by Phoebe North
“Yeah,” Annie agrees grimly. She’s standing next to the interior door, her head cast to one side and hair trailing down her shoulder. She looks pretty, young, sad. I want to tell her that I’ve been there, thinking of James in an endless, useless way but totally unable to speak his name to anyone. The other girls didn’t get it. Not even Harper. The only person I was even remotely friendly with who really knew James really was Neal Harriman, and he transferred to private school last year.
But before I can tell her that, she turns away. “Want a snack?” she asks.
I tell her, “Sure.”
As we walk through her house, Annie turns every single light on, until everything is sickly yellow inside. We stand in the kitchen, our weight against the counters, eating string cheese and glasses of iced tea made from a powdered mix. I have a weird feeling, like we’re little kids on a playdate or something, and our parents might come in at any second and tell us to be sure to share nicely. But we’re alone in Annie’s house. There are no grown-ups here.
She wads up the plastic wrapper from her cheese in her palm and tosses it in the trash can. Then she grins at me. “Are you ready?”
I’m not sure what to expect. Magic. Or nothing. Or everything. James, returned from the dead. A forest full of ghosts. Nervously, I nod.
Annie leads me out the back door.
“This is it,” she says as we stand on the edge of a creek that is hardly even a creek. It’s totally dried up in spots, just a muddy bog.
But on the other side is their magical kingdom. The epic, fantastical land of Gumlea. I remember how James used to blush at the babyish name, and I can imagine him blushing now. It’s not much to look at. There’s some kind of plastic ride-on toy stuck in the mud a few feet away. The woods ahead are tangled with underbrush and litter. It’s nothing more than a narrow strip of land. You can even make out the traffic from Route 32 on the other side through the tree line. I see poison ivy, broken bottles, crows. But no knights or princesses or whatever.
The house is like four car lengths behind us. I glance over my shoulder.
“And your parents don’t care if we go out there, even after what happened?”
“Mom doesn’t care what I do. Dad would probably kill me, but he doesn’t have to know, right?”
Before I can answer, she launches herself over the creek in one swift movement, landing with her sneakers heavy and thick in the mud. Then she does something strange. She stands straight, squaring her shoulders, and takes one step backward. Then she turns around.
“Your turn,” she says, and her whole face lights up. Her eyeteeth stick out a little when she smiles, I realize. It’s different from James’s smile, which was all straight and perfect after years of braces.
Plus there’s that dimple. God.
I bumble over the creek, my steps uncertain. When I make it to the other side, Annie elbows me.
“Step backward,” she says. “That’s how you enter Gumlea.”
I hesitate. “This feels . . .”
“Ridiculous, I know. But come on, you must have had tea parties as a kid. Played house, whatever. You get up there and sing in medieval robes in front of the whole school and no one cares. Who’s watching you? Just me, and I’m crazy. I won’t judge.”
She’s looking at me with James’s eyes, and a smile all her own. More flip-flops. More hope sparking in my brain. Maybe we could share something. So I draw in a deep breath, hold it for a moment, and exhale.
Then I step backward, too.
Seven
I’M NO IDIOT. I’M NEARLY seventeen years old. I never believed in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. My mother always said she didn’t want me to be surprised when I got older, like she was, so she started teaching me about the birds and the bees out of old anatomy textbooks back in elementary school. I never believed in the stork, and I knew that Bloody Mary wasn’t going to appear in our elementary school bathroom no matter how many times Harper said her name. But still, when I step back into Gumlea, I find myself hoping that something will happen. Lightning will split the sky. A beam of light will lift me off the ground. I’ll see a doorway open in the line of trees and find myself barreling toward it, pushed by the wind and the farts of unicorns. It’s a crazy, stupid hope, and yet I can’t help but cling to it. Funny thing is, I had no idea I was unhappy here until there fails to materialize.
Because when I step backward, I’m still in the woods, my clean new hiking boots sinking into the mud.
