Bone Deep

by O'Brien, Kim;

  We climb down several levels of semi-collapsed cliff dwellings. The blackened, caved-in openings seem more suited for giant bees than as the homes of prehistoric American Indians.

  We’re not the first people to hike down here. There’s all sorts of graffiti cut into the rock, some even dating back to the 1800s. I bet it ticks my dad off to see it, and this makes me smile.

  We spend the next couple of hours exploring some of the larger caves. Most of them are too collapsed to go into, but there’s one large enough for us to crawl partially inside. Once we’re sure there aren’t any snakes or scorpions, we lie on our bellies in the shade and hang out, talking about everything and nothing.

  When we were little, we used to do this a lot. I always thought that first impressions were the strongest—that the first breath of air, the first time you stepped inside an old pit house or a cliff dwelling, physically did something to you. The scent entered your body and brought the traces of whoever lived there to life. At least that’s what I used to tell Emily and how every game began.

  Of course, now I know that it was just my imagination, but back then it was so easy to believe it was something more. That Emily and I weren’t playing house as much as we were reliving parts of the lives of the people who had lived there. In our fantasies, we were sister-maidens living out the mythology of the stories we heard our fathers tell us as we sat around the campfire every night.

  Back then it felt so good to have a sister—even if it wasn’t real. It doesn’t justify the things we did, but maybe it explains what happens when the lines of what’s real and what’s fantasy get blurred.

  On the way back from the well, I see Jalen emerging from a cluster of gnarled, small-leafed cottonwood trees growing out from around the banks of Otter Creek. He’s with a thin, elderly man with a brown, wrinkled face the color of nutmeg and feathers braided into his graying black hair. Jalen carries a recyclable grocery bag in one hand, and a branch of cottonwood the width of my arm sticks out of the top.

  “Hello,” Emily says.

  My gaze goes to the slight frown on Jalen’s face and then returns to the fragile-looking man standing beside him.

  “Who’s that?” the man asks, looking straight at me.

  Jalen’s mouth tightens, and he steps closer to the older man. “That’s Dr. Patterson’s daughter. Come on, Uncle.”

  My cheeks burn. Dr. Patterson’s daughter. He doesn’t even remember my name. So much for hoping that he felt the same connection I did.

  Jalen’s uncle smiles at me. “She has pretty eyes,” he says, smiling with almost childlike pleasure. “The blue corn maiden.”

  He’s missing a tooth, and his hair is greasy. If I ran into him on the street, I’d think he was homeless, maybe mentally ill. But his eyes shine with intelligence, and despite his physical frailty, there’s something solid and strong about him.

  I can’t help smiling back at him. “Thanks.”

  “Uncle,” Jalen prompts. With one final glance, the older man allows Jalen to turn him in the direction of Otter Creek.

  I stare at Jalen’s back, feeling hurt and stupid for thinking maybe he was the one who’d filled my water bottle for me, that it was some kind of silent acknowledgment that he felt something for me. It’s obvious now that my imagination is still capable of leading me into trouble.

  “So that’s why you don’t want to go out with Dale or Jeremy,” Emily teases as soon as they’re out of earshot.

  “Are you kidding me? He doesn’t even know my name.”

  “He knows your name,” Emily replies.

  “Then why not say, ‘This is Paige Patterson?’” I shake my head. “Not that it matters,” I add the last part quickly and then firmly. “It’s not like I care.”

  Emily laughs knowingly. “Yes, you do. You can’t fight it, you know.” She links her arm through mine. “Sometimes it just happens and there’s nothing you can do about it except see where it leads.”

  “It’s not going to lead anywhere. Seriously, Emily, you’re making this all up. I don’t like him.”

  But she isn’t and we both know it. All these years have passed, and yet she still reads me so easily. I know suddenly that this is the test of a friendship. That time and distance don’t matter. She’s always been my best friend, and I should have fought harder to hold onto her. Instead, I listened when my mother said she was trouble.

