by Anne Heltzel
I held my breath, waiting for him to turn angry eyes my way. I shouldn’t have done it; I shouldn’t have drawn the truth. But then he tore the picture out and put it in his pocket.
“Hope you don’t mind,” he said.
“I do mind,” I told him. “It’s mine. Maybe once I get to know you better, you can have it.” I was shocked by my boldness, but he didn’t seem bothered.
“Fair enough,” he said, handing it back. Then, after another minute, “Icarus. Icarus might have been better. For the drawing, I mean. Better than a fallen angel.”
“Daddy always told me any man who describes himself as Icarus has a terrible ego,” I said to him. There was another pause, then he surprised me by laughing long and hard.
“Your dad’s probably right,” he told me.
After that, we talked. We talked for hours and hours, all through the morning and into the afternoon. He told me he wanted to go to Thailand to live in a hut on the beach and read books all day in a hammock and live on nothing but fish he caught himself. I said that sounded nice, that I would come too and peddle my art to tourists on the side of the road. That I’d roast bananas for dessert. That I’d weave mosquito netting for the windows. That I’d let the salt coat my hair until I looked wild and fierce.
He laughed and said, “We’re a little different but exactly the same, you know.” And then he told me in words heated and passionate about the books he loved the most, and as he talked, I illustrated what I saw in his words, the emotions of it and feelings of it, until my notepad was nearly full. Then I looked at my watch and it was almost time for dinner, and I was sure even my oblivious parents would know I wasn’t sick, after all, that I’d just skipped out. I was shocked that six-and-a-half hours had gone by. I’d never talked that much to any single person in my life, even Katie.
He was intoxicating, he was brilliant, he opened my mind and heart. He was a dreamer, like me.
“I’ve got to go,” I told him.
“OK,” he said. “But I’ll miss you.” He smiled, wide and crooked, and my heart stopped. I’d barely walked four steps, four heavy steps, when he spoke up again.
“Hey, I hate to ask you this, but . . .” At that point I would have done anything in the world he’d asked for. He looked down, as if he was embarrassed. “I’m just short a few bucks,” he said. “Do you have anything? A loan, I mean.” My heart plummeted. Money was the one thing I couldn’t give him. But then I’d remembered the small safe in Mama and Daddy’s room. The way they opened it only on our birthdays or other special occasions. Family money. The money they’d saved up. I nodded slowly. I told him what to do, when to meet me.
So here I am, eleven p.m., staring at Mama and Daddy’s sleeping bodies. They look so peaceful next to each other, as if they were born curled up like this. I imagine Sam and me doing the same thing, and I shudder. This afternoon was too wonderful for me to bear. I turn from them and tiptoe back to my room, careful to leave their door open a crack for easier access later. I think how jealous Katie will be when she meets Sam. Or maybe she’ll be happy for me, proud of me for finding him and attracting him all on my own. I suddenly can’t wait to tell her all about him; I imagine us whispering and giggling like old times.
I stand there daydreaming for another few minutes before I hear it: the slight pinging on my windowpane. I laugh; the pebbles had been his idea. “I’ve always wanted to,” he’d said. I wave to him before running as quietly as I can down the stairs. My heart is thudding. I am betraying Mama and Daddy. But it’s just a loan; he said he’d replace it by next week. They only go in that safe every few months, anyway. They’ll never even know it was gone. And I trust him, I do.
I let Sam in the front door, and we tiptoe upstairs together. What we’re about to do is wrong and I know it, but I am high, so very high on adrenaline and giddiness and the inexplicable, incomparable attraction I feel for him. He clutches my hand and places one finger to his lips, and then I’m fighting giggles; it’s one big adventure. This whole day has been. The fun of it makes what we’re actually doing easier to ignore.
