I just need to catch him.
I wobble only a little when I stand up. My muscles are already screaming at me to stop. The scrapes on my hands ache. Tomorrow my entire body will most likely be riddled with pain.
But I don’t care.
“Don’t look down,” I say to myself. “Look forward.”
My body is now more accustomed to the feeling of being on wheels. With less effort this time, I get myself moving. Luca is lost in the maze of ramps and sidewalks that connects all the buildings of South Hill High.
I have to find him. I skate through areas I’ve never noticed before—the outdoor picnic area where Jay and Chloe eat lunch when the sun is out, the football stadium’s parking lot, through the quad where big pine trees shade students napping and studying.
All are empty tonight.
I come around the corner to find the cadmium yellow of the sun streaking through the night. Luca is at the top of a ramp. He catches speed, like dawn light rolling down a hill.
The ramp is steep, and I still haven’t mastered how to stop, but none of this prevents me from chasing Luca.
I yell his name, and so much adrenaline is pumping through me I feel practically invincible.
He finds me at the top of the ramp, our eyes locking only briefly.
My skates pick up speed. Luca’s expression reminds me of the drop I feel in my stomach as I realize I’ve abandoned any control. My body feels heavy as it’s pulled down by gravity. The slope only makes it worse, the roller skates picking up momentum. This time there’s no grass to fall into. No soft landing.
All control is lost. Hope is all that remains.
20
MOON-STAINED
Lizzie went through phases where she refused to sleep for days on end. It started when she was little. No amount of begging or pleading would force her eyes closed.
“It’s just so dark sometimes, Songbird,” she said once. “I don’t like the darkness.”
“But the night is always dark,” I said.
“Not when I can see the stars. There are more suns out at night than during the day. I just need the clouds to pass.”
But at times Spokane lives under a blanket of clouds for days on end.
“We should tell Chief,” I begged her. “He’ll know what to do.”
“No.” Lizzie was adamant. “He’s too quick to put people in handcuffs.”
“But you need sleep,” I said.
“The moon never rests. It’s constantly changing. Can’t I be like the moon?”
I saw bags under her eyes, fatigue in her beautiful features.
“The moon is a flashlight, so shadows play on earth instead of in minds. But the clouds are blocking the moon. They need a place to play, Songbird.” Lizzie’s body hung heavy.
This was two years ago. Lizzie was the worst I’d ever seen.
“Please, Lizzie,” I begged. “Just a little sleep.”
“Have you ever noticed that it’s never truly dark unless you close your eyes?” she said. “If I can just keep mine open, it won’t happen again.”
“What won’t happen?”
“Things creep around in the darkness.”
“What things?”
“Things I can’t control.” We were in her room on the empty floor. Olga was downstairs, asleep, and Chief was at work, helping other people survive. “With my eyes open, I can imagine anything. But when they’re closed, the darkness makes its own story and I can’t find the truth.”
Lizzie looked at me with this helpless, tired expression I’ll never forget.
“Let’s go sit outside,” I said. “You’ll feel better with fresh air.”
And so we did.
We spread out on the ground in our backyard, and slowly the clouds parted. The moon came out again, and she relaxed.
“You’re moon-stained, Songbird. The night looks good on you,” Lizzie said, a smile returning to her face. “If I could, I’d never sleep again. I’d keep my eyes on the moon and make sure the shadows knew I was watching them. Shadows play on the light.”
Only then, with the moonlit night blanketing her body, did Lizzie finally close her eyes and sleep, as if her world was back in working order.
When we woke up the next day, covered in early-morning dew, Lizzie was back to herself. She made me promise not to tell Chief what had happened.
“He thinks I’m broken, Songbird. He wants to put me back together how he wants me to be. Not how I am. I can’t let that happen.”
