Anything But Ordinary

by Lara Avery

  The door chimed closed.

  Bryce watched Gabby through the wall made of windows for the last time. Through the leaf-filled parking lot, into her black VW, seat belt on, checking her mirrors.

  Maybe Bryce would see her again. Not in Nashville, Tennessee, but maybe.

  Gabby reversed and pulled away.

  Maybe somewhere else, Bryce thought.

  ryce looked in the mirror. Her hair had grown to the middle of her back. It’s my twenty-third birthday. Weird. She tried it aloud.

  “It’s my twenty-third birthday.”

  Bryce had pledged not to think about her death a month ago, but she couldn’t help it. She thought about it today.

  Well, there actually wasn’t much to think about. It hadn’t come, that was the main point. Four weeks had passed since the night Carter told her; then five weeks had passed. Now the month of September was long gone.

  Bryce was still getting headaches and becoming short of breath, but she had trained herself to take everything slow. Nobody expected her to be fast anymore, anyway, so it was easy to lie low. She remembered to bring everything she needed from downstairs up the stairs in one trip. She took a lot of hot baths. Sydney had stopped going out every night once school started, so Bryce didn’t need to make any excuses for why she was staying in.

  If not for the occasional look from Carter, she might have even forgotten that time was running out. With all the rest Bryce was getting, she had very little stress. Without stress, she had no visions.

  She didn’t miss the burning pain, but she had to admit she missed the memories. She didn’t care about seeing the future, or whatever it was she saw. Five minutes from now, Bryce would be eating Carter’s birthday breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes and applewood-smoked bacon. That was her future.

  “There’s the birthday girl!” Bryce’s mom greeted her.

  Her dad was leaning over the counter, reading the paper. “Do you have comfortable clothes on?” Aside from a bear hug, that was his only birthday greeting.

  “When do I not?” Bryce asked, confused. “Why do you ask?”

  “You’ll see,” he said, rubbing his hands together.

  “No no no…” Bryce heard from the stove. Carter was overseeing Sydney as she worked the bacon. “Don’t flip it. It doesn’t have the right crispiness. You can tell by the bubbles.”

  “Just stick to your pancakes and let me do my job,” her sister muttered. “Oh, hey, Bryce.”

  “Bryce!” Carter lit up, crossing the kitchen with batter stains on his shirt. He still refused to wear an apron, greeting her with a savoring hug and a kiss that said he hadn’t seen her in years. The same way he did every day.

  “Sit, sit, sit.” Bryce’s mother ushered her to the table.

  No one was allowing Bryce to do any work in the kitchen. But that meant they weren’t allowing her to sneak handfuls of chocolate chips, either.

  Bryce looked over her shoulder to Sydney, who was avoiding crackles of bacon grease with her tongs in the air.

  “Did you get the present I left on your bed?” Bryce called.

  “You’re not supposed to get other people presents on your own birthday,” Sydney said, flipping a strip of bacon. “Only old people do that.”

  Bryce took this to mean yes. While Carter studied at the Vanderbilt Library yesterday, Bryce had finished with Huck Finn and wandered over to the computers, searching until she found what she was looking for. Last night before Sydney got home, Bryce left a printout on her pillow.

  SAVANNAH COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN—PRODUCTION. SOUND DESIGN. PERFORMING ARTS. MUSIC MANAGEMENT.

  Sydney gave her sister a one-sided smile over the stove. She’d consider it on her own time, but Bryce at least wanted her to know that when she got tired of the Nashville industrial district, there were options. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Moving her in the right direction. She knew what it was like to get caught up in your own little world.

  Bryce’s thoughts were interrupted by scuffles and whispers. She started to turn around.

  “Don’t!” a chorus of voices let out.

  Bryce snickered and obediently stayed put.

  She had given her parents a present, too, but she knew they wouldn’t accept it on what was supposed to be “her” day, so she just set it on the mantel. She wondered when they would notice the framed original of their prom picture, back out of storage, next to a framed print of the picture Bryce took of them. They had gotten the pose exactly identical. In love, then and now.

