I started sketching, trying to relax into the feeling of stroke and line, letting my hand and my heart think for me, giving my mind a rest. I’d been thinking so hard lately, and it hadn’t seemed to get me anywhere.
A small island appeared in the center of my page, surrounded by water. One palm tree, heavy with coconuts, gave shade to a girl sitting at its base. Me. The island’s shore was littered with glass bottles, each with paper inside, as though every message-in-a-bottle that had been thrown out to sea had ended up here, on this island.
I turned the page and drew three boxes in a vertical line, wanting to show a sequence of action, like I’d been doing with my doors. In the first, the girl chose a bottle. Next, she read the paper. Here, I paused. What would be on the paper? People sent wishes out to sea and sometimes questions, or even notes to people they loved but couldn’t speak to directly. The way you could pray, and sometimes you felt God come near, and other times you felt like you were throwing a bottle out to sea, and who knew whether God would hear you, or you’d hear him.
If I was honest with myself, I didn’t really believe that. I knew God heard my prayers. How could I doubt that, after all I’d learned and been through this year? Still, I felt like I was missing a connection, too. I didn’t want to throw my prayers out to sea like messages in a bottle. There had to be a better way.
I drew the third picture, a close up of the note, clutched in the girl’s hands. Are you out there?
As I shaded the hands, my pencil slowed and then stopped, a realization slipping into my hand, up my arm, wrapping around my heart and then finally coming clear in my mind. The girl is on the island, not God. The bottles aren’t messages from the girl to God; they are messages from God to the girl. And she’s out there, alone, with no better way of communicating than gathering messages from bottles. I stared at the seat back, trying to understand.
Don’t think. Draw.
Yes, my mind had totally failed me so far.
The stewardess asked me a question, but it took me a second to make sense of her words, as I returned to myself, here in the airplane, traveling alone, on my way to Owl Creek.
“Um, yeah. Thanks. Coke, please.”
I put my sketchbook in the seat back pocket, and she handed me a glass of ice, a napkin, and a can of Coke. “Peanuts, cookies, or pretzels?”
“Cookies.”
I hardly tasted the cookies, because I was so focused on figuring out the story. If the girl was alone on the island, how had she gotten there? And how would she get home? And would she find a better way to talk to God than through messages in bottles?
When I finished my Coke and my cookies, my brain felt dizzy, like I’d spun and spun on the same questions for too long. Maybe I’d take a nap and finish the story later, when I’d had more time. Not to think, but maybe to listen? I put my tray table up, leaned my seat back and slipped instantly to sleep.
“Ladies and gentlemen …” A voice over the intercom woke me up.
I sat up and stretched my neck.
“… We are making our final descent. Please put your tray tables up and your seats in the upright position.”
Ruth’s dad would be waiting at the gate, and Ruth would be just outside security. And maybe other people would come too. I sat up straight and felt my hair. Probably I was a mess after having slept so long, but I couldn’t redo my hair without wetting it down. When we got on the ground, I could dig out my lip-gloss and mints, so at least I wouldn’t have bad breath.
Outside the window, the runway neared, and I grabbed the arms of my chair, holding tight. We only bounced once, and the plane slowed without much trouble. I had to wait until everyone else was out before the stewardess could come help me with my bag, but that gave me a minute to take care of the breath situation. Rick waited at the desk, grinning, and gave me one of his signature bear hugs.
“Sadie, I’m so glad you’re here!”
I hugged him back. “Is Ruth here?”
He reached for the handle of my bag. “Yep. There’s a surprise waiting for you outside security.”
I tried not to hope too much that the surprise would include Andrew. After I called my parents to let them know I was safe, Rick waited for me outside the restroom while I did battle with my hair. With wet, but more orderly braids, I followed Rick through the long airport halls toward the exit.
Chapter 19
Homecoming
“Surprise!”
