“Did you know we lived in a trailer park when it happened?” Clarisse asks, but she doesn’t give me time to respond or react; she just keeps talking. “There was a little girl who lived next to us with her mom. My father climbed in that little girl’s bedroom through her unlocked window. He woke her up and said it was time to play a game. He led her out of the window and into the woods behind the trailer park, way out past the lake, and told her they were going to play hide and seek. He told her that her mother was already out there, hiding, and that he would help her find her. They walked and walked and eventually...” Clarisse’s voice trails off, low and ragged. She hugs her knees tighter, making her body as small as possible.
I see Clarisse’s father and the little girl in the distance. I can’t freeze the frame. I have to watch. He is young and handsome. He holds the little girl’s hand. She wears a purple nightgown, a thin ruffle at the hem. Her eyes search the dark, her body tunes itself, tries to locate her mother’s vibrations. He whispers in her ear. Keep going, keep going. He pats her on the head.
“She was my age, Evelyn. We played together. We set up a tea party in my bedroom one day, and my father sat there with us smiling and laughing and drinking invisible tea from a pink cup, and the whole time he was thinking about strangling her and raping her. Slitting her throat and wrapping her body in a garbage bag.”
He whispers again. We’re almost there, honey. Something starts to pool inside of her—a fear that churns slowly, picking up speed as they walk. She wants to turn back now. He feels her fear, knows it’s almost time. She calls for her mother, her voice warm and small in the night. He covers her mouth with one hand while wrapping the long fingers of the other around her neck. Don’t you dare make another sound.
I feel an idea forming inside me. It begins in my feet and then moves to my legs, making them feel restless and warm. As the idea gains momentum, it continues to rise up through me. It follows my nerves, that spidery network of highways and byways that allow the body to feel. People look like maps on the inside, all these channels that usher fluids and proteins and oxygen—all those ingredients of being human that we don’t even have to think about.
“Listen to me, Clarisse. Whatever fucked your father up, whatever made him kill that little girl, it isn’t in you.” I put my hand on her head, stroking her hair. She flinches at my touch at first, like an animal, wild and unsure, but I keep going, smoothing her hair gently with my fingertips until her breathing slows. “And I can prove it.”
She looks up at me now and raises one eyebrow. “How?”
It’s simple, so clear to me now. I’ll test Clarisse, conducting an experiment of sorts. I’ll put her in a situation where she has the opportunity to kill someone. I’ll let her prove she isn’t a murderer. Clarisse isn’t a murderer because, you see, a murderer isn’t made on the day she’s born, the day she’s pushed from a mother’s womb, sent down the birth canal to land crying and gasping into waiting hands. A murderer is born on the day she kills.
I sit down on the ground next to Clarisse and whisper my idea in her ear. She listens, and eventually she whispers back. Sometimes, the imagery is too easy. Unraveling a tapestry begins by pulling a single thread. Rivers begin as wading pools you can walk across with just a few steps, before they rush wider and wider, curve into muscular currents. The test begins as a pinprick—a scratching at the surface of a scab, to see what it might feel like to rip it off completely. We’ll start slowly and see what it’s like to tear just a corner of the dried blood, rip the almost skin that is trying to heal itself. When that doesn’t hurt, when that starts to feel good, we’ll pick some more and we’ll peel some more and we’ll scratch some more until the wound is reopened, and even though blood is rising to the surface like a small red pond, we won’t feel the pain.
By the time the sun has disappeared completely, by the time we’ve walked back to the mall, where my mother and Shea are waiting to pick us up, my feelings are set in stone, and I am sure of what we must do. The test will save Clarisse. The test will save both of us.
Chapter Fourteen
LETTERS FROM THE DEATH HOUSE
Dear Sis,
Last night I decided I should figure out what I believe in when it comes to the afterlife. So I thought about it, and I decided that I don’t believe in heaven or hell. You know I never paid any mind in church when mom dragged us there every now and then. It seemed really fake to me, like something adults just made up to scare kids. I don’t believe there’s one place where everyone goes, where you meet up with other dead people. I believe you just go to your own place, like you can make your own heaven. It’s a nice thing to think about, really it is. It’s been on my mind all day now so I thought I’d pick up a pen and put my thoughts on paper and send them to you.
