by Deb Caletti
“My publicist?”
“Olivia. Zach’s handling financial matters. I’m covering logistics.”
“You guys don’t need to do this.”
“We’ve discussed overall strategy and made a plan with Mrs. Hodges.” Mrs. Hodges—the business teacher and DECA adviser at Roosevelt. “She underscored the need for publicity, and Olivia’s all over it. Ashley Naches from Wenatchee High is only the first person Olivia contacted, and she jumped at the chance to talk to you.”
Annabelle groans. “Malc! What is there even to say?”
“What is there to say? You’re kidding, right?”
Annabelle’s stomach feels sick. “I don’t want to do PR. You know how I feel about all that.” It’s whooshing back. The news. Reporters, press. The days when she couldn’t leave the house, even if she wanted to. The days when the phone rang and rang until they shut them all off.
Stop!
“Annabelle. It’s the Purple Panther Bugle. This isn’t CNN.”
“Malc, I can’t.”
“You can. You have to. This is too big to just be about you.”
“God damn it! Fine.”
“You’ll have to sign in at the offi—”
“I said fine! I’ll figure it out.”
Malcolm is not only a genius; he has the industrious, plodding patience of a tortoise crossing a desert plane. He’s also her friend. “Me and Mom are going to be surprising you for your birthday tomorrow, and I know how you hate surprises, so act surprised.”
He loves her. She shouldn’t have snapped at him. “Thanks, butthead.”
“Stop being a moron.”
Annabelle listens to his serious breathing on the other end of the phone. “I love you, too,” she says.
• • •
In spite of being alone all day, she wants to be alone more. She’s glad the calls are done. She has no desire, even, to look at social media, to peek at what her friends are doing. The world is gone. At least, that world has temporarily vanished, and she is in another one, one that feels real and old, one that has gone on and on, no matter what is happening in that other noisy place. Terrible stuff can happen there, petty stuff can, while here, beavers still drag around sticks. Here, there is a plan that makes sense, one that’s been working as it has for eons.
She takes off her disgusting clothes, rinses them, and hangs them up. She gets in the shower. Well, it’s sort of a shower—a nozzle you hold over yourself. The warm water comes down.
And, then—oh, shit, shit, shit!—the warm water is coming down, all right.
“Eyyow!”
She shrieks. It is actually more of a scream, the sound a rabbit makes when it’s been caught by an eagle. She holds the nozzle away from her body like it’s a hose of acid rain. The sting is at her back, where her bra clasps, and it’s at her neck where there was a tag, and it’s under her breasts, and down her sides where the seams of her shirt hit.
She didn’t see the marks. She looks down at her body. The raw places aren’t even really visible, but they will be tomorrow. She should have known better than to wear that loose shirt—a cotton one, no less. Now, her skin has abrasions where any fabric rubbed and rubbed against her skin.
She leans far, far over to wash her chopped hair, but when even a drop of water hits the back of her neck where that tag was, it burns.
“Ouch, ouch, ouch!”
She gets out carefully. She pat-pats herself dry. Her ankles burn, too, but not as badly as they did the day before. Her body is on fire. She is a mess of wounds. Fresh wounds, old ones, wounds in various stages of pain and healing.
She wonders if all of her will ever feel healed at the same time.
It is something every human being wonders, probably, at some point or another.
She climbs into her bunk. She lets the sheet—ow, ow, ow—fall carefully over her. She sets her alarm, but then turns the face of the phone away. She doesn’t dare look at that clock. She can’t bear to see the numbers moving forward, five to six, six to seven, seven to eight. Eleven to twelve.
If she looks, she will see it, the time going forward to the day she gets to turn eighteen. The awful day that she gets to be another year older.
9
1. The heart symbol can be traced to before the Ice Age, when Cro-Magnon hunters used it in pictograms on cave walls.
2. The first time the shape was used as a representation of love was in a painting from 1250. In it, a man kneels and hands over his heart to a lady. It looks more like a pinecone than the shape we know today.
