How to Disappear Completely

by Ali Standish

Edie O’Shea stares out at me from her dark house.

  “Emma?”

  I freeze. This was not part of the plan.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I look down at Lily’s copy of The World at the End of the Tunnel. At the story I’ve cherished for so long. The one that helped Gram get through her darkest years.

  And suddenly I feel very, very stupid.

  What am I doing here with this book? Edie is going to think I’m crazy. She’s going to tell everyone at school that I’m stalking her or something.

  But then I think again of Gram, and I take a deep breath.

  “I just—I was going to leave this for you,” I say, cheeks warm despite the cold.

  Edie reaches out a hand for the book. “I’ve heard of this one,” she says, “but I’ve never read it.”

  Her voice is different away from school. Less certain. She looks up at me and narrows her eyes. “Why did you bring this to me? After I’ve been so—you know—”

  “Mean?” I say, before I can stop myself. Edie stiffens.

  “Look, I just thought tomorrow might be kind of hard for you. And this book has gotten me through some, um, hard stuff. I just wanted you to know someone was thinking about you. That someone cared.”

  She crosses her arms over her chest. “You know about my dad, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I admit. “My mom is working for him. Designing his new, um, house.”

  Edie sniffles. “I know,” she says sharply. “Your mom is the reason I found out my dad was leaving, actually. I found her business card in my dad’s briefcase. That’s when he told me. And I kind of hated you after that.”

  I feel my eyes widen with surprise. All along, I thought this was about that stupid poem. But it was so much bigger than that. “I didn’t know until a couple of days ago,” I reply. “And I won’t tell anyone.”

  I’m about to turn to go when Edie speaks again. “You probably don’t believe me, but I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “For the picture and the text and all that. The first time I saw you on the school bus without makeup, I knew I shouldn’t have done it. Because it wasn’t ever really about, you know, your skin. But I didn’t—I couldn’t tell you that.”

  “Well, you kind of made my life miserable for a while,” I say. “And nobody deserves to feel like I felt. But I know it sucks, what’s happening with your dad. I know what it’s like to lose someone. Just . . . don’t do it to anyone else, okay?”

  Edie nods. There’s another uncomfortable moment of silence.

  “Well, I should—” I say just as Edie says, “Thank you for the—”

  We both laugh nervously.

  “I still don’t get why you’re being so nice to me,” Edie says. “It’s kind of weird, but it— Well, thanks. I actually really like reading, you know.”

  “Good,” I reply. “I hope you like it. Happy Thanksgiving.”

  “Happy Thanksgiving, Emma.”

  Then I turn away. And I have the strongest feeling that somewhere, Gram is really, really proud of me.

  49

  When I come downstairs the next morning, the kitchen is already filled with wonderful aromas. I have a mug of hot cocoa and toast for breakfast while Mom and Dad bustle around.

  “Going to be a cold one today,” Dad says as he chops the rosemary.

  “I heard they’re calling for snow,” Mom replies from the sink.

  “A white Thanksgiving?” I ask, smearing a little extra butter on my crust and giving it to Boomer, who has been sniffing around the turkey waiting to be stuffed on the counter.

  “Stranger things have happened.” Dad winks at me.

  “Hey, Mom?” I ask.

  “Uh-oh,” Mom says. “I know that voice. That’s the voice of a girl whose about to ask for something. Something big.”

  “Not really,” I say. “It’s just, I was thinking—do we have room for one more at dinner?”

  Mom turns the faucet off, flicking the water from her hands before she turns to look at me. “Are you thinking about Madeline Mitchell?”

  I nod.

  She glances at Dad. “We’ll have plenty of food,” he says. “It sounds like the Ramirezes are bringing enough to feed the whole village.”

  “Well, it’s fine by me,” says Mom. “The more the merrier.”

