The Museum of Us

by Tara Wilson Redd

  In my room, I draw little rectangles for the bookcases and my bed, and a little circle for my beanbag chair, where I like to sit and read. I draw the stairs up as even, neat lines. On the ground floor the kitchen becomes a geometry problem of cooking ephemera my mom never uses. The little island that used to host all my dad’s and my projects—Lego fortresses and Hot Wheels death circuits—rises in the middle of it. The living room, the bathroom, the master bedroom, all in a ring. The great big TV is reduced to a thin little rectangle from above. On the second floor, I outline my dad’s cave and my mom’s craft room—which are remarkably similar in their contents—and the other bathroom. I’m kind of fuzzier on those rooms. My parents shut themselves in their offices just like I shut myself in the basement. I write their names on their boxes instead.

  Outside is where Old Charlotte used to be, so I fence in our yard and draw her in even though she’s gone.

  That’s it, I think. That’s everything.

  It looks awfully empty like that.

  So I go back to the boxes in the basement and label them. Sometimes I forget that we have a second floor of the house. Our boxes I never forget.

  Our whole life from before is in those boxes, but my parents don’t care. It’s nothing but a bunch of old junk to them now. Now they listen to classical music and NPR and run a respectable business. That’s what was fated for us, I guess. Besides all the records and all the things you need to play them, we have the whole collection of Mom’s Beatles stuff that you can’t imagine was easy to find in the 1970s when she was a kid. Like, Beatles shoes and cups and pins and pictures. She has newspaper clippings from when John Lennon was shot. Real ones, not even printouts. She has all these posters she made out of cut-up pictures, and all these drawn-over books of guitar tabs with her handwritten notes on them.

  My dad’s got all his days on the road in boxes down there too: camp stoves, suitcases, cool old sleeping bags and stuff. He always wanted to take road trips when he was a teenager. My parents were going to live in a VW van at one point and just see the whole world. They thought they were going to have the most mobile life you could build, without furniture, without rules, without anything. Their lives were going to be motors and music and me. We were going to be vagabonds forever. It all packed up very nicely in the end.

  I look at my drawing and it feels small because it is small. So I draw in every single thing I know is in our house, even the things I don’t really notice anymore: fancy pillows on the bed, the lamp in the living room, the windows and doors and chairs. My mom buys tons of furniture now, so I have lots of things to draw. I lose myself completely in the details and when I remember I’m supposed to be focused and not give anything away, Roberts is looking at my paper.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she says.

  “It’s fine.” I shove the paper at her. “There’s the house. Are we done?”

  “You’re very precise,” she says, examining it. She hands me hers. It’s two sticks with a roof, basically, and some flowers in the yard. It looks kind of like a little kid drew it. “Most of the time people draw the outside of the house. It’s interesting that you drew the floor plan,” she says.

  “Yep. Fascinating. I’m probably a serial killer,” I say. Roberts laughs.

  “Well, what do you think it means?”

  “Probably about as much as the fact that you drew red flowers in front of yours.”

  “I have red flowers in my yard right now. They’re my favorite part of my house. I love all these details in yours. You must really care about your house. What are these empty boxes up here, though?”

  “My parents’ offices. I didn’t finish them.”

  “Why?”

  “Why are you making me do these stupid things? Write a story? Draw a picture?”

  “I asked you to do it. I’m not making you do it.”

  “But why?”

  “Because we sometimes…reveal ourselves in what we write or draw or say or do, in ways we can’t see, ourselves, very easily. And when we talk with another person, we may figure out things we wouldn’t have realized any other way.”

  “But I don’t want to ‘reveal myself.’ I want you to just believe me when I tell you I wasn’t trying to kill myself. Because that’s the truth. That’s my true story: I crashed my car into a tree and it was an accident. The end.”

  “So, why don’t you want to do it, then?” I rush to answer and she holds up her hand. “And don’t say because it’s stupid…think about it for a second.”

  I do. I wait a long time so she’ll think I’ve delved really deep into my subconscious, and then I tell her:

  “My English teacher made one of the exam questions last year ‘Why did Mary Shelley write Frankenstein?’ The answer was, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein because she was afraid of childbirth. Like it was a fact. Not like she sat down to tell a story, but like she just sat down and said, ‘I’m afraid of childbirth, and hence I shall write Frankenstein.’

  “I don’t think people write stories like that. And it’s kind of rotten, to just disregard that she wrote a really kick-ass scary story. It’s like the story doesn’t even matter. And I don’t know if you ever even get to know what you mean when you tell a story. But you can know what you’re saying. And I just think that we should look at the facts, and take people at their word.”

  “But that’s exactly the point, isn’t it? That maybe we can see something new as readers.”

  “But how could we ever know that it’s true?”

  “We can’t,” she says, shrugging. “Just like I can never really know what’s inside your head. All I can do is provide…feedback. Help you identify themes, ask questions, challenge suppositions…but you’re writing this story. You can write a lot of stories from the same facts. It’s interesting to look at which one you choose to tell.”