I want my heaven to be on the Loxahatchee River. I’m going to picture it every day in my mind. I will picture the Spanish moss that hangs from the live oaks. And I’ll picture that spot where the river gets narrow and there are so many cypress knees, it’s like an obstacle course and you have to steer the canoe carefully so as not to hit them.
I have a plan for that day now, when it comes, so you don’t have to worry about me. When they take me down to the death chamber and strap me to the bed, I will close my eyes and picture myself on the Loxahatchee, and I’ll just breathe until it’s all over and then I’ll just be there. I want you to know that you don’t have to feel bad about it, Sis. You can just think of me on a grand trip along the river.
Give Kimmy a hug from me. Give yourself one, too.
Love,
Andy
I open a new tab and look up the Loxahatchee River. It’s seven miles long. It starts near Jupiter, Florida, and empties into the Atlantic. You can rent a canoe at an outpost in Dickinson State Park and paddle until your arms get tired, until you reach the inlet, where the river spills into the ocean. Loxahatchee is Seminole for river of turtles. They stand on the banks, warm their cold blood. Manatee feed on mangrove leaves, shoal grass, and floating hyacinth. Bald cypress branches filter the sun, beams of light casting shadows on the water.
There is just enough room in the canoe for the two of us. We float along the river together. We paddle in rhythm, propelling ourselves toward the open water. That’s my idea of heaven, and it is a nice thing to think about—that if you love something fiercely enough, it could be yours forever.
Chapter Fifteen
Greg begins making low, throat-clearing noises, our signal to settle in. I turn to survey the group and see the usual participants and one new girl. She is younger than most of us, and looks either terrified or completely bored—I can’t tell which just yet. She’s wearing a stonewashed denim jumper and green tights, perhaps something she found in a pile of clothes her mother meant to donate. Very 1985. The name tag sticker over her heart says SOPHIE.
“There’s no theme tonight. It’s a round robin night,” Greg announces. “I want to know what everyone’s been up to.” There is a slight murmur from the group, a collective laboring of breath. Clarisse and I look at each other from across the circle, and we try not to smile at each other too widely, try not to break out into laughter, because Greg doesn’t want to know what we’ve been up to.
We are all a bit tense now, except for the new girl, who doesn’t know that by round robin, Greg means, “I’ll go around the circle and force everyone to say something that’s happening in his or her life, and I won’t let anyone cop out and just share what they ate for dinner last night.”
I could say something. It’s not too late to come clean, to shine a light inside the dark center of me. It’s not too late to swim out to the swell, to reach the rolling wave before it breaks and crashes.
Greg moves his focus around the room, and kids reluctantly talk out loud about the happenings in their lives. When it’s the new girl’s turn, she sits up a bit straighter in her chair in anticipation.
“Since it’s your first visit, Sophie, perhaps you can just share a bit about yourself with us. You can talk abo
ut what brings you here tonight. You can talk about the past, the present, the future. There are no limitations. And we are all here to support you.” Greg looks around the room. “Remember the ground rules, folks,” he reminds us. Greg is using his best making-the-new-kid-comfortable voice, which is even softer and lighter than his usual voice.
“Well, I’ve never been to something like this before,” Sophie begins. She has an elastic hair tie in her hands, stretching it as she talks. “I’ve never really wanted to talk about my mother. Still don’t want to talk about her, if I’m being honest.” She laughs that uncomfortable little laugh that our group is used to, a way to burn off nerves. The circle laughs along with Sophie to release some tension. I can feel the room relax. I’ve felt it before—the feeling of releasing a small amount of air out of an overinflated balloon so that it doesn’t stretch too far and pop, making a loud sound that you’re sure sounds like the pop of a gun. I see Sophie’s shoulders lower just slightly, a sign that she’s starting to let her guard down.
