“I know,” I say, rubbing my temples to try to stop the low throbbing. “I know.”
“Mark,” Jenna’s mother says. Her tone is low, mildly chastising. “She doesn’t want to be in our house.”
She’s right. I can’t stand the thought of being smothered by the long hallways of their immaculate house, which hold almost as many pictures of me on the walls as of Jenna.
Pictures of us in mud masks and pajamas. Shots of us grinning in front of the ocean, with the tip of Mr. Williams’s pinky in the corner of the frame. The one of Jenna looking back over her shoulder and smiling her devastating smile, the one she rarely let people see, the one that made her face glow and her eyes crinkle.
That’s the photo Mrs. Williams had blown up and framed for the funeral service. During the reception at their house, Kailey Lancaster pointed to where the wrapped canvas picture sat on an easel and whispered to her boyfriend, “It doesn’t even look like her.”
It took everything in me not to “accidentally” knock her plate of cheese cubes and fruit out of her hand.
I shove the memory from my brain and half try to give Jenna’s books back, to insist they return the six or so massive boxes to Jenna’s shelves, but her parents refuse to hear of it.
When they finally leave, I spend what feels like hours going through Jenna’s library and systematically destroying page 49 of each of her books, tearing the pages in half before sloppily taping them back together. The first roll of tape I grab from the kitchen junk drawer is double-sided. I numbly use it for about twelve books. I don’t attempt to fix the others.
It was Jenna’s rule of reading excerpts, the page 49 thing.
“Far enough to get a feel for what the author’s writing is really like without going too far and risking a huge spoiler,” she always said.
I don’t know why I rip the pages. Maybe I’m hoping she will come back and chastise me for ruining her books. Maybe I’m trying to erase her, to make the books my own so I can forget perfect Jenna and her perfect books ever existed.
Or maybe I’m just stupid with grief and don’t know what I’m doing.
Later that night, summer rain patters against the window and drowns out even my most melancholy thoughts, and I try to read the book I started before graduation. Over and over, I try. I switch to Orman, and I try again. But my eyes refuse to change the letters into sentences, the sentences into pages.
I reread the same sentence no less than five times before I give up. I close the book and lie on my back with my eyes closed.
My life has split in two. Before there was a before and a subsequent after, I imagined myself a talented reader. Reading, for me, has always been more like playing a video game than watching a movie, an active experience that used to leave me physically and emotionally wrought.
I could step into a page and roam the described landscape independently of the characters that inhabited it. I’ve plucked the ring from Frodo and felt its inscribed Elvish on my fingertips. I’ve sneaked gulps of milk from the Boxcar Children’s hidden stash beneath the waterfall, borrowed Harry’s broom while he studied with Hermione, and played with the Bennet cats while Elizabeth and her sisters were dancing at Netherfield. I’ve stepped in the forest-green prints of Orman, my footprints dwarfing Emmeline’s and barely matching up to Ainsley’s. I’ve rested my palm against the cool stone of the lighthouse fortress that first greeted them upon their arrival, and smelled the salt from the sea below.
I’ve lived in books. I’ve eaten and breathed books for so long that I took it for granted. I assumed that, if they saved me once, they would always be there to pick me up, even if Jenna wasn’t.
But Jenna is gone, and the words stay on the page in their neat, orderly rows. The pages don’t rise up to meet me like old friends, and the characters are marionettes pulled by visible strings.
If I were going to take a self-portrait, I wouldn’t focus on my crumpled body curled on the bed with its mismatched sheets and pillowcases. I would take all of Jenna’s books and wrap them so tightly with masking tape that the covers would wrinkle beneath the binding. I would take my books and rip out the last two pages of each, because this is what it feels like without Jenna here to see what comes after this—college, careers, boyfriends, whatever. None of it will matter, because in all of my imaginings, it was always the two of us, sisters by choice rather than blood.
