”

  “He’s not dating either one of them,” Sean said.

  Kira and I stopped walking.

  “He’s not?” Kira’s voice lit with hope.

  Sean shrugged. “Don’t think so. People tend to tell me gossip like that. I would have remembered. Why don’t you ask him out? You could be artsy together.”

  Kira hugged Sean impulsively, and we kept walking.

  The moon followed us along the water and into the trees to light the path before us. We dropped Kira at her house, then Sean walked with me to Francine’s porch. I handed him the sheep ears.

  “Keep them,” he said. “They’re adorable.”

  “This was a really good Halloween. You were right.”

  “I know I say this a lot, but you are magic with little kids. I’m so glad you came.”

  My cheeks went warm.

  “I have something for you,” he said. “I’ve been carrying it around all night, should have left it here to begin with.” He pulled a flat, butcher-paper-wrapped package from his coat pocket. Tied with string.

  “Sean.”

  “It’s just a thing! It’s not romantic, I swear.”

  A paperback book. Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson.

  “I thought maybe we could dispense with all the Muir/Pinchot dick swinging and get with a woman who could have taught them both a shit ton about the ocean they never knew but should have.”

  Honest to God, I could barely breathe.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  He held out his hiking watch. “Look at that….Fifteen minutes before curfew and I’m not even going to try to kiss you.”

  “Sean.”

  That beautiful smile. “I just wanted you to have fun tonight. Look, here’s all the space….” He backed down the stairs and to the road. “I understand. But I’m also not giving up hope.” He waved the hat, walked into the trees, and was gone.

  I stood for a while, watching the bats swoop and flit in the moonlight.

  “Good Halloween?” Francine asked from the sofa when I got in the house. I sat beside her, and Terry Johnson yawned, stretched, and cinnamon-rolled right into my lap.

  “Not bad,” I said.

  On the TV a woman on Antiques Roadshow described the origins of an old clock to a man who broke down in tears when she told him it would fetch, at auction, at least fifty thousand dollars.

  “I had no idea,” the man sobbed. “It’s been in my carport getting rained on all this time; we thought it was worthless. I would have taken better care of it if I’d known it was so valuable!”

  “If you’d been more careful with it,” the woman scolded, “it would have been worth twice as much.”

  “People are ridiculous,�
�� Francine said. “Priceless treasures right there in the house with them their whole lives and they never bother to notice.”

  “You’re a treasure,” I told Terry Johnson, smooshing my face into his neck. “We notice you!” He growled at me and curled up again.

  I lay awake that night for hours, the moon refusing to let me sleep, until I gave in, pulled my blackbird treasure bag from my suitcase, and took out Bread and Jam for Frances and The Wilderness World of John Muir, and I put them together, beside my new clothes, on top of the dresser with the Rachel Carson book. A neat row of three.

  I could hear Joellen’s voice. Two is a pair; three is a collection.

  * * *

  I carry with me a paper Dixie cup.

  My third-grade teacher let us eat candy in class and watch Mary Poppins for Halloween. She was super into it. In the morning she had us make hats from construction paper. Girls made flat boaters and decorated them with red tissue paper poppies; the boys made top hats, like in the bank scene. I was psyched, movies in school always felt so special, and I had never seen this one.

  As far as I could tell, this movie was about parents who had two cute children they were determined to spend as little time with as possible. And so they hire a woman who constantly gaslights the kids and makes them doubt their own sanity; she takes them on fantastical trips, then says they never happened. She gives them the powers of flight and time travel, encourages them to surrender to the magic and enjoy themselves, then acts all affronted and accuses them of lying when they mention how fun the adventure was. The whole movie seemed to be introducing the concept of what a nanny was and, at the same time, arguing against ever employing one. The parents are so desperate to get away from their children that they pay this stranger to pretend to love the children, and Mary does—so well, in fact, that the children fall in love with her, the only adult (aside from a rando chimney sweep who takes a turn babysitting the children one afternoon when literally no one else will step up) who actually seems to want to be with them. The children are confused and manipulated, desperate for Mary’s love, which she doles out sparingly, just enough to keep them wanting more—and then she leaves them. Without warning, without saying goodbye, back in the care of two buffoons whose idea of parenting is to pass their children off to any paid stranger who walks through the door.

  When the movie was over I found myself in trouble, terrified and sobbing and waiting outside the principal’s office for ripping up a bunch of the paper hats, and for screaming that I hated that stupid movie and also noting that Mary is a lying liar. I had never been in trouble in school, never even met the principal. Now look what I’d done. I was sure I’d end up in jail.

  The office door opened, and the secretary stepped into the hall. She was old like a grandma and wore a pumpkin-colored sweater. She gave me a paper Dixie cup of water and sat in the kid-sized chair beside me.

  “I heard what happened,” she said. “Don’t tell anyone, but I hate that movie, too.”

  I drank the water and stopped crying. “Here,” she said, and uncapped a black Sharpie. “I’m going to write your name on your cup; you can have as much water as you want. Okay?”

  The cup was white, and it had blue dots in the swirly shapes of flowers all over it. I asked her if she would write on the bottom instead. She smiled. “It is a pretty cup,” she said, and wrote my name, spelled the right way, on the cup’s flat bottom.

  My punishment was staying in the office with this secretary for lunch and recess all week, drinking from my cup and drawing with highlighter pens on her various notepads. It was the best week I’d ever spent in school.

