by Alex Flinn
Meredith was still quiet, almost as if she’d fallen asleep. But no. She shifted. Spider quite liked her. She could be friends with someone like her, someone quiet. Most people wouldn’t see the point of a friendship with someone who didn’t talk incessantly. Even Ruthie (whom Spider considered to be her best friend) sometimes felt the need to ask questions. How was she feeling? Did she like her book? Questions to try to make her talk. It wasn’t people Spider disliked so much as talking. That was why she dreamed of living here year-round. When the summer people left, she could come out here in the cold evening and look at the sky and not have to have an opinion about it.
That would be lonely. Spider was used to loneliness, though.
Against the background of crickets, Spider heard Meredith’s sigh.
Yes, yes, I know how you feel. But she didn’t speak. She wished she could capture the feeling of this night in words, so others could experience the airy peacefulness. But the absence of words, of human speech, was the essence of it. Finally, she began to shiver. She had no sweater. Her legs ached from her awkward position. She rose but didn’t say anything. She wondered if she should.
When she opened the front door, she heard someone crying. Was it Kate? And was Spider supposed to do something about it? Ask what was wrong? No. Surely not. Surely Kate had waited until she thought no one was around. It would be rude to bother her. She didn’t want some stranger intruding. Spider closed the door without a sound, then tiptoed up to bed.
Britta and Ruthie seemed to be finished talking. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. Outside, she heard an owl shrieking. She’d never heard one so close to the house.
Spider wondered if she had done the right thing, ignoring Kate. It wasn’t until she was cuddled under her soft, old periwinkle-and-white quilt in the silent darkness that she wondered what rich, beautiful Kate had to cry about.
7
Kate
KATE STARED AT the texts, bubble after depressing bubble.
She’d been asleep on the bus when they’d come in. Fortunately, she’d awakened, by some instinct, at the right stop, or she might have ended up in Canada somewhere, hunting caribou. Then, when she finally reached the bus station, she hadn’t been able to look at her phone because she was listening to Britta, being polite because, possibly, she’d overreacted on the bus. Okay, she had overreacted. Britta kept talking, trying to be her BFF. Bless her heart.
To be fair, had she been in a better mood, she might have liked Britta. But she was not. In. A. Good. Mood. They probably thought she was a snob. Maybe she was one.
Only when she’d reached the privacy of her own room had she looked at her phone. Most of the texts were from her mother.
Your father’s in trouble.
I don’t know what to do.
Please call me.
Did you know?
And on it went. And on. Why had her father warned Kate but not his wife?
And one text from Colin, just one:
Is this why you broke up with me?
Yes. She had known. And yes, that was why she’d broken up with Colin. But it was too late to answer either message. She had no bars. They were out in the wilderness.
It was better that way. That was what she’d wanted. No need to drag Colin into this mess. She couldn’t stand the idea of his family judging hers, of them telling him to break up with her. She had her pride.
She noticed that there were no texts from her friends at home. Not one.
Not that she was expecting some outpouring of sympathy from Marlowe and Greer, certainly not from Lacey, who’d probably be thrilled to get her spot for Extemporaneous on debate team if Kate had to transfer schools. But there wasn’t even a normal text, like a cat meme. Which meant they were all probably texting one another about her.
She heard laughter drifting down the stairway, Ruthie’s old laughter, then Britta’s younger voice. She would be especially nice to Britta tomorrow, to make up with her.
She scrolled through Colin’s old messages, months of them, pictures of them together, at homecoming, on a spring break ski trip, at a charity white elephant sale, Colin wearing an old Mexican sombrero someone had donated, Kate with an aqua belly-dancing skirt over her jeans. Mrs. Bader had yelled at them not to wear the merchandise.
“I think you look hot in it,” he’d said, and he bought it for her. “Wear it without the jeans next time.”
She had never put it all the way on, though. As soon as she’d tried, that night after they’d counted the cashbox, he had kissed her. Kissing Colin was like skiing down a perfect, powdery slope. It was her first time being in love, and her mother had assured her it wouldn’t last forever. But God, she’d wanted it to.
Her fingers kept scrolling to a photo of them in the park. They’d spoken Latin all day, Colin consulting his Latin dictionary, and someone had yelled at them to speak English; this was America. Kate had yelled back, “Ignorantia non excusat nam odium,” which she thought meant “ignorance doesn’t excuse hatefulness,” but she might have been wrong. It was at least close enough to make Colin laugh as the woman shooed them off.
“You told her,” he had said.
“I don’t think she knows what I told her,” Kate had replied.
“Sometimes it’s only important that you know.”
How she wanted to answer Colin’s texts. Fortunately, the Gods of Cell Phone Reception prevented it even if her own conscience didn’t. But had Spider said something about a hill? Being able to get service on a hill?
Now it was too dark. Her hand ached from clutching the phone so hard. She lay down on the bed and sobbed, sobbed for Mother and Daddy and Colin and her stupid spot on the debate team, for not being able to take in the beauty of this new place because of all the old thoughts crowding it out.
8
Meredith
Essay topic: “One of the great challenges of our time is that the disparities we face today have more complex causes and point less straightforwardly to solutions.”