I’d arrange the ripped pages falling on the taped books and I would call it Time Heals No Wounds. Or maybe I would focus on the crumpled edges of the removed pages and call it Amelia Abridged.
When I eventually fall asleep, tears still pooling in my ears, a shadow monster with teeth chases me through endless swampy marshes. In my hand is an instruction manual on how to defeat it, but since I can no longer read, I run and run and run.
chapter four
It has been ten days since the funeral, and Jenna is not here. It’s like a mantra now, my personal maxim: I am wearing a sweater in June because even in the Texas heat I can’t seem to stop shivering, and Jenna is not here. I count out change from my piggy bank and order pizza online so I don’t have to speak to people with sunshiny voices unaffected by grief, and Jenna is not here. I walk to Downtown Books and stand at the window, telling myself I can stay there as long as I like, and Jenna is not here.
She’s not here.
My phone buzzes in my pocket as I stare into the bookstore, and my heart leaps into my throat for one beautiful, terrible moment because I think Jenna’s calling to tell me not to be a creeper.
But Jenna is not here. It’s the next best/worst thing: her dad.
I think about hitting the Ignore button, even though that seems doubly terrible, since I’m in the family text group, which was mostly Jenna and me sending random photos of ducklings and Mrs. Williams reminding us when our college admission and scholarship applications were due.
My thumb is hovering between the Answer and Ignore options when the screen lights up anew, this time with the Downtown Books phone number. Why on earth are they calling? Do they know I’m standing outside of their storefront like a golden retriever waiting for its owner to return?
Even this makes me think of Jenna’s funeral. Everyone was so intent on talking to me and offering their condolences, their voices jumbling over and around me in a cacophony I pretended to decipher. I glued myself to her casket, reluctant to leave her. I was a sentry, I told myself, and I would keep watch over her until I no longer could.
I shake the memory off. In a panic, I swipe to dismiss Mr. Williams and answer the bookstore’s call, walking a short way down the sidewalk so the person calling can’t see me through the window.
“Hello?” I clear my throat, which is scratchy from almost a full twenty-four hours of disuse.
“Amelia? Hi, it’s Becky from Downtown Books. We got a package in for you today. I just wanted to let you know!”
“A package? I didn’t order a book.”
“It’s not from our store, actually. It’s the weirdest thing … It’s some sort of transfer or something from a bookstore in Michigan, a place called Val’s?”
I shake my head and then, realizing she can’t see me, say, “What book is it?”
“Don’t know,” Becky says. “It came in an envelope and I didn’t want to open it since it’s not one of our usual packages. It has your name on it, though, and you’re the only Amelia Griffin in our system.”
“I wasn’t expecting anything,” I say again, but my mind is starting to piece together some insane hope that this is a gift from Jenna.
“Strange,” Becky says. “What a mystery! Do you want me to open it for you and let you know what’s inside?”
“No,” I say quickly, looking back over my shoulder toward the store. “No, I’ll come get it. I’m not far.”
“Excellent! I’ll keep it at the front register for you. See you soon.”
I look at the time on my phone and make myself wait exactly ten minutes before I walk the twenty yards back.
; In those ten minutes, I contemplate all sorts of wonderful mysteries, finally settling on the insane possibility that Jenna isn’t actually dead and that she was kidnapped by pirates and made to fake her own death because of ransom demands the Williamses never met because Mr. Williams is just as likely to accidentally delete emails as read them. And instead of killing her, the pirates shipped her back to one of their boats in Michigan—because it’s practically an island, surrounded by all that water, and there’s probably a lot of pirate ships out on those lakes—and she is trying to communicate with me via this book she sent.
As a rebuttal, my brain keeps bringing up the image of her in the casket, her dark hair a sharp contrast to the white silk lining, her favorite silver tights tucked out of view. The reminder catches me off guard and I pretend to cough to hide the gasp of grief that claws its way up my throat.
I’m mostly under control when Becky comes to the counter and plops a square brown envelope in front of me.
“Open it,” Becky begs, “I’m so curious!”
