Lark

by Tracey Porter

  “Look at me!” she yells, pulling at her hair and pushing up her sleeves. Her arms are rough and brown. “It’s happening! Right now!”

  The door to my mother’s office creaks open. Her footsteps pound down the hallway.

  “My mother’s coming,” I whisper.

  Lark scowls back. “She can’t hear me.”

  “Be quiet!” I whisper.

  “I won’t! What’s the big deal about a stab wound? Don’t you realize what’s happening to me? Don’t you know that the only thing worse than what that man did to me is turning into a tree? You’re not worried about your mother. You’re putting me off because you’re a coward.”

  “Stop!” I say.

  “And you’re selfish! So what if you have a few more nightmares? I’m about to lose my body forever! I’m about to turn into a tree!”

  But it’s too awful to see, too terrible to see the cut in her side, the place where the knife went in. I can’t do it without fainting or getting sick or so scared that I might never come back from being afraid.

  “I can’t,” I say. “I will later. I promise. I want to help, but I can’t right now.”

  Lark shakes her head. “Forget it. You had your chance. I’m never coming back here. I’m going to find someone else.”

  Outside the wind picks up. It thrashes the trees and shrieks through the neighborhood. Shingles lift off roofs and gates clatter. Lark opens my window and slips out, legs first.

  “Good-bye.”

  The curtains billow and snap in a riot of anger and frost. A gust of cold wind blows into my face. When I open my eyes, she’s gone.

  “Lark!” I lean out the window, calling after her. “Come back!”

  The clouds break and a sleeting rain falls. I’m pelted in the face, and my wet nightgown sticks to my skin. The rain is so cold, it stings. I leap to the ground and run through the gate at the edge of my yard. Broken branches pull out the hem of my nightgown. Fir trees rattle their dry cones. I fall and pick myself up and run into the woods. Eyes flash in the dark, eyes of dead girls caught in trees.

  “Little Night! Little Night!” they sing bitterly, mocking my name, hating me for failing Lark. “You’re too late. She’s like us now!”

  The rain turns to ice. The sky collapses in snow. I cross the creek, cracking paper-thin ice, cutting my feet on sharp stones. Lark waits on the other side, so white she is almost blue.

  “I’m here. I’m ready now,” I say. And I am. I’m tired of being afraid. I don’t want to be the one who fails her in the end.

  I stretch out my hand. Before my eyes, her fingernails extend into thin roots that wrap around my wrist and pull me into her.

  “Too late, too late, too late,” she says, sounding both mournful and pleased. I don’t know what she is now. Ghost or tree? Girl or wood?

  I try to draw back my hand.

  “Let me go,” I cry. I dig my heels into the cold earth and struggle against her.

  Behind me I hear running footsteps and someone yelling. It’s my mother. She pulls me away from the tree, and I fall into her arms. I hear the panic in her voice as she tries to help me stand. Finally she scoops me in her arms and carries me home. The trees shake their branches at me. They would like to tangle my hair and scratch my skin. All Lark wanted was someone to see what happened to her, but I’m only a girl, too afraid to look.

  MAN ARRESTED IN DEATH OF TEENAGER

  MARCH 7: A 29-year-old man faces arraignment next week after his arrest for the murder of a 16-year-old girl whose body was found in a heavily wooded area of Potomac Overlook Park. Police say they arrested Stephen Blaire before noon yesterday at his Fairfax apartment on suspicion of first-degree murder in the death of Lark Austin.

  She was declared missing on January 24 after disappearing after her gymnastics lesson. She was found two days later, beaten and stabbed and dead from exposure after the area’s first major snowstorm. Detectives have not yet revealed what led them to arrest Blaire.

  Chapter 20

  Eve

  Under my window, men carry boxes from Lark’s house to a moving van parked in her driveway. They trundle out pictures and furniture wrapped in packing blankets. It makes me sick to think about someone else living there. Van Gogh wouldn’t want the Austins to sell their house. And if they did, he’d draw it at least a dozen times before they left. And then again after they left. But never once after the other people moved in.

