by Alex Flinn
“That’s awful,” Britta said. “I never knew your dad died, Meredith.”
“No one did,” Meredith said. “We moved to a new neighborhood, closer to my grandparents, so they could watch me after school. No one ever knew me when I had a dad.”
“I remember you that year,” Britta said. “When you first came to school, you barely talked to anyone. We just thought you were weird.” She looked down at her Doritos. “Sorry.”
“No, I was weird,” Meredith agreed, despite the sinking feeling. “I changed that year when we moved, with no friends or anything. All I had was school. If I’d stayed where I was, I might have been . . .” She looked at Britta. “I could’ve been you.”
Britta laughed. “That would be awful, I guess.”
Meredith thought about it. Britta was nice. And well-liked, the type of person who didn’t constantly worry about saying or doing something wrong, even if she did, because she was confident in her social abilities. In a way, Britta was smarter than she was. “No,” she said finally. “Just different.”
She didn’t want to talk about herself anymore. She never did. “How about you?” She passed the buck to Britta. “You ever have an experience like that?”
“Yeah.” Britta hesitated. “I mean, it’s not as bad. No one died. But yeah, it changed me. My parents got divorced when I was little. They were having problems my whole life. I’m five years younger than my brother, and I feel like they probably had me to, like, save their marriage or something. But it didn’t work. They split up when I was five. We visited my father Wednesdays and every other weekend, the usual routine, I guess. Anyway, my mother always said she would be a mother and a father to me, because she was all I had.”
“So your parents’ divorce was a life-changing event?” Meredith asked.
“No. I mean, yes, but that wasn’t the day everything changed. A lot of people’s parents get divorced. The day it changed was this time we were all out at the park together, me, my mom, my brother, and my grandparents. We went for a picnic. There’s this little pond with lots of turtles in it, so my brother brought dog food to give them.”
“The wayside park on US 1?” Meredith said. When Britta nodded, Meredith said, “I used to go there with my grandparents too, when my mom was at work.”
“Okay, so you know how deep and scary that pond is. We walked down the rocks to get closer to the turtles, and we were throwing dog food. I was six, and I could dog-paddle, but I wasn’t a good swimmer. My brother, Lukas, took this big handful of dog food, and I tried to grab some from him. Then, next thing I knew, I was launching face-first into the water. I plunged deep down, and it was all black and murky, and I couldn’t catch my breath. I heard Lukas screaming, but it seemed really far away, like I was hearing him through a wall.”
“That must have been so scary,” Meredith said, picturing it.
“Yeah. I can still feel the cold, murky water closing in on me.” She held her hands to her face. “I don’t know how long I was in there. I remember my hands scraping the rocks on the sides, like I was instinctively trying to pull myself up but couldn’t. Then, suddenly, someone was there beside me, hoisting me out of the water.” Britta gulped in a breath.
“It was my grandmother. She’d been sitting way far back from where we were, like I said, at a picnic table. When she saw me fall in, she ran over and jumped into the pond in her dress, to get me. She didn’t hesitate. Like, it was just maternal instinct to try and save me.”
Meredith nodded. She got it. “But your mother didn’t.”
“Exactly. She was there. My grandmother was farther. And my mother was younger and dressed more appropriately, and she was my mother, who’s supposed to have that instinct. But she didn’t jump in. Like, she had to decide whether to get her hair wet or something.”
“Maybe that wasn’t it?” Meredith said. “I thought you said she was overprotective.”
“I’ve thought about that. I feel like she acts overprotective because that’s how she’s supposed to act, how her friends act. But when she had the opportunity to actually protect me, she didn’t. Like, now, she’s more concerned with her skeezy boyfriend than with me. Last year, we were making plans to go on a cruise together, like this girl-bonding thing. Then, she met Rick, and she went on a cruise with him for Christmas break and left me home with my grandmother and the cat.”
“Wow,” Meredith said. “That’s so the opposite of my helicopter mom.” Not that her mom ever did anything fun like a cruise. They mostly took trips to see colleges.
“Pick your poison, right? But anyway, it really did change everything, everything about me and about how I thought about myself. From then on, I knew I was sort of on my own. And now that she’s with Rick . . . God, he’s so awful. Sometimes, I think he’s just with her because she has a daughter. Like, it’s creepy.”
The other two girls were silent. Those two didn’t talk. The half-mile-or-so walk to that woman’s house had been excruciating. Britta had sprinted ahead, so Meredith was stuck with Spider, who walked slowly and wouldn’t speak, and Kate, who seemed to be in her own private Idaho. It wasn’t like she and Britta were besties, just two people who valued conversation over stony silence.
Should Meredith say something? Just to fill the silence?
Then Britta said, “Did either of you guys have an experience like that?” at the same moment Spider said, “I sort of had an experience like that too.”
She speaks. But that would be obnoxious to say, so Meredith said, “When was that?”
Now, despite volunteering, Spider squirmed and looked down.
Finally, Britta broke the silence again. “We’re being depressing, guys. How about this topic I saw online the other day: If you discovered a fountain like the one in Tuck Everlasting that gave you eternal youth, would you be able to drink when your driver’s license said you were twenty-one, or would you always be, like, seventeen?”
