“Everybody here sucks,” Autumn said. “Pottsville sucks. I want to work on a cruise ship.”
“Have you ever been on one—a ship?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know? Maybe you’ll get seasick. Every place is the same. You know that, right? Nothing will change. You’ll still be you, even in the middle of the ocean.”
Autumn shrugged. “You should come, too. We can share a cabin.”
“Let me get my life preserver.” I sounded like a complete bitch. I sounded like Natalie Paquin. Sometimes I don’t know why I do the things I do. I used to get snotty with my dad when he told his corny jokes in front of Scilla or tried to hold my hand in public. But then a wave of guilt would rush in. He wasn’t trying to annoy me; he was just being my dad.
“You’re not setting sail tomorrow, are you?” I said.
Autumn shook her head. “No. I meant when we graduate.”
“So I’ve got time to think about it.”
Autumn smiled. I rolled my eyes, but in a nice way, the way Scilla used to roll her eyes at me when I’d get on some stupid, crazy kick, like making a movie or learning to levitate. I picked up my trash and tossed it in one of the green bins against the wall. A girl from my French class was standing nearby with Jess from the bus. They were watching me, whispering. “Nice boots,” the girl from French—Kylie, I think—said when I passed. I felt myself swell with something like hope. I thought she meant it, but Jess had done the same thing to Autumn so I know she didn’t.
None of this ended up in the e-mail to Scilla. In the e-mail, I’m lucky to go to this school. I’m in high school, not middle, which is a totally different experience. There’s none of that petty bullshit like we had to deal with at Jackson. All the kids are really nice and want to know all about me. The classes are small and everyone is pretty much friends except for this one girl who everyone hates because she’s a total freak, living in her own little world. It was all lies—most of it, anyway—except for the part about Autumn. And the stuff about my new best friend. I called her my stone angel. I couldn’t tell Scilla that I don’t know her name, this girl … this ghost. I made it sound like she’s someone I met when I got to Pottsville. “She’s way cooler than Natalie,” I wrote. “And nicer, too. You’d love her. She’s great.”
I’m not done with it yet, the e-mail. I want it to be perfect. I saved it as a draft. I don’t know why I care. That’s not true. I do know, but it kills me to admit it: I miss Scilla with all my heart. We grew up together. My mom and dad treated her like family. Scilla’s in almost every memory I have of my life since first grade. It’s hard to let go. She was like a sister to me. I know I have my girl from the In-Between, and she should be enough. She is enough. But honestly—if I’m truly honest with myself—I have to wonder if she’s not something my damaged brain created, something I made up to get over losing Scilla.
thirty
I came upstairs to write about the shitty thing I did to Autumn today, but none of that matters now. I spotted it the second I sat down at my desk: Someone had moved the ribbon that always marks my last entry in this, the Pegasus journal. My mother. How could she? Fury boiled up inside me, and I started shaking.
But as I turned to the page my hands shook harder. It wasn’t my mother. Toward the back of the book, in the middle of a blank page, scrawled in red ink:
You carry my heart. (You carry my heart in my heart.)
A line from my favorite poem. It is and it isn’t. That’s not how it goes, but it’s her. The girl from the In-Between. I know her handwriting. It’s burned into my memory. I keep staring at my palm like it holds the answer. The air is electric. I’m electric. My skin tingles. A current surges through my veins, warming my blood, tickling my cells. I’m not losing my mind. She’s not some figment of my bruised brain. She’s real. My heart soars. Higher and higher. I’m suddenly whole. A veil has been lifted. I’m aware of everything—the bright scent of turning leaves, the moth-white moon shining over the yard, my mother humming softly to herself in the bathroom.
Below her message I wrote:
Help me find you. What is your name?
I keep checking and checking. Nothing. Not yet. It’s not like e-mail, you idiot. An answer isn’t going to just magically appear while you’re sitting here. I need to stop. I need to go do something.
thirty-one
“Who’s Madeline Torus?” my mother asked, gritting her teeth at the computer.
My stomach nose-dived, and my face burned as if I’d been caught stealing her sleeping pills. Worse. As if she’d discovered my father’s ashes in the jar in my drawer.