  For a while, I sit next to Lily on the couch. She’s watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade while I thumb through a new book. Well, a new old book. The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

  It’s hard for me to really understand most of the poems inside, but Gram has made little notes in the margins. Questions and comments and things. She obviously read this book many, many times. I even found a poem where she must have borrowed the name “Goldengrove” from. It’s about a girl looking at an autumn forest.

  Which reminds me. There’s something I have to do. A story I have to finish.

  So I set the poems aside, bundle up, and take Boomer out to our own autumn forest. We trace our usual path along High Street, past the church, and down to the meadows. Boomer breaks into a sprint when we cross under the barbed wire.

  The woods are bright with sunlight but quiet as midnight. I run my hands along the trunks of the trees as I walk, listening to the golden crunch of the leaves under my feet.

  The cold is sharp against my cheeks, but I don’t mind it. It’s the kind of cold that reminds you that you’re alive, that you have a whole day stretching out ahead of you and you just never know what it will hold.

  When I get to the grove, I pull the journal out from the sycamore hollow. As I do, I notice something I never have before. The gray bark on the sycamore tree. Bits of it have begun to peel away, exposing pale patches of new bark underneath. I smile, running my hand over the sycamore’s trunk before turning away.

  Ivy’s story isn’t finished yet. It needs one more chapter. I sit down on Throne Rock and write furiously, until my hand starts to cramp. Until I’ve said everything I need to say.

  I’m just getting up to return the journal to the sycamore hollow, where Madeline can read it, when I stop.

  Gram always made me read our stories out loud when we finished them.

  Because stories are like spells. They don’t work properly unless you tell them out loud.

  So I flip back in the journal to the beginning of the story. “Okay, Gram,” I say. “For you.”

  I clear my throat.

  “‘Once upon a time,’” I start, “‘there was a humble cottage that sat halfway between a village and a great wood, as if it could not decide to which it belonged.’”

  I tell my story to the Spinney, just like I’ve told so many before. The way I look may be different now, but my voice is the same as always.

  And as I speak, I feel something strange happen. A breeze ripples through the treetops, and all around me, I can sense movement. I feel the familiar sensation of eyes—many eyes—upon me. Except this time, I don’t mind. This time, I smile.

  Because if I were to look up, I am sure I would see a gnome popping her head up from the patch of moss closest to me. Others would appear next to her as they work their way out from their burrow, all of them resting their pointed chins in their little palms.

  I would see the fauns arriving soundlessly, settling themselves in a graceful ring around the sycamore’s trunk.

  And a rock in the middle of the stream, unrolling itself into a forest troll, its heavy eyes blinking ever so slowly.

  The fairies drifting to the ground in the falling yellow leaves, twinkling inside them like dewdrops.

  And Gram, sitting by the stream in her long cotton dress, her face lifted toward the sky, listening.

  All of them gathering for one last story.

  All of them waiting to hear the end.

  Ivy’s new friends insisted that she eat and drink before setting out to meet the witch. The fauns took her to a comfortable den, the pixies lit a fire to warm her, and as she ate, the others told her stories of Gran and of how she had found
Ivy as a baby by a stream and how Ivy had filled every corner of her wild heart.

  Then they left Ivy once more, so she could think of a plan to banish the witch.

  “How can we defeat her, Shilling?” Ivy wondered, curled under a knotty blanket given to her by the gnomes. “What do we have that she doesn’t?”

  She glanced to the corner of the den, where the crutch Gran had been carving when she died rested against the twiggy wall. Except when Ivy looked at it now, she saw that it was not a crutch at all, but a half-finished sword.

  Ivy knew then what she must do. She knew Gran had left her the sword so she could fight this battle. She borrowed a knife from the elves and set to work at once, whittling the wood into a sword, finishing what her gran had started.

  And when she was done, she crept out from the den in the middle of the moonless night, when all the forest creatures were fast asleep. For she was the Keeper of the forest, the protector of its magic, and this was her battle and hers alone to fight. Only Shilling went with her, prowling on silent paws.

