“The high school here is excellent,” she said.
“What colors?”
So many schools have aggressive colors, clashing in the hallways and on the lockers, maroon and mustard yellow, army green and gold; and all the stupid “spirit days” make it hard to disappear and be ignored.
“Blue and white,” she said. “Spartans!”
Okay. That and the blackbirds. Good omens.
I hefted my suitcase from the car, and we stood together before the only house in all of Seattle and its surrounding islands that had a long-term bed for me.
“Muiriel.” A woman came out to the porch, wiping her hands on a dish towel. Almost as small as Joellen, maybe in her sixties, a white lady with graying dark hair piled in a bun, wearing a plaid apron over a soft body in jeans and a gray sweater.
“Francine,” Joellen whisper-reminded me.
I held up my hand. “Hello, Francine.”
I picked up my suitcase, and Francine held the screen door open for us. We blinked the sun from our eyes and stood in the bright kitchen. Butcher-block countertop. White cabinets. Clean smell of dish soap. Through the wall of windows above the sink I saw a back field with a little wooden house.
“Chicken coop,” Francine said. “You like chickens?”
“I do,” I said. “Just not to eat.”
Her head tilted. “You eat pigs? Cows?”
“No, sorry.”
Bread without flesh is a good diet, wrote John Muir, confirming what I’d already learned on a field trip to the grocery store in second grade. A gutted pig hung from hooks by its back legs in the deli, and I figured out meat is animals.
“Muiriel,” Francine said, “we are going to have us a time. I don’t eat them, either. Here. Give.” She took my suitcase and led us down a narrow hall to a stairwell that opened into an attic room beneath the A-frame roof. A braided rag rug and one big bed beneath a dormer window. Smelled like clean laundry.
“Are there—where are the other beds?” I asked.
“I donated the bunks to hospice just last month,” Francine said. “Bought all new linens, too. Painted, repaired all the kicked-in doors and holes in the drywall; twenty years of fostering takes a toll on an old place,” she said.
I nodded. Absolute truth.
“Joellen tells me you’re not bound to make me have to do it all again, paint and all that. File says it, too. You set to prove them right?”
Not accusatory, not suspicious—just a matter-of-fact question.
“Yes,” I said. “But, so I’m— It’s only me? In this room?”
“Only you in the house. You’re my last,” Francine said.
“I told you it would be only you,” Joellen said, low.
“Yeah,” I said, just as low. “It’s just…a big room.” My heart sped up. So much easier to be ignored, helpful and hidden, unnoticed in a loud group of many kids.
“It’s beautiful,” Joellen said to Francine.
“Big bed,” I said.
“It’s a full,” Francine said. “Smaller than a queen, bigger than a bunk. Never had a kid your age. Twelve-year-olds fit pretty well in bunks, but I thought you’d like a real bed, room to stretch.”
I stared at the lonely expanse of blanket and pillows until Joellen nudged me.
“It’s so pretty,” I said. “Thank you.”
Francine put my suitcase on a wide chest of drawers and went to the window to push it open. “Air this joint out a little,” she said. And then something black flitted in, a fast, aimless bird with silent wings. “Oh,” Francine said, “get!” She flapped her apron and shooed it back outside. “Bats,” she said.
Joellen’s face went ashen. “In the daylight? Doesn’t that mean they’re rabid?”
“Not necessarily,” Francine said. “You girls like lemonade? Unpack and come get some.” She made her slow way down the steps. I leaned out the window. Attached beneath the sill: a wooden bat house. Joellen was shaking.
We stood for a moment in that cavernous room, filled with light and a wide-plank wood floor. The closet door with a brass handle, no keyhole. A perfectly nice room. I sat on the end of the lonely bed. White quilt with vines of leaves and blue flowers stitched, maybe by hand, all over it. This woman put a hand-sewn quilt on a bed for a foster placement? What the hell?
Joellen sat beside me. “Bats.” Her voice was faint. “I can keep looking.”
“Just mice with wings,” I said, and worked the necklace in my pocket.
Later, I stood with my lemonade beside Francine on the porch and waved as Joellen maneuvered the car around granite boulders in the grassy driveway. The sun was really out now, and the grass and trees smelled fresh, different from the trees and lawns and forested parks I walked in Seattle, definitely better than the streets. Here, without the hum of freeway traffic, the quiet was nearly deafening.
Joellen finally got the car turned around; she waved out the window and was gone. The blackbirds rose again from the trees.
Joellen’s leaving had never been a big deal. She’d always been so close, never more than a few minutes away. Now a half-hour ferry ride and a lot of water between us, and I couldn’t breathe very deeply.
“You okay?” Francine asked.
I nodded.
“Hungry?”
I was. But instead I said, “Can I take a walk?”
She took my lemonade glass into the house and came back out with a folded paper map. “Trails,” she said. “Joellen said you’d want to walk.”
Oh, Jo. Breathe.
“Make sure your phone is on,” Francine said.
I exhaled and got ready for a familiar, annoying battle. “Don’t have one.”
She frowned. “No phone?”
“No phone.”
Her eyes went wide. “Really?”
