“I need to go for a walk,” I said. I felt breathless, trapped.
She looked surprised and opened her mouth, then closed it again, before speaking. “Where exactly do you plan to go?”
“Just—” I gestured vaguely. I didn’t have anywhere in mind. “Along the beach. Not far. I’ll be back soon.”
“For what reason?”
“To get some air.”
“You’re not meeting anyone?”
I stared at her. “Who would I meet? I don’t know anyone here.”
“June,” she said, closing her book and tucking a bookmark inside. Eleanor Roosevelt looked at me, looked at her, and then curled up at her feet. “You can’t just leave. It’s almost ten o’clock, for goodness’ sake. I didn’t think we were going to have to talk about a curfew so soon, but your mother brought it up with me, and I think after sunset—”
“Jesus Christ.”
Oma did not berate me for cursing as my parents would have, but she did give me a piercing look that I disliked. I took a deep breath and let it out before speaking carefully and slowly. “I’m sorry. I’m not going anywhere or meeting anyone. I’m just feeling a little…claustrophobic. I would really, really like to take a walk. Alone. Please.”
She considered me for an uncomfortably long time. “Half an hour,” she said finally. “No more. Be back by ten thirty.”
“Fine. No problem.”
“And—” She set her book aside and rummaged in one of her large sweater pockets before coming up with her phone. “Let’s swap phones, shall we?”
I was so taken aback that I just stood there for a moment, unmoving. “What?”
“Well,” she said, her voice reasonable, “one of the great blessings of mobile phones is being able to call for help if something goes wrong. And I’m not going to send my granddaughter out into the night, even for a short while in a safe town, without a way to call for help. But if you are lying to me—” She gave me that look again. “It’ll be a little harder to do whatever you’re thinking of doing.”
This was not a technique my parents had ever tried. They had taken away my phone plenty of times, but they had never switched with me.
Oma held out both hands, one empty, her phone in the other. “Come on. Let’s have it.”
“This is weird,” I said.
She shrugged. “It’s this or no walk until we earn some trust together.”
I gave her my phone. “It’s locked,” I told her. “So you can’t look at my texts.”
“Oh, same here,” Oma said.
I didn’t know what to say to that.
She turned back to her book. “Ten thirty,” she said without looking up.
I left.
The windowless halls of the condominium building were silent and bright. I took the five flights of stairs down to the lobby and stepped out the door. The frozen air outside was a welcome shock. I took in one deep breath, then another, before hurrying down the path to the beach.
Beach was a generous term. Maybe twenty feet of damp brown sand, crunchy with rocks and sharp shells, separated the river from the edge of the grass. You couldn’t go barefoot here, even in the summer, when you might want to. On the rare visits when my family went swimming in the river instead of in the condo’s pool, we wore flip-flops. If you lost them in the water, you had to run back up to the soft grass dodging the worst of the rocks, praying you didn’t get cut.
Now, the sand clicked and snapped under my sneakers as I set out toward the school. I trained my eyes on the line of water to my left, brushing gently against the shore. It was silky and black except where it reflected the moonlight. I took my hands out of my pockets and let myself feel my own shivers, luxuriate in them. The cold returned me to myself.
When my parents had sat me down at the kitchen table and told me they were sending me away, they had laid out their reasons as if they were building a wall brick by brick: solid, inarguable. “We don’t want to do this,” they had said. “But…”
The closest public high school had gotten mediocre rankings for the past several years. (True, but not a reason; Oakview had a billion extracurriculars and AP classes. I would have had a good education there, and they knew it.)
They wanted me to have a closer relationship with my grandmother. (Might have been true, but again, not a real reason. Besides, Oma hadn’t made the request, and who were they to say what she wanted?)
Jess was a distraction and a bad influence. (Jess was witty and thoughtful and brilliant. She was my best friend. The only person completely on my side.)
I was setting a bad example for my siblings. (It didn’t matter what kind of example I set. At the age of twelve, the twins had more ambition and stronger senses of self than most full-grown adults.)
The status quo was not working. (I think by this my parents meant that they had tried various disciplinary actions to change my behavior, and my behavior had not changed. This, at least, was true.)
“We don’t want to do this,” they had said, but after that phone call, it felt very much like they wanted me gone. It must have been easier at home without me. They didn’t have to worry about Candace and Bryan breaking curfew or drinking or fighting with them. The twins’ friends were easy, well-behaved but distant, because Candace and Bryan were each other’s best friends.
I couldn’t blame my siblings. They really were great: smart and creative and charismatic, funny and weird and sweet. They were never disappointed in me. They always assumed I was doing my best. Even when they were so annoying that they enraged me—which was often, with all that energy—I loved them in a way that made me want to sweep them up and carry them on my shoulders.
I knew they missed me. I just wasn’t sure if my parents missed me, too.
A few yards of rocks separated the stretch of beach in front of the condos from the beach in front of the school. I clambered across them, stepping carefully in the dark from one flat plane to another, balancing occasionally on a sharp point, feeling it dig into the rubber of my shoes. On the other side, the sand was the same. I kept close to the water as I walked.