  Emily stops walking. “Ask him out,” she urges. “You have to do it. You have to be the one to do it. You’re the boss’s daughter.”

  “Are you kidding? He doesn’t like me, which is totally fine. I’m not interested in dating anyone.”

  “You say that,” Emily says, “but even you don’t believe it. Every relationship is a risk. Sometimes you just have to go for it.”

  I shake my head, but I think about Jalen, about how closely he walked beside his uncle as if he wanted to be able to catch him if he stumbled. What would it be like to have someone looking out for me? To care about me like that? I cross my arms and then release them angrily because I don’t want there to be this deep ache inside me. And I especially don’t want to rely on some guy to make it go away.

  “No way I’m asking him out.” I raise my brows. “I wouldn’t go out with him if he begged me.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Paige,” she says, teasing me in the way only a very old friend can get away with, “just who are you trying to fool? Stop dreaming and start living.”

  SIX

  Paige

  I don’t ask Jalen out, but I fantasize about it. I imagine walking up to him, staring into those amazing dark eyes, and saying, Hey, where’s the nearest Starbucks? And he smiles and says, About a half-hour away. Why don’t I take you?

  Of course the reality is that, if I asked him, he’d probably look tortured or give me directions without meeting my eyes. Emily wants me to go for it, but I have no intention of humiliating myself. Besides, what I told her is true. I’m really not looking for a relationship.

  Still, as the days pass, my gaze keeps finding Jalen—on the other side of the ladders when I climb through the levels in the ruins, in a passageway, or walking by the river. We barely acknowledge each other, but his presence penetrates me anyway. Like heat or cold, he somehow gets inside me, but then we’re past each other, he’s gone, and all I feel is foolish.

  On Saturday morning, the park stays closed as a Diné medicine man comes to perform a cleansing ceremony in the ruins. The purpose is to drive away any bad spirits before my father’s restoration work. The ceremony is so private and so holy that, out of respect to the Navajos, nobody else is allowed near the cliffs.

  I’m a little relieved because it means for the next several days there’s very little chance I’ll be running into Jalen. Instead, Emily and I stay in the information center and the blessed cool of the air-conditioning.

  We spend most of Tuesday morning in the break room on our laptops. Emily blogs, and I spend way too much time composing a short email to my mom.

  I’m sorry I haven’t called. I always think about it at the wrong time. (Lie. I’ve avoided calling her because I’m still mad at her). I’m fine. (Debatably a lie). Guess what? Emily Linton is doing a summer internship here. Yesterday we hiked to Tacoma Well. More later, Paige

  I feel a little mean for mentioning Emily when I know it will upset her. But I’m justified. My mom sent me here. She has to deal with whatever happens.

  Mid-morning, Emily and I buy some sodas and chips from the vending machines. And then, even though we’re not supposed to eat in the museum section, we wander through the maze of exhibits.

  We pass a wall of reddish-brown pottery—much of it broken—and turn a corner where some shelves house stone and animal-bone tools and weapons. Usually the exhibits are packed with tourists, so today, because of the medicine man, the park is empty and it feels like Emily and I have our own private gallery showing.

  Pausing in front of a taxidermy display of desert animals, we stare at a doe who looks eternally frightene
d, and a tawny-colored coyote frozen in mid-trot. On the ground are smaller animals and reptiles. I squat to examine a coiled rattlesnake. Emily crouches next to me. Her breath is warm on my shoulder.

  “Do you remember when we found that snake hole?”

  Instantly I am nine years old and about to stick my hand into a round black opening in the earth. I remember how my heart pounded and my blood felt like hot acid in my veins. Emily sang and chanted as I knelt and then plunged my hand inside. The fear radiated in me, creating the power we believed was magical. That night, with the power still strong inside me, I dreamed of my grandfather, who had died when I was five. The last time I had seen him was in his bedroom in the nursing home, when my father took me to say goodbye. In my dream, his face floated above me, gaunt and colorless, watching me with a stern look. His lips did not move, but I heard his voice inside my head and he said the same thing he told me the last time I saw him. The dark is coming.