When we reach my parents’ door, I push it open ever so carefully. It emits a small creak, but it’s not loud enough to wake them. Just to make sure, I hold my breath and wait another thirty seconds, counting it out —“one, one thousand,” like that — in my head. Then we creep in soundlessly. The room smells like cookies baking, and my eyes are immediately drawn to the flickering candles on their windowsill. Mama’s doing. She’s forgotten, as usual, to put them out, but now their light leads us, an accomplice to our crime. The smell is suffocating as I inch my way toward the small safe Daddy had installed into the wall right next to their bed. The room itself is dingy and gray and littered with scraps of paper and candy wrappers, Mama’s hair spray and bottles of nail polish in every color. In the corner is Daddy’s model-plane set, bits of balsa wood littering the floor below a cheap folding table. Neither of my parents is tidy. There’s a thin sheet covering the only window in lieu of a curtain, blocking out prying eyes. I don’t know the code to the safe, but Sam told me he knows how to use a bobby pin, and the code itself is way too loud to use even if I did know it.
I’m waiting behind Sam and he’s fumbling with the pin and my armpits are feeling damp and Mama seems more restless than usual, grunting a little and drooling, although maybe this is what she always does. I’ve never seen it up close. They’ve been out for nearly two hours, plenty long enough, I estimate, for them to be in REM. But who knows whether they are or not? Long enough is no guarantee, and two of them means double the chance we’ll be caught. The desperation of my plan washes over me in full, but Sam’s in it both hands now, jiggling that bobby pin for all it’s worth, and the way he seems so assured of everything calms me down a little.
Then there’s a click. Silence.
The door swings wide and, thank God, they haven’t spent all of it or even close to it, and I help Sam grab it, jamming bill after bill into my pockets and down my shirt into my bra. I’m so excited, I don’t feel Sam’s hand on my wrist, pulling me away, pointing at my mama, who’s rolling over, as if she’s about to wake up. But something about the situation has taken hold of me, and it’s as if my hands won’t stop reaching into that safe.
I pull away and feel my skin begin to slide through his wrist, and then I am free, except momentum makes my arm jerk back and it collides with something, and that same something falls from the sill, hitting my arm and leaking searing, hot wetness over me. I smell cookies baking on my wrist.
There is a wave of intense heat. It pushes me backward into Sam. Something’s gone wrong.
Now the place is on fire. Everything is ablaze. I stare at it, wondering how it could have happened so quickly. Then Mama is awake, rubbing her eyes in confusion, mumbling incoherently. I look at Sam and wonder why he is still standing there, why he isn’t running away, and then I realize that he’s stamping at the flames frantically, but then they’re spreading and his stamping’s doing no good, and the smoke is so thick I can barely see, and we’re both hacking madly, and he’s pleading with me to come with him. The flames have spread between me and Mama and Daddy.
I am suddenly more afraid than I have ever been in my life. I fight Sam and turn to go back, but his grip is iron. He is strong, much stronger than I am. Now we’re at the door, and I give in, allowing him to pull me closer to it, farther from my parents. I find the doorknob first with my hands, but when I try to turn it, it melts my fingers and wrist on impact, and I scream. I watch as Sam pulls his shirt off and uses it as a glove, and then the door is wide open and we are gloriously free, since the smoke isn’t as bad in this part of the hall.
But Mama and Daddy are not behind us. I turn back for them one more time, but I can’t see them. I can’t even tell anymore which direction I am pointed, because I am so disoriented by the flames. All this time, Sam’s hand never leaves my wrist. The flames are miles high already and block the stairs to the attic, but the stairs to the main level are still inta
ct and that’s where he pulls me. I mutter prayers under my breath that Mama and Daddy will be OK. Maybe they have already jumped from their second-story window.
Sam pushes me to the ground and we start down on all fours, me in front and him behind. And when I wake up, there is an angel above me, stroking my cheek, and I can’t remember a thing.