“Welcome, Sophie. I know I’m speaking for everyone when I say I’m glad you’re here.”
“Thanks,” Sophie says, her brown eyes soft and slightly sad. “I’m starting to realize that something good can come out of talking about her and what she did.”
“Exactly,” Greg says. His face looks open and kind, his body throwing supportive energy toward Sophie as she tells us a bit about her story.
Sophie says she entered the foster care system at age two, when her mother was charged with triple homicide. She was eventually convicted of murdering Sophie’s father, his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s sister at the home that they shared in Bradenton. Sophie was outside in her mother’s blue Buick during the murders, strapped into her car seat and told to wait while Mommy went inside to see Daddy for a minute. Her mother was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“Sometimes I think I want to know why she did it, and other times I think it doesn’t matter and I should just move on,” Sophie says. “I guess I’m just a walking jumble of feelings. So my foster mom found the Wavelengths, and we decided that coming here might help me feel like less of a jumble.”
“Thanks, Sophie,” Greg says. “Thanks for sharing some of your experience. That’s a great start.”
Clarisse scoots her chair back and makes Greg notice her. He smiles at her but she doesn’t smile back. Her defenses are engaged, an invisible barricade surrounding her, but it doesn’t deter Greg.
“Clarisse!” Greg says in his cheery I’m-trying-to-make-sad-kids-talk voice. “It’s your turn. Please share something with us.”
Clarisse uncrosses her legs and crosses them the other way. I can see the bottom of one of her shoes—all the tread is gone, the rubber sole smooth from so many steps. She looks at Greg. His eyes are hopeful, like mine.
“Well, my father is finally getting a hearing for his appeal,” she says. “His lawyers are asking for the death sentence to be commuted to life in prison.”
The group reacts as we usually do when legal matters are discussed. We all know something about appeals and parole and retrials and reduced sentences and time off for good behavior.
“And how does that make you feel, Clarisse?” It’s Greg’s voice, but really it’s mine too.
“Honestly, I really don’t care about it. It doesn’t affect me. Either way he’s dead to me,” Clarisse says, and then laughs through her nose. She leans back in her chair and tilts her face toward the ceiling as though she’s bathing in sunlight. A few of us squirm in our seats a little.
“You don’t have to talk about it at all if you aren’t comfortable, Clarisse,” Greg says, using his therapist voice to turn the conversation around. “It may take a while to process. You know you have an outlet for your feelings when you’re ready to share.” Clarisse looks at me and then down at her feet. She bites her lower lip.
When group ends, Clarisse goes right for the cookies and lemonade.
“Hey!” I say, tapping her on the shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me about the appeal?” I ask. I can feel Clarisse gathering her energy, her bright, bright light, just like the meaning of her name—bright and shining, like a flame. I look in her eyes and she looks in mine and we’re just two girls with murderer fathers standing in silence.
“I don’t know,” Clarisse says. “I guess I just didn’t want to talk about it. Like, what’s the point? Does it really matter? Death sentence, life sentence, it’s all the same, really. Anyway, it doesn’t change what we have to do. It doesn’t change the test.”
She grabs a napkin and piles cookies on it like a tower, six or seven cookies balancing on top of each other. “I’m just a little sick of this Wavelengths shit,” Clarisse says. “I wish I could just disappear for a while,” she says. “Do you ever feel that way?”
“All the time,” I say. I reach over and take a cookie from the top of her tower, starting to nibble at the sugary edge.
“All the time,” Clarisse repeats. She reaches her hand up toward mine, and I move my hand down toward hers in a high-five. We connect, palm to palm, lifeline against lifeline and all the other lines like maps on our skin that can tell our fortunes, our fate.
Chapter Sixteen
As I walk home from the jetty, my nerves tingle with expectation. I get to sleep over at Clarisse’s house tonight. I get to lie next to her in her big bed, feeling the cool sheets chilling my skin. I get to listen to Clarisse breathe after she falls asleep, watch her chest rise and fall. Sometimes her legs twitch, as if she’s chasing something in her dreams.