  Two flicks of a lighter. A whispered, “One, two, three…”

  “Happy birthday to you…” Her father’s deep, out-of-tune voice stuck out from the chorus of Sydney, her mom, and Carter singing to her.

  Bryce turned around. Her mother held a tall stack of chocolate chip pancakes with two candles stuck in them. Bryce laughed and put her hands on her mouth. “Oh, yum!”

  She could almost taste the melted chocolate. Everyone stood around her.

  Bryce closed her eyes to make a wish, but she was coming up blank. She couldn’t think of anything. She squeezed her eyes tighter and gave a nervous smile, knowing they were waiting on her. But everything seemed to have fallen from the sky exactly how it should have, even the bad stuff. This is how it was, and she couldn’t imagine it any better.

  Carter touched her shoulder. Bryce opened her eyes to the two bright flames. She enjoyed the sight of them flickering, bright and alive, and then she blew them out.

  Soon the clatter of forks and knives joined the chatter of stuffed mouths, and everyone had to tell Carter to shut up when he started criticizing his own cooking.

  “So.” Carter finally changed the subject, biting off a strip of bacon. “Jane’s expecting a visit sometime. They have a card for you in the neurology wing.”

  “You told them it was my birthday?” Bryce looked at him accusingly.

  He winked at her. “They have your paperwork, Bryce. They know your DOB.”

  “Well played,” Sydney said, popping a bite of pancake into her mouth.

  “Yeah.” Carter cleared his throat. “My dad and I…were there, and spoke to them yesterday.”

  Bryce put down her fork. “Your dad?”

  “Yes, where is this mysterious father and when do I get to ask him which sports teams he supports?” Bryce’s father asked between chews.

  Bryce’s gaze was locked on Carter across the table. He hadn’t mentioned his dad visiting Sam. Was he happy about it? She couldn’t tell.

  “Well,” Carter said, returning Bryce’s look with a small smile, “you may run into him over there if you’re back at the hospital sometime.”

  “What made him do it?”

  “I told him your story,” Carter said, his chin up. He looked around at her family. “And how the Grahams never left your side, and how they got a miracle.”

  “We sure did.” Bryce’s mother leaned her head on Bryce’s shoulder. “We sure did.”

  When Bryce pushed away her plate, her dad got up from his chair. “Are you ready?”

  “I guess.” Bryce laughed.

  Her mom handed her a sweater. They were going out back.

  Carter discreetly helped Bryce down the stairs, his hand around her waist. As they passed through the basement doors, she shivered. It was an unusually cold October day.

  “Ugh,” Sydney said as they walked, folding her arms over her chest, where the word DUBSTEP was printed in neon pink. “Why won’t winter stay away?”

  They came to the barn. Maybe Bryce’s present was more power tools. Thanks to Bryce and her dad, and sometimes Carter, the barn was no longer just patched up, it was transformed.

  Bryce’s dad bypassed the door, however, and they followed him toward the pasture.

  As they came around the barn, Bryce’s eyes fell on a familiar-looking blue tarp. They had pulled the half-finished plane out of the barn when they started work, but Bryce hadn’t laid eyes on it since then. Her dad pulled the tarp away with a flourish, like a magician r
evealing a trick. “Ta-da!”

  The old two-seater looked pristine, not a bolt out of place. It had been painted deep cherry red, facing a thin landing strip mowed through the dry grass.

  “You finished it,” Bryce said in awe.

  “I helped,” Sydney said proudly.

  “I thought you were doing your homework,” Bryce teased, punching her sister on the arm. She smiled at the thought of her sister and her dad handing each other tools, laying out tape for the paint.

  “That too.” Sydney rolled her eyes.

  “Alrighty. Let’s do it,” Mike said, taking two pairs of aviator goggles out of his pockets. Everyone turned to Bryce. She watched her sister’s eyes land on the plane, and back to her.

  “Sydney should go,” Bryce decided.

  “Really?” her father asked.

  “Yeah. Sydney gets first ride for her painting job. And her excellent secret-keeping.”

  “I mean, I don’t have to.” Sydney fidgeted.