I pulled out my phone to text Jess and realized it was not my phone before putting it back in my pocket. 10:10. I would have to turn back soon. I thought about coming back to the condo late, just to see what would happen. But to what end? I had nothing to gain. Nothing was keeping me outside except my own restlessness and a loneliness too big for my body.
Campus was quiet. Up on the hill, two girls jogged from the athletics building to the dorms, one holding a volleyball under her arm, the pair of them lit up golden in the glow of the streetlights. Some other girls hadn’t closed the curtains of their dorm rooms, and through the window, I could see puzzle pieces of their lives: here a band poster, there a bookshelf. A girl leaning close to a mirror and touching her face. A girl talking on the phone and laughing.
I got as far as the arts building before turning back. I cut through campus and walked back toward the condos on the low stone wall, placing one foot in front of the other like a child. It slowed my progress, and to make up time, I ran the last little bit. By the time I got in the elevator, I was out of breath and coughing from the cold.
“10:28,” Oma said, looking up from her book as I walked in. She smiled, seeming genuinely pleased. “Two minutes to spare. How was your walk?”
“Good,” I said, still breathing hard. We exchanged phones. I checked to see if Jess had texted me, and indeed she had: I wish you were here to make me leave this stupid party. “How’s your book?”
“Excellent,” she answered.
I stood there for a moment, uncertain of the next step. Typically, my parents started asking questions as soon as I got home after being out at night, which I then deflected or answered minimally until they decided to fight about it or let me go to my room. But Oma seemed to have no questions. In fact, it seemed that what she really wa
nted was to get back to reading.
“Thank you,” I said at last. “I feel better.”
“Good,” she said. She paused for a moment, then continued, “You know, I’m here if you ever—you know—want to talk, or—”
“I know,” I cut her off. She looked a little relieved, and I wondered for a moment how my mother could have come from this woman. In appearance, they were clearly related; all three of us, in fact, looked like carbon copies of each other at different ages, the same dark-brown eyes, the same square jaws. But if my mother had learned to parent from her mother, Oma must have been very different as a younger woman.
“I’m going to bed,” I said, though just as I was turning to leave, a thought occurred to me, and I turned back. “I forgot to tell you,” I said, “I’m going to have brunch with some girls from school tomorrow. At Harold’s. I don’t think I need a ride. When I looked it up, it seemed like a short walk.” I paused. “That’s okay, right?”
Oma raised her eyebrows. “Of course. I was actually going to suggest we go out to lunch tomorrow, but if you already have plans…”
“We can go another time,” I said quickly, but Oma didn’t look offended that I had made arrangements for my weekend without her.
“Which girls, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Claire and Kitty…” I realized I didn’t know their last names, but I didn’t need to—Oma nodded. “We’re in the same science class. And I had lunch with them a few days ago.” I didn’t mention Sam. I had never gotten into trouble because of boys at home, but my parents didn’t trust any of the guys that Jess and I spent time with, no matter how many times I told them that Patrick was basically a walking mannequin and Ethan was great. Besides, Sam wasn’t part of our brunch plans, so I didn’t feel I was lying.
“Sure, I know them,” Oma answered easily. “I had both of them in my class last year. Really nice girls. Smart. A little…”
“A little what?” I was ready for her condemnation, but it didn’t come.
“Insular is what I was going to say,” she continued, “but that sounds bad, and that’s not the way I mean it.” She looked thoughtful. “They really only had eyes for each other is what I mean. I’m glad they’re branching out.”
“I’ll tell them they have your approval,” I said, and Oma started laughing.
“Lord, no need. They don’t need to hear anything more from me. The two of them passed my class with flying colors. I wish them only the best.”
“Well, I’ll tell them that,” I said, smiling. “Good night, Oma.”
“Good night, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart. She had called me that ever since I was a little girl, and it had always struck me as old-fashioned and funny, the kind of thing a grandmother says only for the sake of being a grandmother. But tonight, the word and the way she said it—gentle, as if she were holding it in her hands like a baby bird—made me want to sit down next to her and tell her everything. The phone call and the suffocation that followed. All my anger and fear and the emotions I had not sorted out yet. I wanted to tell her things I didn’t even know about myself, and come to know them in the telling.
But only for a moment. It passed, and I didn’t speak, and I went to bed.
Seven
I woke up the next morning to the sun shining brightly on my pillow. It was so nice to see the sun that I didn’t even mind the light waking me up. It had been such a gray week that I had assumed the room was naturally dim. But no—I would need to ask Oma to buy curtains. I took a shower, got dressed, and stepped outside to the balcony, hoping the air had given up some of its chill. It had not. But the wind had calmed, and the sun on my skin had a faint, promising warmth, and that was something.
Oma was in the living room, reading with Ellie. “You off to brunch?” she asked.
