Finally, I see the lights of the Thunderbird, blurred at the edges, softened into hundreds of facets. It’s as though I’m looking through a kaleidoscope, the prize I won at the Florida State Fair when I was seven. I was sure I could knock all the milk bottles down if I just aimed low enough and hit the right spot, even though Shea said the game was fixed, the bottles rigged with hidden weights so that clearing them all was impossible.
Shea paid two dollars for one baseball—it was firm in my hand, its pieces sewn together with red stitching. I adopted a baseball pitcher’s stance, like I’d seen on TV, turning ninety degrees from the pyramid of bottles. The man operating the game smiled big and easy—amused with the little girl and her serious attitude. I wound up for the pitch, raised my leg, placed the ball above my shoulder, and then hurled it in one long motion toward the milk bottles. Shea let out a high-pitched gasping sound when the bottles hit the floor, and I chose my reward—a kaleidoscope made of cardboard and covered in shiny green paper.
I put my eye up to the tiny hole and looked inside. There were mirrors and colors and bits of glitter. I saw a million little diamonds, a million sparks of light. When I held it up toward the sky, it got brighter, shinier. The facets multiplied. My vision expanded. My eyes doubled, tripled, quadrupled, until I lost my vision completely. On the ride home from the fair I tore the kaleidoscope apart. I was desperate to see inside, to find out how it worked, discover the origin of the magic.
But the origin is not a location you can pinpoint, like the place in the ground where a tree sprouts from a seed under the soil or the spot on the treasure map, marked with an X. Walk thirty paces north, then dig. Origin goes deeper than that.
In my dreams, I am a deep blue sea. I dive within myself, hoping to eventually graze my own sea floor, hoping to find something beautiful there, an oyster with divine beauty locked inside. In my dreams, I dive down, down, down, searching and searching, but I always wake up before I can get to the bottom, before I can find out if the pearl is really there.
Chapter Thirty-One
I wake to the sensation of fingers smoothing hair from my face—my mother’s touch, skin I know the feeling of even in the dark. “Time to get up,” she says in her soft voice, the one that only wants to love and protect me.
I open my eyes, but the room is dark, the blackout shades still drawn, until Shea pushes them open, morning light streaming into the room as if the sun were hanging just outside our window. “Good morning, starshine!” Shea sings. It’s a line from a song in the musical Hair, a part of the soundtrack of Shea’s childhood. Shea stands at the foot of my bed, hands on hips, a superhero pose, only missing the shiny red cape flowing behind her.
I try to reply, but my lips are dried shut. They feel as though they’re made of baked earth, clay fired in a kiln. I finally manage a smile and sit up, rub pieces of sleep from my eyes, and place my bare feet on the scratchy carpet.
As my eyes adjust, I look at the alarm clock on the bedside table, the old-fashioned kind with silver bells on top. I see black numbers and black hands and a white face under glass, but time isn’t a concept I can grasp right now. How long ago were we on the beach, my hands running through his hair, his skin wet and warm?
Clarisse’s side of the bed is empty. The only evidence of her is the wrinkled sheets, one strand of her hair on the bright white pillowcase, and her green retainer case on the nightstand next to the landline phone, a beige relic that now lives in museums and outdated hotel rooms.
Shea and my mother are packing up the room, overnight bags waiting by the door. Music is playing from the small speaker on the windowsill, the one that goes everywhere with them. Grunge rock guitar tones float high across the room, and drums and bass fill in the lower spaces.
My mother and Shea dance around as they work, Shea twirling my mother like they’re in an old movie musical in black-and-white. Shea attempts a dip, lowering my mother until her hair grazes the floor, becoming a shimmery waterfall in the light. They break into laughter at that point, and Shea pulls my mother in for a kiss.
My mother is wearing makeup—black-lined eyes and pink glossy lips—and she looks so pretty I could cry. I hear the shower running in the bathroom and think of Clarisse standing in the tub, water washing over her and down the drain. I haven’t seen her since last night when I returned to the room just before midnight and found her sitting in the hallway outside our door, waiting for me. When she saw me, she stood up and knocked and then Shea let us in. Clarisse went straight to the bathroom, and I slipped into bed, falling asleep in what felt like an instant.
