He turns and looks at me with an amused expression. “All right, all right. Chill already.”
Tarin, though, doesn’t look so amused. “Jess.” Her voice is tight, careful, but her eyes are wild with panic. “What’s going on?”
I don’t let her unnerve me. “I’m not coming,” I say. “I made a mistake.”
Falcon sighs loudly and rests his head on the steering wheel. “Chicks. So much drama.”
He doesn’t seem like such a bad guy, but I doubt he’s the ticket to whatever it is we’re looking for. I turn to Tarin and lean in closer to talk softly.
“You can change your mind too,” I say. “It’s not too late. Maybe you can talk to your mom. Tell her how you feel.”
She leers at me, arms across her chest. She’s trying to be tough, but I see it in her eyes: she wants me to convince her, to find those magic words that will make her believe we don’t need to run. I don’t have the words yet for this feeling that’s building inside me. So I use the words that had inspired the Girl.
“I read a quote the other day,” I say slowly, the thought unraveling in my mind, “that said”—I’m not sure I have it, but then the Girl helps me out—“that said, The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Tarin looks at me like I’ve gone off the deep end. “All right, it’s kind of hokey. But I think it’s about taking a chance, about not being afraid to open up to life, to other people. Things are a little screwed up for us, I know. But maybe we need to try harder to make things better, instead of blaming everyone else.”
She grips her hands tightly in her lap. The ferret makes a weird squeaking noise; Falcon has his head tilted back and his eyes closed. My rambling probably didn’t make a bit of sense, but I know what I feel is real. We are not doomed. There are people who care about us, love us, and even if it’s not a bed of roses, it’s got to be better than nothing.
Tarin closes her eyes, and I think I might have gotten through to her, made her feel a twinge of hope. But when she opens them again, I see that stubborn look of hers. I have lost.
“God, Jess, don’t be a wimp,” she snaps. “You’re not happy at home, you know that. They don’t know you, the real you. This is your chance for freedom, and you’re blowing it.”
I look at her long and hard, and then do the surest thing I ever remember doing. I open the side door, grab my camera and bags, and step out onto the road.
“Thanks anyway, Falcon,” I say, and I close the door.
The car moves slowly forward at first, then spits gravel behind it as it picks up speed. I watch it leave, my backpack hanging in one hand, the duffel bag in the other. I am nervous about facing my family. But I feel so alive that I let out a loud scream.
There is no one there to hear, only open fields stretching out on either side of me. But I am there, and I hear it, and I feel it, too, deep inside. And that counts for something.
I begin the long walk home.
Filling in the Blanks
I’m sweaty and my legs ache by the time I see the chimney of our house poking through the trees. Tarin and Falcon and Lady Di are probably far down the highway by now, have probably moved on to Nirvana.
The wind moves the pines softly, and it’s quiet around the house. I stand there a few minutes and look at it, this little corner of the world that is ours, and it washes through me finally. Real gratitude. It’s a good place, and even if I may not always feel I belong, it is my home too. Everyone may miss the old Jessica. But I think they might be willing to give the new one—me—a chance too.
Ginger motors across the lawn, tail wagging so fast she looks like she could become airborne.
“Baby doll,” I say, and she dives into me, rubbing her face on my legs and letting out a soft whine as I massage her ears. “Don’t worry.”
There’s no car parked at the end of the driveway. I walk slowly up to the door. It’s not locked. Inside, I grab the phone and dial Mom’s cell. It rings a few times and then her voice mail comes on.
“Mom,” I say. “It’s me. I’m home. ” My voice cracks. “I’ll be here, waiting.”
It hits me when I hang up: I didn’t call her Mother. And it came out naturally, without any effort.
I pace around the house, jittery and hungry and exhausted. I can’t stand the waiting, so I fill a bowl with cereal and milk but can only eat half of it. My phone dings, and when I pick it up, I have a text: Hello pretty pixie. Hope you don’t mind I got your number through some connections. I am a very powerful ogre, you know. Wanted to say sorry. Shouldn’t have let you touch that nasty potion. How are things out in the wilds?
