Wild Blue Wonder

by Carlie Sorosiak

And there in the tall grasses between the lawn and the forest is half the cast of The Hunger Games

  Naturally.

  who have also seen the abductions and they must fight off the aliens

  So we have to join the army

  And then I woke up

  Which is all to say that I was up really, really early that morning, so I spent approximately three hours on ASOS and . . .

  Hana barges into my room, garment bags crisscrossed over her chest like an ammunition belt, and I am not a screamer but I scream.

  “Sorry!” she says. “Seriously, I’m sorry.”

  I yank off the headphones. “At least walk if you’re going to sneak up on a person.”

  “Isn’t that creepier, though? I’m sneaking up on you, but I’m doing it slooooowly.”

  I flip over onto my stomach and peer up at her. “Please tell me those bags don’t contain what I think they do.”

  The Winter Wonderland dance in December hasn’t been the first thing on my mind. Or even, like, the five hundred and first thing. These things—dances, parties, college applications, graduation seven months from now—just seem so dumb in the scope of everything. But Hana’s jazzed because we always go to dances together; we get ready at her house, and she does my makeup, and then redoes it when I inevitably have a snack and ruin my lipstick. Not that I love dances, but it’s a fun tradition. Or was? Should I try to act excited about the dance, for my best friend’s sake? It would definitely be false excitement. I’d be like those women on TV who are superenthusiastic about eating yogurt that makes you poo.

  “Before you tell me no,” she hedges, “I left the tags on.”

  “No.”

  “Humor me.”

  “No.”

  “Just one.”

  “No.”

  She does that ultrascary thing—twisting her lips and cranking up her left eyebrow like Mrs. Chang, who, for the record, is incredibly intimidating. Draping one of the packages over my back, she says, “It’s waiting.”

  “You know you’re not getting me to this dance unless I’m in a body bag, right?”

  “Jeez. Morbid much?”

  “You’ve seen Carrie, right? The pig’s blood?”

  She scrunches her nose and declares, “No one has pigs in Winship,” like that would be the determining factor. “Now, up.”

  “You’re impossible.” Trudging into the bathroom, I switch on the lights and shut the door.

  From outside: “I don’t hear any clothes changing!”

  So I slip off my yellow sweater and unzip the garment bag. Outside the plastic, this turquoise dress is practically fluorescent. When I wiggle into it, my grief boobs and stomach stare back in the mirror. Before, I mostly cared about what my body could do: how fast my arms could part the water, how quickly my legs could propel me across the lane. I liked my muscles. But ever since I stopped swimming, I’m finding it more and more difficult to look in the mirror and not pick out something that bothers me. My belly’s bigger now, my muscles smaller. I don’t look bad. I just don’t look like an athlete. I don’t look like me.

  “I’m taking it off,” I tell Hana.

  “Nooooooo.” She swings open the bathroom door and gives me a thorough once-over. “How do you think you don’t look good in that dress?”

  “It’s too . . .”

  “Fantastic? Sexy? Fabulous?” She hops up on the countertop and starts thumping the back of her legs against the cabinets.

  I unzip the back. “I’m sure you’ll look great in whatever you wear, but I—I just can’t, okay?”

  Her lips push out a long stream of air. “Well, I tried. Can I at least stay the night? Because my mom’s got her big finance meeting at the hospital so she’s superstressed, and my dad’s cooking bibimbap and you know he’s a terrible chef and I can’t smile at him anymore and pretend like it’s good.”

  “Han Solo, you don’t even need to ask.”

  “Cool . . . And can I choose the movie?”

  “You’re really milking this whole my best friend isn’t going to the dance thing, aren’t you?”

  “As much as I can.”

  After riffling through Netflix, she settles on The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, but not before diving into a five-minute soliloquy about how we absolutely must find magical jeans of our own.

  “They don’t even wash them,” I interject. “Isn’t that kind of gross?”

