by Adi Alsaid
Sonia led the way to the elevators. Before she pushed the call button, Sonia faced Leila, trying to figure out what to say. “What you did for me, I’m not sure anyone else will ever match.” She shook her head at the floor, maybe realizing herself for the first time how much Leila had done for her. “I feel like I owe you so much more than just this rushed good-bye.”
“Don’t be silly,” Leila said. “You don’t owe me anything. Our adventures introduced me to the man of my dreams. Right after we’re done here, I’m heading straight back to Tim Hortons.”
Sonia laughed, then reluctantly called the elevator. “Seriously, you have my number. If you ever need anything, just let me know.”
The elevator announced its arrival with a ding. When they stepped inside, Leila pulled Sonia in for an unexpected hug. “Thanks,” Sonia said, hugging back. “I don’t know where the hell you came from, but I’m glad you did. I’d have been lost without you.”
“Me, too,” Leila said.
They stepped apart, and Sonia was surprised to see a tear scurrying down Leila’s cheek. Then the doors opened, and Sonia spotted Martha sitting on a leather couch in the lobby, her purse on her lap. She was looking straight at the elevators, and when they made eye contact, Martha waved and started gathering her things.
“Bye,” Sonia said, the word feeling small as it left her mouth. Then she smiled at Leila and hurried out the elevator, her heels clomping loudly on the marble floor.
8
IT WAS A pretty drive from the hotel to the church. Everything was green, the sky suddenly bereft of clouds. The road took them along the lake, and even though it was early August, everything seemed to be in bloom. Purple, white, and pink blossoms dotted the landscape. Bright yellow flowers grew right along the asphalt, leaning into the street, as if asking someone to take them away.
Sam’s dad, Bill, was quiet as he drove, focused on the road. He hated speed and usually begged Martha to drive on their road trips. But Martha was in the back helping Sonia with her makeup. Sonia could see sweat forming on Bill’s hairline in the rearview mirror.
“Other eye,” Martha said, turning Sonia’s head toward her to apply the eyeliner.
“What’d you do all morning?” Martha asked. “You didn’t go with everyone else to breakfast?”
“Nope,” Sonia said. “Just kind of stayed in bed, trying to catch up on sleep.” She kept her gaze out the window, enjoying the drive, going over in her head exactly what she wanted to say. “Liz picked a good date,” she said, admiring the prettiness of the day.
“It’s funny, I could have sworn there were clouds earlier,” Martha said, tilting her head to look past the tops of the trees they were driving past. “Even if there were clouds, I wouldn’t put it past Liz to find a way to get rid of them. That girl knows how to get her way.”
“Nothing like her mother,” Bill said, checking the rearview mirror to see if Sonia would laugh at his joke. She smiled at him and turned away, his eyes a little too much like Sam’s for her to hold his gaze for very long.
When they arrived at the church, the ushers were not yet herding people toward the door. Wedding guests loitered around the entrance, seeking shade, posing for pictures with their arms around each other. The collective murmuring of the crowd was the only audible sound, and Sonia knew exactly what she would hear if she closed her eyes and listened for words. And because she felt as if she owed it to him, she did. She shut her eyes and felt the breeze on her skin and listened carefully until in the chorus of voices she could pick out Sam’s name being spoken.
Opening her eyes, Sonia looked at the church, which was large and made of stone, with a tall, vaulted ceiling and stained-glass windows. Sonia spotted Jeremiah standing next to Roger at the curved entrance of the church. He was trying not to look at her. She waited until he gave in and motioned for him to come closer, then looked around the rest of the courtyard and the grassy surroundings for Liz’s white dress. For a moment, she worried that Liz was hidden away somewhere, far from the prying, if unlucky, pre-wedding eyes of the groom. Then she remembered how Liz had professed a hatred for that particular tradition. “I’m not some prize waiting to be revealed behind the curtain,” she’d said. “It’s dehumanizing. No, I get to mingle with my friends and family before the wedding, too. And if Roger isn’t blown away by having me stand at the altar with him just because he saw me fifteen minutes earlier, then we’re off to a bad start.”
