by Kara Storti
I go inside and sit down on the forest floor splotched with sunlight, sigh hard, dusting off my jeans, my T-shirt. The motion hurts all the bruises. Faith plops the kitten on my lap, which hurts them even more.
“Hey! Hey now. I didn’t tell you to do that.” I raise my hands and suck in my stomach so the creature is touching as little of me as possible.
“She won’t bite,” Faith says.
“How do you know she’s a she? You’re a pervert if you looked.”
She scowls at me. “I didn’t look. I just know.”
The kitten is purring, nudging me in the stomach with its hard, tiny head. I surrender. I think it’s going to fall off my lap, so I put my arms around it to keep it in place. It settles and rests against me.
“She likes you,” Faith says, smiling. She traces her finger into the dirt to make a heart.
I look up at the ceiling of the fort, satisfied that there are no gaps. I barely see the trees above and know that the camp is fortified, ambush-ready. No leaks or weak spots. This will be my safe haven after school, my quiet place, my escape. Solid work, I think to myself. Faith is humming some stupid pop song, and the kitten is like a hot water bottle for an ache. We both lie back.
“I was thinking we need curtains,” Faith says, suddenly.
“For what?” I ask, sleepiness slurring my speech. The drowsiness comes out of nowhere. I welcome it.
“For our home, silly. This would make a good one, don’t you think? See that corner over there?” She points to a small gap in the boughs. “We could put up some light blue curtains. The kind where you can see through them.” She leans over and whispers something to the kitten, probably sharing the idea, as if it’s got great taste in interior design. Nevertheless, I go along with this. Faith likes to pretend a lot, which is fine with me. She talks about the house we’re going to live in, the car we’re going to drive, the places we’ll see.
“The kitchen table would go over there. But you can’t put anything on it unless we’re eating dinner. I like it when things look neat,” she says.
“Our room isn’t neat,” I say, lazily kneading the kitten’s neck.
“It’s because you’re messy.”
I let the comment slide. The kitten molds its body further against me. I rub it underneath its chin, and its head presses down on my fingers, as if to say, more, more, more. My sister chatters endlessly, and I stop listening to her words, but I like the sound of her voice. The fort smells like pinecones and Christmas trees, and the kitten is so soft and uncomplicated. On and on with Faith’s babbling, on and on with the purring, the smells and sounds and my fingers busy petting fur, and I don’t think I’ve ever been this comfortable and content in my life.
When there’s a break in Faith’s rambling, I say, “Did you know that a cat’s heart beats twice as fast as a human heart?”
“No,” Faith says. She turns on her side to face me, immediately drawn in. She likes it when I start spouting unusual information I learned from old encyclopedias Mom bought from the Home Shopping Network and never used. “Tell me more.”
I don’t skip a beat. “Sir Isaac Newton, who discovered the law of gravity, also invented the cat door.”
“Really? He’s so smart.”
“There’s a word for the love of cats. Ailurophilia.”
“You’re so smart.” This comment startles me. I’m not sure she’s said this before with such emphasis.
“Nah,” I say.
“You are, Phineas. I wish I knew as much as you. You know everything, and it makes you so cool, like you’re a superhero or something.”
“Oh come on, that’s just dumb.” Claws knead the material of my shirt in the way that kittens do when they’re content.
“No it’s not. Someday you’re going to be in the Guinness Book of World Records for the guy who knows the most facts. Which is funny, because it’s a book all about facts.”
“That is kind of funny,” I say, my fingers full of fur. Faith’s eyes are set on me, beaming with such adoration I’m partially embarrassed. Only partially, though. I would do anything for my sister. The only fact I need is that my twin feels the same for me. This fact has been confirmed and verified. We’re each one-half of a pretty kick-ass whole.
The kitten twitches from a dream, opens its eyes, and then closes them again. My sister scooches closer to me and scratches it behind its ears. It doesn’t wake up and its sleepiness is contagious. I fade into slumber thinking about how almost all calico cats are female, a cat’s normal temperature is 101.5 degrees, a group of kittens is called a kindle, and their eyes come in three shapes: round, slanted, and almond. The knowledge is so powerful that I wonder if the kitten senses it. What does the kitten know? Does it feel at home as I do, in the forest, in the shade of boughs?
