by Beth Turley
Whitney’s train was leaving before mine. She hugged me hard before walking away, her duffel bag bumping against her thigh. I tried to take a picture of her in my mind. Violet dress, strappy gold sandals, curls as tall as the clouds.
I waited for my train to come at one of the tables by Shake Shack, eating fries out of a paper bag. I let myself think about everything. About the phone call with my mom and with Summer, my conversation with Mrs. Parekh, the ripped jeans that I was too afraid to wear. How people can turn from strangers to secret-keepers. I kept thinking while I crumpled up my greasy bag and headed for tunnel twenty-seven, back under the stars. It was all too much to keep inside. Every once in a while I would have to poke my head out of my shell and sing about it.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The Return
Mom wrapped me up in her arms on the Bienvenidos mat. She smelled like cleaning spray and oranges, her after-hospital smell. I squeezed her back and breathed it all in. Edgar came running across the living room, the plush clownfish in his hand. He gripped my thigh.
Dad stepped in behind me with my duffel bag.
“How was it?” Mom asked into my hair.
“It was wonderful,” I said, my cheek against her chest.
“I told her to save all her stories for dinner,” Dad said. “We can hear them together.”
“Dinner!” Edgar screamed. Dad scooped him up.
“Let Lenny settle in first.”
I pulled away from Mom. Everything was the same. Mom’s scrubs with the cats in bow ties, Edgar’s voice. But my heart felt different. I did need to settle into this new world where I didn’t hide my Lyric Libro in the closet. A world where Summer and I might not be best friends.
Upstairs my room was too warm, the window sealed up and closing out the breeze. I opened it as far as it could go. Summer’s blinds were down. I went to put my duffel bag on my bed and saw an open envelope lying on the comforter. Mom had written great job on the outside. The Franklin City Middle School shield was in the corner. I pulled the letter from inside and unfolded it. My classes were listed on one side, the grades on the other. I’d gotten an A in earth science and algebra. An A in art class and history. Ms. Debra had given me an A for gym and wrote conscientious effort as a comment. Language Arts was listed last. A-.
I waited for that little minus sign to crush me, but it didn’t. It didn’t subtract anything from who I was, or who I could be. It was just a little dash. And maybe I’d get more little dashes next year, or in high school, or college. I’d be okay, even if I wasn’t always perfect.
Wind came through the window, a relief from the heat. I sat at the end of my bed and faced the Spread Your Wings wall. The Post-its were bright between the magazine pages. I could read some of them from here. It’s good to talk about relatable things. OMG those donuts look amazing.
A pebble flew between me and the wall. It landed on the floor and skidded into the closet.
“Shoot,” I heard Summer’s voice say. I read one more Post-it. Do you think it’s hard to put your true feelings in an essay? Summer had written that one.
She was in her window when I got to mine.
“It was open too wide,” she said.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” I answered.
“Yeah.” She looked down and dropped a pebble to the grass. “Do you want to take a walk?”
I nodded. Summer disappeared from the window. I ran my fingers over the write your feelings Post-it on my way out. Mom called out to me from the kitchen when I got to the front door.
“Hey, dinner’s in an hour.”
It was so normal, what she’d say every time I rushed out the door to meet Summer. She never even had to ask if that’s where I was going.
“I’ll be back,” I said. Summer was at her mailbox already.
“Summer is welcome to come for dinner too.”
My heart thudded. I left before I could answer, or picture Summer in her seat at our dining table. She was opening and closing the mouth of her whale mailbox when I got outside. She had her hair pulled up and sneakers on, but not the ones with my signature.
“Where to?” I asked.
Summer shrugged.
“Let’s just walk.”
We started up Daybury Street. The sun was hot and made the pavement glow. We turned right at the top of the road.
“Are you happy to be back?” Summer asked. A car zipped by us and we pressed closer to the curb.
“Sort of. I missed home. But now I miss things like the hotel room and swiping my MetroCard. And the Flyers.” I imagined Whitney, Cailin, and Harlow walking with us down the street: Whitney wearing something fabulous, Harlow investigating the neighborhood, Cailin taking pictures of the trees.
“I still can’t believe you met Magnet,” Summer said.
“She prefers Cailin.”
Summer turned onto the trail through the woods and I followed. The shade was cool and the trail was hard-packed dirt. Someone had come to clear the overgrown weeds away.
“I missed you,” Summer said, then ran ahead and jumped the log in the middle of the path. When she was over, she turned around. She kept her eyes on the wood.
“Me too.” I stepped carefully over the log. Summer smiled at the dirt.
The trail opened up to a view of the water, bright blue and glittering. The FRANKLIN CITY BOAT LAUNCH sign was ahead by the stone wall. We both stopped short.
“Is it okay that we came here?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s still the same.”
“But we’re not.”
Summer sighed. She rose up on her toes and fell back down, doing nervous calf stretches.
“It’s my fault,” she said.
