by Deb Caletti
But no, before that.
Way before that.
Geoff Graham is over by his car in the Roosevelt parking lot. He’s there with Trevor Jackson and Zander Khan. Zander pushes Geoff good-naturedly, and Geoff shoves him back. They’re laughing. Talking loud. Annabelle leans against Gina’s old Toyota, waiting for Kat. Last week, Roosevelt lost to Ballard High in the District Championship, so the cross-country season is over. Now, Annabelle’s back to her regular work and volunteer schedule, and she’s going to give Kat a ride home. Kat’s always late, it’s annoying, and right then this is the biggest problem Annabelle’s got. Kat better hurry up. Annabelle needs to go home and change for work.
It’s late fall. The trees along the sidewalk near the school—so recently a burning orange and red and yellow—are losing their last leaves. A few drift down as she waits. The air has the smoky smell of the end of October. Fall always smells like a campfire.
She can’t miss him, coming her way. The Taker. He’s just so tall. Annabelle feels embarrassed for him, but she doesn’t know why. He hasn’t talked to her in Mixed Media for two days, and then he was absent, but here he is now. She wonders what’s going on. He grins like he’s up to something. This makes her nervous. But curious, too.
“Hey,” he calls.
Geoff looks over. She notices this quite clearly, the way Geoff stops the joking and laughing and pushing. The way he watches, now that The Taker has caught his eye.
The Taker is holding a pink envelope. A card. A card that’s on its way to her. Her embarrassment grows.
She feels . . . She doesn’t know. The tiniest bloom of regret. She has started something that she’ll now have to undo. You can smile at a boy, and he’ll think you’re in love with him, Gina cautioned back in the sixth grade, after Georgie Zacharro. This meant: It’s your job to keep guys in check. Her first thought when she sees that card coming toward her is that she has somehow misused the nice-and-beautiful power-not-power she has. She wielded it recklessly, unleashed it on the vulnerable without entirely meaning to. It sucks, the way that her power is at times not enough and too much at others.
“For you,” The Taker says. And then he does something that makes her uncomfortable. Well, the whole thing does, but this is worse. He bows. It’s one of those odd actions that Geoff Graham and Trevor Jackson and Zander Khan would never do because they’d know it was odd. In fact, Trevor and Zander are also looking her way now, along with Geoff. And they are nice guys, so this is not threatening or mocking, just—it’s unusual enough to make them wonder.
“Wow,” she says. “Thank you.”
She’s not sure what to do, but he seems to be waiting, so she opens it. On the front of the card there’s a vase of flowers dropping petals onto a tabletop and floor. Inside, in elaborate script: An honest mess is more beautiful than a perfect picture.
He waits.
She’s a little stunned, because he seems to have understood something about her, the actual her. He isn’t just seeing the pretend girl she feels like so much of the time, the girl who tries to be so perfect, perfect, perfect. At least, he notices something real about her that even Will never did. Yet the message and this card are too much. It’s too much for this high school parking lot with beeping horns and laughter and buses idling by the curb.
“The other day, your shirt . . .”
She’d totally forgotten. This gives her some context, some way to respond. What a relief. She laughs a little. “Aww,” she says. “Hey, thanks.”
“No worries.”
He blushes like mad. “That’s really sweet,” Annabelle says. She wishes Kat would hurry up.
“Hey, I gotta go. My bus.”
“Thanks again,” Annabelle says. “That’s really sweet,” she repeats.
“See you.”
“See you.”
He lopes toward the second bus, takes the stairs in one leap. The buses pull away. Trevor gets into Geoff’s car, and Geoff reverses out of his spot. Zander jogs in the direction of home. Annabelle tucks the card in her notebook.
