by Erin Stewart
“I don’t have time.”
“Cora told me about the surgery,” she says. “And the play.”
“It’s not about the stupid play.”
Dr. Layne takes a step back, holding me at arm’s length.
“Ava. You don’t need that surgery to do the play, if that’s what you want to do.”
“You don’t get it. I look in the mirror and I don’t even know that girl. I’m not naive—I know the surgery won’t fix me. But it could make me a little more me again. Maybe just enough to get back on that stage.”
Dr. Layne sighs heavily. “How about this. Maybe today it would be more helpful if you could share a positive, happy memory.”
I scoff. “I’m all out of warm and fuzzy moments.”
Dr. Layne looks at me, somewhat sterner this time, and I realize I’m not getting off without penance today.
“Dig deeper.” She points to my chest. “It’s in there.”
I mutter a half-genuine apology to Olivia when I return to the circle. She smiles weakly.
Dr. Layne directs the group: “Let’s switch gears now to the power of positive thinking. Ava has offered to start us off with a memory.”
Olivia and Braden turn to me. I wish Piper were here making some joke about how stupid this all is. Because it is. All this talking and sharing and feeling. I breathe deeply and try to summon my best therapy-appropriate psychoanalysis.
“So we used to have a big, bushy sunset maple tree in our front yard that had all these leaves that would turn yellow and red and orange in the fall. Dad called it our burning bush. Anyway, when Dad would get home from work, I would run outside and he would scoop me up in his arms beneath that huge tree.
“ ‘Ready to fly?’ he’d say. Then he’d toss me up high into the air, so high that I got that roller-coaster stomach-drop feeling. It felt like the earth and my dad were a million miles away. For a split second at the top, I’d panic. But then I’d see my dad’s face and his arms outstretched to catch me. He’d fold me back into his chest and whisper, ‘I’ll always catch you.’ ”
Dr. Layne scribbles in her notepad.
“That’s beautiful, Ava. Thank you.”
Gold star for therapy today—an outburst and a breakthrough. She tells us to take a few minutes and write a good memory in our notebooks.
But Layne doesn’t realize my story is not a good memory.
Dads don’t always catch their little girls.
As I fell from my enflamed bedroom window, I waited for his hands.
I waited.
And waited.
Until I hit the ground.
He didn’t catch me.
He shoved me headfirst into a life where he couldn’t protect me from pain.
The memory is a lie.
Just like everything else.
Like my toe is a finger and my hair is hot pink. Like Glenn and Cora are my parents.
Like a boy could ever see me as a girl, or I wouldn’t be a laughingstock on that stage.
Like silly songs can chase away nightmares.
April 2
A memory?
How about this one?
A chance encounter
in aisle 5.
Josh.
My Josh.
No longer mine.
He clutched a box of Corn Pops
like it could save him
from this moment
from the girl
he once knew.
A girl
without a face.
His cheeks drained white.
Lips I once kissed,
hung open.
Eyes, once adoring,
now wide,
like he'd seen a ghost.
We both had.
A hollow specter of what used to be.
A boy looking at a girl.
But the Fire made it ugly.
Like everything it touches—
even the memories went up in smoke.
24
Glenn picks me up from group, a jacket and hiking boots on the passenger seat.
“Up for a stroll?” he asks.
I put on the boots while he drives, unsure why I need such footwear for a “stroll.” He steers his truck farther and farther up the canyon, cutting through the Wasatch Mountains. This is no little saunter he has in mind.
When he pulls off at a small, unpaved parking lot on the side of the winding canyon road, he points to a steep trail disappearing into the still-naked trees. As the mountain rises away from us, the snowpack deepens.
“I don’t think I can do that,” I say. It’s been more than a year since I’ve worked out more than the pathetic knee bends and arm lifts with two-pound weights that Terry the Torturer forced on me.
Glenn hops out of the truck, pulling on his work jacket.
“You can.”
He climbs ahead of me, leading me through a trail that I have serious doubts about being an actual trail because we have to step over boulders and under low-hanging branches every few paces. The trail gradually steepens, the snow slowly thickening on the ground, my compression garments squeezing my knees.
I catch my breath against the skinny white trunk of a quaking aspen. When Glenn doesn’t stop, I follow in his footsteps, sunk deep into the snow now, making every forward movement an exhausting routine of step, sink, pull out, repeat.
I’m beginning to think this is some style of corporal punishment for my mini temper tantrum last night, when Glenn finally stops. He waves me to a row of boulders overlooking the valley. I sit and exhale heavy white puffs into the thin air.
Glenn and I look out over the valley spread below us. Ant cars creep along the highway, and even though snow still blankets the mountains, the grass in the valley is gearing up for spring. A massive flock of seagulls rises from the valley like an avian tornado, twisting and turning north as one until the white specks fall in line to soar home.
To the south, I can almost convince myself I can see my own home beyond where the cookie-cutter subdivisions give way to verdant fields. I lean over the edge, trying to catch a glimpse. Glenn puts his arm across me exactly the way Mom used to in the car, making a human seat belt when she’d slam the brakes.
