by Phoebe North
“Are you happy now?” I ask her. Kiss her kiss her, I’m thinking, watching the way she bites at her lip. But the moment isn’t right. Not quite. Not yet.
“I will be,” she tells me. “This knife is the key to everything. You saved him, Vidya. You saved him.”
The way she’s talking scares me a little, but it doesn’t matter, because Annie puts the knife down on the ground beside her cairn and crawls over to me across the warm, never-turned earth. She plants her mouth on mine, and we’re kissing and laughing and kissing again, our bodies bright, our hearts furiously beating, and as a thousand bones are turned to dust beneath us, we are the only things alive.
I hold her hand and walk her home. Birds are singing and she has the knife tucked into the waistband of her jeans like some kind of fucking pirate and she looks so, so happy that I almost expect her to take off, flying above the sidewalk, still holding my hand in hers.
To be honest, I could fly a little, too.
She hasn’t stopped talking since we left the cemetery. She has big plans for that knife, a whole ceremony plotted out. There will be singing and prayers and offerings to the king. Nothing weird, she says, in case I was scared she was going to sacrifice a small animal or something—just some drawings she’s done. She says that Jamie will have to do his part on the other side, but she has faith in him. He’s been trying to get back to her, she says. She’s sure of it.
Do I believe her? Do I think this whole weirdo ceremony will work? Hell, probably not. But I’m watching her as she talks, and it’s like her whole body is sparkling. She’s so damned animated, waving her free hand through the air. I wonder how she comes up with this stuff, and if it makes her feel better about . . . you know, everything.
I wish I could believe. That I could work magic like this, too. The thing is, the more time I spend around Annie, the more I feel like it’s really, truly, ridiculously possible.
But then, as we cross the street to her house, she gets quiet all of a sudden, biting her lip. “We’ll have to wait until the winter solstice,” she says. “It’ll be cold to be out in the woods, but the veil is thinner then. There’s no way it’ll work now.”
I feel relieved. Part of me wondered if she was going to ask me to pull James between worlds now, while we wait for my dad to pick me up. “That’s fine,” I say, and squeeze her hand. “I’m not going anywhere.”
We stop in the middle of the road to kiss. Someone could hit us with their minivan. I don’t care. Her body is pressed up against mine at all the right points.
When she pulls away she says, “Spend the night? Please. It’s my birthday tomorrow, right?”
That knife worked better than I thought. I say, “I’ll have to ask my parents.”
But that doesn’t faze her. Nothing does, I think. “Cool,” she says, breaking away from me, racing toward her house.
I rush after.
Twelve
DAD’S NOT HAPPY TO HEAR I’m staying over Annie’s. “You’re supposed to go with your mom to see Naniji and Nanaji tomorrow,” he says, and he sounds worried when he says it—probably because he knows he’s going to be in for it when he tells Mom. I feel bad. I twist my mouth. I’d forgotten. Or maybe I hadn’t exactly forgotten but had wanted to forget.
We’re not close, my grandparents and me. They love me in their way, but they don’t understand me at all. They always make it clear, though, that it’s a problem with Mom—not with me. If only she’d married the boy they wanted her to marry, if only she’d raised me the way that she had been raised. If only I’d been taught to cover myself up like a good Indian girl, to stay away from white boys . . . they never even mention that I’ve dated white girls. That’s a kind of crime they can’t even imagine.
And I guess I love them in their way, too, but it’s hard being around them sometimes, when I hear Mom fighting with them on the phone late at night because they don’t like the outfit I’m wearing in my school photos and they don’t approve of my grades, which are pretty good, I think, but never spectacular in anything except music. Mom always sticks up for me, but it breaks my heart a little bit that she has to stand up for me at all. We could all get along, I think, if they took even a moment to stop trying to make me—and my mother—into the daughters they think a daughter should be.
“Can she go without me just this once, please?” I say. Then I lower my voice, hoping that Annie can’t hear me speak from where I’m sitting in their living room, even though she’s only one thin wall away, talking to her own mother. “It’s a girl.”
