“Would you at least think about coming outside?” she asked, and placed a hand on my arm. I caught the scent of her again, and it reminded me of what life was like before. I breathed her in and yearned for what we used to have.
“I’ll think about it,” I said. And maybe going outside would change things. Maybe it would be a good thing. I pressed the cloth harder into my hand, and the pain bit into my palm.
65
Collin was sitting on the front porch swing when I got home from school the next day. He broke into a run and met me as I got off the bus.
“Mom said I could go out into the fields tonight if you went out too. Will you do it? Please? Please?”
He tugged on my book bag and made it fall off my shoulder. I searched the yard for Mom, so I could tell her exactly how I felt about this little plan. Leave it to her to rope my brother into all of this. She knew there was no way I’d say no to Collin.
“You really want to be outside at night? There are bugs, and it’s wet and cold. It’s so much more comfortable inside.”
“No, no way! Please say yes.”
I remembered how he’d woken me in the middle of the night crying over Abby. He wasn’t getting much attention, and it wouldn’t be that big a deal to go outside for one night if it helped make him feel better.
“I’ll go out for a little bit,” I told him. “But don’t think that I’m going to do this all the time.”
“Yay!” He yelled and ran up the driveway, no doubt to find Mom so she could celebrate the victory.
I told him we had to wait until after dinner, and as soon as we cleared the dishes, he was waiting at the door.
Collin raced into the field, but I moved slowly, still skeptical about these people and their belief that they were doing the right thing to help bring Abby back.
I expected everyone to be in small groups in the backyard, kind of like high school where we sat in our cliques, not daring to cross over into a section that wasn’t your territory, but it wasn’t like that at all. It was one big group, as if they had become friends or family. Adults talked to teammates of my sister, neighbors sat next to teachers from my school, and the few classmates who were there seemed to be friends with one another.
I dragged Collin to Mom first. She was with our neighbor Karin, the one who suggested the circles had to do with Abby in the first place. The two of them were deep in conversation.
A woman with a pile of blankets tucked under one arm walked over to me and placed her hand on my shoulder.
“You must miss you sister very much,” she said.
“Of course I do,” I replied, immediately defensive, because is there any other way to feel?
“When I think about how much I miss her, I have to stop because it could never be as much as your family does.”
I tilted my head to get a better look at this woman. Was she for real?
“How do you know Abby?” I asked.
“The same way most of these people do. She’s a part of our town. I might not have known her personally, but I can feel the loss.”
“Right,” I said, wondering if the loss she felt hurt as much as the one I did.
She hiked the blankets higher and gave me one last smile. “Well, I wanted you to know that we’re praying real hard for your family.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled and turned to Mom.
“Honey, you’re here. Karin and I were just talking about how important these circles are.”
“Oh, yes,” Karin said. “I don’t know what I’d do without them.”
Um, how about go home and live your life, I thought to myself, because so far, the Miracle Seekers were pretty much exactly what I thought they’d be: a bunch of fakes who clung to Abby’s disappearance to fill some hole in their own empty lives.
I didn’t bother to answer her. Instead I turned to Mom. “I’m taking Collin over to Mary Grace, but we need to talk later.”
She put on a fake smile and turned back to Karin. She knew exactly what I wanted to talk to her about, and I had a feeling she’d spend the night stuck to someone’s side so the opportunity wouldn’t happen.
I helped Collin spread out the blanket we had brought from inside and the two of us sat next to Mary Grace.
“Hi,” I said, and wondered how I’d gotten to the point where I was outside sitting with her. She was surprisingly nice to me, considering the last time we’d spoken I wasn’t exactly the most pleasant person in the world.
“I’m glad you’re out here.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t have much of a choice. It was either this or stay inside with Hound Dog. Since he stinks and needs a bath, coming out here won.”
“I totally get your decision. I remember when he got sprayed by a skunk, and it took forever for you guys to get the stink off of him,” she said. Her face grew serious. “Seriously, though, it’s good to see you.”
“Rhylee said we can come out here every night,” Collin told her, settling onto the blanket I’d spread out next to Mary Grace.
“I said nothing of the sort,” I told him.
“We’ll see about that,” he said and sounded exactly like Mom. He lay on his back and studied the sky. Stars peeked out among the inky blue backdrop, and he traced a path between each with his finger.
I pulled bits of grass out of the ground as a group of people came to stand by Mom and Karin. One of them rang a large cowbell.
“We’re going to welcome in the evening with a song,” he said, and those around me quieted down. The ladies drew together and sang something full of words about “god’s glory” and “saving love.”
The group passed around purple candles. I took one and when Mary Grace lit her candle from the candle of a man sitting near us, I reached mine out and watched the flame catch. Collin stuck his candle in front of my face, and I helped him light it.
I stared at the flickering center as the sky grew darker and night fell.
“Why does everyone sing?” I asked Mary Grace.
“For Abby,” she said.
