The Ethan I Was Before

by Ali Standish

  “That’s kind of what Mr. Reid said to me,” I say quietly. “On the phone before. He said he doesn’t blame me anymore. That I couldn’t have known what would happen.”

  Grandpa Ike nods. “See? Nobody blames you.”

  I take a shuddering breath. “Then why do I still blame myself?”

  He sighs. “Sometimes we hold on to guilt or grief because it’s the last thing we have that ties us to the person we miss. We don’t want to let them go because it feels like we’ll have nothing left. But it’s dangerous, Ethan. The never letting go. Because until you let go, you can’t begin to remember. And if you don’t cherish your memories of Kacey, then she really will be gone.”

  For a long moment, we sit listening to the hum of the bees.

  “I don’t want to say good-bye,” I whisper to no one in particular.

  Grandpa Ike pats a rough hand on my back. “You’ll never have to say good-bye,” he says. “Not so long as you remember.”

  Granny

  A FEW MINUTES LATER, we walk back to Roddie’s truck.

  It’s hard to explain, but when we leave, I feel just a little lighter than I have in a long time. Like when you’re carrying too many grocery bags and someone takes one of them off your hands.

  Despite the huge puddles and scattered debris still on the roads, it only takes us five minutes to get to Coralee’s. There’s no visible damage, but the house seems to sit even lower to the ground than it did before. I guess it’s survived its fair share of hurricanes.

  “I’ll wait out here,” Grandpa Ike says. “Your mother’s orders.”

  I smile at the thought of Grandpa Ike taking orders from Mom. “Hey, Grandpa Ike?”

  “Mmm?”

  “You were right,” I say. “When you said that kids are stronger than people give them credit for. I think old people probably are too.”

  Grandpa Ike laughs. “I knew I liked you, kid.”

  I grab the box with the pups and stride up the driveway, but I’m extra careful going up the porch steps. They feel soggy beneath my feet. I almost reach the screen door before I see Granny.

  “Are you Farmer Mitchell’s boy?” she calls. “Did he send you with my eggs?”

  “Um, what?”

  Granny is seated in the rocking chair closest to the door. As I approach her, I can hear her ragged breathing, and I see an oxygen mask in her lap. Her milky eyes squint at me, as if trying to make out who I am.

  “It’s Ethan,” I remind her gently. “I’m Coralee’s friend.”

  “Coralee?” She tilts her head up and takes a labored breath. Then she rocks back in her chair. “Coralee. Of course. Sweet girl. Smart, too. She’s sleeping. They all are. That’s how I was able to sneak out here. They don’t like me outta my bed, see.”

  She raises the oxygen mask to her mouth and sucks in a breath. Her arms are so thin that I can see the outline of her nubby wrist bones.

  “Are you feeling okay, Granny? Can I take you inside?”

  She waves a frail arm at me. “Have to enjoy this while I can,” she says. “Ain’t got much time left now.”

  Granny may be confused, but I believe her about not having much time left. Her face is ashen, and her flowered robe hangs like a tent over her. I should probably go inside and get Coralee or Adina, but something tells me that Granny is right. She should be allowed to enjoy the view from her rocking chair while she can.

  “Is Nima here too?” I ask.

  “Nima?” Granny echoes. A cloud passes over her face. But then light pierces her dusky eyes like the first stars peeking out after an evening storm, and she breaks into a grin. “My Nima. I knew she would come back for me. I knew she’d come ’fore the end.”

  Granny rocks forward, and something falls out of her lap. I place the pup box on the ground and reach down to pick it up for her. It’s a book. A journal, rather, with a plain black cover.

  “Is this yours?” I ask, holding it out to her.

  But she shakes her head. “Just the stories,” she says. “Coralee writes them down and then reads them to me. Helps me remember. Help her to remember when I’m gone, too.”

  My arm is still outstretched, but Granny doesn’t take the book.

  “Go on,” she says. “Read. Read some to me.”

  I open the cover and flip through the pages, stopping when something familiar catches my eye. The page is titled “Tiny the Gator.”

