by Amber Smith
I was physically biting my tongue, repressing the urge to correct her or explain all the ways that Earth is not just sitting there in the middle of nothing. Where would I even begin? Kepler’s laws of planetary motion? Galileo? Newton? General relativity? The entire timeline of the history of physics was running through my mind on a loop.
“Okay, don’t look so horrified,” she said with a snort. “I know it’s not really like that.”
“Sorry,” I said. I felt embarrassed; I could be a snob when it comes to this stuff.
“I know you people just love to think southerners are stupid, but I’m not a total moron, believe it or not. I fully understand it all has to do with gravity and orbits, or whatever else. I just mean . . .” She paused, searching for the words, but this time I couldn’t stop myself from interrupting her.
“I don’t think southerners are stupid.”
She said, “Okay,” but I could tell from the way the curve of her mouth was set that she didn’t believe me.
“Hey, my parents grew up here, just like you—I don’t think they’re stupid.”
“But you didn’t.” She squinted at me, like she was trying to see me better. I felt the beat of my heart pumping faster. “Let me guess—you grew up in . . . Connecticut?”
“Connecticut? No.”
She looked at me even harder, this smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “Massachusetts?”
I smiled back. “No,” I replied, wondering what kind of criteria I was fulfilling in her mind about the kinds of people who grew up in places like Connecticut and Massachusetts.
“I know,” she finally said. “New York.”
I hesitated, but then gave in. “Okay, yeah. So?”
“Nothing.” She shrugged. “I could just tell.”
“How?”
“Maybe it’s the way you talk.”
Suddenly I really wanted to know what I sounded like to her. I wished I didn’t care so much, wished I wasn’t so self-conscious about it. I’d been purposely talking lower for years, before the hormones, even before I consciously understood what I was doing, but I cleared my throat before speaking again just to be sure.
“I grew up in New York State, not New York City, which is what everyone thinks when you say ‘New York.’ ” I lived on the complete opposite side of the state in a suburb of Buffalo that was pretty much like any other suburb in America. “Where I grew up and New York City—it’s like two different worlds.”
She nodded like she was really considering this. “It’s sort of the same here, in a way. I mean, Western North Carolina is totally different from Eastern North Carolina. We have the mountains on one side, the ocean on the other—two completely different landscapes, different weather, different ways of doing things. Then you have places like Charlotte and Raleigh and Winston-Salem dotted throughout, all this nice metropolitan culture. But between, it’s all hog farms and tobacco fields and soy crops and a bunch of land waiting to become the next big thing. But really, we’re just another part of that big line of fields between where you want to be and the emptiness in between. Carson is just another spot of nothing.”
“Whoa. That’s big stuff,” I said. “Yeah, I didn’t think about that. You’re right.”
As I reviewed our conversation, I realized I’d never let her finish what she was saying. “I interrupted you before. What were you going to say?”
“Before you called me stupid?”
“I did not call you stupid!”
“Relax, I’m kidding!” She laughed at me again, in this way that made me laugh at myself.
I breathed in deeply. The air was cooling off outside, and it calmed me. “You were saying how it was crazy to think about—”
“Oh, right,” she said. “I just meant, like, I remember when I was a little kid, before I knew about the science of it, I used to stay awake at night actually worrying about Earth, thinking one day it would just stop spinning and fall and fall and just keep falling forever.”
A firework soared up into the sky at that moment and burst above us, casting a rainbow across the car, over Maia’s face.
“I don’t know,” she said, quieter. “Sometimes I still think about that, I guess.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but watching her, I couldn’t tell whether what she was saying made her sad or worried or something else. I got the feeling she wasn’t really talking about the planet anymore.
“When I was a kid,” I offered, “it was the opposite for me. I used to have this theory about the universe and everything that helped me to not be afraid, when I thought about Earth and the planets and the stars and the Sun and all of it.”
“What was it?”
“Well, everything is perfect. It’s all orchestrated in this total balance of creation and destruction. I mean, the scale of the cosmos is so vast that we’re not even evolved enough to comprehend it. But when you think about the beginning, and how much has had to happen for us to be here—how the universe had to evolve, and how our galaxy is just one tiny part, and our solar system is an even smaller part, and Earth is miniscule in comparison—it’s incredible that somehow life evolved on this planet. All the comets and asteroids that had to collide with Earth to give us the oceans and gases and metals and everything we would need. It seems like chaos, but it’s not at all. Us sitting here in this car having this conversation has been like thirteen billion years in the making.” I stopped to catch my breath; I was getting carried away. But she was looking right at me, waiting for me to finish. “And when things are working like that, then it makes me feel like everything else in my life is going to work out too.”
She was quiet, and I could feel the creep of embarrassment crawling up my neck. I’d given her too much of myself, way too much.
“You said you used to have this theory, but you still believe that,” she said. “Don’t you?”
It was like the opposite of being caught in a lie, except it was the same vulnerable kind of naked feeling. She had caught me in a truth. “Maybe,” I admitted. “Is that a bad thing?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s nice.”