I don’t want the memories. I struggle to my feet; I run from him and I run from them. I run from Abby, too, that person I was and wasn’t, the person Sam wanted me to be. I run fast at first and then never fast enough, tree branches whipping my face and midnight sounds hissing just behind my heels. I move like this, on and on and on — a crazed automaton — until I am reduced to nothing but blood and sweat and tears. Will I die like this out here? I run for what must be hours. I’ve run the wrong way; I’ve known it all along, but I also don’t know which is the right way. I expected to see the big rock, the faded trampled-out path, fresh from our feet. Then the pond, lovely and shining under the moon, and the cave not far behind it.
But all I’ve seen for miles are trees, thick trees with rocks and brambles scattered in between. My pants are torn. There is mud everywhere; it saturates me until I feel I am made of clay. I have no direction, only forward. There’s only one thing I feel profoundly: exhaustion. I want to sleep; I must sleep or I will die. I must keep moving or I will die. I take one more step and hope that with it will come something new: a road, or water — because I am horribly, painfully thirsty, so thirsty I am dizzy — or maybe some sign of human life. But there’s nothing; and maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, I think at last, to sleep, just for a little while.
I open my eyes as I do every other day, but today there’s the brightness of sun in my face. It’s unusual; there’s usually no sunlight in the cave. We have to go outside for our sun. “Sam?” I ask. “Sammy?” He doesn’t answer me. I roll over, and there’s something sharp and prickly in my face. My face. My face is on fire. I reach up and scratch it and claw at it because it feels like I’ve got some horrible itching disease, and I call for Sammy but he doesn’t come, and I open my eyes and —
I am not in the cave at all. Not at all. I am somewhere vast and, even though it has all the same things: trees and brambles and bugs and animal noises and dirt — none of it’s familiar. I claw at my face and remember. He’s gone. I left him. I scratch harder and snarl, the way I imagine an animal might, because that’s what I’m feeling: animal pain. Animal pain and otherpain, pain inside. I look down, and my fingernails are bloody. It feels good. It distracts from the otherpain.
It was my fault.
I sit up; a wave of dizziness and nausea overcomes me. I vomit up nothing onto the ground. I scratch more, then I scratch the hands I’m scratching with. My arms are covered in ugly red welts that have made them swollen and inflamed as if there’s a nest of mosquitoes living right there under the skin. I touch my face again. It’s probably the same, but I don’t care. I am empty and exhausted; most of me just wants to lie back down.
My fault.
But then there’s this other part of me. Move, move, move, it says. You won’t die here like this. You can’t.
I laugh and laugh and laugh because I am so stupid and that voice is wrong because I can die out here and maybe I even want to. I laugh as I’m on my knees, crawling, as I’m standing up, taking steps I didn’t know I could, as I’m moving forward, and the worst part is I don’t know where I’m moving forward to; maybe I’m moving even farther away from where I should be moving, and this realization is even more hilarious. I laugh and walk, walk and laugh, choke on my own laughter, stumble on swollen legs, look around me at all these things I never noticed before that seem surreal, maybe enchanted. I am so thirsty.
Maybe I’m in an enchanted forest and if I just fall asleep, a prince will wake me up. Maybe the prince will be Sam; he’ll be well again and nothing will be wrong with him, and he’ll run one palm across my cheek and my whole face will heal up just like magic, and everything will be OK. Everything will be OK. Even if I die, everything will be OK.
I don’t know time anymore; in this place, time doesn’t exist, anyway. It’s just more of the same. Trees and rocks and bugs and dirt. Trees and rocks and bugs and dirt. I say this through my lips, which have turned to wood, firewood. I laugh some more. If a tree falls and you don’t hear it, does it really fall? If a girl dies in the woods and you don’t find her, is she really dead? Was she ever alive?
It’s hot in the shade. I need a gas station to pump some fuel into me or my engine will stall. It’s about to stall. It does. There’s no fuel for my legs, so they give out first and I’m back to the earth, where I was before, where I came from in the first place.
I’m just so exhausted. It occurs to me that I really could die here, that I am too tired to go on, and that maybe I will lie here until I am too thirsty or too hungry to live, whichever comes first. Until my body betrays me. And if that happens, it wouldn’t be so bad; my story will die with me. No one will ever know the truth. I am filled with relief at this thought. There will be nothing to tell.