My instinct was to tell her she hadn’t done anything wrong. But that’s not how problems get solved. Diagnoses don’t get treated by ignoring them.
“It’s mine, too. I didn’t speak up when you did things that bothered me. I was too scared of losing you.”
The sun on the water was so bright it was hard to look right at it, but I did anyway, let it burn my eyes.
“I’m just as afraid of losing you,” Summer said.
“You haven’t been acting like that.”
“You’re my other half, Elena. You have been since we were babies. And I don’t want that to be different but lately I’ve been feeling… different. I didn’t know how to tell you. Or anyone. So I pushed you away instead.”
“Tell me what?”
Summer took off.
“Summer!” I called out. I ran after her down the hill toward the boat launch. We stopped at the stone wall.
“I like Riah,” she said. She put a hand to the pulse point on her neck.
I wanted to roll my eyes but resisted the urge.
“Yeah, we’ve established that.”
“No.” Summer shook her head hard. “I like her. Like her.”
I thought about Mindy and what she’d said to me in the hall at the Tappiston, about how discovering yourself was like learning a new language. And that friends figured out how to translate. I wrapped my arms around her, breathed in her powdery smell.
“I hear you,” I said. “I understand.”
Summer squeezed me back.
“Really?” she asked.
“Of course. Did you really think I’d judge you?”
I pulled away. Out on the dock one white boat was being set up by a guy in a cowboy hat, two little kids waiting next to him on the dock in orange lifejackets. The name on the side said The Jack & Jill.
“I didn’t know what you’d say,” she added. “I don’t know what anyone’s going to say. My parents. Everyone at school.”
The man in the cowboy hat stepped into the boat and picked each kid up to bring them on board, then pushed away from the dock.
“Well, I’m here for you. We shouldn’t have to hide, especially not from each other,” I said.
Summer looked at me, her eyes like sparkling green sea glass.
; “Elena, I didn’t mean the things you heard me say to Kendra. I’ve just always known that you could be more than you thought you could. But you didn’t see it. You needed more time. And I shouldn’t have been upset with you for that.”
The Jack & Jill sailed farther away, the mechanical sound of its engine getting quieter.
“I see it now.” I leaned my shoulder into hers. “So. Does she like you back?”
Summer’s smile stretched across her whole face, and she nodded fast. She told me more about Riah, about the butterflies in her stomach when she saw her in the hall, the calmness that overcame her when their steps synched up on a run. The Jack & Jill was a speck on the horizon now, and neither of us talked about sailing away, only what was good about being right here.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The Release Day
Summer and I still inhaled issues of Spread Your Wings like we did Bugles. But I looked at them a little differently. Now I knew it was really Gertrude giving the advice in the Ask Amelia section. I knew what the donuts from the Donut Hole tasted like. I knew how it felt to be a Flyer.
The day the September issue was set to release, I was working on a song. My window was open and the fall air slipped through, cool with the smell of leaves.
If you wait until the moment’s right
You’ll be waiting for the rest of your life.
Footsteps scrambled up the stairs. I looked up in time to see Riah and Summer burst into the room. Their faces were flushed red and sweaty, their sneakers coated in dirt. My signature was still on Summer’s right sneaker, for good luck. Riah’s name was on the other.
“Oh my gosh, you are not allowed on this bed,” I exclaimed. I starfished myself over the covers.
“We’re being punished for working hard?” Summer asked. She pretended she was going to jump on top of me.
“You’re glistening!” I laughed.
“What if we have this?” Riah asked. She pulled her hands out from behind her back. A magazine was in one of them, showing the back cover with an ad for fruit-flavored ChapStick. My heart sped up. Summer took my moment of distraction to dive onto the bed, and I was too panicked to think about her sweating on my comforter. Riah handed me the magazine and then grabbed my desk chair, rolling it closer to us. My phone beeped next to me. The screen showed a message from Whitney in the CHEW group chat.
Whitney: VIDEO CHAT TIME?!
Harlow: Yes, I’ve been staring at this ChapStick ad for so long I’m about to buy the gooseberry flavor.
Cailin: I’m ready!
I opened the laptop I had borrowed from Mom and got the video call app open. It rang a few times, and then Whitney, Harlow, and Cailin appeared on the screen. We had video chatted a few times since we left New York. It was funny to see them in their little boxes, like four worlds coming together. Whitney with her room painted pink, Harlow in front of a big window with a rosebush behind the glass, Cailin with her cheerleading bows and trophies on the wall.
“Summer and Riah are here too,” I said, and flipped the computer so they could see.
“Hey,” Cailin replied, and Summer’s mouth dropped open. This was the third time they’d virtually met, but Summer still got tongue-tied around Cailin, which was funny since that used to be me. Well, words still got tangled in my head. But I was better about getting them out. We had eighth-grade orientation a week ago, and when the guidance counselor, Mr. Douglas, asked if anyone did anything fun this summer, I raised my hand and talked about being a Flyer, and only blushed a little bit.
