Searching for Sky

by Jillian Cantor

  “River,” I whisper, “River, it’s me. I’m here.” I reach for his hand, and I squeeze it. I will him to squeeze back. His hand is warm still but limp, and he doesn’t respond. “Listen to me,” I tell him. “I’m not going to say good-bye to you. You’re going to get better and wake up, and we’re going to go back to Island, okay?”

  The machine beeps, slow and steady. River’s chest moves up and down. He’s still alive. He’s still breathing.

  I turn his hand over, and I look at his large palm, and then with my finger I slowly trace the picture I left for him that night on the beach. The picture he drew for me on Island. Two overlapping circles. Me and him. Him and me. Going around, connecting, together.

  “You promised,” I tell him.

  Suddenly the beeping on his machines gets louder, higher, the beeps closer together.

  Dr. Cabot runs in, and she is not alone now. Another doctor I don’t recognize runs to River’s other side and pushes on his chest. Then another one runs in behind him. “Megan,” Dr. Cabot says, “you need to leave.” She tugs on my shoulder.

  I shake my head. “What’s happening?”

  “You can’t be in here any longer.” She pulls hard on my arm so I’m forced to let go of River’s hand. It falls limply back to the bed, and now a few doctors surround him, pushing on his body.

  “I can’t leave him,” I say, but she is strong, and my leg is weak, and she pulls hard so that I have no choice.

  “River!” I yell. “River.” But only the machines answer me, beeping, beeping, beeping so loud that I don’t think there’s any way River could hear me over them.

  “See you again soon,” I yell, tears streaming down my face as Dr. Cabot pulls me into the blank white hallway.

  Ben and I don’t say a word on the ride back to University Hospital. We don’t talk about the way River looked lying in that bed, or what Dr. Cabot said, that it would be the last time I’ll see him. We don’t talk about what it meant when the machines started beeping louder, when the doctors rushed in and pushed on River’s chest. We don’t talk about how River is a part of me—that he always has been, and he always will be—and that I don’t know the world without him. And I understand now I don’t want to. That without him, my circle is broken, empty, alone.

  I am glad that Ben isn’t making me talk, asking me questions, as if he understands that I can’t talk, that any words now may break me. Maybe he really is my friend. But what does that matter now, anyway? What does anything matter if River isn’t with me?

  Ben drives his SUV through the car forest of the I-5, and I lean my head against the window, closing my eyes, opening them again. Wishing every time they open that all this is a bad dream. That when I look around, I’ll be lying on the rabbit pelts in Shelter, River’s back hugging mine, the sounds of the green birds crying in the distance. But the only sounds I hear are car horns, and something on the radio that I don’t recognize, that I don’t have the strength to ask Ben about.

  When he finally turns back into the parking lot at University Hospital, I see a lot of cars with bright red throbbing lights on the top. “Oh, shit,” Ben says.

  Shit, I remember, is one of the bad words that I’m not supposed to echo.

  Ben stops the car, and a man dressed in black bangs on the glass of Ben’s window. “Step out of the car, son,” he’s saying. I think I hear my grandmother’s voice yelling from somewhere in the distance. Or maybe she’s crying. It’s hard to tell.

  “Shit,” Ben whispers again. His face is very pale, his eyes so wide. An owl’s. A scared one.

  He puts his hand on the door to get out.

  “Thank you,” I say, but the words escape me like a shadow, so soft and shapeless, I’m not even sure Ben hears them.

  Chapter 38

  I’m not sure what happens to Ben after we get out of his SUV, and I know I should care, and part of me does. But it is very hard to think of anything else but River, of the way he looked, lifeless in that bed as the doctors rushed toward him.

  I allow my grandmother to pull me back to my room in University Hospital because I don’t really have another choice, and I’m tired, and my leg hurts. Back in the bed, I lie there limply, not even trying to fight as the nurse pushes her poison into my arm again. I want it to take me away now. To take me back. I want to dream in Island again, the water and the fish swimming easily through my legs, River’s arms holding me up. But I don’t. I dream nothing.

