by Laurie Foos
O.K., I say. Let’s go.
And then before I think about what I’m really saying, I tell Audrey we’ll meet at her house and take her father’s car, because her father’s crazy and won’t know, and it’s too cold now to walk. Greg will drive, and we’ll get into the car, all of us, and we’ll go out to the lake and find her. I don’t say it, but part of me thinks, And then Greg will shut up about her once and for all.
Because, really, I want to go, but more than that, I want Greg to stop talking about her.
Caroline says we shouldn’t go, it’s not right, we’re going to get in a lot of trouble, which is what Caroline always says, and Greg says, You and your fucking grades and your fucking tests, and Caroline says, At least I’m not failing fucking biology. Caroline almost never curses, so we all laugh, even Audrey, whose mouth opens in a half-laugh, half-yawn. It makes me think of Ethan’s mouth, how wide it is, how I can never make him close it all the way, how I wish he could be quiet, that he could just be. Greg looks over at me so quick I almost miss it. I can tell he’s thinking about Ethan, too. Or at least I think he is. He has a certain look people seem to get when they think about Ethan. I know I shouldn’t, but I get that look too, and I feel guilty about it. Maybe that’s what makes me let Greg do whatever he wants.
I take out my mirror and put the lipstick on real slow, a big, deep circle. Greg is watching my mouth. It makes me want to laugh, the way he watches. I laugh a little too and get lipstick on my teeth and then wipe it away by curling my tongue. I laugh some more.
Greg says, This is good. I can drive the fucking car. I’ll drive it right out and find her. He scrapes his sneakers on the cement. The fucking lake. Now we’re really going to fucking go.
The others walk away when the bell rings. I try to count up all the fucks, but I lose count.
See you tonight, I say to Audrey, and she gives a little wave. We used to be so close, Audrey and me, passing notes to each other in class and laughing at all the same things. When we were little, we used to go to the lake with our mothers and pretend we were mermaids in the water, dragging ourselves along on our hands. Audrey never looks at me now. I talked to Greg about it, but he kept making those little sucking noises on my shoulder and said, Audrey doesn’t fucking look at anybody anymore. Audrey’s a fucking freak.
It made me a little mad when he said that, more than a little mad, and I thought about finding a way to get out there without him, out to the woods alone. Even though Mom is always driving off at night with her cakes and her friends, and even though my father hardly comes home, I am never alone. Maybe if I see the blue girl I’ll be able to figure out how to really be alone.
At night, Greg comes for me and waits outside on the back lawn, out by the white fence that blocks out the trees. Everything on the lawn is framed in white. Even the flowers Mom plants in the spring come up white. Sometimes when the sun hits, the trees look white, too. The fence keeps the trees out and Ethan in, so of course Ethan wants to run though the trees, run all the way out to the highway that leads to town. He wants to keep running until he makes it out to the lake, where he can scream and no one will hear him. I don’t know if that’s what Ethan really wants because there’s no way to know, but this is what I think he wants, to run, to run and scream and have no one hear him. Because just like me, Ethan is never alone.
Caroline isn’t with Greg when I open the sliding door and walk across the lawn. He brings his hands up to my face and kisses me with his slow tongue going around and around, and usually I kiss him back with my hands around his waist, but now I am too tired, tired of never being alone.
Where the fuck is Caroline? I ask, because it’s what Greg would say.
He moves back and shoves his hands in his pockets. He laughs.
You shouldn’t talk like that, he says, you’re too beautiful to talk like that.
Now I’m the one who laughs.
Shut the fuck up, Greg, I say, because I want him to know how it feels to be on the other end of all those fucks. Where’s Caroline?
I look up at my mom’s window, at Ethan’s window right next door, at the white moon in the sky, the white house, the white fence, all of it glowing. I pull my denim jacket around me and think, This is the way I’ll break out of all this white, by seeing the blue girl again, and up close, but then I decide I’m not going. Not without Caroline, and definitely not without Audrey.
