by Rocky Callen
“It was?” I hadn’t expected that confession. I peered up at her. Her gaze was soft and open, her harsh features transformed into something almost lovely. She nodded.
“I always forgot the sounds the letters made when smooshed together and I hated books.”
I blinked at her. “But—but you are a librarian.”
“Yes, I am.” She smiled. “Do you know why?”
I shook my head.
“Because I found out the secret about words.”
“What’s the secret?” I leaned in, waiting. Expectant.
She smiled, almost conspiratorially, and leaned in closer. “They are magic.”
11
August,
The next day, I walk to your house, and as I stand outside, I know you are there. There is music drifting down from your open bedroom window. It is so much softer than anything I ever listened to. It feels like falling, like musical notes that could cry and break you down along with them.
I want to fall into your arms, August. I want all the memories that I can’t grasp to hold me close and closer still. Just so I can understand. Because if I’ve been left behind with nothing but this slow trickle of memories to lead me forward, I know that our memories will give me solid ground to stand on.
I close my eyes and listen to the music, hearing you in it, the peace and quiet and gentleness. It takes me a moment to recognize the familiarity of it. I had drifted on these notes before. In a place that was for dreams and dreamers.
And then that’s when I remember: I was the one who showed you the place. Our place.
* * *
We were seven. I had cut through Britney’s yard and found it while trying to climb the tallest tree near the rows of houses. It was a small cove with purple flowers and low branches for climbing. There had been some fallen-over logs that looked like dugouts for war. It was perfect.
As soon as I laid eyes on it, I knew I wanted to take you there.
I held your skinny, callus-less hands and dragged you behind me. You had grown taller and you couldn’t quite keep up with your limbs, so you kept tripping over every bit of underbrush. I laughed when you fell and you would give me your fake-glare every time.
“Hurry up!” I teased.
Your big saucer eyes didn’t disappoint. The moment we stepped into the clearing, they grew five times wider. “Wow, Ellie! It’s perfect.”
I let go of your hand and ran to jump on a log. “I told you it would be!” I walked across the log, balancing with my arms outstretched. “This can be our secret place. We can rule it.”
“As king and queen?” you said, turning slowly around the space, admiring it.
“No, as warriors.” I lunged for you and pushed you down. “Ellie Walker takes down August Matthews with one—” My narration was interrupted as you pulled me down and sat on top of me, grabbing my fists to make me hit myself.
You took over the fight’s narration. “Then Ellie, crazy from mutant poisoning, starts to hit herself in the—”
“Do your stories always have to include mutant poisoning?” I said, pushing as hard as I could so I wouldn’t slap myself.
“Uh, only the best ones do.”
I rolled my eyes. And hid a smile.
That little cove set behind the Fairfield subdivision and nestled in the woods became our sanctuary for years. It was also the first place that made me realize you could create a new world and live in it. You could shut out all the ugliness and the realness of everything else and laugh so loud that it hurt. I liked that pain. And there in our little sanctuary was the only place I felt it.
Shortly after that first day, you pinned me down by my shoulders and I flailed to wiggle free. “Is that all you got, Walker?” you asked. Your canine tooth was missing because you fell off the monkey bars and knocked it loose. It made you look adorable, disarming. I pulled my feet up to my chest and kicked. You plopped back into the dirt and moss at the base of the sycamore trees.
“I guess not.”
You roared as you lunged forward to knock me over again. I faked left and then pivoted to my right and you fell to your knees in an inglorious and messy thud. Laughter erupted from me and you looked back over your shoulder to glare, but nothing you did was truly based in anger, although you sometimes did try to make a show of it. It didn’t take long for your big mouth to quirk up in a grin. You were laughing by the time I stood up.
“Fine. We’ll call this one a draw.”
“A draw?” I scoffed, indicating that there was a clear victor in this round.
“Okay, fine. You win. A-E rules, right?”
“Right.” I grinned. “A-E rules” was our code. You would continue wrestling me in the woods if, and only if, I wouldn’t tell anyone when I won. It was our secret. We were superheroes and warriors in these woods set between the river and the subdivision. I still liked playing with sticks and wielding them like swords. I was a fighter.
I looked up to the sky. The sun was starting to dip and I stiffened. “I have to go home.”
“Oh, c’mon! We didn’t get here till late today. Just stay out for another hour.”
“I’ll get in trouble.”
“Don’t be a wuss. What’s the point if you don’t get into trouble every now and then?”
I looked away from you toward a small creek. It was a skinny, spidery waterway that fed into the river. I knew the kind of trouble you were talking about. I saw when your mom would pull you aside, all pointy fingers and stern voice and say, “You’re grounded for three days!” which really meant you were grounded for one. And even then, you could watch TV and have friends over. I wasn’t really sure how that was a legitimate punishment for anything. I didn’t resent you for it. I was a mix of envious and happy for you.
You didn’t have to be home before seven o’clock so you could wash all the evidence off. You didn’t have to go home and sit quietly at a table and feel the sweat drip down your spine because you wondered how many drinks your father had had.
