Tumble & Fall

by Alexandra Coutts

  But Dad was the only one who went in. Ryan brought his three favorite books about caterpillars, and pulled his faded Red Sox hat down low as he read. Denise spent the afternoon flipping through wedding magazines, occasionally asking for Sienna’s opinion on everything from flower arrangements to canapés. Sienna managed to grumble a few lukewarm responses (“wow,” “pretty,” “yum”…) before pulling a towel over her face and pretending to take a nap.

  Then came dinner on the patio, a drawn-out presentation of all of Denise’s favorites. Luckily, she turned out to be a much better cook than Dad. Sienna did her best to pretend not to enjoy the homemade pasta and fresh tomato and basil salad, but she snuck back to the kitchen for seconds when she thought nobody was looking.

  After three rounds of charades, Sienna excused herself to her room. She had hoped that might be the end of it. Maybe one day was all Dad had in mind. They’d done what he wanted. They were nice to Denise. Sienna had even started calling her “Denny” to her face.

  But after she’d brushed her teeth, Dad was waiting for her in the hall. A hand on her shoulder, his eyes hopeful and sad. “Denny is hoping to put together some bouquets for the wedding,” he’d said. “Could you take her to one of your secret spots tomorrow morning?”

  Sienna clenched her teeth and agreed, a quick, silent nod. They’d said good night and she closed her bedroom door.

  The secret spots weren’t hers. They were Mom’s. Sienna hadn’t been back since the summer before she died. Fields of wildflowers, hidden deep in the woods, down the overgrown deer paths you had to squint to see.

  She sits at the edge of her bed and reaches for her pillbox. She takes half of her anxiety meds at night. A full dose in the morning would make her groggy and weird all day. She’d overheard a few of the staffers at the House, worried that the “kids” would start to boycott. What was the point in medicating themselves, when there was a chance they were all going to die, anyway? Sienna had considered taking a break. The meds did help her to feel more settled, less repetitive in her thinking, but they also made her feel like a zombie. Is that really how she wants to spend the next few days?

  There’s a sharp ping and Sienna turns to the window. She stands frozen, wondering if she’d imagined the sound, when it happens again. This time, a pebble sails in through the open crack, rolling across the floor to her bare feet.

  “Sienna!”

  She hears her name whispered in the dark, and carefully tugs at the window. The light from the garage seeps onto the yard and glows on a pair of striped flip-flops. Owen steps slowly out from the shadows.

  “Hey,” he calls again. Sienna leans forward, fidgeting with the neckline of the flimsy camisole she wears to sleep.

  “What are you doing?” She laughs. He’s wearing a faded blue T-shirt with thin white stripes, and dark jeans. His hair is fluffier than usual, like it’s just been washed.

  “What does it look like?” he calls out, his voice soft and hoarse. He picks up another piece of gravel from the driveway and tosses it in the air. “Come on. You owe me a date.”

  “I do?” Sienna jokes. She looks over her shoulder at the door to her room, open a crack. Denny and Dad have already gone to bed, but she can still hear the murmur of their voices. She holds up a finger and shuts her bedroom door slowly, careful not to catch the creak as it shuts. She gives her bed a quick look—Dad never checks on her at night anymore, but just in case, she stuffs the pillows under the sheets and pulls the blanket up tight. It doesn’t look remotely like an actual person sleeping, but it will have to do.

  Sienna throws on a pair of jeans and sandals, and grabs a light cardigan from her bag. As she passes her bed, she eyes the pillbox, open on the table. She snaps the box shut and tucks it behind the lamp.

  She steps onto the deck, pulling the door shut noiselessly behind her. She leans over the high wooden railing to survey her options. It’s only a short hop to the roof of the sunroom below. From there, if she really stretches, she can reach a low branch of the Japanese maple in their yard.

  She lands, almost gracefully, on the soft, damp grass, just a few feet from where Owen is standing. She can’t believe how easy it was to get out, or that she’d never tried it before.

