by Gin Phillips
I’m surprised to see that Dad is waiting for me. He’s not usually too punctual. He holds the door open for me and then hugs me, warm and tight. I smile against his T-shirt. He’s put on weight in the last few years, and the fabric is stretched tight across his belly. Every inch of his skin is covered in freckles, so until you get close to him, he looks like he’s got a really good tan.
We sit down and order, and he gulps down half his glass of tea before he’s ready to talk. To give him credit, he does let me talk first. He asks me about summer school.
“It’s going okay,” I say.
“You usually make such good grades,” he says, and I think he might be about to ask me to tell him more about my life these days. To explain why I’m so different from the daughter he’s always known. And if he asked me that question, if he showed me that he’d been paying attention all this time, I might give him a real answer. If he just asked me, I might tell him.
“Everybody has tough times,” he says, taking another swig of tea. “I’m struggling a little right now. Bored with the job, you know. I’m on the road so much, and it’s hard to eat right. I’ve been gaining weight, and my back’s bothering me. But the worst thing is the new guy they’ve hired to run the office—he’s twenty years old if he’s a day. Complete idiot. Making my life miserable checking all my logs and calling up my customers.”
Dad drives a truck delivering snack foods around the northern part of the state. He’s been doing it a few years now, and he’s never liked it. He tells me more about his boss and more about his back and then some about his cholesterol.
“It’s high,” he says. “Way over two hundred. They’ve been warning me about heart attack risk. I’m supposed to exercise. Supposed to eat more soluble fiber.”
I nod and crunch on my ice as he talks. Our food comes, and the mac and cheese is phenomenal. It has prosciutto in it—I learned that word here at John’s. It means sophisticated ham. I savor every bite of it as my father keeps talking. I finish my meal at least fifteen minutes before him because I’ve had nothing to do but eat, and he’s hardly had a chance to take a bite. He’s eating a hamburger, by the way, which can’t be good for cholesterol.
“Ah, it’s good to catch up with you, sweetheart,” he says, finally, as he tosses his napkin on the table. I now know that Dad’s boss is the nephew of the company’s owner, that Dad thinks he has a wasp nest in his garage, and that Dad has started dating a woman named Brenda who collects unicorns.
I hand the waiter my empty plate. Dad’s always been more of a talker than a listener. He probably needed to get that out of his system. I’m envisioning a stroll through the park where I can talk to him about A Wrinkle in Time. It’s about a girl who meets three magical women—one of them used to be a star—and she’s whisked away from her home to faraway corners of the galaxy so she can save her missing father. I’ve been trying to figure out whether she’s disappointed when she comes back. It seems like it would be very hard to visit other planets and battle the forces of darkness and then have to go back to school the next Monday.
“So I’ve been reading this book,” I say, propping my elbows on the table. “It’s about traveling through the universe to other worlds.”
“You ready to get out of here?” interrupts Dad.
“Oh. Sure. Okay.” I wipe my hands on my napkin. “Where to now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you want to spend the afternoon together?”
“Oh,” he says. “Did we say that?” He chews on his straw, picks his teeth with it as he looks at me.
I sink back into the booth. “Yeah. We did.”
“I don’t remember that. I thought we said lunch. I thought you were so busy with school.”
I watch how the edge of his straw slides into the space between his front teeth. It’s gross, but I can’t take my eyes off it.
“That’s fine,” I say.
“I was planning on heading home, do a little yard work, maybe watch a game,” he says. “But you could come with me.”
“Right. No. You should go on.”
“I just thought you’d want to get back,” he says. “I mean, I would have loved to spend more time with you. It’s just that I haven’t had many free afternoons lately. I’m dying to lie around and fall asleep on the couch.”
“It’s okay,” I say again. I think of turtles in drawers.
