by Deb Caletti
She spots flashes of The Taker in the dim grottos and murky hollows where the bears and the cougars might be. There are his bitten-down cuticles, and the way she once accidentally embarrassed him.
You nervous? she asked, laughing, holding up one of his hands.
The expression that crossed his face—it was shame, but deeper than shame. Fury, maybe.
So what? You get freaked out at a four-way stop. She knew he liked her, but it seemed like he hated her a little right then, too. And then there was the time he stormed out of class after he pronounced “awry” awe-ree when he read aloud, and everyone laughed. The walls shuddered when he slammed the door. The next day, Mrs. Lyons and Annabelle and the whole class, really, pretended it hadn’t happened, though you could feel the energy of pretending in the air.
Kat is also in the damp shadows of the forest. Annabelle sees her, jumping up and down and screaming alongside Annabelle’s family at the finish line of Annabelle’s second marathon that November.
Go, Belle Bottom! You’re almost there! You can do it!
She sees Kat sitting at that back table of Essential Baking Company, reading and eating an almond croissant, drinking green tea as Annabelle makes complicated coffee drinks for the other customers. She hears Kat at lunch one day, saying, I like his smile, though. His—The Taker’s. The though tells more than the like. Kat is trying to be generous. Then she changes the subject to something safer. I got the new Alice Wu at the library, but the cover sucks.
These small details spring out from the thickest brush and shadows, but the larger pieces stay crouched in hiding, and the largest piece of all lurks in the deepest, darkest cave, pacing and putrid. While she’s here in Idaho, at least, the worst memories are in the distance, and Seth Greggory is in the distance, because there may be grizzlies, but the can shakes, and it sounds like stop, stop, stop!
After every sixteen-mile stint in Idaho, Grandpa Ed is there just as he’s promised, in the location her “team” has scoped out.
“Look who’s back. My little Jesse Owens.”
“Who?”
“Mi fa cagare! Read your history!” Mi fa cagare: statement of disgust. Translation: It makes me poop.
After her run, Annabelle takes a long nap, and then they find a brewpub, or she eats an enormous pasta dish that he’s fixed. She checks in with Malcolm and Zach and Olivia about the plans for the next day. She calls her mother. Gina, seeing that she hasn’t died yet, has cut down her daily calls from ten or twelve a day to two or three. This may also be due to the anxiety medication she’s now on, according to Malcolm. For a few weeks after Annabelle left, he said, Gina kept waking him up to see if he was breathing. Their house was filled with those protective saint candles you get at the grocery store for a few bucks. Gina made the two of them say lengthy safety-prayers before dinner. Malcolm finally told her that if she didn’t get help, he would go and live with That Bastard Father Anthony at the rectory of Saint Therese’s. Have a good run tomorrow, and enjoy the scenery, Gina says. If Annabelle didn’t also hear Gina trying very hard to breathe deeply, she’d have thought her real mother had been abducted.
Grandpa Ed has been in a fabulous mood, too, since they’ve crossed the border. After the raccoon turd, there’s been no more whittling; instead, he’s been spending lots of time on a laptop he bought at Best Buy on a trip into Coeur d’Alene. Man, he loves that thing. He’s on it all the time. He loves it so much, he always seems in good spirits lately. It’s the magic of technology, Annabelle thinks.
“All right. Look what we got to look forward to. Roundup, Montana,” he reads to her after dinner. “Site of the Great Centennial Cattle Drive of 1989.”
“1989? Wow. Historic.”
“Celebrating Montana turning a hundred, okay? Don’t be a smarty-pants. Almost three thousand cattle ran through the town. Two hundred covered wagons. Che figata! Thirty-three hundred horses over six days.”
“Sounds like Panama City Beach during spring break.”
“Twenty-four hundred cowboys and cowgirls.”
“Yee-haw. Imagine them in bikinis after a few Jell-O shots.”
