by Natalie Lund
He figured out how to accelerate down the runway, but he crashed into the fence at the edge of the airfield. How did you lift up? He tried again, this time getting the plane to hop a few times on the runway before it crashed. Finally he got the simulated plane off the ground and into the pixelated sky, but he lost his bearings. Which instrument showed him where he was according to the horizon? He couldn’t remember from Brad’s tour of the cockpit, and he couldn’t see the ground. He tilted the nose down and then up, and when he finally found the ground, it was above him. Somehow, he’d flipped over and was upside down. He tried to right the aircraft, but it stalled and plummeted. The simulator screen flashed red as he fell. He crashed into a stand of trees and the fake windshield cracked.
The simulator reset itself and returned him to the runway. He managed to take off again, and this time he kept his eye on an instrument that showed a little image of a plane on a line that he took to be the horizon. He kept the wings level and pointed the nose above it. The simulator took him over the forest where he’d crashed before, above mountain peaks capped with white snow, and out over a flat blue ocean. He didn’t know where he was in the simulated world, but he saw a path into his future more clearly than he ever had before.
He could do this. He would.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
NATE
Ten days before
NATE WAS AWAKE, but he stayed in bed. He heard his parents leave and, a few hours later, Aaron—off to wait tables at an oyster grill on the boardwalk. Nate’s stomach ached with hunger and his bladder felt like a bowling ball, but if he didn’t move at all, he could almost forget about his knee. Almost.
The problem had become his thoughts.
I’m worthless.
I deserve this pain.
They were like boomerangs. Every time he dozed off or managed to think about something else, they sliced through him again, hooking his brain and dragging it down.
I was never that good at soccer.
I was a big fish in a small pond.
It was all a pipe dream.
I was worthless then.
But I’m even more worthless now.
He had to find a way to shut his brain off or—or what? He wasn’t sure.
I’ve been so selfish.
All those times I barely nodded a hello at Janie.
When I resented Israel for asking me to teach him.
When I avoided talking to Aaron after he left for college.
Slamming into his crutch at the soccer field and bending his knee in Aaron’s dorm had hurt, but also helped somehow. As though the physical pain quieted everything else.
Nate swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood gingerly, testing how sore it still felt from yesterday’s PT. He limped from his bedroom to the bathroom, then down the hall to the living room without his brace, trying to put equal weight on each of his legs. His weak knee buckled every few strides, quick collapses that knocked the breath out of him. But the pain worked—momentarily erasing the thoughts that looped through him. Offering a sliver of quiet—a moment where he was only his body. Only that hot, filling hurt.
Finally Nate collapsed onto the couch, his heartbeat knocking loudly in his skull. He touched the skin around his knee. It was hot and puffy.
The doorbell rang. It had to be Janie. Here to take him to his PT.
“Come in!” he shouted. She let herself in. Her hair was in its usual braids, frizzed by the humidity, so it looked like a sandstorm around her head. He wanted to pull off the hair ties and sink his fingers into it. It would be warm, he thought, and moist from sweat.
“You ready?” she asked.
He tried to stand again, but his knee buckled immediately and he fell back into the couch with an oof.
“Where’s your brace?” she asked.
“I think I forgot it in my room.”
She returned with it a moment later and helped him Velcro it on. “Ouch,” she said, nodding toward the swelling. “Want me to ask my dad to look at it?”
“No, the physical therapist will ice it when I’m done.”
“Okay. If you’re sure. Want help getting up?”
He nodded and she slid an arm under his armpit and around his back. She squeezed him to her, so he could smell her cottony scent, and then helped lift him. He wanted to stay like that—in her embrace, half balanced on his good leg, momentarily free of both pain and his thoughts.
* * *
• • •
At PT, Janie waited in a chair by the treadmill, a book open in her lap. The physical therapist took it easy on him—given the swelling—so he had time to watch Janie flipping each page slowly as though she needed to say goodbye to it before she could move on to the next.
While he was doing knee bends, he caught her looking back at him once—her bottom lip pinched between two fingers. She blushed and dropped her hand.
“I have an idea,” she said when they were back in the car.
“What?” He tried to keep the exhaustion out of his voice.
“You’ll see.”
She drove past their houses toward the south end of the island, where there were relatively few people even in the summer. As they drove, the vacation homes grew larger and farther apart, and finally gave way to the national park—a craggy tangle of black mangroves and seagrasses. The park had one small man-made beach for camping, where several tents quivered in the wind like frightened animals.
She turned before the toll bridge to the next island, parked, and swung open her door.
“Janie, I don’t want to be at the beach right now. I told you that the other day.”
“I know. I know,” she said. “But I thought you might change your mind once you were here. You used to see magic here, remember?”
“I used to pick my nose, too.”
She laughed and kicked off her shoes. She helped him pull off his, and stabilized him with an elbow as they walked out onto the beach. The unevenness of the sand made his knee ache.