3. In the Middle Ages, heart shapes were also used to portray lily pads, fig leaves, and weapons, namely arrows.
4. On his coat of arms, fifteenth-century Italian military leader Bartolomeo Colleoni used upside-down hearts to depict his testicles.
5. Heart shapes . . . symbols for love, sex, and violence.
“Wake up, Bella Luna!” Grandpa Ed says. He whistles the happy birthday song.
She is already awake. She’s been awake for a while. She closes the Moleskine, folds her pillow over her head. She’s been dreading this day, as she dreads all the big days—all birthdays, not just hers; also, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and upcoming events like anniversaries, proms, and graduations.
There are lots of good reasons to be in the middle of nowhere. But she can’t avoid this, her eighteenth birthday. It will bring on everyone’s forced cheer. They will be trying for her, which means she’ll have to try for them, too, and this will be harder and more arduous than her run today.
She steels herself, takes the pillow from her head. “I smell bacon,” she says. “Do I actually smell bacon?” It’s her first gift to Grandpa Ed’s first gift. She makes her voice full of pleased surprise.
“My Bella Luna loves her bacon.”
Her phone rings. It’s Mom, Malcolm, and Carl Walter singing, “Happy birthday to you!” Second gift to their gift—she makes her voice delighted and grateful.
When she hangs up, she sees that there’s a message and an e-mail card from That Bastard Father Anthony. A singing chipmunk holds an acorn with a candle in it. Miss you. With love, Dad. Olivia called late last night: I know this is a hard day. Hang in there. There are eight notification messages from people posting on the Facebook page she doesn’t even use anymore. She counts. Sixteen more hours until this day can be considered over.
She climbs the ladder from her bunk, and Grandpa Ed hands her a big cinnamon roll with a candle in it. “Wow! Where did we get these?”
“Special treat from a friend.”
A friend? She realizes that she didn’t hear Grandpa Ed come in last night. She has no idea how late it was. “So, who were those people you had cocktails with?”
“Dawn Celeste and her grandson. They’re from Portland, Oregon. She’s a widow. They’re taking a trip of the western states together.”
“You said he was my age? So, why isn’t he in school?”
“You should have come with me and asked him yourself, if you wanted to know so bad. Look at these babies. Plump and lush.”
“The cinnamon rolls or the widow? Dawn Celeste—sounds like an old hippie name.”
“It is an old hippie name. She changed it from Delores Carpenter to Dawn Celestial when she was seventeen. Look, I made you some fluffy scrambled eggs, too. Mangia, mangia, before the good stuff gets cold.”
• • •
Annabelle wears her seamless, moisture-wicking shirt with all the tags ripped out. She squeezes out the last bit of Aquaphor from an old tube, slathers what’s left onto all her chafed spots, and then covers them with Band-Aids. She needs some Body Glide, but way out here, it’ll probably be impossible to find. She’ll have to make due with Vaseline until she gets to a larger city.
Out on the Iron Horse Trail that morning, the sky is blue. It reminds her of the sky she sat under while watching Will’s lacrosse practice. It’s the shade of blue he wears in the baby picture that’s framed and sitting on the shelves of Robert and Tracie’s bonus room. It�
�s the shade of blue of Kat’s mother, Patty’s, bedroom.
When even the sky is a reminder, you’ve got problems, Annabelle knows. Grief is everywhere. It’s its own being. It walks beside you silently, jumps out at you meanly, pokes you awake at night. It makes tears roll down your cheeks at a blue sky.
Happy birthday, Belle Bottom, Kat says.
Remember last year? I don’t know how I’m going to get through this.
An hour at a time.
Sometimes an hour is forever and sometimes it’s a second.
Sometimes it’s Mrs. Ysidro’s class, Kat says. They both laugh. See? They have that language that comes from shared history. An hour in Mrs. Ysidro’s AP Calculus was an eon.
Kat’s laugh—it’s the best. She laughs like a baby does. It’s an all-the-way, let-it-loose laugh. It’s a laugh that just destroys you with its hundred-percent-ness.
• • •
The last section of the Iron Horse Trail is flat, flat, flat. This is the real birthday gift of her dreams.