  Holding the wooden sword by her side, Ivy strode through the forest until she came to its dark heart, to the grove of thorny trees.

  And there, in the center of the trees, was a cottage, just as Ivy remembered it.

  “Come out, witch!” Ivy called, raising her sword high. “Come out and do battle with me, the Keeper of this forest.”

  Presently, the witch appeared in her white fur cloak, holding her long wooden staff. She cackled when she saw Ivy standing in the snow. “You think you can defeat me, girl?” she shrieked. “We’ll see about that, won’t we?”

  Ivy swallowed down her fear as the witch swept closer, holding her staff as if it were a club. Ivy raised her sword.

  “I will give you one last chance, silly girl,” snarled the witch as she approached, her face bathed in shadows. “Run now. Leave this forest forever, and I shall spare your life.”

  But Ivy had come to face the witch. And face the witch she would. She lifted her sword behind her just as the witch’s staff began to whirl in the air. Ivy let out a great cry and swung her blade.

  When Ivy’s sword hit the witch’s staff, a very strange thing happened. For a moment, all was still. Then suddenly, the forest was filled with bright light, and in its glow, Ivy caught sight of the witch’s face beneath her hood. And she gasped, for the old woman’s face had changed once more, and Ivy could not understand what she saw.

  In the next instant, the witch was ripped from sight, the light faded away, and Ivy and Shilling were left alone in the grove. But not quite alone, for moving through the trees was a pulsing, bluish light. As it drew nearer, Ivy saw that it was the woman in white, and she raised her sword again, fearing the witch’s tricks.

  “Peace, my child,” said the woman, “for I am no witch. She has been vanquished, thanks to you.”

  “If you are not the witch, then who are you?” Ivy asked.

  The woman stopped in front of Ivy and drew off her hood. The face beneath seemed carved from pearl. “I am the same figure you saw in the forest all those years ago,” the woman said. “I am the moon that hangs in the sky, that watches over this forest and all forests, and that sometimes likes to walk among them on moonless nights.”

  “But I saw you,” Ivy said, “leaving Poppy Cottage just before my gran died. You killed her!”

  “I did not,” said the woman calmly. “I came only to tell her that it was her time to go, just as I tell the tides each day and night. Just as I must tell all things eventually. I came to tell her that all would be well, that I would watch over you in her absence.”

  “Then who was the witch who put a curse on me?” Ivy asked, still uncertain.

  “I think perhaps you can answer that for yourself,” said the woman in white.

  “It was me,” Ivy said quietly, remembering the face she had seen in the flash of light, just before the witch disappeared. It had been the mirror image of her own. “I am the witch.”

  “In a manner of speaking,” said the woman kindly. “Your fear created the witch. Fear that without your grandmother to love you, you would not be worthy of love any longer. That without her to see you, you would simply disappear.”

  “Was the witch ever real, then?” Ivy asked. “Or have I only imagined her?”

  “Certainly, your fear made her real. But because of that, all you needed to do to vanquish her was to be brave. You have proved yourself a worthy guardian for this forest tonight. You came on your own and risked your life to save the forest and all its magic. You are its true Keeper.”

  The woman in white bowed her head to Ivy, who bowed her own head in return. Then the woman turned to go.

  “Wait,” Ivy said. “Please—can you take a message to my gran for me?”

  The woman smiled, and Ivy could feel its warmth upon her face. “Tell her yourself,” she said. “For she is all around you.”

  Then the air shimmered, and the woman in white was gone.

  By the time Ivy and Shilling made their way back to the fauns’ den, daylight had broken and the forest creatures had all awakened. When she told them that the witch had been vanquished, they gave a great cheer that echoed all through the forest. They began to sing and dance, and preparations were made for a great party to celebrate the defeat of the witch and the coming of the new Keeper.