  “No, come on, Syd,” Bryce urged. “You know you want to wear those goggles.”

  “It’s true.” Sydney grinned and climbed into the plane with their father.

  Bryce, her mother, and Carter all stood to the side of the landing strip as Sydney and her father took off. The little plane kicked up dust, sped down the runway, lifting up just yards before the tree line, heading due east as it started to soar. From the ground, they all began to cheer.

  Bryce closed her eyes and thought of her father and sister. Through their eyes, she saw it: the hills where the grass was burned gold, the flaming red trees. She heard them whoop at the top of their lungs. And then, like a jewel nestled inside the valleys, she saw the twirling green of a river. The Cumberland? No. The Mississippi.

  Through her closed eyes the colors of the landscape bended and looped through one another like ribbons. Whirling through the air, over, under, the water glistening bright. She could hear her father and Sydney shouting and laughing at each other. Bryce opened her eyes.

  Finally the plane circled back around and landed, not exactly gracefully, but in one piece.

  Bryce’s father hopped out first and then helped Sydney, whose hair was tousled from the wind, her cheeks flushed pink.

  “Who’s next?” he said. “Beth?”

  “I don’t know, I already did my hair,” Bryce’s mother said, patting it down. Bryce’s father knit his brow.

  “Oh, I’m kidding!” she cried. She laughed and climbed in, repeating, “Oh, brother, oh, brother,” as she struggled to wiggle the goggles into place.

  As he helped his wife into the tiny seat, Bryce’s father turned back to them with a wink. “See you kids back at the house. Your mom and I might be a while.”

  Bryce’s mother blushed and gave a wave. “Ignore your father.”

  Bryce and Sydney watched their plane take flight, soaring through the sky. She kept her face turned up, squinting whenever the sun broke through the thick clouds.

  She heard her father’s laughter, her mother’s squeals, and caught her sister’s eyes, shining as she shivered in the chilly morning. Sydney tucked her arms into her T-shirt, and Bryce put a hand on her sister’s shoulder, rubbing it to warm her up. They were together. They were happy.

  This was where she belonged.

  t warmed up later that day, warm enough to see a movie at Big Chief Drive-In. The feature that night was The Searchers. Carter would admit to nothing, saying it was the best coincidence in the world.

  The day after Bryce’s birthday it got even warmer, almost hot. Toward evening Carter and Bryce took a trip to Percy Lake, both of them whooping like wild dogs on the big hill. They tucked into the trees and bushes covered in the flames of change, breaking into the clearing, breathing in the sickeningly sweet smell of past-ripe crab apples.

  Leaves flew up in the wind, taking little dips to land on Bryce’s dress, then diving off the bluff into the green-patched lake.

  They sat watching the sun set, dissolving to ooze orange in the trees, like an egg yolk in water. Bryce curled up next to Carter, leaning her head on his chest.

  “Tell me something,” she said. She did this a lot, when she got bored of the quiet. He usually pulled out some random fact about tendons or neurons.

  “Okay. Here’s something you don’t know.” He stroked her hair. “I was there the day you got hurt at the Trials.”

  “Really?” Bryce lifted her head to look at him. “Why?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. It was totally random. I was about to be a freshman at Vanderbilt, and I didn’t know anybody yet—I had arrived early and I was wandering around campus, checking it out. The door to the natatorium was propped open and I heard cheering, so I went inside. And I saw this beautiful girl, standing on a platform in a swimsuit, so naturally…”

  “So you saw me get hurt?” Bryce felt a little stab in her gut. Why didn’t you save me?

  “I didn’t see the dive. I was distracted by something…but then I heard people gasp.”

  She shook off the wounded feeling. Carter was just a guy in the stands. But it was such a coincidence. “And then you found out I was at the same hospital as your brother.”

  “A few years later, yeah.”

  “Huh,” Bryce said, her head back on Carter’s chest. There was nothing else to be said about it. Stranger things had happened.

  “Want to know something else?” he whispered after a while.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I wanted to kiss you the first day you brought me here.”

  Bryce answered him by doing just that, so long they had to come up for breath, and then leaned in for more.