As we drove, fireworks exploded on either side of the car, some in the distance, others closer. All different colors. We had both windows rolled all the way down, the wind blowing in. She had her head resting against the frame of the car door, her hair blowing all across her face. I had to force myself to stop watching her.
MAIA
THE HEADLIGHTS SHONE ON MY house like a spotlight. I knew I was supposed to say good night and thanks and this was fun and let’s do it again and all of those normal things you say to people, but when I looked over at Chris and his smile, I couldn’t think of any words to say. I wanted to lean into the space between us, something like gravity pulling me toward him. But I looked down at my hands in my lap, and said, “Well.”
And then he laughed and said, “Yeah.”
“Okay,” I tried to begin again, but words were failing me.
“Bike tires part two another day, then?” he asked.
“I’d like that.”
We were stuck looking at each other, except this time he looked away first. He ran his hand over his hair, and drummed his fingers along the edge of the steering wheel. I opened the door, and when the light inside the car turned on, it seemed to crush whatever the awkwardness was that had just taken place.
As I got out of the car, he raised his hand in a small wave. “Good night.”
“Night,” I said through the open window.
I went inside, but I stood there in the dark entryway and watched as his headlights faded down the driveway. The light was on in the kitchen for me. Mom’s way of saying she still cared about whether I made it home each night.
No way was I going to fall asleep. Between Chris and finding those Mallory spots and the fireworks still going off in the distance, the air around me was vibrating. I immediately started filling the coffeepot with water. I scooped in the coffee grounds—huge, heaping spoonfuls, until the white paper
filter was nearly overflowing.
The coffeemaker began its gurgling and hissing routine, and I pulled a mug out of the cupboard. While I waited for the coffee, my thoughts drifted out the kitchen window and across the field up to the second story of the gray house, where a light was on. Tomorrow suddenly seemed like a really long time to have to wait to see him again.
“Mallory, what are you doing?”
I spun around. Mom was standing there in her bathrobe, her eyes half open.
“Mom,” I said. “You just called me Mallory.”
She flinched at the sound of my sister’s name. Her eyes opened all the way then, and she shook her head, her face getting all scrunched up. “No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I know what I said, Maia.” She argued in that tone she usually reserved for my father, and I had the distinct suspicion that she threw my name in there just to prove she still knew it.
Just then, the basement door creaked open.
Dad shuffled into the kitchen, his hair disheveled, and he was now standing right next to Mom. “What’s going on?” he mumbled.
Mom rolled her eyes—how dare he speak in her presence.
Next I heard Roxie padding down the stairs. Her nails clicked against the linoleum as she walked up between Mom and Dad, yet another set of eyes on me.
“Nothing’s going on,” I said. “It’s not even ten o’clock.”
Mom crossed her arms and firmed up her stance for just a moment before she sank back into her tiredness and unfolded her arms again. “Who was that dropping you off just now?” she asked.
“Hayden,” I lied, for some reason.
If she knew that wasn’t the truth, she didn’t give herself away. She looked at my dad and pulled her robe tighter across her chest, as if he was just some random man, a stranger, someone simply renting a room from her, and with whom it was inappropriate to be standing around in the kitchen while wearing pajamas. She started walking away, and I heard her say “Good night” from the living room.
Then it was just Dad and me, with Roxie standing in between us now, looking back and forth, probably trying to decipher which of us needed her more.
“Coffee at this hour?” he asked.
“I’m not tired,” I explained, and I knew I was taking a tone with him—that’s how he used to describe it, back when he had the wherewithal to stand his ground. “Is that a problem?” I added, like an extra test. Maybe if I copped enough attitude, it would snap him back into parent mode. But I was wrong. Because the way he looked at me, all hurt, like an injured animal, you’d have thought I’d said, Why don’t you go fuck off and die?
“No” was all he said. And then he walked away too.
Guilt trip. Squared.
The coffeemaker gave one last gurgle.
“Great,” I muttered.
I bent down and scratched Roxie in that spot behind the ears that she loved, and whispered, “You’re the only sane one left in this family.”
• • •
Roxie followed me outside the way she used to follow Mallory when she’d stay up late in the barn drinking coffee on one of her work binges.
I’d filled my cup too high and spilled the hot coffee on myself at least three times as I made my way outside in the dark. I didn’t really like coffee all that much, but I remembered how Mallory would make big pots of it, alternating with her weed, so she could stay awake to work. She’d said it helped her think straight, that it was natural and it wasn’t like she was some kind of meth-head, which is what happened to a lot of the kids around here after graduating from CHS. But I always thought that was just Mallory-bullshit.
I pulled open the barn door and turned on the lights.
I walked along the wall of endless pictures, searching for the places I’d seen today with Chris. There was the gas station graffiti that had been residing in the back of my mind ever since I found it. There was Bowman’s—Bowman’s bare and stark, and then Bowman’s full of people in party mode. There was the empty road with the clouds.
