by Anne Valente
So when Wren’s flashlight flickered in her room, drove a shotgun path across the street into my own bedroom window once September burned away, once Willow swallowed itself in dark just past the school’s afternoon bell, and after her father, my mother finally fell asleep before blue-glowing television sets, inside sweat-stained sheets, I threw on my darkest sweatshirt, my blackest pants. I climbed down the tree beyond my window, the Morse tapping of Wren’s flashlight illuminating my path, casting my shadow against the house. I waited by the curb, breath steaming in October midnight, and watched the sky slowly begin to glow, green streaks then blue, climbing up from the horizon like colors on acid test strips, shimmering ribbons of light that I watched without words until Wren appeared. Together we walked, straight down the center of the street, no one out, our clothes black enough to hold us against night while the auroras bloomed around us, wavering curtains of emerald, bright enough to illumine our way.
Wren carried old pillowcases stuffed heavy with grain sacks, with hay. At the bluffs, Tee and Kestrel already waited for us, Tee smoking a cigarette on the picnic table and Kestrel sitting unmoving beside her, watching the borealis blossom in bands beyond the rocks.
Tee turned our way, jumped off the picnic table, stubbed her cigarette against dew-frosted grass. As Wren held one old pillow against her chest, gripped tight between white-knuckled hands, Tee walked over steady and slammed her fist into the center. Wren stumbled back, coughed, hay dust bursting from the pillow like volcanic ash. Tee rubbed her bony hand, stepped back and looked out over the bluffs, and in the glow of the northern lights I saw her eyes shimmer wet.
Tee, I said, then stopped when she looked at me, the glow revealing a bruise down her cheekbone, black cast green in the swirling skylight.
Fuck off, Tee said. She walked back to Wren where she punched the pillowcase again and again, Wren holding the edges tight, footing staggered across the uneven rock until Tee finally had enough.
Tee pulled the pillow from Wren’s hands, held it steady against her own chest while Wren bent low to catch her breath, palms against her knees. Tee knew, we all knew, that Wren’s dad had taken her paycheck again, had locked her earnings inside a small safe, kept for booze, poker, women. When Wren’s breathing slowed and steadied, she stood to full height and faced Tee, eyes hard. She punched the pillow once, slow at first, then quicker until Tee’s body shook with each blow, like a Western, a riddling of bullets.
I looked at Kestrel, who stood there by the picnic table, shoulders hunched, curled in on herself to protect what was hers, constantly taken. I grabbed the other pillow, resting heavy on the picnic table, and stood before Kestrel with it held against my breastbone, arms steeled and ready for the first tremulous blow. Kestrel raised her eyes to mine, and behind her the auroras wavered like brushstrokes, alighting glints of her hair and casting her face in indelible sorrow. Her eyes moved down to the pillow and fixed there, seeing what I imagined was more than thread counts, more than cotton. Then she punched, both hands clenched rigid—she punched so hard I felt what force was in her move through me, a kinetic quake, all the light she held inside her, some separate sun no one saw, eclipsed.
We’d learned all our lives what the auroras meant. In grade school, each year, the terms grew more technical, from atoms to photons to geomagnetic storm to solar wind, a flow of ions shot from the sun, colliding with the earth’s magnetic fields. We learned the auroras’ shades, their seasons, their steady growth past the equinox. We learned so much we traded wonder for routine, dozed, favored sleep over splendor, ignored beauty burst and blooming overhead, haloing our town. We loved and hated Willow then, how ignorance made us safe inside moonlight, unsafe beneath sun.
The days grew shorter, nights longer. And yet the days still felt stretched, even without light, all the hollers and whistles and barks filling the dark spaces the sun left behind, all our walks home, every walk to work. At the car wash, before her dad even made it to her paychecks, Wren suffered catcalls, her hands sliding sponges across hoods while boys shouted from backseat windows, You can wash my hood anytime, mocked and high-fived, tried to tuck meager tips into the waistband of her jeans. Kestrel avoided the bleachers after school, tried the shortcut through woods, and was cornered in the library bathroom instead, during study hall, locked in by Todd Marcus, her brother’s best friend. He pinned her to the wall, slithered a hand down her pants. Threw five dollars against the tiled floor once he’d had enough.
