by Emily France
Micah and Anish exchanged looks like they thought Essa had completely lost it, but they had no choice but to help.
“Okay, okay,” Micah said. “Let me see the wheel.” Essa handed over the piece of paper. He studied it like it was a new kite that had arrived at the shop, a complex one with a new design he’d never seen. Like he had to figure out how to put it together piece by piece. “Spokes. Look at the spokes. There are . . .” He silently counted them. “Eight.”
“Which makes sense,” Essa said. “They stand for the—”
“Eightfold Path.”
“That’s the path Buddha laid out to relieve suffering,” Essa said, turning to Anish. “To stop dhukha.”
The three of them sat there for another ten minutes, just staring at it.
“Essa.” Micah sighed. “I think it’s just a Dharma wheel. I’m sorry.”
The wheel blurred in Essa’s vision as tears started to pool in her eyes. “Talk to me, Puck. Talk to me,” she whispered.
“Wait,” Anish said. “Let me see it.”
Essa handed the drawing to him, and he held it up to the one on the poster. “This spoke,” he said, pointing to the one on the left. “It’s darker than the one on the poster, right? Come look.”
Essa and Micah leaned it. “Yeah,” Micah said. “But she probably just drew it with a different pen. The ink is just darker there.”
“No,” Essa said. She pressed the drawings close together. “He’s right. It’s darker. It really is. Just one spoke.”
“What’s it mean?” Anish asked.
“I have no idea,” Essa said. She brushed her finger over and over again across her sanctuary tattoo. “Maybe I missed something? Micah, search under my mom’s bed. See if you can find anything else. I apologize in advance if you find anything weird. It’s my mom, after all.”
“No problem.”
Micah headed down the hallway, and Anish and Essa started to tear Puck’s room apart. Her desk drawers were full of equal parts scripts for school plays, tangled kite string, and old homework assignments all with the grade of A. Essa looked under her bed and found candy wrappers, scented markers, a unicorn pillow, and Puck’s tap shoes. Anish took Puck’s closet and said he found nothing but clothes, shoes, a giant box of gumballs, and a mammoth tub of Jolly Ranchers.
There wasn’t anything under her bedside lamp, under her carpet, behind her curtains. There was nothing but Puck’s usual stuff.
“I found nothing.” It was Micah, back from Essa’s mom’s room. He was standing in the doorway. “Well, not nothing. My hand brushed a pair of boxers under the bed. Which I can only assume are Ronnie’s.” Micah looked slightly ill. “Can I get an STD on my hand?”
“What about this?” Anish said. He was standing by Puck’s study desk, holding something in his hand.
It was a compass. A cheap plastic one with a flimsy plastic red arrow. Anish moved around the room with it. It still worked. No matter where he turned, the arrow spun around to the north.
“What about it?” Essa asked.
“Maybe the wheel isn’t just a wheel. Maybe it’s directional. Maybe the darkened spoke is an arrow?”
Essa looked back at the drawing. The spoke in the due west position was the darkened one. She sat up a little straighter on the bed, hope rising. “Okay,” she said slowly. “So assume it’s pointing west. But west from where?”
Micah crossed the room and took the compass out of Anish’s hand. “Well, if the wheel is a compass, then you should head west from where you found the wheel.”
“Oh my god,” Essa said, hopping off the bed. She raced to her mother’s room with Micah and Anish in tow. “The box was there,” she said, pointing under the bed. “Due west would put us . . . in Mom’s bathroom.”
They tore the bathroom apart. They found all her mother’s herbal bubble bath jars, incense holders, and homemade soaps. Micah yanked open a drawer under the sink and started pulling out Q-tips. He threw them over his shoulder like they were handfuls of salt for good luck. Essa bent down and started picking them up as fast as he could throw them.
“I don’t think tossing Q-tips around is going to—” She stopped when she saw something peeking out from underneath the bathroom vanity.
A mala.
It was the mala that Essa had found in the bathroom earlier, before their trek in the mountains. The one she worried her mom had bought for herself even though Puck had asked for it.
She leaned over and pulled it out. The beads were a little dusty from being on the floor. She held them up to the light and gently blew against them to clean them off. The brown tassel on the necklace’s end swayed in Essa’s breath.
That’s when she saw it.
Something nested in the tassel. A tiny note, tied in among the string. She hadn’t noticed it when she picked the necklace up earlier:
Sticks and Stones.
“Look,” Essa said, holding it up for Micah and Anish to see. “It says sticks and stones. A mala with a note, left due west from the Puzzle Kite box.” Essa’s heart pounded in her chest, in her ears, behind her eyes. Hope filled every cell of her body like chlorophyll filling a green leaf in the sun.
It’s a clue.
It’s a note.
She stowed away under a kite because she was planning to fly.
“You guys,” Essa said, almost shouting, “this is real. This is it. She ran off. She planned it. She ran away and she wants us to—” Essa stopped talking. Her mother appeared in the doorway. She wasn’t in one of her carefree skirts or tiny little tanks. She was in sweatpants, a huge old T-shirt with paint stains on it. Her hair was messy. Her eyes were puffy from crying. Essa knew right away from the look on her face. It was one of dread. Of horror. Of despair. She had something to tell Essa, and she didn’t want to.
