Far Away

by Lisa Graff

  I set my messenger bag flat on my lap. “I think this is something I need to do myself.”

  Grant seems to understand, because all he says, his voice gruff, is, “Don’t be too much like your mom, all right?” Then I get a handshake, too.

  Meg makes her way over next, pushing an enormous red plastic jug through the window. “For the road,” she says.

  I unscrew the white lid. Take a big whiff. “More coffee,” I tell Jax, and he does a really bad job not looking disgusted.

  “I’m really sorry again,” I tell Meg. “I shouldn’t have said Ashlynne sent me.”

  And Meg surprises me then.

  “Oh, Ashlynne did send you here,” she says.

  I open my mouth to correct her, but I don’t get a chance.

  “Whether you know it or not,” Meg says, “that was our daughter directing you here.” She’s wiping at her eyes again, but she doesn’t seem sad anymore. Not quite. “We’ve been sitting around wallowing for months, and then you two show up out of nowhere—Jennie June’s daughter and a pancake-flipper all the way from Florida. It was exactly what we needed. Ashlynne’s always been like that, finding ways to bring joy to the people she loves.”

  I’m about to tell her that, no, this has nothing to do with Ashlynne, it’s all about my mom and her tether—but I stop myself before the words come out. Because who knows? Spirit works in mysterious ways. Maybe it was both.

  Two minutes later, we’re on the road. Although I wouldn’t say Jax is exactly thrilled about the detour I want to take before heading back to L.A.

  “We don’t have time, CJ,” he argues when I try to direct him to my mom’s old house. 115 Chestnut, that’s the address Grant gave me.

  “Just this one stop, I promise. Take the parkway, coming up.” I point out the sign.

  When Jax sighs, I can tell he’s giving in. But then he reaches for the cup holder. “Let’s call your aunt, tell her we’re gonna be late.”

  I whack the phone out of his hand.

  “What the heck, CJ?”

  I do my best to explain. “My mom was the one who told Aunt Nic the house burned down, right?” I look at the photo of the mushroom sculpture that Grant let me keep. “But she’s Spirit. She obviously knew the house was still there. So there must’ve been a reason she lied to Aunt Nic. Maybe she didn’t want Aunt Nic to go back, or there was something there that . . . I don’t know. Once I know why Spirit’s leading me there, I’ll call Aunt Nic.”

  “But—”

  “I won’t let you get fired, Jax, I promise.”

  He doesn’t answer that. But he does turn onto the parkway.

  “Just . . . one favor, CJ?” he asks after we upshift together.

  “Shoot.”

  “Whoever lives in this house now? Don’t lie to them about why we’re there, okay? I don’t know if they’ll believe you, about why you want to hang out in their backyard and look at a sculpture—that might not even still be there, by the way—but . . .”

  “It’ll be there,” I say. And, just as importantly, “I won’t lie.” The way Meg looked, crying on Ashlynne’s bed—I never want to make anyone look like that again.

  We pass strip malls and gas stations—all places, I realize, that my mom and Aunt Nic probably knew growing up. It’s mostly boring stuff, but I’m glad I get to see it.

  So I’m sort of wrapped up in my own thoughts when Jax asks me, “How come you told Meg and Grant the truth back there? You didn’t have to. You could’ve just bolted when you realized the mural was gone, and they never would’ve known you’d been lying. How come you owned up to it?”

  I shrug. “If I hadn’t’ve told them the truth, I never would’ve learned about my mom’s sculpture, right? Or the house? We wouldn’t be headed there right now.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t know that when you did it.”

  “So probably Spirit guided me somehow, I don’t know.”

  I can tell Jax doesn’t agree. “Or maybe you just felt bad for lying to such nice people, and you decided being honest was the right thing to do.”

  I don’t bother responding. Jax is going to think whatever he wants anyway, no matter what I say.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you had anxiety?” I ask instead. “I probably would’ve been nicer to you if I knew.”

  He snorts at that. “Maybe I would’ve told you if you’d been nicer to me.”