And me, I took back roads too, through woods and past the river, twice the length home but worth the peace of tall pines and blackbird songs, after Jim Henshaw pulled up along the sidewalk, exposed himself from the car, said, Who’s gonna believe you, no daddy around? He worked at the chemical plant with my mother, seemed nice enough when he’d given her rides home, waved from the driveway. When he pulled up beside me, I thought he’d slowed to offer me the same.
Thought a cougar caught my girl, my mom said, when I came home an hour late, pine needles piercing my jacket, back roads mired in bramble. She stood in the kitchen stirring soup in a pot. I ached to tell her how close to right she was.
Where you been, Teal? she asked, and when I didn’t respond, she looked up. The smoke from the pot curled into her hair. What, big cat got your tongue? She laughed, and though I wanted to, I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell her that despite the four walls she’d built around us, despite every warmth and meal and tenderness she’d laid before me, something had seeped through, water stains through walls.
I sat beside her, held the tongue that soup scalded, rolled the burn around my mouth while the television blared from the living room.
That night, Wren brought a bat. When I met her in the street, the lights illumined what she held in her hands, its mottled wood cast in pockmarked jade. Her eyes burned hard, phosphorescent beneath the charged sky.
My dad takes my paychecks, I take his bat.
I nodded and we walked. There was nothing left to say.
Kestrel sat alone when we arrived, perched on the picnic table, hands clutching her middle. She glanced at us, said Tee hadn’t showed, then her eyes moved to the bat in Wren’s hands, at rest but ready. Kestrel grabbed it, I’d never seen her move so fast, and she slammed it against a maple tree, bark splintering from root, chips bursting, revealing sap. She held the bat trembling inside her unsteady hands, then pulled back and smashed the trunk high, low, perpendicular to bark lines, sometimes parallel. She smashed and smashed, wood against wood, but the bat never cracked, never broke, until she paused, lungs steaming. Wren approached her then, from behind, enclosed Kestrel’s hands inside her own, guided the bat. Even swings, steady. Practice, Wren told her, and Kestrel calmed. I watched the breath leak out of her, watched her arms move stable beneath guiding hands until her swing grew even, until Wren moved away, stood next to me again.
It isn’t enough, she whispered near my ear, both of us watching Kestrel. It isn’t enough to just be angry, to vent our wrongs. We need to be calculated, prepared.
As the northern lights flared above us, I looked at her and thought release, practice, slow build of muscle to fight if needed, self-defense. But through the cadence of her voice and the way her jaw settled in a thin line, clenched, I wondered for the first time whether the plan held no if for her, but only the tenor of when.
Tee never showed at school either, her desk empty next to mine in physics, all the locker room stalls deserted, where she sometimes hid to cut class. But Brett moved through the school halls, cocky swagger, indifferent gaze, and when we came to the bluffs that night, Tee was already waiting for us, silent, still.
Where the hell have you been? Wren asked, then her mouth closed upon her words when she saw the blood staining Tee’s wrists, soaking through her sweatshirt sleeves.
Oh, Tee, I breathed, and moved to hold her. Kestrel looked down, away, as Tee pushed her palms rough against me.
Shove it, Teal, she said. Then she drew in a breath and looked at me, quiet. It’s so much worse than you
think, she whispered.
She told us no, they weren’t cuts, no knives dug deep into her wrists, self-inflicted. They were from rope, rubbed raw. Brett had tied her to his bed. He’d bound her captive, over twenty-four hours, while he ate dinner downstairs, slept, went to school and sat in study hall, left her without food, water, to dig skin into twine to free herself, to thrash like some wounded animal.
I looked down past Tee’s bloodied sleeves, saw a urine-soaked stain creeping down her jeans.
You don’t know how humiliating, she said to us. You can’t even fucking fathom.
