by Leah Thomas
“Should I applaud?”
“No, but take my suitcase.” She tapped a wheeled bag. “I’m delicate. And don’t look at me like that. I took your job at the library after you left. I just happen to want to go to the States now that I’ve graduated early.”
“Fieke!”
“Yeah. This graduate wants to meet Wes Anderson. No argument.”
She stepped aside. Of course I had known he was behind her from the moment I entered the terminal. Terminals are noisy places. The echoes of him are familiar. But I have come to appreciate dramatic gestures.
Owen looked taller than when I’d last seen him. Older. In his hand he held a spiral notepad. He held up his finger and wrote: Moderator. Username bachandbeyond.
“Owen.” I focused my regret directly on him, but gently. Granted him some sense of how I felt without crushing him. “All you’ve done. The board. This flight. I could thank you a thousand times, and you’d deserve more.”
Owen lowered his notebook. Looked at me. He did not look regretful. He did not look angry. What did he look? Did we have any branches left to us?
“Have I ever known you, Owen?”
Even if he could speak, he would not have answered that. This was all. He leaned forward—
I removed my goggles just in time, savored that final branch before the tree fell for good. When I pulled the lenses down once more, the warmth of his lips stayed trapped beneath them.
Surrounded by a circle of hope holders. It would not do to upset them. It would not do to let them feel my sadness. Owen and I parted in silence.
Fieke and I turned away from the group of friends and strangers in the security line. I did turn my head so they’d know I was looking. The begoggled group waited for us to pass out of sight.
For them I would smile in this airport. It is not the same as hiding. It is more like entrusting others to know what you feel. As you must trust them to convey their own feelings back. Or some such moral lesson. Don’t laugh, Oliver.
Fieke and I raised our hands and passed beyond the glass wall.
Not drowning. Waving.
Fieke just elbowed me: “Close the fluffing window. The glare’s in my eyes.”
It’s given me a perfect thought. Do you know what gives many people cancer? The sun, Ollie.
Even though I’ve never seen the sun, I would never give up that which keeps me alive.
chapter thirty-nine
THE LEAVES
Moritz, that’s so messed up.
What’s more messed up: I’m writing you again. I’m still here.
Maybe all your poetic nonsense makes me want to irradiate you.
Or maybe you brought me back a little, Geborgenheit.
I didn’t trip. I walked until I couldn’t walk anymore, skirting around people on sidewalks. Beyond the Megamart were more businesses, followed by more neighborhoods, and I walked past those, too, and I started to wonder how long it would take to walk back to the woods. I wondered what the road signs for entering Michigan would say. “Welcome Back, You Murderous Freak,” maybe.
By the time I reached the end of Fayton’s sidewalks and started dragging my feet down the shoulder, dusk made all the approaching headlights bright as daggers. Falling on a dagger is pretty Shakespearean, Moritz. I stopped on the shoulder and took a step closer to the road. I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t think I was thinking. But really, Moritz. Logically, if there’s one person who’d always hurt other people, you give them the Max treatment. You make them stare into dark lenses. Or the bright lenses of headlights.
I’d gotten used to the passing cars whipping up the air, but suddenly the air moved differently behind me—
Before I heard her footsteps, I’d been tackled to the ground.
Bridget sat on my back. I buried my face in the gritty shoulder of the road, squeezing grass with my hand.
“Bridget, get off me.”
She didn’t budge.
“Seriously, Bridget. You shouldn’t touch me. I’m probably killing you. Right this minute I’m making you sick.”
She shrugged; I could feel it.
“You have to get off me! Please, Bridget. Please. Please.”
Bridget shrugged.
“Please. I killed my mom.”
Bridget reached a warm hand down to my face and pulled my beanie over my ears.
“Don’t touch me! You can’t touch me—”
“Breathe, Oliver Paulot.”
“I can’t,” I sobbed. “There’s all this . . . weight on me.”
We both knew I didn’t mean her.
