Nowhere Near You

by Leah Thomas

  “If we’d known about you,” says Uncle Porter, “we’d’ve come got you years back.”

  There is Uncle Porter and Aunt Maribel and also cousin Samantha. Samantha is three years older than Bridget. She teaches Bridget how to braid her hair and put on eye shadow. She teaches Bridget table manners. She sings to her in the evenings. She says Bridget will love school.

  She says, “I always wanted a baby sister.”

  Bridget feels many things. She feels the spicy warmth of pie on her tongue. She feels the dust of fireworks on the Fourth of July. She feels cool fingers of lake water after dark. She feels the sting of sunburn on her cheeks. She feels soothed when Aunt Maribel rubs aloe onto her back. She feels empty when a robin hits the window of the country home. She feels swollen pride when Uncle Porter gives the robin a burial. She feels crumbly when the robin caws in her dreams.

  Samantha and Bridget go swimming at the creek to celebrate the last day of summer. Samantha gives Bridget one of her old bathing suits. Bridget shakes her head.

  “What are you afraid of, scaredy-cat?” Samantha fixes her hair in the hallway mirror. “You’re skinny as a rake!”

  Bridget doesn’t say: “There’s a hole in my chest.”

  “Some girls have modesty.” Aunt Maribel rinses the snap peas from the garden.

  “What for? There ain’t any boys down at the crick.”

  Bridget wears the bathing suit with a T-shirt over it. She sunburns easily. Bridget does not say: “I never saw the sun until this summer.”

  Bridget watches from the long grass with her toes in the water. Samantha sunbathes and waits for boys who will not come. Bridget is feeling hot and sleepy. She stands up. She stretches her arms toward the sky.

  Samantha grabs the hem of Bridget’s T-shirt. She pulls it over her head. Bridget feels things like white shock and red anger.

  “Don’t!”

  “Why are you strapping your chest? You don’t have boobs. I don’t even got them yet.”

  Bridget crosses her arms over her bandages. Her T-shirt is soggy with creek water.

  Samantha purses her lips. “Why bother? There’s nothing to see.”

  Samantha does not help Bridget pack her schoolbag. Bridget feels yellow worry. She looks at the notebooks on their bedroom floor. Samantha paints her nails on her bed.

  Uncle Porter and Aunt Maribel wish them good night. Bridget doesn’t sleep. She feels twitches in her stomach. She feels flutters in her heart. It is dark in the bedroom and the night is cloudy. Samantha starts snoring.

  Bridget breaks her promise.

  She pulls out her heart. Invisible worry and fear cling to it and leave her.

  She tucks it under her pillow. She falls asleep.

  Samantha shakes her awake.

  “Get up!”

  “Okay,” says Bridget. She holds her heart under her pillow.

  “Are you still mad at me?”

  “No.” Her heart is not in her.

  “Say it like you mean it.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Last time I apologize to you.” Samantha lets go of Bridget’s shoulder. She leaves to take a shower.

  Bridget puts her heart back in. It itches. It weighs more than before.

  Samantha is angry at breakfast. She is angry at the bus stop. She is angry when the bus drives along the winding roads. She says, “I’m only sitting by you so Dad won’t kill me.”

  Samantha leaves Bridget to find her own friends at school. She does not tell Bridget where to go. Bridget is scared. A bell rings. The other children go inside. Bridget stands on the sidewalk by the flagpole. She tries to breathe. Her fingers go to her chest.

  A man with a whistle around his neck pushes her inside. “Go to the office.”

  A woman tells her to smile pretty on her first day. She leads Bridget down a green-tiled hallway to a classroom with owls on the door.

  Bridget is scared of the stuffed owls stacked on Miss Pauley’s cupboards. She is scared of their eyes. She is scared of the eyes in her fourth-grade class. Some kids smile. Some do not. Bridget doesn’t know what this means. She keeps her hand on her chest. She stands at the front of the class. Finally, Miss Pauley shows her to her desk.

  “It’s all right, dear. We have another Bridget here, too. You’ll be Bridget T. and she’ll be Bridget B. Bridget B., do you mind showing our new Bridget around the school today?”

  Bridget B. is pretty. She has a scrunchie in her hair. “Okay. I’d love to!”