Everyone had come—Vivian, Frankie, Ruth, her brother and sister, Ruth’s mom, Andrew, Helen, even Penny. They’d worn clown wigs for the occasion and held up colorful signs reading “Welcome home, Sadie!” Penny hadn’t needed to wear a clown wig — her hair was dyed a spectacular shade of lime green.
Home. This did feel like coming home, in lots of ways. They swept me into hug after hug, and finally, after feeling like I’d been passed around a whole dance floor of people, I found myself hugging Andrew.
He whispered in my ear, “Missed you, Sades.”
I stepped back and smiled at him, realizing he’d grown about an inch since I’d last seen him. Now I had to look up to see his eyes.
They’d come in three cars, and we decided we’d all go out to eat, even though it was already eight o’clock in Michigan. I still needed to eat, and Penny said she wouldn’t mind some chocolate cake for dessert.
Dinner was a whirlwind of everyone talking over everyone else, and so much laughter my stomach ached. After everything that had been happening, I felt like I’d suddenly left a very dark room and walked into the sunshine. As the adults paid the bill, I realized I was also bone-deep exhausted.
Andrew laced his fingers through mine and squeezed my hand on the way out to the car. “Call me tomorrow. I want to take you to see July and her cubs.”
“No, we have an art lesson tomorrow,” Frankie said, wrapping her arm around my waist.
Ruth made a face. “You guys, she’s staying with me. I have first dibs.”
“Give her room to breathe,” Rick said. “There’s plenty of time for everyone to see Sadie.”
Yes. I’d come with a one-way ticket, and no one knew how long I’d stay. Even with all the happiness, that felt strange. My family in California, me here, for who knew how long.
I promised I’d call everyone and make plans, and then joined Ruth in the back seat of their SUV. Hannah and Mark fell asleep almost as soon as they were buckled in, and I felt myself nodding off too.
When the engine stopped, I woke up and we all trundled off to bed. Since Ruth’s family had an official guest bedroom, I had my own room. Tonight, since I wasn’t sure I could put two more words together even to say goodnight, my own room was perfect. The minute I slipped under the covers and my head hit the pillow, I was asleep.
“Sadie, Sadie, Sadie!”
I woke up to what felt like an earthquake, but what was actually Hannah and Mark jumping on my bed.
“Dad made waffles!” Hannah shouted.
“Mark and Hannah,” Ruth’s voice was stern from the doorway. “What did I say about waking Sadie up?”
“But it’s time for breakfast,” Hannah said, pouting, as she climbed down off the bed.
“And that’s a reason to pounce on her in her sleep?”
“Sorry, Sadie,” Mark said, looking shamefaced, but only a little.
When I sat up, Mark gave me a wide-eyed look. “Whoa!”
I reached up for my hair. Yep, wild. It always was when I woke up.
Making crazy eyes at Mark, I said, “Better watch out! I’m a monster in the morning.”
He shrieked and raced Hannah out of the room.
“I’m supposed to babysit the monsters this morning,” Ruth said. “And I guess Frankie and Vivian are going to be having an art lesson. You want to go over there and avoid the mad crazy kids, and then we can go to Black Bear Java for ice cream later, when Mom finishes her volunteer fair at the church?”
“Sounds perfect.” I didn’t feel up to making decisions or plans of my own yet.
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br /> Ruth came to sit with me on the bed. “Are you okay?”
From her expression, I knew she really wanted to know.
“There’s a lot going on back home, with Pips, and the girls, and of course with Dad’s case. I know I can’t avoid it all forever, but when they offered to send me here, I didn’t complain. I wanted to see all of you, and I needed a break, too.”
“Were you scared? Of the guy following you?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I wanted to stand up to him, to tell him he was wrong, because Charlotte really needs that test, and Karl’s only getting in the way of Tyler finishing it. But when I saw him, I was too afraid to say anything at all.”
“It’s not your job to stand up to a crazy guy,” Ruth said.
“I know, you’re right. I just wish there was something I could do to help Charlotte.”