If fries would keep, I’d order a to-go box for Lydia. I think Dad is still talking, but I’m just thinking about to-go orders. Maybe I should have saved some mac and cheese. But how would we have heated it? I could have ordered her a club sandwich earlier—she loves bacon. I picture the menu in my head, even though I know it’s too late to order anything else. I just want to focus on something. We stand, we walk, and Dad keeps talking.
Dad hugs me when we get outside. He gives great hugs—he’s warm and solid, and his arms completely surround me. I close my eyes and inhale the slight smell of gasoline that’s always on his skin.
“Love you, Nell,” he says. The words are so easy for him, just like breathing. It’s like he loves hamburgers and he loves the Crimson Tide and he loves Pepsi and he loves a good cigar. Love love love.
“I love you, Dad,” I say.
He drops me off at the Piggly Wiggly, where I tell him I’m meeting a friend who’ll bring me back to school. That leaves me with a very short walk to the golf course, but I’m not quite ready to go back yet. Even after the scare this morning, I can’t bring myself to go climb the fence now. I’d have to explain to Lydia that Dad didn’t actually want to spend the afternoon with me, and even though she wouldn’t be surprised, I just don’t want to have to say the words. I decide to wind through the neighborhood a little. Kill some time. I pick a side street by the grocery store that leads to a web of tiny, crooked streets. I don’t know anyone who lives back here. It should be safe.
I twist and turn until I pass one house with a steep yard and a set of concrete stairs leading up to the wooden porch. Alongside the staircase, there’s a stone pig on each side. Sort of like some people have stone lions looking all threatening at the entrance to the property . . . only these are small pigs. Very nonthreatening. The pigs are unexpected, but what makes me stop is when I notice that there’s a girl sitting on one of the pigs. When she turns to me, I nearly trip over a crack in the sidewalk.
It’s the girl from the gas station. Alexia. She blinks at me a second, then takes her earphones out of her ears.
“Hi,” she says, and the way she says it, I know she recognizes me.
“Hi.”
“Come grab a pig,” she says, waving me over.
I walk over and settle onto the empty pig.
“Do you live around here?” she asks.
“Sort of,” I say. “I live around the golf course.”
“Nice. We go there for fireworks on July Fourth every year. Hole Sixteen. We jump the fence.”
I didn’t know that. Geez, you think you’re running away to an abandoned golf course, and you find out it’s crawling with all sorts of people. I’ll probably wake up some morning with Girl Scouts knocking on my door selling cookies.
“Who’s ‘we’?” I ask.
“Me and my boyfriend.”
She looks like a girl who would always have a boyfriend. “What’s his name?”
“This one? This one’s name is Darren.”
“Doesn’t sound like you’re serious about him.”
“I don’t get serious,” she says.
She’s still swaying slightly to some beat that I can’t hear.
“Maybe I’ll see you there,” I say. The Fourth of July is in three days.
“You’ll probably see me more at the Chevron now,” she says. “I’m getting my own place. Saving up all the money I can. Forty hours a week.”
“How old are you?”
“I turned sixteen last week. It’s legal.”
“You’re not going to school anymore?”
“Oh, I’ll go back. But I gotta get out of here first.” She jerks her head toward the house behind her. “I can’t take it. Why do you think I’m outside sitting on a pig?”
I stare at her house, at the dark windows and the begonias wilting in the flower boxes. I can think of plenty to say, but I’m not sure about the etiquette. Somehow saying, “Is your mother crazy, too?” seems like it might be a little rude.
“Good luck,” I say instead.
“Hey, listen to this,” she says, and she hold out her earphone. I lift the speaker to my ear and listen. It’s a woman’s rich, clear voice singing along with the strumming of a guitar. The music makes me think of islands, of sand and water. I can almost hear waves in the background, and I think the sound might be something Hawaiian.
I watch Alexia as I listen. She looks small and thin to me now, not nearly as flawless as she does behind the gas station register. I can see her clavicle bones poking through her skin. I think about her working all day behind the counter, hour after hour, taking money and giving change and swiping cards and stocking shelves.