“Sara and I used to hike up here,” Glenn says, gazing out. “Funny how I thought of it as our spot. Like we owned it. Now she’s gone, and these hills are still here.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small black hunk. I recognize the shape of it immediately.
“Joining a handbell choir?” I say.
Glenn transfers Mom’s bell slowly to me with two hands like it could crumble to dust if we breathe wrong. The metal is cold like it always was, but the surface is a dusky black instead of shiny bronze.
The clacker thuds against the inside when I shake it. The sound is different from before—deeper—but I’m always surprised it still chimes at all.
“Do you know how this handbell survived?” Glenn says.
“If you’re gonna say a miracle, I’m walking down this mountain alone.”
Glenn takes the bell back.
“It survived because copper has a high melting point.” He turns the bell over, tracing the pad of his finger along the blackened, bowed side. “The tin isn’t immune to fire, though, so it looks a little different.”
I bristle.
“I get it. I’m the bell. I’m ugly but still here. Yay, survival!” I fist-pump into the air.
Glenn rests the charbroiled chunk of my mother’s memory on his flattened palm, totally ignoring my sarcasm.
“You’re not ugly,” he says, still examining the bell. “And you are not your body.”
Glenn means well, but he sounds like he’s reading directly from The Big Book of Lies to Tell Burned People. I am every bit
my body. We’re kind of a package deal. Okay, maybe more like a hostage situation, but still—inseparable.
“Why do you keep this bell on your dresser if you think it’s so hideous?” he asks.
The bell is so small in Glenn’s hand. It doesn’t look like it could produce the rich tones I remember reverberating through the church at Christmastime when Mom performed with the handbell choir.
“It was Mom’s,” I say, surprised by the lump in my throat. “It’s all I have of her.”
Glenn smiles, holding it up in the slanted evening light. “I can still picture your mother in those ridiculous white gloves up there in that church ringing these damned bells she loved so much.”
Glenn pauses like he’s searching for words.
“Just think how much more she loved you.” He holds the blackened bell between us. “You are the part of her that survived. And now, you’re part of us.”
My guilt from yesterday rises, spreading through my chest and up my throat, making me wish I could go back in time and swallow all my vain requests, all my harsh words.
“Glenn, you don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do. I want you to hear this. The truth is, you’ll never replace Sara, and we’ll never replace your parents. We wouldn’t want to. But sometimes I don’t know how we would have survived this last year without you.”
Glenn clears his throats as he straightens up. He places the bell on the rock between us, his hefty hand engulfing what’s left of mine.
“And we realize this surgery is important to you.”
“It’s fine—”
“No, it’s not. You don’t ask for much. Never have. In the hospital, nurses would find you biting your lip rather than asking for help. Probably because you’ve got your mother’s genes—tougher than a trotline. Too tough for your own good, sometimes,” he says. “So Cora and I know you wouldn’t ask unless it mattered.”
I hold my breath, afraid even the slightest wind may knock the universe off-kilter and stop whatever is happening here.
Glenn’s eyes meet mine.
“So you’re gonna get your surgery.”
I throw my arms around Glenn’s bulky shoulders before he can say anything else.
“Thank you,” I whisper. I want to say more, but words don’t seem to do this moment justice.
“You understand your scars will still be there, right? It’s just your eyes?”
“Yes, yes, just my eyes.” I pull back slightly. “But the money—”
“We talked to the insurance, and they’ll cover part of it.”
“And the other part?”
“You know your aunt Cora. If there’s a solution, she’ll find it. She’s been on eBay all day, selling stuff we don’t need anymore to people with way too much money.” Glenn forces a laugh but then smiles genuinely as he takes my hand.
“We just want to make you happy,” he says. “Are you? Happy?”
“I can’t remember the last time I felt like this,” I say, hugging him again so tight his five-o’clock shadow scratches my cheek.
We hike back down, hand in hand, Glenn walking sideways to help me with my weak knees threatening to buckle.
I smile uncontrollably all the way home. Cora meets us at the doorway, already crying. She hugs me tight, and I let her.
“I scheduled it for four weeks from today,” she says.
I hug her one more time, which seems to surprise her so much that she lets out an audible gasp. She sniffles in my ear as she hugs me back.
“I hope you know, Ava, surgery or no surgery, you’re enough.”
She tells me to go check out my room, where I find perfect pink paint reaching all the way to the ceiling. I write on my calendar on April 30 in big red letters: SURGERY!
Before I can finish, the sight of the empty curio cabinet stops me short.
The dolls are gone.
No longer locked, the glass door of the cabinet opens easily. I place Mom’s handbell inside. The bare shelf guts me as I think of Cora on eBay, selling what the fire left to the highest bidder.
For me.
So I can hit my star.
I call Tony to ask if my audition slot is still open.
“Yours if you want it,” he says.
I tug up the corners of my eyes in my reflection.
“Yes,” I say into the phone. “I want it.”
And into the glass, I smile at the girl grinning back.
