You Must Not Miss

by Katrina Leno

  “No, honestly. I was just sick.”

  “That’s what I said it must be, but when you didn’t answer your phone, I was honestly like, is she maybe dead? I had Ben check the hospital computers for your name.”

  “Really?”

  “She really did,” Ben confirmed. “Which is a total invasion of privacy on, like, twelve different levels, but I was happy when I didn’t find you.”

  “Or a Jane Doe,” Clare added. “I told him to look for a Jane Doe, too.”

  “We don’t get many Jane Does,” Ben said, rolling his eyes. “This isn’t Grey’s Anatomy.”

  Luckily for Magpie, this comment sent Clare and Ben into a spiral of questions (from Clare) and answers (from Ben) about just how similar Ben’s volunteer work at the hospital was to Grey’s Anatomy, which was, so she professed, Clare’s favorite show. (As it turned out, there were not many similarities at all.) Magpie took this reprieve from questioning to eat a few bites of her grilled cheese and listen in on the rest of the table.

  Which was currently locked in a vicious debate about Brandon Phipp’s party.

  Which was—Magpie’s stomach sank to find out—tomorrow night.

  Tomorrow night?

  Time flies when you’re almost dying in a made-up fantasy world.

  Magpie turned her head to see Hither standing on the table closest to hers. It was doing some sort of complicated Irish jig. She did her best to ignore it.

  “Mags, are you still a no?” Luke asked.

  “No, actually. I think I’m gonna go for a little bit,” Magpie replied.

  “Let’s just do something else,” Brianna suggested. “Literally anything else in the entire world. My dad is a dentist—we could all get root canals?”

  “I’ve had a root canal,” Clare piped in. “It was awful. The worst part is—”

  “The smell. We know, girl. When are you going to retire this root-canal story?” Luke asked.

  “The smell?” Brianna asked. “What does that even mean? What does it smell like?”

  “Rotten flesh,” Clare said seriously. “It’s all rotten in there. My dentist said I was the youngest person she’d ever given a root canal to.”

  “You say that like it’s something to be proud of,” Ben said, shaking his head. “I love you, but you are so weird.”

  “Also, are we seriously back to debating this party?” Clare asked. “Do we ever talk about anything else? I mean—it’s just a party. We’re not all required to suck the dick of Brandon Phipp. Ha. That kind of rhymes. Suck the dick of Brandon—what?”

  The entire table had come to a complete, eerie hush, exactly as if a light switch had been flicked off, muting the six of them so completely that you could have heard a pin drop. Well, all of them except Clare, who had continued talking right through the muting until she’d realized that all eyes were on her, and all eyes were doing their best to scream Shut the eff up.

  And then she realized why. And her own eyes widened to roughly the size of dinner plates. She covered her mouth with one hand.

  And then four pairs of eyes slid off Clare and moved over to Magpie.

  Who was silently gathering up her things, a funny look on her face because, of course, out of everyone gathered here today, she was the only one who had, on the worst night of her life so far, sucked the dick of Brandon Phipp.

  It does kind of rhyme, doesn’t it? Hither asked as Magpie clumsily stood and left the lunch table, beelining toward the cafeteria doors with a single-mindedness only the truly mortified can produce.

  It added, What, are we going somewhere?

  And it followed her into the hall.

  Magpie had not visited her locker in the middle of the day for six months and three weeks, but she felt oddly calm doing so now because it was lunchtime and Allison was eating in the cafeteria with all of the other sophomores.

  She tried not to think about the way Clare had so easily made a joke—which would have been under other circumstances completely benign—about giving Brandon Phipp head.

  If she thought too much about it, she was left with a funny taste in the back of her throat. Something hot and sticky sliding down her chin. The sensation of not being able to breathe. Tears stinging her eyes. Brandon Phipp’s hands tangled up in her hair.

  She dropped books into her locker with the intention of making noise to distract herself from the thoughts running wildly through her brain. She could sense Hither somewhere close but not immediately visible, somewhere lurking around the edges. Maybe it was scared of the way she felt right now, the rage that coursed through her veins and made her skin hot to the touch.

  Good. Let it be scared. Let everyone be scared of the things Magpie could do to them.

  She shoved book after book into her locker, then she slammed the locker shut with a satisfying crash that echoed through the hallways and echoed through her skull.

  She was left holding her backpack, the yellow notebook inside, the yellow notebook that might as well have been a part of her, so closely was she linked with it. And the pen that she had made. And her phone, forgotten and out of power.

  She was going to leave.

  She didn’t need this school; she didn’t need this town; she didn’t need this world, not when she had one of her own to return to.

  So she spun around, ready to storm out, to escape the unbreathable air of this terrible place—

  But there was someone blocking her way.

  Two someones blocking her way.

  Mrs. Henderson, the guidance counselor with the radar for eating disorders. She was with the vice principal of Farther High, a woman named Amanda Wood, with a face as hard as her name suggested, her mouth now set into a line so straight that you could set a ruler by it.

