“Did you love her?”
“Yes,” he states. “But love is a lot of work.”
“Did you work at it?” I ask more emphatically.
“Every damn day.”
“If that’s the case, why did you let her go?”
My question seems to snap him out of his trance. “It’s not that simple.”
“But you loved her. You wanted to be with her. Why did you let her leave? Why not chase her down? Force her to come home?”
I know that love and I have just gotten acquainted, but I would chase after Luca until my feet started to bleed and my toenails fell off.
Chief stands, his mood shifting. “I said it’s not that simple, Wren.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
That’s been his excuse. Chief refused to talk to me and Lizzie about his relationship with our mom, claiming we weren’t old enough to understand, as if he could protect us from pain, but pain moved into our house the moment Lizzie moved out.
I don’t think Chief can talk about love without seeing it outlined in pain.
“Just try,” I say. “I want to know.”
“You don’t want to know!” he yells. His voice startles me. “Wren, do you know why the world needs police?”
I don’t respond.
“So they can turn themselves away from crime and let someone else clean up the mess. Let me do my job. I’ll deal with the chaos of your mom so you don’t have to carry the burden. That’s what I did before she left, and that’s what I continue to do after.”
Chief goes up to bed before he’s drunk his usual six beers.
A woman named Samantha makes it to the bonus round. Time expires before she’s able to solve the puzzle, and she misses out on winning a new car.
31
WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT
It’s the last day of Driver’s Ed. Engines rumble in the background as Mr. Angry Driver’s Ed Teacher tells us the mechanics of the go-cart and his expectations for the day. The course is set up as a simulation of real life, with stop lights, turns, some sections of the track that symbolize highway, others that indicate pedestrian roadway.
“This isn’t a game,” he says, his eyes dancing over Luca briefly. Luca is so excited he’s practically bouncing. His yellow light is extra bright. I could bathe in it to warm myself, and it only makes me want him even more. “Follow the rules. If everyone passes the simulation, you’ll have the rest of the time for some fun.”
“I like fun,” Luca says to me. “Do you like fun?”
“What’s fun?” His pinky finger slyly knots with mine. “Fun is my middle name,” I say.
“How radical of your parents. My middle name is just Jonathan.”
“Actually, my middle name is Margaret. It’s, like, the middlest of middle names.”
For a moment I consider telling Luca about Chief’s outburst, how he left his beer on the table, half-drunk, dripping with condensation that left a ring stain on the wood. He’s holding something in or shutting something out. But why? My mom is gone. She has been for years.
“Are you OK?” Luca’s question has a concerned edge to it.
“I’m nervous about the go-carts,” I lie.
“What’s there to be nervous about?”
“Chief always says that cars are weapons. They kill more people than guns.”
Luca leans in close, his lips gracing the soft spot right at the base of my ear. “Don’t worry. If anything happens, I’m here to give you mouth to mouth anytime you need it.”
It takes every ounce of willpower to move away from him when Mr. Angry Driver’s Ed Teacher clears his throat in our direction.
We pick two go-carts parked next to each other. I walk Luca through the proper safety steps.
“You want to check your mirrors,” I say.
“There are no mirrors.”
“Remember your blind spots.”
“Baby Girl would say, ‘Life is one giant blind spot.’” Luca revs his engine and smiles. “We see only what we want to see.”
I put on my helmet. Is that true? It sure feels like that sometimes. That perspective taints our vision. What might I be missing with my own eyes?
The simulation starts, and Luca breaks all the rules instantly, forgetting about stop signs and never using his blinker. He is chaos personified. I hear the rumbling of engines and Chief’s voice saying over and over again, Guns have safety buttons. Cars have seat belts. Both are important.
The memory of his strained voice and pained face replay in my head as I drive. Why is he holding on to the past so tightly? Is that what love makes you do?
By the time the simulation is over, my hands ache from gripping the steering wheel so tightly.
But the breeze feels good today against the blistering sun and dry heat.
We pull back into the starting area. I take my helmet off to air out my sweaty head.
“Now we can have some real fun,” Luca says, revving his engine again.
“What would you call that?” I ask, wiping my forehead.
“Foreplay.” He winks. “Catch me if you can, Hot Brod!” Luca takes off. My chest pinches with an instantaneous ache. The farther he gets from me, the worse it feels. I need him like I need the wind to blow. I press the gas pedal to the floor, and the go-cart lurches forward.
My hands grip the steering wheel. Luca takes a turn at a speed that feels unnatural. When I attempt the same thing, my cart rises onto just two wheels, but, ignoring the danger, I grip the steering wheel harder and press the gas.
But with every turn, I seem to lose ground. Luca just gets farther and farther away until he feels unattainable. Untouchable. I want to yell at him to slow down, but my voice won’t reach him. It’s like he’s trying to leave me.
Chief’s words echo in my head. When you want someone that badly, it can make a person blind to reality.