They all looked at each other, and Kate said, “I don’t know, but I loved that book.”
“Me too,” Meredith agreed.
27
Spider
EXT. NORTH CREEK RAILWAY STATION, A HISTORIC RAILROAD STATION, PICNIC TABLES — DAY
Spider, Britta, Meredith, and Kate are enjoying some really incredible chicken sandwiches and sharing not-so-incredible personal stories. Spider is trying to act casual to hide her internal cringing.
“I LOVED IT too,” Spider said. “I saw the movie at least ten times.” She looked over at Britta, grateful to her for giving her a way out of embarrassing self-revelation. But did she want it? It was so weird, these girls pouring their hearts out. Her first instinct was to say nothing, to joke, “Yeah, these chicken sandwiches I made are life changing,” because, by the way, she’d made them. No big deal. And she hadn’t just put meat on bread either. She’d sliced up red onions and stuff.
But they were looking at her, and she wanted to be friends with them, she realized. But was that more likely to happen if she revealed something about herself, or if she didn’t?
Too late to back out without them thinking she was weird. Everyone always did anyway.
She said, “You know, Theodore Roosevelt was my favorite president. He was really into conservation, and he established national forests like this one.” The other girls were nodding like, What does this have to do with anything? “So yeah, I like nature, so I like Roosevelt.”
Silence. Britta finished the bite she was chewing, examined her sandwich, and said, “These are really good. What’s in here, red onion?”
“Yeah. Red onion.”
Meredith opened her sandwich to look at it. “Very good.”
Spider had never been one of those people who talked just because she feared silence. But, on the other hand, they had a month left of this. They couldn’t just not talk.
So she said, “The thing about Teddy Roosevelt that not everyone knows is, he was a really sickly kid. He had asthma.” Meredith was nodding, like she knew that. “His father was disappointed b
ecause he couldn’t do all the normal boy things, so, to make his father proud, he started hiking and doing all the stuff he was famous for.”
“Like killing bears?” Britta said.
“Actually, he is famous for not killing a bear,” Meredith said. “That’s where they got teddy bears from, because he wouldn’t shoot this little bear.”
“True,” Spider said. “But he shot lots of other things. He was a big hunter, and his house on Long Island is full of his trophies. But he did it to work through his health problems.”
“Not so healthy for the animals,” Meredith said.
“Did that actually work?” Britta asked.
“Apparently. He climbed the Matterhorn and led a two-year expedition to the Amazon.” The other girls were leaning forward like they were actually interested in what she had to say. Even Britta was paying attention. Maybe they were just being polite, but on the other hand, that was more than Spider’s own family, except Ruthie, would do. She could do this.
“Anyway, this is really significant to me not only because Roosevelt lived in the town I’m from but also because I have health problems. When I was little, I was always hurting in some way, my legs or my hands or something.” She looked to see if they were still with her. People tended to roll their eyes if you said you had a health problem and it wasn’t cancer or being in a wheelchair. A girl in her class had a peanut allergy, and some people said it was just for attention. Like, why would anyone lie about that? “Sometimes I’d cry myself to sleep.”
“You don’t look sick,” Kate said, and Spider tried not to show her annoyance.
“Yeah, people always say that. I look fine. My family thought I was faking. They’re athletic, so they played tennis or soccer, and they thought I was making excuses because I didn’t want to do those things. I was a whiner, or it was psychosomatic.” She looked at Britta. “That means in your head.”
“I know what it means.” Britta straightened her shoulders. “My mom thought my middle school stomachaches were psychosomatic. It was, like, her favorite word.”
“I think we all had those stomachaches in seventh grade,” Meredith said.
“Seventh grade was the worst,” Kate agreed.
Wow. Had seventh grade sucked for everyone? She hadn’t realized. “I’ll write a movie about seventh grade someday. Anyway, this went on for a while. I wouldn’t participate in something, so everyone would get mad, and my mother would say, ‘I’m taking you to the doctor,’ like it was a threat, because what kid wants to go to the doctor. But I was like, ‘Yes! Take me to the doctor!’ because I really wanted not to be in pain. She never did. Then, one day, my sister came in my room because I was taking forever to get dressed and Mom sent her to hurry me. But when Emily saw me, trying to step into my shorts without bending over, she told my mom, ‘I think there’s something really wrong with her. She can’t even get her shorts on.’ So that was when my mom actually did take me to a doctor, and they did tests and blood work, and they found I had an actual condition with a name, juvenile idiopathic arthritis. I thought arthritis was something only old people got, but apparently, there is a juvenile version, and I hit the lottery. One of my mom’s friends said she knew a girl who had it and died.”
“Died?” Britta’s mouth was wide-open. But Spider didn’t want sympathy. In fact, it was the opposite of what she wanted.
“Oh, don’t worry. My doctor said that’s very, very rare. I’m not going to turn this trip into The Fault in Our Stars or something. My doctor said not to worry about it.”
“But I bet you did worry,” Britta said. “Pobrecita.”
“Yeah, what a thing to tell a kid,” Meredith said.