  “Ms. Lewis,” she said, and Magpie noted that it was never good when an adult called you by your last name. It was never followed by something pleasant, something easy, something like I just wanted to tell you I love your shirt today. Wherever did you get it?

  As if to prove this point, Amanda Wood added, “If you could follow me, please. We’d like to have a bit of a chat.”

  Magpie had two options.

  Option one, of course: She could follow them.

  That seemed to be the obvious choice.

  Option two was a little bit more slippery.

  In short: She could turn and run.

  Oh, here you are being all dramatic again. A little chat with these nice ladies won’t kill you. Plus, the bell’s about to ring. You don’t want to cause a scene, do you? You never know who might be visiting her locker.…

  Which was enough to convince her.

  Magpie put a smile on her face, a smile she hoped conveyed a message somewhere along the lines of Everything is fine, and I am a happy and well-adjusted student. Then she nodded, and said, “Of course,” and followed the two women down the hall.

  Magpie had been in the guidance counselor’s office once before, last year, so she knew that’s where they were headed. Mrs. Henderson made it a point to meet with the incoming freshman class individually, half-hour sessions to introduce herself and hand out some pamphlets about healthy eating. She’d done a little redecorating since then; there was a new plant in one corner of the room and a painting that took up much of one wall. It was a painting of the sea on a calm, sunny day. There was a single sailboat just far enough away so you couldn’t tell if somebody was on it. The water looked actually wet, as if you could slip right into it and end up in another world. Magpie thought she had read about something like that happening. Before this, she wouldn’t have believed it was possible. But now she understood that things like that actually happened.

  “Do you like it?” Mrs. Henderson asked, mistaking Magpie’s silence for admiration. “My daughter painted that.”

  Was it part of her therapy, Magpie wondered, part of the treatment for her anorexia? To paint the sea, to make it look as real as possible?

  Just say yes, for goodness’ sake.

  “Yes. I like it very
much,” Magpie said.

  Mrs. Henderson, the proud parent, nodded her head, as if something had been proved. Then she pointed at one of the three chairs set in a lopsided triangle in front of her desk, and said, “Please. Have a seat.”

  Magpie did.

  The two women did.

  And for a moment they all stared at one another, but if they wanted Magpie to be the first to talk, they would have to wait a long, long time, because Magpie could stay silent for years, subsisting on only macaroni and cheese and the occasional vodka lemonade.

  “This isn’t going to be an easy discussion, Margaret,” Amanda Wood said. Ah, so she knew Ms. Lewis’s first name. Magpie didn’t know if it was Ms. Wood or Mrs. Wood or Miss Wood so she chose, in her mind, to refer to the vice principal by her full name because that is how the other students of Farther High did.

  And no duh, it wasn’t going to be an easy conversation.

  No conversation that ever took place with a guidance counselor and vice principal present was ever easy.

  “A number of your teachers have been in touch with us,” Mrs. Henderson said. Her voice was exactly how a guidance counselor’s voice should be: soft and lilting and sounding a little bit as if she might burst into tears at any moment.

  “Oh?” Magpie said.

  It was best to say as little as possible in these types of situations.

  “Margaret, it would appear that you haven’t been handing in many assignments at all,” Amanda Wood said. “Your class participation has been almost nonexistent. You were out once last week, you’ve missed classes three times this week, you were late this morning, and there is only one week left of school. Truancy is something we take very seriously here, Margaret.”

  “It’s only truancy if I don’t have a good reason, right?” Magpie asked.

  “Do you have a good reason, Margaret? Because if one does, they usually would have reported it to the office by now,” Amanda Wood said.

  “My mother was in the hospital,” Magpie said.

  “That was last week, correct? Mr. James informed us of that, yes. Has something happened to her more recently?”

  “I had a migraine,” Magpie said.

  Every time she spoke, she heard her voice grow

  softer

  and

  softer

  and she hated herself for it.

  “I see,” Amanda Wood said.

  “Margaret, we want to help you. We’re just trying to get to the bottom of this,” Mrs. Henderson said. She was clearly playing the role of good cop in this little play they were all in.

  “I just missed a few days of school. I can get my mother to write a note if that would help,” Magpie said.

  “If it were just the issue of a few missed days, we wouldn’t be here,” Amanda Wood replied. “We understand that life can sometimes get in the way of school. We aren’t without understanding.”

  “So what is it?”

  “As of now, your algebra and science teachers inform me that you will fail their classes this year. History—Ms. Peel—is contingent upon the final project’s completion. And Mr. James tells us that you have an assignment due tomorrow that will determine whether you pass or fail. Let me make this clear to you, Margaret—if you fail either history or English, you will not successfully complete sophomore year. You will have to retake classes during the summer, and your chances of graduating on time will be compromised.”

  Mrs. Henderson shifted in her seat. “Margaret—are you on track to complete these two assignments? Ms. Peel tells us the final project is done with a partner. Have you chosen yours?”

  “Yes. It will be completed.”

  “And English?” she pressed. “What about the assignment that’s due tomorrow?”

  “It’s done,” Magpie lied. The lie was easy to tell, just as slippery and wet as the painting of the sea.