When Kat finally appears, Annabelle doesn’t tell her what happened. That night, though, Annabelle looks up The Taker online. What is she expecting to find? No idea. There are only pictures of him and friends from his old school in Vermont. In one, guys wearing backward baseball caps lie goofily on classroom desks; in another, a group of kids wearing American Revolution–style three-corner hats stand on a lawn. There’s an awkward homecoming photo, and a cat playing in snow, and his dad and him holding rifles at a shooting range. There’s a close-up of a big breakfast. There’s him and his mom dressed up and standing in front of a fancy hotel. She’s a good foot shorter than he is, but has his same shaggy hair.
Annabelle is wrong to judge him without knowing him. So what, he’s awkward—he’s new at their school. He seems sweet. The only card Will ever gave her was for Valentine’s Day. It showed a beagle holding a box of chocolates and said You’re my favorite treat dispenser.
She should repay The Taker for this kindness. She should at least ask him about himself. She should at least be friendly and nice.
Still, she throws the card away in the garbage can in her room. She shoves it way down. It doesn’t seem far enough. The card makes her feel bad. She takes the can out and dumps it in the trash.
“Do the kitchen one, too,” Gina calls.
• • •
In that dark tunnel, Annabelle can barely breathe. Besides the bats and the dripping water, she imagines things on the ground, ready to spring at her ankles. She imagines a man, his back flat against the wall, ready to seize her when she passes. He is there, and then there, and then there, with his reaching arms. She swerves away from his hands. She picks up her pace, because she pictures another man behind her, trying to catch her. He’s back there somewhere, getting closer. He’s gaining on her. She needs to hurry.
There is danger above, below, around, behind. Darkness wiggles its horrible fingers and tries to grab.
When she sees the tiny pinprick of light that means she’s near the end, she feels relieved but not relieved enough. She can almost hear the man’s steps behind her.
The circle of light grows. It brightens as a new day does. In spite of the long ordeal she just endured, it feels like a sudden embrace. She runs another mile or so away from that awful place, and when it is no longer visible behind her, she slows, and then stops.
She sets her palms on her knees. Pants. She takes a long drink of water. She wants to feel victorious, like she faced that freaking tunnel and won. She is, after all, out in the sun, with the tunnel behind her. But way down in there, inside of her, the something-someone still chases. It does not have the immediacy that it did in the tunnel. She cannot hear the man’s steps or feel his breath on the back of her neck, but he still lies in wait.
Turned up or turned down, the feeling is permanent. She survived something big, and when you survive something big, you are always, always aware that next time you might not.
8
“What am I going to do with you, huh?” Grandpa Ed’s accent flares whenever he gets emotional. He came to this country when he was twelve, from the town of Gallarate, province of Varese, in northern Italy. Patron Saint of Gallarate: Saint Christopher, who watches over travelers, children, and bachelors, and protects against storms, holy death, and toothaches. Grandpa Ed’s Saint Christopher medal is tucked into the plastic sleeve of the RV’s visor.
“Che palle!” Translation: What balls.
“I’m sorry,” Annabelle says.
“You’re not sorry,” he says. “Don’t give me sorry.”
“I’m a little sorry.”
Mostly, she’s relieved. She was so happy to see the RV right there at their chosen meeting place by the Yakima River. She worried he might get mad enough to leave her stranded. Annabelle has seen the way he and Gina fight. Someone is always saying something too honest, and voices rise, and then one of them stomps off. They’ll pretend the other doesn’t exist for a week, even
if they see each other getting the mail. But maybe things are different with children and grandchildren, because Grandpa Ed’s upset at her fades quickly. It seems like she gets a million chances with him.
“How’d it go?”
“Fine. Good.” She won’t add to his worries with the truth. “Butt hurts.”
“Yeah? You give me a pain in my culo, too. Let me see the feet.”
She’s already unwrapping the bandages. Grandpa Ed winces. “Jesus.”
“I thought you were in the fish-packing business. You saw guts.”
“I was the businessman. I was the numbers guy.”
This is hard to believe when she has to tell him a million times how 2,700 miles divided by sixteen equals five months, give or take. “It’s actually feeling a lot better, even though it still looks gross.”