There’s a long pause. It’s been a long time since I told him about anyone. Not since Keira.
“Crap,” he says. And it’s one of those weird minutes where talking to Dad almost feels more like talking to a brother than a father. “You know your mother’s going to kill me if she finds out I’m covering for you.”
“Pleeeeease, Daddy?” I ask, and I hear him sigh.
“Is she at least nice?” he asks. “Nicer than the last one?”
I glance over my shoulder to where I know Annie is waiting, and probably listening, too. “Yes,” I tell him. “She’s super nice. An artist. You’d like her.”
He would like her. They could talk about Led Zeppelin together or something. It’s not a lie.
“You know that if this is serious, then we’re going to have to meet her parents.”
I nod my head a little. I knew that. I just didn’t want to think about it. “It might be hard. They’re, like, going through a divorce right now.”
“Her mother, then. We’ll have her over for dinner soon. Your mother will be thrilled.”
Mom tried this with Keira, too, the whole respectable meeting-your-girlfriend’s-parents thing. Of course, it never happened. Didn’t matter how many times I asked for her mom’s number or told her my mom wanted to friend hers on Facebook. Wasn’t going to happen.
I don’t really want it to happen with Annie, either. It’s too much, too weird. How would I ever explain that this was James’s mother, too? But I know that this time I have to throw Mom a bone. Especially if I want my father to cover for me. And he probably will. He’s a total sucker for some light teenage rebellion.
“Sure, I’d like that,” I say with a summer breeze in my voice, and then add, “I’ll call you tomorrow afternoon when I need a ride home.”
I don’t mention Nanaji and Naniji again, and he doesn’t, either. I know there’ll be fallout from that for him—but that he’ll weather it just for me. Sitting on the sofa at Uncle Jovan’s house, listening to my grandparents pick my mother apart. He sighs one last time.
“Don’t get into any trouble,” he tells me. “I love you.”
I tell him that I love him, too. Then the line goes quiet.
“Everything okay with your parents?” Annie says as she saunters into the living room, then sprawls out across the sofa like she owns the place. I guess she does.
“Yeah,” I say simply, even if it’s half a lie. “Yours?”
Annie shrugs. “She won’t be back until, like, eleven. She has night classes on Fridays. When I said that a friend was sleeping over, she just figured I meant Miranda and I didn’t correct her.”
I look at her for a long time. Her pale face, moonish in the daylight that’s fading behind the curtains, doesn’t show any emotion. Not happiness, or even pain.
“But tomorrow is your birthday,” I say. “Don’t you have anything planned?”
Annie shrugs again. “Yeah, she’ll make disgusting pancakes or something, but that’s usually it. Honestly, I think she’d rather forget,” she says, so matter-of-factly that my teeth grit a little bit to hear it. My mom would never forget my birthday, not for a minute. But I understand a little better when she adds, “You know, because it’s his birthday, too.”
Her brother comes home a while after that. Well, her other brother. Elijah. He’s got a face that’s a little likes James’s but fatter, and big hands and feet and a skinny body. He’s nine and looks kind of like a disheveled pupp
y. He barely makes eye contact when she introduces us, then sits at the dining room table to wait for his dinner while Annie makes it for him.
I get up and help because that’s what you do in my family—and that’s why it bothers me so much that he just sits there. He’s old enough, I think, to microwave his own plate of leftovers. But without skipping a beat, she does it for him. I plate us up some leftover pasta, too, and before I know it I’m sitting at the table with both of them, about to dig in.
But just as Annie picks up her fork, she sets it down again.
“The candles! I almost forgot!”
I’m not sure what I’m expecting. Some kind of Wiccan stuff, I guess? A bunch of tapers carved with runes? But Annie gets a pair of brass candlesticks out from under the sink instead, plus two of those white emergency candles. She lights them, covers her face, and murmurs a prayer into her hands. I guess it’s Hebrew. Elijah rolls his eyes and digs into dinner before she’s even done.
“What was that about?” I ask her carefully, making sure to sound curious and gentle as Annie sits down in the seat across from me. It’s weird, how normal this feels, a family dinner without any parents.
