The Edge of Anything

by Nora Shalaway Carpenter

  “Oh.” Len’s breath caught. “My sister calls a lot.”

  Sage drummed the steering wheel. “Do you know anything about OCD?” she blurted. The light turned green. “Obsessive compulsive disorder?”

  “Um, a little, I guess. It makes people do things over and over, right? Like they have to do things a certain number of times?”

  “It’s more than that. It covers a lot of stuff, actually.” Sage’s eyes slid to Len. “I think you might have it.”

  Len’s chest convulsed like something had slammed into her. “That’s not what I have.”

  “Hear me out.”

  “No!” Len shouted. “I know what’s wrong with me.” She turned to the window, crumpling.

  “You do?”

  “I want to go home.”

  “Len—”

  “Take me home, Sage.”

  “No.”

  Len whipped back to her. “What do you mean, no?”

  “You said you know what’s wrong. Tell me.”

  Len shook her head. She’d been so stupid. Why had she gotten in the car? Sage hadn’t wanted her company at all. Len was just a problem to her, a mind puzzle to distract from her own misery. Len covered her face, desperate to hide her mortification. “Why won’t you just take me home?”

  “Because.” Sage made a sudden sharp turn, forcing Len to grab the handle above the door. “If you go home, you’ll be miserable and beat yourself up over something that’s not your fault at all.” The car bounced as it hit the edge of the curb before finally coming to rest in a Walgreens parking lot.

  Len closed her eyes. She was so, so tired of fighting what was happening to her. Of keeping it a secret. “I have childhood dementia.” She glanced at Sage, who wasn’t even trying to hide her horror.

  The roar of traffic filled the car. “What is that?” asked Sage.

  “Just what it sounds like. It’s rare, but that’s life, right?” Len took a deep breath, then told Sage everything. About Nonni and how her mind had slowly come unraveled. How the same thing was happening to Len, she was sure of it, and how Jamie had treated a patient who was just ten years old. How Nonni didn’t recognize them and Mom cried at night when she thought Len was asleep. How Len couldn’t bear to tell her parents, because Mom cried enough, and they wouldn’t be able to afford treatment anyway, and she’d found a letter saying they’d missed last month’s rent.

  “Shit,” Sage said, finally. “I’m sorry. About all of that.” Her head tipped back against the seat. “It just… shit.”

  It was such a ridiculous understatement that Len laughed—a small sound at first, but it rippled into a half-crying belly laugh. Sage looked at her like she was slightly insane, which she supposed she was, because nothing was funny. But she’d gotten a taste of it, the laughter, and it was delicious, like spring water after an all-day mountain hike. It fed something in her she hadn’t realized was hungry. She wished she could laugh forever.

  “See,” Len said, because Sage was still looking at her like she was nuts. “I’m losing my mind.”

  She thought that might make Sage laugh, too, but Sage just sat back, drumming the steering wheel again. She reminded Len of a falcon, like the one she’d seen with Nonni several years ago on a hike at Chimney Rock. Peregrine, that was it. Nonni had almost fainted at their luck.

  Nonni had shown her a close-up photo later, and Len had been struck by the bird’s fierce countenance and its intense, piercing concentration. Sage’s face held the same, calculating look.

  Sage turned to her. “So, you haven’t been diagnosed with this childhood dementia thing, right? You just think you have it?”

  Len bristled. “Dementia is genetic. I have all the symptoms. And there’s no cure.” Her voice caught, but she was out of tears. “We don’t have health insurance. All a diagnosis would do is mess up my family worse.” She looked out the passenger window. “I’ve caused too much pain already.”

  “Here’s the thing,” Sage said, and Len turned back to her. She ran a hand over her dark messy hair. “You said this type of dementia is super rare, right?”

  “Fifty thousand people have it.” The stat had been bouncing around Len’s head ever since she’d first looked up the disease.

  “Fifty thousand people in the world? Out of, like, eight billion?”

  Len stiffened. “You don’t believe me.”

  “It’s not that. Listen. You said your symptoms match up with dementia. But I really feel like they match up with OCD, which is way more common.”

  “I don’t have OCD!”