  I read aloud from Coralee’s handwriting, which scrambles across the page as though it was written in a hurry.

  That year the summer just refused to die, like a guest overstaying his welcome. I loved my Nima, but Lord, could she be a handful, and seemed like the hotter it was, the more energy she had for bouncing around, breaking things. So I sent her and her sister down to the county fair one day in September to get them out from under my feet. I had laundry to do, see.

  Well, Nima had an arm on her like a quarterback, and she won first prize in one of those games, the ones where you throw a ball at a bottle to break it. And what was first prize but a live baby alligator, teeth and tail and scales and all. They gave it to her in a goldfish bowl. That’s how small it was. She was holding that bowl like it was a prize hen when she came running down the road. She told us its name was Tiny. Tiny the Alligator! Can you imagine? Her daddy ’bout had a conniption fit, and I wouldn’t go within arm’s reach of that thing. But she cried and wailed and stamped her foot something awful, and that’s how Tiny ended up in the bathtub. Any time one of us wanted to bathe, Nima had to come in and fish that scaly beast from the tub and take it to the yard till we was through.

  Tiny stayed until he was too big to fit in that tub anymore. That’s when my Chester took him out to the marsh in the middle of the night, and my, but I’ll never forget the way that child screamed when she saw he was gone the next morning.

  When I finish, Granny cackles merrily and slaps her palm against her knee.

  “She liked that gator ’cause it was as feisty as she was, I tell you,” she croaks. “She was heartbroken when Tiny got taken away.”

  So Coralee hadn’t made Tiny up. He had been real. He just hadn’t belonged to Coralee.

  I flip through to the next page and read the title. “Nima and Granny’s Taffy Recipe.”

  “This recipe won the blue ribbon at the 1986 County Fair,” I read, “and can always be relied upon in case of low blood sugar.”

  “Strawberry juice and sea salt. That’s the key,” nods Granny. “That’s what makes it special from the others.”

  I flip through some more pages, scanning the familiar titles. “Nima and the Snake Bite.” “Uncle Calvin’s Story.” “The Rolling Pin Rescue.”

  “These stories seem to be mostly about Nima,” I say.

  I shake my head as I flip through the book. “Nima’s Slippery School Prank.” Didn’t Mom say she remembered something about someone turning a dance studio into a Slip’N Slide? Maybe that was because it had actually happened here in Palm Knot when she was a kid.

  All the stories Coralee had told me were true. They just weren’t hers.

  “Coralee wanted to know her mama,” Granny agrees. “My Adina didn’t like it one bit, but that was Coralee’s way of keeping her mama alive. They’re real alike, those two. Adina is more like her brother Calvin.”

  “Calvin,” I echo, remembering what Coralee told me about her “brother.”

  “He’s a doctor. Graduated from medical school last year. Isn’t that something?”

  I jump when I hear the door creak open. “Ethan?”

  Coralee stands in the doorway, looking from me to Granny to the book. “What are you doing out here?” she asks.

  “Just talking with Granny,” I say, closing the journal and placing it on the table next to Granny’s rocking chair. “She was telling me about Calvin.”

  Coralee’s face scrunches up like she’s trying to decide whether to get angry. But she doesn’t. She opens the door wider. “You better come in,” she says. “Granny’s not supposed to be out o
f bed.”

  Kacey’s Song

  WHILE NIMA AND ADINA help Granny back to her bedroom, I follow Coralee upstairs.

  “Calvin was my uncle,” Coralee says. “Granny can’t always remember things that have happened. He died in a car accident a long time ago, before I was born.”

  “Oh,” I say, surprised to hear Coralee speak so matter-of-factly about the dead uncle she’s been pretending is her own living brother. “That’s too bad.”

  As we climb the squeaky steps, I still see Coralee’s small handwriting scrawl across the pages of her journal.

  Something about it reminds me of the tidy rows of flowers around Grandma Betty’s grave.