  Owen puts a hand on the top of her head in a sort of improvised half hug. It could be awkward, but for some reason, it’s not. Sienna, forever the tallest girl in her class, feels small and protected.

  “Sorry,” he says, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “I’ve never thrown a rock at a girl’s window before. How’d I do?”

  Sienna smiles. He smells like soap and pine needles. “Looks like it worked,” she says.

  They cut through the high grass and out onto the road, the sound track of chatty crickets and rustling leaves muffling the quiet rhythm of their feet. “Where are we going?” Sienna asks as they round a corner at the bottom of the hill.

  Just as they approach the intersection, a pair of headlights cut through the darkness, and an old blue pickup squeals to a stop beside them. “Our ride,” Owen announces. He waves to the driver, the dreadlocked girl-drummer from his band, and walks around to the back. Five or six people are already crammed inside, perched against the tailgate or wedged between a rusty silver toolbox and the truck’s crowded cab. Owen plants a foot on the bumper and climbs over, leaning out to give Sienna his hand.

  She jumps into the flatbed beside him, and feels his arms close around the tops of her shoulders as the truck picks up speed. She’s never ridden in the back like this before, free and untethered. She turns her face to the wind, closes her eyes, and smiles at the darkness.

  * * *

  As soon as they’ve parked by the docks, Owen grabs Sienna’s hand and guides her away from the truck. “See you up there!” Maggie, the dreadlocked driver, calls after them.

  Sienna looks back over her shoulder as the group unpacks coolers and bundled-up sleeping bags. “Are they moving in?” she asks.

  Owen laughs. “It’s kind of a rotating party,” he says. “Every night they set up in a new place.”

  Sienna looks ahead at the crowded, narrow avenues leading to the center of town. People, mostly kids their age and a little bit older, are everywhere—camped out on the curb or dancing in the middle of the street to music playing from speakers, set up every few blocks.

  But the stores and restaurants lining the streets, the gift shops and ice cream parlors, the video arcade, the run-down movie theater—every building is shuttered and dark. The deserted backdrop makes the street-side bustle feel wild and lawless. Sienna tightens her grip around Owen’s hand and follows him across an empty parking lot.

  “How long has it been like this?” she asks. She remembers the nights she used to come into town with her family, for Thai food and frozen yogurt, or a lazy stroll along the harbor. It’s hard to believe it’s the same place.

  “Not long,” Owen says. “A few days. The cops tried to shut it down a few times, but I think eventually they gave up and joined the party.”

  The music changes as they pass from one section of the street to another, first Brazilian pop, then pulsing techno, now classic rock. Kids in colorful and abstract clothing—some wearing little more than bathing suits or wrapped, toga-style, in tapestries and sheets—weave in and out, bumping between them as Owen pulls her along the sidewalk.

  “Where are we going?” she asks. Her breathing is ragged and she’s starting to feel claustrophobic.

  “You’ll see.” Owen nudges her.

  Finally, the crowds thin out, and up ahead, Sienna sees a circle of flickering neon lights. A chorus of polka-themed circus music floats around them, and Owen looks to her with a smile. The Flying Horses, the old-fashioned carousel at the center of town, is the one establishment still up and running. Sienna hears the familiar screeches of joyful riders as the painted horses glide around the track.

  She hasn’t been to the carousel since forever. It used to be the family’s favorite rainy day outing. Even climbing the steps to the open doub
le doors makes her heart heavy with longing, longing for a time when Sienna, too small to ride alone, sat snuggled in her dad’s lap, reaching out with their arms entwined, hoping to catch the brass ring.

  But as she follows Owen up the steps and past the main entrance, it’s clear that things have changed. The ticket windows are boarded up and the friendly, middle-aged attendants who normally preside over the zigzagging line to the front are nowhere to be seen. Instead, chaos reigns, and the horses seem to be zipping by at an unnaturally fast clip.

  “As soon as word got out that the carousel was shutting down, a bunch of older kids decided to get it running again,” Owen explains as they join the horde of people waiting to climb on board.