Blessedly, my phone buzzes, Mr. Williams’s picture lighting up the screen again, and I am saved from answering her.
“I have to take this,” I say, which is true. I can’t ignore him twice or he’ll go into panic mode, thinking the worst. “I’m sure the package is nothing. Thanks, Becky.”
I practically run out of the store, the package tucked under my arm, my phone against my ear.
“Hello, Mr. W—Mark,” I say. He insisted I finally give up the Mr. and Mrs. bit once and for all at the funeral.
“Amelia,” he says. His voice sounds sunshiny and round. “How are you?”
I’m thrown off by his tone but try not to let it show. “I’m okay, I guess.”
“Just calling to make sure you’re still okay with dinner this evening. We’re picking up those chicken fingers you like.”
“Yeah, looking forward to it,” I say, wrestling the package from under my arm to hold it between both hands. The handwriting is sloppy, almost illegible, but it most definitely says “Care of Amelia Griffin” above the Downtown Books address.
“I’ll pick you up around five then, okay?”
“Sounds great,” I say, eager to get off the phone and further examine the package. “Thank you.”
“And Amelia?” His voice loses a little of its sunshine. “Whatever you need, remember? Just let us know.”
I stop thinking about the package, my brain flicking to last week’s first biweekly Amelia-and-the-Williams “family dinner.”
What I need—who I need—was devastatingly absent from the table.
“Thank you, Mark,” I say again.
“Because it’s … it’s hard enough, hon. It’s hard enough going through what you’re going through. Make sure you’re eating, okay? Eat well, Amelia. Make sure you eat lunch, okay?”
“Sure thing,” I say. “See you tonight.”
I make myself obey, though this package is the first thing I’ve been remotely distracted by since Jenna’s funeral. I promise myself I can examine its every corner if I stop by the grocery store and buy something to make Mom and me for lunch.
* * *
I make spaghetti and canned sauce—it’s the only thing I know how to cook besides grilled cheese—and sprinkle enough salt in the water to fill the sea. I need it to boil faster, need to go to my room and shut the door and consider the hundreds of possibilities for this little book-shaped package.
I need to escape again.
Mom doesn’t look up when I set a steaming bowl of spaghetti on the little table next to her recliner. I have to move an ashtray and an empty box of wine to make room. She’s watching some talk show where the hosts pick live audience members to compete in stupid games to earn gift cards.
She’s between jobs again. The gas station she worked at was bought out by a chain and they laid off most of the existing employees. She’s been home since just before Jenna died, and I can’t stand it. The TV is always, always on.
“I made spaghetti,” I say.
She nods as the TV audience bursts into hysterical screams of laughter.
“I’ll be in my room if you need me,” I tell her.
I slurp spaghetti cross-legged on my bed, staring at the package in front of me and telling myself that as soon as I’m done eating, I can tear into it. I am trying my best to make this moment last, to savor each second that goes by where something other than Jenna’s death is competing for my attention.
But then I feel guilty for wishing Jenna away and open the package before I’ve eaten half the noodles.
I don’t try and stifle my awed gasp.
It’s a deluxe edition of The Forest Between the Sea and the Sky, bound in dark green leather, with the sigil of Orman stamped on the front. I scramble to flip the book open to inspect the inside of the front cover. “101 of 100” is stamped on the bottom. The internet buzzed about these limited edition copies for weeks before the release. They include four full-page illustrations by Endsley himself, plus a new color map of Orman. It’s real leather, too. I don’t remember exactly how much they cost, but it was hundreds of dollars.
And I have the 101st edition.
Jenna. It has to be Jenna. She must have ordered this as an apology for the Endsley fiasco, but I have to be sure.
A quick internet search pops up a number to a Val’s in Lochbrook, Michigan. The pictures of the town that appear alongside the store’s contact information are gorgeous—lakes and sailboats and sunsets and a lighthouse atop a hill that reminds me of Orman.
It’s a sign.