“Shabbat prayers,” she says. “We don’t go to synagogue anymore. But I’ve been reading about what makes someone Jewish, and if you participate in rituals, that’s enough. Well, according to some people, it’s enough if your mother is. I don’t know. It just feels important to me. I think Eli should hear the prayers, too.”
More eye rolling from Eli. “I don’t care about that stuff,” he says, like it’s an old argument. “I’m Christian now, anyway.”
“I don’t think you can choose like that.”
“I just did. But thanks, Mom.” He flings food at her with his fork, but she’s not offended. She only giggles, then looks down, guiltily, at her plate.
“You probably think it’s stupid,” she says to me. “You’re, like, Hindu, right?”
My hands feel a little tingly and cold at the assumption. “No. I’m an atheist. Born and raised.”
“Oh. Sorry. You probably think I’m doubly stupid, then.”
Both she and Eli are looking at me. His eyes are nothing like his siblings’ eyes. They’re pale, like algae in a lake. Hers are sunlight through autumn leaves. But the message is the same in both of them. I’ve seen it before, a million times from the kids at school.
Have you accepted God into your heart? it says.
God only knows, I want to tell them, I’ve tried.
“No. It would make my grandparents happy, I guess. They’re pretty religious. But my parents don’t believe, and I’ve never really seen the need. You can be an ethical, happy person without all of that.”
“Oh,” says Annie, picking up her fork.
We eat the rest of the meal in silence.
After we eat, we load up the dishwasher while Elijah flops out on the couch in front of the TV. Then, like we agreed to it beforehand, we trudge up the stairs together in silence. I figure we’re heading for her room, but Annie stops in front of a closed bedroom door. She stands there for a moment, staring.
“What’s up?” I whisper, because it feels right to whisper, touching the thin skin just above her elbow.
The hall light is dim, yellowing her face like old paper. “This is Jamie’s room. Do you want to see it?”
His room. How many times did I imagine it, on secret nights when I was alone in mine? I never saw it. He didn’t want me to meet his dad, which was understandable, I guess. In my mind, it was the coolest room in the world, lit by black lights and string lights and tiny cones of burning incense. I nod, bracing myself. Annie opens the door.
At first, only darkness and the smell of dust. But then she turns on the light, revealing a space that’s pretty damned ordinary. There’s a messy desk, scattered with paper, with stickers half peeled off all along the sides. A twin bed, neatly made, in the corner. Baseball wallpaper, mostly covered by band posters. But over his bed, you can’t see a single silk-screened baseball. Because there’s wide-ruled notebook paper taped over it instead, a whole notebook’s worth. It’s scribbled with blue pen and pencil, maps and poems and stories. The maps are even better than I imagined, more detailed, with towering mountains and rushing rivers and cities, all hard angles, invading the wild lands.
“You drew these,” I say, kneeling on the bed so I can see better. Annie is standing behind me, not saying anything even though I can hear her breathe. “James told me. He loved your maps.”
“They’re nothing special,” she says, but I can practically hear how she’s blushing, something about the thickness of her voice.
“Don’t be ridiculous. They’re beautiful.” I reach out and touch one of them. The paper is as delicate as a butterfly’s wing. It looks like a real place. I try to imagine James, lost in those twisting mountain roads. Here in this room, with the air full and trembling, it’s easier than I expected.
“Hey,” Annie says suddenly, grabbing a page from the wall and tearing it off. I cringe at that. This feels almost like a temple, a sacred space. But she seems eager to change the air. “Look at this. I think it’s about you.”
I sit on the edge of the bed, taking the sheet from her. It’s his handwriting. Tiny. Tight. You know whose. I would have recognized it anywhere. I used to read his notes over and over again, wondering if they held some kind of clue about where he went.
In the Obsidian Tower,
the Lady lies in wait.
Her hair is an Ebony Rope.
Her eyes are Smoldering Embers . . .
I cringe.
“What?” Annie asks.
“An Ebony Rope. I don’t know. It’s kind of embarrassing.”
She smiles at me. Her crooked teeth suddenly remind me of fangs. “He loved you. He probably still does.”