  Coralee opens a door, and I follow her through. Her two pups are on the floor, snuggled together in a pen she has made out of chicken wire and newspaper. I deposit my pups gently into the pen and look around. A little white desk stands in one corner of the room, with at least a hundred books stacked in crooked piles across its surface. Her bed has a pink bedspread with silhouettes of horses galloping across it.

  “How is it with your mom back?” I ask.

  Coralee wrinkles her nose. “She’s not really my mom,” she says. “Not yet, anyway. She and Adina talked almost the whole night long. She says she’s moving back to Palm Knot. For me.”

  “Wow,” I say. “That’s really great.”

  “I guess,” she murmurs, sitting down by the pen. “She’s been running her own store. She wants to start one here, maybe inside Mack’s. One of those places that sell cookies and ice cream and candy.”

  She says it casually, like it doesn’t really matter, but I hear the faintest note of pride in her voice. “Like taffy?” I ask, smiling.

  “How did you know?”

  I shrug. “Lucky guess. What about the jewelry?”

  “We’re putting it away until I turn eighteen. Then Nima says I can decide what to do with it.”

  “That’s cool.”

  There’s a moment’s pause before Coralee clears her throat and claps her hands together. “Anyway,” she says. “I have news. We’re going to be celebrities!”

  “What?”

  “The preserve just called before you got here,” she says. “They’re going to meet us at school tomorrow morning so we can hand over the pups. Maria Olivas from Channel Eight is going to be there and everything! They want to interview us for the news.”

  I shake my head, but I can’t help smiling. Coralee will be telling this story for years to come. Only this one will be her own.

  “You’ll have to handle the paparazzi by yourself,” I say. “I came to give you my pups. We’re leaving today.”

  “Leaving?” asks Coralee, crestfallen.

  “Kacey’s dad called this morning. He said they wanted to wait for me before they took Kacey off her life support.”

  “Oh,” says Coralee. “I thought—I mean, your mom told me he was kind of upset with you.”

  “He was,” I say. “But he apologized. He said he thought Kacey would want me there. So we’re leaving tonight. We’re going to stay a few days, so Roddie and his girlfriend can do some college tours together.”

  It was me who suggested this to Dad. Maybe Boston College won’t be sending scouts to Palm Knot, but that doesn’t mean that Roddie can’t still apply for a scholarship. He and Dad are going to work on making a recruiting video this summer.

  “A few days?” Coralee asks. “And then you’re coming back?”

  I nod, then pretend not to notice when Coralee breathes a long sigh of relief.

  “That’s great,” she says. “I mean, I’m glad you’ll have a chance to see her again.”

  “Me too,” I say. It’s hard to hide the tremble in my voice. I suck in a deep breath of air and clear my throat. “Anyway, I’m sorry I won’t get a chance to see the look on Suzanne’s face when she realizes you’re going to be on TV.”

  Coralee sucks her teeth and bugs her eyes out in an impression of an enraged Suzanne, which makes us both laugh.

  “So, what else did Granny say to you?” she asks when our laughter has died away. Her voice has gone all light and casual.

  “She thought I was someone else at first, but then she told me that she was trying to enjoy the time she has left.”

  Coralee looks down at the pups.

  “She’s dying,” she says. “We’ve known for a while she wasn’t going to get any better. That’s why I left Atlanta. I was living with my dad there, but I told him I wanted to come back. To help Adina and to spend time with Granny while I can. But last week, they moved in all the hospice equipment. They only do that when they know someone doesn’t have long. That’s why I wasn’t in school before.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, hanging my head. “I should have been there for you.”

  “How could you?” Coralee says. “You have Kacey to think about. Granny’s had a long life. I’ll miss her when she’s gone, but I know it’s her time. Kacey was so young, like us. It’s different.”

  I keep my gaze on two of the pups, who are resting so that their bodies come together to make the shape of a heart with a hole in the middle. As I watch, one of the pups snuggles closer to its sibling, closing the gap between them.

  “I know I didn’t know Kacey,” Coralee continues. “But I really wish we could have been friends.”

  “She would have liked you,” I say. “A lot.”

  “I want to play you something.” Coralee pulls out a violin case from underneath her bed.