Roger was coming along with Jeremiah, headed in Sonia’s direction, presumably to say hi to Martha and Bill. When they got there, Sonia asked Roger to find Liz and bring her over, trying to make it sound natural, trying not to think that this would ruin the wedding, exactly what she had spent all night trying to avoid doing.
Meanwhile, Jeremiah greeted Sam’s parents, shaking Bill’s hand and kissing Martha on the cheek. He navigated through the parental small talk with ease, as if he weren’t a college freshman but someone much older, someone who knew exactly his place in the world. It was one of the things she loved about him: his ability to be so well-spoken when she knew him to be such a goofball at heart.
Liz arrived beaming, whatever worries she might have about the wedding temporarily put aside to cheerfully greet her parents. After a round of hugs to everyone around, her hand went back to Roger’s, her fingers finding the spaces between his as if that was exactly where they belonged. Sonia resisted the urge to do the same with Jeremiah.
“Martha, Bill, Liz, I have something I need to tell you.” Everyone turned to look at her, and she almost lost her resolve. She met Jeremiah’s eyes, and he gave her a knowing smile, a slight nod.
“I know this is absolutely terrible timing. But I don’t want to hide anything from you anymore. You guys have always treated me so well, like I’m actually part of the family.” She stopped, feeling her voice start to quaver. “Jeremiah and I are seeing each other.”
She tried to read the expressions on their faces, but after registering their surprise, she tore herself away, choosing instead to look at the grass and the six pairs of shoes gathered in a semicircle, their tips all pointed at her. She felt a tickle by her temple and realized only after wiping at the spot that she’d started to cry. “I’m so sorry that I didn’t tell you sooner. I just didn’t want it to seem like I’m forgetting about Sam. I’m not. I promise, I’m not.”
Sonia unclasped her purse and pulled out one of the tissues she’d shoved inside, using it to wipe at her nose. A woman in an olive-green dress called out to Liz and started walking toward the group. Liz waved and then held up a finger, telling the woman to give her a minute.
Sonia went on. “It’s too soon, I know.” She pressed the tissue against her nose again and sniffed. No cute sniffles here; this was a thick, dutiful sniff, aiming to keep back the snot in her nose so that she could finish her damn apology to this wonderful family.
“It’s too soon. But here it is anyway.” She turned to Jeremiah, whose expression didn’t give enough away. “I’m in love with you,” she said. “I’ll always love Sam, but I’m in love with you now, and I’m sorry that I didn’t have the guts to admit it before.” She turned back to Sam’s family.
“And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you guys sooner and that I’m telling you right now. But I had to tell you. And, Liz, I’d understand if you don’t want me to be in the ceremony anymore, or”—she turned to Martha and Bill—“if you guys want me to go altogether. I’m only a part of this family because of Sam, and I’m just so sorry that I couldn’t love him even more while he was here.”
She could tell that people were starting to glance in her direction. She turned her head back to the grass, the expressionless shoes on the ground. She felt a hand on her shoulder and assumed it was Jeremiah’s, and she might have felt strange about taking it if she didn’t need it so much. But when she reached for it, she felt rings, unfamiliarity.
“Darling, look at me.” Martha was smiling
at her, not even an arm’s length away. “It is okay to move on.” Over Martha’s shoulder, Sonia could see Liz dabbing at the corner of one eye with the hand that still held Roger’s. She, too, was smiling. “You joined this family because of Sam, yes. But you are always going to be a part of this family. And, like any member of this family, I want you to be happy.”
Around them, wedding guests started moving toward the entrance of the church. When Sonia tasted the saltiness of tears, she realized she was smiling. The sobs were under control, but the tears still flowed.
“It’s a strange time for all of us, but I’m happy you told us,” Martha went on. “I might have the urge to try to keep Sam alive through you, but if I do that, please stop me. You are not just Sam’s girlfriend to us. Or Sam’s ex, or Sam’s anything. You are Sonia. Our Sonia, as far as we’re concerned.”
