by N. Griffin
“What is it?” he whispered eagerly.
“She won’t tell,” said Stephanie, her gray hair ribbon straggling down her back.
“I will now, since I guess I really should ask you before I take your bike,” said Bett.
“Thoughtful of you,” said Bill. “Spill.”
“Well,” said Bett. “You know that ravine under the rock ledge that goes to the river?”
“You mean where that path cuts into the slope?”
“Yeah,” said Bett. “I’m going to ride down it. On your bike. Mine’s just a road bike, and I thought yours would be, you know, heftier.”
“He won’t let you,” said Stephanie immediately. “Bill, don’t let her! Don’t! She’ll kill herself, all the rocks on that path! Bett,” she pleaded, “please no. Come on. This is the stupidest one you’ve ever thought of.”
“If by ‘stupid’ you mean ‘badass,’ ” said Bill, “I am going to let you borrow the shit out of my bike, Bett, and then I am going to video you with my phone with the night vision app on, and then we’ll post it to YouTube, where you will become the most famous badass ever.”
“Bill!” But Stephanie was ignored and Bill gallantly pushed the bike up the hill to the lip of the ravine and the rocky path. Bett’s heart was already pounding with the love-hate of the Feet, Stephanie nearly weeping behind her.
“Bett, I am not kidding. That is no path. That is a vertical DROP, Bett! Bett, you will die.”
“Shut up, please,” said Bett. She had the handlebars in her hands now, one foot on a pedal, the other on the ground.
“Bett—”
“Shut up, Steph,” said Bill, holding out his phone to frame Bett in its lens. “Damn. I want to watch it in, like, real life. Stephanie, will you video it?”
“No!”
“Shut up!” both Bill and Bett hissed.
“Fine,” said Bill. “I’ll do it myself. Bett, just go when you’re ready. I’m all set.”
“I will.” Bett looked down at the path, the big boulder about halfway down, the silver-tipped current swirling below.
NOW. And she was rocketing down, bumping from stone to stone, bike leaping and landing and leaping again until Bett reached that big rock and YES—she was flying, bike in her hands, feet still on the pedals, and there was the moment, the moment inside the split second, inside forever and no time at all. Then she was back on the ground, coasting down, braking but somehow winding up in the freezing river anyway.
“BADASS!” Bill was yelling and turning around and slapping his legs up at the lip of the ravine as Bett dripped out of the river, shivering, and made her way back up the slope with Bill’s bike. She hoped the water hadn’t wrecked it.
But Bill didn’t seem to care about that at all. “BAD-EFFING-ASS!”
Bett knew it. She knew it and loved it and her blood was singing. She tucked in her smile and wheeled the bike the rest of the way up, which was slippy and took some doing.
When she got near the top, Stephanie was crying and Bill grabbed the bike from Bett and tugged it over the lip of the ravine. Then he dropped it and pulled Bett up, too, and slapped her on the shoulder before enveloping her in a hug.
“Steph, I am fine,” said Bett when Bill released her. “I am always fine.”
“No, you aren’t!” said Stephanie. “You are bleeding!”
Bett looked where Stephanie pointed, at the confluence of veins on the heel of her hand, blood seeping out of a tiny, deep cut.
“Must have been a rock in the water,” said Bett. “Steph, I don’t even feel it. Just needs a Band-Aid.”
“Here,” said Stephanie, still sniffling. And she pulled her gray, raggly edged ribbon off her head and handed it to Bett. “Press.”
“Are you giving her a dirty ribbon to put on a wound?” asked Bill, repulsed, and Stephanie punched him.
“It’s not dirty,” she said. Then, still sniffling, she said, “Fine. Let’s watch you on Bill’s phone,” and she and Bett started up with their laughing.
“Please shut up and don’t make me regret coming out here,” said Bill. He held his phone in front of them, and they watched the Fizzicle Feet together, Bett’s heart leaping with the bike, soaring over the boulder in the path almost as it had when she’d done it. The three of them stood on the hill in the moonlight, shoulders close, watching Bett fly down the slope again and again.