  She gestures to my dirty laundry pile, the Mount Kilimanjaro of clothes—and okay, point taken. After bribing the guy on the phone at Ruby’s an extra ten dollars to deliver this far into the woods, Hana orders a jumbo spicy chicken pizza with extra mozzarella, cheesy bread sticks, and cookies (because it’s a Friday, so why the hell not?), then presses play on my laptop. We wrap my quilt around our shoulders on my bed, and it takes precisely thirty seconds for attention-hound Galileo to settle between us, massaging the back of Hana’s calf with his paws.

  A third of the way through the film—when Carmen is starting to doubt the supernatural power of these jeans—our pizza order arrives. We spread the assortment of Italian goodies across my bedroom floor, Galileo batting the cheese strings dangling from our pizza slices. Eventually he transitions to lying spread eagle on his back, white belly exposed, obviously hoping a cuter/more ridiculous position will award him snacks.

  Two hours later, the pizza’s cold, we’ve watched an episode of our mutual favorite K-drama, The Heirs, and we’re now on to reruns of The Vampire Diaries. “Know what I wonder?” Hana says through bites of spicy chicken, which is definitely Maine spicy (very little heat at all). “They get all crazed when they’re around blood, right?”

  “I think that’s the general vampire concept, yes.”

  “Okay so, statistically, half of Mystic Falls is women. And if the town has a population of roughly seven thousand—”

  “I love how you know that off the top of your head.”

  “—then wouldn’t dozens of women be on their periods all at the same time? Why doesn’t that drive the vampires insane?”

  “Huh. I’ve never thought about that before.”

  “I think it’s a conspiracy to never discuss periods on TV. Like, we can see a girl getting her throat ripped out, but talk about periods? Now you’ve gone too far!”

  “We should start a petition: ‘More Periods in The Vampire Diaries.’”

  “Amen, sister. Hey, do you want the last piece of pizza?”

  “All yours.”

  Around midnight, after I’ve consumed enough cheesy bread to fulfill my yearly cheesy-bread quota, Mom pops her head in as we’re brushing our teeth. “Night-night, girls. Sweet dreams.” And of course Fern’s bed is empty, her quilt cold and unruffled, and Mom’s eyes linger on it for a snap too long. “Where’s your sister?”

  Building a snowman in the backyard. Plotting my destruction somewhere in the house. What’s the most believable answer? “Sh-she’s . . . ,” I stutter, toothpaste dribbling down my chin. “Re-mem-ber, she’s staying at Har-per’s tonight?”

  Mom blinks. “She didn’t tell me that.”

  “She . . . she asked Dad, I think.”

  “Well he didn’t tell me that.”

  I shrug like sorry, that’s all I know.

  “Okay,” Mom says, blowing out a breath. “I’ll call Harper’s mom.”

  That won’t do any good. Harper has an older sister who always covers for her—pretending to be Mrs. Williams; she has the just-sweet-enough voice down pat. Of course, I don’t say any of this. “Sounds good. Night, Mom. I love you.”

  She lingers in the doorway for a heartbeat longer before saying, “Good night, love both you girls.” After she’s gone, I finish brushing my teeth and tug out Hana’s designated sleeping bag from my closet; it’s shaped like a unicorn and comes complete with a horn. My mom bought it when Hana and I were six. It was way too big for her back then—and is much snugger now, but still sort of fits.

  “How awful should I feel?” I whisper, just in case Mom or Nan
a’s lurking nearby.

  “For lying to your mom? I mean, Fern would kill you if you told.”

  “Yeah. But I still feel like a crappy daughter and shitty big sister. . . .”

  “You shouldn’t. It’s an impossible situation.”

  I peer down at her. She’s snuggling into the unicorn, halfway between my side of the room and Fern’s—and I’m shocked that the crevice hasn’t swallowed her, the one that my sister has telepathically installed instead of a duct-tape line.

  “Are you absolutely positive you don’t want to sleep on the couch?” I ask. “Or Fern’s bed? Or you can have mine?”

  “And give up my unicorn sleeping bag? You’ll have to pry me from its jaws.”

  “Fair enough. . . . Hey,” I begin, not sure how I’m going to finish. Something’s been picking at me. Hana doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve; she usually wears it on both sleeves, and on badges all over her sweater. And maybe that’s what’s bothering me so much. “Why didn’t you tell me about Elliot?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, why didn’t you tell me you had a crush on him?”

