Valerie removes the rings from each of her fingers and lifts the necklaces from around her head with no less grace than a prima ballerina, setting them in a series of colored trays on a tall table before showing me to my room. There is a queen-size four-poster bed with thick midnight-blue curtains, an armoire, and a small sink in the corner, with no attached bathroom. The sink is rather an eyesore, jutting out near the bedside table.
“Inexplicable, that,” Valerie says, following my gaze. “I find it rather charming in its oddness. You may brush your teeth without leaving the room, but little else, I’m afraid. There’s no television, and the top floor has just the one bathroom, but I promise I don’t spend above an hour or three getting ready in the morning.”
An hour or three? I hope I can hold my pee that long.
“It’s a joke, dear,” she says, laughing at my expression. “It’s the door exactly opposite your quarters, so you won’t become lost. I tend to wake early most days, so I’ll likely be out of your hair before you rise.”
She reiterates that the café is downstairs, should I need a midnight snack or drink, and that the shop opens whenever she feels like it—and she almost always feels like it around eight. I thank her, which she waves off with a hand that holds one remaining ring—the wedding band—as she closes the door behind her.
After I send a quick text letting the Williamses know I’ve checked into a hotel, a white lie I don’t bother feeling guilty about, I drift into a restless sleep under a deluge of thoughts about Jenna, N. E. Endsley, and 101st copies of books.
* * *
I manage a few hours of sleep before despair and fear reach their dark, oily fingers from beneath the floorboards to play with the tendrils of my hair. I’ve heard grief compared to a tide, but tides are predictable. These feelings are not. I try to think of whales swimming, to imagine myself in a small boat, watching them glide around me, but I can feel my heart constricting, tight pain booming through my chest, so I extricate myself from the sheets wound around my legs and let myself into the dark hallway of Valerie’s apartments. I’m in the elevator with the glowing second-floor button pressed before I fully realize what I’m doing.
If Valerie wakes and asks, I’ll say I was thirsty. She’ll pretend to believe me, but we would both know my bluff. Even then, she wouldn’t ask what’s wrong or ask me to tell my story, and I thank the god of the whales for adults that do not pry or presume.
The flyers on the elevator walls blur as I realize I’m technically supposed to be one. An adult. I’m supposed to be able to make my own life choices, be self-sufficient, and generally be more something. Mature, maybe, but I know plenty of immature adults.
I feel old, a tattered sail on a boat that has barely weathered the storm. Losing Jenna, or maybe understanding how the people I love will all die someday, makes me feel apart. Funerals are supposed to be for really old relatives, not for friends that were in the isle of green. Not for friends whose lives had only begun.
Yet somehow I also feel far too young to be a high school graduate, too unprepared for what lies ahead. Is the fear I feel about school because Jenna is no longer beside me or because I never wanted to major in English in the first place?
A memory: Jenna muttering to herself as she compiled notes on one of her many spreadsheets. This school didn’t have a program that emphasized pharmacognosy, Jenna’s chosen narrow field of study about turning plants into medicine. This school had poor placement for PhD students who wanted to pursue teaching at a college level.
“No, no, no, no.”
I didn’t look up from my math homework to acknowledge Jenna’s increasingly distressed protests.
“What is it?” I asked, my voice flat. Geometric proofs were kicking my butt, and her racket wasn’t helping.
“Don’t use that tone,” Jenna said. “This is for you as much as it’s for me.”
“And what this is this?” I asked.
“Our futures, Amelia. Our futures. Or do you not want to go to the same school?”
I set down my pencil and uncurled my legs, scooching to sit shoulder to shoulder with Jenna. She turned the laptop toward me and dramatically threw her arm over her eyes while I scanned the screen.
“A&M, University of Washington, University of Alaska … What is this?”
“Candidates,” Jenna said, her eyes still covered by her arm. “For schools. For us.” Duh, her tone said.