She looked out across the bluffs, toward Brett’s house, some unseen musty bedroom where he’d finally cut her free. I can’t go home, she said. Not like this. She wiped her nose against her sleeve.
She stood and grabbed Wren’s bat, leaning sturdy against a pine, and slammed it fierce into the picnic table bench. She picked up pinecones, cracked them hard out over the bluffs, jagged shapes black in silhouette against blue-green, northern lights streaked like finger paints down sky-dark canvas. And when she finally crumpled into the grass, collapsed on herself, shaking, I pulled her up and she let me. We left Wren and Kestrel behind, walked without words to my house where I climbed the tree and gave her my clothes, bandaged her wounds, let her light her old clothing on fire, down to ragged ash.
That Friday, after Wren’s dad finally went to bed, we sat on her roof and watched the northern lights alone, just me and her, Tee sheltered in her bedroom and Kestrel refusing to walk from her house to Wren’s. A fair reason, I knew, and why we never went to the bluffs on weekends, only week-nights, when bars closed early, when the streets were deserted. I could have pole-vaulted to Wren’s, thrown stones through her window from mine. I could tiptoe across the street without the Jim Henshaws of Willow sidling alongside me, calling from cars.
That fucker needs a lesson taught to him, I said, thinking of Brett, then of Tee, her rope-cut wrists, how I washed them and her blood swirled down the drain, staining ivory porcelain pink.
You know what would happen, Wren said, staring out across her yard, eyes weary. Besides, that’s Tee’s problem. We’ve got our own.
I watched the dyed horizon, more crimson than blue tonight, and wondered if that was ever true, if any of us existed alone, our own separate spheres.
My dad, Wren said, glance burning down through roof shingles, he keeps that safe in his car. I saw him once. He put it in the glove box. All my cashed paychecks.
The auroras burned bright, shimmering lines, a beauty I knew blazed only from trapped particles, nothing more, ions shuttling toward earth, beating back, enraged that gravity held them.
I could take all that money, Wren said. I could just take it all back, if I knew he wouldn’t beat the shit out of me.
I didn’t look at her when she spoke, but I heard it anyway, that same cadence in her voice, something known when everything else for us was unknown, our fists the only solidity, the crack of knuckle on grain sack, a violence of choice.
Your mom, Teal. Wren looked at me. How is she?
She’s tired. She gets by, I said, unsure why Wren brought her up. She never had before.
Wren sighed. Maybe once we’re her age, these fucks will leave us alone.
I didn’t respond, just watched the auroras, all those charged particles inside all that banded beauty as impossible to imagine as a future that far away, a future in Willow—and Wren, even more impossible, a burn too bright to smolder, to sustain itself.
Tee hid her wrists when she came back to school, an easy task as October frosted into November, all our sleeves lengthened, and though her face was still bruised, patched black fading slowly to muted yellow, she told everyone she fell, slipped on a patch of early ice, not yet used to the care of stepping gingerly.
She forced herself to ignore Brett, we all did, but I saw her anger pool inside her, unchecked, watched her dig a pocketknife into her desk, deeper and deeper, chips of wood flaking, the center growing dark.
I took the back roads, cut through woods, wore bulky clothes, blended into pine. Jim Henshaw came by only once, dropped my mother off; he smiled at me and I turned away. My mother looked hurt, teenage apathy, self-absorption, but she squeezed Jim’s hand anyway, told him thanks for the ride.
The auroras burned brighter, clear and fogless as the air grew starker and the solar winds more desperate. Wren’s pay increased at the car wash, a brief burst of celebration we commemorated with beers, stolen cigars. She tried to hide the difference, kept some small cache for herself hidden between mattress and box spring, but when she met me in the street late, eyes red, dark circles, I knew her dad had checked the discrepancy against pay stubs, bruised shiner beneath her left eye sealing all certainty. She held a knife in her hands, small switchblade, extended.
When we reached the bluffs, Tee and Kestrel already there, throwing punches against pillows. Wren clutched the knife, carved a target into a maple tree. A silhouette, arms and legs, full height, taller than any of us. She stood back and stared, breath cloud rising, then stabbed the knife into the tree, hitting leg, abdomen, heart until the knife stuck, flush inside frozen bark.