“It’s healing, Bella Luna.” She likes when he calls her this. Luna is her middle name. Her grandmother’s name. Annabelle never met her—she died when Gina was seventeen. But Annabelle has heard stories. How her grandmother had the love of fifteen mothers. How she could put Grandpa Ed in his place with one look. How she could ward off the malocchio, the evil eye, with a prayer and the dip of her pinkie into a bowl of water sprinkled with a few drops of olive oil. Sometimes, Annabelle thinks her mom and Grandpa fight because they both loved the same person so much.
“I almost can’t believe it’s healing, but I guess it is.”
“Okay. Buckle up. We’ve got to move. There’s a state park nearby. I already scoped the place out. Can you believe it? A cop drove by and told me we can’t stay here overnight! What’s the problem, I’m gonna rob something?”
“A beaver,” she says.
“Yeah! That’s about all a guy could steal out here.”
“No, I mean, look. I see a beaver.”
She points. He’s right there, scurrying out of the river. He disappears into some brush, and then he’s back again, carrying a big branch that looks way too big for him.
“That’s a heavy load,” Annabelle says. The beaver tugs and pulls. What he’s trying to accomplish—it looks impossible. He doesn’t look all that smart, to be honest, choosing something so huge. “Why’d he pick that one?”
“We don’t know what he’s doing, but he knows what he’s doing,” Grandpa Ed says.
• • •
It’s a shame that they have to move. The river is winding and scenic, like a picture of a river. It’s calendar-page perfect. The snow is melting, and white rapids splash against picturesque rocks, and spring gives the late afternoon a sweet yellow light. It’s all science and beauty and nature, minus the messed-up stuff of the human world. It’s one of those moments where you imagine quitting everything and staying right there. Annabelle has a lot of those moments lately. Of course, they are all just a fantasy because of Seth Greggory.
The RV rumbles and lurches away. The state campground isn’t as inviting as the river. It’s woodsy and shaded, and the dampness of winter still lingers. Grandpa Ed finds their spot, yanks the parking brake.
“Look! People are camping. It’s March and freezing cold. I can’t imagine it.”
Annabelle forgets who she’s talking to for a second. Before he bought the house next door to theirs in Fremont, Grandpa Ed drove around the country and stayed in places like this for years. Now, he’s as cheerful and flashy as the winning slot machine.
“Party central,” he says, snapping his fingers. “Viva Las Vegas.”
“Wow, you sure perked up.” Annabelle peeks out the window. “All I see are some zipped tents and a camper with a ‘Keep Portland Weird’ license plate holder. They’re probably granola-eaters on the run from the law.”
He raises his eyebrows at her.
“Forget I said that.”
“Strangers are friends you haven’t met yet,” Grandpa Ed says. He sounds like sweet Mrs. Parsons from Sunnyside Eldercare, not Grandpa Ed, with his big nose and his hair combed back, wearing his Seahawks sweat suit. “They invited me over for a cocktail.”
“They? Who?”
“The lady with the camper. I saw her when I checked out the place this afternoon.”
“Wow. Go get ’em, tiger.”
“Dinner’s in the oven. Help yourself. I’m going to get changed.”
“You better.” His sweatshirt says Property of Seattle Seahawks and looks like he used it as a shirt/apron combo.
“You should clean up and come with me.”
“I can barely move.”
“There’s a kid your age. A grandson. From Portland.”
“No, Grandpa.”
“C’mon . . .”
“Stop it. No boys.”
“Bella. What’d I say, you’re getting married tonight? No. I said, come say hello, be friendly. Be a good neighbor.”
“No boys. No way.”
“You gonna close off that part of your life forever? Huh, Sister Mary?”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Suit yourself.”
After a good half hour, he comes out of the bathroom. What the hell! He’s wearing black slacks and a dress shirt, and he smells like he’s been attacked by a cologne squirter. His hair is floofed up to hide his hearing aids.
He snaps his fingers, and the little door of the RV slams shut.