“Abby doesn’t like singing. She dropped out of choir freshmen year because she said it was boring.”
“We don’t sing because of the songs,” Mary Grace said. She brought her candle close to her face. “It’s so she can hear us. If she’s out there somewhere, maybe she’ll hear our voices and come home.”
I almost laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of her response. Mary Grace was smart; she had to know that no amount of singing was going to bring Abby home. I turned to her to tell her as much, but what I saw made me keep my words to myself. She was holding her candle with both hands, staring into the flame that lit up the tears that ran down her face.
“I know this is all kind of stupid,” she said, whispering the words that moments ago I’d been thinking.
“It’s not,” I told her, because I got it. I understood her sadness, because I felt it too. And maybe the circles were bullshit, but what we were missing wasn’t.
66
When I got home from school the next day, I found Collin digging around in the guest room closet. We never had anyone stay over and use the room, so it had basically become a place to dump any random junk we had. Collin pulled out gift boxes, mittens that had no mates, and sports equipment I didn’t even know we owned. He created a pile on the floor of so much stuff, you’d think the closet went on forever.
“What are you trying to find?” I asked him when a winter boot flew across the room and nearly hit me.
“My sleeping bag,” he said.
“What for?” I asked, way too skeptical of his plans.
“The circles,” he said, confirming what I already knew.
“Collin, last night was a one-time thing—”
“I don’t care,” he interrupted. “I’m going out there. You and Mom can’t stop me.”
“There isn’t anything out there for us,” I said, but he wasn’t about to reason with me. Instead, he turned and began to dig through the closet again.
I sighed and pushe
d him aside. “Let me look. I think they’re up top on the shelf, and you’re not going to be able to reach them.” I stood on my tiptoes and rooted around until my hand touched something soft and squishy. “Bingo!”
I pulled out a sleeping bag and dropped it down. We both stared at it, neither one of us making a move to touch it.
It was Abby’s sleeping bag.
We each had our own color and Abby’s was purple. I’d always been jealous Mom had let Abby pick her sleeping bag first and she got such a pretty color, while I was stuck with red.
Her bag well-worn from family campouts and sleepovers, especially the ones where we only ventured as far as the family room. It used to be a tradition to bring them out when a storm rolled in. We’d lie in our sleeping bags on the living room floor, open the curtains on our huge front windows, and watch the lightning flash across the sky. The four of us would fall asleep like that, lined up in a row listening to the weather rage outside, and wake to the bright sun filtering in. Mom acted as if we slept there to watch the storms, but she wasn’t fooling us. They spooked her and she didn’t want to sleep alone. We only did it when Dad was at work.
We stopped when Abby joined the cross-country team freshman year. We’d overslept one morning after an October storm shook most of the leaves off our trees. The team had stood outside, their hoodies zipped up and running in place to keep warm.
“Abby,” Dad had said, still in his work uniform. “Your crew is on our driveway waiting for you.”
She had scrambled up from her sleeping bag.
He’d opened the front door and waved. “Morning, everyone. Abby is just waking up. Do you want some breakfast while you wait? I bet you could give up a day of running for some of my blueberry pancakes.”
Abby had pushed Dad aside, embarrassed, and waved the team away. “Go ahead without me. I’ll catch up.”
She’d closed the door before Dad could entice them in again with his pancakes and stomped up the steps.
We never slept in the living room after that. Abby had refused during the next storm, and it didn’t feel the same to sleep beside Mom and Collin, so I’d stopped doing it too.
But tonight I stretched my hands back up to the top shelf and found Collin’s green sleeping bag. I tossed it to him.
“Does this mean we can go outside?” Collin asked and jumped from one foot to the other, excited at the possibility.
“One more night,” I told him.
“Yes!” he said, and made his way down the steps and toward the front door before I could get another word in. I reached into the closet to find my sleeping bag, but then thought better of it. Instead, I bent down, grabbed Abby’s sleeping bag, and followed Collin.
67
It was nice to see Collin happy and excited about something, even if it was the circles. So as crazy as it sounded, I agreed to go outside for the third night in a row. I figured if spending a few hours out there helped him, I could grin and bear it.
I spent the time last night with Mary Grace again. The two of us traded stories about Abby. We told each other things about my sister that the other had never heard. And when you talked in the dark, it was easier to tell things we couldn’t say to anyone else.
I told Mary Grace about how Abby would spread butter on Mom’s meat loaf, a practice we found disgusting but one Abby assured us was delicious. Or how she left her tennis shoes in the hallway after a run and would have to find them from whatever hiding spot Hound Dog decided to drop them in after having a good chew.
Mary Grace shared the time she let Abby drive her parents’ van before she got her license and she scratched it on a curb in the parking lot. She told her parents she did it so Abby wouldn’t get in trouble. Or about the time when Abby tried to drink a whole gallon of milk after she heard it was impossible. Two-thirds of the way through, she found out the hard way why people couldn’t do it.