There was the cemetery gate. And now, following in succession, a picture of a stone statue, worn and weathered; it looked like a saint or angel or something, with this halo of sunlight all around it. If I didn’t know better, I would think Mallory had edited the photo that way. But she never did that. She’d said that if there was something in there you wanted out, then that was all the more reason it should stay in, and if there was something missing that should be there, then that’s why you keep doing it, why she would always go back out the next day and do it all over again.
I would go back to the cemetery in New Pines.
I would do it over again.
I sat down at Mallory’s table and rifled through the drawer until I found a sketchbook. When I opened it, there was nothing in it, although there had been pages ripped out, indentations on the blank paper underneath. I grabbed the red, waxy tipped pencil that was sitting out, and I made a list of all the pictures I’d found in real life so far.
As I sat there, surrounded by Mallory’s things, I was brought back to a night we shared out here. It was barely a year ago, on one of those caffeine- and marijuana-fueled nights—the last night we were friends. She was pacing back and forth in front of me, ranting and elated at the same time: “The world’s a mess, right?” she exclaimed.
“Yeah,” I agreed, half-heartedly.
“Nothing makes sense. Everything’s so chaotic and out of control. But when you’re taking a photo”—she paused for emphasis (she was always doing that)—“it’s like the only thing in the entire world that has to make sense is what’s inside the frame. This little rectangle of space. And all the rest of it can fall away.” She held her hands out as if she were letting something invisible fall from between her fingers.
I yawned. I had been reaching my breaking point with her for months, probably for my entire life, and this was the night when I’d finally had enough. I told her I was tired and wanted to go back to the house and get into bed.
When I stood up, she pulled on my arm and said, “Come on, we’re having secret sister time, Mai.”
“No we’re not,” I snapped. Maybe it was a little bit of a contact high that made me stand up to her that night. Regardless of why I did it, I did. And I’d never be able to take it back. “You’re just using me,” I told her, my voice full of needles. “You don’t care that it’s me here. You just talk at me while you get more and more obliterated and make less and less sense. You try to make me feel like it’s some special sister bonding thing, when really you just keep me here so I don’t tell Mom and Dad you’re a pothead.”
“Whoa-ho.” Her voice lilted, and she took a step back, clapping her hands together like I’d just finished a performance. “Where did that come from?”
“From me!” I had to yell to get her to hear me, and that made me even angrier.
“I don’t know if I should be hurt or impressed.”
“Neither,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Or both,” she added, and turned her back to me.
She picked up a photograph that was lying on the table along with a handful of thumbtacks and brought them over to the wall, not so much ignoring me but pretending I had disappeared.
“I’m serious, Mallory!” I said, following along behind her.
She arranged the four thumbtacks in a row, holding the heads of the tacks between her lips as she centered the photo on the wall with both hands. “So get out,” she mumbled through the hardware in her mouth.
I stood there for a moment and watched as she steadied the photo and then took each tack one by one and speared the corners with precision, never looking back at me, not saying another word.
I closed my eyes now as I sat in her chair, trying hard to remember what the photograph was. I remember looking at it right before I walked out, and thinking how she cared more about this stupid picture than being my sister. I stood, retracing the steps I had taken as I followed her that night, the sequence of events
so ingrained in my mind that they led me directly to it.
The photo was of a stained glass window.
I touched the corner where one of the tacks was positioned on a tilt, not flush with the wall like the other three. Was that the tack she’d pressed in as she told me to get out?
The window was a square in the center of a rectangle of paper—the white space around it made it stand out. As I looked at all the surrounding photos, this was the only one cropped in that way. Maybe that’s what she was talking about when I couldn’t be bothered to pay attention. About how it’s only what’s inside the frame that needs to make sense.
That was the key to figuring out where this window was. It had been cropped. Cropped from something else, a bigger picture. I raced back over to Mallory’s desk. I flung open the drawers. She had hundreds of multicolored file folders jammed in each drawer, only the colors didn’t seem to indicate any particular organizational system.
In each folder, there were hundreds of plastic sleeves filled with even more negatives, row after row after row. Black-and-white ghostly images, all turned inside out.
I removed the file folders by the armful and splayed them out on the floor.
I took a deep breath, then a sip of coffee, and opened the first one. I grasped the first sleeve at the corners, between my thumb and forefinger, and held it up to the light. My eyes scanned each tiny image, one after another. Sheet after sheet. I’d made it through only three folders, and I’d barely even started to make the beginning of a dent in what was still left to go through.
I wished I hadn’t messed things up with Neil so badly, because he could have probably told me in one glance where this window lived. I leaned forward over my thighs and let my forehead rest against a pile of slippery plastic sleeves. “Mallory,” I groaned. I hesitated to talk to her outright, to ask a real question of her. Because not getting an answer would be too hard. This was stupid. Impossible.
I began collecting the folders again, stacking them one on top of the other. I carried them in my arms and set them down on the edge of the desk. I went and got another stack, and another. And as I set down the very last pile, one of the folders at the bottom slid out of place, like a house slipping off its foundation. I reached out to try to catch it, but it was too late.