  Dead end. Obvious trap. Abort mission.

  “So what do you think of my house?” I ask.

  She looks at it for a moment, then she tucks it into her briefcase to be analyzed with the rest of me.

  “Honestly? What I’m wondering is…what you stand to gain by changing the subject.”

  Oh, Dr. Roberts. You must love us teenage girls. So ready to break at any moment. So ready to erupt into a fountain of answers if only someone would listen. If only someone would speak that one sentence that is so insightful it cuts through the sarcasm. You must love the challenge. The puzzle. Just what is wrong with Sadie Black?

  Well, fat chance she’ll be finding out. I will outsmart her. It’s nothing personal. That’s simply how it is. She’s the enemy—

  “Sadie? You’re wandering, aren’t you?” she says, and I snap to attention.

  “What?”

  “You looked like you were somewhere else.”

  “No.”

  “Sadie. Don’t you think people can see when your thoughts are somewhere else?”

  “I’m not crazy!”

  “No one said you were.”

  Blunder. If this were a game of chess, what I just did was a blunder. Roberts takes the board. Black flips the board onto the floor. Chess pieces everywhere.

  “I don’t think you’re crazy,” she says after an awkward minute.

  “Then what do you think?”

  “I think you’re complicated, and you’re trying to figure some stuff out.”

  And then, for some reason, I smile.

  * * *

  “I think you’re complicated,” she told me so sweetly, like a serpent, “and you’re trying to figure some stuff out.”

  Then I smiled because I’m an idiot. She almost got me.

  I outsmarted Roberts for now, but I must be careful. Every moment is a battle. I have to remember that.

  I stop before I write something I will regret. I’m trying to remember it all, to observe everything like an explor
er, but it’s almost impossible.

  See, even explorers fail at that. It’s like, if you climb Mount Everest, a lot of that time is alone in your head walking. But do people write down step after step? No, they write down the interesting parts. That’s just how a journal works. It’s exactly like the pain in my leg: every day is full of it, punctuated by little moments of talking, little checkmarks on a sheet. Sometimes exciting things happen. But mostly the adventure is pain.

  Pain is the measure of my time, like steps taken on a journey. But I won’t remember that. Or rather, I’ll remember, but I won’t feel it. Even when I write it down, it doesn’t make it real to the person I will be in the future.

  I am in constant pain.

  See, that doesn’t carry that pain forward. It’s just a statement. The word pain is just the shadow of a stranger who’s already gone.

  I could paint a better picture, and maybe I could feel it then. Maybe I could carry that pain out of myself and into another person. But do I want to remember that? Or do I want to let it go?

  What is it possible to save with words?

  George. George. George. I write his name down as faintly as possible, but even that doesn’t bring him here. George written down is just a word. Like pain.

  I stop and stare at the page.

  I completely mark out those featherlight words in black just in case. I know better than to write even his name.

  My heart is pounding. What was I thinking? If I write his name and Roberts sees it, they’ll take George away. If I tell Roberts about George, he will die.

  I black out half the page around where I wrote his name, destroying everything near it. Just to be safe.

  It would be nice, though: storing George in my notebook just in case. But if I came back, if I read what I wrote, would I even be the same me who wrote these words? Could I resurrect him from a few scribbled lines? I don’t know if I could even save George by putting him in this journal.

  But what else can I do?

  George has always lived in my head. I never thought that was an unsafe place for him to be. I never thought—never even imagined—that anyone could take my thoughts from me. But Eleanor says they can steal your dreams, and I think she knows. This place I’m in, it can change what you think. It can uncover your deepest treasures and take them away. It can make things that once made sense to you unrecognizable. It can make you a different person, and those things you didn’t write down…they’re just gone.

  What would I do if I lost the Star Palace forever? What would I do if I somehow lost George?

  Dr. Roberts made me smile. She found a crack.

  I can’t talk about George, because then everyone will know I’m crazy. They will take my thoughts away, fix me. I live a beautiful life of shattered options, coexisting all at once, all of them unreal. I know that sounds crazy, but I’m not insane. You’d have to be insane not to want this.

  George and I have lived in hundreds of worlds and hundreds of books. We passed our O.W.L. exams side by side. There are no mountains we have not scaled, no oceans we have not explored, and yet still there’s infinitely more to see. He’s taken me to Amsterdam countless times, to drink countless bottles of stars. I don’t know why I live this way, but I can’t stop. I’d die without George. I’d be empty.

  My hand hovers over my notebook. Am I strong enough to walk out of here with George safe inside my head? Maybe a message in a bottle, to some future me, is his best shot.

  Maybe if I wrote down our stories and did the best I could, made them as beautiful as they felt, I would be able to find him again.

  I try to remember without going to him. I try to think of what it looks like from the outside, so I don’t get sucked under. In these memories, I am a character in my own story, and that character is behaving…strangely.

  Sadie hadn’t gotten out of bed for days. She had been lying on the bottom of a black ocean.

  I stop. I don’t want to think about this. And anyway, I could never capture what it feels like to be with him. I’m not good at anything, not even telling my own story. Why bother to try?