  “Len.” Sage’s voice was soft. “You had me wipe mud off your hands. Because you couldn’t do it yourself.”

  Shame gushed through Len. It closed off her throat, leaked out her pores.

  “There’s this thing I read about,” Sage went on. “Contamination fear—”

  Len must have looked bad, really bad, because Sage stopped talking midsentence.

  “This is why you picked me up?” Len asked. “To make me feel like this? As bad as you?”

  Sage recoiled. “Of course not—”

  Len’s mouth felt caked with mud, her lips dry and crumbly. “Something is happening to me. And yeah, I don’t like to get dirty, but it’s more than that.” She touched her head. “It’s hard to process things sometimes. A lot. And I forget things. I get confused. And… scared.” She hugged herself. It was awful saying this out loud, admitting it. “It’s hard to explain, but I’m the one that lives in my own head, okay?”

  Sage looked over the steering wheel at the traffic that whipped by on the road in front of them. “Yeah,” she whispered. “Okay.”

  A horrible thought attacked Len. “You won’t tell anyone this, right? I told you this in confidence. And anyway, I’m doing better now. I think, um, I just needed to get it out, you know?”

  Sage frowned, and panic seized Len. If Sage told anyone, her parents would find out about Nadia, and so would Fauna. She couldn’t hurt them again. And what if she was force-fed drugs for the rest of her life or placed in some kind of institution?

  “I’ll show you,” Len said. “I’ll prove I can control it.” She swallowed. “Let’s go hiking again.”

  Sage raised an eyebrow, and Len could tell she was remembering what happened last time. “I’m not sure—”

  “I can do it,” Len said. “Anywhere. You choose.” Her heart pounded in her ears.

  “Okay,” Sage said, in a voice that was overly nonchalant. “How about Graveyard Fields?”

  The name flooded Len with memories, dozens and dozens, all of them with Fauna. Len kept herself very still. Sage knew this. She’d seen the photo of Len and Fauna on her wall. This was some kind of test, and Len would pass it, because Dad was right: she was a strong woman, and she would will herself to do whatever she needed to convince Sage. To keep her from telling.

  She counted a slow breath in, a slow breath out.

  “Great.” Len pretended to adjust something on her camera. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  The parking lot at the Fields was full, of course, being Saturday. Sage circled the lot twice, then managed to wedge the car between a Ford Focus and a group of motorcycles. The calm that overtook Len surprised her. She hadn’t been here since Fauna had revealed her pregnancy, and after Nadia died, she had no intention of ever coming back.

  “Ready?” Sage asked, climbing out.

  Len swung open the car door. She could do this. She was strong. “Yes.” She looped her camera around her neck and followed Sage to the stone steps that led down to the paved trailhead.

  As usual, the air was almost ten degrees cooler up here. Sage had slipped on a thin wind jacket she’d grabbed from the back, which, from the style, Len guessed belonged to Sage’s mom. But Len found the sixty-five-degree air perfect. She followed Sage halfway down the steep steps, then paused, inhaling a huge gulp of pine- and rhododendron-scented air. The last bit of tightness in her chest loosened.

  A twentysomething couple approached,
returning to the parking lot. Sage passed them and kept going, entering a sea of rhododendron, but Len gave wide berth to the German Shepherd by their side. Then she surveyed the landscape through her lens. Some of the trees were already turning up here, their edges fringed with specks of sunset gold. The whole hilly expanse shimmered.

  Len didn’t think so much about angles or the themed series that she had less and less time to create. She just shot. She’d needed space and Sage had given it to her without being asked. She descended the remaining stairs and snapped a quick photo of Sage engulfed in a mountainous twist of rhododendron. If someone had asked her yesterday what a friend was, she might have given any number of answers. A person who likes you despite your weirdness—perhaps because of it. A person who sticks up for you, who doesn’t go to parties that they were invited to but you were snubbed from. Who helps if you ask, no matter what. She adjusted the f-stop and sneaked another picture of Sage.

  But there was another facet of friendship, Len realized. Something she hadn’t really considered before, but that suddenly struck her as essential. Regular friends should do all those things, sure, but there was also maybe a different kind of friendship, a deeper kind. A kind Len felt certain she’d never had with anyone besides Fauna and had believed didn’t exist outside of sisterhood.

