After that I drove around and ended up where I always did, in the empty area between town and the road that ran around it. I pulled the car over, parked in the empty space and turned it off, letting the silence of where I was sink into me. I could see the trees so clearly here, a dense tangle of green and brown that blanketed the hills, the ground rising higher and higher, up into the sky.
At night, I couldn’t see any of this.
I tapped my fingers against the steering wheel and looked around my car. Aside from me, nothing in it was mine. Nothing was personal. No music, no food wrappers. Nothing. I didn’t even have any school books around, left them all at home to gather dust.
I had always been a messy car person. I dropped papers on the floor of Mom’s and spilled soda in Dad’s. I lost socks I took off after games and forgot half-eaten candy bars until they melted or grew fur. In Lissa’s car I had left notebooks and pencils and lost at least two calculators. In Jess’s I had an extra pair of soccer cleats, and the sweater I’d worn the one time she and Brian and Matt and I had double-dated last year, which had been a disaster because Matt had talked about college soccer so much he’d bored even me. A week later, I’d won Athlete of the Year instead of him at the annual sports banquet and he’d dumped me.
I remembered having Mom and Dad drop me off at Jess’s after the banquet, desperate to talk to her because I wasn’t upset about Matt. I hadn’t even cried.
“What’s wrong with me?” I said to Jess. “I finally get a boyfriend—and it’s not like there’s a lot of choice around here—and I was glad when he said we were over. Glad! No more listening to him talking about trying to choose between Central State and Cedar College and that’s not normal, is it? I should be crying, right?”
“It’s totally normal,” Jess said. “Matt so isn’t the right guy for you. I mean, just because he loves soccer and you love soccer, it doesn’t mean you’re perfect for each other, you know? Now, tell me everything Coach Henson said after he called your name. Did he mention your six-goal game?”
I ended up spending the night, calling home and getting permission from Dad, who was completely distracted, more interested in talking to Mom about how David sounded like he was getting sick than in talking to me. Jess and I stayed up so late talking that her dad banged on the wall and told us that if we wanted to keep talking we had to go outside and do it in her car.
We had. Laughing, we’d trailed blankets out of her house and piled them around us in the car. We’d talked until the sun rose, falling asleep only long enough to wake up cold and stiff and exhausted. We didn’t care, just got ready and drove to school with the windows down, the smell of the forest rolling in from the hills, the wind snapping across our faces and waking us up.
I’d been so happy. A happy that seemed so simple now—and so out of reach. I shifted in my seat, then slid over to the passenger side and closed my eyes. I pretended it was that morning again, that Jess and I were in the car, cracked the window and felt the wind stir across the top of my head.
Feel it, I told myself. Feel it. You’re happy. You’re in the car, it’s early and the wind is blowing, catching your hair, and you’re—
Cold.
I’m cold, shivering, and there is a woman standing in front of me. She is saying something. I can see her mouth move. There is sweat on her forehead, fat moist drops. I am so thirsty, and there is water dripping over my face but I can’t seem to drink it. I can’t seem to lift my arms to wipe it away.
The woman takes my arm and her hand is hot on my skin, burning me. I yank myself free, still shivering.
Honey, she says. Honey, where did you come from? I just came round the corner and almost hit you. Where did you come from?
I want her to shut up. Her voice hurts my ears. I point back behind me. I will not look.
I don’t understand, she says.
There, I say. I was there. My voice hurts. I hurt.
The woman starts talking again and she is so loud. I put my hands over my ears. I can still hear her anyway, hear her saying, Were you in an accident? Did something happen to you? Did someone do this to you?
Honey, what’s your name?
I don’t know. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know who she is. I back away and she follows. She makes me take my hands off my ears.
Don’t be scared, she says. My car is right here. See my car? You’re safe now, honey. You’re safe. I’m Joyce and you’re safe. There you go, have a seat. I’m going to buckle your seat belt for you now, okay? There we go.
There is a window. There are trees all around me, so close, and I am so tired and so cold that I’m falling. I am moving side to side, trapped in a seat with my vision narrowing down to black and yellow spots, and it’s so warm behind me—so warm—and I know that if I turn around I’ll see . . .
I have to get away. I try to move but I can’t. I’m trapped. I can’t get free. I can’t—
I started to cry, shaking as a wounded noise ripped up my throat. It wouldn’t come out, lay trapped inside me, and I couldn’t breathe, felt the sides of my throat caving in. I buried my face in my hands, curling myself into a ball and willing my mind to go blank. I gulped in air, my heart knocking against my chest so hard I could feel it.
I had remembered something, finally, and I wished I hadn’t.
Twenty
I cried so hard I ended up shaking uncontrollably, my chest hitching, and when I breathed I felt the weird spasm that snags your throat before you throw up. I couldn’t seem to stop it.
I cupped my hands around my ears and dug my fingers in hard, scraping the skin beneath them. It hurt and I did it over and over again until my eyes watered and my head cleared, and then I crawled back into the driver’s seat.
I didn’t want to drive home—I didn’t want to drive at all—but I couldn’t stay where I was. Not with . . . I thought about what I remembered, what had happened to me, and shook my head, hard, as another sob shook me. In front of me, the trees shimmied, shaking in the wind.
I started the car.