Ogre. It’s Dan, the guy from the pit party. I can’t help smiling. But I am not ready to write back, have no idea when I will feel normal enough to go down that road. Ginger barks outside, and I hear car doors closing. First things first.
I stand at the top of the steps. Dad sees me and bounds up the stairs, then throws his arms around me so tight I can barely breathe. Mom comes behind him, and she’s hugging me, tears making a trail down her cheeks. Dad lets go, runs back down the stairs and gets Stephen, with his crutches, and plunks him beside me. Then we are all wrapping our arms around each other in a twisted human pretzel.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m so, so sorry.”
When we finally pull apart, Dad says, “Where the hell have you been?”
We sit around the kitchen table and I tell them everything: that Tarin and I didn’t take the bus anywhere, and that we were not so far away at all. I tell them about the camper, and how I couldn’t stand myself for hurting Stephen. How sorry I was.
Dad shakes his head. “We’ve been out of our minds with worry. I can’t believe you were so close all this time. The police have been looking for you in the city, visiting all of Tarin’s friends.”
Mom looks at me with red eyes. “Don’t ever do that to us again.”
I nod and squeeze her hand on the table. “Never,” I say, and I turn to Stephen. “And I hope you can forgive me, one day, for stabbing your foot.”
“Well,” he says, “we’re not letting you around the kitchen knives for a long, long time.”
And when I look at them, the three people who love me most in the world, I know that if we are going to make this work, really be a family, it’s time to put everything out in the open. I take a deep breath.
“I learned something while I was gone. About what happened with Ramses.”
Mom and Dad look surprised. “Did you remember?” Mom says.
I shake my head. “I found a photo.”
“Photo?” Dad says. “Of what?”
“A selfie I took. Standing in front of the pen. I think maybe it was right before I got hurt.”
Mom and Dad glance at each other, and Stephen stares down at the table. “But,” Dad says, “you didn’t have your phone with you. That doesn’t make sense.”
“It was on a camera I found in the basement,” I say. “And I found this too.” I reach into the duffel bag and unfold the red scarf, smoothing it with my hands on the middle of the table.
Stephen lifts his head, his face twisted in confusion. “What are you doing?” he says, his voice trembling. “Why are you doing this?”
“I need to understand, Stephen,” I say.
A shudder goes through Little Man’s body, like a huge pressure has been building inside and he can’t keep it there anymore. “But when you woke up, in the hospital,” he says, his voice high and shaky, “I tried to talk to you about what happened. You said we never needed to talk about it again, that it didn’t matter.”
He looks at me with so much desperation, I feel it clutching at me. “I’m sorry, Stephen,” I say. “I only said that because I was tired, and you looked so upset. Please, Little Man. Help me out.”
“What,” Dad says, his voice sharp and impatient, “are you two talking about?”
Stephen lets out a long, deep sigh. And I feel it coming. Finally, the moment of truth. “I know
what happened to Jessica.”
Mom’s hand flies to her mouth. “What? How?”
“I know,” Stephen says, “because I was there.”
Dad slams his hand on the table. “You were in the pen too?”
Stephen nods, then turns to face me. “At first,” he says slowly, “in the house, I went along with your plan. You said you wanted to play fashion shoot. That I could be a famous photographer taking photos of a movie star. Pierre, you called me. You said photos in front of the bison would be cool. I had to go to the bathroom, so I said I’d meet you at the pen.”
I nod for him to go on.
“But then, when I got there, you were opening the gate. When I asked what you were doing, you said the fence would ruin the pictures. You had that dumb scarf around your head and said you wanted something more artistic. You wanted to lie in the hay, stretched out, with the bison in the background. You told me what avant-garde meant. I said that it was too risky, but you said the bison knew you, that they trusted you. You looked me in the eye and said, I need to do this, Stephen. Promise me that you will never, ever tell. This will be our secret, to carry to the grave. I said I didn’t want to, that I was going to run and get Mom and Dad.”