  Instead I write George a note that no one else could understand.

  I am so sorry. I’m sorry I let myself get us here, and I’m sorry for every time you have called me and I have turned away. I am yours, and you are mine. I want us to have forever, to seek and find.

  The ice extended beyond her line of sight, and had she not come from a world of hearths and tea, Sadie would not have believed in the existence of those comforts. The harshness of the landscape was complete, all-encompassing. It erased the rest of the world, leaving only the challenge: Antarctica. Never before had such a journey been attempted, not even by Shackleton, Amundsen, or Scott. She had to be strong. She was the only girl on this voyage, and a stowaway to boot. She couldn’t just be a sailor. She had to be more.

  Sadie squelched in her shoes as she marched with determination toward the captain sullenly sitting on his throne of snow. He gazed off into the white, battered by the icy wind. The only monument to civilization remaining—their ship trapped in the ice—stood behind him, and the rest of the crew gazed on as it creaked and finally began its descent into the black depths below, carrying its flag with it.

  “Your coffee, Captain,” she said, marching up with the insufficient cup of hot liquid. George drew himself up and tried to make himself look unperturbed. He took the coffee expertly, despite the layers and layers of coats and mittens. Only his blue eyes were visible through his thick hat and many scarves. He cleared enough of his face to speak.

  “Are you afraid to die, girl?”

  “No, Captain.”

  “And the others?”

  “Not a man aboard is a coward. In fact, they are celebrating. They are singing.”

  George listened hard, and through the Arctic wind he pulled out the notes of a familiar song.

  “Why do they sing?”

  “After all the waiting, all the indecision, the end is in many ways a relief, sir. Even to die is better than the dullness of waiting.”

  “Ah, but it is not the end. We didn’t go down with the ship after all.”

  He took a swig of coffee, glaring at her disdainfully.

  “It’s the start of an adventure,” Sadie said. “It’s what we’re here for.”

  “Is that what you’re here for?” he asked. He pulled his scarf down around his neck, breathing vapor thick as ghosts.

  “Yes, Captain!” she nearly shouted. Her heart yearned for it: to see sights unseen, to face danger in every moment, to do what had never been done before.

  “Are you sure it isn’t…something else? Someone else?”

  Sadie crinkled her nose, breaking character.

  “What? George, what are you—”

  He put an arm around her shoulder and she felt hot, too hot. This was wrong. This wasn’t the adventure they were supposed to be on.

  “Would you like to stay for dinner?”

  “What?”

  “Sadie, are you listening?” George started to melt, his charcoal hair dripping to the ground. Both George and the Antarctic waste evaporated and Sadie was back in reality. In the sweltering heat on his back porch, Henry asked: “Do you want to stay for dinner, or do you have to go home?”

  Sadie put down her copy of Shackleton’s South.

  “I can stay,” she said.

  “You seem kind of out of it.” He put down his book. He was supposed to be doing summer reading for school—the rising juniors were reading British everything—but hadn’t made much progress. Sadie had finished hers for sophomore world lit months ago.

  “Sadie?” he called her. “Where are you?”

  “What?”

  “In your head, I mean. You just seem like you’re somewhere else.” He frowned.

  “I’m not.”

  Anger flickered acro
ss his face, though it evaporated in mere seconds. “Why do you always lie to me when I ask what you’re thinking?” he asked.

  “I don’t.”

  George grinned icily in the back of her mind. Yes you do, he whispered.

  Henry’s eyes were boring into her, searching for the part of her that dreamed. All of her freshman year, Henry had been pacing her labyrinths trying to find her monsters, her secrets. She could never let her guard down. He must never find out.

  “I was just reading,” she said finally. “Really. You know I get distracted.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve been reading that page for a long time.”

  “So have you,” she snapped. She covered her mouth, shocked at her own anger. Were they going to have a fight?

  But she looked so shocked that Henry burst out laughing.

  “Guilty as charged. You’ve seen through my clever ruse,” he said with a grin. “The book was but a prop in my covert surveillance operation. You know, you make the funniest faces when you’re reading.”

  Sadie turned bright red. How long had he been watching her? How long had she been with George? Her brain scrambled as she tried to think clearly: had her lips been moving? Had she been smiling strangely? What could he possibly have seen?

  “I was just…you know…”

  “Thinking?” he interjected.

  “Yeah.”

  “I make faces when I listen to music, especially if I’m trying it out in my head…awesome guitar solos and stuff. My mom calls it my ‘crazy guitar look.’ What were you thinking about?”

  “Antarctica,” Sadie said half-truthfully.

  “Cool.”

  “Ice-cold, actually.”

  He laughed in the kind of ugly way she loved—all nose—throwing his head back like it was the funniest thing in the world. “Hey,” he said, stopping. “Maybe instead of staying here for dinner we could go out. Like a real date.”

  Sadie paused, clutching her book to her chest.

  “If you want to stay in, that’s cool too,” Henry said, eyeing the book. “But it’s the last weekend before school….”