  And while Ivy slept that morning, the creatures built her a cottage of her own. They crept to Poppy Cottage and brought back Ivy’s bed, Gran’s books, the pots and pans and remedy jars. And when Ivy woke up, she found she had a new home in the middle of the forest, where the creatures could visit her often. She would never again be alone.

  As the cold of winter left and the color of spring returned, the forest creatures quite forgot about the witch.

  Ivy did not forget.

  Ivy knew that, as sure as summer would follow the spring, trouble would find the forest again one day. And when that time came, she would stand and fight.

  But for now, there were sunshine and tulips and foxgloves that bloomed at her heels.

  For now, her balsam bark heart beat steady in her chest.

  50

  When I look up, Boomer and I are alone once more in the Spinney. As I knew we would be. And I think that’s okay.

  Before she ever brought me here, Gram told me that if there was one thing she believed, it’s that there is magic in the world for those who want to see it.

  I always thought when Gram talked about magic, she meant fairies and fauns and forest trolls.

  I’m not sure if I’ll ever see the charmed folk again, at least not the way I once did. But I know now that there are other kinds of magic in the world.

  Like how some people are shape-shifters. You think they’re one thing, and then suddenly they turn into something else completely. Wicked mothers and sisters can become your biggest cheerleaders. Old witches become enchantresses, and kindly grandmothers hide forests of secrets behind their twinkling eyes.

  Or like how sometimes, the right person walks into your life and you walk into theirs just when you need each other most. Like you’re each other’s lucky charms.

  Or the way that people can live on inside you for a long time, even when they’re supposed to be dead and gone.

  And maybe there are such things as curses, too. But there’s also magic in the ways people find to overcome their curses, and maybe even find a way to make something beautiful out of them.

  I know now that people can disappear. But they can also come back.

  I guess what I’m trying to say is that I always used to think of magic as this kind of treasure waiting to be found, like a robin’s egg or a five-dollar bill dropped on the street. Or a forgotten railroad tunnel that can lead you into another world entirely.

  But now, I think magic is more like something you have inside of you. Like love or kindness or stories.

  I close the journal and put it back into the hollow for Madeline to find. Ivy’s story is finished now. My story, on the other hand, i
s just beginning, and I have no idea how it’s going to end.

  Some mornings, I still wake up and examine my skin for signs that my treatments are working. Thinking that I could find a breadcrumb trail to follow back in time, to when I had only one color of skin.

  But today, I looked at my reflection and saw a different girl than the one I was before that first spot appeared on my toe. Not just plain old Emma, but a girl who is totally one of a kind. I saw a girl who is braver than she used to be, and kinder, too. A girl with beautiful sycamore skin.

  I saw a girl who takes after her gram.

  And I know that no matter what my skin looks like tomorrow or next month or next year, I’m going to keep fighting for that girl.

  I will never let her disappear again.

  51

  Nobody answers when I knock on Madeline’s door a few minutes later. Not even when Boomer whines and scratches at the door.

  “Madeline?” I call.

  I don’t hear her. There’s no curtain twitching. But for some reason, I am sure that she can hear me.

  “I just came to tell you that if you wanted to come to my house for Thanksgiving, I would really love that,” I say through the door. “My parents, too. Fina will be there and her parents. I know it’s a lot of people, and I understand if you don’t want to come. But even if you don’t, I’ll be back to visit again. It’s what she would want, so no arguing, okay?”

  There’s no answer.

  “I’m going to go now. Dinner’s at three o’clock. Oh, and by the way, I finished our story.”

  I wait a second longer, just in case the door cracks open, but it doesn’t.

  “Happy Thanksgiving, Madeline,” I say.

  As Boomer and I pass by the church on our way home, I glance over at the graveyard. Then I do a double take. Professor Swann is there, standing at Gram’s grave.

  I kind of forgot about him, and my theory that he might have been in love with Gram, after Fina and I found out who was really writing to me in my journal. Who had really left the flowers on the grave, and written the inscription in Gram’s copy of The World at the End of the Tunnel.