“So,” Mom says, “why didn’t you?”
Little Man wraps his arms around himself. “I had never seen your face like that. You looked so determined—almost angry. We always look out for each other, you said. I always have your back, now you have to cover mine. You said that if I couldn’t keep your secret, you couldn’t keep mine.” He freezes, his face contorting with emotion. He struggles to keep it in, but a sob wracks his body. “You said,” he chokes out, “that you would tell Mom and Dad what I had done.”
I don’t get it for a few seconds as I watch him put his head down on his folded arms. Mom gets up and puts her arms around him. But then the thought gets clearer in my mind: the old Jessica had something on him, something he was scared to get in trouble for. The Girl blackmailed him. Not exactly nice behavior from Miss Sweet-as-Candy.
“I swear,” I say gently, “I have no idea what you did. And even if I did remember, I wouldn’t rat you out.”
Mom lets him out of her embrace and he sits up, rubbing his face on his sleeve. “It’s all right,” he says. “I was going to tell the truth about everything anyway. How I was looking down at the camera, trying to figure out the buttons. I heard a thumping on the ground and when I looked up, Ramses came charging out of nowhere. I yelled at you to run, but you tripped on a rock. Your scarf went flying. And then Ramses was there. I felt so helpless. I grabbed the scarf—I don’t know why. Then I ran to get help. But when I was on my way to the house, Dad found you. I could hear him yelling from the pen, and when I reached the front door, I told Mom you were hurt. I was going to confess everything, and I didn’t care if I got into trouble or if you told my secret.”
He lets out a long breath. “But then I saw you lying there in the hospital, all beat up. I knew you might die, that I might never talk to you again. And I couldn’t break our promise. You were right.” He smiles weakly at me. “We’ve always had each other’s backs. So I hid the camera and the scarf. I didn’t know you had taken a selfie before I got to the pen, or I would have erased it.”
I smile back at him, and my eyes water. Oh, Little Man. What hell the Girl has put him through: the weight of his secret, a crazy sister and the farm going up for sale. All this for some artsy photos to prove she could do something daring, different. My mind goes over the past few weeks. Stephen’s strange behavior when I asked him about the Very Bad Day. The feeling I had that he blamed me for Mom and Dad wanting to sell the farm. Even small things, like his frustration when I wanted to drive the quad. Who’s going to know? I had said. And his answer: I will. You will. Isn’t that enough? So many things make sense now.
But Stephen is not done. He turns to face Mom and Dad. “One day when you weren’t home, I did something really stupid and dangerous. I broke into the gun cabinet, and I took out Dad’s shotgun.” Little Man’s face flushes red, but he shows courage and carries on. “I went out back and put shells in it, like Dad showed me, and I shot at some cans. I was careful, and everything was fine. But then, on my last shot, Ginger came popping out of nowhere, and the bullet almost hit her.” His eyes well up and his body goes limp. “I could have killed her. It was horrible.” He looks at me now, and the guilt I see in his eyes clenches a fist around my heart.
A heavy silence hangs in the room. Then Dad stands up. He goes around the table and wraps his arms around Stephen. Little Man looks deflated. “We will definitely be talking about this more later,” he says. “But for now, thank you for telling the truth.”
“Stephen,” Mom says. “Our dear, dear Stephen.” And she runs her fingers gently across his forehead and into his hair.
My little bro suffered through this for a sister I had thought was so damn perfect. I should hate the Girl, should march into the bathroom and tell her what I think of her. That she’s a blackmailer and a manipulator. That her need to prove she could do something interesting was pathetic, and she should be ashamed. But despite all that, I’m not one tiny bit angry. She didn’t have it all figured out either. Like me, she was trying desperately to be her own person without disappointing the people she cared about. All this time I’ve been cowering under her shadow, trying to live up to an ideal that wasn’t even real. A feeling of serenity comes over me, a melting away of all the pressure I’ve been carrying around the past weeks.