  Bridget feels happy. She looks at Bridget B. Bridget B. does not smile at Bridget. Bridget B. looks at other girls and rolls her eyes.

  Bridget has never gone to real school before. Other kids recite times tables Bridget has never learned. When other kids were learning times tables, Bridget was locked in an incubator in one room while her heart was tested down the hall. Bridget knows this isn’t her fault. In her heart, she still feels stupid.

  Before lunch, Bridget B. takes her hand. She leads Bridget to the end of the hall.

  “I hate that you stole my name,” says Bridget B. “It’s so lame.”

  “I didn’t steal it.”

  “I was here first. So yeah, you did. Doesn’t matter. People will forget your name pretty quick. I promise.”

  Bridget finds the cafeteria by herself. Samantha has a different lunch hour. Bridget sits down with her sack lunch. Two kids ask her to go somewhere else. Bridget finds an empty table. “It’s okay.” A boy with braces and glasses sits next to her. “I was new last year, too.” He holds out his hand. “I’m Josh.”

  Bridget feels happy. Then she looks at him.

  His glasses shine like the goggles in the laboratory. His braces are surgical utensils.

  Bridget stands. Bridget runs.

  “No hall pass, no dice!” says the man with the whistle.

  Bridget is good at running. She used to run on treadmills for hours and days and weeks, even, when her heart wasn’t in her.

  Bridget runs to the nearest girls’ bathroom. She locks herself in a stall. She reaches into her shirt and pulls her heart out. Her head clears. She is not relieved. She is not anything.

  Bridget wonders what will happen if she flushes her heart down the toilet. Maybe it will kill her. Maybe it will soak her heart in sewage. Maybe she will smell it even from eighty-seven miles away.

  She tucks the heart into her lunch bag. The man with the whistle waits in the hallway.

  “I know you’re new. But you can’t just run around school like that.”

  Bridget couldn’t care less.

  They get off the bus. Samantha asks Bridget how her first day was.

  “Okay.”

  “Did something happen?” Samantha stops in the driveway.

  “Things happened.”

  “Fine. Don’t talk to me. It’s not like you’re my real sister anyhow.”

  Bridget puts her heart back in before dinner. She cries in the bathroom for seven minutes before she can bear the weight of it. She washes her hands. She realizes she should have asked Samantha about her day. Bridget feels so sad about this. She knows she can’t eat dinner without crying more. She hides her heart behind a stack of towels.

  Samantha smiles for Aunt Maribel and Uncle Porter over macaroni.

  “How was school?”

  Bridget shrugs.

  Aunt Maribel takes her hand. “It’ll get better. It was only your first day.”

  Bridget puts her heart back in after dinner. She waits for Samantha to come upstairs. Samantha stays on the phone in the living room. She wears her headphones to bed.

  The next day, Bridget still doesn’t know her times tables. Josh doesn’t sit by her at lunch. She waves at him in the lunch line. He looks at his feet. He sits by himself on the other side of the cafeteria. Bridget stands in the center of the lunchroom with her chocolate milk.

  Bridget B. waves at Bridget. “Come here.”

  Bridget B. is surrounded by girls whose hands always cover their mouths.

  “Do you want to
sit here?” Bridget B. pats the seat beside her.

  Bridget nods.

  “Speak up. Do you want to sit here?”

  “Yes, please.” Bridget is feeling bright gratitude.

  When she tries to sit down, Bridget B. pushes the chair back in.

  “Well, what I want is for you to go back to wherever you came from. I guess we don’t always get what we want, right?”

  Bridget backs away. Her fingers creep to her neckline. Her heart is thumping. She has the sense to ask the man with the whistle for a hall pass this time. Before Bridget can cry, she’s watching her heart sink to the bottom of a toilet bowl.

  Bridget keeps her heart in her backpack and desk, in a Lisa Frank crayon box with a purple kitten on the front.

  In Miss Pauley’s class, the owls don’t scare Bridget. Bridget B.’s whispers and the boys who tug on Bridget’s braids don’t scare Bridget. Not knowing multiplication doesn’t scare Bridget.

  Nothing scares Bridget.