“I’m going home,” I said, and I didn’t look back. I was sad and angry. I was scared to go home, but also mad that you thought I was a wuss.
“C’mon, Walker … just a few more.”
I ran. I didn’t want to be convinced. If I was late, he would hit Momma again. She still had a bruise from when I spilled milk two days before. It was yellow, black, and all unnatural skin colors. I thought that even the body knows when something is wrong and I didn’t want to cause more wrong to blossom on her skin.
I ran faster when I heard you behind me trying to catch up. I rarely won when we wrestled, but I always won when we raced. I ran faster and faster until the subdivision came into view. I cut through the Percys’ yard and leaped onto the pavement. I didn’t glance back because I knew you weren’t following me anymore. I couldn’t hear your steps slow. You probably stopped at the tree line. Stopped at the threshold of our world of heroes and fantasy. You could stay there for a while longer.
I couldn’t.
I was home on time. All washed up. Clean. Quiet. The air felt oppressive. The house felt cramped. Not a word. Be a good girl, I thought.
Later, Father was drinking his whiskey and I heard the growl of his voice and the hushed murmur of my momma’s. Father shouting. I thought I heard my name, but I shoved my head under my pillow and tried not to hear. Momma didn’t cry. I always did. I hoped that one day, I could learn how not to cry too. I took my hand and wiped my nose. It came away with a line of snot on it. I looked around for a tissue or paper towel. I didn’t have one.
I wasn’t going to the bathroom to get a tissue. I looked in my drawer and took out a mismatched sock and wiped it across my arm. I didn’t get in my pj’s. I slipped into my cocoon of a blanket and fell asleep.
The next morning, I went to my door to open it and narrowed my eyes when I realized it was locked. It only locked from the inside and I didn’t lock it. Someone had reached in, turned the lock, and closed it behind them.
My momma had locked my door to k
eep me safe.
* * *
Our little sanctuary always kept us safe. It was where we both ran to escape, to play, to be free.
I remember I first started to tell stories there when we were ten.
You groaned as you entered our clearing. “I hate them!”
I didn’t look up. “Hate who?”
You collapsed next to me, plopping right into a patch of wishing flowers, and I almost slapped your arm for ruining them before my gaze caught on how the seeds fluttered in the air and sunlight. Like little dreams with fluffy parachutes. I didn’t blow the seeds free, but I closed my eyes and made a wish anyway.
“My parents!”
“You don’t hate your parents.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?” I had met your parents. They wore ironed clothes and had gelled hair and smiles almost as big as yours (no one had a smile quite as big as yours). They called me Miss Ellie, as if I was already grown. I liked them.
“Because they are so old. And boring. And like, they just don’t get me, you know?” You started to pick at a scab on your knee.
“Stop that.” I smacked your hand away. You looked at me as if I had just slapped you square in the face. I rolled my eyes. “You’ll scar if you keep picking.” I knew all about scars. I didn’t want to see any on you.
You huffed out a breath. “So I have been talking to them about these two things for weeks now and they just keep putting it off and I finally cornered them and told them to give me an answer and they flat-out said no. They knew all along they would say no and they just made me wait!”
I looked at the way your face scrunched up into angry lines. “What did they say no to?”
“They won’t let me go to art camp this summer.”
I sat up straighter. You had just won the art award at school. You had a collection of paintings hanging in our school hallway. Every single notebook you owned was framed in elaborate pencil drawings. You had been talking about going to the art camp in the city for two whole years. You were finally old enough.
Maybe I didn’t like your parents either. “That’s so stupid!”
“I know!”
Art camp would mean you would be away for six weeks in the summer. I bristled the first time you talked about it because I knew I would miss you. But I never wanted it taken away from you. You belonged there.
“We have to figure out a way for you to go.”
“It’s impossible. It costs nine hundred and fifty dollars. Where can I get money like that?”
This is where I would’ve liked to remember how we came up with some ingenious idea and the whole community rallied and then we said our sniffly farewells as you headed off to camp. That is the movie version. But we didn’t live in the movies. I scooted closer to you and leaned my head on your shoulder. You were plucking the seeds off the flowers—pinching bunches, tearing them off, and tossing them in the grass beside you. It didn’t look like you were making a wish. It looked like you were throwing it away.
“Tell me a story,” you whispered.
This had become our game over the past few months. I would tell you stories and you would draw me promises. We wrote and drew our way out of our worst days. Sometimes I didn’t understand your anger. Sometimes the things that wrecked your day seemed so small in comparison to the bruises on my back. But still, I wanted to take all of that hurt away, even if I didn’t understand it, because it was yours and I didn’t want it to be.
“There was a b—”
“No, start with ‘Once upon a time.’”
“Why?”
“Isn’t that how the fairy tales all start? That way we know it will be a happy ending.”
Not all fairy tales have happy endings, but I didn’t tell you that.
“Once upon a time,” I began.