Am I being blind with Luca? Does he really want me like I want him? Or is this all going to end in disaster? Where’s the proof that love ever works out? I’ve never seen it. Come the fall he’ll go back to school without me. He’ll be busy with a different life. He’ll forget me. And I’ll be left missing him. Wishing we could be together and knowing he’s out of reach.
And then it happens. The moment is so quick, and yet I’m slow to process it.
Wilder is standing on the edge of the track, watching me.
“I told you it would fall apart, Wren. I warned you.”
But when I look back, he’s gone. Disappeared.
My vision goes blurry in the sunlight. Luca is so far away from me, I’ll never catch him. A bead of sweat drips down my forehead. When I wipe at it, I realize I’ve made a mistake.
The collision comes from behind, jarring me. My head whips forward. My seat belt tugs against my chest like a vise grip, holding me back and crushing me. My forehead knocks so hard on the steering wheel that stars pop in my eyes.
I forgot to put on my helmet.
I’ve been careless.
Everything slows.
The lights go out. The world goes black. And shadows begin to whisper in the darkness.
Songbird, look at the moon, Lizzie says, her voice that of a child. She thumbs the scar on her leg from when she fell down the stairs. The moon hangs full, like it’s taking up the entire night. On nights like this, I can feel her. She’s out there somewhere, calling to us. Can’t you hear her?
Our mom feels as tangible to me as the wind. She pushes and pulls, but when I try to grab her, nothing fills my hand.
That’s just make-believe, Lizzie. It isn’t real.
You know as well as I do, Songbird. Life is just one big made-up story. No one tells it the same.
Then what are we to believe?
Lizzie doesn’t answer me.
And somewhere in the distance, I hear a woman crying.
32
THE RELIABLE SOURCE
Whiplash and a concussion—that’s the doctor’s diagn
osis. The crash caused a pileup—a chain reaction of crash after crash after crash, but I was the only one without a helmet. Everyone else came out unscathed.
When he arrived at the track, half-asleep and looking worn down, Chief threatened to sue the driving company. I told him over and over again that it was my fault. That I forgot the helmet. That I was driving recklessly.
“How many times have I told you?” Chief said, his voice straining to remain calm. “Cars are weapons and should be treated as such.”
I got all woozy and almost fainted right there, and Chief backed off.
By the time we got to the hospital, he had calmed down.
Now he’s filling out paperwork in the hallway, drinking coffee as I talk to the doctor. It’s the same doctor who saw me two months ago, when Lizzie left and I went dark.
The pain in my head won’t ease. The cold that I felt in my memory seems to settle in the marrow of my bones, and I can’t get warm. So many things are swarming through my mind.
Wilder. Luca. Lizzie. I don’t know what to believe. What’s real?
She’s out there somewhere, calling to us. Can’t you hear her? Lizzie’s voice echoes in my head.
“I remember you,” the doctor says, flashing a light in my eyes.
“I remember you, too.”
“Questionable heart problem and ingestion of a bird, I believe it was.” He feels the base of my skull and the tender spot on my forehead before getting out a prescription pad and writing.
“You’re drinking enough water?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Getting enough exercise?”
“Yes.”
He hands me a prescription. “You have a mild concussion and slight whiplash. Take this prescription, ibuprofen for the headache and muscle pain, and rest. No strenuous activity for a week.”
“A week? But I have Roller Derby training.”
“One week won’t kill you.” He examines me again. “You look good, Wren. Much healthier.”
“Thanks.” But there’s disappointment in my voice. When he turns to leave, I stop him. “My friend’s grandma has dementia.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Some days she’s fine, and then the next she’s gone again.”
The doctor sits down on the end of my bed. “The mind is a mysterious organ. And can be a frustrating one.”
I don’t know why I’m telling him all of this. There are so many puzzle pieces shifting around in my head.
“The brain is . . . peculiar,” he says. “It’s subjective at times.”
“What do you mean?”
“It chooses when to remember and when to forget,” he says. “And sometimes it simply believes what it wants to believe.”
I know this well. But it still doesn’t help me.
“So even the mind can’t be trusted?”
The doctor pauses. “I’ve always found it best to ask the heart the hard questions. It’s a more reliable source.”
Chief walks in then. “Is she going to be OK?”
“Mild concussion,” the doctor says. “But she’ll survive.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Take care of yourself, Wren.” With a soft touch on my shoulder, the doctor leaves.
Chief helps me off the bed, wrapping his arm around my waist tightly to hold me up.
“I’m OK, Chief,” I say. “I can walk just fine.”
“You scared the shit out of me today. Just appease your old man.”
So I do. He hoists me into his arms easily, and I wonder how many times a night he has to do this, how many desperate people Chief has carried because they believed they weren’t strong enough to survive on their own. Drug addicts. Domestic abuse. Suicide. He’s seen it all. Carried so many bodies.
How many times has Chief taken on the burden for people when they couldn’t hold themselves?
This isn’t the first time he’s done it for me.
I let him practically carry me to the car.
“Is it hard, Chief?”
“Is what hard?”
“Carrying people all the time.”
“Only when they fight me,” he says. “Some people just don’t want to be carried.”