The only serious downer through Idaho: her team. The Facebook page has hit a plateau of 540 followers, and the GoFundMe donations have stalled. There’s an emergency Skype meeting that night, after Grandpa Ed leaves to “get a little fresh air.” He does this every evening now, and he comes back rosy-cheeked and pleased with himself, whistling some old-guy tune. At first, Annabelle thought he was hitting the tavern, but tonight, they’re in Black Bear, Idaho, on Yellow Dog Road and there’s not a brewpub in sight. In fact, there is nothing in sight except for the forested darkness of Shoshone County.
“Nice hair,” she says to Zach Oh, when she sees him on her phone. “Desert dune during a windstorm.”
“Hey, I didn’t say anything about yours.”
“I gave him some gel,” Olivia says. “It gives him some lift.”
“Next, she’s going say you chew too loud and tell you not to go out with certain friends,” Malcolm says.
“He doesn’t have any friends,” Annabelle says, and she and Olivia crack up.
“I’m glad some people are in a good mood,” Zach says. “Because I am not in a good mood, okay? The last commenter on the Facebook page was selling weight-loss powder, and the one before that was a middle-aged predator dude with chest hair.”
“We need new content,” Malcolm says.
“It’s true. We need new content,” Olivia says.
“Minus expenses, the GoFundMe’s at eleven hundred bucks, give or take. Eleven hundred bucks will barely get you to North Dakota, with gas, food, and the new shoes you’re going to need at the rate you’re going through them. This is a crisis, gang.” Zach looks like the young CEO of the startup. His new, hip hair says I got this, but his fretful face gives away the fact that the whole deal is crashing and burning.
“You’ve got to start posting stuff, Annabelle,” Malcolm says. He’s holding his phone so they can see up his nose.
“Malcolm, gross.”
“Your followers want to be part of your trip,” Olivia says.
“Everyone else on USA Crossers has a blog. They show where they are on their route. They take photos,” Malcolm’s nose holes say.
USA Crossers is the site dedicated to everyone who has run across the USA. Only about three hundred people have done it so far, ever since the first lunatic tried it in 1909. This was Edward Payson Weston, who walked from New York to San Francisco in a hundred days. More and more people are making the trip, though. Ten to twenty are doing it right now with her, including another teen, Elena Callas, who’s raising money for ALS, an illness her father has. Also crossing right now: a Desert Storm vet running for immigrant rights and a college student raising funds for National Parks preservation.
“I don’t get why you won’t just let us send out a press release,” Olivia says. “Did you even read the one I wrote?”
“I’ve been busy.”
Olivia exhales in frustration. Olivia always paces when she’s on the phone, so in Olivia’s Skype corner, Annabelle gets a whizzing tour of Olivia’s room. A paper lamp shoots by, and then a poster of Amelia Earhart standing by her plane. “The media would pick this up in two seconds!”
“No.”
“Why? Come on, Annabelle,” Zach says.
“No! That’s like me asking for something. That’s me drawing attention to myself.”
“Exactly!” Olivia says.
“If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.”
“She’s okay if it happens accidentally, but not if she goes out and looks for it directly,” Malcolm’s nose holes say.
“Elena Callas has twelve thousand followers, and she got a parade in Denver,” Zach Oh says. “Because people know.”
“I’m not in a competition with Elena Callas. I just want to make it all the way.”
“You’re not going to make it to South Dakota if we don’t get the word out and get more money,” Zach
says.
“College fund, I keep telling you.”
“College fund is for college.” Malcolm has disappeared. His voice is firm, but it sounds far away, and all she can see is an image of his bed.
“I don’t even know if I’m going.”
“You’re going,” Zach says. “End of story. And you need to speak. You can’t waste this opportunity. You’re going to fucking say things that need to be said.” Zach never says fucking. His mom would have a stroke if she heard him. Annabelle almost laughs, but he’s clearly upset. He’s upset because the tragedy has also affected him, of course. Olivia, too.
“At least contribute to the Facebook page,” Olivia says. “Elena puts up photos of all the people she meets along the route. Buddy shots, arms around each other. Feel-good stuff. Like when a store plays lively music or a restaurant shoots out smells of garlic.”
“You’re going to be great when you get your MBA,” she tells Olivia.