  She angled her head back and snapped a picture of branches and sky, catching just enough of the sun’s edge to make the foliage glow.

  This deeper kind of friend knew what you needed sometimes before you did. And they gave it to you without needing to be asked.

  She swiveled her lens back to Sage. Were they real friends now, maybe even that deeper kind?

  Sage looked up. “Get anything good?” she called.

  Len walked over to her and turned the camera around so Sage could see. As she flipped through the images, a seed of excitement planted in her belly. Some of them weren’t too bad.

  “Wait.” Sage stuck her hand out. “Is that me?”

  Len nodded. “It was a cool visual, like the rhododendron was devouring you.” She looked up. “Is that okay?”

  Sage squinted. “Not devouring me.” She pointed at the image. “See how my hand’s there. It’s like I’m making it grow.” She wiggled her eyebrows, and Len laughed.

  “You have a good laugh,” Sage said. “It’s crackly. Like fire.”

  It was an odd compliment, but Len liked it. Sometimes Sage seemed as offbeat as she was.

  “I think I needed to come here,” Len said suddenly.

  Sage pulled the sleeves of the wind jacket over her hands and rubbed them together.

  “I didn’t want to come back,” Len said. “I haven’t, since—”

  Sage nodded.

  “But it’s okay,” Len said. “I didn’t think it would be.”

  Sage rocked back on her heels. “So do you want to go on to the Fields, then? It’s my favorite part.”

  Len looked down the path, remembering the last time she’d walked it, full to bursting with joy. “That’s where my sister told me,” she said quietly. “About Nadia. That she was gonna have a baby girl.”

  As if on cue, child laughs came from the parking area. Len’s nose began to sting.

  “We don’t have to go,” Sage said. “We can hike somewhere else.”

  “No,” Len said. “I can do it.” She repositioned her camera and slipped her hands into her pockets. She’d made a promise to Dad and she intended to keep it. “I want to.”

  They passed through the rest of the rhododendron thicket in silence, pausing on the bridge overlooking a small creek so Len could snap some photos. The wind was stronger on the bridge. It whipped Len’s hair loose and burrowed into the gap at the neck of her sweatshirt. A few yards ahead of her, Sage shivered, but Len wasn’t cold at all. For once, she felt okay. Good, even.

  She let her camera rest on its strap and closed her eyes. The soft water gurgles, the heady scent of leaves and bark, the gentle touch of sun, even the cool wind on her lips—all of it alone was ordinary, and yet somehow the combination felt magical. An ordinary magic, she thought. Maybe this was the Life Force.

  Len wasn’t entirely sure she understood the concept in the same way as her parents. Really, she wasn’t sure what she understood or believed, and it was almost too much to think about at times. But she couldn’t deny that there was something about places like this, so remote and wild that not even cell signals could penetrate them. She took another breath, this time visualizing a soft white light coming from the trees and rhododendron. It spread out, enveloping her before melting into her skin, soft and buttery, like Mom’s favorite homemade lotion.

  “Len?” Sage said. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” Len blinked, soaking in the feeling of steadiness. Pride burst through her, and she made a mental note to tell Dad about the successful visualization.

  They went left at the fork, away from the crowded Lower Falls, and climbed a set of wooden steps. When the trail became grass and earth, Len didn’t let herself stop. She imagined the white light again, a protective bubble, and plowed onto the dirt trail, astonished at her own fearlessness. She was doing this. She could control her fear.

  “It’s so beautiful,” Sage breathed.

  They were walking straight toward it, the place immortalized in Len’s photograph. The place she first learned Nadia’s name. Len’s breathing shortened, and she looked down. Huge mistake. The dirt trail was littered with bits of debris and dark matter. What was it?

  “Did you read Wuthering Heights?” Sage asked. “I always imagined the setting someplace like here. Well, maybe a little darker. More gloom, you know?”

  Len grunted acknowledgment. Those were just normal dirt things, she told herself. Normal outside things. Normal people don’t even notice them.

