by Deb Caletti
She is done because what she is doing, this whole idea, is pointless. That’s the biggest thing. Why is she doing this? She has lost track of the why. Seth Greggory is still out there, and her future is still her future, and nothing she is doing will make anything change, if it hasn’t already. Look at the horrors that have already happened and happened and happened, and nothing. Same, same, same. More, more, more. If such horrors can happen to classrooms of kindergartners, little first graders with little pink rubber boots and sweet butterfly backpacks, there is no hope. Nothing had been done. Kindergartners. Nothing. Beautiful, beautiful children.
Annabelle sits down. Right on that ground, at the cross between East Morris Road and WA 27. A hot wind blows. She leans her head on her arms. She is too tired and defeated to cry.
She knows what Kat would say. Just one more day. Go one more day.
She can’t go one more day.
So she fishes out her phone. She could call Dr. Mann. She could call Zach or Malcolm, who will talk her out of this, who will remind her that her Facebook page now has four hundred followers, and that her GoFundMe is up to two thousand bucks.
But everything has gone to shit, so she calls Grandpa Ed. At least, she tries to call Grandpa Ed, but her phone has no service.
Insert a great deal of expletives here. Also, some foot kicking, which basically just stirs up a lot of dirt that sticks to her sweat. It is tantrum-y but feels great. Awful and horrible, but kind of good. She throws a rock. She usually has terrible aim (she hated the baseball unit in PE), but the rock pings against the RAILROAD CROSSING sign in a way that is unusually satisfying. She throws another and misses.
She is pissed off at her phone. She is angry in general. She is not nearly angry enough, she realizes. Because, my God. She should be furious. She should rage like mad every day. Her rage should start at The Taker and extend to every single way her body is legally controlled or left unprotected. Her anger has been buried under goodness and guilt and fear, but it’s a shame, because people with real power get angry. People with real power tell other people what they think, right to their big scary-ass faces.
All right. Shit, all right! She has no choice but to go on to the meeting place of the day, West Chatcolet Road, Worley, Idaho. Grandpa is probably in Worley now, checking out all four of its streets so he can give her the lowdown of the place in excruciating detail. The excruciating details of Worley will sound pretty much like the excruciating details of every small town they’ve been in so far. How much can you say about a post office, a church, and an Ace Hardware?
So, that’s it. She’s done. Even Loretta has fled. Saint Christopher is probably breathing a sigh of relief. It’s pretty clear which direction Annabelle Agnelli needs to go, though, because it is definitely not WA 27. She turns left onto South Marsh Road, where, incidentally, there is no marsh. There is no water whatsoever, nothing remotely blue except the sky, which is also the same in every direction, not a cloud in sight.
Next, East Calumet Road, Rockford, Washington. From there, she’ll turn on Chatcolet, and then she’ll be at the border, and then it’ll be over.
• • •
She sees the turnoff for Chatcolet Road up ahead. It’s right next to a farmhouse, which is all white and picturesque, with barns and outbuildings. There’s a majestic row of grain silos, too. It’s weird, because she also thinks she sees some people out by the juncture. A little huddle of them, like they’re waiting at a bus stop. She hopes it’s a bus stop. If it is, maybe she’ll get on the next one. Maybe she’ll just ride that bus to wherever it’s going. The idea is so appealing that she briefly indulges in one of those fantasies that momentarily feels real. She smiles at the bus driver so he doesn’t suspect anything. She chooses a seat by the emergency exit. She’ll just keep getting on buses and trains and planes until she’s in sunny Mexico, even if Seth Greggory will have none of that.
The people in the little huddle are looking at her. Well, sure, you would. It’s probably not something they’re used to seeing, a girl in running clothes coming down this empty road in the middle of nowhere. Of course, it’s not nowhere to them, but still.
The people are really staring. She counts—one, two, three, four, five, six. Plus a kid. Plus a dog. It’s probably the whole town. The staring is a little awkward. She feels like the alien landing her UFO in the crops. She wants to tell them she’s come from a peaceful planet, but, obviously, that’s a lie.