  She pauses. “Huh, thought I did.” I can tell she’s lying.

  “I can tell you’re lying,” I say.

  “Am I that obvious?”

  “Open book.”

  Twisting in her sleeping bag, she swallows. Twice. Loudly. “Because I really like him.”

  “Yeah, so I don’t get why—”

  “Because I really, really like him. Did you know that he’s training to be an Eagle Scout? And he plays the drums. And when he took off his sweater in German class—”

  “What?”

  “Chill. He was wearing a shirt underneath. A Renaissance festival shirt. You know how much I love those turkey legs and those wax hands, not to mention the costumes and the masks, and he’s just so nice, and we like the same music and he builds his own Adirondack chairs and . . . Actually, I think I might be in love with him.”

  Now I’m the one swallowing invisible stones. “And that’s a bad thing?”

  “Of course it is.” Her eyes connect with mine. “Besides the fact that he’s my first . . . I don’t know, my first whatever . . . how am I supposed to be in love in front of you?”

  Even when I don’t think she gets it, she does. I sink back farther into my pillow so she can’t see my face any longer. “I’m happy for you,” I say. “Really, I am.”

  I flick off the lights.

  We lie silently until I’m almost certain she’s asleep, but suddenly she whispers into the dark: “It doesn’t feel the same. This house.”

  “My mom thinks there’s a presence.”

  I hear her shaking her head. “No. There’s an absence.”

  And I don’t really know what to say—besides that I feel it, too. Feel it so, so deep in my marrow that sometimes I wonder if I even have marrow anymore, if this gut-punching absence has made me totally hollow.

  After Dylan’s funeral, all the fishermen on Winship Bay blew their foghorns at once. It was deafening. Then everything got abruptly and terribly quiet. I didn’t know the whole world could sound like nothing.

  I miss you, I mouth to the ceiling, so he’s the only one who can hear.

  I must’ve dozed off, because the next thing I know, the clock’s flashing 2:07 a.m. and I’m thirsty, could gulp down rivers after all that salty, salty cheese. Stumbling from bed, I creak open the door, rubbing my eyes.

  Water, water, water.

  And . . . what’s that? Puffs of light race in patterns across the hardwoods. Everything has gone icy, like I can chew on the breath in my mouth. At the end of the hallway, a dark figure moves.

  “What the—” Reed says.

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  “What are you . . . ?”

  “What are you?” I whisper.

  Stepping closer so I can fully make him out, he crunches his eyebrows together. In his hands is Nana Eden’s favorite wool blanket, and he’s stuffed the bottoms of his black pajamas into boots.

  Boots?

  Is he going to see Charlie or something? Why’s he doing it in the dead of night?

  Reed looks like he’s filtering through options—what to say next. Finally he shakes his hatless head, hair in his eyes. “Sleepwalking.”

  Lie. Reed’s a champion snoozer. Rocks envy him. During our family road trip to Nova Scotia, he straight-up conked during Dad’s rendition of Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” and stayed asleep when the rest of the car joined in. And with my singing voice, that’s really something.

  Neither of us says anything for an uncomfortably long time.

  According to the psychiatrist I paid a visit to after Dylan died, there are five stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I’m here to tell you that it is utter bullshit. Although I did have a slight urge to kick everything kickable in a fifty-mile radius (anger), I can only liken my experience with grief to parachuting minus the parachute—dropping directly into an infinite and hostile sea. There is nothing but blue wilderness in all directions. And I see that in Reed’s face. It’s like looking into a mirror.

  “Well,” I mumble eventually, “I’m gonna get some water.”

  Gruffness radiates off his body like heat from the sun. “And I’m . . . night.”

  “Night.”

  He trails back into his room, and after chugging a glass of water, I slide back into bed.

  Hana’s shifting. “What was that?”

  I blow out the longest breath, guilt one-two-punching my chest. “I don’t know.”

  June

  I’m Not a Little Girl Anymore

  Near the end of June was my seventeenth birthday.