Clarisse emerges from the bathroom now in cutoff shorts and a purple T-shirt, her wet hair wrapped in a bleached white towel, a cloud of steam following her over to the little table and two chairs.
Shea loads her arms and shoulders with our bags, and my mother opens the door for her. “I’m going to take this stuff down and get the car cooled off,” Shea says. “This train will be leaving in fifteen minutes.” She makes a motion with her arm that imitates a train conductor pulling the whistle. This is Shea’s role in our family—she keeps the trains running on time; she plans and prepares so that my mother doesn’t have to sweat the details of daily living. Shea gives my mother another kiss and walks across the threshold of the room, the door closing with a click.
“Hey,” I say to Clarisse as she grabs her retainer case and starts packing her bag.
“Hey,” she says back. She looks down at her phone, scrolling through a feed of photos, scenes of what other people are doing with their Sunday mornings. She won’t even turn her head toward me, acting as though she will spontaneously ignite if she looks at me. Some people believe that’s a real thing—spontaneous human combustion—people bursting into flame from the inside out without warning. It may have happened to a woman in St. Pete in the 1950s. Her name was Mary, and when they found her, all that was left of her was her left foot wearing a black slipper. The rest of her had turned to ash, even though the house showed no fire or smoke damage.
My mother sits down on the bed next to me. I feel her shoulder pressed against mine. I see the sun catching a hint of sparkle in her lip gloss. “I’m glad we came,” she says. “This was really good for both of us.” She smiles, and I smile back.
We sweep the hotel room one more time, making sure we’ve left nothing behind. We float down the elevator shaft and into the lobby. We walk through the sliding glass doors and back into the warm sunlight. We take our places inside the car, and the backseat AC blows cold air on my ankles as we drive away from the Thunderbird.
I can sense a change in movement, a different leaning of the axis, each revolution around the sun slowed down, every moment exploded into small pieces, the pieces breathing and alive, every particle of existence exaggerated. Was it just yesterday that my mother and Shea sat in deck chairs in the same backyard my father played in, his bare child’s feet running across the green grass? Was it just yesterday that I unwrapped the delicate butter dish and felt the cool porcelain on my cheek? Did we really see the sunset on the beach last night, pink and red and orange streaking the sky above us? Or was it all a play, a dream, a trick of the imagination and time?
My mother drives down the island’s main drag slowly, stopping at every intersection to allow beachgoers to cross the street. They wear brightly colored shirts and shorts, sundresses, and wide-brimmed hats. They carry plastic shovel-and-pail sets for sandcastles and pastel-colored foam noodles for floating.
Shea tunes the radio to the nineties station, Lisa Loeb’s voice sweetly reminding I missed you. My mother and Shea reach for each other at the same time, their hands meeting on the center console between them as they clasp fingers and palms. Clarisse is plugged into her headphones, staring out her window so that I can only see the back of her head, the sun catching natural highlights in her hair.
We’ve traveled a few blocks when I begin to notice them—flashes of red and blue, difficult to make out in the bright white of the sunshine streaming overhead. An a
mbulance, two state police cars, and a local television news van, all parked in the public parking lot near the causeway.
Shea wonders out loud if it has something to do with spring breakers. A very drunk girl fell off a hotel balcony last year and nearly died, remember? But my mother thinks it’s too late for spring break, isn’t it? It’s the middle of May, vacation season already in full bloom. Maybe it’s a tourist, a medical emergency of some sort.
“I hope everyone’s okay,” my mother says. She puts her hand to her chest and exhales a small breath, a gesture of remembrance she makes when she sees a car accident or a dead animal. “Sleep well, sweet baby,” she’ll say when faced with the motionless body of a raccoon on the side of the road, its dark front paws almost clasped together as if in prayer, the fur on its fuzzy tail moving slightly in the wind.