Wait a second. Wait just a second, here. They are shouting now. Jesus! This is scaring her. But they look happy. They start jumping up and down.
They are calling her name.
Go, Annabelle!
Oh my God, oh my God, she thinks. She is horrified, and embarrassed. But, wait—maybe Zach Oh or Olivia or someone has relatives out in Worley, Idaho. That’s it. Stupid Zach called up some aunt of his, and the aunt called her friends.
A woman reaches out her arm. She’s holding a baggie, and it’s full of orange slices.
“Wow,” Annabelle says. “These are for me?”
“Don’t stop. Keep going!” the woman says. She’s wearing mom jean–shorts and a plaid sleeveless top.
“It’s okay. I can stop. Thank you. You’re here for me?”
The little kid—he has shiny little-kid hair, and little jeans with a little cowboy belt—is holding a balloon. It’s made of red foil and has a fire truck on it. It sags a little. “Go ahead, Jonathan,” another woman says. Her hair matches the color of the dry grass, and she is stout as a bale of hay. “He thought you’d like this balloon from his birthday party. To celebrate your crossing.”
“I can’t believe it. Thank you,” Annabelle says to the boy as he hands her the balloon. He hides behind his mother’s legs. “I don’t know what to say. Do you all know Zach?”
“Zach?”
“Zach Oh?”
“We know you. From the Spokesman.”
A man hands her a newspaper folded in half. Hey, newspapers! Who even knew those existed anymore!
Annabelle looks down at the page and sees a photo of herself. It’s the one Ashley Naches took of her in the high school library. The paper is the Spokesman-Review, but the byline reads The Wentachee World, and, yep, there’s Ashley’s name. Her article in the high school paper has hit it big in eastern Washington.
“You go, sweetheart,” another woman says. “You’re right near the border. It’s up there where that truck is parked. We thought you’d like to know when you made it. Otherwise, you can’t really tell.”
“I’m—” Annabelle swallows. She can’t speak. Even if she could, she doesn’t know what to say. She might cry. She’s overcome.
“Go, honey,” the blond woman says. “You can do this.”
“We heard about what you’re doing. We heard about what happened,” the man says. “You are lifting us. We are lifting you.”
It is one of those vaguely religious things people say that sometimes creep you out, but now it’s kind of nice. Actually, it’s really nice. It’s so nice, she can’t even believe it. She feels choked up. She is holding the balloon and the bag of oranges. It is hard, so hard, but she sees Dr. Mann in her brown leather chair, urging, and so she takes this kindness, too.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
“Go!”
She does. She runs. The fire truck balloon hovers and bobs behind her. She is fighting back tears, but she has forgotten all about quitting. Up ahead, there’s a man in the white pickup truck. He leans out his window and waves his arm.
“Right here!” he shouts. “Right here is where it changes.”
“Thank you!” she yells back. “Thank you.”
She doesn’t know exactly when her foot crossed the border, bringing her from one state to another. But the man is right.
This is where it changes.
13
“I can’t believe it,” Annabelle says to Grandpa Ed, across the table of the Coeur d’Alene Casino Resort Hotel restaurant. A big pink slab of prime rib sits in front of he
r.
“That there’s the horseradish.” Grandpa Ed points to a little silver cup of fluffy white stuff. “It looks like sour cream, but if you put it on your potato, you’re gonna be sorry.” He bites the end off of a fried shrimp.
“Thanks for the heads-up. This is wild, isn’t this wild? It feels wrong.”
“If fried shrimp is wrong, I don’t wanna be right,” Grandpa Ed says. “Cheers to you, crossing the border into Idaho.”
“Cheers.” They clink soda cups.
“Ashley Naches is a really good writer,” Annabelle says.
“Front page, Bella Luna.”
The picture is pretty bad, though. Annabelle’s hair has grown out some, but her eyes look absent and hollowed out. She looks haunted and vulnerable. The article is between a piece about a rash of carjackings in parking garages, and an ad for Jerome Machet, DDS. Your Gentle Dental Friend. But she is surprised at Ashley Naches’s words and how tender they are. It is something that could have happened to anyone, but it didn’t happen to just anyone. . . . It almost makes Annabelle sound like someone worth rooting for and believing in.