“And,” Liz interjected, “if you think for a second this is going to get you out of being my bridesmaid, you are dead wrong. No incredibly-in-poor-taste pun intended.” She wiped at her eyes again and hugged Sonia, Roger’s arm dragged into the hug, since Liz refused to let go of him. “And you.” She turned to Jeremiah, sticking a menacing finger in his face. “Break her heart, and I’ll chop off your—”
“Liz!” Martha and Bill both yelled, so on cue that Sonia could imagine Liz making the threat enough times before that her parents had learned exactly when to interrupt her.
“I mean it: You hurt her, and I will hurt you back,” Liz said, her finger still in Jeremiah’s face.
“Y-yes,” Jeremiah stammered quickly. “Agreed. If I hurt her, I would want you to hurt me back.”
“Good,” Liz said, “holstering” her finger back to her side and turning over her shoulder to look at the crowd funneling its way into the church. “Now, would anyone mind if we get on with my wedding, please?”
“Don’t be a brat,” Martha said. “We’re having a moment here.”
“It’s my wedding. I can brat if I want to,” Liz said, sticking out her tongue.
A breeze, by no means a perfect one—a little too warm and pollinated—blew past them. It made Sonia think of Leila, for some reason. When she felt the air rushing past her, cooling the tears on her cheeks, brushing past her skin, she got a clear image of Leila in her red car, with its red interior, with her hair flying in the breeze of an open window.
“Come on,” Martha said, holding her shawl close to her shoulders. “Let’s go before my daughter threatens to cut off any more body parts.”
* * *
The dance floor was just starting to fill up. A little drunk off the four-course meal and the wine and the relief, Sonia grabbed Jeremiah’s hand and pulled him from his chair.
“Are you ready to be amazed by my dancing moves?” he said, smirking but still looking somewhat nervous.
“I expect to be blown away.”
“If at any point that’s not the case, I have a backup plan to distract you by making you laugh and/or making out with you.”
“I like that plan.”
She was only a little self-conscious leading him by the hand in a room full of people. The most public place they’d held hands in before this was the 7/11 down the road from his apartment. On the dance floor, she turned to face him, not letting go of his one hand, putting her other up on his shoulder. His free hand slipped to just above her waist, and they began to waltz, a little off rhythm from the song that was actually playing. Jeremiah didn’t know at all what he was doing, but he didn’t let that stop him. Sonia pulled herself closer, waiting for the squeeze of his fingers against her hip.
“Sorry I disappeared last night,” she said, looking up at him. She would have loved to see his eyes looking back at her, but they were focused intently on his feet.
“Can I get the story now?”
Sonia considered, then rested her head against his chest, his chin fitting in snugly to one side of her bun. “I don’t know if I believe the story quite yet. It can wait until the morning.”
“Okay,” he said.
She pressed him closer, then felt him suddenly stumble. Liz and Roger, dancing a little more proficiently, had purposely bumped into them.
“Stop being cute together!” Liz cried out over the music. “That’s our job.”
Sonia laughed and then, feeling at once weird and thankful about it, kissed Jeremiah on the dance floor, in plain view of everyone. It was the kind of kiss that can propel a couple into a relationship, and it was not the only one of the kind she’d received from Jeremiah. He kept his eyes closed for an almost comical amount of time after the kiss was over, as if needing to recover from it. She put her head back against his chest, against the tuxedo jacket she’d spent all the previous night in.
A thought occurred to her, of her lost passport sitting in her stolen purse, and out of simple joy and tiredness, she mumbled it against his chest: “I have absolutely no idea how I’m going to get back home.”
1
LEILA GRABBED A nearby log and tossed it into the fire. The hidden moisture within the bark made it crackle and smoke. It was dusk. Since yesterday’s arrival at the campsite outside Fairbanks, Alaska, it had been dusk more often than she’d ever seen before, as if the world were spinning just fast enough to keep the sun right below the horizon at all times. In an hour or so, it would finally get dark. Sometime after that, in the stillness of the night, the Northern Lights would maybe, hopefully, streak across the sky.