The light turns green, and we drive on.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Instead of working on my English assignment, an essay about The Crucible, I’m sitting on my bed, staring at the Limoges butter dish on my dresser. The dish sits next to the nesting dolls my mother found at a yard sale for me. Most people don’t know that nesting dolls are made from one block of wood—one origin, one wooden parent for each family of dolls.
The smallest doll is a solid piece of wood that doesn’t open. It looks like a tiny bowling pin painted like a girl. Even though there are five dolls altogether, I think of the set as one girl with other girls inside her, one girl with many faces, many bodies. Each doll is painted by hand, her faces so detailed that you can see the individual brush strokes. She has rosy cheeks, perfect little circles of red like a toy soldier. Her hair is tucked into her cape, with just a little tuft of dark curl peeking out, a tendril over one eye.
I try to tune my mind into Clarisse’s location, but she feels out of range now. It’s been over a week since I’ve seen her, since we dropped her off at her house on our way back from Treasure Island. I watched her walk to her front door, her flip-flops slapping the soles of her feet with each step. She waved good-bye without turning around, and then she was gone.
I unlock my phone and begin a text to Clarisse. It’s midnight, but I’m sure she’s still awake. I type and then erase several drafts before finally getting the message right.
Hey. Want to hang out this weekend?
I add a happy emoji to the end of the message, a smiling cat with hearts for eyes, and then hit Send. I open my laptop and go to a study guide page for The Crucible. I click on John Proctor’s name from the character list and read:
In a sense, The Crucible has the structure of a classical tragedy, with John Proctor as the play’s tragic hero. Proctor is a good man, but one with a secret, fatal flaw.
I open a new tab, Google “tragic hero,” and click on the first result, which explains:
A tragic hero is a literary character who makes an error in judgment that inevitably leads to his/her own destruction.
My phone dings, a text from Clarisse: Can’t this weekend, maybe next? George bought a boat. We’re taking it out to Caladesi Island.
She doesn’t invite me to come along, doesn’t include a little yacht emoji at the end of her message. I open another tab, Google “Treasure Island Oliver,” and then hit Enter. I click the first link, and a video news clip loads on the screen.
It begins with a reporter in a royal blue skirt and blazer, standing in front of a hospital entrance, her blond hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail. Her voice is clear and even. “A Massachusetts teenager was brutally attacked on Treasure Island Beach and is now fighting for his life in a Bay Area hospital. The family has reached out exclusively to Action News to share their story in the hopes that one of our viewers may know something, anything, about what happened to him.”
The piece cuts to a man in his mid-fifties wearing round wire-rimmed glasses. A bloated IV bag hangs on a metal pole behind him. “We just don’t know why. Why anyone would do this to Oliver,” the man says. Oliver resembles him so much I want to look away.
The reporter continues. “Oliver Vernon, from Lowell, Massachusetts, was staying at the Gulf Breeze Resort at Treasure Island Beach with his family when he went for a walk on the beach after sunset. It wasn’t until the next morning that his family realized that he hadn’t returned to the resort. They contacted hotel security and had just begun searching the beach when the unimaginable happened—a sanitation worker discovered Oliver in restrooms next to the beach access parking lot, suffering from a traumatic brain injury that has left the young man unable to explain what happened to him. Oliver is here at Tampa General, and although authorities are working diligently to find his assailant, there are no leads in the case and little physical evidence. Oliver’s father, Tim Vernon, spoke with me in his son’s hospital room. Oliver’s mother was too distraught to talk on camera.”
“The police are doing all that they can,” Tim says. The video cuts to a school photo of Oliver, who is handsome and smiling in front of a gray marble background. “But they are basically at a standstill. If someone knows something, anything, we ask that you please call the Treasure Island Police Department. You can remain anonymous. We just want answers.” He takes off his glasses for a moment and wipes tears from his eyes.