“Priscilla’s mother called,” she said. “Who’s Madeline? You should know. You sent this.” My mother turned the monitor so I could see. She crossed her arms and waited.
The e-mail started out fine:
Sweet Darling. My Scilla Monster. You know you meant the world to me.
But then I kept reading. They weren’t my words.
Why did I slit my wrists over you? I should have slit your throat instead.
I told Priscilla that she was dead to me now, that Madeline Torus was my life, my universe, a shimmering silver star in an endless black void. I stopped before I got to the end. I couldn’t read anymore. My eyes refused to focus. I couldn’t concentrate. (Concentrate. Concentrate.)
“Is she someone from school?” my mother hounded. “Did she tell you to write this?”
“I didn’t do it.”
“Ellie, it’s in the sent file. I sure as hell didn’t write it.”
I swear to God, it wasn’t me. I’d saved it as a draft—the e-mail—to work on later. She sent it—Madeline Torus. The girl from the In-Between. Try telling that to my mother. Try telling that to Priscilla.
Mrs. Hodges told my mother that she understands that I’ve been through a lot, but what I wrote was just plain cruel. I need help. My mother agrees. She thinks I need to see someone—a therapist maybe, or a counselor. Knock yourself out, Mom. Make an appointment. Ground me. Do whatever you want. It doesn’t matter. My stone angel has a name. It’s Madeline Torus. I’m not insane. She exists.
Correction: existed.
Later, after my mother went to bed, I went on the Internet. I have to find her family. There’s a C. Torus in Florida and a Peter Torus in Virginia, but none in New York. It’s an uncommon name, not like Moss. There are hundreds of us in every state, all over the country.
How did she die? I remember scars, pure white scars. Was she a suicide? Who is she, this lost soul? Where did she live? When did she live? When did she die?
Madeline Torus.
I repeat her name like a charm or a prayer.
thirty-two
Autumn came over begging me to go with her into the woods behind her house.
“Why would I want to go back there?” It’s full of gnats and pricker bushes and God knows what else. Deer, I know. Wild dogs, too. The ones that ate her chickens. I hear them at night, howling.
She said she had to show me something. She said I wouldn’t regret it. I followed her down the road to her dirt yard, past the picnic table and the empty coop and into the trees, deeper and deeper, until we got to a lopsided little fort. It was sad, really, but Autumn looked so proud. She’d built it herself, she said, out of old doors. Inside, a plywood floor, a couple of beanbag chairs, and a crate. Wrinkly magazines. A plastic cooler with snack cakes and warm soda. She tossed me a can of grape.
“No one else knows about this place,” she said. “You can use it whenever you want.”
“Thanks,” I said, trying to sound honored. “It’s nice.”
The worse I treat Autumn, the harder she tries to make me her friend. It made me feel bad—for a little while, anyway—for what I did on Thursday, when Autumn was acting really dumb in health class, and I turned to the girls next to me and said, “Is this school too small for Special Ed?” It got a laugh out of Jess, but looking back, it was a pretty crappy thing to say. It’s not easy being mean. I don�
�t know how some people do it. It’s not for me. I end up feeling like a jerk.
“So what do you do out here?” I said.
“Listen to music. Watch birds. Spy on people. You wouldn’t believe how many couples come into the woods to make out.”
Autumn pulled a prescription bottle from her sweatshirt. She swallowed a giant orange pill with root beer, then sunk her teeth into a Swiss roll. “Help yourself,” she said. “There’s brownies, snowballs, and something with peanut butter.”
“What’s the pill for?”
“It’s a fruit chew. Want one?”
I shook my head and plopped down on a beanbag chair and flipped through a magazine.
Autumn picked at something on her chin, rambling about how she thinks there’s a Bigfoot living in the woods. She’s seen enormous prints, broken branches, mysterious piles of poop.
“My mother says it’s a bear. But it’s not. I know.”
What I said next came out of nowhere. I told her that I’m haunted by a ghost I met when I died. I needed to tell someone and telling Autumn was like telling the birds, the trees, or one of the rocks at the bottom of the river. No one talks to her. No one listens.