You closed your eyes to listen and I whispered a tale about a boy who painted things into reality. A drawn door that was a portal to anywhere. A painted star you could sit on and dip your toes into ocean sky. An acrylic wishing flower whose seeds could be ridden to what you desired most in the whole world. A magic boy with a paintbrush who was ridiculed until he showed the world what he could do.
You were smiling by the end. I was too. You opened up your eyes and searched the patches of grass around you. “What are you looking for?” I asked.
You tugged on one fluffy wishing flower.
“We will both get out of here, Ellie.”
“We will both get out of here,” I repeated, because sometimes you have to say things out loud even if you don’t know if they can be true.
“Let’s blow out this wishing flower together.” Saucer eyes. Big smile. “If the fuzzy flowers fly away, then we’ll know that our wish will come true.”
I sat back. I didn’t want to blow out the flower. I didn’t want to squeeze my eyes shut and heave out a long breath only to open my eyes to see a cluster of seeds still stuck there, mocking me for dreaming too big. I’d had that happen before. I didn’t want to know that the wish wouldn’t come true. But you raised the flower in front of my eyes, all wild and bright hope, and you started to count down.
“Three.” Inhale.
“Two.” Hold it.
“One.” Eyesshutandblowallthebreathoutandkeepblowinguntilyourlungsache.
Open eyes.
The seeds were parachutes of promise that teetered in the air.
The dandelion was bald.
We both smiled as we stared at it.
* * *
August, I don’t quite remember when I locked you out of my life or forgot about our promises. As every memory slams into me, I taste the bitterness of regret. I walk into your home and go up the stairs. Your bedroom door is locked now, but that doesn’t keep me out.
You don’t go to school. You don’t even leave your room. You are lying on your floor amid the wreckage that you created and you stare at the ceiling. I lie down beside you and my breath catches when I see it. There is a canvas pinned to your ceiling.
You painted me as if I was the sky, and my freckles the constellations. You painted me wild and wondrous. You painted me and I want to stand up and feel every brushstroke. When I stand, I see in faint white letters in the corner a date.
The date you must’ve painted this. The date was last week.
The thought tickles something in my chest, a memory, a feeling, but I can’t place it.
I had still been alive. You painted me in stars as if I could be beautiful enough to be among them.
12
Magic,
In August’s room, I see a little note in gold ink in my handwriting. I could only see the very first line.
Once upon a time …
I should’ve told August the truth about fairy tales and happy endings.
But when I see that note, I remember that I once believed in magic.
And it lived in gold ink.
There was a gold felt pen in Sheldon’s corner store in the center of town. It was a tiny display of bright metallic pens that you could try on black paper. I would go there after school every day just to hold the pen in my hand. There was a feel to how it brushed the page, like an artful stroke. Like a soft kiss. The contrast of the gold shimmery ink and the stark black looked like magic.
I wanted to wield your power.
I wanted my stories and words to soak into that shimmering ink and grow wings.
The pen was such a simple thing. It sat in a plastic display and the black paper had expletives and initials and inappropriate doodles. Other town kids came here to mess with the new rack of pens, but none of them knew how to wield the magic in them. Not like me.
It cost only $3.79. But I didn’t have $3.79.
I just had two hands, two eyes, and one heart.
I walked out of the store with the pen hiding in my pocket.
I stole the pen.
It was wrong. I knew that. I could feel the trespass like an itch in my hand and when I was older, I left the money on the counter for Sheldon to find.
He never knew I stole the pen, but that didn’t matter. I knew.
I still used it.
I used it to unbreak my heart on sad nights and write new worlds with August.
Magic pinched between fingertips.
Until the ink faded and dried up, it let me hold your power, your freedom, in my hands.
13
Momma,
I needed that magic for what came later that year. I even had the pen in my back pocket when it happened. Father’s anger seeped into the floorboards and doorframes. We could feel it everywhere, lurking and hungry.
When I was eleven, there was a day he had a late-night shift and wouldn’t be home until after midnight. When I came through the door, I saw the grocery bags. I could smell the sweetness in the air.
“Momma, what’s—”
You appeared in the kitchen doorway, your smile bright. There was flour on your shirt. “You got straight As this quarter, little dove. We need to celebrate.” Your makeup covered old bruises, but your eyes were soft and warm and gooey.
Even though Father wasn’t home, I walked in slowly, listening to the creaking floorboards, making sure not to let the surge of giddy excitement bubble up and make a mess. You sensed my apprehension, and just as I was about to say my protest, a handful of flour puffed against my chest. I looked down, white on my T-shirt. I looked up, innocent face and a waving powdery hand.
The burst of laughter was so shocking that I clapped a hand over my mouth the second it was out. I lunged for you.
The war of sugar and flour was on. We were childish and ridiculous and for that hour, you smelled of burnt sugar and everything I had missed about you. Our kitchen turned into a flour and frosting war zone and we were ruthless opponents. In lieu of helmets, you had a strainer on your head and I had a bowl. I stood on one side of the kitchen island as you kneeled on the other.
“One, two, three…”
“Go!” I said, jumping out from behind my side of the island and taking a big handful of flour to throw at you. You made a horrified expression as if I had caught you completely off-guard.