-----
The fort fades away, and I’m leaning against the gravestone, my head tilted up toward the sky, mouth open. Jesus, I still feel on top of the world, so alive, every fiber of me. Hello world! Hello me! Put my hands up to my face to see if this is real, to see if I’m real, and when I do, I notice something that’s got to be a mind trick. Surely a hallucination. My fingers smell like pine and Christmas trees, which all right, I’m outside, and there are evergreens around, but where did these little hairs come from? They’re stuck between my sweaty fingers, gray, no longer than an inch. I rub my eyes, shake the fog out of my head, but that doesn’t make them disappear. Is it the old lady’s hair? Well, that doesn’t make sense. There’s an explanation for this. There has to be.
But no time for contemplation because . . . whoosh . . . a wave of euphoria wraps itself around me, around and around. I close my eyes and breathe in deep this new life, a life that isn’t waiting for the cemetery but is running away from it. For the first time in a while, I’m alive. This is not the sleepy, unmotivated comedown of weed, or the hysterical anxiousness of coke withdrawal, or the soggy blue depression of postheroin. This feels natural. Muscles loose, mind more alert than before.
Before I know it, I’m running past every gravestone, feeling untouchable, invincible, wings on my back snapping to their full span, feet barely touching the ground. I can do anything, and this second is lasting forever. I can ace the SATs and become a CEO and fix Pop and Mom, fix Faith’s eye with a click of a button. I’m going to leave behind some incredible legacy that everyone will talk about for years, because it will be so magnificent.
I am magnificent.
I sprint, I go, going hasn’t ever felt so right, racing over the dead, shouting their names, Betsy, Randall, and Carlyle, a monument to honor a goddamn dog named Ellie. Ellie! I scream, Ellie!
When I’ve raced around the whole cemetery I’m out of breath, but not so out of breath that I can’t call everyone I know to make big plans for a party tonight—I want to get my peeps together, I want to celebrate us, celebrate living, celebrate—
Hope?
Then the idea comes to me, of course, it’s genius. I’m going to start creating buzz around this drug at the party, this new thing, whatever it is. I’ll get a hold of it, and it will change the landscape of the drug scene, and with my marketing brilliance, I could make a killing. Yes. This is exactly the answer to my problem. What needs to happen. I just need her. The old woman. I walk back to the gravestone where this all began.
In loving memory of
James Thorbor
May 5, 1925 to June 7, 1971
All we have is now
James Thorbor.
Jimmy.
Now I have some information to go on.
I’ve got to find this lady.
Chapter Five
When I get to our trailer, my buzz is on a steady, slow burn, a feeling that’s almost as good as the initial euphoria. At least it’s a Saturday, and I don’t have to show up at my shitty job for another few hours. I work at the local sub shop and come home every day smelling like bread and cold cuts, but I guess there could be worse things. Mom’s on the couch biting her nails and watching television, a
nd Pop is who knows where. Faith’s probably in our bedroom studying in the closet we don’t use for clothes anymore. It’s big enough for a tiny desk, a lamp, and if she wants total privacy, she can slide the door shut almost all the way. Our clothes are folded in plastic boxes underneath our beds and in the drawers of our dresser. We used to be slobs; now we’re Spartans.
“Where’ve you been?” Mom asks, her bare legs tucked underneath her. She didn’t do her hair today, and there’s a stain on her “Keep Calm and Drink Coffee” T-shirt. The dark circles under her eyes are like muddy puddles.
“You know where.”
Mom starts laughing. “My little birdie boy. Don’t you got something better to do?”
I wave her away and walk around the piles of boxes. Towers of them, some so high they are taller than my six feet. It’s a bunch of Jenga stacks just waiting to collapse. A new shipment must have come in the mail today.