  One evening the doctor waits in the dining room with a mug of tea. Aunt Maribel gives him a whole apple pie.

  “Bridget, you’ve broken your promise.”

  She pulls the boxed heart out of her schoolbag.

  He peels off his glasses. “Don’t you like it here, Bridget?”

  Bridget shrugs.

  “Bridget, do you know what I’m afraid of?”

  “All the things you’ve done.”

  He nods. “But I’m more afraid you’ll be afraid of the things you’ve done one day. You don’t care now, but I do. I care so much. And so does your new family. You can’t keep doing this. You’re not ending your fear. You’re giving it to other people. People who love you.”

  “Why should I care?”

  “I should think you’ve seen enough sadness in the world. Don’t create more.”

  Shining utensils and drills and lights. Even when her heart is not in her, she feels those still. The doctor taps the Lisa Frank crayon box.

  “Please, Bridget. Give it a day.”

  “Okay,” Bridget says, because the doctor has always been kind.

  Bridget plugs her heart into place in the early hours of the morning. She is done crying by the time she has to get up.

  Samantha knows the difference. Samantha talks to Bridget.

  “There are rumors going around about you.” They walk to the end of the driveway. “You spend the lunch in the bathroom. Are you bulimic now?”

  Bridget shakes her head. Her lip trembles. She is not used to feeling things.

  “Then what’s going on? Why does half the school hate you?”

  “Bridget B.”

  Samantha jogs ahead to look Bridget in the eye. “What, this fourth grader did something to you? You should have said so!”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll mess her up, is why.”

  Bridget stops walking. Her heart feels too large. “Why?”

  “Nobody screws with my family.”

  “But we aren’t real sisters.”

  Samantha adjusts the straps of her backpack and marches ahead. “Like hell we aren’t.”

  Bridget feels mostly merry-happy-joy-glee-teary-never-take-her-heart-out-again.

  Samantha confronts Bridget B. by the fence during recess. Bridget B. is not alone. She is with her boyfriend, Jordan. Jordan is repeating fifth grade.

  Samantha drags Bridget with her. “Leave my sister alone.”

  “I never touched your sister. Who would want to? Your whole family’s full of dirty—”

  Samantha grabs Bridget B. by her scrunchied ponytail.

  Bridget B. screams and Jordan pushes Samantha in the chest. He laughs when Samantha hits the grass. “The skank’s been stuffing her bra!”

  “Have not!” Samantha screams. Her chest is misshapen.

  Bridget tries to help her cousin. Her heart aches. Samantha shoves her back and stands up on her own. She crosses her arms.

  “Look at her lip shakin’,” says Jordan. “What, you gonna cry now?”

  Samantha shakes her head. She can’t raise her fists without revealing dislodged padding.

  Bridget B.’s eyes are full of tears, too. But she’s feeling anger. “Pull her arms back, Jordan. Quick. Teacher’s coming.”

  There are boys watching, boys who know he smokes cigarettes. Jordan reaches for Samantha’s arms. He wrenches them apart. The crowd shrinks.

  Bridget feels scared. She feels Samantha’s humiliation. She feels useless and overwhelmed, and her hand is already moving. When Bridget B. reaches forward to lift up Samantha’s shirt, Bridget sobs aloud. She plunges her hand into her chest.

  The feelings vanish. Her screeching sob halts. She stands on the playground with a hole in her chest and a heart in her fist.

  Jordan faints. Bridget B. screams. She tries to pull him off the ground. Someone is gagging. Children run. Whistles blow.

  Bridget feels nothing but the heartbeat in her hands. She feels nothing until she turns around and sees Josh behind her. Josh stands still while kids scurry past him. His eyes are wide behind his glasses, and his braces are shining like surgical utensils.

  In the laboratory they strapped her arms down. Not here.

  She hits Josh so hard his braces cut her knuckles as he falls.

  Samantha is wide-eyed.

  “I’m not your sister,” says Bridget.

  Bridget turns and runs, heart in hand.

  The doctor finds her down by the creek at sunset. Bridget holds her heart over the gentle current. It is cold. Even without her heart, Bridget feels that. When she drops her heart, maybe it will freeze overnight. She feels exhaustion in her legs. She feels the places she scratched herself when she ran the miles to get here across pavement and through brambles and downhill.