  “You actually play?” I say before I can stop myself. “I thought—”

  “You thought I made that up too?” Coralee finishes.

  “Well, I just—I didn’t—”

  “It’s okay, Ethan. What Suzanne told you is true. I do make stuff up sometimes. But it’s not because—”

  This time it’s me who cuts Coralee off. “You don’t need to explain yourself to me,” I say. “Not to me or to anybody.”

  Because she doesn’t. Because I get why Coralee lied. Like Granny said, it was her way of keeping her mother’s memory alive. Of keeping her mother alive.

  I understand Coralee now, and anybody who doesn’t, well, that’s their problem.

  “Sometimes a story is all you have,” she says. “Sometimes that can be enough.”

  I nod. “Maybe when I get back from Boston, I can tell you some stories about Kacey.”

  Coralee beams. “I would like that.”

  “Were you going to play me something?”

  “Yeah,” she says, pulling a violin and bow from her case, “I wanted to play you a song. I wanted to do something to help you remember her when she’s gone. So I wrote this. It’s Kacey’s song.”

  Coralee rests her cheek against the violin and runs the bow across its strings. I can tell she’s no musical prodigy by the way it whines every now and then, but she handles her bow skillfully. She plays a melody that is graceful and gentle one moment and carefree and bouncing the next. It’s just like Kacey. Like Coralee has managed to capture everything that I loved—that I love—about her in this one song.

  I want her to go on forever.

  What I Know about Myself

  1.My name is Ethan Truitt.

  2.I have been in the car for one hour, forty-seven minutes, and five seconds.

  3.I have a long way to go before I get where I am going.

  4.Which is a nursing home, where I will see my best friend, Kacey, for the last time.

  5.And when I see her, I will hold her hand until it’s time to leave.

  6.But I won’t say good-bye.

  7.I’ll say this instead.

  “We both have to let go now, Kacey. It’s time for you to move on, to be free.”

  Then I will lean in close so only she can hear me.

  And whisper, “I dare you.”

  Author’s Note: The Red Wolf

  Coralee might not have known it, but her determination to save the red wolf pups would have helped the whole species survive. In 2016, the US Fish & Wildlife Servic
e estimated that there were only forty-five to sixty red wolves remaining in the wild, and two hundred living in captivity. That means that red wolves are even more endangered than other high-profile animals, such as giant pandas, mountain gorillas, and polar bears. Currently, the only wild population of red wolves can be found in northeastern North Carolina, with other wolves being kept and bred in captivity in sites around the United States.

  But it wasn’t always like this. Before Europeans colonized the United States, red wolves ranged as far north as Canada, as far west as Missouri, and as far south as central Texas. The red wolf had spiritual importance for many Cherokee peoples, who called it the wa’ya. But by the mid-1900s, red wolves teetered on the brink of extinction, due mostly to human interference.

  The red wolf is now protected under the Endangered Species Act as a distinct species of canid, smaller than the gray wolf but larger than the coyote, with reddish brown fur that gives it its name. Like gray wolves, red wolves are shy and pose no threat to humans unless they feel threatened. They live and hunt in small packs, mate for life, and breed once a year between January and March, with an average of four to eight pups being born in the late spring. Mother wolves make their dens in well-hidden spots, such as in hollow trees, by stream banks, in burrows made by other animals, or even(!) in drainpipes.

  Even though the red wolf is supposed to be protected, its survival in the wild, which helps to balance the ecosystem by controlling prey populations, is uncertain. Due to threats from illegal hunting, interbreeding with coyotes, and habitat destruction, the numbers of wild wolves left in North Carolina have fallen rapidly in the past five years. In 2016, the US Fish & Wildlife Service announced its plan to cut the wolves’ recovery area drastically, meaning that most of the wild wolves would likely be removed and taken into captivity. Conservation groups are currently fighting for the right of the red wolf to remain and be protected in the wild.

  Coralee is right: every animal should have someone looking out for it, and you can help look out for red wolves! Here are a few ways to get involved.