And, now, a few nearby people apparently do. Six residents of Rockford, Washington, and seven members of the Coeur d’Alene city council, plus the mayor, also met her by Grandpa Ed’s RV in Worley. They gave her a bottle of Martinelli’s sparkling cider and a gift certificate for dinner and two rooms at the Coeur d’Alene Casino Resort Hotel. Another teen reporter, Jax Jones from Coeur d’Alene High, took her picture shaking hands with Mayor Ellis. The fire truck balloon hovered next to her, trying to get in the photo like Sierra Kincaid always does.
“It’s weird, though. I keep feeling like someone should just haul me off to jail right now.”
“Stop it, kiddo.”
“Look where we are.”
Outside the restaurant window, there’s a giant teepee and a beautiful lit pool. Through the wide doorway of the restaurant, she can see the blinking rainbow lights of slot machines, and there’s the ringing and clanging of a win. Okay, honestly, there’s only a handful of people out there, and one guy in the restaurant, and the waitress seems tired, but still.
“Che figata! I can’t wait to sleep in a real bed.”
“That’s not what you said back at the Sleepy Inn. ‘I've got a real bed.’ ”
“That was different.”
“How was it different?”
“Mind your own business. Hand me one of those rolls, would ya?”
“Because Mom was paying then?”
“That’s got nothing to do with you.”
“Why do you two always fight? I mean, what about la famiglia?”
“You love, you fight. You fight, you love.” This makes no sense, but whatever. He saws his roll open. Slaps on the butter.
“But why do you fight? Is it a big family secret?”
“No secret. I told you.”
“You never told me.”
“I told you a hundred times.”
“Something about Nana.”
“She was sick. With cancer. Your mother thinks I should have made her see a doctor sooner. Nana kept saying she had a backache. Her stomach was bloated out like a balloon. . . .”
Annabelle is silent. What was she thinking? They were so happy a minute ago. God, she really has a way of messing things up. She could spoil a parade.
“You don’t think I tried? I tried. You can’t make someone do what they don’t wanna do. And you can’t always stop ’em from what they’re gonna do.”
“Yeah.”
“Right, Bella Luna?”
“Right.”
“Capisce?”
“Yeah.” It’s a hard thing to hear. Or, at least, to truly believe.
“Look, they got that molten lava cake,” Grandpa Ed says.
• • •
Oh, wow, the room is fancy. If she were a movie star, this would be the room she’d get. Wait, maybe if she’d just gotten married, because, look. There are rose petals all over the bed, and a silver ice bucket on a stand.
She checks the place out. It’s so roomy that she flings out her arms and walks around like that. You could fit five people in the shower. Or maybe just two active honeymooners, haha. She opens the cap of one of the little bottles on the bathroom counter and sniffs. Yum. There’s shampoo and conditioner, but also lotion and rectangle soap and round soap and bumpy, massaging soap and a shower scrub soap. It is a party of soap! In the closet—awesome, a robe! First order of business: She takes a shower and puts that baby on.
She lies on her back on the bed in her white robe. The bed is still made, and she just lies there with her arms out and her feet together, like the Jesus on the cross that hangs over their kitchen doorway. The flower petals are all around her.
Annabelle smells like lavender. It’s astonishing, really, how she’s a different person from the one who was just standing at the crossroads, kicking dirt and flinging a rock at the railroad sign.
She is a different person from the defeated Annabelle, the giving-up Annabelle. She is sort of a victorious Annabelle, lying among rose petals on the honeymoon bed of the Coeur d’Alene Casino Resort Hotel. You never know what a day will bring, which is both the good news and bad news of life.
She has decided to keep going, as anyone could tell by her closed eyes and calm expression. She realizes that all big decisions are ones that must be decided and decided again. She imagines that when you fall in love, you must decide to be in love a million times or more, and when you go to college, you must decide again and again to stay in college, and the same thing is true when you decide to run across the United States of America after a horrible tragedy.