“Breathe. You can survive anything if your blood keeps flowing.”
I inhaled damp asphalt, let the tension leave my neck. “The world doesn’t want me.”
Bridget shrugged. “Never wanted me, either. We’ve still got to live in it.”
“How did you find me so fast?”
“I always know where the pieces of me are,” Bridget said simply.
“I’m not a piece of you,” I told her.
She shrugged. “Just stating my opinion.”
“Since when . . . do you . . . have opinions?” I asked the pavement, grit on my lips.
Bridget got up, kneeled down next to me to find my eyes.
Moritz, her face was alive. Eyes welling with tears, puffy bags underneath, tracks down her cheeks from hours of feeling.
I let the grass in my hands go.
“Since I felt like it,” she said, and smiled the saddest smile I’ve ever seen.
Turns out Bridget didn’t run all the way to the edge of town. Turns out Brian answered the door when Wharton came looking for me, scattering the torn pieces of my School Daze certificate up on the doorstep, threatening to give me a living autopsy until Brian slammed the door on his fingers. Turns out Brian ran straight out the back, leaping fences like hurdles on his way to Bridget’s house, and she took one look at his face and demanded her heart back. Turns out Ms. Arana got home in time to find Bridget gasping, full of feeling again. Turns out she drove Brian and Bridget to the Megamart and beyond, all over town, asking if anyone had seen Ollie—yes, that Ollie, the weird, new transfer student. Turns out Ms. Arana’s were some of the headlights I’d stared into, the brake lights that stopped up ahead.
By the time Bridget got me off the ground, Ms. Arana was barreling my way—
“Don’t touch me—”
Warm arms almost broke me in half. “Ollie! I’ve just heard from your doctor! He’s coming to get you! Just make it to the weekend! I don’t let my strays die on me.”
“Don’t touch me.” I couldn’t get loose. “I’m radioactive.”
She leaned back to look at me. “Always have to stand out, don’t you? Now, get in the car.”
“No. You don’t get it. I might be killing you.”
“Honey, there are so many things in this world that could kill me. Cars and bullets and heart attacks and shark bites and falling trees in storms. A hug won’t kill me, and won’t kill you.”
Brian punched me on the shoulder when she pushed me into the backseat.
“Don’t touch—”
“You’re not my mom.”
Bridget reached back from the passenger seat to pat me on the knee. That was it.
The whole drive home, no one complained about my tearslaughtery racket. Yeah, I was laughing under the sobs. This was ridiculous, Moritz.
I can’t let the sort of people who’d hug me anyway just . . . hug me anyway.
By the end of the week, I thought school might have been a dream. Or I would have, if classmates hadn’t arrived on my doorstep every day with get-well gifts. I saw Chelsea and Whitney and Patrick through the curtains, watched Ms. Arana thank them and refuse them entry. So even if she was okay with me killing her, she wasn’t sacrificing the high schoolers anymore.
Not only was I killing her, I was stealing her vacation days. And Brian was driving me nuts, too. He kept coming home late, but now he had this shit-eaten grin, which probably meant he a
nd Bridget were having lunch together. And he kept sitting on my couch with me.
“Don’t. I’ll kill you.”
“I’ll fight you.”
“I’ve seen you fight.”
“And you couldn’t even kill elementary schoolers. Come help me feed the dogs.”
The next day I got your news about Arthur and my official doom. Brian found me sitting in the backyard husky kennel with Kushla. He cleaned the straw around me, lovingly ruffled her fur, and patted me once on the head before leaving the cage.
Through the bars, he mumbled, “You remember I told you I don’t like you?”
I buried my face in my knees.
“Well, sometimes I also tell people I don’t like dogs. Brianism, I guess.”
The Tearslaughter Shit-Com.
The following Monday, Auburn-Stache parked the Impala across the street from Brian’s driveway. I watched him scratch his head and knock on the neighbor’s door for almost a minute before I stepped outside.
He looked about ten years older, and he was no spring chicken to start with.