After breakfast, Ruth’s mom drove me over to Vivian’s trailer. Construction was in full steam on her house, and they’d already finished the wooden frame. Workers swarmed the lot, nailing, cutting, shouting to one another, and using power tools. The trailer was parked in the trees near the back of the lot. We picked our way over, and knocked on the door.
“She’s here!” Frankie shouted when she threw open the door.
“I’ll pick you up at two,” Annabelle told me.
Frankie laid out the pages across the table. She’d mostly worked in collage, where Vivian had drawn in pastel, colored pencil, and charcoal, and I’d mostly painted. We had about thirty pages in all.
“The sketchbook has eighty pages,” Frankie said. “7 have to get moving.”
“I like how we’ve used so many different mediums,” Vivian said. “But I think we need to find some other visual ideas. We have a lot of literal doors.”
“If we could use words, or write a story, it might be easier,” I said.
“There’s no reason we can’t use words in an image,” Vivian said. “But we might be still thinking too literally.”
“Your puddle isn’t literal,” Frankie said.
“Right,” Vivian said. “So, here’s the challenge. I want you to head outside and find something that is definitely not a door, but that you can imagine being a door. And then we’ll all come back in and create a new piece of art.”
Frankie and I were halfway out when Vivian called, “And don’t forget to take a cookie with you.”
I laughed and took a still warm chocolate chip cookie from the tray. Frankie did too, and followed me out into the warm summer afternoon. Tall grass tickled my bare legs as I walked away from the workers, out toward the trees.
I had just finished my last bite of cookie, halfway across the field when Frankie said, “Watch out for ticks.”
Frankie was wearing full-length jeans, much more appropriate than my cut-off shorts.
“Yeah, I was just thinking that,” I said.
I’d only been in California for a few weeks, and I’d already forgotten some very important Michigan basics. No matter where you went, if there was the possibility you might go outside, you ought to cover your skin.
Now that I was thinking about ticks, my skin crawled and itched, as though they were swarming me. I shuddered and ran the rest of the way to the forest, where the grass thinned out. I planted myself in the middle of the path and started inspecting for black creepy crawlies.
Frankie caught up to me, laughing. “Do you have an infestation?”
“Very funny.” I brushed off my legs, pretty sure I was tick-free. “You don’t see any, do you?”
Frankie circled me, and then stopped, looking close at the back of my knee. “Wait.”
“Wait, what?” My heart raced, and I could hear the blood pounding in my ears. You’d think such a small bug couldn’t cause panic like this. “Tell me, Frankie!”
“Sheesh,” Frankie said, elbowing me. “I’m just teasing.”
I rolled my eyes at her and started down the path. Anything could be a door, but I didn’t just want to find some random leaf and call it a door. I wanted to actually see a door in whatever object I picked, maybe have an idea of what might be on the other side. Frankie didn’t seem to be having any luck either.
“Have you heard from your mom?” I asked her.
Instead of answering, she sat on a stump and picked at the peeling bark.
“Frankie? Is everything okay?”
Finally, she looked up at me. “They’re getting a divorce.”
I hadn’t realized her parents weren’t divorced already. They’d been living apart for a long time, and Frankie’s mom had a long-term boyfriend.
“Chase and mom want to get married, so she finally needs to make their separation official.”
I found a stump of my own to sit on, and waited for her to say more. I couldn’t read her emotions on her face. Mostly, she just looked blank.
“Nothing is changing, really,” Frankie said. “But as part of the divorce, they have to decide what to do with me.”
“What to do with you?” As though she was an old couch that no one wanted anymore.
“They want me to decide. Now that I’ve been in New York, and here with Dad.” She looked up at me with watery eyes.
“Do you have to decide on one or the other? Couldn’t you spend some time with each?”