No. No. No.
“Mom.” Essa swallowed hard.
“They found the man you saw in the woods. He checks out. Just a strange guy who’s delusional, but harmless.”
Essa looked up, hoping to see light in her mother’s eyes. Maybe good news.
“And they found something else.” Her mother’s eyes stayed dark. Full of grief. “A shred of Puck’s clothes,” her mother whispered. “It was a mountain lion, Essa. They’re sure of it.” Her mom stepped close and held Essa’s face in her hands.
“No,” Essa said, her sobs coming quick. Choking. She was choking out the words. “She’s okay. She is. Look.” Essa held up the mala. “There’s a note. ‘Sticks and stones.’ It’s a clue . . .”
Essa’s mom was crying, too. She was looking at her daughter with something Essa was sure she’d never seen before. Just like the priest’s face—it was compassion. Or maybe pity.
“She ran away, Mom,” Essa continued. She was shaking now. Hard. “She wants us to find her. She left these clues. She’s a runaway—”
“Maybe she ran away,” her mom said. She took the mala from Essa’s trembling hands. “But if she did, she didn’t get very far.”
“No, no, no—”
“She’s gone, sweetheart. She’s gone.”
June 29
33
OLIVER
“It’s in the paper again today,” Sophie said, clicking through the Boulder Daily Camera website.
Oliver couldn’t bear to read one more detailed account of how a beautiful nine-year-old girl wandered away from her camp and was eaten by a mountain lion.
“The search is officially called off. And apparently Puck was the second child to be attacked by a mountain lion in the Comanche Peak Wilderness. Another small boy from Boulder was attacked and killed by one in the . . . wait, the date was just here.” Sophie squinted at her laptop. “In the 1990s. He ran ahead of his family and was dragged off. They only found his shoes.”
“I’m going to be sick.” Oliver pushed away from the table and ran to the bathroom.
He held his head over the toilet.
They found Puck’s shredded clothes.
He heaved and nothing came up. And again. And again.
His phone jingled in his pocket. He didn’t want to look. It jingled again.
Lilly.
FaceTime.
He wasn’t going to answer. He couldn’t. First he’d need to get out of the bathroom, get it together, act like everything was okay. His mom had told him that Lilly was home from the facility, doing better on her new medicine. Oliver couldn’t tell Lilly what was really going on. It might send her spiraling into another episode. She might put the pieces together. She might . . .
He pressed the green answer button.
“Hey,” he said.
His sister looked back at him through his cell screen. She was sitting in his bedroom back in Chicago, on his bed. His pillows were stacked behind her. She’d drawn a cluster of spheres with red colored pencils and taped it to Oliver’s wall. “I’m in your room.”
“I can see that.”
“And you’re in the . . . bathroom?” She glanced at the bath towels hanging on the rack behind him.
“Um, yeah, I was just . . .”
“You’re sick,” she said. Her smoky blue eyes sharpened. She leaned toward the screen. She was holding a book and clutched it to her chest. She was worried. “Are you okay?”
Maybe the medicine really was working. Maybe she was getting better. But still, he was supposed to say yes, that he was doing fine. He was supposed to be calm. He was supposed to talk about the weather. He wasn’t supposed to say anything that could upset her. That could set her back. He wasn’t supposed to lean on her. Like a sister.
“No.” He heaved again into the toilet. He couldn’t help it. “Not okay.”
“What’s happened, Oliver? What is it?”
“I’m so sorry, Lil.” The tears came next. “I’m so fucking sorry. For what I said to you. For what I did. Please forgive me. I’d die if something happened to you. I’d die.”
“Oliver. Breathe. I love you. It’s okay. I’m okay. You need to come home—”
“I will,” Oliver said. The heaving stopped. He sat down on the tile floor and leaned against the bathroom wall. He reached up and pulled one of the bath towels off the rack. He ran it over his face, down the back of his neck. “I just can’t come home yet. I can’t leave her.”
“Can’t leave who?”
Don’t tell her.
Don’t tell her.
“Essa.” He looked right at his sister. Like they were pirates in the same crew. Like there was a storm on the high seas he needed to tell her about so they could put their heads together and chart their course to safety. “I’m in love with her. But I screwed up. I really screwed up. She won’t even talk to me. And her sister. Her little sister Puck, she . . . disappeared.”
“I know.”
He paused. His stomach tightened. “You do?”
“I heard Mom talking to Sophie on the phone. I looked up the news story online.” Lilly looked better. She really did. Oliver thought her eyes looked here. Present. “I can’t believe you guys were up in the woods like that. So scary. And they found her clothes?”
“Shreds of it.” Oliver closed his eyes. “Hanging on a bush. Totally shredded. Just a few pieces.” The tears came again. “I love you. You know that, right? And if something ever happened to you, I’d miss you so much. So, so much.”
Lilly nodded. Then she held up her arms.
May 16
Chicago
34
OLIVER
“You’re schizophrenic.”