  The way he’d said it sent chills down my spine, and I’d pinched myself hard enough to leave a bruise, hard enough to wake me if I were asleep. He was still there, floating like a horrible moon in the corner of the tent. The terror rose in me, and I’d cried out, loud enough to wake Emily, and she’d turned on the lantern.

  Of course there was nothing to see, no ghostly head floating in the darkness, only Emily staring at me with wide eyes. When I told her what happened, however, she’d believed me. It seemed proof that fear could open doors to other worlds, that the greater the fear we produced in ourselves, the greater power it gave us to tap into those worlds. We did not recognize the essential truth about fear—that it exists for a reason. It warns you to turn back and stop whatever you’re doing before it’s too late.

  “Girls,” a woman’s voice startles me so badly that my soda slops and I wipe my hand on my shorts.

  Standing behind us is a tall, thin woman with very fair skin and reddish-blonde hair. She’s wearing a pair of Bermuda shorts and a green silk blouse knotted at the waist. With her elfish features and long arms and legs, she looks a lot like Nicole Kidman, only older.

  Emily jumps to her feet. “Mrs. Shum,” she says, “we were just taking our snacks to the front of the building.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she says. Her green eyes smile at me. “You’re Paige, aren’t you? Duke’s daughter. Welcome. I’m Julia Shum, Dr. Shum’s wife.”

  My father’s boss’s wife—instantly she’s more interesting. Her nails are polished, her gold jewelry flawless, and her lipstick a shade of pink that my mother would say was too bright but then would secretly try to copy.

  “Mrs. Shum is an artist,” Emily explains. “You know that model in the front of the museum? Mrs. Shum made that.”

  I look at her with even more respect. “Seriously? It’s amazing.” It’s a scaled-down version of the ruins, no longer crumbling and broken, but restored to what they would have looked like a thousand years ago, complete with tiny clay Native Americans climbing the ladders.

  “Thank you.” Mrs. Shum steeples her fingers and then places them over her lips as if she’s hiding a secret. Her eyes sparkle. “I’m glad you liked it. Hopefully you’ll like my newest exhibit. Would you like to see it?”

  “Of course,” Emily says, but when Mrs. Shum isn’t looking, she rolls her eyes.

  Mrs. Shum leads us through the pottery and weaponry exhibits and then stops in front of a pair of heavy, black curtains. “It doesn’t look like much now, so you’re going to have to use your imagination.”

  She pulls open the curtains, and we step inside an area partially framed with two-by-fours. The floor is cold, rough stone. Tools and bags of plaster lie scattered about.

  “It’s a backdrop,” Mrs. Shum explains, “for the railings and plank ways that your father is extracting from the ruins. We’re going to build an exhibit where people can actually see them—they’ll be roped off, of course—but I’m going to recreate one of the passageways.”

  Vaguely, in the back of my mind, I remember my father saying something about some of the pieces going to research and others going to a museum, but I didn’t realize it was this one.

  “I’m going to texture the walls myself,” Mrs. Shum adds, “and then paint the plaster black. I want people to have as close to the actual experience of being inside the ruins as possible. We’ll use torches for lighting, that sort of thing.”

  “You should make it smell kind of smoky, too.”

  Mrs. Shum’s eyes light up. “That’s a great idea, Paige. I never thought of that.”

  “And the handprints. You should paint them into the walls, but make them almost invisible so you really have to look to see them.”

  Mrs. Shum’s smile widens. I’ve impressed her. “Another good idea.” She pauses. “Anything else?”

  I look over at Emily, expecting her to say something, but she doesn’t. It’s odd because we’ve always played off each other’s ideas, pushed each other.

  Emily catches my eye and shrugs. “Well, Paige and I should probably let you get back to work.” She doesn’t wait for an answer. Turning, she fumbles with the curtains and then slips from the exhibit without saying goodbye.