  “Yeah, okay.” So maybe he has a point. “Sorry,” I say. “But do you? Have anxiety? That’s what Grant thought.”

  “I mean, yeah.” Jax keeps his eyes on the road while he answers. “But it’s not a big deal. I just don’t like new stuff. It’s like there are all these rules for every place you go or every person you meet, and everyone knows them but me.”

  “Rules?” I say.

  He sighs. “Like, okay, at that gas station before.” He jerks his head over his shoulder, like he’s pointing out the spot we stopped at earlier. “Some gas stations are the kind where you’re supposed to pump your own gas, but at other ones a guy comes out and pumps for you, and you’re supposed to stay in your car. But if you stay in your car and it’s not the guy-pumps-for-you kind, then you’re just sitting there for ten minutes, and then someone honks at you because they want to use the pump. And if it is the guy-pumps-for-you kind, at some of those places you tip, but at some other places you don’t. And if you don’t tip when you’re supposed to, then you’re a jerk, but if you do tip and you’re not supposed to, then you’re an idiot. And there’s never, like, signs that say all that stuff, but somehow everyone but me always knows already. Every time I go somewhere new, or meet a new person, it’s like I can feel the cells in my brain going into overdrive, freaking out just so I can look normal, so no one will figure out I’m the one person who doesn’t know the rules. And the worst part is that I know people can tell I’m freaking out, and all I want to do is, like, run away so I can just breathe and reset and figure things out by myself, but then I know everyone would see me running away, and that would be even worse.”

  He’s been scratching his arm again while he talks about it. He doesn’t notice that I’ve noticed.

  “That kind of sounds like a big deal, Jax,” I say.

  He shakes his head like he’s going to argue, but then seems to change his mind. “School’s the worst, because it’s the same place every day, but the rules change all the time anyway, and you never know when it’s going to happen. Sometimes it’s teachers who change them, like new seating arrangements or whatever, but sometimes just other kids decide that one thing they were all doing the day before is now the worst thing you could do, and did they all, like, text each other or . . . ?” He clears his throat. Won’t look at me. “I stopped going. I’d go to sleep every night thinking, ‘Tomorrow, you are totally not going to have a weird freak-out,’ and then the next morning I’d wake up and I’d just think, ‘Well, what if I do?’ And then I’d get anxious about getting anxious. And then I couldn’t even make myself leave the house.”

  “So . . .” I’m beginning to see how he ended up on our crew. “Homeschool.”

  “Uncle Oscar told my mom about Cyrus, and she knew you were homeschooled—she didn’t know about George Watermelon, obviously, she thought you were, like, actually learning stuff.” I stick out my tongue, and he laughs. “And, anyway, she thought maybe being around new people during the tour would be good for me. Originally I was supposed to work spotlight so I wouldn’t be in the middle of everything, but . . .”

  “Ah.”

  “Right. So.” He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “If this job falls through, my mom says she’s gonna force me to go to regular school no matter what. I don’t know if she’s planning on, like, dragging me to the car and sitting on me the whole way there or whatever, but you don’t mess with my mom when she decides she’s going to do something. So that’s why I can’t lose this job.�
� He takes a deep breath. “Now you think I’m crazy.”

  “I don’t think you’re crazy,” I say. I feel like he’s embarrassed, and I don’t want him to be embarrassed. “You know what you need? When your brain’s working overdrive like that and you want to run away? You need a distraction, so when you do leave no one will notice. How ’bout this? Next time you’re feeling all anxiousy, I’ll go up to the people you’re trying to escape from and I’ll flash my hands in their faces”—I demonstrate, pressing my hands open-closed, open-closed super fast—“and shout, ‘Hey, everybody, look over here!’ And then you can run away.”

  “You’re making fun of me,” Jax says, but he’s laughing.

  “I am not! It would work! You just let me know when you need to escape.”

  “I’ll do that,” he promises. “How long till we get there?”

  “About ten more miles,” I say. Then, because we’re passing a horse trailer and I can see a snout poking out of a slit in the side, I leap up in my seat and holler, “HORSE!”