“That’s what happened with Lizzie,” I say matter-of-factly, and then yawn. Outside, the sunlight intensifies the pain behind my eyes.
“Let’s not talk about this right now,” Chief says.
He opens the car door and sets me inside.
“Do you ever just want to let go?” I ask him.
“With you, Wren, never.”
33
A BIRD COMES TO CALL
My room is all white. White walls. White comforter. The wooden floors creak and pop in the summer when they swell. In the winter I’d pretend I was covered in an avalanche, surrounded by cold white everywhere, hunkering down to stay warm. Lizzie’s room was my canvas. I never bothered to paint mine because I thought it was useless. I had no color. Every time I looked in the mirror and couldn’t see an aura, I knew it was pointless. I could paint my walls a rainbow, and it still wouldn’t make me shine.
It was more important that Lizzie got what she needed. That Lizzie have a colorful landscape to wander and wonder in. When the endless nothingness of white got to me in the winter, I just crept down the hall to Lizzie’s room and stood in the ever-growing summer forest for a while, waiting until I was warm again.
“I realized something, Songbird,” Lizzie said one time. Snow was falling on the slushy roads, and the trees outside were leafless and brown, but in Lizzie’s room it was perpetual summer. “You’re the only bird in my forest. Are you lonely? Do you need another bird to play with?”
“No,” I said quickly. I didn’t want to compete with anyone for Lizzie’s attention.
“Just tell me if you change your mind.”
I said I would, even though I knew it would never happen.
“Lizzie,” I asked, “do you think this forest really exists somewhere in the world?”
“Of course, it does, Songbird,” she said.
“Where?”
“Right here.”
“Then we never have to leave, do we?” I asked.
“That’s up to you.”
Nothing has changed in Lizzie’s forest since I painted the first trees. They haven’t gotten any taller. The flowers never wilt. The butterflies never head south for the winter, because it’s never winter. It’s an endless summer nightscape.
But I know now that it’s a distraction, an illusion, a magic trick of the eye. I thought if I just kept adding to our encapsulated, motionless world, she wouldn’t notice how fake it all was. We could live in the warmth, even on cold days.
But I wasn’t fooling only Lizzie. I was tricking myself. And now that world is crumbling. Crumbling to reveal what’s real. Even now, as Wilder and I sit in my backyard, I prefer the tickle of grass. The carpet in Lizzie’s room only itches my skin now.
“You shouldn’t have been there, Wilder.”
“I was just trying to protect you,” he says. “I’m worried. You’re never home. You don’t rely on me. What happens when you don’t need me anymore?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe we should go back to the way it was. It was . . . safer.”
I thumb the grass, letting each blade skim my skin. Even it pales in comparison to Luca’s touch.
“We can’t go back.”
“Are you really sure that boy likes you? The moment things get hard for him, he runs. You know this. What’s to say he isn’t going to do that to you?”
Shaded by night, Wilder looks partially dissolved, not completely solid.
“You’re right,” I say. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t even know what to believe.”
“Doesn’t that scare you?”
“I’m terrified.”
“See? My point exactly. Save yourself the pain, Wren. End it now.”
“I don’t think I can.”
�
�Why? We’ll go back to the way it was—just the two of us. You can believe in me.”
I close my eyes and try to listen to my heart.
“I don’t think I want to do that, Wilder.”
He goes silent.
“Nothing lasts,” I finally say. “Not this. Not summer. The birds eventually leave for the winter. But if we wait it out . . .”
Off in the distance, I hear a song, whistled into the darkness.
And I whisper to the night, “The birds will come back.”
Chief takes work off for two days to keep an eye on me. Luca texts me repeatedly, but I don’t respond. The story isn’t clear yet. My head hurts too much to think about it.
By the third day I can tell the sunlight is getting to Chief. He wasn’t expecting this change in schedule. Nothing is going as planned this summer, and Chief is getting antsier and edgier with each unpredicted turn. Lines in his face that weren’t deep two months ago are starting to show more.
The night covers him well. Chief can hide in the darkness, just how he likes it. Never fully seen. But daylight’s nature is to expose.
Chief is relieved when he finally goes back to work, and Olga returns to her usual spot on the couch.
I’m lying in bed when Olga knocks on my bedroom door. She doesn’t wait for me to answer before bringing a tray of food in. The moment is oddly maternal and unexpected.
“You need good food.” She sets down a tray with homemade chicken noodle soup. “Good food heals the body.”
“You cook?”
“I cook.”
I’ve known Olga for fourteen years and can’t remember a single time she cooked for us. “How did I not know that?”
“You never ask, so I never tell you.”
I take a bite of the soup and wonder what else Olga hasn’t told me simply because I didn’t ask the right questions.
She looks around at my white room and shivers. “It’s cold in here.”
“It’s always cold,” I say. “Even in the summer.”
“More reason to eat soup.”
I take a bite.
“This is really good. Thank you.”
“You rest now.” Olga moves toward the door.
“Olga?” She turns and looks at me. “If good food heals the body, what heals the heart?”
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