  I can barely keep up with her as she weaves her way through the rest of the museum to the exit door.

  “Where are you going?”

  Emily ignores me, pushes the glass door open, and steps outside. I follow her into the furnace-like heat and the sunlight that stabs like needles into my eyes. “What’s the matter?”

  She doesn’t talk until we’re halfway to the parking lot. “God. That woman. I just needed to get away for a minute.” She takes a deep breath of air and then releases it slowly.

  “What do you mean?”

  Emily shakes her head. “She’s just so phony. It makes me crazy.”

  “Why? She seems nice.”

  Emily gives me a scathing look. “That’s what she wants you to think.” She shakes her head, obviously getting more upset by the moment. “She was nice to me at first, too, and then when she found out how old I was, she tried to get me kicked out of the internship program. If it wasn’t for your father, Paige, she would have.”

  I think Emily is just jealous because Mrs. Shum liked my ideas.

  “My father, the hero.” I say it automatically, sarcastically, because he’s the clear villain in every story about him. I can’t stand that Emily can’t see that.

  Emily’s face tightens. “I know you’re upset about the whole divorce thing, Paige, but so is your father. He feels terrible about what happened.”

  I glance sharply at her. A shot of bitterness stings me. “How do you know what he feels?”

  “Because when he first came here, he came to our house. I saw him, Paige. He was lost. He wouldn’t talk unless you asked him a question, and he wasn’t eating either. One time he sat in the car for, like, fifteen minutes before he walked up to our house and rang our doorbell.”

  “Funny. He had no trouble getting in his car and driving out of our lives.”

  “You’re wrong. Half the reason I got this job was that your father thought it would make you happy. Before you got here, he asked me a million questions about things you might like.”

  “And he sure listened because the refrigerator was stocked with hotdogs and frozen pizza. I hate hotdogs.”

  Her hands go to her hips. “Your room. You don’t know how much he agonized over everything in it. He wanted it to be perfect for you.”

  For a moment, I just look at her. “What do you know about my room?”

  “Everything. I helped him pick it out, and when the furniture came, we decided where everything should go.”

  Emily and my father decorated my room? Them together poring over my dresser? My vanity? I picture their heads together, studying the Pottery Barn catalog and talking about me. I hate that he’s different with her—nicer, warmer—than he is with me. “Do you honestly think a Pottery Barn room makes up for what he did?”

  The sun is full in her face, and Emily squint
s as she glares down at me. “Maybe he loved you enough to leave.”

  “Oh, come on,” I give a false laugh. “Don’t give me the ‘it’s for the best’ crap. I’ve heard that before. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I know enough to know that it would have been worse for you if your father and mother had stayed married.” She sweeps her yellow bangs behind her ear. “It would have sucked the life out of you—out of everyone.”

  I make an exasperated sound. Why does everyone always think they know what’s best for me? “I’m not saying that they shouldn’t have gotten a divorce. I’m saying that he didn’t have to take this job. He could have stayed at Rutgers. He could have chosen me. Instead…this.” I make a big gesture with my arms to include the whole park. Inside, anger boils. “He walked away from us. No matter how you look at it, that’s what he did. He simply didn’t care.”

  Emily’s nostrils flare. “Just because he came here doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about you. You think I haven’t seen what an unhappy marriage can do to people? It kills them. It’s like taking a little sip of poison every day.” Her cheeks turn red. “Grow up, Paige,” she says and walks away.

  SEVEN

  Paige

  For the next several days, I refuse to go with my father to his office and therefore manage to avoid Emily, who thinks she knows everything and really knows nothing.

  She tries to call and text, but I ignore her. Every time I think about what she said—grow up, Paige—it makes me mad. She’s the one who needs to grow up. Even worse is thinking about them hanging out together, picking out my furniture and decorating my room. I imagine them talking and laughing, Emily sharing her opinion and my dad peering into her face as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world. Why couldn’t he ever look at me like that?