Except Oliver wasn’t saying it. He was yelling it. That Lilly was sick. Unhinged. A maniac. That so much of what she believed wasn’t true. That the whole story she’d just told him about their father planning to kill someone was a delusion.
He’d told her.
He’d left her reality for his.
Lilly ran into the bathroom and grabbed his razor by the sink. She pulled out the blades, slicing her fingers as she pried them loose. She pressed them against her flesh, over and over again. Back and forth, up and down. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing. She didn’t make dainty little horizontal slices on her wrists. She made long, deep cuts up and down her forearms. She flayed the flesh, carved it like it was a rotten pumpkin after Halloween. Soft. Worthless. Ready for the garbage.
There was blood. So much blood. It splattered on the bathroom floor. It splattered all over the sink. The mirror. Just before she passed out, she said one last thing:
“Traitor.”
Oliver’s mother appeared in the bathroom doorway. He told her what do, his voice flat. “Call an ambulance.”
After Lilly was admitted to the hospital, his dad left. His mother drank wine. Oliver went to his room. And lost it. Threw books. Punched the walls. Felt like the worst human being on earth.
His mom and Sophie made the Boulder summer plan the next day.
I almost killed her.
June 29
35
OLIVER
Now Oliver stared at the phone.
“Look, they’re healing.” Lilly was still holding up her arms, wrists facing the screen. The cuts were healed, but the scars were deep purple and blue. Slashes ran up and down her forearm, thin lines branching across her skin. “It’s not your fault. Not really. I get it.” Lilly played with a long strand of her hair.
They looked at each other for a long while. Were they together again? In the same moment, in the same world?
“I’m sick,” she said.
“I know, Lilly. I know you are. And I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she said. She reclined on Oliver’s pillows. “I might be. But I think I know what causes it.” Her blue eyes flashed bright. “They said they were giving me Risperdal in there. But it totally wasn’t. The pill didn’t look right. It wasn’t the right shape. I think it was an experiment. They were experimenting on me. Seeing what they could do to my brain . . .”
She’s not better.
Maybe good enough to be out of the facility for a little while. But she wasn’t better. She was just in a new delusion.
He had the urge to go back to his old habits. To ask her about the medicine. To agree with her that it was probably an experiment, a poison, a test. He started to tell her that he’d help track down the doctors. He’d help her make it right.
But he didn’t say any of that.
He thought about telling her that she was wrong. That they were giving her the right medicine. That the doctors cared for her. That they were trying to help her. That she was schizophrenic. And would be. Forever.
He didn’t say any of that, either.
He wanted to be with her like they were when they were kids. At sail on the same sea. It was all he wanted.
“Lilly,” he asked, “can you hold on?”
She nodded, and he got off the floor. Phone in hand, he went to Sophie’s living room, to the little altar. He pulled the single white flower out of the vase by the Buddha statue. He sat down on the sofa and held the flower up to the screen.
“Do you see this?” he asked. He twirled the stem.
“Yeah,” Lilly said, looking confused.
“It’s a gardenia.” Oliver was so sad, so tired. But he sniffed the flower. Looked back at Lilly. “It smells so sweet. And it’s beautiful, right? See how these petals fold over? And look at the middle. So perfect. What’s it look like? To you?”
Lilly still looked a little confused, but went along. She leaned toward the screen, studied the flower. “Like paper. Like a paper sculpture. A featherweight paper flower.”
She opened her mouth to say something else, but stopped. Oliver kept the flower in his hand, kept holding it up for her to see, kept twirling it. Around and around. They watched for a few beautiful moments.
<
br /> Just the flower.
Just him.
Just her.
Just this.
He twirled it one more time.
And smiled.
She did, too.
For one beautiful kalpa.
He felt the koan.
Buddha was surrounded by his students. He held up a white flower and twirled it, saying nothing. No one understood the meaning of this wordless sermon except Mahākāśyapa.
Whose only response was a smile.
Mahākāśyapa understood the Dharma gate, the mind of nirvana that does not depend on words.
For the first time since they were little, he felt like she was near. That she was here. That he didn’t have to miss her, because she wasn’t gone.
Lilly leaned back. She looked away from the flower. “I thought of something.” She held up the book she’d been holding. Oliver could see its misty green cover, the sea-blue typeface: The History of Fairy Folklore.
Oliver prepared himself to hear the details of another delusion. Another paranoid story. Another world. He feared their moment together was over.
“They found shreds of her clothes, right?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “That’s right.”
She opened her book to one of the dog-eared pages. “I saw Puck’s picture in one of the articles I read,” Lilly said. “And I felt something. Sometimes I feel like I’m a real-life fairy. With wings. With magic. And Puck looked like one, too.”
She’s gone again. Totally and completely gone.
“And the thing about fairies,” she continued, “is that they like to leave fairy dust behind them. So you know where they’ve been. So you can follow them wherever they go.”
She looked at Oliver like he should understand.
He did.
“So you think . . .”
“Yes. I think.”
PART IV
THE FOURTH NOBLE TRUTH:
The Eightfold Path