  I don’t know how much time has passed when I wake up again and the gray marine layer falls in through my window. Morning again. In California. But I don’t know what morning it is, how many mornings, how long I have slept and slept, lulled into darkness with the nurses’ poison.

  This morning, a nurse brings food I won’t eat, that I haven’t eaten in what feels like forever, and she leaves it on the table next to my bed along with a newspaper. I hold out my arm, expecting her to inject me again, waiting for the relief it will bring, the blank and dreamless darkness. But instead she says, “You’re going home today.”

  “Home,” I repeat, another stupid, empty word in California. Home is Island. River. My eye catches on the newspaper she brought in with her. My picture is there on the front again, and so is River’s. And Helmut’s. “What does this say?” I ask her.

  “I don’t know if I should …”

  But I know how to read one word: dies. Mrs. Fairfield taught me to read it when we read that article about the shooting in Iowa together. Dies. Dead. Murder. Gone. My mother and Helmut sinking down beneath the waves, cold and purple and bloated.

  The newspaper is saying what I already knew these past few days through my long, dark sleeps. River is gone. River is dead.

  I clutch the newspaper so hard that it begins to tear, that my fingers turn black and purple, and the side of River’s face has rubbed away because I can’t stop touching it, running my finger across it, wanting to make it real, make him come back here.

  A few hours later, my grandmother wheels me out of University Hospital and into the parking lot. My fingers still clutch the newspaper picture of River, my fingertips black. She is talking to me as she wheels me out, but my ears are filled with water; my head is numb and heavy.

  I hear her say something about adding someone else to her team of professionals, a physical therapist who will help my leg get back to normal. I hear her voice, her words thrumming in my ears, like bees buzzing. A painful, stupid noise. But I am just a shadow now. And I don’t care if my leg works or not.

  “I need to see him,” I say as we get to the car. “Where is he?” My eyes fill with tears, and then her face falls.

  “Oh,” she says, “honey.” She puts her hand on my shoulder. “He has an aunt in Temecula. Dr. Cabot told me that she was … taking care of everything.”

  I think again about how River and I took care of my mother and Helmut. River should find the water, too, I think. He should be put in the ocean. I understand that the Pacific might not be able to heal him, but maybe it will. Maybe it will bring him back to where he belongs, the other side, to Island. See you soon, I’d said to him. “I want to do it,” I say softly.

  “Honey.” She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. You can’t. His aunt is family. That’s her job. That’s the way we do things here.”

  “But she hated him,” I say. “She didn’t want him when he was alive. Can’t you go talk to her, tell her? He needs to be in the water, in the ocean.”

  She frowns but doesn’t answer. She puts her hand on my shoulder, and she leans over to help me out of the chair and into the car. My bones shift and move, but that’s all they are, all I am—bones. I am the one who is empty and broken now, a skeleton.

  Back in the pink bedroom, I go to sleep again.

  I sleep for days or weeks or months. I don’t know. The notches that I marked for days behind the bed with a pencil are gone, and I understand my grandmother must’ve found them and made them disappear while I was away. So now time is nothing. It is empty. I don’t even try to
understand it.

  I am resting my eyes. I remember when my grandmother said that, and she seemed sad, and now I understand what it means.

  My grandmother brings food, and I push it away. I rest my eyes and try to get back there, to Island, to Shelter, with River’s warm back hugging mine. I try and I try, and sometimes, in my dreams, it is almost right there, almost close enough for me to grab it in my fingers and pull it back to me. But then it disappears, slipping through my hands like grains of sand.

  “Mrs. Fairfield is here to see you,” my grandmother says, and I tuck my head tighter under the covers, pretending to be asleep, wishing for it. She tries again later, or the next day, with Dr. Banks.

  Maybe I am here, with her, without River. Stuck in California. But they can’t make me get out of my bed, I think. They can’t make me eat. Or even breathe. I can stay here between these sheets forever, until my skin falls away and my bones peek through. Until my skeleton collapses into the water, and then somehow, I will find them again. My mother. River. Island.