  “How?” Sienna asks. Ahead of them, a group of girls with glow sticks wrapped around their heads are singing a song Sienna doesn’t recognize. She wonders if they all snuck out, as she did, or if their parents know that they’re here.

  Owen shrugs. “One of them used to work the ring arm,” he says, nodding to the hulking metal claw that stretches out from the wall. Sienna used to wonder about the people—usually bronzed, blue-eyed teenage boys—that stood on a pedestal behind the arm, feeding handfuls of rings inside, always struggling to keep up with the riders swiping them out on the other end. At some point, a mysterious voice over the loudspeaker would announce that the brass ring had been dispensed, signaling that the end of the ride was near. The arm attendant would step quietly down from his platform and disappear behind a thick red curtain. It always seemed like such an important job, Sienna remembers thinking, to determine when the last ring would be captured, when the fun would come to an end.

  “Hey,” Owen says, wrapping his elbow around her neck and pulling her close. “You okay?”

  Sienna manages a smile. “Yeah,” she says softly. Seeing town this way has made her feel adrift, and uneasy. It’s the first time since leaving the House that things have felt so dramatically different. Whatever it is that’s happening, whatever comes of the next few days, it’s real. And it’s big. For the first time that she can remember, Sienna feels afraid.

  “We don’t have to stay,” he says. “I thought it would be fun to go for a ride, but…”

  “No,” Sienna says, leaning the top of her head near his chest, feeling the warmth of his shirt, the flutter of his pulse beneath her cheek. “Let’s go for a ride.”

  Owen rests his palm on the top of her head again, his hand warm and strong on her hair. This time, she turns her face to his and he leans down, holding her chin in his palm. He brings his lips to hers and she feels herself melting, as if every cell in her body is slowing down. Everything inside of her feels suddenly released. Her busy brain is quiet and calm.

  They’re still tangled together when a shoulder bumps them forward. The line is moving. Owen pulls back and smiles. He takes her hand as they shuffle forward, inching closer to the blurry spin.

  ZAN

  “Where did they all come from?”

  Nick taps the steering wheel anxiously with his thumbs, waiting as a large crowd passes in front of the car. Their car is still one of just a few on the road, but the sidewalks are now teeming with couples holding hands, families clustered together, and large groups of students strolling en masse. The sun has slipped behind the boxy city skyline, and Zan wonders if there’s something about the darkness that makes people afraid to be alone.

  Zan stares at the address, scrawled on the receipt in her lap. First, it was just a name and number. Now, there’s a place, a street in a part of the city she knows nothing about. It seems impossible that so much information, so many clues to something she never even suspected, could fit on such a small square of paper.

  “My cousins used to live in Somerville,” Nick says as the car lurches around a corner. They are slowly making their way out of downtown, the shops and restaurants becoming more spread out as the roads expand. “I think I can get us in the neighborhood, at least.”

  Zan nods. It seems, suddenly, strange that she and Nick are each other’s only company at a time like this, and even stranger that they are driving around the city, in search of a mysterious girl named Vanessa. Strange, but not altogether awful. More like an unlikely coincidence, and one that Zan suspects Leo must have been behind, somehow.

  She sneaks a glance at Nick’s profile, his square jaw set as he navigates the foreign city streets. She wonders what he’d be doing today, tonight, if she hadn’t told him about what she’d found.

  “What did your parents say about you leaving?” she asks abruptly. She realizes she knows next to nothing about Nick’s family, except for his dad and the boat. What about his mom? Wouldn’t she want her only son at home at a time like this?

  Nick shrugs. “Not much.” He smiles, almost sadly. “My mom’s just happy to have my dad around, for once. And my sisters are too busy being little drama queens to notice.”

  Zan remembers Nick’s younger sisters, a pair of golden-haired twins his mother dressed alike until middle school. “What about Clara?” Zan asks. Clara Morrison was one of Zan’s best friends, back before Leo, when Zan still had friends. The fact that Clara was dating Nick meant they all saw each other often, though “dating Nick” was something of a contradiction in terms. The only relationship that Nick ever seemed to have much time for was the one he had with his boat. “I mean, doesn’t she care that you’re gone?”