  EVERY TREE ON THE ISLAND was bare by the first Wednesday of November, and Kira and I were wasting our early-release day in the library. School was out at noon, but instead of a stroll on the beach or in the woods, I was inside, trying to help her not freak out about her unstellar SAT scores and the related panic over applying to colleges that would wonder why she hadn’t enrolled in classes in the discipline she planned to major in, studio art, during this, her senior year.

  “One hour, and then I’m walking to Salishwood early,” I whispered, and spread out some homework of my own.

  “Ooh, look,” Kira whispered back, “it’s your husband.”

  There he was, being all respectful, giving me the stupid “space” I had requested, all while being heart-stopping handsome. He dropped his backpack onto a table and pulled out some homework, completely missing us in a corner study nook.

  “Look at your face,” Kira whispered. “Stop punishing yourself. Stop punishing him.”

  “I’m not punishing anyone; I’m trying to use my brain and not my nether regions to make decisions.”

  She put her hands on the table and got all Law & Order Olivia-Benson-in-the-interrogation-room on me. “Listen,” she whispered. “Look. Listen and look. This is not some dumb crush; you aren’t twelve years old, and you’re not being guided by your hoo-ha. You two never shut up, you yak nonstop with each other when you’re together about stuff no one else in the world understands or gives a shit about—do you know who had even half a clue what you guys were dressed as on Halloween?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “No one! Only you two! I’ve known him forever, and I know I only just met you, but I feel like you and I…”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

  She smiled. “Okay, I get you, you get me. Great. So, then I can say, you know goddamned as well as I do that you aren’t messing around letting your hormones take you down a life-ruining path by being with him. And he’s definitely not. Put yourself and him out of his misery. Put me out of mine. Trust yourself. He’s waiting for you. Go get him.”

  “I need a book,” I whispered, and ran to hide in the stacks to watch him like a freaking stalker instead of just walking up and saying hello like a normal person because I could not be more spineless. Or more lonely for him, even though I saw him nearly every day. I am a mess. I stood in the biographies section and watched his lean, strong arms move as he turned pages, and wrote notes, and put his hand on the close-cropped dark hair on the back of his head, and, wait—who is that?

  He smiled up at a long-haired girl, her back to me; he stood, and they talked.

  She was at least three inches taller than him.

  Katrina.

  Kira was instantly beside me, peering through the shelves at Sean chatting with the other half of our euphoniously conjoined nemesis. “What the shit is she talking to him about?” she whispered. “He is so— Can’t he ever be mean to anyone?”

  He gathered his stuff, pulled his backpack on his shoulders, and they left the library together.

  “Wait,” I said. “I’ll be back.”

  Down the hall, to the parking lot, she was laughing; he didn’t talk much. They got in her car and drove away.

  My stomach swam.

  Back in the library, Kira pounced. “What is he doing?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “You didn’t ask him?”

  “No.”

  “Just call him and ask, say, Hey, I saw you, what’s up?”

  “It’s not my business. Doesn’t matter.”

  She dropped back in her chair. “Why are you giving up so easily?”

  I sat beside her. “I’m jealous.”

  “Okay.”

  “Jealous, while I’m stringing him along.”

  “You are not.”

  “I am. I’m too scared to be his girlfriend, but then I decide he doesn’t get to be with anyone else? He can’t have a conversation or get in a car with any girl who isn’t me? That’s not fair. And I’m not doing my homework. Jealousy is the most dangerous trap of all, now I’ll never know if I want him because I do or if I just don’t want him to be with anyone else.”

  Kira shook her head. “You are killing me. I could barely follow that line of…nonlogic, twisting yourself i
n knots. He isn’t ‘with’ anyone else.”

  “And now I feel guilty because you have your own life, you shouldn’t have to hear about all this garbage. I need to remember why I’m here. None of this matters.”

  She looked a little stricken. “It matters to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” she said. “Sean was my only friend at this school, on the entire island. Until you came. And sometimes, when you talk about leaving so soon, I wish…I like you two together. I like you having reasons to stay.”

  The ache, the tug I’d been feeling sometimes, pulled again.

  “You do want him for him, and there’s nothing wrong with that. He is in. Love. With. You. Screw Katrina. Screw Tiana. Screw them both.” And then her eyes lit up. She looked down at the pile of SAT prep before her and said, “You know what? You’re right.”

  “About what?”

  She started gathering her stuff, shoving it into her pack. “About everything. Except Sean. Let’s go.”

  I gathered my books and ran to catch up to her, charging, with purpose, down halls and up stairwells.

  “Kira,” I panted. “Where are we going?”

  “Art room,” she said, walking faster. “I am entering that goddamn art fair. I have really good pieces I made and left in class last year, they’re sitting on a shelf collecting dust, and they’re better than anything anyone else has made this year, which I know because you are not the only one who can obsess and spy, my friend, oh, no, you are not.” She stopped abruptly and turned back to me. “I should be in that class.”

  “Yes,” I said, excitement replacing the misery of just moments before.

  “Me,” she said. “Not them.”

  “Yes!”

  She put all her small but determined weight against the art room door and pushed it open.

  Kind of anticlimactic. Enya playing from a laptop, wall of windows and natural light, a few kids milling around working on stuff. They looked up, nodded at Kira, and went back to painting and gluing feathers on a papier-mâché bird. “Look,” she said, beaming, and pointed.

  On a high shelf were a couple of small canvases, a wire mobile, and a sculpture. “That’s my favorite,” she said. “You will especially love it.”