• • •
Annabelle hurts all over. She stretches, concentrating on her glutes to help the pain in her hip. Then she takes Grandpa Ed’s pan out of the oven, lifts the foil, and eats the roast chicken with rosemary potatoes as she stands against the counter. She’s still wearing her disgusting clothes, but she’s starving. Lately, she’s a machine, energy in, energy out. She likes feeling like a machine. It would be great to be made out of metal parts that have no feelings, only a job to do.
Annabelle eats while checking her phone messages and texts. They’ve piled up. There are even a few e-mails. This is what happens when you drop your life. Next, she returns calls.
“Carl Walter drove me over to Dick’s and we picked up your car,” Gina says. “We’re lucky it didn’t get impounded. I called the manager, and he said ‘no problem,’ but Carl Walter was still in Boise until today. I finally got in touch with Mrs. Garvey. You’d think she was the governor and not the principal of Roosevelt High, after how many messages I left and secretaries I had to talk to. They’re excusing the unexcused absences. Don’t be mad, but I forgot to call last week, because, you know, I had a lot on my mind. Then she tells me she hopes you’ll be at the graduation ceremony, that missing it would be unfortunate, given the situation, and I totally get it, but what a bitch! Unfortunate. She had the balls to say the community needs—”
Annabelle has stopped listening. At the word community, she’s out of there. Her mother loves her and she loves her mother—honestly, she’d have never gotten through what she has without her—but sometimes you wish even the people you love would go away. Not for long, not forever, just long enough to have a little quiet. Annabelle gazes out the little window of the RV. Night has fallen. She wonders what that beaver is doing now. It’s spooky out there. But she sees the camper from Portland across the way, lit up and glowing like the moon.
“And blah blah, more something, more nothing, babble, babble, babble, but he said it was fine, as long as you’re back by September twenty-second—”
“What?”
“Seth Greggory. Weren’t you listening? This is important.”
“A big truck passed and I couldn’t hear.”
“He said it’s fine if you leave the state. I was worried, you know.”
“Okay.”
“So, that’s good.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t have to snap, Annabelle. Um, I’m dealing with your whole life over here? A box for you from Amazon came—”
“Oh, yeah. Remember? Those watercolor pens I needed for school. I’ll pay you back. Better yet, I’ll give you my bank passwords.”
“There’s no need for that! You’ll be home after Ida
ho, in, what, twelve days?”
“What do you mean, I’ll be home after Idaho in twelve days?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean? Your grandpa said you guys agreed to only cross the state line into Idaho, and then he’ll drive you back.”
“Agnelli Curse. He lied.”
“What do you mean, he lied? He can’t have lied!” She’s shrieking. Annabelle actually has to hold the phone away from her ear. “The only reason I’m agreeing to this madness is because you’ll be back in less than two we—”
There’s a rustling sound. Now her mother’s voice is muffled, protesting from a distance with words she can’t make out.
“Don’t worry, I’ll handle her,” Malcolm says.
“God, Malc, what’d you do, wrestle her?”
“Six hundred,” he says.
“Six hundred what?”
“Six hundred dollars! The GoFundMe.”
“You’re kidding. That’s a fortune.”
“Well, two hundred came from your old bosses at Essential Baking, Claire and Thomas. And didn’t you work with an old guy, Giancarlo?”
“Mr. Giancarlo. At Sunnyside.”
“Must be his daughter. Jennie Giancarlo, seventy-five bucks. Seven hundred will probably only get you halfway through Idaho, if we don’t count what you already spent, but we’ve barely started getting the word out.”
“Malcolm, I’ve got my college money.”
“Don’t you get it? People want to help.”
She can’t stand to hear this. The kindness from her old bosses, from Mr. Giancarlo’s daughter, from strangers—it brings a wave of shame that threatens to drown her.
“Annabelle, are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“Don’t freak out, but when you get to Wenatchee in three days, you’ve got an interview with Ashley Naches from Wenatchee High. I’m going to text you her number. Call her when you’re an hour away, and she’ll meet you in the library of the school.”
“What? Why?”
“Per the PR campaign from your publicist.”