“Thank you, Loretta,” Annabelle says.
She doesn’t have to pretend to be delighted this time. She feels the excited relief of a snow day.
It’s flat, but as she goes, she realizes that the trail isn’t in the best condition. It winds through a rocky meadow, where she can still see some of the railroad track hidden in high grass. The ground is uneven. If she thinks about her feet, she’ll definitely trip. This used to happen when she carried her lunch tray in the cafeteria. If she was conscious of balancing things, she’d spill her drink, or a wave of Ivar’s chowder would splotch over the bowl.
Now, she sees herself carrying her lunch tray on this same day last year. All of her friends are at their table. They’re all looking at her as she approaches, and she knows this means they have a surprise for her, and so she spills her water, and it splashes onto her salad.
“Happy birthday!” Kat shouts. “I know you don’t like big surprises, so it’s just a little one for now.”
“Who doesn’t like surprises?” Carly Trevor says.
“People who haven’t gotten good ones.” It’s the millionth reason to love Kat. She has the wisdom of people who’ve gone through shit.
“Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, please.” Zander puts his hands together and looks at the cafeteria ceiling where the god of birthday cakes must be.
“Yeah, like, don’t tell her it’s a cake or anything,” Zach Oh says.
Kat lifts the double-layer beauty from its hiding place under the table. Happy 17th, Belle Bottom. “Ta-da.”
“Guys! This is so sweet!” Annabelle wasn’t expecting anything until the weekend, when they’re all going out to celebrate.
“That is so much frosting,” Sierra Kincaid says. “Oh my God. I’m going to have to be good the rest of the week.”
“Just enjoy the yum,” Kat says.
“Yes! Chocolate!” Zander yells, like he just found a bag of money with his name on it. “I call corner piece.”
“Eww, go ahead,” Sierra says.
They sing. They substitute insults for her name, like any good friends.
After the plates have been shoved in the trash and everyone goes off to class, Kat unzips her backpack. “I want to give you this now, on your real birthday.”
The gift is beautifully wrapped in thick green paper, looped with rainbow shades of ribbon. Annabelle hates to wreck it by opening it. “It’s so pretty.”
“Just tear it right off,” Kat says.
When Annabelle sees what’s underneath, she holds it to her chest. “Oh, wow. Thank you, thank you! I love it. I love this so much.”
She does. She brings it to her nose, sniffs the rich, dark leather. She’d always wanted a Moleskine like Kat’s. Kat writes lines in it that she wants to use in her short stories. Annabelle doesn’t know what she’ll put in hers.
“Now we’re twins,” Kat says.
• • •
When the trail exits the meadow, it turns cruel. It climbs slowly until Annabelle finds herself high, high up. The ground drops off below in a rocky lurch. It is not an easy day after all. Annabelle shuffles and pants, feeling the pull in her thighs and calves and the press in her lungs. Ahead of her, the trail of scrubby shrubs is heading toward a monster.
Oh wow. Oh wow, wow, wow. It’s a railway trestle. It’s creaky-looking and made of ancient timbers, and it rises precariously from the ground that is so very far below. She will have to cross it. The railroad tracks that once ran across the trestle are gone, and now there are only thin wooden slats.
The row of A-shape structures holding up this bridge—they don’t look good. They’re blackened and old. They look rotted and unsteady. At the start of the Iron Horse Trail, she saw the sign labeled TRAIL IMPROVEMENT PLAN, but she thought she’d be off the route before she got to the wrecked parts.
Now, she sees the orange flags tied to various posts. Boards have been lifted off the trestle floor itself, and the handrail has been replaced in spots. She can see the new, light pine set against the dark worn wood. Worse—sections of handrail are completely missing.
Her stomach drops when she looks down.
Jesus. This doesn’t look safe. Not at all. Not remotely. Gina would have a heart attack if she saw this. Annabelle may be having one right this minute. Her chest is squeezing at the sight of those gaping bits in the trestle ahead.
“Oh, Loretta,” she says.
Loretta has fallen silent. Yeah, Annabelle would, too, if she’d just screwed up that big.