Wren turned and looked at us, each of us, auroras glowing behind her, softening her somehow inside the rippled bands.
What did you want to be? she asked. What did you want, before all this, before you knew what we know?
Her words were general, spewed in anger, so swift and rapid I struggled to make sense of them. But I heard Tee breathe next to me, quick intake, the wind knocked from her as if she’d been punched.
I wanted a house, she said. Two dogs, maybe a cat. She glanced at us, eyes sad. I wanted to share that with someone who loved me.
Kestrel looked up, away from us, watched the lights shimmer blue-green, silent streaks. I wanted to be an astronaut. She laughed, mocking herself. Can you imagine? An astronaut. A girl from Willow.
That’s more than me, Wren said. You know what I wanted? To cut hair. All I ever wanted, to open a goddamn hairdressing shop, and now, what? Not even scraps, not even fucking change, nickels, dimes. She stared at us. None of it, any of it, is mine.
Wren pulled the knife from the tree, retracted the blade.
If I left this place, that’s what I’d do. If I just had the money, I’d leave this fucking place behind.
Tee nodded, Kestrel smiled with sorrow. And me, I watched the hard-packed ground, a question I’d never considered—if Willow had ever left me space to dream, to wish, or if I’d only had it so much better, my mother and me, no need for animal instinct, the inborn desire to flee.
In physics, Tee began to pass me notes, her arms stretched just enough for her sleeves to pull back, revealing scars, deep cuts scabbing toward healed. She passed me notes of houses. Drawings. Boxed figures, triangle on top. Circles of cats, of dogs playing in crude shrubs, herself standing there smiling, skinny stick-figure arms. I nodded, folded her notes into my pockets, paid attention instead to classroom lectures, to examples of vectors, momentum, power. Our teacher gave us equations, formulas that explained the charge of electricity, an endless stretch of theory never tied to tangible example, to the ionized particles above our homes every night.
I was studying on the couch when my mother came home, arms full of grocery bags from Al’s Market where she’d stopped on the way, something she never did unless she had a reason.
Let’s celebrate, she said, unloading tomatoes on the kitchen counter, garlic, onions, fresh produce she almost never bought, from-scratch meals she never made.
What are we celebrating?
She set the brown bags down. I don’t know, she said. She stared at me, smiled. I guess I just wanted a nice dinner with my daughter.
She unpacked wine, giggled like she was fourteen, and I imagined her as a girl then, something I rarely thought about if ever—where she came from, what source, what roots of Willow sprang her from childhood, my grandparents gone.
I helped her make marinara, sliced tomatoes, celery, garlic. S
he let me have a glass of wine, asked about school, my friends. The scent of simmering onions filled the house, seeping into pillows, couch cushions, percolating warmth.
When we sat down at the table, I watched her twirl noodles into fork tines, pull them slowly from her plate, a comfortable silence between us, something earned.
Mom, I said.
She looked up at me, face smooth of lines, and the joy there broke my heart a little, to crack the silence, to pull her from the refuge of pleasure, so small.
What did you want? I asked. I almost couldn’t look at her.
She twirled more noodles. What did I want when, sweet pea?
When you were a little girl. What did you want to be?
Her fork stopped twirling, and she set it down. She swallowed. A sadness wavered across her features, but when she looked up at me, I saw only a smile.
I wanted you, Teal.
She reached over, squeezed my hand.
In the end, you’re my baby girl. That’s all that matters.
She held her hand there on mine, then picked up her fork again, and I thought of the chemical plant, the sauce from scratch, small refuge of home while Willow crouched outside the door—if any moment of it, this life, was ever for her. I considered telling her about Jim Henshaw then, I wanted to open my mouth and shout all the wrongs, mine and hers, into the unsullied space between us. But the silence was too comfortable, her enjoyment too great, and the space sealed itself beneath the calm of the room, the warmth still leaking from the stove, beneath the joy on her face, cracked by sorrow if I spoke.