  Ian is in his nerdy glasses and a red thrift-shop wool sweater. He lies on my bed while I crosshatch the shutters. I’m scribbling, building up texture, defining boundaries of stucco and wood, trying to capture what I know before the new owners completely destroy it with some ghastly remodel. I’ve given Ian a reading assignment—Van Gogh’s letters to Theo, the ones where he writes about the colors of the soil, wheat, and sky, and how he has to buy more canvas right away so he can capture it all before the season changes.

  Ian crosses an ankle over a knee. His mouth is slightly open because he’s concentrating. He is completely, utterly adorable.

  “I love them,” he says. “But why do you? They’re all about color and you don’t paint. You only draw in black.”

  I think about the paints in my father’s studio. Paints made of pigments and oils, egg yolk and minerals. Paints from England in little lead tubes. I remember squeezing out pearls of paint. The colors were so bright, they made my eyes vibrate.

  “Color’s hard to manage.” I can’t say what scares me about the loss of clear lines, the blur of edges.

  “But you love it,” Ian insists, holding up the book. It’s open to a detail of sunflowers against a bright yellow background. Petals spiral with brushstrokes of vermilion and orange. The stone I buried deep in my chest begins to cut its way to the surface.

  My mom knocks on the door while I’m formulating a response. She carries an armload of whites.

  “I’m feeling generous,” she says. “I’ll do yours, but only if you give them to me right now.”

  It’s her third interruption since Ian arrived. She’s brought us a tray of sandwiches and grapes. She’s hovering, trying to help us make good decisions. I look through my hamper and hand her some clothes.

  “By the way, “ she says on her way out, “the Austins are having a little gathering for Lark’s friends next week. They want her friends to choose something to remember her.”

  “I’m not going,” I say. “I don’t want anything.”

  “You might later,” she says.

  “Mom, in case you didn’t notice, Lark and I weren’t friends anymore. We’ve barely talked since middle school.”

  “Think of it as a gift,” she says. “Something her parents are offering you and something you can give them. Simply by being there.”

  “You should go,” says Ian.

  I glare at him.

  “I’ll take you,” he offers.

  My mom beams. “Thanks, Ian,” she says, and leaves without closing the door. A sock falls to the floor.

  If it were another book he was reading, I’d pull it from Ian’s hands and hit him with it. But it’s Volume II of my Bulfinch edition of The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, the one with the dark blue cover and the gold cypress tree on the spine. “Give me that,” I say. “Now.”

  He complies. I place it gently on the floor. Then I sucker punch him in the upper arm, but he’s too fast for me. He flexes his biceps so it almost hurts me as much as it does him.

  “OWWW!” he says.

  “Traitor.”

  “What do you mean, traitor? That’s a bit extreme.”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “It’s polite,” he says. “It’s what you do when someone dies.”

  He holds me tight, and I bury my face in his neck. He smells like frost and leaves and cold air. I can feel all types of bad choices coming on. Ian throws a leg over mine, then rolls me over in some kind of ninja move so that now he’s on top looking down at me. I see his rumpled black hair and white skin, his sapphire blu
e eyes. I keep staring, waiting, then he rolls me back over. He gets up and sits away from me, his back against the wall.

  “Is something wrong?” he asks. “Are you okay when I get physical with you?”

  Suddenly I’m cold. A voice inside says to say nothing, but words catch up and fight in my throat. The stone deep inside me tears through muscle and skin.

  “I—I—I need to tell you something. . . .” And I do. Words stumble and fall out of me. Sounds of my mother doing the laundry float upstairs, punctuating the silence while I try to find words. I tell him about Trevor, how scared I was in the dressing room, how I tried to tell Lark, how my mom didn’t do anything once I finally told her.

  “It’s like she didn’t get it. She didn’t get how it made me feel. She was focused on other things, like if he went inside me or not, or if she had to take me to the doctor.”