When the memory washes over my tired soul, it’s vivid and powerful. I surrender to it because I can’t find the strength not to.
Mama is awake. The flames have spread between me and Mama and Daddy. Mama screams, but I am transfixed. I watch her makeshift curtains light up magically. It’s a beautiful light show before me, and even my parents look beautiful, for by now their sheets are on fire and they appear ethereal. But there is something wrong here; I feel the frantic desire to leave. Something is terribly wrong. The fire is spreading fast, as if the house was glued together with lighter fluid. I’m finding it hard to breathe and now to see, and Sam’s grip on my wrist grows tighter, and this time I allow him to lead me through the haze across the room, even though I hear Mama and now Daddy screaming my name.
I see my mother’s face and I am cold. I see my mother’s face and horror turns me to ice. I am in the core of Circle Nine, the world I loathed and feared. I am shivering, sickened, destroyed. All I want, I think, is to have my family back. All I want is to be forgiven. But still, one voice in my head won’t let me go.
What about Katie? the voice asks. What happened to her?
I don’t know, I say back. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.
Yet the voice stays with me. I can’t give up, not yet, not while I don’t know everything. I force myself to stumble on.
Gunshots.
I am tired, so tired. It is hard to know what’s going on.
An epic war is going on around me; I wonder if I’ve been hit.
Boom. Screaming. A furry thing tears by me. It’s crying blood.
Yet I keep walking.
A pair of brown boots in front of me.
Voices, voices all around. I hover in the voices.
“Are you OK? Miss, are you OK?”
I nod. A hand on my shoulder brings me back, just a little.
“Are you hurt?” A long look at my face. “Did someone hurt you?”
“No,” I whisper. A look of doubt.
More voices: “She looks terrible.” . . . “Shhhh.”
“Where do you live?”
“Here.” I gesture. “Right here. I’ve been out here for a while,” I hear myself say in a dreamy voice. I’m awfully tired.
“Come on. We’ll get you some help.” A gentle hand, and I’m being lifted, carried, placed in a truck. I don’t mind. I’m tired, so tired.
Darkness.
The voices fade in and out. They swirl around me, lifting me up on a cloud of comfort. I am buoyant. They are angels.
“She’s doing fine. Just a little dehydrated, and exhausted, I’d say.”
“She looks like she could sleep for days.”
“Maybe she will.”
“Nothing serious, then?”
“Could’ve been much worse. Nearly had a heart attack when I seen her.”
And there’s a little angel, too.
“Will she be OK? Will she, Dad?”
&n
bsp; As I dream, I feel promise filling my body; I become limp and light and entirely free from pain, as if I’ve been lifted out of my shell and taken somewhere better. I feel close to everything I ever lost and wanted back. My mother, my father, and Katie. And Sam. Sam, whole and beautiful again, the way he was when he stood over me that day long ago, eyes so innocent and longing and strong and full of promise. I’m warm all over, and there’s something else I feel, something foreign and wonderful. I’m at peace. I want it. I want to stop struggling. I want this peace.
“Hasn’t seen a decent meal in weeks, by the look of it. She’s so scrawny.”
“Thank God you found her. Who knows what she was doing out there all alone. And that bruise on her face! Could’ve been much worse.”
I can open my eyes. I can see the room around me. There’s a man in camouflage and hunting boots staring at me, arms crossed. There’s a woman holding a mug. I’m on a cot. The springs of it dig into my back. The room is small; the walls close in on me. I close my eyes again; I don’t want this. I wanted to die.
“No way, kiddo,” says the woman. “You’ve been out for a full day. Now that you’re back with us, you’re staying. Don’t get any big ideas.” Her face looms, kind and round, above me. “Just to give you your strength,” she tells me, handing me the mug, which has a seductive-smelling broth in it. “Just some fluids.”
I sip it slowly, savoring its warmth; then I close my eyes and will these people away, pretending to sink back into sleep for just a little while longer.