I’m lost in the memory of it, swimming through it, breathing it, smelling the grass that lingered in our hair, feeling the soft dew on my skin from the sunrise, the wave of relief I felt when Lizzie turned her rested face toward mine and said, “Do you hear them? The songbirds are calling for you. They want you to come home.” Lizzie grasped my hand. “I’ll miss you so much when you leave, but I understand. The wilderness will call us both back to her. We can’t live among the painted trees forever. But it’s OK, Songbird. When you decide to fly from here, I’ll kiss you goodbye and let you go.”
But she left me first, with nothing but a breeze in her wake to kiss my cheek goodbye.
The cool night air tickles my skin as the pine trees that surround the high school catch shadows from the moonlight. I don’t know what Lizzie saw when she closed her eyes. She was in an untouchable, unspeakable place I could never reach.
But tonight it’s Luca, moon-stained and beautiful, who hovers over me, his aura mixing with the light of the moon, the halo around his black hair touched by twilight. So tangible.
For a moment the feeling that’s consumed me for a month comes back. My body is adrift. Emptiness leaves room for the echo of sadness. But I’m not so hollow anymore.
Luca fills the night with my name.
Wren.
Wren.
Wren.
It’s as if he’s pushing life into my lungs, soothing the claustrophobic ache in my chest. Filling me. Lizzie’s hand dissolves, and the memory of her whisks away into the night and becomes speckles of stars above.
“Wren, can you hear me?”
Luca, can you save me? Keep pulling, I urge him. Keep breathing. Don’t leave me in the ravine.
“Wren, talk to me.”
“You’re a love seat,” I say.
“What?”
“You’re a love seat.”
“I think you’re concussed.”
“If I had to categorize you as a piece of furniture, you’d be a love seat.”
Luca grins deviously. “Well, you can sit on me anytime you want.”
“I should warn you. I’m a chair that’s missing a leg. Wobbly at best. At worst, disposable.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll hold you up.”
I’m jealous of the moon’s touch on his shoulder and hair and lips. Luca sits me up, slowly, cautiously.
“Do I need to call an ambulance?” he asks.
“No.”
“But you blacked out for a second,” Luca says.
He doesn’t understand that my life has been a blackout for the past month. Maybe longer.
“If you call an ambulance, my dad will come, and then he’ll ask what your last name is, and I’ll never be allowed to see you again.”
Luca freezes. “OK. No ambulance.”
His hand feels the back of my head. I wince slightly.
“I need to check you out, Wren,” he says. “Make sure you’re OK. Hold still and tell me if it hurts.”
I can’t explain to him that this is nothing. The pain of falling is easily handled. It’s the heart that’s not so simple.
Luca starts with my feet, taking one skate off at a time. “Any pain?” he asks.
I shake my head.
A smirk pulls at his cheeks, and he touches my longer second toe. “You weren’t lying. That toe is long.”
His hands move to my legs, inspecting every inch, his thumb moving smoothly over my skin.
I bite down hard.
“Does that hurt?” He backs up.<
br />
“No.” I’m resisting the urge to grab him and not let go.
“You might be the toughest person I know,” Luca says.
“I don’t feel strong.”
“You just wiped out, blacked out, and told me you’re fine,” Luca says incredulously. “What more proof do you need?” His fingers are back, searching my skin inch by inch, just like he promised.
“Well, in that case, you should know you’re not a failure, Luca.”
He blows off my comment with a sarcastic grunt. “What would you call tonight?”
“Magic.”
Our eyes connect. He searches my face, as if the truth might be carved in the creases around my eyes when I smile.
You can do it, Songbird, Lizzie said.
The list of reasons I could never do a handstand was long—my arms weren’t strong enough, my legs too heavy, the ground too hard, my life too broken for the extraordinary.
I’m dead weight, I thought. Baggage. Heavy. Unwanted even by the air. It’ll drop me.
I just know I can’t do it, I said to her.
Then borrow my belief for a while, Lizzie said.