“Geez,” I say, “I used to be a horrible jerk. But don’t worry—brain damage has fixed me all up.”
Stephen lets out a choked laugh, and, surprisingly, Mom and Dad laugh too.
After our big talk, I call Tarin’s mother and give her all the information I have on Falcon. I hope Tarin won’t hate me, but I think—I hope—that if her mother would show Tarin she cares, genuinely cares, they can make things better. I get off the phone and a tidal wave of fatigue hits me. I am on my way to the stairs when I pause in the doorway of the living room, where Mom and Dad sit holding hands on the couch.
“Mom? Dad?” I say. “Do you think maybe we could reconsider the decision to sell the farm, if it’s not too late?”
They share a look. Mother nods slowly. “There are still a few conditions pending before the sale is final. So I suppose we could talk about it.”
It’s enough for me, for now.
Upstairs, I pay a visit to Stephen’s room. He looks exhausted too.
“I have one last thing to confess,” he says. “Don’t laugh at me, but every time I missed you when you were in the coma, I slept with that scarf.” His cheeks flush a deep pink. “I know. I’m a dork.”
“No,” I say. “You’re the best.” And I squeeze him so hard he lets out a squeal.
Then I collapse on my bed and drift off. It’s not quite as deep as the Big Sleep I began on April 26, but it’s pretty darn close.
The Olive Branch
I wake up early the next morning, and the house is quiet. I sneak down to the basement, connect the camera to the computer and download the selfie the Girl took seconds before everything changed. The Girl’s face, my face, is calm on the screen, youthful and innocent. Seeing her there, I feel a little sad but hopeful too. I lift my phone and take a new selfie, then email it to myself.
Once I have both selfies in the photo-editing program, I manipulate their colors—bright orange, some lime green in the backdrop. I place them side by side and surround them with a thick black frame. It’s perfect. Me and the Girl. Not entirely different, but not exactly the same either.
I save the image as Us, and then write a text to Tarin.
Please don’t be mad. I want to be your friend, but I couldn’t live with myself if you got hurt.
The next one is for Megan.
Hello BFF. I know I haven’t been easy to be around. Can I have another chance? No cupcakes, I promise.
There’s Ogre, too, to answer eventually. And also the email from the tbi sup
port group that might be worth checking out. But more urgent, there is someone else I need to talk to before I can truly start again.
Downstairs, I throw on my plaid coat and step outside into the chilly morning air. Ginger follows as I make my way to the bison pen. The herd is partway out to the field, but when I call, a few cows gallop over toward the fence. Behind them, the obvious king of the herd emerges. It’s Ramses, and he makes his way more slowly, his head down. He doesn’t get as close to the fence as the cows, but he’s looking toward me, waiting.
“I came to make peace,” I say. “I don’t hate you for what happened. I was in your space, I know. You’re the boss, and you were probably doing what you felt was right to protect your family. I can’t blame you for that.”
He lets out a snort and paws at the ground.
“So how about it?” I say. “Do you think there’s room for both of us out here?”
Another snort, and he turns and gallops off into the herd, sending a few young bulls trotting away from the bales. I lean on the fence and watch them for a few minutes, and the tiniest bit of warmth rises up inside of me. Jessica loved them, and maybe I can learn to, at least a little.
In the house, everyone is still sleeping, so I go back up to my room. The Girl is waiting there for me.
“Good morning,” I say, “my friend.”
She looks worn out, but there is a glint of hope in her tired eyes.
“Stop beating yourself up over it,” I say. “You’re only human.” She leans in closer, and I know she is listening. Finally.
“We’ve been through a lot together, haven’t we?” I say. “I know I’ve been a nightmare to deal with. But whether we like it or not, we’ve built this life together.”
And then I take a deep breath and work up the guts to do something I can no longer put off: ask her to step aside. “Do you think I can do it, make it all work, on my own? I’m ready to try. The big question is, are you willing to let me?”
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