Stephanie might be the one who was in the Catholic school, but Bett was the one who, in those milliseconds of what-if, saw the face of God.
12
Autumn, Eleventh Grade, Two in the Early Morning of Friday
BETT SAT UP IN BED and pulled out her phone.
YouTube. Play.
The doll Rayfenetta was making was coming out magnificently. The armor shone with its intertwined triangles, the wings were huge, and there was a helmet on the doll’s beautiful head, with the real and fake hair braids tumbling out from beneath.
Bett picked and picked at the scar on her wrist.
“Like I said before,” Rayfenetta said, “one of the best things about Blythe dolls is that you can change out the eyes. I don’t like these green ones for this doll. Watch.”
And she popped the eyes out.
Bett flinched.
“The more you do it, the easier it gets.”
Rayfenetta took up one eye and switched it to another side—bright and almost silver.
“And see? See how that color makes the metal stand out?”
Bett did see.
But Rayfenetta didn’t change out the other eye. Instead, she took the tiny flower she had made in the last video and stuck it in the other socket. Then she drew vines around it like a tattoo.
Bett picked her scar until it bled.
13
Still Around Two in the Horrible Morning
STILL NO SLEEP FOR BETT. Partly it was because of the picture slasher-burner with all the teachers and principal and her mother clearly worried about the incident, too. But some of it was not because of any reason, particularly, just a restlessness that was familiar to her and for which there was often no cure. Get up already, she told herself, and, resigned to not sleeping, went down the narrow stairs to the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea. As long as she watched the teapot, she could stop it before it whistled and brought her mother down into the kitchen to see what Bett was up to.
But the tea, caffeinated, turned out to be a terrible idea, and the restlessness and anxiety grew. What could she do? A shower would wake up her mother, too, but Bett had washed her feet in warm water once this summer to bathe a cut from the grasses, and found it so soothing that she bathed them now sometimes on purpose when she couldn’t sleep. So she went into the tiny bathroom lined with books and filled the sink with warm water and washed each foot, one at a time.
Bett looked at her feet. They were pretty, she had to admit, though she would never wear sandals and flip-flops to show them off like a Twinkler girl.
Bett thought for a minute.
I haven’t in forever.
But her feet were so warm. Could she? Or would it be too Plus?
Hesitantly, Bett stuck her hand under the sink until she found her old basket of nail polishes, all of them more than two years old. She hadn’t touched them since—since. But there they were.
Not red. Not pink. Not a color color. Too Plus.
From the basket, Bett plucked a small bottle of polish the color of hematite stones and went to work. The brush on her warm, lovely toes was calming, getting it just right, not going outside the edge of her toenails. There. Done. Warm, lovely feet, and now maybe she could rest, toes outside her blankets.
She still couldn’t sleep, though. She just rested, looking at her feet and thinking about the man in the river. Her thoughts drifted and swayed until they landed, unwelcome, on her father. Bedtime with her father when she was young had been a mixed bag at best. He was always wanting to tell her stories about fairies and other little creatures with wings, and she used to have to put out her hand
and tell him, “Stop. Tell me about real stuff.”
One time the “real stuff” had been him telling her about vets. She had heard about what vets were from Career Day in kindergarten and was very excited to see what kind of animals her father worked with.
Maybe elephants. Or maybe whales and birds.
“Oh,” her father had said. “You’re thinking about ‘vet’ as a word that’s short for ‘veterinarian.’ They’re the ones who work with animals. I work with ‘veterans,’ who are people who have gone to war for our country and come home again.”
“What’s war?” Bett had asked, and her father sighed and ran his hand through his hair.
“It’s when two countries who can’t get along fight,” he said simply.
“You mean like punching?” asked Bett, wheeling her own fists around.
“Sort of,” said her father. He looked very much like he wished they were still listening to his story about the beings with wings. “But worse. Sometimes they hurt each other so badly people die. Or come home hurt. On the outside or the inside.”