“We need to release the video,” Malcolm says, as if he and Zach and Olivia are kidnappers with a hostage. “It’s our secret weapon.”
“What video?” Now Annabelle’s worried. “This isn’t some terrible montage of baby movies and news footage, is it? Come on, guys. I’m not exactly Elena with a sick father.”
“Annabelle. This is no time to be silent. I mean, we need this. The world is a fucking disaster right now, and this is one thing we can do something about. I know you understand this! I get why it’s hard, but come on.” Two fuckings in one day. Zach is losing it. Zach Oh has a 4.0 grade point average, and you can see how he got it. He’s a surprisingly passionate guy. Then again, after the tragedy, he had nightmares so bad, his mom slept in a chair in his room.
“My mission is personal.”
“Annabelle?” Olivia says gently. “This is about you. But also . . . me. All of us. And . . . my little sisters. Every woman. Every person, but especially—every female person.”
“It can be personal and global,” Bit the dog now says. At least, it’s Bit’s big face and crazy teeth that she sees on-screen now. Malcolm is holding him up and trying to make his mouth move like he’s talking.
“Bit!” she cries. “I miss you, baby!”
“Stealing Kleenex and eating underwear is not as much fun without you,” Malcolm says in a Bit voice. Bit is squirming like a caught trout.
“I’ll put it up tomorrow,” Zach says, but no one is paying attention anymore.
“And the eating of your own poop, Bit, how is that going?” Annabelle is acting like her old self for a minute. This is how she used to be. Having made-up conversations with her brother and her dog.
“It is going deliciously. And I am scooting my butt along the rug like a champ.”
“Way to go, bud,” Annabelle says.
This is also how she used to be. Taking the sun and fun wherever she could get it. Ignoring warnings. Letting stuff pass. Completely overlooking the critical words.
Like video. Like secret weapon.
15
Two weeks later, Annabelle and Grandpa Ed are at a truck stop in White Sulphur Springs, Montana, when the waitress pauses before setting down the menus.
“You look familiar to me,” she says, narrowing her eyes and looking at Annabelle hard. The café is in a little white building with a sign in front that says EAT. It reminds Annabelle of the food Gina bought after That Bastard Father Anthony left—the no-frills, say-it-like-it-is cans and boxes you get on the bottom shelf of the store: Cola. Beans. Rice Cereal. But now it’s Two Eggs and Pancake Stack and Biscuits and Gravy. The waitress is wearing a burgundy Grizzlies football jersey, which has a bear paw clawing down the front of it. After the harrowing time Annabelle has so far spent in the huge and endless state of Montana, this feels like just another bad omen.
Annabelle kicks Grandpa Ed under the table, and he scowls. No way, the scowl says. And maybe he’s right, because how can this woman even recognize her from the news reports of almost a year ago? She doesn’t look like that same girl in the school photo of her that they always showed. The girl with the long hair and bright eyes and the shining future.
“Where you guys from?”
“Seattle.” Annabelle waits. She wonders if this will help the server’s memory click into place.
“Long way from home.”
“You can say that again,” Grandpa Ed says.
Menus are set down. Water gets trickled into glasses. Coffee poured. It has been forty-three days since Annabelle took off like a frightened squirrel back at Dick’s in Seattle. She has run 698 miles. For the last fourteen of those days, 222 of those miles, almost a third of her trip, she has been running on THE LONESOME HIGHWAY.
The Lonesome Highway is perfectly named. There, you can run for miles along yellow prairie and never see a car, and at night, it’s pitch-black as a coal mine. Deep space has more light. Deep space has more action. Occasionally a star explodes, but on the Lonesome Highway, the only thing that exploded was one of Grandpa Ed’s tires, and now they are riding on the thin, small spare.
There is no Wi-Fi on the Lonesome Highway. No regular phone service. Talk about lonely. She’d give anything to hear Gina telling her for the millionth time to wear her reflectors. And who knows what’s going on at home. Grandpa Ed checks in at whatever motel he can find with phone service, but it’s a quick We’re fine, you’re fine, good-bye as the motel lady eyes him with impatience.