  The kisses sent spurts of fire down her back and sides, good fire, fire that licked with warmth in winter, melting ice into little wet pools. His hands ran up and down her bare arms, to her neck, her chest.

  They were under the branches now, Bryce’s back against the trunk of the tree, Carter’s weight pressed against her. They slid down, locked by each other’s arms, landing in the grass side by side.

  Her breaths coming in quick bursts, Bryce met Carter’s eyes, moving down to his nose, to his lips, to the buttons of his shirt.

  She unbuttoned them.

  Carter reached behind her neck to unzip her dress.

  Bryce unbuckled his belt.

  He unhooked her bra.

  They undid each other.

  Soon she was no longer Bryce Graham with the extraordinary head, the weak legs, the awkward hands. She was inside all that. By the look on Carter’s face, he knew it, too. Their lives weren’t in all the funny external gestures, the hands on skin, the lips on skin, one skeleton against the other, one mouth on the other mouth, the flesh hot, the arched back. It wasn’t that.

  With Carter, the root of everything was inside. The branches in autumn above her, his head in the crook of her shoulder, Bryce saw the root of everything.

  Our lives come from the inside.

  “I love you,” he said into the night, his chest no longer heaving. They had wiggled back into their clothes. The chill had come back when the sun went down, and they were covered in sweat.

  “I love you, too,” Bryce said, but her breath was still ragged.

  Her ears were ringing, morphing seamlessly into a familiar chorus of buzzing.

  “Huh,” she said.

  “What?” Carter said quietly beside her.

  “Bit late for cicadas,” she said.

  “I don’t hear any,” Carter said, his voice fading. “Just gonna rest my eyes for a bit,” he said, soon followed by the steady, slow breaths of sleep.

  “Okay,” Bryce said, and stood up. The buzzing grew louder, as loud as it could ever get in late July. But it was October. Pain was rising from places it had never come from before—behind her ears, the base of her neck near her shoulders, shooting across her forehead.

  She thought about rousing Carter, but another wave brought her to her knees, then to the ground in a crawling position.

  Bryce started t
o list all the things she knew about the ground, to keep from passing out.

  Hard dirt.

  Blades of grass.

  Broken acorn shells.

  Twigs.

  Soft sand.

  Water lapping on the back of her hand.

  That’s not right! Bryce pushed up, angry that she had been tricked. Her brain was tricking her. Fear rose along with another wave of pain. She was no longer in control.

  Speckled heat and light.

  Back to the dark.

  Gold light on the surface of the water.

  Bryce’s head throbbed, her lungs full of cotton, but at least she could stand.

  “Oh,” she realized with a hoarse whisper. She knew somehow, by the darkness darker than any she’d ever seen. By the way the water looked gold, like it was reversed with the sky. It never looked like that. Tonight was it. The vision she had seen. The dive. Her beginning, her end.

  Bryce had almost convinced herself that it was all a mistake, that she was going to live. Not forever, just long enough to do more things. To go to college. To be in love for a long time. To travel the world. She felt her face contort as if she was going to cry, but she didn’t know if she physically could.

  She was answered with pain so heavy it brought her back into darkness. She fought her way out like she was being buried in the air.

  Bryce stepped as carefully as she could to Carter, fast asleep, and kissed him gently so as not to wake him. Would he be surprised to find her gone in the morning? Bryce wondered if he had started believing she would live, too.

  As she made her way to the edge of the bluff, holding saplings for balance, Bryce said silent good-byes to her mother, her father, her little sister. She could picture them in their beds: her mother in her electric-pink bathrobe; her dad snoring in a sweat suit, a biography of a baseball player open on his chest; Sydney as Bryce had seen her the last couple of nights, her face buried in a book about music theory.

  The buzzing was too loud now to make out any other sounds, and pain was bursting behind her eyes like a fireworks finale. With every inch of movement her muscles had left, Bryce crossed her hands in front of her in perfect form, bent her legs, tense and steady, and sprung off. A tuck in the dark, then toward the light, straight as an arrow. A last dive into forever.