Annie’s grinning at me, a toothy, wild grin, even though we haven’t really entered a magical kingdom. Even though we’re nothing more than a couple of ridiculous kids playing make-believe in the scrubby woods behind her house. Even though we’re too old for make-believe, for any of it. It doesn’t seem to bother her at all. She waves me forward.
“Come on,” she says. “Let’s go.”
There’s nothing else to do but shrug and follow her. The woods smell like dirt and moss. We tromp a rhythm over the broken glass that’s shattered like diamonds and buried in the mud. Annie talks to me in a low, excited voice as we walk. It’s like she’s waited her whole life to have someone to tell this stuff. And I know that feeling. There’s been so much I haven’t shared with anybody, not since James disappeared. Music and stories. Absurd dreams. Brian Wilson.
“Do you come out here much?” I ask, looking around at the garbage—at the rotting boards someone’s nailed to a maple tree. She touches them, frowning.
“Not often enough, I guess. I should fix that. That’s the fortress of the Emperata Annit. Or at least it used to be. Oh, hey, look! This is the Castle of the Solitary King!”
The “castle” is a massive tree, half-rotted through, carved with the initials of what I’m assuming were a million boys long since grown: CH, NH, GR, JK, AK. We’re walking deeper and deeper into the gray tangle of underbrush. I can tell we’re not the only ones who have made this trip. Beneath my feet, I can see the tracks of mountain bikes and big-footed dogs. Annie tells me they’re wolf tracks, signs of a Winter Watcher.
We walk past a picnic table that’s all bent and caked with spray paint. Annie tells me that this is a pirate ship. She rambles something about feeding the ship mermaid flesh, waving her hands wildly through the air. The thing is, I’m sure she used to share these stories with James. They must have meant something to both of them. I know that’s why she’s telling me now. I’m connected to him, maybe more than anyone else. I knew him, kissed him. I remember what it was like to whisper low words into his ear. But James and I hardly ever talked about any of this. We talked about thick doorstop fantasy novels, the ones I stole off my dad’s bookshelves and traded with him. We talked about God—my lack of belief, his massive question mark. We talked about the next time we could get each other alone. The handful of times he told me anything about Gumlea, he blushed, embarrassed. Or else expressed annoyance at his weird, obsessive little sister who wouldn’t let her fantasies go. We were in middle school, after all. Too old to have an imagination.
Annie doesn’t blush anymore. When I first mentioned Gumlea to her, it was like I was slinging arrows into her private heart. But now that I’ve uncorked her, Annie has no shame. She’s decided to share Gumlea with me—so I guess that means she’s going to share every rock, every stone, every single myth. James let it all go, but it’s clear, even though it’s been a while since she’s been out here in these woods, that Annie never has.
I don’t notice we’re walking uphill until Annie’s words catch in her throat for a second and then she gets quiet, all at once. I’m breathing harder, too, and as our shoes grip the surface of the hard rock, carved into a mountain face by polar ice thousands of years ago, the sound of our progress is almost like a chorus. This is better, I tell myself, the silence. She’s no longer saying anything weird, anything scary. I’m relieved. Honestly, part of me feels like I’ve just slipped into the woods with a madwoman. Even while another part of me is undeniably crushing on her.
She parts a thick wall of
brush with her hand. Turning back, she grins at me. “You’ll like this,” she says. “Winter Watcher’s mountain.”
I follow her through the door of gold-tipped leaves, and suck in a breath. We’ve reached some sort of rocky outcropping where the rock face falls away into nothing. The wind whips, cool and biting, all around us, but the sun is warm and perfect. Annie sits on the rock, squinting into the distance. You can see everything here, our whole world. There’s the high school, hollow school buses lined up outside. There’s Kirky’s Deli, the supermarket, the bank, the library, the massive river that curls through downtown, a chain of garden apartments. There’s the Thruway in the distance, the cars shivering down it. I perch beside Annie.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, because it is. Funny to see it like this. It looks almost like a scale model of our lives instead of the real deal. Truth is, I spend a lot of my time looking ahead. College, semesters abroad, maybe internships in New York City. Bands I might join, like the one my dad joined. Boys and girls I might kiss when I finally get out of this boring town. I spend a lot of time fantasizing about the music I’ll write and the adventures I’ll have. I spend a lot of time fantasizing about just getting . . . away. But here’s my whole life, sunlit and perfect, and for a second, I can almost remember what it felt like to be a little kid and be happy with it. I glance at Annie.