I ran my finger along the trackpad. Beside each school was a list of criteria, all rated on a one-to-ten scale: pharmacognosy program strength, English program strength, diversity, on-campus life, off-campus entertainment, proximity to major airport, professor-to-student ratios, number of AP course credits accepted.
The list went on. She had already entered data for at least twelve schools, and their “grades” were typed in bold at the top of each column.
“Jenna, this is ridiculous. You can’t decide where we’re going to college this way.”
She moved her arm, her eyes narrowed. “Why ever not?”
“Why ever not? Because, Miss Prim-and-Proper, you can’t possibly know”—I glanced at the screen—“the overall quality of the locally sourced coffee down to a numerical rating without having tried it.”
“Yes I can,” Jenna argued. “They’re called online reviews. They’re very popular.”
“Okay, but why should that factor in to where we’re going to school?”
Her arm went back over her eyes and she growled in the back of her throat. “We’re going to be there for four years, at least, Amelia. Don’t you want to make sure we’ll be happy there?”
I laughed. “You can’t be serious. You don’t honestly think this spreadsheet is going to guarantee us happiness, do you?”
But she did. A week later—after a lot more frustrated grumblings on her part—Jenna ordered informational pamphlets from the top three contenders on what I had come to call her College Deathmatch Spreadsheet. When they came in, we pored over them at her dining room table. Glossy photos of campuses in ideal lighting, bookmarks with the numbers of admissions advisors, and detachable sheets of majors littered the table.
“I don’t even know,” Jenna said, what felt like hours later. “What do you think?”
“There’s something about the campus of this one,” I said, pushing the University of Montana packet in front of her. “The snow and the hill behind the admin building, and did you see the photo of this professor? Her professional head shot is a photo of her dogsledding.”
Jenna stared at the flyer, her lip curling upward. “You like it because the trees remind you of Orman, don’t you?”
This hadn’t even popped into my mind, but when I looked back to the photo, I nodded.
“Me, too,” she whispered.
“So let’s go.” I smiled. “Where did this one rank in the deathmatch?”
“Second,” she said. “But only by three-tenths of a point.”
“Let’s apply,” I said. “No harm in trying. And maybe this will be the only place we both get into our programs.”
It was. I called it a sign, and Jenna called it a statistical probability, based on her research, but I took it to mean that we were on the right track. Jenna and I were supposed to be with each other, always.
But she’s not here. What am I supposed to do with a sign meant for two?
My thoughts are swarming like flies, and I wave them away when the elevator door slides open. I’m drawn past the café, through the maze of eerily empty tables and couches that echo the sitting area downstairs, to the far hallway that contains the book rooms. Three hushed electric candelabras dimly light my way through the darkness, though the book rooms appear completely unlit. The large window at the end of the hall looks out over the grove of trees and I let myself imagine I am a high lady walking through silent castle corridors. A feeling of reverence steps on despair’s grimy fingers long enough for me to half lunge myself at the window to look upon a unicorn as it steps gently from the shelter of the trees into the
moonlight. Or a night rider, cloaked and mysterious, riding a noble steed across the clearing before retreating into the darkness of the forest. I have the fleeting thought that maybe, in the absence of reading, my mind will make its own stories.
I wonder if the college prep course will advise against daydreaming. I can’t bring myself to read a single page of a new book, but the idea of being a droid focused on academia almost physically pains me. I untangle myself from the thought. It’s not like I can back out. I pinky promised, and I won’t break that, even if Jenna’s not here to give me a pep talk.
My imaginings must block everything out, because at first I don’t see the muted light coming from my right, the book room I didn’t get to explore. My feet slow, my body bracing itself like it knows something I don’t.
Glowing electric lanterns with flickering bulbs are mounted on top of every curved bookshelf and sporadically along the walls. It’s the largest book room I’ve seen here, almost perfectly circular, with a large area rug designed like a compass just beyond the door. In the pale light of the lanterns, I can make out a mural on the wall, so realistic and unexpected that I immediately sober, despair and mystery alike falling off me so quickly I’m half convinced they make an audible clang against the floor.