—Omar Wasow, assistant professor of politics, Princeton University, and cofounder of Blackplanet.com. This quote is taken from Professor Wasow’s January 2014 speech at the Martin Luther King Day celebration at Princeton University.
WHAT DID THAT even mean?
She decided not to think about it. After Spider left, Meredith spread out and put her feet up on the second Adirondack chair. She was alone! Blessedly alone, with the stars! Now she could start relaxing. She’d promised her guidance counselor, if not her mother, she would.
She had to admit, though, that she was weirdly impressed with Spider. Never before had she met someone so untroubled by the obligation of appearing friendly, even to paying guests. From the time she’d picked them up at the bus stop until now, she hadn’t said one extraneous word. She hadn’t even apologized very much when she’d actually sat on Meredith.
But that was what Meredith had wanted. Absolute silence.
And stars.
Meredith leaned back and breathed deeply. Look at me now, Ms. Gayton! I’m relaxing in a chair! I’m taking deep, cleansing breaths!
So many stars. At home, you could see the basics, the Big Dipper and Jupiter. Now, Meredith didn’t even know where to look first. She’d consult her astronomy book, but it seemed like every constellation was there. In the silence, they almost sang.
There were no cars, televisions, lawn mowers. Even the crickets seemed muted.
Then, a sound rose from the trees.
“Whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo. Whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo!”
What was it? A mournful song, or a ghost.
Or was it someone crying?
The house was way off the road and separated from the next closest house by acres of woods that went far back and down a hill. It was from these woods that the cry came.
“Whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo. Whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo!”
An owl. Was it hunting? Meredith stood slowly on the pine needle–dappled dirt. She placed first one careful foot, then the other, on the ground. She tried to foll
ow the sound. In the silence, her every step sounded like the crunch of a bag of potato chips.
Could the owl hear her? She shivered. The night was actually cool, though it was July.
“Whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo. Whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo!”
It sounded closer. Meredith walked farther into the woods, holding her arms out to fend off the trees, like Red Riding Hood about to confront a wolf. Meredith felt the soft ground underneath her sneakers, the wind between her fingers.
She touched something.
It did not feel like a tree.
She jumped back. The owl? Had she actually touched the owl?
“Eek!” she screamed, sure she had, sure it was going to attack her with sharp talons as if she were a helpless mouse.
She dived to the ground, shielding her face.
Only then did she realize the thing she had touched did not have feathers.
Hope is the thing with feathers. Emily Dickinson had said that. But, though the thing she had touched wasn’t feathered, she was pretty sure it was living. A person. A person taller than she was.
Meredith screamed for real, her shrieks piercing the quiet night.
“God! Stop it!”
It was a guy’s voice, and his words did nothing to silence her.
“They’re right there!” she yelled, gesturing wildly in the direction she assumed the house was in, even though she could just barely see one lit window through the trees.
“Who’s there?” The voice was laughing, laughing the way killers do in books when they have their victims cornered. Why had she come here? Why hadn’t she stayed in Miami?
“My . . . friends . . . ,” she stammered out. “Four of them. They’ll hear me. They’ll know if something happens to me. They’ll call the police.”
Another laugh. “And the police will come in a few days, I guess.”
Meredith felt her heart hammering away. But, she realized, he wasn’t attacking her. Instead, she heard him fumbling, maybe looking for rope to tie her up. She’d never thought about how scary it was to be alone. At home, there was the safety of crowds. She tried to scramble to her feet, but the pine needle–covered ground was silk-slick beneath her feet. She started to slide downhill.
He grabbed her. “Whoa!”
She stopped sliding. She saw what he’d been fumbling for, a flashlight. It illuminated her face, and she struggled to get away. No one was coming to help her. There was no one.
The guy let go of her, still laughing. Meredith stumbled back, heart pounding more and more furiously. “Who are you?” The flashlight raked her from head to toe. “Not a Webster.”
Meredith breathed in, saying nothing. Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
“I know all of them,” he continued. “They’re not here this summer except the old lady and Spider, and Spider doesn’t leave the house much.”
Gradually, it dawned on Meredith that, just maybe, she wasn’t going to die.
“Who are you?” she gasped out.
“Oh!” He laughed and shone the flashlight on his own face. “I’m Harmon Dickinson.”
Hope is the thing with feathers.
In the flashlight beam, his face looked skeleton-like, a campfire nightmare image. Still, she could make out that he was not a man. Rather, he was a guy about her age, tall, with brown, curly hair and broad shoulders. He had something strapped around his neck. Camera.
Who took pictures in the woods at night?
Pervs, that was who. Stalkers. Had he been going to their house to take pictures through the window? Was that how he knew so much about the Websters? Was he a Peeping Tom?
Still, she said, “Dickinson, like the poet?”
He shrugged. “Dickinson like the Dickinson family, my family. We’ve lived here forever.”
“I haven’t been here forever. I’m from Miami.” Meredith eyed the camera.
“Ooh, Miami. ¡Muy caliente! I learned that in Spanish class.”
“I take German.” She tried to stand, but her foot slid out beneath her. “Oh!”