  “Margaret,” Mrs. Henderson continued. “If I may be frank… I’ve looked over your records from freshman year. You never quite made the honor roll, but you were a solid student. Bs and Cs. You missed a total of ten days last year. There was nothing like this. There’s been a complete shift. I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you what was going on here.”

  “It’s just… been a lot of stuff,” Magpie said, fumbling over her words, feeling the heat start to build in her cheeks and her neck.

  “You can talk to us,” Amanda Wood said. “If there’s something going on. If something happened.”

  “Nothing happened,” Magpie said, perhaps a bit too quickly. Mrs. Henderson pursed her lips, as if she wanted to say more but couldn’t decide on the words.

  Amanda Wood, for her part, seemed eager to put the conversation to rest. She clapped her hands together softly, and said, “So we should have no further problems. Margaret, you are on an academic suspension that will carry into your junior year. You will have weekly check-ins with Mrs. Henderson and monthly check-ins with me. You will be given a worksheet that every teacher must sign at the beginning and end of every class. Every assignment you hand in must be logged on that sheet. We will be getting in touch with your parents, to keep them informed about what’s going on. Since school is out next week, we are taking it on good faith that you will hand in the two discussed assignments. I don’t expect you to need a follow-up meeting next week, but if you do, I’m sure we can arrange it. Mrs. Henderson will be able to explain things more completely. Do you have any questions?”

  Magpie had a lot of questions. But one question was more pressing at the moment than all the others.

  Because more than anything else, she wished she could disappear.

  Whenever she wanted. Wherever she wanted.

  Like now. In this moment. Just slip away into another world.

  So—why the garden shed?

  Could she open a door to Near somewhere else?

  Or was it tied to that specific place?

  What are you up to?

  Oh, dear friend.

  Everything. She was up to everything.

  Magpie went through the motions.

  She went to all her classes that afternoon.

  She went home and made dinner and ate it and unplugged the phone so if Amanda Wood called later, when Ann Marie was there, she would get a busy signal.

  And then she left the house, slipping out as soon as the sun had disappeared below the horizon line, pushing her bike fast down Pine Street, putting miles between her and the garden shed.

  She ended up in a field of Christmas trees.

  A little farm that would chop them down in December and sell them to the people of Farther to decorate with tinsel and lights, to shove presents underneath, to pretend Santa was proof of some real magic in the world.

  She used to come here twice a season every year. Once with her own family to pick out a tiny tree to go in their tiny living room and once with Allison and her parents. When they had been younger, she and Allison would play hide-and-seek, darting between rows of evergreens and jumping out to scare each other.

  She hadn’t come at all this past winter.

  Ann Marie hadn’t mentioned it.

  They’d eaten Chinese food on Christmas Eve and leftover Chinese food on Christmas Day.

  Magpie slipped off her bike and let it fall to the ground with a muted thud.

  Hither had been following her the whole way, of course, first a dragon, then a bird of prey, then something that might have been a panther stalking behind her bike with great fluid strides.

  It watched her now with interest as she pulled the yellow notebook from her backpack and uncapped the Near-pen and held both of them, one in each hand, and closed her eyes.

  Didn’t I say you don’t need that anymore?

  “I like it. It helps me concentrate.”

  What are you trying to do here?

  “Shouldn’t you already know?”

  But she smiled because she had been practicing keeping her thoughts to herself, and it had worked, and as she raised the pen to the notebook, Hither watched her i
ntently because it had no idea what she was going to write.

  Which was this:

  I am able to get to Near no matter where I am. I can open a doorway with this pen. I can draw one into existence. I can make one out of thin air.

  She closed the notebook and held it to her chest.

  I see.

  “You can’t talk me out of it.”

  On the contrary. I’m surprised it took you this long to consider the possibility.

  “So it can be done?”

  I suppose you’re about to find out.

  Magpie held the pen in her right hand.

  Though it was made of metal, it was warm on her skin, and she imagined that it pulsed with some impossible energy from some impossible world.

  She raised the tip of the pen and touched it to the air.

  And she felt—somehow—the most delicate pressure against it. As if it had found some purchase in the night molecules.

  Slowly, she dragged it downward.

  And before her eyes the thinnest glowing line appeared.

  She drew another line, then a third, then a little doorknob to finish off her creation.

  She had a drawn a door. Out of thin air. Out of the very night. Out of nothing.

  And she reached her hand out and clasped the knob…

  And pulled.

  Magpie stepped through a row of Christmas trees into another world.

  The waters that surrounded the island of Near were closer now than they had ever been before. A mile away, two at the most. She thought of the painting in Mrs. Henderson’s office. She thought of her swimming pool. She squinted at the horizon line; the water of Near was so calm and expansive and serene that Magpie almost wished she was at its edge—but then she caught herself and didn’t. There would be time for that later.

  The new doorway disappeared behind her as soon as she had stepped through, the glowing line fading into nothingness as she turned and watched. And in its place—the not-shed. So she could open a doorway anywhere in Farther and always end up here, back where she started, in her own not-backyard.