“Oh,” said Bett. She didn’t really get it, but that was okay. She wheeled her arms around in punches again.
“Your uncle was in the Gulf War,” said her dad.
“Which uncle?”
“Your uncle Todd,” said her father. “He died in that war before you were born.” His eyes clouded. “I loved him very much.” He went quiet. “He’s why I work with vets now,” he said at last.
“Vets, vets, vets,” said Bett, bouncing where she sat in her bed. “Maybe one of them will let you ride a whale. Or pet a bird.” Her father smiled, but his eyes were sad. Then he gave her a hug. It lasted too long, and Bett pulled away, impatient.
“Tell me a different story,” Bett demanded. “One about something good. Like tractors.”
“I’ll tell you about four-wheelers. Your uncle Todd loved then.”
“Did you love them, too?”
Her dad’s eyes grew sad again. “No,” he said. “Not my thing. But I think you’ll like them, when you’re older. You’re a lot like your uncle. Built like him, too.”
“I’m a lot like Mom, I thought you said.”
“That you are. She reminds me of Todd, too. That’s part of why I love you both so much.” And her dad had kissed her forehead and then told her about Uncle Todd four-wheeling for the rest of that story time.
Stop. Stop thinking about him. That was ages ago, and you don’t have to think about him anymore.
So Bett lay perfectly still, thinking of nothing until she just told herself it was officially time to get moving and get ready for the next day of eleventh grade. She got up and dressed with her hair in its messy pile on the top of her head, and a fresh pair of cut-up jean shorts over her butt. Yesterday only made wearing shorts again today more necessary. More mortification to enjoy, only don’t think about that, because then the mortification would turn into a weird backward kind of Plus, and God knew how she’d deal with that.
As she put on her sneakers she thought, briefly, that it was a shame no one was going to see her pretty feet with her hematite toes, but she swallowed the thought with the Pop-Tarts she chose for breakfast and was out of the house and at the bottom of the slope easily fifteen minutes before the bus could be expected. She mentally slapped her own hand in a spectral high five that she had successfully avoided her mother, who went to the station house late on Fridays, and avoided her own brain as well, with which she had only upset irritation. Except for the idea about the toes. That had been an okay part, even if it verged on too Plus.
She was so tired, she couldn’t pay attention to the morning chatter of the bus ride, even though Dan was clearly wanting to talk to the bus at large about the fire and the art destroyer, and Ranger was cakesing, and Mutt was pissed, and Eddie shouted at them periodically. Bett’s inability to focus was actually relaxing, sort of like taking a nap with her eyes open.
But Eddie ruined it.
Bett was last off the bus, and when she’d landed on the sidewalk in front of the school, Eddie roared, “BETT!” and made her turn around and pay attention at last.
Eddie cleared his throat. “Bett,” he said, “I need to talk to you.”
What? What about? Some comment about her weight, probably, or some crap about talking with her father. Whichever it was, Bett wanted no truck with Eddie and talking. He could keep his thoughts about her weight to himself.
This was where pretended deafness was a blessing. Bett pelted toward the school. She didn’t need to hear what Eddie had to say. Therefore, this running did not count as a Plus.
14
TWO YEARS AGO . . . Stephanie had fallen asleep as soon as they came in from the Bike Ravine Fizzicle Feet that ninth-grade night, falling into her bed as if she were already dreaming. But not Bett. She was too electric, too alive, too everything. She lay in the twin bed next to Stephanie’s with the ribbon around her wrist and looked out the window, reliving the night until it turned to day.
At six, she woke Stephanie up. “School,” she said simply.
“Ugh,” moaned Stephanie.
“Get up,” said Bett. “We have to show them we’re ‘responsible’ if we ever want another school-night sleepover.”
“I don’t think I ever do, if it means waking up,” moaned Stephanie. But she sat up, her long, Twinkler-adjacent hair falling forward over her face. “Also if it means that’s when you do the worst and most death-defying of your Fizzicle Feets.”