I liked being with Mary Grace. Together, we brought parts of my sister back to life. If we were talking about her, it was as if she was still there, and we needed her with us so badly.
“Do you remember the duck eggs in the woods?” she asked.
I did, pale yellow and sitting in a nest of feathers. When I was younger, before there was Tommy, Abby and Mary Grace didn’t allow me in on their secret adventures, even though I’d begged them. They’d run into the woods together, sometimes with me trailing after them, but they were always too fast. I’d fall behind and watch them disappear into the trees. I’d stand guard at the entrance until they reappeared, sweaty and flushed, laughing together.
The duck eggs, though, were a secret I became a part of. Abby and Mary Grace burst out of the woods one day, breathless. “Rhylee, come with us,” Abby said.
At first, I suspected they were playing some trick on me, but Abby grabbed my hand and pulled me forward. “Hurry. You have to be quick or you’ll miss it.”
I blindly followed the two of them. They led me in twists and turns to some secret place.
“Where are we going?” I asked, surprised they were letting me join in.
“We need to be quiet or we won’t be able to look,” Abby said and pushed away branches and made her own path. We walked like this for about five minutes without breathing a word. Suddenly, Abby stopped. “Rhylee, look.”
I turned to where she pointed and between the branches, near the edge of the riverbank, was a nest with seven fat eggs in it.
“It’s her nest and that’s the dad,” Mary Grace said and pointed to a duck swimming in the water with another duck near the nest.
“When are they going to hatch?” I asked and kept my eye on the mother.
“Soon, I think. We’ve been visiting for about a week and she’s always on the nest. Any day now there’s going to be babies. We’ll come back.”
On the way home, and I couldn’t stop thinking about those seven eggs and the fuzzy chicks that would hatch from them.
Abby and Mary Grace took me back every day. We made sure not to stay long if the mother was on the nest. She’d shift back and forth nervously and was bothered by our presence.
Until one day we got to the pond and she wasn’t there.
Instead, there was only her nest with a single egg split in half. A long jagged crack down the center, the rest of the nest empty, the pond still.
“Abby, what do you think happened? Why are the eggs gone?” I’d asked.
She was scared. She walked around the nest and there were feathers all over. I thought about the coyotes we could hear howling at night.
“Do you think something—”
“Stop it,” she interrupted. “Don’t even say it.” She’d turned and run away, leaving Mary Grace and me alone.
I shook my head, trying to get rid of the images of that day. We’d never talked about what happened to the eggs.
Just like we hadn’t talked about what had happened with Tommy. She’d run away. And I’d never followed her.
Mary Grace poked me. “Earth to Rhylee. Are you still here?”
“Yeah, I’m here. I remember the eggs,” I said.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“Think?”
“About them. Did they hatch? Or did something get to them?” She moved closer to my sleeping bag; the two of us huddled together.
“Of course they hatched,” I said, because you couldn’t think any other way. “And the mom took her babies away to an even bigger place so they could swim without bumping into one another.”
“Me too,” Mary Grace said. “I’m sure they survived.”
68
A few days later, Tessa waited for me outside in the line of buses. From the way she stood with her hands on her hips, she wasn’t looking for a casual conversation.
She took one long look at me as if I was a cow and she was appraising me for auction. “You look like crap.”
“Don’t even start with me,” I grumbled. “I’m exhausted. I was outside in the field last night.”
She placed both her hands on my sho
ulders so we were facing each other. “You, my friend, have turned cuckoo.”
She walked around me, inspecting my head.
“What the heck are you doing?”
“Checking for a hole where they sucked your brains out. They’ve brainwashed you. I can’t believe you’re buying into the circles.”
“Believe me, I’m not. Those people are still as crazy as they ever were. But if it helps Collin, I’m willing to do that,” I told her. What I didn’t tell her is that it helps me too.
“There are a million other things you can do to help your brother.”
“Being out there isn’t so bad. I usually spend the time talking with Mary Grace.”
Tessa rolled her eyes. “Mary Grace? I thought she drove you nuts.”
“She’s not that bad. I actually kind of like her now.”
“Whatever, do what you want, but it seems to me that your life is on pause right now.”
“Shouldn’t it be? My sister is missing.”
“You’re right, she’s missing. But you aren’t. Think about what you lose in the meantime. Do you really want to continue to spend the hours of your life suspended, waiting for Abby to return?”
“I can’t let her go,” I said.
“No one is asking for that. I miss her too, Rhylee. But I also miss you.”
“I’m right here,” I argued. I’d always been here.
“You’re different,” she said. “You’re not the same anymore.”
“How can I not be? My sister is missing.”
“You don’t think you’ve disappeared? What’s the use of being here if you act as if you’re gone too?” Tessa said. “You’ve let go of everything that you were, so it’s almost as if you’re a ghost too. We can’t stop living. None of us.”
And maybe she was right. Maybe I was gone. Maybe I was losing myself, little by little, until there was nothing left.
A Void the Size of the World Page 19