“Really.” Back on my freedom hobbyhorse; without a phone, I am not tethered to anyone having access to me anytime they want, with their texts and calls. Joellen has her phone; I can always find a landline to get to her. She and the parents can call the school if they need me, and outside of school I am always where I say I will be. Libraries and school have all the computers and interwebs I need. I am impeccably reliable and so have earned the right to not be under constant surveillance.
“Huh.” I could hear her wheels turning, but she said only, “Walk near civilization for now. Need some money?”
“I’m okay,” I said. Never be needy. Never be a burden.
“All right. See you in two hours, not a minute past.”
“Two hours. From now. I’ll be back here. Got it.” I learned years ago that the best way to avoid getting accused of being late, missing curfew, misbehaving, was to repeat their words, exactly what a parent says, right back to them. Helps them remember.
“Can you find your way?” Francine asked.
I nodded through my swollen throat. Could I find my way back? What had I agreed to? Alone on an actual island. With bats.
“Joellen says I’m meant to be your last,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Okay then.” She put the map in my hand. “Let’s be each other’s.”
Her smile made my throat feel a little bit better.
NO FOSTER PARENT HAD EVER let me just take off for a walk like that, and definitely not twenty minutes after arriving, especially not in a brand-new town. Francine was a puzzle. Maybe, since I was her last, there was no reason to be meticulous. Coasting to retirement.
The first thing I always do when I move into a new house is get back outside as fast as I can and walk beneath the open sky, where I am still and always home.
I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
I walked the island that first day, across a quiet highway to a trail through a
forest wilderness, back out to the road to a path beside the harbor, boats docked and bobbing in the ferry’s wake, and then the main street. Shops lined both sides, not chain stores—candles and books and toys. A sign guiding me to the internment museum. Post office with a thousand paper cranes folded from express envelopes suspended in its branches. A candy shop. I ducked in and bought a pack of Fruit Stripe gum. Outside, people and dogs walked around me, and then in the sea air there was the aroma of baking bread.
Across the street. Blackbird Coffee and Pie. Like the four and twenty.
Joellen will love this.
I keep ten dollars with me at all times, strictly for emergencies and necessities like Fruit Stripe gum. Not frivolities such as eating in coffee shops.
But this day felt different. Anxious. And I was hungry. So, sort of an emergency.
Inside, Blackbird was crowded and too hot, but bread definitely was baking, and also pie, and coffee brewing. I stood in line before the glass case of cakes and scones, and on the bottom shelf, at toddler eye level, were baskets of the most intricately decorated sugar cookies I had ever seen—shapes of mice and owls and even ferry boats, frosted in perfect green and white just like the real boats, only with sparkling sugar and tiny frosted-icing words: Washington State Ferry. Works of art.
The line moved, but the girl in front of me, face in her phone, did not notice or step forward.
The girl at the register rolled her eyes. Black hair in a high bun, very pierced ears, black Sub Pop tank top. She was maybe Japanese American? And looked my age but couldn’t have been, because inked across both her forearms and shoulders were elaborate, beautiful tattoos that would have taken years—ocean waves, birds, and words, and across her clavicles, a pine branch with cones. Her name tag read Kira. “Next,” she called.
The girl in front of me also looked my age. She was taller than me, white, dressed in jeans ripped in a way that there was no point in calling them pants anymore. She wore a cropped shirt and had long, dark hair that reminded me of this one mom I lived with who was always getting Brazilian blowouts. This girl leaned against the glass and drawled, “Give me a latte, nonfat, no foam, like none, and let me see…” She took her time considering every single crumb in the case before deciding, at last, on “cookies.”
Basicest of the white basics, Zola called girls like this one.
Kira sighed. “Which kind?”
“Um…” Line Girl texted some more and knelt down to take a picture of the cookies. “Boats.”
“How many.”
“All of them.” Line Girl smiled.
Kira closed her eyes and exhaled. She made the latte, set it on the counter, and then assembled a paper box, lined it with tissue, and nestled all eight beautiful ferry boat cookies in two careful rows.
Ten years in nearly twice as many schools gave me sense memory for classic, run-of-the-mill mean-kid bullshit. This whole exchange had a familiar tone.
Here was the windup:
Line Girl paid with a twenty, Kira gave her the change in coins, and the girl dropped them into the empty glass tip jar beside the register.
The pitch:
Line Girl picked up the latte and the cookie box, smiled brightly once more at Kira, and turned to go.
The swing:
She paused at the trash basket beside the counter, dropped the box of cookies into it, took a picture of it in there, and walked out the door.
Home run.
Kira blinked hard, refusing to cry, and looked right at me. “What can I get you?”
I’ve seen that face in every house, school, and mirror I’ve known.
In the tip jar were three pennies and a nickel.
Whatever was happening, it was clear that even on this idyllic island, there were still dickhead kids. They are All. The. Same. Where does this uniformity come from? Are they taken aside to a special class where they memorize the techniques and voice patterns of Assholery 101?