Greg says I should be cool, relax, that Caroline went to Audrey’s, and we’ll meet them there, and that he wanted some time alone with me, that he never gets any time alone with me, and he kisses me again, softer this time, until I give in to the complaining, give in to the kissing. When I’m done being kissed, I take his hand and lead him past the white gate, out to the road where we walk the white line holding hands. I look at the leaves and stuff my other hand in my pocket, and I think about how long the walk will take. Since we probably won’t get to Audrey’s until eight, I wonder if the blue girl will be asleep or if we’ll have to wake her up, if she’ll lie there waiting for me like she does when I see her in my mind, or if she’ll come out to the road to find us, if she’s been waiting for us all along.
By the time we get to Audrey’s, my hands and face are colder than I remember them feeling in a long time. I have to make Greg stop pulling me over to the side of the road to touch me with his cold hands. I say, Come on, already, you’re the one who keeps saying you want to fucking see her, and he says, You shouldn’t say fuck. I told you that you’re too beautiful for that.
Taking the car is easy. Audrey comes out with the keys and hands them to Greg without looking at him.
Are you sure your dad won’t notice that his car is gone? I ask. And Audrey starts laughing hard, and says, If only. She points at the living room window. We can see right in. There’s her father with the little ball in both hands, aiming it at the hoop. I tell Greg to open the car door because I don’t want to see if he makes the shot or not.
The engine is quiet, and I tell Greg to drive slow, not to get crazy. Caroline reminds us that none of us has a license yet, that this is definitely against the law and that we could probably all get thrown out of school if we get pulled over. I don’t even mind when he says, Shut the fuck up, Caroline.
We drive, all of us quiet, even Greg. At the spot in the woods where the road ends, Audrey says from the back seat, Turn here. It’s the only thing anyone has said the whole way, and for a minute, while thinking about Ethan and his voices and the girl out there somewhere in the dark, I almost forget that Audrey is with us. I turn around to look at her, but Audrey doesn’t look back at me. She looks really awake now, though, and she hasn’t looked that way in a long, long time.
Greg turns down the road so hard the tires spin in the gravel, and I fall against the door. Fucking road, he says, and then squeezes my knee and mouths a sorry. It’s so dark that even with the brights on we can’t see anything, just trees and road and gravel. It’s quiet in the car except for Greg muttering all of his fucks under his breath, and for a minute, I think I’m going to scream like Ethan. I’m just going to open my mouth as wide as it will go and scream for them to let me out when Audrey says, Stop the car.
Greg doesn’t stop, so Audrey says it again, louder, then puts her hand on the back of his neck.
I said, stop the fucking car, she says.
Greg stops. The car shakes when he hits the brakes hard. Take it easy, Audrey, Greg says, and she tells him to stop telling her what to do.
You wanted to see her, right? she says. Well, now you’re going to.
She opens the car door. The dome light goes on overhead. It’s so dark even its faint light makes me squint. While I’m squinting, Audrey leans her head back into the car and looks right at me.
Stay here, she says. Stay here until I tell you to come out.
I nod at her. This time it’s my turn to squeeze Greg’s knee.
And turn off the lights, she says.
Caroline says to wait. How is Audrey going to see in the dark? It�
�s so dark out here, she says, and she is breathing very hard when Audrey closes the door. She yells at Greg that he got us into this, that now something is going to happen to Audrey in the dark, and how are any of us going to be able to get her when we can’t see her. Greg doesn’t tell her to shut up again. He just shuts off the lights and that makes her quiet.
It’s darker than I ever imagined it could be. I hold a hand up in front of my face, and it’s true, I can’t see it. I can’t see Greg, who is moving his hand on my knee, squeezing, and then moving it up to my thigh. I try to follow Audrey, but she disappears in seconds. We are surrounded by trees, but it’s too dark to see them.
For the longest time we sit. All we can hear is our own breath, mine and Greg’s and Caroline’s, all mixed so that I can’t tell where my breath ends and Greg’s starts.
Finally I can’t take it. I can’t stand all this breathing.
Where is she? I say. Where is Audrey?