“That’s what I want to do, for real,” she says as I hand back her music. “Sing. Record some songs. I got plans.”
For some reason, the sweet rise and fall of the song has made me sad. It’s playing in my head as I think of Alexia standing behind that counter.
“I should probably go,” I say, stepping away from the pig. “But I’d like to hear you sing sometime.”
“Uh-uh,” she laughs. “I’m not doing any shows in the Chevron.”
“You got any CDs?”
“Not yet.”
“I get one when you do, okay? When you’ve recorded your first track?”
She rolls her eyes but seems pleased. “Maybe I’ll see you at fireworks. Or at the store.”
“I hope so,” I say.
I can’t get the song out of my head as I walk. I walk faster and concentrate on my footsteps, hoping I’ll break the rhythm. When I get to Clairmont, though, the skies open up, and the feel of rain knocks every thought out of my head. It’s the first rain we’ve had in weeks, and the drops fall heavy and hard, stinging my skin. In seconds, I’m soaked through my clothes.
CHAPTER 17
ELEPHANTS AND LONG MEMORIES
As I scale the fence and drop into Lodema, the wind picks up, and I see the trees bending and bowing toward the ground. The water runs into my eyes and into my mouth—it’s warm and slightly metallic-tasting. I sprint the last few yards to Lydia’s rocket ship, and I bang on the door.
No answer.
I slowly open the door, calling Lydia’s name. The silence is unnerving—no Saban panting or barking, no whir of a fan, no squeak of Lydia coming down the stairs. There’s nothing but wind and the patter of rain against the sides of the rocket.
“I’m back,” I call. “Lydia?”
Nothing. I jiggle the door, opening and closing it until the overhead light flickers and brightens. It takes a few seconds to realize what I knew on some level as soon as I heard the silence.
There’s no one here. There’s no fan, no dog, no pile of clothes, no trace of Lydia.
I sit down in one of the spinning chairs, and I close my eyes. I turn slowly, letting my feet drag on the floor. I am pleasantly dizzy, floating. I am not here. I am nowhere. I am only spinning and spinning and I might never stop.
My vision is all blurry when I notice the sheet of paper stuck between the buttons of the control panel. It’s a few lines written on the back of a receipt. It says:
I went home. I told Mom I got homesick at camp.
I think I’m done for the summer. Have fun. Let me know if you want to meet by the honeysuckle tree later.
Your roommate, Lydia.
It bugs me how in books best friends are always getting into fights. Serious, hurling-insults, swear-I’ll-never-speak-to-you-again fights. I mean, come on, I’m not in preschool. I’m not going to get into a big dramatic screaming match with Lydia. That would be stupid. I don’t even feel angry with her. I’m like an acorn, I think, and I had the perfect hat. But I lost it. That strikes me as almost funny, even though I know it’s sad. But I don’t feel sad. I say that to myself, moving my lips, I don’t feel sad. I spin in the chair some more, and thoughts of acorns and sadness fly right out of my head. The only thing I feel is dizzy.
When I feel steady enough, I pull out my phone and type, “Sorry you left. Miss you.”
And a few seconds after I push Send, she writes back, “Then come home.”
I tell her I can’t. I do miss her. But I can’t go back yet. That’s all I type for the night.
I wake up the next morning, and there’s still pink in the sky. I throw on some clothes, grab my Swiss army knife and a couple of hooks, and start walking. I never want to taste fish again, but fishing is at least a way to keep busy. Without Lydia, I have to find the bait myself. I start shoving over logs, and pretty soon I’m not even looking for bugs. I just keep shoving. I like the feel of straining my muscles, the satisfying sucking sound when the wood finally pops free of the damp dirt and rolls over. Even when my shoulders get sore and my fingers start blistering, I keep flipping over logs.