  Ian looks at me, then away, resting his head behind clasped hands. It must be a burden to hear this.

  “But I like when we’re physical,” I say. I’m shaking now. My breath cuts off so I can only whisper. “I do. I’m not always sure how to respond, but I like when we’re physical. And I want you to like me that way.”

  Ian crosses the room and folds me into his arms. He kisses my hair while I lean into him. “Listen to me,” he says. “That Trevor guy is an asshole. He’s a child molester and a pervert. You’re with me now, and nothing like that can ever happen to you again.”

  Chapter 21

  Lark

  I’m monstrous and ugly—part tree, part girl, the color of dirt and bark. Leaves cover my face. I blend in with the woods, like a fallen tree or a stump, a branch torn off by a storm. I stand by the trees by my house, watching Ian and Eve walk from her house to mine. I hear Eve describing the games that we played in the den, how we made collages with scented markers and glitter.

  “Why are you telling me this?” he asks, drawing her close.

  “Because you liked her,” she says. “Didn’t you?”

  I wait to hear what he says. I remember how I used to blush when he walked into class, how he smiled and dropped his head when he took the desk next to mine.

  “Only a little,” he says. “I gave up quick. She was hard to get to know. I couldn’t have a conversation with her.”

  “Not like with me?”

  “No. Not like with you.”

  I watch him kiss Eve, and I have never felt more dead than I do now. I remember how I liked his voice, and how his eyes always seemed to be dilated. I didn’t have room for him. I cast out Eve as well because she didn’t keep up with her swimming. I was all about practice and regionals, competitions and grades. The week before I died my mother signed me up for an SAT prep course. I was dead when I was alive, and I didn’t even know it.

  Chapter 22

  Nyetta

  It’s almost noon, but I’m still in bed, wrapped in my blanket. My mother paces the hall and talks to my dad on the phone, describing how she found me collapsed in the woods.

  “It was snowing and she was facedown, crying and hallucinating, talking to Lark.” She’s crying like she doesn’t know what to do. Next she’s on the phone to April, telling her the same thing. When she comes into my room, I pretend I’m asleep.

  I hear a car in the driveway and a knock on the door. Moments later, my dad walks into my room.

  “Hey, you,” he says. “How’re you feeling?” I let him hold me against him and rock me like he did when I was little.

  My mom comes in with a tray of soup and crackers, and a glass of apple juice mixed with sparkling water. My parents sit on my bed and watch me eat. The broth trickles down my throat. My throat feels swollen and sore. Either Lark or I broke my window because one pane is patched with brown paper and tape.

  “I’ll go to the hardware store later,” my dad says.

  “Can I come?” I ask.

  “Maybe,” he says.

  “After you see April,” says my mother.

  “But it’s not Wednesday,” I say. I’m drowsy and thick, like there’s a cloud in my head. “I don’t want to go. I’m not feeling well.” But my parents say I have to go. They tell me to finish my soup and get dressed.

  Strangely, the three of us go in my dad’s car, something that hasn’t happened in years. I’m on the alert, waiting for the fighting to start. But it doesn’t. Seeing the backs of their heads so close together makes me remember what it was like before the divorce. I feel like crying, but I don’t.

  April’s cheery and welcoming, especially to my father, whom she hasn’t met before. She ushers me into her office and settles into her big comfy chair. She asks me if I know why my parents wanted me to see her today, and I say it’s because I was outside last night when I should have been in bed.

  “Were you running away?” she asks.

  “Of course not,” I say.

  “Your mother says you were talking to Lark.”

  “It was a dream,” I say.

  “Your parents wonder if you should live with your dad for a while. They think a change might be good for you.”

  I tell April that’s a stupid idea, and when she asks why, I remind her I’m homeschooled.

  “Hallie isn’t smart enough to teach me. My mother has a PhD.”

  “I don’t think they imagine you staying there for an extended period of time.”

  “Whatever,” I say.