I keep saying it, Where’s Audrey, where’s Audrey? and Greg tells me to calm down, but I’m beyond myself. It’s like I’ve stepped out of my own skin and can see this girl sitting in a car with her friends, waiting to see this girl who may not even be there, who may not even be alive, and I look at the girl and want to tell her that it’s time to stop all of this, all of it right now, this girl who may or may not be me. The girl in her white sweater and denim jacket is screaming, Go get Audrey, we have to get Audrey right now, this girl in the car who can’t see anything, not even her hand in front of her face.
And then we hear something.
I don’t wait. I open the car door and start running, the gravel flying up from my shoes, my mouth open and filling with hard, fast, burning breath. I can hear them behind me as they run, Caroline and Greg, but I won’t stop now, can’t stop, I just keep running in the thick dark with the gravel slipping and skidding under my shoes. Greg catches up and grabs my arm, and we keep running together until the gravel gives way to sand, and we’re so close to the lake we almost run into it.
The girl is on her back. Audrey’s hair is stuck to the sides of her head as she pulls the girl on her side and starts pounding her on the back. Again, again, again, is all I can think, flashing back to that day on the lake with our mothers, all three of them sitting there and not moving while Audrey did the work, and I move forward just a little like I’m really going to help her this time. But once again I just stand and watch as Audrey pounds. Water spits out from the girl’s blue mouth. The air is full of coughing.
We stand looking down at her. It’s hard to tell how blue she really is in all this darkness. Her eyes open, she looks up at us, and lifts her blue hand to her mouth to wipe away some of the water. Then she opens her mouth.
Fuck, Greg says, and backs away.
I keep looking at her, looking at the blue hand pointing to her open blue mouth and the small white teeth inside.
You saw her, Audrey says to Greg. Now help me get her back to her house.
Fuck that, Greg says. No fucking way am I touching that, and he starts moving back toward the car.
Caroline grabs his arm and says, Where are you going, Greg? You can’t leave us here, and he says, Fuck this, I’m getting back in the car.
I think about what finally makes me move. Not the girl lying in front of us with her mouth open and staring. Not even Audrey, shivering in the cold. It’s Ethan I think of, Ethan on the white tile with his mouth open, Ethan with his head pounding on the floor until it’s bruised. What kind of a sister could I be to Ethan if I leave the blue girl all alone?
I try not to think of the weight of her on me as Audrey and I half-carry her back to the house. I try not to think about the darkness, or the way the girl’s breath sounds up close, rattling, almost, and sharp. I try not to think about the house as we move closer to it, and I try not to think as I let Audrey go in by herself, and I stand outside in the gravel, trying not to wonder if she’ll ever come out. I try not to think as we get back into the car. Caroline sits in the front with Greg, and I get in the back with Audrey and put my arm around her until she sinks against me. I try not to think about the wetness or the cold or the smell of the lake water in her hair. When Audrey gets out at her house, I stay in the backseat, alone, until Greg pulls me out.
Come on, we have to go now, her father will be looking for the car, he says. Come on, I have to take you home.
I let Greg help me out of the car. The shades are drawn, but still I can see her father’s shadow. Part of me wants to watch while he plays his game, but I know I can’t stay there in the driveway with Greg breathing all over me. I know I have to go home, and when I do, I will sit with my back against Ethan’s door and listen to him talk to himself the way he does sometimes. Ethan’s O.K., he’ll say, Ethan’s O.K. now. Always the same, the way he says it. I think of the girl in the water and all that breathing and the sounds of the water spitting out of her mouth. I think about being home, sitting with my back against Ethan’s door, whispering to Ethan four times, just the way he likes, that Ethan’s right, that Ethan’s O.K.
Irene
I WAS TRYING TO LISTEN TO THE TREES ON THE NIGHT they went to find her. It was all I could think to do. It’s not that I didn’t think of stopping them. It’s not that I didn’t know all along they would go. But the time for stopping them had passed. I realized that, sitting on the porch, hearing the garage door open and close, hearing their voices whisper.