  Jax only blinks. Once. Twice. Three times.

  “What?” I ask. “I’m playing Horse.”

  “I figured,” he says.

  “It’s fun.”

  “You keep saying.”

  I sit back in my seat. Jax doesn’t know what he’s missing. “Just keep driving,” I tell him.

  * * *

  • • •

  “You sure Grant got the address right?” Jax asks when we pull up to the house. “This is . . . um . . .”

  He doesn’t need to say what he means by “um.” The front lawn is so overgrown it’s practically a forest, and the house itself is worse—paint peeling everywhere, one porch step rotted away. The whole building has a serious “Stay away” vibe.

  “This is it,” I say, yanking open the door. But when Jax moves to open his, too, I turn around. “Actually,” I say, “you mind staying in the truck?” He squints at me. “To, like, be a lookout?” I nod toward his phone. “Call for help if you need to.”

  “If that’s what you . . . want,” Jax says slowly. I can tell he thinks he should go in with me. Which is nice of him, really. But I’m pretty sure this is one stop Spirit wants me to make on my own.

  “Thanks,” I tell him. And I hop out of the truck. Then I suck in a deep breath of cold air and make my way up to the porch, weeds prickling my ankles through my socks.

  It’ll be fine, I tell myself as I walk. Over and over. It’ll be fine. Spirit sent me.

  * * *

  • • •

  I try the front door first, but no one answers. The windows are grimy and the curtains are drawn, so I can’t see anything inside. I turn back to the truck and shrug at Jax. He rolls down his window to shout at me.

  “Ready to go back?” he calls.

  “One more minute!” I tell him.

  I stick my hands in my coat pockets, trying to squeeze some warmth into my fingers as I make my way back down the porch, through the weeds, and around to the backyard. As soon as I see the sculpture, I forget all about the cold.

  It’s definitely more beaten up than in the photo, but somehow all the rust and dirt and age have only made it more beautiful. Complicated and quirky and interesting, just like my mom.

  Grant was right that the sculpture is mostly made out of cans and bottles, but as I get closer I see that there are some bigger pieces of metal in there, too. Long coiled stems rise out of the weeds, blooming into fat mushroom caps. A twisted mushroom garden. One of the mushroom caps has rusted right off—I find it hiding in the weeds below. When I pick it up, it fits perfectly in the palm of my hand, like it was meant to be there. I’m shocked by how heavy it is. The cap is icy cold, molded cement spotted with specks of colored glass.

  This, I’m certain, is the reason Spirit led me all this way. I am holding my mother’s tether.

  I grip the mushroom cap in my bare hands, allowing myself to be overtaken by the emotional energy inside it.

  Only, all I feel is cold.

  I try again, gripping the cement cap even tighter. I sniff.

  All I smell is the chill in the air.

  I clench the tether to my chest, willing myself to sense her emotional energy. It must be in there. It has to be. I perk up my ears.

  All I hear is . . .

  Thumping.

  Thumping?

  I search for the source of the noise, and at last I find it. One branch of an overgrown holly bush is smooshed up hard against the back door of the house, and it’s broken through a pane of glass. Inside, the wooden blinds are thumping against the window as the wind whistles through. One hand still tight around the mushroom cap, I pick my way through the weeds and discover that nearly the whole pane of glass is gone.

  “Hello?” I call through the window.

  It’s dark inside. Still and quiet.

  I look around, to see if this is where Spirit wants me to be.

  All I hear is thumping.

  I slip the mushroom cap inside my pocket, the weight of it tugging half my coat down. I pull my messenger bag over my shoulder and set it carefully on the bottom of the windowpane, in case there are any sharp shards of glass. Slowly and gently, I reach my hand through for the inside latch, hoping it will be like the one on our tour bus—one swift flick and it’s unlocked.

  One swift flick.

  When I try the doorknob, it sticks for just a moment. But then I push harder, and suddenly there’s the whole house in front of me, like it’s just been waiting for me to step inside.