“’Lo, stranger!” I called. He froze. It took him forever to turn around. Another forever to cross the street. By the time he reached me, I’d settled onto the stoop. “How’s it hanging, Ass?”
“Ollie, don’t smile like that. I can hardly bear to look at you.”
“Why, does looking at me cause cancer?”
I wish he’d laughed, Moritz. I tried to pretend I couldn’t see how red his eyes were. “Of course Moritz told you. I might have known that.” He plopped himself down next to me.
“You did know that. Next time save us the trouble and just tell me yourself.” I took off my hat and handed it to him.
He took his hands from his face. Eyes wider than flying saucers. “Ollie . . . how?”
“Just had to calm down a bit. Sit still. You were always right about that. Not that it matters now. It’s not worth the risk, huh.”
He stared at my hairline where the fuzz was more of a layer of fluff now.
“It’s all there. It’s not falling out,” I told him. I pulled the hat back on and released the air in my lungs. “But you already knew that, too. And you let me meet people.”
Auburn-Stache shook his head a little. “I wasn’t certain.”
“I wonder if Liz is sick, too. I wonder if Mom knew and let her play with me anyhow. Now that’d be fucked up.”
“People do fucked-up things. I left you, for instance.” He peeled off his glasses and wiped his eyes. His back was hunched and trembling.
“I’m sorry about Arthur, Auburn-Stache.”
“Yes. So am I. It wasn’t your—”
“Don’t—” My voice broke. “It is my fault, even if I didn’t know it. Not knowing the truth doesn’t make the truth go away.”
“Ollie, it may well be that Moritz’s mother will offer us a solution. And perhaps I’ll find a way to, I don’t know, restrain or insulate or immunize—”
“In the meantime, I don’t want to be a murderer.”
“It’s so unjust, Oliver.”
“Yup. You guys really fucked things up for a lot of people. But I’m not going to. Arthur’s enough.” I cleared my throat. “Auburn-Stache, you know what sounds awesome to me?”
“What, Ollie?”
“I’d kill to go home. Like, really. Can you give me a ride?”
Tears slipped down his nose, and it felt like something I shouldn’t be watching, so I looked at the trees instead. Some had blossoms. Different yards, different trees. And they had leaves now. A few of them were on the grass and no one had squirreled them away yet.
And I wrote this by hand, but now Auburn-Stache will have to type it up. Now that you’re on the move, my letters won’t reach you. Electricity can. Shocking.
chapter forty
THE HEART (REPRISE)
Ollie,
This isn’t a story. These aren’t worthless words, blocks of frozen sound. These aren’t lines of logic. These are words written with my heart in. These are words of joy and grit and grass and slush and winter-into-spring. Here are all the things I feel when I want to feel them, things I want to feel because there is a sun and because water looks blue but isn’t and because you cared for my words even when they were ice blocks and not words at all.
They aren’t words of love. Love is a strong thing to feel and right now everything is a strong thing to feel.
But gratitude. I am feeling grateful for the wind through rolled-down windows and the heat of car seats when you leave them and the smell of steaming petroleum at gas stations and the way the window-washing fluid dries out my hands.
This is sunlight through car windows. This is the smell of things that pierce through metals as you drive past them and the strange pangs of missing someone you’ve only just left behind. These are words with my heart in me.
I had to wait for spring break before I could go. The Tidmores smiled and wished me the best, and when I come back I think maybe I’ll smile at them, too. When I told Brian where I was going, he waited at the end of the driveway in his hoodie.
“Will you keep it in?” Brian asked me.
He has asked what you haven’t. He has asked what made me put my heart back in the first place, and in the driveway I gave him the same answer I’ll always give to those questions:
“None of your business.”
He smiled and said, “Same old Bridget.”
I am writing this with a body full of heart. I am writing words that spill from me like creek water over stones, that swirl around me like clouds torn apart by passing planes.
It has taken me so long to get to here. Hours in a car, beautiful hours. I am impatient. Maybe we’re the same Ollie.