Never one to jump into anyone else’s battle, for some reason I shocked myself when, on autopilot, I went to the trash basket, where the cookie box lay unopened and lopsided on a pile of empty coffee cups and wadded-up napkins. I pulled it out and wiped dripping coffee from its side, otherwise perfectly intact. Kira watched me, wide-eyed, from the register, then looked away. I walked back to the counter.
“What can I get you?” Kira asked again, all business, clearly bewildered by what I’d done, and so was I, but she wasn’t going to acknowledge or say anything about it, and thank God, because I didn’t want to, either. Key to flying under the radar and therefore surviving in school or life is always, always staying out of anyone else’s business; I know that, I live that, so what had compelled me to dumpster-dive and insert myself into this obviously well-established war?
Because the familiar look on Kira’s face when those cookies went in the trash said it obviously wasn’t a war. It was one-sided bullshit, and she was scared. That’s why.
“Tea, please. And…” I hated to part with any more of my ten dollars, but I was so hungry. “What’s the best thing?” I asked. “Your favorite?”
“Toast,” Kira said, no hesitation. “With jam. House-made.”
I got a little light-headed and put my hands on the counter. “Toast?” I said. “With jam?”
“It’s life-changing,” she said, expressionless.
“Okay.”
“Tea and toast. Five dollars. Name for the order?”
“Muiriel.”
“Got it. Next.”
I paid and waited for a table to be free. Even in hot weather, tea is good. John Muir made tea from pine needles, which sounds to me like it would taste the way Pine-Sol cleanser smells, but you do you, man. Sometimes he purposely lived on nothing but tea and bread for months.
But bread and jam.
Near the coffee lids and napkins was a corkboard tacked with notices: apartments for rent, dog walker available, aural cleansing for seventy-five dollars (which I first read as anal cleansing, and it made me smile). One notice had pine boughs drawn as borders and was the only one printed in a font that wasn’t Papyrus or Comic Sans, so it looked especially professional.
INTERNSHIP
Salishwood Environmental Education Center
High school seniors * Earn college credit helping elementary school groups learn about wilderness ethics and explore 250 acres of untouched forest
* No experience necessary *
Contact Jane at Salishwood
What. The. Hell?
Toast and jam. Blackbird. Wilderness, forest, internship. What universe had I stumbled—ferried—into? For half a second my worn-out brain entertained the notion of Does Joellen have the power over time and space to create an entire town full of lures to keep me rooted all year?
Beneath the worry in my anxious, rapidly beating heart, there was a tiny flash of something else. Unfamiliar but working against the fear. Hope? Excitement?
Maybe the big bed in the lonely attic at Francine’s wouldn’t be so bad. For a while.
I tore off an email address flag and put it in my pocket, then glanced around before tearing all the flags and stashing them. People left a booth beside a window, and I sat and thought about what Salishwood could be, and the delicious words wilderness ethics. I messed with the paper flags in my pocket and watched the sidewalk. Dogs on leashes met and sniffed and moved along. Kids on bikes. People pushing strollers. Lots of tourists. Island Harbor Book Company looked good. Grocery store. Barbershop.
Then my toast came.
Thick, buttered slices of sweet wheat bread, crisp outside, warm and mealy inside, and a dish of homemade raspberry jam. Kira was not wrong.
Life-changing.
I walked back to Francine’s, past the harbor and through the trees, in kind of a daze. Twenty minutes early, as always. I thanked her for the map and excused m
yself to lie down.
“Think you’ll want dinner?” she asked from the bottom of the stairwell.
“Probably not, thanks,” I said from the top, watching bats flit around their little house beneath the window. “Might sleep through it, anyway.”
I nearly had the door closed, and she called, “Muiriel.”
I peered down at her, pushing hairpins from her mouth into her messy bun.
“How was the walk?”
“Good. Thank you.”
“See the town?”
“I did. It’s nice.”
“You okay?”
I nodded.
“Sure you’re not hungry?”
“I went to Blackbird.”
“Toast?”
“Yeah,” I said, then, “Oh, wait!” I’d forgotten the box in my hands that I’d carried the whole walk back. “These are for you.” I stepped down and gave her the cookies.
She lifted the lid and beamed. “Ferries. Beautiful.”
“Yeah.” They were too pretty to be thrown out. What a weird, stupid thing for that girl to do.
“Muiriel, thank you,” Francine said. “I’ll take them to the girls I volunteer with; we’ve got a meeting tomorrow. When you’re up for it, let’s go grocery shopping. Make sure we’ve got food you like in the house. Okay?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“You sure you’re all right?” She frowned up at me.
“Just tired.” This was exactly the kind of attention I was trying to avoid; in a house full of kids, I could go take a nap and skip eating for days if I felt like it, and no one would even notice. Not that I would; I love food more than life. But I mean, I could. If no one was paying attention.
“All right. Well, plenty in the fridge if you wake up and want something. Will you be able to sleep?”
I nodded.
“Phone’s in the kitchen if you want to call Joellen. See you in the morning.”
“Yep.” I climbed the steps to the lonely room two at a time.
“Oh, and, Muiriel?”
I stopped and turned back, Francine still looking up at me.
What I Carry Page 3