  Chapter 39

  I am just about back to Island, skimming the water in Roger and Jeremy’s boat, River’s hands on my back, Island a small shell growing larger in the distance, when I hear R.E.M. singing in my ear.

  No, shouting, about the end of the world.

  I open my eyes, and River, the boat, Island, they’re all gone, and Ben is hovering above me, his iPod in my face, screaming music at my head.

  “What are you doing? Stop it.” I push the iPod away with my hand, and it falls, hitting the floor. But R.E.M. is still shouting at me.

  Ben reaches down to pick up the iPod and turns it off. “Hey, Island Girl,” he says softly.

  “Don’t call me that. And get out,” I snap at him. “I’m trying to sleep.”

  “Sky,” he says gently, “do you know what it took to convince Alice to even let me in here to see you?” I think about how he took me to see River, when no one else would, and how mad my grandmother must’ve been. But if it hadn’t been for him, I never would’ve seen River again. I never would’ve held his hand one last time, tracing the circles of us in his palm.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “I brought you something.” He bends down and reaches into his bag, and then he pulls out a drawing and hands it to me. I expect it to be the one I saw on his table that day, of me running into the waves. But it’s not.

  It’s a picture of River’s wooden shelter, the pier, as Ben called it, rising high above the sand, the rocks, the ocean. I touch my finger to the spot underneath where River’s things were, where we slept the last time, together. Where the shadow in black shot us. I hate everything about this picture, but also, I love it.

  “Thanks,” I tell him.

  “I did it in fifth period, chem lab.” I don’t know what he’s talking about, so I shake my head. “School,” he says. “I was bored in school today, so I drew it for you.”

  “Oh,” I say, understanding now that time has passed, that Ben is in school, that River is gone, and the world has shifted and moved, and yet for me, everything has stayed exactly the same. After my mother and Helmut died, after the storm ended, River and I left Shelter and did the jobs we always did, adding to them the extras done by Helmut and my mother, too. We did it wordlessly, without discussion over who would do what. I caught the fish, as I always did, and cooked it, too, as my mother did. I checked the traps the way Helmut taught me. River prepared the fish and cleaned it in Falls after he’d collected flowers. I feathered a bird the way Helmut would’ve. River lit the fire in Fire Pit the way my mother did and extinguished it at night before we went to sleep, as Helmut did. Everything moved and hummed and lived, exactly as it had before. Until time passed, and my birthday came. And River and I were happy there, the two of us, as if that were the way it had always been.

  “You know you have to get out of that bed,” Ben says now.

  “Why?” I ask him. “And how did you get my grandmother to let you up here, anyway?”

  “I promised I’d get you downstairs for dinner.” He pauses. “And I gave her money back.”

  “Why?” I ask again.

  “Because I liked spending time with you this summer. It didn’t feel like a job.” He smiles at me. “And she feels really bad about what happened,” Ben says, and his face turns, so I think he does, too.

  “Yeah, sure she does,” I say, and I think about the last time we talked, when I pleaded with her to talk to River’s aunt in Temecula and she refused. She told me to accept it. To move on. I can’t.

  Ben starts to say something, then hesitates for a moment. “Remember that day when we went to the fish market and you asked me about the shooting in Iowa?” he finally says.

  I nod, though it feels so far away now, the thought of a gun then, like a boat once was on Island. Something I wasn’t even sure was real, though now my leg throbs, reminding me just how real guns are.

  “And I said it happens all the time. That stuff like that … happens.” I nod again. “Well, I started to tell you something, but I didn’t think I should. And now I think you need to know.” He pauses. “Do you know why your mother joined Helmut’s cult?”

  I shake my head, though it feels silly that I didn’t think about that before. That I never once considered why she left Pink Bedroom to go live on the farm with Helmut and those other people. Eden, River called it, remembering its beauty. Maybe she just loved it there as much as River did.