It’s a depiction of the first big scene from the Orman Chronicles, when Emmeline and Ainsley row their canoe into another realm by accident. They don’t realize they’ve left their world until they see the looming cliff, a lighthouse castle perched atop its crest, and the gentle ripples of the river beneath their stolen canoe suddenly become the large waves of a great sea.
This room has fallen out of my imagination, like someone shadowed me as I explored the corners of every page of those books and jotted down notes about my favorite details. My entire body is drawn to the mural, and I’m having a hard time convincing myself it is only a painting and not a secret portal to a world I ache to find.
Used to ache to find.
I wonder if Endsley had a hand in its creation. Maybe he knows about the room but disapproves. He’s obviously not a fan of attention.
I walk toward the lighthouse but am unable to reach it, even on tiptoe. I feel this impulsive need to try, though. Jenna was much taller than me. If she were here, I would tell her to touch the lighthouse for both of us and she would tell me that’s stupid or ask why, but I would break her down. She would roll her eyes and reach a palm up to the wall, but her hand would linger for a second longer than necessary because she had wanted to touch it all along.
I’m stretched against the wall, my palm flattened against the painted rock face, when he coughs.
N. E. Endsley is sitting in an armchair tucked between two bookcases. I jolt as he rises to his feet, and the lanterns on the cases gently sway as if in a breeze.
When I was little, my father used to read me the same book every night before I fell asleep. It was called The Forest Girl. It didn’t have many words, but the illustrations were in lovely shades of blue and gray and green all muddled together to make looming castles and tall haunting trees that soared high above the little golden-haired princess. I loved that book, but it was lost in one of the moves we made, when my father’s job took us from Washington to Kansas to Texas.
Years later, while wandering a used bookstore with Jenna—she knew I loved them—I went to the picture book section on a whim. Old friends fluttered their pages and stretched their bindings toward me and I fondly stroked their spines. My eyes came to settle on a picture book crammed between some illustrated children’s Bibles, forgotten and worn, and my entire body came alive in recognition of the narrative that used to sing me to sleep. The Forest Girl sat unassumingly on a shelf, waiting for me to recover it, nostalgia and love and regret for our time apart wrapped into a few colored illustrations.
This is as close as I can come to describing what it is like to find myself far away from well-laid plans, from Jenna and common sense, and instead standing, quite alone, before N. E. Endsley.
What comes out of my mouth first is unplanned and rawer than I would like.
“Jenna loved your books,” I say, tilting my head back to meet his eyes. “Did she tell you that when you spoke?”
He stares at me so long I wonder if he’ll turn around and disappear without a word, a phantom prince returning to his silent castle.
Or maybe I’m a fool and he doesn’t remember meeting Jenna at all and has nothing to say.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.
His tone is haughty and imperious, like he’s all-knowing. It’s not at all similar to the warm cadence of Valerie’s voice, though she could get more accomplished with a single word than most monarchs could with a sentence.
No, N. E. Endsley is using his voice to belittle, and the part of me still surviving with my head above water refuses to be made small.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” I say. “She met you at the festival that you ditched. She helped you.”
Even in the low light, I see him flinch.
“See!” I point, my finger nearly grazing his chest. “See? You remember.”
“I don’t,” he insists, a frantic undercurrent in his voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about or who you are.”
While his voice rises, mine recedes, not in fright but in desperation. My whole body suddenly needs N. E. Endsley to acknowledge the existence of Jenna Williams more than I’ve ever needed anything in my life.
“Why won’t you tell me?” My voice is quiet, splintered. I hate myself for losing my cool, but there is nothing I can do to stop the oncoming runaway train of grief.
He takes an agitated step closer, like if he physically lunges at this conversation he can make it go away. “Why do you need to know?”