Autumn was mute. She sat there with her mouth open, staring dully, her stringy bangs hanging in her eyes. Maybe her fruit chew was kicking in.
“Never mind,” I said.
“Are you scared?” Autumn whispered. “You know, there’s this guy on TV who fell off a ladder and now he can talk with the dead.”
“It’s not like that,” I said. “It’s—” My mouth was open but nothing came out. I wanted to tell her about Madeline, but I couldn’t form the words. I tossed the magazine on the floor and looked up at the ceiling. More doors. One of them had a window in it, like a skylight. The blue-white square darkened as something soared overhead. A cloud. A bird. My stone angel.
When one door closes …
“This ghost—it’s not your dad, is it?” Autumn said.
“No. My dad’s gone. This—”
Autumn tilted an ear toward the door—the actual door, not the ceiling. “You hear that?” I did. The sound of branches breaking. We crawled across the floor and waited, and then Autumn poked her head out. Nothing. No Bigfoot. Just some chipmunks and a flash of something bigger. A deer. We watched it for a while and then went back inside.
“Did you keep any of your dad’s ashes?” Autumn asked.
A chill trickled down my neck. Had she gone through my desk? I narrowed my eyes. “Why?”
Autumn picked at the hole in her chin. “I don’t know. It’s something I would do. I’m weird like that. It was dumb question.”
It wasn’t a dumb question. It was something I might have asked or wondered about. I told her that when I died, he was there—my dad. It was me and him and this girl who’s my ghost. I should’ve just told her about the ashes, too. And Lucy’s fur. It’s hard keeping so many secrets. But Autumn offered me her sleeve and said, “Don’t cry. We don’t have to talk about your dad.”
“I’m not crying,” I said. “There’s something in my eye.”
A tear crawled down my nose. I was crying but I didn’t know why. It wasn’t my dad. It was something else. It was Autumn. It was me. It was two freaks hanging out in a musty clubhouse drinking warm soda, listening for Bigfoot, discussing creepy souvenirs. Autumn popping fruit chews like they’re medicine; me, wanting so badly to tell her how my best friend is a ghost. What’s embarrassing is that I think I was actually having fun. Maybe “fun” isn’t the right word. I didn’t feel like I wanted to be somewhere else. How messed up is that? I’ll never be normal. It’s not who I am. I’ve known this forever. Sometimes it just sneaks up on me.
Autumn pulled a crappy old boom box out from under the crate and popped in a CD.
“These guys always cheer me up,” she said.
We sat there listening to her music, some ancient rock star singing about painting the world black. Busy streets. Red hearts. Clear blue skies. Everything bright and cheery. I understand darkness. My father was consumed by it. I guess I am, too. Some days it feels like he’s been gone forever. Weeks feel like years. Other times, it’s still so fresh, my heart stings. It’s easy to pretend he’s at work or holed up in his study. Dinner is the hardest. We always ate together as a family, the three of us sitting down every night, even when my dad was sick. That’s when I feel it. The void. Mom feels it, too. I can tell by the way she rambles the whole time we’re eating, barely touching her food so she can keep us from drowning in all that silence. I try not to think about him too much. I know I’m a crummy daughter.
“What kind of tattoo are you going to get?”
Autumn looked shocked that I remembered or cared. Probably both.
“Wings,” she said. Her face brightened as she pulled out a notebook and sat next to me, showing me her sketches. They were pretty amazing. Autumn can draw really well. I told her so and she smiled. “You’re a good soul,” she said. “Lonely, but good. You can’t see it, but you need me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Autumn shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t need you,” I said harshly. “I don’t need anyone.”
To prove my point, I left. Just got up and walked out, slamming the door behind me. I hurried along the path through the woods alone, listening to Autumn calling “sorry” and “wait,” not caring about Bigfoot or bears. Pricker bushes tore at my ankles, branches whipped my face. I couldn’t get away fast enough. Away from that cruddy little clubhouse. Away from that song about blackness. Away from the stupid, fleeting thought that I should give Autumn a chance, that maybe we were meant to be friends after all.
Where was my stone angel?