I feel different when I’m with Clarisse. She makes the whole world thick with the most delicious beauty. I can’t stand leaving her, for that is when I’m reminded that beautiful things are temporary after all. I’ll be in the car with my mother or Shea on the way home from Clarisse’s, and I’ll look out the passenger side window and the scenery will become artificial before my eyes, all my surroundings suddenly unreal. The world will transform into a hideous diorama, everything crudely fashioned, every flaw magnified—each crack in the highway, every unopened bud on every tree, every dead animal swarmed with flies. It will be as if the veil has been pulled back on the atmosphere, and I can see the bones, the skeleton within.
I’ll want more than anything to command my mother or Shea to turn the car around, to let me return to Clarisse forever, to let me never leave her ever again, but I know that’s impossible, at least for now, and the nesting dolls inside my sternum will close up, one by one, and my smallest and smoothest heart will be trapped inside. Until Clarisse and I are together again.
I have some time to kill before Clarisse and George pick me up so I stop at the Gulf Beaches Historical Museum. Housed in a small building on 10th Street that was once a church, it’s now a historic landmark full of photos, news clippings, and artifacts from the early days of the settlement of the Gulf Beaches. As I walk through the white gates of the property, a sign implores me to Come take a walk into history, a call I can seldom resist. I’ve spent a lot of time in this space over the years, and the old lady volunteer always greets me with a pleased expression on her face, so glad that a young local is interested in history. Inside there are photographs and legal documents under glass and scrapbooks you can flip through, full of newspaper pages preserved in plastic film. There are a few old telephones on display and a telegraph key that you can actually play with.
My favorite thing to do at the museum is to read the stories about Silas Dent, who was known as the “Happy Hermit of Cabbage Key.” Silas was from Georgia and came here to the Gulf Beach barrier islands in 1900 with his family to farm. The Dents ran a dairy farm for a while, and for some time, you could hear moos in the distance along with the cries of the seagulls, until it became clear that the cows weren’t suited for beach life. So the Dent family bought acreage inland, near the city of Largo, and moved the cows and themselves there. But Silas chose to stay on tiny Cabbage Key, living simply in a grass hut that he’d constructed himself.
In pictures, Silas has a long white beard, and his skin looks dark and leathery from the sun. He has beady, little eyes. He squints when he smiles in the sunshine. According to the stories about him in the museum, Silas loved three things best—nature, Christmas, and children. Although he had a reputation as a hermit, preferring his own company and adamantly living alone until he died in 1952, Silas would visit Pass-a-Grille every December, rowing his boat across the Boca Ciega Bay and docking at Merry Pier. He dressed up as Santa Claus for the children, passing out gifts he made for them or purchased with money he saved throughout the year. It was the only time Silas traded in his usual attire of faded denim overalls.
Silas had a unique way of rowing. He sat in his rowboat facing forward, instead of backward, so he could see in the direction he was traveling. According to a story in the St. Petersburg Times, when Silas was asked why he did that, he replied, “Never much worried ’bout where I been, more ’bout where I’se going.”
I make it home and get my overnight bag packed. When I hear George honk the horn outside, I kiss my mother and Shea good-bye. The drive to Clarisse’s house takes longer than usual because, once we cross the Howard Frankland Bridge, George likes to take side roads and back roads from Tampa to Seffner, avoiding the Crosstown Expressway and the infamous I-4, that eternally congested highway that cuts east-west through the middle of the state, the main artery for tourists flocking to the theme parks and other Orlando attractions.
After dinner, Jenny and George start cleaning up, scraping leftover chicken stir-fry and rice into Pyrex bowls to store in the fridge.
I sit quietly, sipping my water, while Clarisse gets a rag from the kitchen and wipes the table clean, leaving a faint trace of vinegar and lemon in the air. George makes all-natural cleaning solutions. He even makes his own laundry detergent with borax and baking soda and grated flakes of Ivory soap in a mason jar.
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