I click the phone number on the page to dial, but immediately hang up. What am I going to say? “Hey there, it’s Amelia. Do you happen to know who sent me a one hundred and first edition of The Forest Between the Sea and the Sky? Because if it was my dead best friend I want to know, but also I haven’t been able to read anything since she died. Do you have a cure for that kind of reading problem? Also, this edition technically shouldn’t exist.”
I put my phone down and flip through the book, the strong scent of leather tickling my nose. I’m looking for any kind of note or marking that will point to Jenna. When my search turns up fruitless after two slow perusals of each page, I flip to the illustrated map, my eyes drinking in every detail.
There is figure-eight-shaped Orman with its gloriously lush forests—the source of most of the island’s magic—on the northern half, as well as on its southern half, the land there fraught from the encroaching and furious sea that is forever trying to swallow the island and its occupants whole. At the northernmost point is the reigning monarch of Orman’s castle, Siren’s Point. And even though they are smaller than my pinky nail, there are the sirens themselves, waiting to tempt sailors into the rocky depths of the ocean.
This time I do not hang up when I call. For every ring, my heart beats three times.
“This is Val’s. Alex speaking.”
He sounds nice, too nice, and this throws me off. I should have planned what to say, but I dig deep and borrow some of Jenna’s authority and let it instill false confidence into my voice.
“Hi, Alex. I received a book today that was marked with your store’s name as the return address. I would like to know who sent it, please.”
I can hear this Alex person typing on the other side, the click of a mouse.
“Sure thing,” he says. “What’s the name?”
“Amelia Griffin.”
The clicking stops. A full ten seconds pass before I say, “Hello? Alex?”
I can almost hear him jerk to attention over the phone. “Yes. Sorry. I’m afraid there has been a mistake.” His voice sounds rushed. “There is no record of an Amelia Griffin in our system. Is there something else I can help you with?”
If I wanted to create a still life to represent this Alex person’s voice, I would need barbed wire. A lot of it.
“That’s weird,” I say. “That’s really weird. It came to me through my local bookstore. Like, it was sent there for me to pick up.
Can you look it up by the bookstore?”
“We do not ship to other bookstores. Are you sure it was our address?”
“There’s a round sticker on the back of the package that says Val’s, Lochbrook, Michigan. Is that your bookstore?”
Another stretch of silence, then a low muttered word I can’t quite make out.
“Hello?” I ask. Maybe our connection is bad, or maybe he doesn’t understand the significance of the situation. “It’s a limited edition of The Forest Between the Sea and the Sky,” I tell him. “The first Orman book? It says it’s the one hundred and first copy out of one hundred, but that makes no sense, right? Can you try looking for Jenna Williams? Maybe she’s in your system?”
I can hear that he isn’t typing. “There is no record of Jenna Williams or Amelia Griffin in our system, I’m sorry.” And here, he almost sounds sorry. “Is there something else I can help you with?”
“No … I guess not.”
“Sorry I couldn’t be of service,” Alex says, before I can add anything else. “Thanks for your call.”
Click.
I have always loved stories that attribute the thrill of adventure to a physical force—a push of insistent wind or the tug of magic. I love the idea of adventure finding us in our day-to-day boredom and beckoning us to go on a quest for something better than we leave behind.
Jenna knew that.
And, as thunder rattles my bedroom window, I can’t help but feel like this has something to do with her, that she is orchestrating it from wherever people go after they die.
It would be so like Jenna to send me a step-by-step manual for how to grieve the loss of her, and to use Orman to deliver her instructions.
For my birthday last year, she set up a meticulous scavenger hunt, using clues from my most beloved books—including Orman—that eventually led me to my favorite restaurant. When I opened the door, the Williamses were sitting at our usual table, Jenna’s delighted grin sparkling in the light of the birthday candles on my bakery-bought cake. Her dad joked that if I had taken any longer to follow the clues, my cake would have been more wax than sugar.
Amelia Unabridged Page 4