Hope blossoms from me, Ollie. I am not ready to feel that yet, but one day I might be. I know when you left us I worried about blenders.
Be stubborn. Be strong. You know me and I know you. That counts for something red and beating. Stay alive.
I hope the house in the purple hills looks the same as it ever did, the orchard stretching out in front of it.
I hope my sister can teach me how to braid happiness.
Heart beats, heart bursts, with our hearts in us.
with feeling,
Bridget
chapter forty-one
THE FICTION
Bridget,
It’s funny—when we met, I downright begged you to share your story with me. When Dr. Auburn-Stache handed me this letter, I did a double take. Because that was your handwriting, I knew, but the letters curled together. But the thing is, you could have been like Arthur. You didn’t have to write me. I kind of get what Auburn-Stache was saying: your story doesn’t belong to me.
It’s amazing that you sent it to me anyway.
And, Bridget, I’m so glad I didn’t kill you.
I’m trying to listen to you. Because you listened to me, which is nuts.
I’m trying to stay alive, or find reasons to, and I won’t go for the blender if you won’t.
Deal?
April or not, snow held on to northern Michigan a whole lot harder than it did Ohio. The driveway I grew up on was slushy. We got stuck halfway down it, so I got out of the Impala and helped Dr. Auburn-Stache rock the car. I don’t know why, but it felt too quiet between the trees. I couldn’t even hear that one crow you always hear on winter days, the one always cawing “I’m here.”
After seeing electricity every single day, the woods felt colorless.
The A-frame looked the same, except that I couldn’t really look at it. The first thing Auburn-Stache did after we slurped our way to the front porch was remove the rusting padlock from the door and pocket it. “We won’t be locking this door anymore, Oliver.”
“How am I going to keep you out, then.”
“Oliver—I know you’re upset, but—”
“I’m not upset.” My lips were numb. “I just don’t like the idea of killing my father figure.”
He leaned against the wall. “O
liver, if this lot belongs to anyone, it’s me. I’d die to undo what I’ve done to you. And I’m not leaving you alone here. I’m done wandering about.”
“But . . . the Blunderkids . . .”
“I’ve done enough damage, thank you. Let them live.” He smiled.
I stood in front of the door like a stranger. Exactly where a mud-monster named Liz—the girl I was in lovesickness with, Bridget—stood a long time ago.
“Auburn-Stache?”
“Yes, Ollie.”
“Don’t tell Liz I’m back.”
Some doors you have to lock.
The cabin in the woods is full of ghosts. Do you believe in ghosts, Bridget?
I was scared of coming home to an empty house. I thought I’d get back and fall out of the world into this gaping well of how things used to be, but that’s not what happened.
Home should have smelled musty, and it did. A few months of winter had passed with no one to warm the insides of that place. But Mom used to keep potpourri in bowls on the windowsills, potpourri she dried herself from her garden and spices. That smell snagged the air.
The floorboards moaned “hi” in exactly the same places as they used to. The terrible paneling on the walls was brown and bleak as ever. The mosaic tiles in the kitchen. Tapestries on the walls. In my bedroom, my human anatomical model remained whole and dull and nothing like a Blunderskeleton would be.
In Mom’s bedroom, I smelled the first ghost. And I saw it, too—when I passed the mirror on her vanity—
I don’t really look like her, Bridget. I take after my long-dead dad. Except Mom was basically bald before the end, and she was pale and confused by the end, too.
I’ve thought a lot about what she knew or didn’t know. If she knew that I was gonna cut the world. If she knew I gave her cancer. (Auburn-Stache keeps telling me we can’t say that for sure, don’t hate yourself.) When I had poison ivy, she told me to share it with her, but she tried really hard not to share death with me. The fact is, I never really knew my mother. She kept a lab coat in the closet. She hid a guitar under her bed. And whenever she didn’t want to think about the past, she made new things, a future out of pottery and overgrown flower beds.