His hand was on her back, steadying her. She planted her feet and tried to right herself. Who knew pine needles were so slippery?
“Want a hand?” He held out his arm. “Grab it.”
She did. His grip was firm. She pulled herself up with a minimum of slippage this time.
“Thank you.”
She stood a moment, unsure what to say. She couldn’t very well go back to sitting on the lawn looking at the stars like she was alone, now that she knew she wasn’t.
“You know,” he said, “just for the record, you mauled me.”
“What?” Meredith brushed her butt, which she suspected was covered in pine needles.
“You screamed like I was an ax murderer, but I’m actually the injured party here. I went innocently out into the woods, and you mauled me. To my great humiliation, I might add. What were you doing here?”
He had the light back on her, like she was under interrogation. Still, she guessed he was somewhat right.
“I thought I heard an owl. I’ve never seen an owl before.” She moved to the side a little, out of the light. “What were you doing there?” Giving him a chance to make it something other than peeping.
Sensing her discomfort, maybe, he shone the light back on himself. “Like this?” He called, “Whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo. Whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo!”
“Yeah.”
He gestured toward his camera. “I was looking for an owl.”
“Oh.” Meredith looked down, glad he couldn’t see her face, which she suspected was getting red. “So much for nature.”
And then, because she couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say, and she hated situations where she couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say, she started to walk away. “Good night.”
A moment later, his voice followed her. “Do you like nature?”
She turned back. “Who doesn’t like nature?”
“Lots of people. Everyone in New York City, I’m guessing. There’s plenty of nature around here, birds, flowers, butterflies. I could show it to you sometime.”
She didn’t answer. Was he asking her to hang with him? Her?
“I’m mostly harmless. We live in the white house down the road. You could ask my mother, if you don’t believe me.”
She laughed. “You’re giving your mother as a reference?” It occurred to her that, up here, people didn’t know she was a huge nerd.
“Not too many people around here. You could ask my math teacher, Mrs. Campanella, but I think she’s on vacation. I know every inch of these woods. Lived here all my life.”
She was almost back to the house when she yelled back, “Maybe!”
He didn’t answer, probably hadn’t heard her. Still, it made her smile.
9
Britta
QUIET. BRITTA HAD never thought about how quiet quiet could be. She’d imagined a lack of actual noise, like people talking or music, but she hadn’t thought of all the noise you didn’t consider. Like airplanes. Cars off in the distance. The stop-start of the air conditioner in the neighbors’ yards as she walked by their houses. Dogs barking at dogs barking at dogs in an endless procession. She realized she’d never been in an actually quiet place before.
Until now. This place was silently silent, so silent that, when she moved the little Rummikub tiles around the table she shared with Ruthie, the sound was deafening.
She picked a tile. Black six! She’d needed that one. At least, she thought she did. She wasn’t completely sure. Ruthie was just teaching her the game.
“Is it a little like dominoes?” she asked Ruthie.
“You play dominoes?” Ruthie asked, surprised.
“I used to play with my grandfather. Old Cuban people play it.”
“Used to?” Ruthie put down her tiles. Three eights and a red six, seven, eight, and nine.
“He died.” Britta examined the tiles Ruthie had placed. “When I was little, he’d let me sit on the chair beside him and help him choose which fichas—t
hat’s what he called the tiles—to play. And he gave me tips—like always set down the doubles first and keep track of what numbers are showing when your opponent passes. By the time I was nine, I could even beat him sometimes.” She remembered Abuelo asking her advice even. She missed that.
“Interesting. You’ll have to teach me.”
“I’d love to. So how does this work? Can I take one of your tiles? Like if I need the nine?”
Ruthie nodded. “But only after you put down fifty points on your own.”
Britta sighed and took a tile. A nine, but yellow. She already had one.
“So what brought you here this summer?” Ruthie removed the nine from the board and placed it with two other nines from her hand.
Britta selected another tile. “Just . . . wanted to relax.”
Ruthie raised an eyebrow. “You don’t seem like a relaxing kind of girl.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Not that this wasn’t true.
“You remind me a great deal of myself at your age, a bundle of energy.” Ruthie placed a tile down. “I couldn’t wait for something interesting to happen in my life. I wouldn’t have wanted to spend a month lying on a hammock.”
Britta said nothing, putting down a blue four, five, six, and seven, then three tens. “That’s fifty-two, right?”
“Yes.”
As Ruthie made her move, Britta took in the bright-yellow walls. The other rooms in the house were decorated like the vacation places her friends had in the Keys, only more mountainy. Antique quilts, rustic furniture, lamps made out of antlers, pillows and hangings with sayings like “Heaven is a little closer in the mountains,” homey decor her mother would find tacky if she knew about it. Ruthie’s room was alive with posters and memorabilia. Britta noticed one from Shakespeare in the Park and another from the production of Hair.
“I don’t know,” she said, putting down a seven. “I just wanted to get away from home. Didn’t you ever feel like that when you were young?”
Ruthie smiled. “I feel like that now sometimes. But of course, when you’re a teenager, you think no one can understand you. Maybe they can’t.”