  “Well, something happened,” Ben says. “Your mom was pregnant with you at the time, and she went out to lunch at a restaurant. You know what that is, right?” I shake my head, but he keeps talking anyway. “It was crowded. There were a lot of people there. She was waiting out front to get a table or meet a friend or something, I’m not sure. And then some crazy asshole with a gun started shooting. A bunch of people were shot, killed.” He pauses. “And your mother got shot, too. She was seriously injured. She was shot in the shoulder, and she lost a lot of blood. She nearly died, and so did you, before you were even born.” He touches my shoulder softly, right there, right in the spot, the spot where my mother’s deep purple mark burned sometimes. And I feel a stillness in my bones and in my blood, a cold like I felt that night when I ran into the California Pacific. The cold of almost having been dead, of almost drowning but not quite.

  Ben exhales and continues talking. “After she recovered and you were born, your mother wanted something else. Something better … I guess. And that’s when she and your father joined the cult.”

  I think about the line on my leg, still hurting, and then I think again about the wrinkled purple circle of flesh on my mother’s shoulder. It had always been there, her one imperfection, the thing that would sometimes grow hot and send her into Shelter during the day. That was from a gun? I’d asked her about it, and every time, she’d said, Oh, that? Just a scar from when I was younger. And she’d shrugged it away as if it was nothing. But now I wonder if it was everything.

  “How do you know all this?” I ask Ben, though I guess it’s the same way he knew about Helmut. The Google in his laptop computer. And I wonder again if it’s all real, entire lives and stories trapped lifeless inside the tiny laptop window. It feels so strange that my life—my mother’s life—is out there for the entire world to see and read in their laptop computers as if they know me, everything about me, as if they know me more than I know myself, and maybe they do. That’s the strangest part. I only know what I’ve seen, what I can touch—the water, the sand, River … my mother’s wrinkled purple imperfection. A gunshot.

  “Well,” Ben is saying, “my mom has told me some of it, and Alice talks about it sometimes. Every year on the anniversary of the shooting, she goes to the restaurant where it happened and brings flowers. There’s a small memorial site there across the street now.” He pauses. “Even though your mom didn’t die when she got shot there, I think Alice kinda feels like she did … That she feels like she lost your mom forever that day. You, too.”

  Everything that
Ben is saying falls in my ears, as if it doesn’t make any sense. It is not at all a part of the world I thought I knew or would’ve ever imagined. I think about my mother describing California to me as a place where people were cold and broken, skeletons. And now I think the skeletons she was talking about were not my grandmother or the Bens of California, but the shadow men with the guns. Bad things happen, Dr. Banks told me. But I never imagined something like this happening to my mother, my grandmother. Me.

  “Shit,” I whisper, Ben’s bad word seeming like the only thing I want to say, I know how to say. I can barely understand what I’m feeling now, much less find the words to describe it to Ben.

  Ben nods, and I think about what he said, about how my grandmother feels as if my mother died that day so long ago, in a time when I wasn’t even born yet. Now I see a glimmer of Island as she must see it, something ugly, something that took my mother and me away from her forever. And as much as I want to hate her for what she did to River, I feel something else for her now, too, a deep sorrow that tugs in my chest, holding me under like a strong wave.

  “Come on,” Ben says now, nudging my shoulder. “Alice is grilling wahoo for dinner. I picked it up fresh after school.”

  “I don’t even like wahoo,” I tell him, but I give him my hand, and I let him help me up out of the bed.

  My grandmother seems smaller than I remember when I see her sitting at her kitchen table, not at all like the kind of person who could destroy someone, or who would even want to. I just wanted to help, she once told me. I don’t know what to do. There are no rules for something like this.

  When she sees me, walking unsteadily into the kitchen, holding on to Ben, she jumps up. “Honey, finally,” she says.

  “It’s just dinner,” I tell her, though my voice falters.

  “Yes,” she says, and she smiles. “You’re exactly right. It’s just dinner.”