A tall teenage boy swooped into the screen behind Harlow. He ruffled Harlow’s hair before disappearing out of the shot.
“Hey!” she squealed, covering her head with her hands. Denny flew back across the room with a book. He went for her hair again but Harlow was ready this time. She was grinning when she turned to the camera again.
“I’m glad you and your brother made up,” Cailin said.
Harlow looked in the direction Denny had gone. Light poured in through the window behind her.
“Me too. I realized I just had to turn it into an interview. Ask him all the questions I wanted to know about why he did what he did. And he told me the truth.”
“What was it?” Whitney asked.
Harlow’s face settled into what I now recognized as her reporter face.
“Sorry. That’s classified.”
“So he’s not a stupid dumb stupidface anymore?” I asked. Summer and Riah giggled into their hands on either side of me.
“He for sure still is. But only in the normal brother way now.”
Whitney cleared her throat.
“Not to interrupt,” she said, bouncing in her chair. “But are we going to look at this magazine we’re in?”
We all nodded back. My palms started to sweat.
“On the count of three we flip it over,” Harlow said. “One.”
“Two,” Cailin added.
“Three,” Summer, Riah, and I said together, then flipped the magazine to the cover.
The four of us had our heads close, Cailin and me below Whitney and Harlow. It was a shot from Lot 88, and the four of us were smiling so big. The cover was light pink, the Spread Your Wings logo above our heads, the contents of the magazine printed around us. 10 Perfect Back to School Outfits. How to Handle a Bully. Ask Amelia: Friend Dilemmas!
“I love it,” Cailin said softly. I ran my hand over the cover and tried to remember every detail of this moment, my friends all around me.
We all started to flip through together, and once in a while someone would ask, “Are you done?” and someone would say, “Almost,” and Summer and I looked at each other and knew that our Spread Your Wings tradition was only more special now that we were sharing it with Riah and the Flyers. I looked over the outfits Whitney had helped put together, the pictures at the Donut Hole that Cailin had taken, the bullying article Harlow had contributed to. And the Ask Amelia advice that I’d given to Friendless.
Our essay was at the end.
“Should I read it out loud?” I asked.
The Flyers nodded. Summer and Riah came closer.
“We know that this is usually the place where each Flyer writes an essay on what is important to them. But we wanted to do things a little differently, because we went through this week together and thought it was only right to do this part together too. We all showed up to the city with our own baggage. Whether we meant to or not, we carried those heavy items with us here. We packed each other into it when we shouldn’t have. Maybe you’ll be able to tell that from the pictures, but most likely, you won’t.
“We learned that we are capable of more than we thought. We can lift each other up, call each other out, follow our dreams, and, most importantly, tell the truth. To other people, and to ourselves.
“Fly High,
“Cailin, Harlow, Elena, and Whitney
“Your September Flyers.”
Summer leaned into my shoulder. I looked at the video chat, at the three other Flyers in squares shaped like the Post-its stuck to my wall. I wasn’t sure what the sticky notes might say tomorrow or next week or next year, because life didn’t have a table of contents like a magazine.
But I wasn’t scared. I had Summer, and the Flyers, and we’d help each other soar no matter what.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I had a panic attack for the first time in a Price Rite supermarket. I remember thinking my lungs had forgotten how to breathe, that my brain was shutting down its systems. Yet, nothing was wrong. It was a slow weekend morning. It was a produce section. Still, I was convinced I was in immense danger, and the feeling didn’t pass until I was back in the car, blasting cold air and taking deep breaths. Like Whitney, I felt like a very small piece of a very big world. A world that felt like it was abruptly ending.
But the world kept turning, as it usually does, no matter how hard your brain tries to tell you it won’t. Nothing has to be wrong for anxiety and panic to, well, attack. It’s an ambush, an enemy swooping in at
unexpected times. Often it can feel like you’re fighting the battle alone. But like Whitney learns, sharing the load with others can help. Using available resources can help. Finding your own way to get through it can help.
You are going to be okay. And you are not alone.
* * *
Here are a few online resources I’ve found helpful:
positivepsychology.com/mindfulness-for-children-kids-activities
childmind.org/topics/concerns/anxiety
adaa.org/living-with-anxiety/children/anxiety-and-depression
Mobile apps like Calm and Headspace also encourage mindfulness and can help relieve anxiety. Sites like adaa.org can connect those struggling with anxiety and panic to licensed therapists.
More from the Author
The Last Tree Town
If This Were a Story
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PHOTO: JANELLE MEDEIROS
Beth Turley is a graduate of the MFA in Creative and Professional Writing program at Western Connecticut State University. She lives and writes in southeastern Connecticut, where the leaves changing color feels like magic and the water is never too far away. She is also the author of If This Were a Story and The Last Tree Town. Visit her on Twitter @Beth_Turley.
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Also by Beth Turley
If This Were a Story