“Because she’s dead,” I say. I sob a little on the last word, tears spilling over my cheeks. “She’s dead, and I’d like to know what she said, and what you said to her, because she died a week after the festival, and we both loved your books, and I—I just want to know.”
I don’t have the energy to care how hopeless I sound, how broken. I don’t have the energy to compare my daydreams of meeting N. E. Endsley to the reality, alone in a bookstore, Jennaless.
I’m not surprised when he abruptly leaves the room. This is too much to handle, I know. Numb, I stand in the middle of the compass rug, with Orman at my back, and think of whales swimming. I imagine their sleek bodies peeking in and out of waves, their songs calling to one another in the twilight, the infant whales playful and happy to be alive.
I am surprised when Endsley abruptly returns, tissue box in hand.
“Here.” He holds the tissues at arm’s length like he’s afraid to get near me in my state, but even with both our arms outstretched, I can’t reach. He gently tosses the box to me and it falls to the ground between us, loud in the silence.
I scoot it closer with my foot and bend to extract a tissue before raising my eyes to meet his. In this light, they are a thunderstorm, the kind no photographer could ever truly capture.
“You can leave,” I say thickly. I can feel the fight seeping out of me with each traitorous tear. I want to be mad, vengeful, but all I am is crushed. “I know you hate people. I’ve read your interviews.”
Maybe I’m so pathetic that even this reclusive author who hates the world has taken pity on me, or I’m hallucinating, but I swear something in Endsley’s expression changes. His eyes briefly leave me, staring over my head to the lighthouse, his jaw tight and his eyes slightly narrowed, and when they return he seems resigned. After a sigh, he takes two long steps to my side and not-so-gently tugs on my arm.
“Sit,” he says. Another command from a king used to getting his way.
“What?” I ask, startled. “Why?”
“Because not so long ago somebody did the same thing I’m about to do for you. Sit.”
Curious and disoriented, I fold myself down beside him so we are both cross-legged on the compass rug. He turns ever so sli
ghtly to face me, sticking his hand out.
“I’m Endsley,” he says.
It’s like having Taylor Swift introducing herself at a concert. It’s preposterous, giggle-worthy, but I don’t laugh.
“I know,” I say, shaking his hand, only realizing after we touch that I’m using the hand I wiped away snot with. “Amelia.”
“Right,” he says. “Right.” He digs around in his pocket and extracts a flip phone, a chunky thing that looks grossly out of place in a world of slim, keyboardless touch screens.
“I don’t really like smartphones,” he says.
I nod, imagining whales free to roam hundreds of miles in a day, sunset after sunset.
He types in a four-digit passcode and uses the archaic arrow pad to navigate to a large icon labeled “Digital Photos.” A grainy photo of an emaciated gray dog appears on the tiny screen.
“Wally,” Endsley says simply, extending the phone so it’s in front of me. “He was something of a legend for a few weeks in New York. He was living in Central Park but would periodically run into the street to try and cross to the food vendors on the other side. He kept evading animal control. The car I was riding in was the one that finally hit him. I took him to the vet—don’t ask me why—and he’s been with me ever since. Valerie figures that’s why he throws himself at things when he’s hungry. His pea-sized brain probably affiliates physical distress with positive outcomes.”
This is beyond bizarre. The mighty N. E. Endsley is showing me phone pictures? A fever dream, that’s what this is. I’m dying, and this is apparently all my brain can manage to give me in my final moments.
Jenna, I think. Give me Jenna instead. But Endsley takes the phone and clicks a few more times. He shows me another image, this one of a gnarled tree.
“This is a tree from the backyard where I grew up. I used to climb up to the little V, see? I would sit there with a legal pad and write story after story. Repetitive, formulaic things, but I liked them. I hated being inside. Sometimes my father would bring me a sandwich so I could picnic in the tree, but that wasn’t often.”
Amelia Unabridged Page 8