  I swam laps in the morning, picking out seaweed trapped between fingers, and then, before Dad left for work, the two of us sat on the south dock as my bathing suit dried against my skin. We ate egg sandwiches, yolk dripping down our hands, sun dripping down our arms. I told him about all the seaweed.

  “It’s been warmer this year,” he said. “We’re probably getting a bloom.”

  The water rippled in front of us, an undulating plane of pure blue. Four loons landed on the surface, hooting thirty feet away. They lined up nose to tail; from far away, if I’d squinted, they’d have looked like some sort of beast.

  “Know what I want for my birthday?” I said, licking up the yolk and arching my eyebrows up and down. “To see Wessie.”

  Dad laughed. “How about some scuba gear instead?”

  “Seriously,” I asked him, “do you believe?”

  He scratched his beard in the early-morning sun. “I think that the people of Winship like stories.”

  “But you don’t think this story’s true?”

  “It’d be easy to write it off as hogwash—just tall tales and too much time on people’s hands. You could take these stories with a bucket of salt. But then again, I’ve seen a lot of strange things in this town, and at The Hundreds. You know your mom’s blueberry bush blossomed the whole winter? And every time there’s a blizzard, I can’t get over the fact that all the animals run here. . . . Did Nana ever tell you about that ghost she thought she saw in the mess hall? ‘A ball of feathery light,’ she said. It doesn’t make any sense. None of it makes any sense. But in Winship . . . Anyway, Wessie’s a good marketing ploy, brings in a lot of tourist revenue. And we haven’t had a camper go in the water without supervision ever.”

  “You didn’t answer the question.”

  “I don’t know, kiddo. It’s possible. Think about the twenty-eight-foot-long squid in New Zealand, and that group of Navy SEALs who found an oarfish that was fifty-six feet long. Then there are coelacanths and megamouth sharks, not to mention Guizhou dragons . . . but the scientist in me also says that no one’s captured Wessie on film. . . . That’s not important, though, if you believe. You can believe.” He smoothed his beard and smiled. “Your mom and I still remember how you’d form those search parties as kids. You, Reed, Fern, and Dy
lan in that little canoe. Out there for hours and hours, paddling around.”

  “Never found anything.”

  “No.”

  “But we thought we were so cool.”

  Dad wrapped a towel around my shoulders. “You were.”

  I didn’t want to make a big deal out of my birthday—being the center of attention felt unnatural outside of the pool—but when I went back to Tupelo Cabin, there was a small scrapbook resting on the foot of my bed, pictures of me and Fern so far that summer, outlined with glitter tape and fabric sparrow stickers.

  “Thank you, thank you,” I said at lunch.

  “Love you,” Fern said.

  And when I dipped into the camp store later that afternoon, you were there, Dylan. And you said you’d buy me whatever I wanted.

  “Ten-pack of eco-friendly stamps?” you suggested. “Organic gummy bears?”

  “You do know that I can just take this stuff for free, right? The whole family-owns-the-camp thing.”

  “Course,” you said. “But it’s more of a present if I buy it.”

  “Well, in that case, gummy bears. Thank you. . . . Why are you smiling?”

  “I’m just a happy guy, Sawyer.”

  “You’re smiling in a specific way.”

  “I’ve only got one smile, Sawyer.”

  So I knew something was going on.

  In the mess hall that night, everyone—the dining staff, counselors, and one hundred campers—sang me “Happy Birthday,” which was a nice but embarrassing surprise. And then I saw you and the other counselors by the buffet: all dressed up as me. Long blond wigs. Black choker necklaces and Red Sox hats. Camp T-shirts with QUINN duct-taped on the back.

  It was so absurd. It was so wonderful.

  Reed got me a geometric poster of a jellyfish. Fern got me a gold-plated dolphin-tail necklace. There was blueberry cake with candles. And afterward, you handed me a gift, too; I couldn’t stop laughing as you flicked your faux hair over your shoulder in a dramatic way.

  “It’s a book,” you said. “Not every day you turn seventeen.” You’d wrapped it in yellow tissue paper from the arts-and-crafts cabin, and I tore it gently to reveal the cover—a silver humpback whale. “It’s what you wanted, right?”