Annabelle taps her thumb to the tips of her fingers, one after the other. Her anxiety ratchets and hums.
Should she run fast over this dangerous bridge, or go carefully slow? Probably, she should just turn around altogether. Slow means less chance of stepping on some rotting board and tumbling to her death; fast means maybe making it to the other side before the whole thing crashes down. Going back means failure.
“It’d be closed, if it were that dangerous,” she says out loud.
But look at it, she says silently to herself.
It’s been one of her biggest problems, hasn’t it? Assessing danger? Isn’t that part of what got her into this mess, to this place where she is weirdly and surreally standing alone on a high, rotting railway trestle on her eighteenth birthday?
Danger was confusing. On the one hand, there was her mother, telling her that every street she had to cross, every car ride, every new person was a deathly risk. As a girl, too, she was told that she needed to be on guard against 50 percent of the human race, and she carried that awareness everywhere, ready to make use of it every time a car slowed next to her as she was walking, or she was driven home by the dad after babysitting. Every time she waited at a bus stop or was at a party with boys and alcohol or was just plain alone, she felt the high alert of vigilance. You could forget that some people don’t live this way. Part of the population rarely even thinks like this. They just walk around without fear and wait at bus stops and go to parties.
But what are you supposed to do when you’re also required to be kind and helpful as well as vigilant? To give directions to the driver in the car slowing beside you, to be polite to the father of the kids you babysat, to be friendly and fun at the party? And some of it wasn’t logical. Most of the time you’re fine. It was hard to hear very well through the buzz of constant watchfulness. She couldn’t tell when she truly was or wasn’t in danger. That voice inside that said, Now, yes, this is it, get out! was muffled by mixed messages. And then, too . . . you could be afraid of all the wrong things.
Because, of course, there were the other critical moments of her birthday last year. That day, the worst, wrong pieces clicked into place, and she didn’t even know it. That day, the clock started ticking.
Annabelle runs. She speeds across that trestle. Well, she speeds as well as she can as she watches where she steps, nervous sweat pouring down her sides, her heart beating in terror. She tries not to look down, because down is everywhere. It’s a harrowing adrena
line blend, being fearless and afraid at the same time.
10
“I heard this place is great,” Grandpa Ed says. The restaurant is called Big Chuck’s, and there’s a wagon wheel on the roof. The freeway whizzes out front. Grandpa Ed pretends that it’s just the two of them going out for a big birthday dinner, and Annabelle pretends not to see Gina’s car in the lot. Actually, she can’t wait to get in there. She’s starving. Honestly, she could eat three or four steaks.
It makes her think of Sierra Kincaid and some girls at school, who’d eat two bites of yogurt and a carrot stick and say they were full. Sometimes, Annabelle did it, too, because you were supposed to be thin and delicate and feminine, even if your body was never those things, even if you were hungry. From the time she was in kindergarten, she heard the encouraging rah-rah about how girls can do anything, yet still there were the yogurt bites and the carrot sticks and girls looking at each other’s bodies, and boys looking, too, judging. It’s hard to be all that you can be on carrot sticks and criticism.
It’s weird because, since her run began, Annabelle feels something different about her body and food. She was already “in shape,” but she is starting to understand that if she wants to be strong, she needs to feed the strength. Energy and power in, energy and power out.
“Surprise!” Gina and Malcolm and Carl Walter shout when she and Grandpa walk in. Actually, Carl Walter just smiles uncomfortably. He’s not the sort for loud displays in restaurants. He’s the kind of guy who’s quiet unless he’s watching sports on TV.
“Surprise!” Angie Morelli O’Brien, Gina’s oldest friend, and her husband, Patrick, also shout.
“Oh my gosh! You guys! Aunt Angie, Uncle Pat! What are you doing here?”
“Anne Lazzarini’s daughter is getting married in Wenatchee, so we thought we’d drop in for dinner on the way. We’re not staying.” She smooches Annabelle’s cheek. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”
“We are staying,” Malcolm warns.
“Come here, my love. Give me a hug,” Gina says. “Happy eighteenth, baby.”