“I know,” Spider said. “But I’m fine. I mean, pretty fine. I take a lot of ibuprofen for the pain, and my mom makes me exercise sometimes. She thinks yoga is the answer to everything, and she doesn’t want me to take anything that could be addictive. I’m not athletic. I don’t think I would have been anyway, but it’s hard to hit a tennis ball with stiff joints.”
“So why did you want to climb a mountain?” Britta asked.
“As a challenge. I have good days, and I can go at my own pace, and maybe twenty-three mountains is a lot, but I want to do things. I don’t want to be the sick girl. I always set goals for myself, to learn things, even to cut up a chicken.” She looked at Britta. “I hate to think there’s one big subset of things, the physical part, that eludes me, that I absolutely can’t do. I’m not quite Stephen Hawking.”
“The smartest man of our time?” Meredith said.
“He said, ‘Look up at the stars and not down at your feet.’ But, my point is, if you’re hella smart, like Hawking or the other Roosevelt, maybe you can get away with not being able to use your body. But I’m not that smart . . . yet.”
“I would have guessed you thought you were that smart,” Britta said.
Spider wondered if she came off that elitist. “Anyway, finding out there actually was something wrong with me was the day everything changed, because I knew I wasn’t just complaining, even though people still think I am. I knew I had a real problem.”
They were silent for a while, listening to the birds and the breeze, and finally, Britta said, “We’ll do it. We’ll definitely do it.”
“Do what?” Kate said, looking up from her phone for once.
“Help Spider. Do whatever it takes so she can climb these towers, or at least some of them. Or one of them.”
Silence. Britta looked around. “I mean, you don’t have to. I just thought . . .”
“No, I want to,” Spider said. “I just figured you’d think it was a stupid idea and I was a pathetic person to want to do it.”
“I absolutely don’t think that.” Britta looked at the other two. “I think you’re brave.”
“Me too,” Meredith said.
Only Kate didn’t say anything. She was back to her phone.
28
Kate
SO THEY WERE bonding again. Fabulous. All sharing their life experiences and getting closer. Except Kate. She didn’t want to share with a bunch of strangers.
Kate didn’t tell anyone, but as soon as they hit the train station, her phone had exploded, buzzing with texts and calls during Meredith’s and Spider’s sad stories and Britta’s original oratory on motherly duty.
It sounded mean to think that about Britta, even to Kate. Britta actually seemed really nice. All the girls did, but especially Britta, who was sweetly trying to encourage Spider even though Spider was being a jerk. She wondered what it would be like to have friends like these girls, normal girls who probably had never heard of a debutante cotillion, much less thought it was a reasonable thing to spend money on, never stepped foot in a country club or gone skiing in Jackson Hole, girls who’d never heard of Peach Springs or her father.
She tried to participate in the conversation. But now their eyes were on her like they expected her to tell a story. The only one she could think of to tell was the one told by the dozen articles her mother had sent her about her father’s fall from grace.
Would they all hate her if they knew about that?
Kate wasn’t ready to out her family. Nothing the other girls had said was really that self-revelatory. Spider was obviously sick. Kate had noticed her hobbling upstairs the first day. Meredith’s father was properly dead, at least, which was better than being a crook.
No, that was horrible. She didn’t even like herself for thinking these things.
Finally, she said, “This trip is when everything changed for me.”
She took a bite of her sandwich and watched their reactions. Spider raised an eyebrow. Britta looked genuinely confused.
Meredith was the first to speak. “Really?”
Then Britta. “But you’ve barely talked to us, and when you have, it was to get mad.”
That made Kate cringe a bit. Was Britta afraid of her?
“I’m sorry. I guess I’m a little . . . shy.” She hated that word. Ugly girls were allowed to be
shy. When you were pretty and shy, people thought you were a snob. “I’m not good around strangers, but I wanted to come here.” She looked around. “Anyone ever hear of Peach Springs, Georgia?”
Blank stares all around.
“Is that a . . . body of water?” Britta asked.
“Sorry. I don’t think I have,” Meredith said, and Spider shook her head.
Kate shrugged. “No, it’s fine. That’s the name of the town I’m from. It’s forty-five minutes from Atlanta, about ten thousand residents, and my father is on the town council.”
“That’s cool,” Britta said, a little too quickly, and they all agreed.
“No, it’s really not. All my life, my father’s been obsessed with local politics. We can’t go out to dinner or even to the drugstore without someone cornering him about their drainage problems, and my brother and I are expected to go to all these community events, ribbon cuttings and veterans’ picnics. Even a turkey pardoning at Thanksgiving.”
“Do you enjoy that?” Meredith asked.
“Would you?” Kate countered. “We had to worry about what we wore and how we spoke and being nice to old ladies. And lately, my mother’s been pressuring me to prepare for my debutante year.”
Now, all their eyebrows were up. “Debutante year?” Spider said.
“It’s a tradition. They have these balls.” In Peach Springs, no one thought twice about saying balls, but Spider smirked. “Dances. They have them in New York too, by the way. It’s not just a dumb southern thing. They raise money for charity. But the main reason is to ‘introduce young ladies to society,’ as my mother would say, which really means to parade me around like a prized Holstein in front of men I’m supposed to marry one day.”