The sky was blue and cloudless, and the water shone emerald green. It had been so long since he’d felt it swirl, cold, over his feet.
A round white bird hopped nearby, taking flight with a squawk each time a wave lapped the sand and settling back down with a fluff of its wings when the water receded.
Nate spotted a pink-and-orange starfish, leaned over gingerly so as not to get his brace wet, and pulled the creature from the sand. He handed it to Janie, and felt a zap of electricity as her fingers brushed his. Nate watched Janie to see if she’d felt it too, but she was looking at the starfish, wrinkling her nose as the creature moved its thousands of little tube feet against her hand.
She carefully placed it back in the water and rubbed her hand on her shorts. He wanted to grab that hand and hold it against his throat, to feel the grit of sand beneath the soft pads of her fingers, the shock of being close to her.
But his knee was throbbing, and he didn’t think he could stand much longer.
Because I’m weak, he thought. Weak and worthless.
He hopped back up the beach and sank onto a dry patch of sand. Janie joined him. They sat in silence a moment, watching an older couple who was holding hands with a toddler, lifting him between them and swinging him over the waves. The toddler shrieked in glee. What was it like to have your whole future before you? To be that carefree?
“Look,” Janie said, pointing. There were two dorsal fins, one much smaller than the other, circling offshore. “They’re hunting.”
Nate was silent, the pain in his knee pulsing with each heartbeat. I deserve it, he thought. After how I’ve treated her.
“Hey, Nate.” Janie’s eyebrows were drawn together in concern. “You seem different lately.”
“Different how?”
She cocked her head. “I don’t know. Spacey, I guess.”
One of the dolphins flipped onto its back and then rolled right side up, wriggling as it tried to catch its prey. It made a wide circle and disappeared beneath the waves. The smaller one—its child?—trailed after. Soon he could no longer see them.
“I’m better than ever,” he said sarcastically.
“I know not being able to play soccer has got to be hard.”
He nodded and felt sadness drumming behind his eyes, urging him to cry. “People think it’s just a game. I mean, it is a game, but it was more to me.”
“I know it was,” she said softly.
Nate swallowed back his tears and tried to feel the magic he’d once felt in the sigh of the waves, the dolphins in the surf, the sun on his back, the heat of Janie’s body, so close to him that they were almost touching. Could touch.
But it was gone. Just like everything else.
REMEMBERED SOULS FORUM
GULF COAST
BeeHappy: I saw it yesterday! The doorway you were talking about.
OtherPlanes: Were you flying?
BeeHappy: No, I’m a window washer. The scaffolding failed and we were hanging on the side of the building until firefighters used harnesses to lower us to the ground.
CyclistRights: Damn. You okay?
BeeHappy: I am now. Never been so terrified in my life. I was sure I was going to die. That’s probably why I saw it.
CyclistRights: Did you think about going through?
BeeHappy: Nah. I got my bees to take care of.
OtherPlanes: You could probably be a bee if you were thinking of one as you passed through. The queen, even.
Hell, I’d look for it again if I weren’t trying to do it right this time around and stop feeling so restless. If there’s anything we in RS know it’s that it doesn’t matter if you leave this life. There are endless lives to live.
BeeHappy: I dunno. I like this life and I think other people like me in it. They don’t want to lose me.
OtherPlanes: That’s why I live without people. No chains.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
JANIE
One week after
MY DAD IS watching baseball in his recliner. He’s been making more of an effort to be home since it happened—though not necessarily to be more sober. He lines the cans up on the counter, his way of keeping track of how many he’s had, and once he’s snoring, I sweep them into the recycling and put on a movie. I set up my replacement phone, a refurbished device Dad ordered online.
Izzy surprises me with a text: Can you come with me to Honore? I’m meeting someone who knew Is. Don’t tell Cass.
This is the second time I’ve been asked on a secret journey. Both Izzy and Cass could borrow cars from their family if they really needed to, so it isn’t just about the fact that I have a car. Maybe they’re starting to like me for real.
What would have happened if, one of the times they’d come to lean on the movie theater’s candy case asking for freebies, I’d let it slip that I hung out with Nate almost every day? Would they have believed me?
Yeah, I’ll come, I text back.
“Dad, I’m going to Honore with Izzy,” I say loudly.
He rubs his eyes and stretches. “What?”
“I’m going to drive to Honore with Izzy,” I repeat.
“Why?”
“She’s going to meet a friend of Israel’s who lives there. She wanted company.”
“I don’t know, Janie.” He puts down the footrest of the recliner and scratches the beard hair on his cheeks.
“You don’t know?”
“She seems a little—off. Candy told me what happened at her brother’s funeral.”
“People think I’m a little off, you know.”
“It doesn’t matter what other people think; it matters what’s inside—”
“Exactly,” I cut him off.
He sighs. “I don’t want to see you hurt again.”