She’s not happy anymore, though. In fact, her expression is sour again. There’s heat in her voice. “I hate it. All of it. Every fucking apple on every fucking tree. School and our parents and fucking Nina. I’m trapped here, though, until Jamie comes back.”
I have no idea who Nina is. Does she mean Nina Westervelt? But before I can ask, something darkens behind her eyes. “I was so pissed when Jamie didn’t want to come out here anymore. It’s the only good thing about our whole world, and he shit on it. Even before he disappeared. First with sports, and Neal. Then there was the pot. And you.”
She looks directly at me. My hands are cold. On the one hand, what she’s saying is ridiculous. The pot, like she’s some grandpa who’s not quite down with the ways of kids these days. I want to defend myself, tell her it wasn’t like that. We were innocent, James and me, only kids. But that wasn’t true, was it? I remember the afternoons in Neal’s basement, Neal gone God knows where. I remember the pipe smoldering on the coffee table, and the weight of James’s body on mine. It felt like we spent a lifetime in that basement. Talking about books and poetry and music. Any time away from it, in the real world, was time we were starved to get back. Part of it was just lust, adolescent and basic. But I think there was a sort of communion in the time we spent together. Something sacred, silent and beautiful.
I see you, he used to say to me. You’re not like anyone else.
That’s not true, I’d tell him quickly. I’m just like you.
I wanted it to be true. I wanted to be made out of magic, like James was made out of magic. Like we were a pair of ancient elves, married to one another, and not just a couple of middle school kids. But really, I know—I’ve always known—that it’s not true. I’m not magic. I’m just an ordinary girl. I was nothing like James, not really. And looking at Annie, I know that I’m nothing like her, either.
It hurts to look at her. Hurts to think it. So instead, I look over to the town. Sunlight is coming in through the clouds in slanted rays like a picture from some kind of Jesus calendar. That’s when I realize something. I stand, shading my eyes with my hand, and look back the way we came.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I say.
“What, you stealing my brother?” Annie asks.
I shake my head. “No, not that. This place. We could see the road from your yard. There’s no room for a mountain here.”
I hear Annie let out a small laugh behind me.
“Gumlean geography,” she says. “It works differently than your Earth geography.”
“That’s nuts. That doesn’t . . .”
I let my words fade. Because honestly? I want to believe this mountain is real. So I glance back at Annie. She’s still sitting on the rock, watching me, dressed in blue jeans and a too-big men’s T-shirt that shows her pale collarbones and a little too much of her bony chest. Her bare lips are pursed. She’s angry at me, still, for taking her brother away—even though I never meant to take anything from anyone. But she’s half something else, too. Amused. Laughing at me in her own silent way, golden sunlight illuminating her black eyelashes. Her legs are all akimbo on the rock. Her fingers are slightly curled into a bed of moss.
An image flashes through my head. It’s fantastic, absurd as her stories. In my mind’s eye, I see myself going to her. I’d sit beside her and brush the hair back from her shoulder and out of her face so I could see her better. Then I’d kiss her. I’d touch her throat, her small breasts, wrap my legs around her waist, feel the whole world tilt around me.
Damn. I shouldn’t be thinking this way. Annie is watching me still, and her anger’s fading, but now she’s just confused. I’m staring too much, and for too long.
“I miss your brother,” I tell her, because that’s the only explanation for it, isn’t it? I was always drawn to James. My body was an instrument, tuned to his. They’re similar, almost like twins. I’m lying to myself, and I know it, but I choose to believe it anyway.