When you are a person who cares for any other person, you must decide and decide again to care, she also understands. Her friends and family have. Grandpa Ed has. Her mother has. In spite of the fighting and blame, he comes to dinner and they celebrate the holidays together. In spite of the fighting and hurt, Gina invites him to dinner and to celebrate the holidays together. They hang in there with their love.
Annabelle holds a rose petal to her nose and smells. Oh, it’s so beautiful and rose-y. It smells like what it is, deep red and velvety. When you are a human being, you must decide and decide again to go forward. You must, or you won’t move from the worst that life offers to here, the bed of the Coeur d’Alene Casino Resort Hotel.
Crawl, walk, or run: forward.
She falls asleep. She is so exhausted, she conks off right there. It is astonishing how untroubled she looks, in her white robe with her eyes sweetly shut, the rose petal still balanced on her nose. The man back in the truck at the border had been right: That was where things changed.
The problem is, they will change and change again. Good to bad to good to bad, the universe spins, which means morning then darkness then morning. She hasn’t forgotten her future, but, still, she is in the good. She has been lifted by strangers, and lifted, too, into sleep. The dream is something about silos and a truck and a yellow field, no longer desolate but full of color.
14
1. There are song titles featuring hearts in various locations: “The Heart of Dixie,” “Heart of Asia,” “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”
2. There are songs about “Hearts on Fire,” and “Foolish Hearts,” and “Cheating Hearts,” and “Wild Hearts,” and “Whole Hearts.” There’s a song about a “Precious Heart” and a “Rebel Heart” and a “Second Hand Heart” and a “Heart of Gold.”
3. Hearts do a lot of stuff in songs: “Heart Skips a Beat,” “The Heart Wants What It Wants.” “Two Hearts Beat As One” while “Two Hearts [are] Breaking.”
4. There are the songs that speak of the darker truth: “Hearts of Stone,” “Wooden Heart,” “Ugly Heart,” “Cold, Cold Heart,” “Jet Black Heart.” There are at least fifty-eight versions of songs titled “Heartless.” This does not seem like nearly enough.
• • •
Loretta is taking Annabelle through the narrow piece of north Idaho, which
sticks up like an index finger. “The panhandle”—yes, she gets it now. It’s an awesome place, even if the trail climbs in elevation and she feels the wrenching through her whole body. After each of her Idaho runs, she is sore in unexpected places from the strain of the upward climb—through her chest muscles and abdomen, the back of her neck. She’s had totally wrong perceptions about Idaho, which just goes to show, you should never judge unless you’ve been there.
What did she imagine? The easy images she’d been handed—potatoes, corn, boring stuff. But Idaho itself is awesome, at least from what she’s seen. There’s lots of cool, beautiful water (Lake Coeur d’Alene, Anderson Lake, Swan Lake, the Coeur d’Alene River, which she runs alongside through most of Idaho). There are brewpubs with lots of meat on the menu (she skips the elk steak). There are perfect temperatures (she’s not there in the winter).
“This panhandle feels like a shortcut through an entire state,” she says to Grandpa Ed.
“It’s the nice little almond in a big biscotti,” he says.
• • •
Maybe it’s because her trek through Idaho is only seventy-four miles, about five days of her trip, but she’s feeling great. She’s in a routine. She gets up early, writes in the Moleskine, and then takes off. She enjoys the beauty that is the water-filled, sparkly spring-ness of Idaho. There are cheery kayakers and bicyclists and crews of friends carrying rafts. On a day of straight-up forest trail, she definitely sees a white-tailed deer. She thinks she sees a wild turkey. She keeps a count of bald eagles, and then loses track because there are so many.
She knows that there are also cougars in those woods. Grizzlies, too. Every trailhead has a sign explaining what to do if you see one. If an animal wants to get you, it will get you, though, won’t it? Isn’t her life proof of that? This is something she struggles with as she runs. This is the question she must answer. How do you feel safe when there are grizzlies in your midst? Perhaps, your only real hope is not crossing paths with one in the first place. She carries a soda can filled with pebbles so the sound will ward off any dangerous creatures. She willfully ignores the fact that a soda can is nothing against a grizzly.