  The doctor kneels on the rocks beside her. “Samantha told me to look here.”

  “I can’t keep my promise.”

  “Promises are like that. But we can try again.”

  “Not here.”

  “Leaving doesn’t mean the Touschicks don’t care about you.”

  The doctor cups his hands under her dangling heart. “You can drop it. I’ll look after it for now. Is that all right?”

  Bridget lets go. “I don’t care.”

  He places her heart in his pocket. “Come along.”

  Bridget watches the doctor climb the hill. “Do I have to put it in when we say good-bye?”

  “Not if you don’t want to.”

  Samantha doesn’t help her pack her bag. She joins Aunt Maribel and Uncle Porter on the porch when Bridget leaves.

  Bridget doesn’t look back. Her heart is not in her.

  After Virginia, Bridget can’t keep her heart in. She runs.

  After Virginia comes Kentucky. Bridget’s second cousin is there. When the cousin finds the heart under Bridget’s bed, Bridget runs to the edge of town to drop it into a quarry. The doctor is there.

  In Omaha, Bridget lives with a great-uncle who dies coughing after three weeks. Bridget runs into deep fields of corn. She buries her heart under the stalks. Hours later, the doctor helps her dig it up. He rinses soil from it.

  The Kansas family does not pass a CPA inspection. Bridget sets her heart down in lanes of traffic. The second car that passes is the doctor’s Impala.

  Maine is running into ocean. And Michigan is running through the decimated city of motors. In a Florida trailer park, Bridget runs until the swamp hits her knees. In a duplex in New Mexico, she walks into the desert and almost presses her heart into cactus needles. After that, she doesn’t care. And after that, she doesn’t care.

  She runs.

  Bridget comes to Fayton, Ohio.

  The house in Fayton is the same as other houses. Bridget arrives in time for her second freshman year to begin. The Tidmores are kind like many others were kind. The details are repetitive. Bridget talks when necessary. She keeps her heart outside herself. They don’t understand why she doesn’t smile. Bridget doesn’t understand why people ever do.

  B
ridget doesn’t run to school on the first day because she doesn’t know the way yet.

  She sees Brian at the bus stop. He says, “You the Tidmores’ new foster kid?”

  Bridget nods.

  “You’re like their third one. Guess you guys are collectibles.” He laughs but does not smile. “Is that mean of me?”

  “It’s accurate.”

  “They’re pretty nice, actually. Not like my mom.”

  Bridget shrugs.

  “She works at a hospital; everyone thinks that means we should be rich or I should be a smart kid. It’s total bullshit. But she just lords it over me like she wants me to help people for a living, too. I don’t want to help people. I don’t like people. Are you going to tell me I’m awful?”

  “I don’t like people, either,” says Bridget.

  It is late September and time for the cross-country tryouts for the junior varsity teams at Christchurch High. Bridget’s heart is tucked inside a bundle of grocery bags at home.

  The air is warm. People are warm. Bridget is nothing.

  Brian doesn’t run correctly. He doesn’t breathe correctly. He’s not asthmatic. He’s only slow. After tryouts, he asks Bridget if he has a chance of making the boys’ team. “No.”

  Brian says, “I knew you’d be honest. Think I’m a loser now?”

  Bridget doesn’t think anything either way. She shrugs.

  Brian tries to keep up with her on the run home. Bridget does not wait for him.

  After seven days of trying, he still follows. Bridget does not ask him what he’s doing.

  She doesn’t care.

  Brian doesn’t have the laboratory excuse. He’s just bad at school. He’s also bad at friends and bad at jokes. Bridget notices.

  Brian sits with Bridget in the cafeteria.

  “Most people ask me not to sit with them. I usually eat outside. People don’t like me. I’m really boring. I don’t like people and I don’t like stuff, either. I don’t like movies or music or any of that crap that people pretend to like so they don’t have to think about how much they don’t like stuff. Do you want to know what I like?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I know you don’t. That’s why I like you.”

  Bridget blinks. She wonders if her heart is beating back home in her sock drawer. Usually, she only wonders about her heart when Auburn-Stache comes over to save it.