“Maybe? I don’t know. I’m confused. Before I went to New York, I wouldn’t have even had to think about the question. I wanted to live with Dad, period. But, even though Mom insists on calling me Francesca, and even though she’s a little …” Frankie looked up at me and memories from my trip to New York with her flashed between us. She choked back a laugh. “… Okay, very ridiculous sometimes, she kind of grew on me. And Dad plans to move to Canada permanently, so going with him means moving again. You know how fun that is.”
Silence settled between us. Probably I should say something, give some wise advice. But as I searched for something, anything, to say, I came up blank.
“It’s okay, Sadie,” Frankie said, breaking the silence. “I don’t expect you to tell me what to do.”
When I looked up at her, I saw a familiar expression, one I’d felt on my own face a lot recently, but that I hadn’t really thought about. Guilt. But neither she nor I had anything to feel guilty about, right? Unless …
“Are you sure you don’t know what you want?” I asked slowly, realizing that I was asking the question of myself just as much as I was asking it of Frankie. “Or are you worried about hurting someone’s feelings?”
Frankie pried the chunk of bark that she’d been working on off of the stump all together and tossed it into the trees. Then, she locked eyes with me.
“Terrified,” she said.
Only one word, but it nearly stopped my heart. And I knew, as though someone had finally hit me over the head, that I was terrified too. Not of Karl or being caught for bullying or cheating, but because I did know what I wanted. I did know how I felt, and no amount of insisting that I didn’t know what to do could change that fact. Just the thought of speaking up made my heart drum in my chest.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Frankie asked.
I shook my head no. “Mine’s nothing like yours. I … We’ll talk about it sometime.”
“Okay.” She brushed bark off her jeans and then gestured grandly. “Then, shall we look for doors?”
I grinned at her imitation of her mom and then caught her arm and pulled her into a hug. “Thank you, Frankie.”
She squeezed back. “You too, Sades.”
Chapter 20
Listening
We searched for a while, but probably because we were each caught up in our own thoughts, we didn’t find anything.
Frankie stopped and nudged me. “You’re not looking.”
“Neither are you.”
“Okay.” She scanned the forest and pointed at a deep, dark knot in a tree. “What about that?”
Promising. I went closer to take a look, and I liked it, but it still didn’t feel quite right. I turned back to tell Frankie
so, but she’d moved on, crouching over something on the path.
I hurried over. “What did you find?”
An old baseball card lay on the ground, its edges curled and dirty.
“I’m trying to imagine whether this would be the kind of door that would turn on its hinges, or if it would be the kind of door that you’d jump into feet first, like the chalk pictures in Mary Poppins.”
“What’s on the other side?” I asked.
“Dirt,” Frankie said.
I raised an eyebrow at her.
“Okay. I guess an old-time baseball stadium. Maybe it’s a time travel card that takes you back to the minute when this player was making the play they’ve drawn on this card.”
“I like it.” Now I really had to come up with something cool.
“I’m going back in to draw,” Frankie said. “See you in a minute.”
I wandered further down the path, remembering how I’d found an old pocket watch out here in this forest. It had belonged to Vivian’s husband a long time ago. Probably the baseball card had belonged to Vivian’s son, Peter. There had to be something else out here, something interesting. As I looked, my mind wandered back to thoughts of the girls, and Karl. The thing was, right now, as long as I was in Owl Creek, I couldn’t do anything. It didn’t make sense to play scenes over and over in my head, what it would be like to face the girls, the expressions on their faces. Or to tell Pips how I really felt. And I may not even have the chance to speak up again to Karl.
I am with you. You are never alone.
The words, sudden and sweet, slowed my heartbeat. Too often, I forgot. I started to think I had to figure everything out, or drum up the courage inside myself to handle my problems all on my own. I forgot to ask for help.
What if I don’t know what to say? I asked.
When it’s time, the right words will come.
I didn’t so much hear the words as feel them, vibrating through me, rich and soothing and warm. With the words came the realization that I should come back to now, this moment in the forest, to my small task of finding a door.
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