“You going to open these?” I say, touching the tape that’s tight around one of the packages. The number of times that I’ve asked this question . . . but still, I’m not going to let it get to me today. I mean, who cares? We’ve all got our thing, right?
“Yeah, I’m going to open them. Just haven’t gotten around to it.” She slides a cigarette from the pack on the coffee table and lights it up. I give her the ashtray that’s across the room on the kitchen table. People look older when they smoke and Mom’s looking about eighty-five after five seconds of puff and exhale.
“Just like you haven’t gotten around to those over there? Or those? Or those?” I ask, pointing.
This small living room is filled with boxes in various shapes and sizes, in various stages of being unpacked, ordered from QVC or those junk catalogues the average person would throw away. The battery-operated “Zen” water fountain that trickles so loud I can hear it from my bedroom. The blankets and comforters that are still in thick plastic, forgotten on the floor. The plaques and prints and pillows with sayings like “Live well. Laugh Often. Love Much” or “Shit Creek Survivor” or “Home is where your story begins.” Brand-new pots and pans sticking out of a half-opened box and a juicer that has yet to see the kitchen.
“Don’t give me those judging eyes,” Mom says. “I could judge you all day.”
I swipe my hand over my face. Usually a comment like this would rub me the wrong way, but I still feel calm, and the hope of my plan is still there.
“Sorry,” I say. And I really mean it, I do.
“Hmmm.” Mom studies me and then goes back to the television. She’s been watching more and more every day. Reality television, soap operas when she’s working the night shift, and of course, the Home Shopping Network. I make my way through the maze of boxes toward my room, knowing how to ease my body around without bumping into them, but then I stop.
“Hey, do you know the name Thorbor? Ever heard of it?” I ask over my shoulder.
Mom’s barely listening. There’s a hot chick on the television screen, lips shiny, boobs fake. “Hmm?” she says again.
“Thorbor.”
“Oh.” She bites her pinky nail, cig locked between her other fingers. “Sounds familiar. Maybe. I see so many people during the day that I can’t keep track. Why? What have you done?”
The question isn’t unreasonable, and I can’t blame her for asking. There’s always room for bad behavior, and I’ve done my fair share of it. All of a sudden I feel sad for Mom. D-Town is perpetually depressing. Our community runs on restaurants and car dealerships and Mom and Pop work there, respectively. Maybe I shouldn’t criticize them for coming home exhausted and drunk, respectively. Yet what’s the point of analyzing when I’m still riding the wave of my buzz?
“I haven’t done anything,” I say gently and go to my room.
-----
Faith’s sitting on her bed, holding a piece of paper in her hands, staring off into space. The window is open and the breeze flutters the pages of a notebook on the night table we share. Her long hair is in damp tangles, black nail polish chipped, nails bitten down. She’s been crying and knowing that makes my stomach clench. The eye patch she wears is covered in cream-colored lace. These eye patches she’s been making for years. She’s developed an online business out of it called “Eye Love Hue,” which sells fashion eye patches of all different fabrics and colors and textures, casual and fancy, sparkly and plain. Her customers aren’t just women who’ve lost an eye—it’s becoming a trend with women in general. I’m surprised Mom hasn’t ordered boxes of them.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. I sit on the floor, take off my Adidas sneakers, and slide them under my bed. The binoculars and pocket bird book I stow underneath my bed too, along with the mirror bagged up to save the powder. Wouldn’t want that precious dust going to waste.
Faith doesn’t answer me.
“I’m not going to ask you again,” I say.
She sniffs and looks at me. “I got into fucking Harvard.”
“Shit, Faith. That’s awesome. It really is.” I’m ecstatic for her, but I don’t want her to see it. She gets pissed when I’m happy and she’s sad—it disrupts the equilibrium of our twinship. Even though this is great news. Even though this is the best news.
“I didn’t think they were going to accept me,” she says, smacking the back of her hand against the piece of paper. Thwack. “I believed it when Oneonta sent me their acceptance letter. But this?”
“I told you they would. You’re seventeen with your own business. You’ve got perfect grades, and you’ve got like, what, twenty articles published in entrepreneur magazines? They eat that shit up. They’d be stupid not to take you.”