  * * *

  • • •

  The air in the house is musty, like I’ve opened a bag of bread that’s been sitting on the counter far too long. I try the switch on the wall, but no lights flick on. At least I can see okay, from the light streaming in through the blinds. Dust hangs thick in the air. I’d bet no one’s lived here for years.

  I make my way across the kitchen, eyes open for whatever it is I’m supposed to find that Aunt Nic isn’t. There are still cookbooks lined up beside the fridge, dish towels draped over the oven handle, knickknacks on the windowsill. I pick up a small white picture frame to examine the photo, and I guess I’m not too surprised when I wipe a trail of dust from the glass and see two little girls smiling back at me—Aunt Nic and my mom.

  These things are my mother’s things. She and Aunt Nic, and me, too—we were the last ones to live here.

  I leave the kitchen and step into the dining room. There’s a piano against one wall. More framed photos. I want to sit on the couch where my mom must’ve opened presents on Christmas morning. I want to stand at the window where my mom might’ve spied on her neighbors. But I know what I need to see first.

  The first bedroom at the top of the stairs is huge, with a four-poster bed made from wood so dark it barely creeps out of the shadows around it. Everything is put away, blankets folded crisp on the bed. It feels like a grown-up space—Grandma and Grandpa Ames’s room, I’d bet, before they died. I move on.

  The next bedroom is obviously Aunt Nic’s, everything tidy. White wood dresser, white vanity, white wood headboard. No knickknacks. No photos. I open one dresser drawer, then another. Nothing inside.

  The third bedroom, though, could not be more different. It’s messy and lived-in and vibrant, even in the darkness. The walls are covered in posters of different bands and drawings and paintings and maps stuck up with thumbtacks. Oil paints and pencil cups are stuffed on the bookshelf. On the bed sits a teddy bear I recognize from photos of my mom as a kid. The dresser is crowded with things—a porcelain unicorn, a bowl filled with quarters, a messy stack of postcards. My whole body buzzes with confusion and excitement and nerves. I walk to the window and tug up the blinds, let the sunlight stream in. And as my eyes adjust to the light, I spot it, on the top shelf of my mother’s open closet.

  A box. Fat and orange, labeled JENNIE JUNE’S PRIV
ATE STUFF!

  I cross the room to grab it. Remove the lid.

  Inside is a beautiful mess of color. Paintings and sketches and doodles. Papers crackle between my fingers, brittle with chill and age, as I leaf through them. The sketch right on top is one my mom drew of herself—you can see the mirror in the drawing. Her hair is tied up in a messy knot and she’s sticking her tongue out, scrunching her face. It somehow captures more than any photo I’ve ever seen of her.

  I’m sniffling up cold tears as I rummage through the box, and I don’t know why. This is amazing. This house, this box, her. Whatever their reasons might be, I’m so grateful Spirit led me here.

  There are a couple portraits of my grandfather, who died when my mom was pretty young, and several of Grandma Ames, who left this world a year before I entered it. There are some of Aunt Nic, too, and people I guess must be my mom’s friends—including a great drawing of Ashlynne gazing into the distance, like she’s staring down the future. Another self-portrait of my mom, drawn in pastels, leaves my fingertips smudgy with color. And there are lots of random sketches in the pile—eyes, furniture, a puppy, people’s hands in different positions. Mushroom doodles crop up again and again—the long, twisted stems with the bulby caps.

  I’m still flipping through papers when I hear a door slam downstairs. Startled, I let the box slip from my fingers, and it falls to the floor, scattering papers and dust. “Hello?” I call as I scramble to pick the pages up. But there is no response. “Hello?” I try again.

  Nothing.

  My fingers are frozen as I pick up a drawing that’s half wedged under the bed. It’s a pastel portrait, rich with color.

  “CJ?” comes a voice from the door, and I nearly jump out of my skin. “There you are.” I look up. It’s Jax. “You’ll never believe,” he says, excited. “I think I figured it out, about those mess—” His face falls as he takes in the sight of me, on the floor, frozen still. Staring at the portrait. “You okay?”

  In response, I hold up the drawing. My hands are shaking, and not from the cold.