Leila turned her head away from the plume of smoke stinging her eyes, covering her nose and mouth with a sleeve of her sweater. The smell of the campfire would be in her hair and on her clothes the rest of the night, she knew, and she did not yet know whether or not she liked that.
“Hi,” a little voice called to Leila. She looked up to see a tiny blonde approaching the campfire, waving. The preteen girl’s smile was missing three teeth. Her parents walked behind her, the woman in a long, patterned skirt and her hair in braids, the man wearing linen pants and hemp bracelets and sporting a beard that reached his chest. “Do you want to have dinner with us?” the girl asked, not really waiting for an answer before taking a seat next to Leila.
“Dee here noticed you putting your tent up on your own,” the woman said, introducing herself as Harriet and her husband as Brendan. “She made us promise that we wouldn’t let you eat alone.”
“Veggies on a stick okay?” Brendan asked, starting to skewer some cherry tomatoes on a twig that he’d brushed mostly clean.
Leila coughed some smoke away and then smiled at the sudden company. “I’d love to have dinner with you guys,” she said to Dee. “Thank you.”
“Tea sound good?” the woman asked, placing a kettle down near the fire and sitting cross-legged on the ground.
“It sounds wonderful.”
Brendan squatted, burying skewers a few inches away from the fire so the vegetables would roast. “How long are you camping for?”
“I booked a spot for a week. But I’m here to see the Northern Lights, so I’ll stay longer if I have to.”
“First time?” Brendan clapped his hands together to brush the dirt off.
“Yup.” Leila turned to Dee. “Do you know the truth behind the Northern Lights?”
Little Dee shook her head no, her blond curls bouncing like springs.
Leila knew her father had told her the story, and she could remember how he would tell it out loud, the pauses and gestures he would make. But that memory stood alone. She had no other memories to accompany the story: how old she was the first time she’d heard it, how often it would be repeated back to her, how it had made her feel before.
“Throughout time, people have had different guesses. Some believed that the Northern Lights were great big fires in the sky, or that they were birds frozen in the air. Most people today think they’re just the sun’s light doing funny things it doesn’t do anywhere else. But all of those are wrong.
”
Dee was already leaning forward, rapt. Leila wondered if she’d reacted the same way the first time she’d heard the tale. It must have been when she was Dee’s age or younger, for the story to stick in her memory when nothing else had.
“The real story about the Northern Lights is this,” Leila said, rubbing her hands together over the fire. “Thousands and thousands of years ago, they didn’t exist at all. This was back when people all over the world lived really similar lives. They hunted for food, formed families and tribes. They woke up with the sun, went to bed when it set.
“Then came a girl,” Leila said, “who saw that the world was starting to get bigger, more complicated. Boats were built that could follow rivers to new places. People started painting, writing, making music.
“This girl, she saw that her life might follow a few different paths, and she worried that she’d be sent off down the wrong one. What if she wanted to become an adventurer? What if she was supposed to be a painter, but no one ever gave her a brush? All day, she thought about these other lives she might be living.”
Leila paused for effect, the way she did even when she was retelling the story to herself, letting her mind linger on that last line. Dusk persisted, the sky an orange-hued purple, a few stars coming out of hiding. Leila knew it was too early, but she scanned the sky anyway, hoping she might catch the Lights trying to eavesdrop on her story. Dee seemed enthralled, too wrapped up to notice that her mom had started running her fingers through her blond curls.
“All the possibilities started filling up the girl, spreading through her insides. Her feet got so heavy, she could barely walk. She couldn’t lift her arms up to feed herself. The possibilities started pressing down against her lungs, making it hard to breathe.
“Worried, her parents called the tribe’s doctor. But he couldn’t tell what was wrong with her. Everyone came to see her, but no one could figure out what was making her so heavy. The more people came to visit, the worse she got.