Bett swallowed her smile. No denying it; last night was supreme and superb and there was no way she wasn’t going to try to top it.
Ankle on the opposite knee, in tiny letters this time, she wrote Bill.
* * *
This morning there were even more buds on the trees than there had been the day before, more crocuses, more everything, although it was still freezing as they stood bouncing on their toes at the foot of Stephanie’s porch, waiting for the school bus to chug up the hill before they headed to the bottom of the driveway to climb up the steep steps of the bus.
“You’re psyched, aren’t you?” said Stephanie. “You’re psyched you went down that hill and flew over that rock. How? How can you do that and not feel out-of-your-mind scared?”
Bett shrugged. “How do you make everyone like you on the spot and know how to handle any boy just the right way?”
“I don’t know,” said Stephanie simply. “I just want people to be happy.”
The bus didn’t come and didn’t come. It was so cold, Bett worried that the crocuses would die and full-on spring wouldn’t arrive at all, which did happen some years here—Salt River went straight from winter to summer in a week, it seemed, and spring pretty much got skipped.
Stephanie looked at her, head cocked. “I wish I were more like you,” she said finally, just as Bett was starting to get weirded out.
“What? Are you kidding? You’re pretty and popular and everyone likes you as soon as they meet you. You make everyone feel special.”
“Shut up,” said Stephanie. “I want to be tall and strong and athletic like you, and have boys as friends like you do and not just as maybe-make-out people, and I want to feel like I could figure out regular things easily like you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like how you and your mom figured out how to redo the drywall when the ceiling in your living room flooded that time.”
Bett shrugged. “That was more common sense than anything else. We just read how and did it.”
“But me and my mom never would.”
“Well, me and my mom would never have the whole town think we should be models, either,” said Bett.
“I want to feel as free as you do,” said Stephanie. “As free to do what you want, when you want to do it. I love that about you, Bett.”
“Even when you yell at me for doing Fizzicle Feets?”
Stephanie nodded. “Even then.”
Down the hill, the diesel of the bus finally sounded through the cold morning
air.
“Remember how you said that time that you wanted to be a bus driver when you were little?” Stephanie reminded Bett, who laughed.
“I did!” said Bett. “I thought it would be the best to drive a school bus.”
“That is the cutest thing.”
“Shut up,” said Bett.
“You shut up,” said Stephanie back. “Watch. I’m going to be like you for real. My first and only Fizzicle Feet.” And she climbed up the five porch stairs of her house and threw her arms back as if to leap.
A five-year-old could do that, thought Bett, but she made sure her face looked anticipatory and interested as the bus came closer and Stephanie leaped from the top porch step. But her jump was
too much—
not enough—
Stephanie was going to fall and slam her head against the ground like a basketball—
Bett ran, to Stephanie, to the gas pumps, feeling her foot stomp on the nozzle hose, which was lying like a snake in the iced dirt of the driveway, and then there was a giant
CRACK, ROAR—
and everything was everywhere: backpacks, shoes, Bett, Stephanie. Everything was everywhere in the burst of those pumps, so loud Bett heard nothing. Jagged with pain, she saw only Stephanie and flames, Stephanie lying at the bottom of the porch steps, one of her eyes bloody and oh God! all the blood all the heat flames all around.
A long time of screaming with no sounds. The bus stopped and the driver and kids all seemed to be screaming something, but they’d agreed not to make a sound, either, out of respect for Bett, she guessed? Fire people with hoses. Mrs. Roan tearing out of the house in not enough clothes. Ambulance. Cop car but not Bett’s mom’s, who was there in her flannel pajamas and coat, also screaming at Bett even though Bett couldn’t hear a word. Bett searing with pain.
Where was Bett’s dad? Over there, he was crouched over Stephanie, pushed away by the EMTs, Stephanie’s mother with not enough on crouched over her daughter, too, weeping, but like everybody else, she’d decided not to do it with a sound.