I am still very good at disappearing. I can leave my brain and my body behind anytime I like and float away into a good book or an interesting map or a beautiful golf course. I can focus on acorns or logs and leave everything else behind. But here’s the thing about disappearing: it works really well when you want to stop feeling, but sometimes you need to feel something. It’s easier not to think about Lydia, to just concentrate on rolling over one log after another and block out how much I miss her. But part of me wants to miss Lydia. That’s not even right—I don’t want to miss her. I don’t want to hurt. But I know I should feel this. I need to feel this. Because it’s important. I have to feel it so I can understand it.
So I let the thoughts and feelings come instead of shutting them out. I do understand why Lydia left. She thought we came out here so it would be just the two of us. That’s not even quite right—she came out here because I asked her. She came out here for me, because that’s what you do when you’re someone’s best friend.
But something’s happened to me since I came out here. It started when we went fishing for the first time, when I threw a cast and felt Marvin standing there beside me. When I tossed a fish into hot oil and could almost smell Memama’s lotion in the air. Then there was Gloria and Maureen and Jakobe. Even though I’m by myself out here, I feel like there are people all around me. Some of them are really here, and some of them are just echoes of people. But even the echoes are real, if that makes sense. It’s like I let go of my tiny bedroom in our dark apartment, and I let go of Mom, and once all that fell away from me—once my normal life fell away—I floated high and far, and I found a different view. I’m not sure what I’m seeing, but I want to keep staring at it until I figure it out.
When I first came out here to Lodema, Lydia was all I had. She was everything. Our friendship was everything. And now it feels like my world could be bigger than just me and Lydia. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or bad thing, but I want to find out. I miss her—I get a pain deep in my stomach thinking of her empty rocket ship—but maybe without her here, this new view of things will make more sense.
Part of me thinks that. The other part thinks I should run as fast as I can to Lydia’s house and beg her to come back out here. Beg her mother to let us be friends again. Beg them both to let things go back to the way they were.
Life would be so much easier if you only felt one way at a time.
I’ve been rolling over logs for what feels like hours. I think my hands are bleeding. My fingertips are slick with something that doesn’t seem to be moss or mud. But I’m shoving against the biggest dead branch y
et—it’s twice as big as I am. The wood is rough and knotted, and the sweat runs down my face and drips on the ground.
The log gives way with a groan, and I strain over each inch until I reach the tipping point. Then the dead wood falls backward with a crash. I can hear my own breathing, harsh and loud. I try to lift my arms over my head to stretch, and I can barely move them. I might have overdone the upper body workout. Maybe I should actually look for grubs and worms now.
I kneel and grab a twig to start sifting through the exposed dirt. But what grabs my attention isn’t wiggly and slimy—it’s hard and white. I wonder if I’ve found a large shell, maybe a chunk of granite. I scrape back the dirt, and the white shape gets longer and thicker. Maybe a baseball bat.
I brush more and more dirt away, and I realize there are more white shapes, lying close together, sometimes on top of each other. Long and thin, some of them. Short and thick, others. I keep going until I find one that’s buried deeper than I can dig. It’s as wide across as a refrigerator. It’s curved slightly, and when I touch it, it’s rough and smooth at the same time.
Only then do I admit what I’ve found: it’s a pile of bones. Very big bones. Like dinosaur big.
I almost call for Lydia before I remember she’s gone. My second thought is that I need to find Gloria. I need someone to tell me what to do. I mean, if you find human bones, you call the police. What about dinosaur bones? Who are the dinosaur police?
I stand up, starting to jog to the putt-putt course, but I can’t help thinking of Lydia. I’ve just made a major scientific discovery, and she’s probably still in her pajamas. She’s going to be so jealous.
I can’t feel any of the soreness in my muscles anymore. I am running fast and easy like an animal on the National Geographic Channel. My feet barely hit the ground as I sprint through the grass. Gazelles should stay out of my way.
Once I see the tidy greens of the putt-putt course, I slow down, heading for the aquarium. Gloria and Maureen and Jakobe take their time climbing up the stairs at Hole Nine at first, but then they seem to switch to a higher speed once they understand what I’m yelling.