Annie looks down at her dirty fingernails. “I do, too. I’ve tried to bring him back. I’ve had dreams about it. The Nameless Boy—that’s Jamie in our stories—he killed the pirate already. He should have come home. I think he’s waiting for me to do something. Work a spell or find his knife or just open the damned door. The ritual. We have to do it, both of us. But I can’t. I’ve failed him.” Her voice cracks then, and finally she adds, “He’s never coming back, and it’s all because of me.”
“You know it’s not your fault, right?” I ask her, ignoring her fantasy talk.
She rubs her forehead with the tips of her fingers. “Yeah. Rationally, I know that. But sometimes it still feels like it is.”
The wind whips up around us. Her hair is a brown cloud around her face. She lets out a sniffle, but it’s lost in the chorus of air, distant traffic, and stirring leaves. When it dies down again, she wipes her eyes on the back of her hand. She’s still sniffling, but less now. I go and sit beside her.
“You know, I haven’t been able to listen to the Beach Boys since he left.”
“The Beach Boys?”
“We were supposed to have a date that Friday. He was going to come over, and I was going to play my dad’s Beach Boys bootlegs.”
“Like . . . ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’?” she asks, a wry smile brightening her crooked mouth.
“Not all of their stuff is like that. Some of it’s amazing. James thought it was silly, too. I wanted to show him that it wasn’t. Sometimes, I feel like I’m still waiting for that Friday to come. I wanted to share something with him. I thought, out of anyone, James would understand.”
Annie tucks her hair behind her ears. “You could play it for me,” she says.
“What?”
“Jamie and I are practically the same person. I know it doesn’t look like it. But if he’s out there somewhere, and I think he is, then you could play it for me. Somehow, he’ll hear it.”
“That sounds like more of your stories. Fairy magic. Kids’ stuff.”
She shrugs. “Maybe. But I know you wanted to show him. So why not try? Everyone goes around acting like there isn’t any magic. What if there is? Isn’t it better to believe me than to believe that?”
There is no magic in the world. That’s what I’ve always told myself. What I’ve always believed. For a few minutes in middle school, when I loved Tolkien and James, I hoped I might be wrong. But that dried up when he disappeared. Now I pretend I’m an ordinary girl and pretend that makes me happy. But it never does.
“Okay,” I say softly.
Annie’s smile gets a little wider. Then she stands, fishes her phone from her pocket, and looks down at it. “We should head back. My mom will b
e home soon.”
“Okay,” I agree, because I don’t want to see Annie’s mom at all. I take one last look down at the town below, the people like tiny plastic figurines, the cars like die-cast toys, the shape of the mountain impossible. This mountain shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t, either. But we both are. Together.
I turn and follow her down the path, my heart beating gently in my throat.
We giggle together when we step away from Gumlea like a pair of kids who have had too much candy to eat. Maybe it’s the sun fading through the trees and maybe it’s the prospect of listening to Brian Wilson with her, but I feel good and peaceful now. So, the girl’s got an overactive imagination. Maybe I would, too, if I’d gone through what she has, brother gone and parents divorcing and all that.
I text my mom, and Annie and I sit on the front steps together to wait. We don’t talk about Gumlea anymore. We talk about Madrigals. I tell her all about the trips we’ll be taking this year, how people always smuggle booze in their bags and then hide it in the tanks of the motel toilets. “My parents would freak if they knew. I’m allowed to have a glass of wine here and there at home, but I’m not supposed to do it out of the house,” I tell her. Then I catch her expression out of the corner of my eye. Not disapproving, but shocked, like she’s seeing some other side of me. I sigh, remembering what she said about her brother smoking, and add, “I don’t even like to drink that much. I mixed vodka and wine last year and couldn’t stop puking.”
“Oh,” she says, like she’s relieved, and it’s kinda adorable. “I’ve only ever had wine at Passover.”
My mom rolls up then in our SUV, which looks black in the waning sunlight. I stand, clutching at my backpack straps.
Annie squints up at me.
“So you’ll come over this weekend?” I say, adding quickly, “To listen to records,” in case she’s forgotten.
“It would have to be Saturday morning, earlyish. I go to my dad’s Saturday nights into Sundays and he’s weird about losing his time.”