  “They think the change would do you some good. After all, you have two little stepbrothers there, and a new stepmother you’ve told me you like. . . .”

  “I never said I like Hallie. . . .”

  “Sorry,” says April. “My mistake. But you have spoken well of her. She’s offered to teach you how to weave, am I right?”

  “She’s okay,” I say. “A little too namby-pamby for my taste.”

  April shrugs. “Maybe it would be good to spend some time in the home of a namby-pamby woman for a while. The way you’ve described her makes me think she’s rather . . . nurturing.”

  “Too nurturing! Those boys are incredibly spoiled.”

  “Maybe she’d spoil you. You could use some spoiling. After all, you’ve been through so much.”

  “Really?” I ask.

  “Really,” says round-faced April. “Your father’s departure, your parents’ divorce, your mother’s anger, the violent death of the person you most looked up to . . . these are all very difficult experiences, very draining, exhausting events for anyone, but especially for someone your age.”

  It’s cold in her office. I pull the pink-and-blue quilt off the ottoman and wrap it around my shoulders. It’s decorated with hobbyhorses and ABC blocks.

  “They’re worried that you were talking to Lark last night.”

  “They don’t have to be. Lark won’t visit me anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I let her down.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “I wouldn’t look where the knife went in. Now she’ll really die. That tree where she was killed is swallowing her up.”

  “Oh, dear,” says April. “Why would the tree do that to her?”

  “Because that’s what happens to girls who are killed the way Lark was. Don’t you know?”

  “No,” says April, “but I’d like to. Will you tell me?”

  “Some trees have a girl in them.”

  When I’m done, April sends me out to the waiting room and asks my parents inside. I sit on the floor, looking through a basket of broken toys and torn books. An assortment of Happy Meal toys, Lego key chains, and metal cars with missing tires are all tangled together in the mane of a My Little Pony. April should do something about this, I think. It could make kids think she doesn’t really care about helping them.

  Chapter 23

  Eve

  Upstairs in the attic, Ian and I sweep down the rafters and wash them with pine soap. We paint the walls white, scrub the one tiny window, hang a few clip lights and strings of Christmas lights from the beams. My dad and Ian carry up a workta
ble and chair and an old velvet armchair I found at the flea market. When it’s spring, my dad says, he’ll put in skylights so I’ll be able to paint by natural light. Shelves of my dad’s old paints and brushes, glass jars of pigments, and all my Van Gogh books line one of the walls.

  Ian sits in the chair while I take his picture.

  “I hate this,” he says.

  “Just look at the camera,” I say. “Or don’t.” I take a few of his profile, amazed at how long his lashes are. I look through the photos carefully, searching for the right one. I’ll paint him in wild blue and orange, swirls of celadon in the back.

  It’s the night of the wake, and Ian walks me to Lark’s door and rings the bell. A woman named Carole asks us inside. She says she’s Lark’s aunt. Ian kisses me good-bye, and the door closes behind him.

  The foyer is shockingly bare. The table where the family left keys and letters is gone. The family photos have been taken down, leaving dark rectangles on the walls. Bolts of bubble wrap and boxes are stacked in the corner. I ask where Lark’s parents are, but Carole says they decided not to stay.

  “I don’t think they realized how hard it would be to see all of Lark’s friends. . . .” Her voice trails off. “It’s too much for them right now.”

  In the living room, different groups of Lark’s friends acknowledge one another with small glances and smiles. Nyetta, the girl down the street, sits on a love seat with her mother and father and her father’s new wife. Girls from school stand around the fireplace while Lark’s friends from gymnastics gather around the sofa. They wear the red-and-white ribbon from their uniform in their hair. Mothers stand around a card table in the corner of the room. They take turns arranging platters of food and serving drinks. I wish I could join them so I’d have something to do. Instead I make my way to the girls from school. Alyssa is there. I’m surprised at first, but then I remember how she knew Lark from the pool and stayed on the swim team long after I left.

  “Hey,” she says.