  Somehow, Sage was still talking, “But if you ask me, Heathcliff is a total possessive, abusive psycho. How can anyone find that romantic?” Len’s attention faded out. Animals died out here. She could have stepped on a piece of dead animal. What if it had rabies? How long did rabies last? Could she get rabies if she touched her boot? Could she bring it back to her house?

  Len stopped, her heart pounding so heavily it hurt. She tried to call back the white light. She was safe. She wasn’t touching anything. Her boots were touching things. She could clean her boots. She could Lysol the shit out of them.

  Sage turned around. “What do you think? Are you—?”

  Len watched Sage take her in. Watched understanding click in her face. This is what Dad meant. Get a grip, Len! But as much as she wanted to, Len couldn’t force herself to move.

  Sage smiled. It was a new smile, though, one Len hadn’t seen before. Gentler. Like she was looking at a fawn and wanted it to know she wouldn’t hurt it. “Sorry,” she said. “I talk a lot.” As if that were the reason Len was frozen. “You just have to tell me to shut up. I won’t mind. Ian does it all the time.”

  Len’s mouth twitched in an attempted grin.

  Sage walked back and stood shoulder to shoulder with Len, her attention focused on the landscape. “This is a nice spot,” she said. “Do you want to take some pictures?”

  Len blinked. Yes. She did want to take pictures. Slowly, the comforting pressure of the camera on her chest came back to her. She lifted the lens and starting shooting. Randomly. Nonsense photos. She would delete them all.

  “I don’t mind your talking,” Len said quietly, the camera still covering her face.

  They stood there for minutes, Len shooting the same image over and over while Sage pointed out interesting tree shapes in the distance and musing about different books she’d read.

  Then, right after explaining why Pride and Prejudice was so much better than Emma, Sage said, “Kayla got a full scholarship offer yesterday. From one of my favorite programs.”

  Len lowered her camera. Sage kept her eyes on the horizon, like she was still talking about the landscape.

  “She told the rest of the team,” Sage continued. “I only found out when
one of them mentioned it because she assumed I already knew.”

  “Maybe…” Len loathed defending Kayla, but she wanted to help Sage. “She probably didn’t want to hurt you.”

  Sage looked at her. “By telling everyone else? Did she think she could keep it a secret?”

  Len frowned. “You should have gotten that offer.”

  “Yes.” Her eyes concentrated on the trees like they were the only thing that mattered.

  “What if,” Len said slowly, “she just didn’t know how to tell you?”

  Sage wiped her sleeve across her face. “Look!” she said. “Is that a groundhog? God, they’re ugly.”

  Len snorted and lifted her camera again, snapping a few shots where Sage pointed. Her thoughts weren’t spiraling anymore, she realized, and her breathing had returned to normal. She let the camera fall back around her neck. Maybe it wasn’t the place that had calmed her. Or maybe the place wasn’t the only reason. Maybe it was Sage.

  Len adjusted the f-stop again. There was something about Sage, about the energy she exuded, that made Len feel stronger. Maybe that was friendship. She nodded across the field. “Right over there,” Len said. “That’s where Fauna told me.”

  Sage looked at her. Len could tell that, if she were someone else, Sage would have hugged her. She was definitely a hugger. But Len didn’t want her to—Sage touched way too many things for Len’s comfort—and Sage must have intuited that. Still, she stood as close to Len as she could get without touching her, and somehow, in an ineffable but important way, that mattered.

  * * *

  After Sage dropped her off at home, Len felt better than she had in ages. She’d gotten some great photos. She possibly had a real friend. And, most important, she’d beaten her brain.

  She rewarded herself with an extra-long shower and a mug of spicy ginger tea. After saying goodnight to her parents (Dad was thrilled to hear about the visualization), she decided to inspect her boots and see how much Lysol was required.

  They were lying on the small rug near the front door with the other shoes. There was more mud on the soles than she’d imagined, and there was a faint odor to them as well. Her pulse surged. She must have stepped in something foul. She’d have to scrub them as well as Lysol. But what if she couldn’t get rid of it all? What if the grossness touched her while she was cleaning? What if it fell off places she didn’t see? She bit her lip. She loved those boots. Fauna had helped her pick them out.