Instead I borrowed everything else—her life, her breath, her world—and left whoever I was behind. My belief in Lizzie was enough. She’s the wire I’ve clung to for stability. I’ve pretended for so long, I don’t know the difference between real and fantasy—the girl Lizzie created and believed me to be, and the girl I actually am.
“What if I disappoint you?” I ask Luca.
“What if I disappoint you?” he replies.
“I guess we’ll just have to borrow each other’s belief until we find it in ourselves,” I say to him. “You can borrow my belief in you.”
“You can borrow mine, too,” he says. “Now, hold still.”
Luca moves his attention to my hands, my arms, my shoulders, his hands not leaving a single exposed inch of me without his touch.
“Almost done,” he says. “I just need to check your head one more time.”
Luca is before me, his eyes on mine, his lips so close when he speaks that his words travel from inside him to inside me and pass only briefly through the night air, with no time to cool.
His fingers tangle in my hair, from the nape of my neck to the crown of my head, soft and searching. If there was any pain, Luca has eased it with his fingers and the humble touch of acknowledgment.
“From now on, no skating without a helmet,” he says. “But I think you’re OK.”
Thinking is impossible right now. All I can do is feel.
“Are you sure you’ve checked everywhere?” I ask, sitting forward. Closing the space between us.
The air is magnetic, the moonbeams charged with vibration.
“Maybe not everywhere,” he whispers.
He leans in, hands still tangled in my hair, our breath swirling together. Lips an inch apart.
But the ringing of a phone startles the night. Luca pulls back from me.
“Damn.” He gets his phone from his pocket. “Fuck.”
“What is it?”
Luca stands. Cold circulates around us. He walks away from me to answer the phone. I can catch only bits and pieces of what he says.
“Hello?” A pause. “At the high school.” Another. “Just skateboarding.” And then in a clipped voice, “No, I’m not doing anything stupid.” More space, more distance. “I didn’t . . . OK, OK. I’ll be right there.” One more pause. Luca’s shoulders fall. “I’m sorry.”
He shoves his phone back in his pocket.
“I have to go,” he says.
“Is everything OK?”
“It’s fine.” He runs his hands through his hair. “Actually, it’s not fine.”
“Can I help?” I ask.
“No.” He says it so quickly, the word feels like a slap. He pauses for a weighted breath that pulls his chest down. “I’m sorry.”
Inch by inch, space invades the night. Luca gets my shoes from his backpack and sets them on the bench. The heat between us is gone. I’m desperate for its return. I’m a period begging an ellipsis to stay.
“This isn’t how I wanted tonight to go,” Luca says. He’s dressed in disappointment. A text dings on his phone. With a frustrated grunt, his entire body tenses.
“It’s OK,” I say. “I can make it home. It’s not far.”
“I don’t want to leave you, but . . .”
But he has to. That’s what Luca doesn’t want to say.
He moves closer. For a moment the space between us is gone. Luca says, “Just promise me you won’t hurt yourself going home.”
“I promise.”
And before I know it, he is gone. Lost in the night.
With shoes on my feet, my legs feel extra heavy. It takes effort to walk home, as if my feet are dragging, drudging their way back.
The skates are slung over my shoulder, saved for the next time someone pulls me down from my perch, offers me a hand, and lets me borrow their strength.
Bouquet of Sunflowers, 1881
Dear Songbird,
I’ve decided Monet was a complete daredevil to paint like he did. He might be the bravest man who ever lived. I know he didn’t jump in front of bullets and save children from burning buildings, like Chief does.
He simply painted outside the lines and started a revolution.
I love you,
Lizzie
Wren Plumley
20080 21st Ave.
Spokane, WA 99203
21
GONE MISSING
I don’t remember moving from Boise. I don’t remember the house I was brought home to from the hospital, or my nursery, or even my mother’s face in the flesh. Any knowledge that I have comes from Lizzie.