Out on the road, the girls—the ones I’d watched from my mother’s window—were standing on the bridge over the river. I don’t know who they belong to. Somebody’s grandkids, I guess. They don’t ride the bus. The girls saw me running and thought it was a game. They started running, too, chasing me until I was in the house, in my room. I half expected to hear them pounding up the stairs. I looked out the window to see if they were gone. Standing in our driveway, looking up at the house, the girls were waving their arms, beckoning me to come back. I closed the blinds.
thirty-three
I’m trying to change, but change is hard. It’s not like you can flip a switch. I’m not like other girls. We don’t connect. I’ve tried listening to their music, watching their movies, reading their books, but I end up feeling crappy and empty, like I just devoured a bag of those fake onion rings. I have weird tastes. I’m drawn to dark things, depressing things. I don’t know why. It’s who I am. Like that photographer who OD’d on sleeping pills, the one who took pictures of deformed bodies and creepy twins and retarded kids in Halloween masks. I love her stuff. Maybe it’s because when I look at them I see myself and don’t feel so alone. I’d give anything to be on the inside instead of outside, always outside looking in.
My mother’s solution: Open up. Get involved. People will like me once they get to know me. I can’t be afraid to make the first move, so I’m giving it a shot.
There’s a club or committee for everything at this school. Pep, French, Robotics, Bowling, Math, Ski, Glee. A million colored sign-up sheets clutter the bulletin board outside the auditorium, and everyone scrambles to get on the popular ones like Yearbook and Prom. I almost joined something called FFA until Kylie told me what it stands for: Future Farmers of America. They sponsor Drive Your Tractor to School Day. Where am I living?
I joined Key Club instead—whatever that is. I think they raise money for sick babies, which is a good thing, I guess. They’re planning a car wash, candy sale, and spaghetti dinner. No one noticed me sitting in back until they needed a volunteer to sell quarter-page ads in the talent show program. That’s the last thing I want to do—ask complete strangers for money for a club I know nothing about. My mother says I have to put in my time. That’s how it works. Maybe next year I can chair a c
ommittee or run for president. Yeah, right. People like Jess get to be president. People like Jess get to walk around school with a camera, shooting her friends for the yearbook. Me, I’m doomed to spend the next four years going door-to-door, pestering people to buy overpriced chocolate.
Autumn doesn’t belong to anything. If they had a club for jerks, she’d be president. I haven’t talked to her since Saturday when she made that stupid comment about me needing her. I’ve been spending lunch in the library, stalking the stacks for new poets. It’s a decent library, with long oak tables and lots of light. Nobody uses it, unless it’s for class. The librarian already knows my name. You can’t eat in here, but that’s okay. It keeps me away from the cafeteria snack rack.
I’ve been really, really good, and it’s starting to show. I’ve lost almost five pounds. My mother said that’s a bag of sugar. She’s not eating, either. She’s been sick since the weekend. She’s got a bug or something. Last night for dinner, she forced down a couple of crackers to settle her stomach before school. She didn’t feel like going, but she had to. It’s an accelerated program. If she misses even one class, she’ll never catch up.
She’s got school tonight, too. She won’t be home till nine. My mother worries about me being alone, but I don’t mind. I’m not really alone. I have Madeline. She’s getting stronger. She’s no longer just a shadow, the absence of light. Her energy pulses and I can see her forming, the most blindingly beautiful creature. Dark hair. Brilliant blue eyes. Her voice is stronger, too. It used to crackle like dry leaves. Now every word is smooth and silvery. I know when she’s coming because I smell her—earthy and metallic—and my legs start shaking and then my hands.
After my mother leaves, I’ll do my homework and watch TV and then take a pill so Madeline and I will become one. I’ve got to be careful about that—the pills. My mother moved them from the medicine cabinet. I wonder if she knows. I had to go through her drawers to find them. I found something else, too: the ultrasounds buried beneath a stack of sweaters. I know I shouldn’t have, but I took them and put them with the fur and ashes in my desk. The other night I asked my mother if she’d named my sister. She said she hadn’t. The baby vanished before she and my dad had settled on something.
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