I’m holding the page against my chest, almost hugging it, crushing it in my hands. I’m looking at Annie. I loved James once. Part of me still does, too. But another part of me is falling into her eyes, wanting to kiss her again, and for what? For reminding me what it felt like to be with him? To be seen, to be understood?
I look down at the page again. “He wrote me other songs, you know. That’s what this is. It’s not a poem, it’s a song.” I say it with certainty, even though I shouldn’t be sure about anything when it comes to James. “Not as cheesy as this one. We were going to start a band. I’d do vocals and play the bass, and he’d play the drums. Neal Harriman was going to play guitar, even though he sucked. I kept telling them I should play lead guitar instead.”
“Dad wouldn’t let him get a drum kit,” Annie says, and her eyes are full of tragedy.
“I know. He said he was working on it, though. He had a plan, I think. Saving up his money or something.”
“I bet he would have done it. I bet he would have been a great drummer.”
To Annie, no one is as amazing as James could have been. “Yeah,” I agree. I look down at the song one last time. “Can I keep this?”
“Sure. No one will notice it’s gone. This place is worse than a tomb. I’m the only one who comes in here.”
I fold up the page very carefully. Then I slip it down inside my pocket. It’s Annie’s birthday, and yet she’s giving me a gift.
Two gifts, actually. Because then she offers me her hand. For some reason, my legs are shaking a little when I take it and rise from James’s bed.
“Thank you,” I say softly. But Annie doesn’t say anything. She just leads me into her room, leaving the memory of her brother crashing against invisible rocks behind us.
We go into her room, and Annie closes the door behind her. It’s nothing like her brother’s room. There’s no kiddie wallpaper. Instead, the walls are painted a rich yellow, like ground mustard seed. The carpet’s been pulled up, revealing the paint-splattered wood floors beneath. Her desk is clean, piled high with books. The whole place smells lived in—like unwashed clothing, rather than ancient, perfectly preserved dust.
The only thing tha
t links the two places are the maps on the walls over the bed, the same maps, drawn by Annie herself, maps of Gumlea.
I’m looking at them again, but this time, I’m not brave enough to crawl up into her bed. That’s moving fast even for me. I’m looking at the maps very carefully, as though I haven’t seen them before.
“You’re a great artist,” I say again. “I remember your painting in the last art show. The skull. It was beautiful.”
“Thanks,” she says. She’s doing something behind me. Closing curtains. Opening drawers. Getting undressed and dressed again. I’m pretending not to listen. “I’ve thought about art school, but I dunno. Jamie’s trying to get back here. I can’t leave when he’s trying to come back.”
It makes me want to cringe again to think about her setting aside her plans for a boy who just had a funeral. But it’s what she believes, I tell myself. “You have plenty of time to decide” is what I say. “But if you ask me, you should go for it. This stuff doesn’t look like it was drawn by some kid. And you drew it a few years ago, right?”
“Most of it. The portraits are newer.”
My eyes drift from the taped-up maps to the images beside them. There’s a self-portrait, half of her face rotted away to a skull. There’s a picture of her friend Miranda, antlers curling from her pixie-cut hair. There’s . . . there’s me, half my face obscured by my hair, the other half of me smiling.
“There’s something behind these drawings,” I tell her. “They’re deep. I can tell just by looking at them that you’ve been through a lot in your life.”
“Oh yeah?”
Annie sits on the bed beside me. She’s wearing a pair of boxer shorts now, her legs pale beneath them. I can see the fine fuzz of short blond hairs all along her thighs. I want to put my hand on her skin, to see if it’s cool to the touch, or as warm as I’m imagining. But I don’t. Not yet.
“Yeah. It’s like Brian Wilson’s music. Trauma does something to art, I think. It’s why I’ll never be a great musician. My life’s too good.”
As soon as I’ve said it, I regret it. It sounds stupid and ignorant. Annie’s expression is strange, too. She shakes her head. “Whatever I’ve lived through, it’s nothing compared to Jamie. However great an artist I am, it’s nothing compared to him.”