Stored deep in the basement are pictures of our mom, but they’re covered in spiders and darkness. I’ve never had the courage to go down there and find them. I think Chief wanted it that way when he put them there.
Lizzie made the journey to that part of the basement only once, unbeknownst to Chief. He banned us from that part of the house, but by putting a wall in front of Lizzie, he was just asking for her to make a rope out of curiosity. Once she threw it over the wall, Lizzie was going to climb.
When she returned from the darkness of the basement, her cheeks were stained with tears and she was clutching a photo.
“Don’t look, Songbird,” Lizzie said. “Just trust me. In some places, make-believe isn’t possible.”
So I never looked at the pictures.
After that the basement was off limits. Chief’s invisible wall was strongly in place. Lizzie and I stayed aboveground, where vines could turn into swings and flowers were transformed into tiaras. Where it was easier to pretend in the sun than remember in the darkness.
I don’t know what Lizzie did with the pictures of our mom. I trusted that she took care of them, like she took care of me. I didn’t want to see them. I knew our mom didn’t look like me. I can tell because of Chief. Sometimes he looked at Lizzie with this pain in his eyes, like his heart was breaking just at the sight of her, and I knew he missed our mom to the point he couldn’t breathe. And then Chief would make a list or go to the gym or save the life of a person who, just like him, wasn’t sure he or she wanted to be saved.
Lizzie must be a replica of our mom.
But some memories you can’t walk out of. Some are so ingrained in the fiber of your being, you can’t hide from them or change them. All a person can do is live with the haunting.
I was four years old when Aunt Betsy and Uncle Kirk came to Spokane for Thanksgiving. Every now and then the image of them comes to me. Chief and Betsy sitting on our couch, Kirk in the armchair, a beer in his hand, football on TV in the background.
“She couldn’t bring herself to hold her,” Chief said as I hid behind them with a stomachache from eating too much. “It was as if Wren was . . . repellent. How could a baby be untouchable?”
“Stop blaming yourself,” Betsy said. “Vivienne made her choices.”
“I’ll never stop blaming myself,” Chief said. “It was my idea to have a second child. I was set on it. I thought it would help. If Wren was never born . . .”
Aunt Betsy embraced Chief in a loving hug as I stayed hiding and, my feet cold on the wood floor, tried to catch their warmth and felt even more sick to my stomach.
If a mother finds her child repellent, what’s to say the world wants that child anymore?
Lizzie could never understand my struggle, because she was wanted. Everyone felt it. Even the trees begged for her weight to dangle from their branches.
But an untouchable child wonders if she’s destined to walk alone, if she’s a mistake dragged behind her parents, bumping along the road until, piece by piece, she is reduced to nothing.
Was it even worth trying to hold myself up? Hold myself together? Was I worth it?
How did my mother know I was repellent? Could she smell it on me? Taste it in the kisses she left on my cheek? Feel it in the heat that passed between us?
Did I cry for her? Did she plug her ears? Did Chief have to feed me bottles and rock me to sleep because my mom couldn’t bring herself to?
Did she take one look at me and know, deep in her heart, that it would be impossible to ever love me? To even pretend? Did she leave me before I was even born?
In some places, make-believe isn’t possible.
My problem with handstands is that I can’t get the courage to jump. I don’t trust what will happen when I let go. I don’t trust myself to handle it. To toss the world upside down by choice. To let the pieces fall away until I’m stripped down to my core.
Instead, for years, I sat perched on the roof, watching life below and silently asking the birds to come and take me home.
It never occurred to me that the world can flip on a person when her feet are solidly planted on the ground. Life hits a bump, and suddenly everything is tossed into the air.
But memories are like a sponge—incomplete, filled with holes, and yet so absorbent, they can consume a person. Still, we decide what to fill those holes with. I’ve given my memories power. Fueled them. Burned and branded them into my brain, making their mark permanent. Because the truth is, there’s safety in being repellent. Untouchable. Invisible.
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