She nods and then wipes her nose on her sleeve.
“So what’s the problem?” I ask, leaning against my bed. There’s really no arguing; Harvard is for Faith and vice versa.
She looks at me, distraught replaced by annoyance. “What’s the problem? What do you think’s the problem?”
The splotch next to her mouth is starting to appear. She didn’t tell Mom and Pop about her episode, and she probably wouldn’t have told me if I hadn’t been there. I know that when an attack happens, the likelihood of another one happening is pretty high. Once the floodgates open . . .
I try to stay calm. “Didn’t they give you a scholarship or something?” Her aggravation is growing, and my anxiety is busting out of me.
“They’re giving me five thousand a year. But that doesn’t even put a dent in it. They do this thing for low-income families, but Mom and Pop aren’t low income. Not on paper.” She looks down at her hands. “I should have never applied there, Phineas. I don’t know what I was thinking. They say the classes aren’t that great at Harvard anyway. They’re all taught by grad students. That’s what I’ve heard.”
Now I’m aggravated. “I thought you wanted to get the fuck out of Dammertown?”
She sighs. “I don’t know, I’ve been thinking about it. It would be too much of a burden. For our family. For me.” She stares me down, wanting me to acknowledge that her anxiety is there and she’s losing the battle. Well it’s okay, sis, because I’ve got my weapon sharpened and ready. It’s in the form of a drug that transported me to my best memory and returned me smelling like pine, with fur between my fingers. Who wouldn’t want the ability to time travel like that, or the illusion of it? Who wouldn’t want a memento to remember it by?
“I’m going to get you the money,” I say firmly.
“Phineas, come on. Stop that gallantry shit. You don’t have to take care of this.” The letter is shaking in her hands that have silver rings on almost every finger.
“You’ll have it. I promise.”
Her eye narrows. “You make good money selling weed, but not that good. And don’t even think about muling heroin again, fuck face.” I don’t remind her that some of her medications and doctors’ appointments have been funded from this fuck face’s efforts, not to mention the startup money for her business.
“What if there’s something else?” I say. I probably sh
ouldn’t have, but the hope of it is making me giddy yet scared, and my words come out wobbly and strained, because underneath that hope is hopelessness. The last time I tried to solve our financial problems, my sister lost her eye.
“No,” she says, sharply. “Absolutely not.”
“You don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
“I don’t care what you’re talking about. This conversation is over.” She slices the air with a flat hand to emphasize over.
I jump up and yank the acceptance letter out of her grasp. “See this?” I hiss. “This is your ticket out of D-Town. Think about it: if you don’t let me help you now, when you’re old and gray, you’re gonna look back at this moment and regret it. If you stay here, you’ll end up in just another trailer, as just another waitress, wondering how everything got so shitty.”
Faith yelps like she’s just been bitten and lunges after me. I keep the letter away from her. She sobs, “You take that back. You take it back. I’ll never end up like that. Never. If anyone’s going to end up like that it’s going to be you.”
The words hang in the air. What she’s said can’t be unsaid, and there is just no response to it because we both know she’s right. I place the letter on her bed. I don’t look at her. This is not the girl in the fort anymore—that girl is long gone.
“Phineas,” she says. “I’m—”
“Nah,” I say, raising my hands between us, like there’s a wall and I’m feeling for it. “I’ve got to get ready for work.” I turn my back as I rummage through my drawers to find a clean shirt and a pair of jeans. I change in the bathroom, the muscles in my neck tight. I’ll prove to her she’s wrong, that I can help her get out of here. This time my plan will be so good, it won’t create negative consequences for anyone but myself.
Chapter Six
I search the white pages on my iPhone in Ben’s Subs and Grub and call every Thorbor listed in Dammertown, Schenectady, Albany, and beyond. There aren’t that many, so it only takes me ten minutes before I realize I’ve hit a dead end. No one by the name of Thorbor knows of the old woman with white puffy hair, and I feel dumb that I didn’t pick up on another distinguishing characteristic.