“It’s not till later. But I have to shoot a roll of film for my photography class. I was thinking I’d walk around a little and do that beforehand. Explore.” I hadn’t really been thinking that until this very moment, but I did have to take some pictures, and I didn’t want to take all of them here. I shuddered at the idea of showing my class a collection of photographs set exclusively in the home of their old history teacher.
Oma nodded. “Sounds good. Text me when you’re headed home, okay? We don’t need to swap phones this time,” she added, smiling. “As long as you’re back before it gets dark. I was thinking of making eggplant parm tonight.”
“Yeah, of course,” I said. “But there’s something I want your help with first.”
Oma stood beside me while I made French press coffee for both of us. She corrected me as I went, stopping me from grinding the beans too fine and showing me how long to wait for the water to cool before pouring it into the glass. Still, though, when we took our first sip, it was not quite right. She narrowed her eyes.
“Usually it tastes better than this,” she said. “Maybe it was all the stopping and starting we had to do.”
“This is better than I did a few days ago. I’ll get it eventually. This helped. Thank you.”
“I’ll think on it.”
I brought the coffee in my thermos as I left the condo and set out in the approximate direction of Harold’s, which, according to the map on my phone, was a little more than a mile away. I held my camera by my side as I wandered, but I didn’t see anything worth photographing. The air was cold and quiet. No one was out and about at this time, not that I would have felt comfortable aiming my camera at a stranger. I passed a crooked street sign that I thought might look good silhouetted against the sky; when I held the camera up to my eye, though, it just looked flat. There was a lawyer’s office with a red door, and I was about to click the shutter when I realized that in black and white, you wouldn’t be able to see the difference between the door and the brick walls around it.
After ten minutes of walking, I hadn’t taken a single picture, and I was starting to question whether any photography was interesting.
But this was just homework. I knew how to do homework. My phone told me there was a park nearby, so I turned left on the next street and resolved to take at least ten pictures.
Thus far, I had walked on the same street that my family always drove coming into town, so I was familiar with most of the buildings, even if I had never looked at them closely. But this street was new to me. It was narrow at first, but a little ways down, a wide, grassy median split the two lanes like an island.
I walked down the double yellow line in the center until I reached it. The brown grass was soft under my boots. A few trees stood on the median, branches bare of leaves, and underneath the trees were some large, misshapen rocks.
Not rocks. Headstones.
I took a step back and nearly fell off the curb. I glanced around quickly, but no one was around to see me spooked. I walked the length of the median, looking more closely at each grave. All the headstones were low, curved, and simple, the edges rough with decay and the letters smooth and indistinct. The newest, from 1924, had a crude etching of a dove on the top; the oldest, from 1893, had crumbled half away. All of them shared the same last name.
I let myself imagine for a moment that I believed in ghosts. I didn’t, and even if I had, it was hard to get too emotional about a family of strangers a century ago. But it was inescapably eerie.
I knelt and framed the first gravestone in my viewfinder, turned the dials until the light meter was satisfied, and clicked. I did the same with the others, reading them as I went and ending with one where the inscription was still legible:
Beloved daughter. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Matthew 5:8
“I never would’ve thought to take pictures here.”
A male voice, off to my left. I put the camera down, cautious, but it was only Sam, standing on the sidewalk and grinning. He had his own camera slung around his chest like a necklace and
his hands jammed into his coat pockets, and he looked pleased to see me. I stood up.
“This is weird, right?” I said, gesturing to the graves. “A cemetery in the middle of the road?”
“It is weird,” Sam admitted. He came across the street to join me on the median, but not before checking both ways for cars, a needless, childlike motion that made me smile. “But it’s always been here. There’s another little cemetery in the convenience store parking lot up a few blocks,” he said, nodding in that direction. “I have no clue why.”
“Maybe this was a family’s backyard once, and their house was torn down, but they didn’t want to move the graves.”
“Yeah, maybe.” He wasn’t standing too close to me, which I appreciated. He wasn’t tall, but he was solidly built, and I was acutely aware of the emptiness of the road around us. Of being alone in a place I didn’t know well, with a boy I had only just met. “Or maybe there was a church.”
“There are so many churches around here already.”
“Maybe it was a very small church,” he proposed, and I laughed.
“The classic five-person church,” I said.
He shrugged and smiled. “I’m Jewish. I wouldn’t know. But it is something interesting to photograph, I’ll give you that.”
“Yeah.” I looked around the road. I was avoiding meeting his eyes. Every time I did, it felt as if he were seeing me one level deeper than I wanted him to. I nodded at the camera resting on his chest. “I take it you’re also out here for our photography assignment?”
“I would probably be out here with my camera even if we didn’t have the assignment, but yeah.” He pointed up the road and to the left. “There’s a park up there where I was planning on going. I don’t have any great ideas, though. Usually on Saturday mornings, I walk around until I see something I want to take a picture of. That could’ve been these headstones, but…”
“Beat you to it. And actually, I was on my way to that park when I stopped here, so in some ways…”
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