Things have changed again. The bliss of Idaho is gone. The bad stuff is winning. The Taker is. Seth Greggory is. Fear is. If nature abhors a vacuum, an imagination adores one. Out there, road stretching to road, the occasional jagged ridge of snowy mountains in the distance, it’s a playground for her thoughts. They run wild, tumble, and fight, like elementary school kids with a substitute recess teacher. The whistle blows, and she yells, Stop! No one listens.
There is The Taker, and The Taker, and The Taker. He stares at her. He sticks out his tongue and waggles his fingers in his ears. Did you think you could forget me? he taunts. Isn’t that part of the reason for what happened? So he would never, ever be forgotten, and never, ever be overlooked?
I win, he says. He does. He has gotten the final word, hasn’t he?
• • •
Against that blank landscape, she and The Taker are in Mixed Media, and they are cutting images from design magazines. She can see his magazine, open to a two-page spread of a beautifully landscaped yard, with lit trees and a lit fountain set into a rock wall.
“That looks like Will’s house,” she tells him. It is the first time she’s mentioned Will to him. After the breakup, it feels good to pretend that Will is just a passing thought, even though he’s still actually in her head every two minutes.
“Will?”
“My old boyfriend. His parents were attorneys.”
“Wow. Fancy. And what happened to Will the Boyfriend?”
Will the Boyfriend—it’s said with the sort of sarcasm that’s actually jealousy. A person’s jealousy is a bit of a thrill until it becomes a monster.
“He thought we should see other people. We were getting ‘too serious.’ ” She makes the quote marks with her fingers.
“So Will is rich but stupid.”
“Aww,” she says, lightly, teasingly.
“Take this, Will and Will’s fancy house.” He slices the page with his scissors. It is silly and dramatic, not ominous. They laugh.
“His parents were nice,” she says. “Until they encouraged him to break up with me.”
They both look down at the page now cut in half.
“I have a hard time talking to you, you’re so pretty,” he finally says.
And she loved it, didn’t she? She just soaked it right in. How awesome, buffed up by a few compliments. Her worth was restored. The thing is, the shameful thing—he never made her feel like she was the dirty water going down the bathtub drain. He wanted her. He desired her. She used him, she thinks now, and look what happened. She was a pretty and nice girl-object to him, and he w
as an ego boost to her.
It’s okay to flirt, Annabelle, Dr. Mann says. And to feel pretty. And to be nice. None of those things mean you’re inviting someone to harm you.
The Lonesome Highway is like one big movie-theater screen.
And it is always a horror movie.
Annabelle blames this part of the trip on Loretta. It’s unfair, though, because Loretta is only looking out for Annabelle’s safety. If Annabelle ran on US Route 12 and not the desolate 200, she’d be facing blind curves, and navigating tight spaces next to guardrails and steep, forested cliffs. A truck zooming along could pick her off in one second. This almost sounds better than what is happening: The Taker, killing her slowly.
The Lonesome Highway may be a safer route, but it is clearly not free from danger. Livening up the action of the Lonesome Highway: two roadside memorials, with plastic flowers and photos of a dead woman and a dead man, killed in automobile crashes.
One dead woman, one dead man. When she sees the second set of plastic flowers and the poster, weather-beaten and faded, Always in our Hearts, Annabelle stops right there. She bends in half. It’s as if someone socked her. She crouches down by the photo. The woman is so young. She is blond and pretty. Her smile is kind. Annabelle cries.
She tries to call Dr. Mann later that day, but Annabelle’s phone still has no service. Everything is dead. Flat, desperate, empty. Lifeless.
It is clear that this endeavor is much more about the head than the body. Well, it’s about the body, too—she’s had to ice her knee every day in the last week, plus take a few anti-inflammatories. But you can’t bring down the swelling of despair with a bag of frozen peas and a Tylenol.
The French toast that the waitress brings is big as a dictionary. Grandpa Ed’s corned beef and hash looks like the many blobs of roadkill Annabelle has seen. He digs in, and she has to avert her eyes.