25
The first person I want to tell is Piper, but since she’s still MIA, Cora drives me to her house after school.
Her house is perfect—like straight-out-of-a-sitcom immaculate with a porch wrapping around the side and a cobblestone walkway winding through a manicured yard. The only thing that doesn’t fit in the suburban fantasy is the makeshift plywood wheelchair ramp covering the front steps.
I knock three times before Piper answers, red-eyed and wearing a tank top and shorts with no compression garments. Without her pink/zebra/neon skin covering, I can see her scars more clearly. Her right arm and thigh are bright red and purple, much sharper than the muted hues of mine.
I hadn’t realized how raw her scars still are, or how much mine have healed.
“Where have you been?” I say.
Piper shields the afternoon sun with her hand.
“I told you. Bad day. Wasn’t in a headshrinky kind of mood.”
She waves me into her house, which is just as perfect on the inside. A marble-floored hallway leads into a foyer with fresh-cut flowers on a table.
“I’m going to audition!” I say, unable to wait a second longer. “And that’s not even the best part.”
She holds up a finger to stop me, her eyes duller than usual as she turns her chair toward the kitchen, where a woman stands elbow-deep in a sink, scrubbing the stainless steel sides so hard her whole body shakes.
“Mom, this is Ava. From group.”
Her mom looks up, eyes redder than Piper’s but equally lifeless, then puts her rubber-gloved hands over her heart.
“Oh, you poor thing.”
“Wow, Mom. Not cool.” Piper rolls down the hallway, waving me after her. “Don’t mind her. Her emotional whack-o-meter broke when my leg did. Plus, my ortho appointments always send her into a blubbering cleaning frenzy. She’ll be polishing for a week after this last one.”
Piper’s room is as loud as she is. A hot-pink-and-zebra bedspread contrasts the lime-green shag rug. Fuzzy neon throw pillows line her bed, and fuchsia lava wiggles in blobby waves in a lamp on her desk.
Piper pulls her body out of her chair and onto the bed, her limp legs following reluctantly as she grabs them one by one and flops them onto the bright bedspread. When I try to help her, I notice her cast-free right leg.
“You got it off!”
Piper shrugs and swats me away.
“Forget about my stupid leg; you were about to tell me the best part about the audition,” she says. “Is it about your boy toy? You still haven’t told me his name, by the way. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”
I plop myself in her empty wheelchair, rolling back and forth with my legs, grinning wildly. I tell her about the surgery while she thumbs through a health-and-fitness magazine on her bed.
“Haven’t you had like twenty?” she says, flipping the pages loudly.
“Yeah but this one’s cosmetic—to fix my eyes.”
I pull up the corners off both eyelids. Piper purses her lips as she scrutinizes my face.
“Sounds pricey.”
“It is. And the craziest part is, I think Cora and Glenn sold Sara’s dolls to pay for it.”
Piper lies back on her pillows, focused on the ceiling instead of me.
“Sounds like everything’s coming up Ava.” She turns to me, her eyebrows furrowed. “Where’s your wig?”
/> “I don’t need it anymore. That’s what I’m telling you. This surgery is what I need.”
Piper turns back to the ceiling, nonplussed. Shouldn’t she be excited? She’s the one who pushed so hard for me to do the play.
A glint of light catches my eyes, and I notice pieces of glass in the corner of her room. I pick up a pointy shard, and the remnants of a smashed picture frame along with a picture of a volleyball team crumpled below the wheel of the wheelchair. In it, Piper stands front and center, smiling, burn-free on two legs.
She watches me pick through the debris, and I notice again the pink puffiness around her eyes.
“What happened?”
She shrugs. “Little setback at physical therapy.”
I hold up the mangled frame.
“This doesn’t seem like a little setback.”
Piper reaches out to grab it, almost toppling off her bed.
“Okay, big setback, then. Massive, colossal setback. Is that what you want to hear?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine. I just don’t need you going all Spanish Inquisition about it. But if you must know, I spent yesterday trying to walk. And failing. And listening to doctors tell me my temporary paralysis might not be so temporary.” Piper scrunches a shaggy pillow into a ball. “Stupid doctors don’t know their butts from their elbows.”
“Is that why your mom was crying?” I don’t dare mention that her eyes betray her, too, for fear I’ll go the way of the picture frame.
Piper laughs, not like ha-ha funny, but more like an isn’t-life-a-kick-in-the-pants, cut-you-open-and-squeeze-lemons-in-the-wound kind of way.
“She hasn’t stopped crying since the crash. Mom cries and cleans. Dad drinks. Everyone has their inebriation of choice.”
I wheel myself to the foot of her bed.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’ve got my coping strategies, too.” She smiles for the first time since I got here. “Close the door.”
Piper leans forward on her bed, her arms wrapped around her waist, trying to pull up her shirt. “Help me.”
I lift the back of her shirt, revealing two feathery, rainbow-hued wings on each shoulder blade and a long line of black letters that start at the first vertebrae on her neck and run all the way down to two little pelvic-bone divots in the small of her back.