The reporter stands in front of the hospital entrance again. A phone number appears along the bottom of the screen. “If you have any information about what happened to Oliver Vernon, please call th—” I pause the video before she can finish.
A cold sensation begins in my feet, moving up my body like a current until it reaches the back of my neck.
In The Catalog of Everything I’ve Done Wrong, I add an entry: hurt someone’s child.
I minimize the window and open a new blank document to begin writing about John Proctor as the tragic hero. My hands fly across the black keys, filling one, then two, then three pages. I’m inspired, ideas bouncing from my brain to my fingertips like magic. As I write, I imagine a shearing, a sawing of limbs, a taking away. I whittle the character down like soapstone, make him smaller and smaller, until eventually he is nothing at all.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Under the comforter, the little bullet is switched on, trembling in my hand. It’s pink and smooth and cool to the touch. It makes a low white-noise sound as it moves. I’m sure Shea would have bought me one if I’d asked, but it was easier to steal it from the novelty store in the mall. I touch myself with the bullet, and it feels even better than using my fingers, just like Clarisse said it would.
Now I’m imagining I’m in Andy’s cell, and it’s just the two of us. He takes the bullet from my hands, pushes it inside me. The end feels like fireworks—so much bright light, so many bursts of colorful stars. I turn it off, and roll onto my side. I look out the window and into the dry morning.
A text alert chimes on my phone, a new incoming message.
Hey, are you home? It’s from Clarisse.
Yeah, I’m home. Why?
Want to go for a ride? I’m actually near your house.
Sure. My hands shake as I type the word, my entire body excited and nervous to see Clarisse. My heart ticks like a windup watch. My mother and Shea have been asking about her so I invented a calamity, a vague “family emergency” Clarisse has been going through during the last weeks, a way to explain her absence to them, her sudden pulling away from my life.
I get dressed and brush my teeth, before going out to the patio to tell Shea where I’m going. She’s listening to music through her earbuds, removing one from her left ear to talk to me.
“Where’s Mom?” I ask.
“Back in bed. She got up early and went for a run. Then she came home and crashed.” Shea takes a sip of her coffee, steam rising from the mug, and then dissipating, dissolving into the air.
“Of course she did.” My mother does this every year when the end of school is near—takes up a predawn running ritual. The endeavor usually fizzles out by the Fourth of July, but Shea and I always humor her, pretending we’ve forgotten her history.
“Have fun and be safe,” Shea says, and then I hear Clarisse beep the horn outside, three quick blasts to let me know she’s here. “I’m glad things are getting better for Clarisse and her family. I’m sure you two have a lot of catching up to do.” Shea blows me a kiss and puts the earbud back in, nodding her head rhythmically to music that only she can hear.
Clarisse is parked in front of my house in George’s car, the small blue hatchback we rode in on a day that feels light-years away to me now. She waves at me through the front windshield as I get inside. The interior smells like citrus, an orange air freshener shaped like a tree hanging from the rearview mirror.
“Where do you want to go?” Clarisse asks.
“Um, the causeway is nice. Do you know how to get there?”
“No, but I can punch it in.” Clarisse’s phone is mounted on the dashboard, clipped to a little stand. She taps in Courtney Campbell Causeway and hits Go. The causeway is a bridge that crosses Old Tampa Bay, connecting Clearwater and Tampa. On one end of the bridge, there is beach access, and you can park right by the water.
Clarisse and I don’t talk much on the way there, the weight of time warm and heavy between us, filled with all the things we haven’t said to each other since that night on the beach at Treasure Island. We drive with the windows down, and let our hair dance in the hot summer breeze. We turn the radio up loud enough to drown the sounds of the other cars as we cross the blue bay.
When a women’s mechanical voice says we’ve reached our destination, Clarisse finds a parking spot facing the water. I look into the distance and see men wading in the shallow foam, casting out nets to catch crabs. I see a group of young mothers walking along the shoreline with children of various ages. The women wear bathing suits and wide-brimmed hats to protect their faces from the sun. The children carry plastic pails with shovels to dig in the wet sand.
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