I was sitting on the porch while Colin played his basketball game in the living room, after Buck had gone to bed in his sailboat pajamas, which have recently gotten short in the sleeves. I sat and tried to hear the operettas my mother talked about when I was a girl. My mother used to say that trees sang if you listened closely, so I would crane my neck toward the branches and dream of glissandos sung in voices that ached. When I told my mother I couldn’t hear the trees, she said, Keep trying, Irene, listen hard, listen deep, but I thought the trees would never sing to me because their voices had been sucked away in a mass of pollen that made my sinuses ache. I could never be sure, but I always thought my mother left this world disappointed in me for missing out on those glorious voices. I keep sitting with the windows open listening for the trees’ voices, but they don’t speak to me.
But I did hear Audrey open and then quietly close her door. I didn’t know she was awake, though I should have assumed it. Audrey, my Audrey, who never sleeps, my Audrey with circles under her eyes and that look of disdain.
The last time Magda, Libby, and I drove over to feed the girl, I tried to figure out what I had done to provoke Audrey’s looks of disdain, but I had no answer. I knew only what I had not done. I took one of the moon pies in my hand and thought about how carefully I had baked the tops and the bottoms, and the careful spooning of the melted chocolate, the creamy richness of the filling, and I wondered if we will ever really be rid of the secrets.
I let my daughter save a dying girl, and I did nothing. That’s one of my secrets, along with so many others. All secrets are terrible, I know that, and I know that no matter how many times I feed them to the blue girl, there is no relief.
I was sitting on the porch trying to hear the trees, but I was thinking of her, the girl in the bed, blue as a dream with her mouth full of wanting. I was trying to hear her breath echoing out from the lake when I heard the click of the car door closing, and I heard them drive off.
In the beginning we told each other the things we’d overheard, things our daughters whispered about a girl who lurked in their dreams. Out by the lake, they’d say. She has no mother. And then, My God, they’d say, the girl is blue.
We didn’t believe them at first. We had sense enough then to turn our backs to the pieces of muffled conversation. We stopped short of reading their texts. They’re young, they’re imaginative, they need something to believe, we said to each other. In a town as dull as this one, it was what we needed. We could understand the boredom, the stifling we sensed in our girls, even at fifteen. We didn’t want that for them, but what could we d
o? We had already long been broken.
I remember lying on the beach that afternoon, looking at Audrey while trying at the same time not to look because I knew if she caught me she’d turn away. I remember wondering if I had been that way with my own mother once, always distant, always trying to disappear, always dismissing her, she who had held me in her womb and squeezed me out. How ungrateful we all once were, we daughters who become mothers only to learn how it feels, the endless cycle of rejection. I remember thinking about my mother that day, wishing I could tell her how sorry I was.
For a moment, when I first saw the blue girl in the water, I actually thought she was my mother. For a moment I felt a choked sadness in my throat and wanted to call out to her, but then I looked at Audrey and knew that she had seen her, too.
There were no trees singing to us the first night that Magda, Libby, and I went to her. How tentative we were, slipping through the trees and out to the crook at the end of the road where the house sat, so alone, one bare window open. Magda and I held hands, and I remember thinking, Try, Irene, try to hear the trees singing, try for your mother, you owe her that much.
For a minute I thought I heard them, the trills of their voices, slow air blowing from rounded mouths, just the way trees ought to sound. I squeezed Magda’s hand and said, I hear something, and she said, I do, too, and then Libby knocked.
The old woman opened the door, peered at us, and shook her head, back and forth, back and forth, the way a child would, the way Buck does sometimes when he doesn’t want to go to bed, when he sticks his fingers in his ears as if to tell me he will never hear me, that he has not only blocked out my voice with his fingers, but he has erased my voice forever.
Come at night, the old woman said. She hacked into a soiled handkerchief, her shoulders shaking as she coughed. Only at night.
She coughed again, a sputtering cough, and then looked directly at me. Her eyes were dark and heavy lidded. She hid her hands in her pockets.