  Nick needlessly checks over his shoulder before pulling into the passing lane. The car whines and rattles as he accelerates. “I didn’t tell her I was leaving,” he says. “We’re not really together anymore.”

  Zan tries to look surprised. She remembers being at parties with Leo, who was constantly nearby, his arm slung easily over her shoulder, and watching Clara brood in a corner. Nick was always getting tied up at the harbor, out fishing or working on his boat. He’d show up at the end of the night and kiss Clara hello, before being talked into a late-night swim or game of Ping-Pong with the guys. He just didn’t seem to “get” the idea of a girlfriend.

  Zan looks through the window at the abandoned streets. They’ve left the crowds behind them, and are now in a desolate, industrial part of town, the two-lane highway lined with warehouses and boarded-up pawnshops. She wonders what waits for them at the address in her hand, if they ever find it.

  The car bucks and hisses in a new and not entirely reassuring way. Nick’s bushy blond eyebrows are locked together in obvious concern.

  “What was that?” Zan asks.

  Nick leans to look through the windshield, where a thin trail of smoke leaks from beneath the bruised and battered hood. “I’m not sure,” he says. He checks the rearview mirror and turns the wheel, guiding the sputtering car to the side of the road. They slide to the curb just as the hiss explodes into a whistling screech and the car burps a black cloud of grimy exhaust.

  Zan fumbles with her door, coughing and shielding her face with the collar of her shirt. Nick is already standing over the smoking hood, waving his hands to clear the air. Once she’s standing a healthy distance from the smell of burning, and mostly convinced the car isn’t going to blow up, Zan can’t help but laugh.

  “I thought you said we’d be okay!” she calls out to Nick, now gingerly attempting to pry open the hood.

  “I said we’d make it to the city.” He spits and squeezes his eyes shut as the rest of the smoke escapes in a thick puff. “I didn’t say anything about a scavenger hunt.”

  “What happened?” Zan asks, tilting the top half of her body forward just slightly, as if seeing better would somehow make her able to help. She knows exactly nothing about cars. She even splurges on full-service gas when it’s an option.

  Nick, it doesn’t surprise her to discover, knows a lot. He hovers over the mess of wires and rusted springs, careful not to touch anything directly. “I think the cooling system is messed up,” he finally says.

  Zan folds her arms and wrinkles her nose. “Is that bad?”

  “Could be worse.” Nick shrugs, slamming the hood. �
��I could fix it if I had some tools.” He leans against the car and glances at the sky. “And parts.”

  “Where does a person get parts?” Zan asks. She looks up and down the side of the highway, as if there might be a CAR PARTS “R” US on the corner.

  Nick rubs his hand over his face and checks the screen of his phone. “Any service station,” he says. “But I doubt anything will be open.” He looks off into the distance before pushing himself away from the bumper. “Wait here,” he says. “I’ll check.”

  Nick jogs a few paces down the road and holds up a hand to let her know he’ll be back. Zan lowers herself to the curb, listening as the car’s insides seem to rearrange themselves, clinking and settling back into place. She hears Nick’s voice in her head. Scavenger hunt.

  Leo loved scavenger hunts. Actual games, like the one he put together for Amelia’s birthday party a few years back, but also adventures that seemed to find him, somehow, wherever he went. Zan remembers the time he walked the entire perimeter of the island, by himself, just because he felt like it. It was when they had first started dating, and he’d asked her along. She’d said no; the thought of camping on the beach, on the island’s farthest, rockiest point, scared her more than she wanted to admit. There’s a part of her that feels like this trip—solving this mystery, from clues he left behind—is her way of proving that she’s changed. That her time with Leo has changed her, for good. She’s not afraid anymore.

  Now more than ever, she feels like he’s watching over her, sending her on one last adventure, setting obstacles and traps along the way, just to see how much she can take.

  “Bring it on,” she whispers to herself with a smirk.

  “Bring what on?”

  Zan turns to find Nick panting over her shoulder. “Nothing,” she covers. “What’d you find?”