Now I understand. This is about my mom and the year after she left. He didn’t know what to do with me any more than the school counselors did. “I’ll be fine, Dad,” I say sharply.
“Okay. Okay.” He looks up at me, his eyes bleary from sleep or alcohol or sadness. “You know, you remind me of her.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“Of course it is. You’re strong and stubborn and smart.”
“She left us.”
“That wasn’t just about her. I didn’t listen. I didn’t really hear her.” He picks up a beer from the TV tray we use as a side table and tilts his head back, but the can is empty, and I can tell this racks him.
“You don’t have to protect me, Dad,” I say. “I know she had to quit school when she had me and we only moved here so I’d be safe.”
His eyes widen as though he’s shocked I figured this out. “Janie, none of that was your fault. I don’t always understand the choice she made, but I do know she has always loved you. Always.”
“Yeah, well, it hurts when you don’t get picked,” I say, thinking of Nate as much as my mom.
He looks at the can in his hand again and squeezes it so it crinkles. “I know,” he says softly. “I know.”
* * *
• • •
Izzy is sitting on the bottom step outside her house, holding a chew toy. A white pit bull is on the other end, tugging and shaking, but Izzy hangs on like it’s no struggle. When I pull into the driveway, the dog gallops up to the car and stands on my door.
“Sorry,” Izzy calls. “She loved going on car rides with Israel.”
She grabs the dog by the collar and pulls it toward the house. Once inside my car, Izzy kicks her sandals off onto the floor mat and puts her legs up on the dash. “Do you mind?” she asks, pointing at her feet.
I pause. It never occurred to me to mind when she takes ownership of the things around her. “No,” I say.
She lets her head loll back on the seat while I reverse and head for the mainland.
“You wrote Nate’s eulogy for Aaron, didn’t you?”
Her intuition surprises me. Does she know me that well? Or Aaron?
“What was he to you?” she asks.
I shrug. “Aaron was like an older brother.”
“No, Janie,” she says, clearly impatient. “You know I’m talking about Nate.”
I pause. My best friend? My first and only love? Someone who broke my heart nearly every day? “I don’t know. It was complicated,” I say.
I think she’ll be unsatisfied and continue to prod, but she doesn’t. “It’s all more complicated than it seems,” she says. “Israel was my twin, but I don’t think he liked me much.”
I know Cass would say, Of course he did, but Izzy is right: Things can be more complicated than they seem. You can love someone and not like them very much. “Why do you think that?” I ask instead.
“He always wanted space. Privacy. I get it, but, like, I spent my entire life with him, too, and I never once wanted more space. If anything, I wanted less space.” She’s talking fast now. “Janie, if he felt something, I could feel it too. Here.” She gestures at her side. “He didn’t like that. It felt like a violation to him. So he asked me to ignore the feeling, but it was like ignoring your right hand.” Her voice wavers.
“Wanting more space doesn’t mean he didn’t like you.”
She shakes her head as though frustrated by me. “Can’t you just tell when a person doesn’t like you much?”
“Yeah.” I’m thinking of Cass now, how little kindness she spent on me—until I told her about Nate.
“Hey,” Izzy says, waiting until I meet her eyes. “I love Cass more than most people, but she can be . . . obtuse sometimes.”
I look back out the windshield, feeling overwhelmed by how much Izzy sees me.
We cross the bridge to the mainland. Several trees hav
e been nearly swallowed by the rising water level. They’re reaching toward the sky, as though begging to be rescued. “Israel was obtuse too,” I say.
She smiles at this, but her eyes are wet. “I need to tell you something, because you’re about to find out anyway.”
We’re on the mainland now. The landscape transitions quickly from vacation homes and wetland to strip malls clustered around highway exits and cattle ranches. The grasses are scrub green and gold and the air through the vents smells damp and earthy. “Okay,” I say. I have no idea what to expect.
“Israel remembered a past life. He’d talk about it when we were kids, but he never grew out of it. And this man we’re meeting today? He’s the son of the guy Israel used to be.”
I’m struck speechless.
We’re meeting someone who Israel knew from a past life? I didn’t know Israel well at all. From Nate’s stories, he was the most serious of the group, the most driven as well. Recently Nate had called him the brain of their trio. Shane was the heart. And you? I’d asked. The janky knee? he’d said with that half smile.
“You’re being awfully quiet,” Izzy says. “I thought you’d understand because of that script you wrote.”
The script? It takes me a minute and then I remember: I’d seen an orca up close at an aquarium on a school trip and thought its eye was haunting—godlike, even. I had wanted to write about the feeling I had when I saw it, that something small could contain the whole universe. There’d also been an old man standing with his hands pressed against the glass and whispering. I invented the part about him talking to his dead wife because I was drawn to the idea that someone could leave you and still be part of your life in a completely different way. But Cass had been right. It was a stupid idea for a school film project with zero budget. How were we going to get an orca to do what we wanted?