I knew I was driving, that I was on the road, but I didn’t feel like I was. I felt like I couldn’t reach the pedals even though I knew my feet were on them and the steering wheel felt like a puff of smoke, imagination in my hands.
I started counting out loud, hoping it would pull me back into myself. It didn’t really work but I kept going because I didn’t know what else to do. I was afraid to keep driving but was even more afraid to stop. What would happen to me if I did?
At 486 or 846—I couldn’t remember what number I was on—I saw Margaret. I was at a stop sign, brake mashed to the floor so hard my foot hurt. She glanced at me and shoved her glasses up her nose, but didn’t wave or anything. She wasn’t walking like she usually did, like she was in a hurry and might knock you down if you got in her way.
Instead she was walking slowly, like she was in pain.
I rolled down my window. “Margaret? Are you . . . are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, and waved a hand at me, dismissal. “I know you must have seen people out walking before. Probably done it yourself when you aren’t gawking at stop signs.”
I wondered where she’d been walking and then remembered the church cemetery was out here, in a space we shared with another church in town. My mom sat on the board that hired someone to mow once a month and argued over how tall grave markers should be.
Margaret had been to Rose’s grave.
When Rose died there had been a service at the church, but afterward only Reverend Williams, Margaret, and Rose’s brother from Ohio had gone on to the grave. Rose hadn’t wanted anyone else there when she was buried. The rest of us gathered in the church basement for a covered dish supper and when Margaret and Reverend Williams came back from the cemetery, Margaret unveiled an industrial coffeemaker that had Rose’s name engraved on the base.
Rose had always been in charge of making coffee for the suppers and it had been famously bad—burnt or watery, or once, tasting like soap bec
ause she’d forgotten to rinse the pot out. Everyone had clapped and laughed through their tears and Margaret had said, “This is how she wanted to be remembered.”
I bet Margaret didn’t think of coffee when she thought of Rose, and I said, “Do you—do you want a ride home?”
Margaret straightened up, looked both ways, and then crossed over to my car, marched right up to my window.
“Listen up, Meggie,” she said. “I’m not that old, and I’ll have you know I’m still perfectly capable of going for a walk.”
“I didn’t say you were old. I just—”
“What are you doing out here anyway? And why are your eyes all red and swollen?”
“No reason,” I muttered. “And I’m going, okay? I just thought maybe you’d want a ride home because you look . . . you look a little tired.”
She snorted. “I do not look tired. And even if I was, I could get home just fine. I don’t need you feeling sorry for me.”
“I don’t—”
“Oh, yes, you do,” she said. “‘Oh, look, there’s Margaret, walking home from Rose’s grave. Poor old Margaret—’”
“Fine,” I snapped. “I do feel sorry for you. What’s so horrible about that?”
She squinted at me, then stalked around to the passenger side and got in. When I didn’t start driving right away, she sighed and made a ‘go’ motion with both hands.
We crossed over one street before she spoke.
“You’re a fine one to talk about people feeling sorry for you, you know. People at church try to talk to you about what happened and you just stand there and nod until you think up an excuse to get your mother or father to take you home. Why do you do that?”
“I don’t know.”
She sighed, sharp and exasperated, but when she spoke again her voice was soft with understanding. “You don’t remember everything about the crash, do you?”
I turned onto her street and stared blindly at the church, seeing only trees and dirt and my bare feet. “I don’t—I don’t remember it at all.”
She didn’t say anything but when I pulled into her driveway she reached over and turned off the car. I sat there, staring at my hands clenched tight on the steering wheel.
She got out and said, “Meggie, come in and sit down for a bit, all right?”
She sounded just like always, the question more of an order, and her bossiness somehow made me feel better. Like at least someone knew what to do, and so I got out of the car.
Inside, I sat at the kitchen table while she did something over by the stove. After a while she put a glass of milk in front of me.
“Drink up,” she said, pointing at the milk, and then sat down across from me.
I pushed the glass away and she sighed. “Your bones need calcium.”
“I don’t feel so good,” I said. And I didn’t. I felt hollowed out, which wasn’t new, but around the edges of it, underneath, was something else. Panic. I could feel the memory of coming out of the forest after the plane crash pulling at me, dragging me down into a place of endless fear. Or remembering.
“I’m not surprised,” she said. “Please drink the milk, Megan. There’s sugar in it, and vanilla. It’ll make you feel better.”
I drank it. I never knew people put vanilla into milk. Why would you even bother when there was chocolate around? But the smell of the vanilla made the milk taste softer somehow, and it did make me feel better. Calmer.
She got up and went into the living room while I was drinking and came back with an old paperback. The cover was gone and the pages were yellowed, curling up at the edges.
“I gave this to Rose a long time ago,” she said. “A friend of mine from the war, a doctor, sent it to me after we moved here. It talks about the war and how it hurt people. We’d had dinner with him and his wife as we were driving out here and Rose . . . it wasn’t a good night for her. She—well, she looked a lot like you do right now.”
She tapped the book with one hand. “My friend was worried about her. I was worried about her. And you know what? She never read this book. She wouldn’t even look at it.”
She glanced down at it and sighed, and then she looked up at me. “For the first few months we lived here, I tried so hard to make Rose better and she hated it. She said she didn’t want me trying to fix her. She said I made her feel broken and I—I finally decided that if I acted like everything was fine then eventually it would be.”
She took a deep breath and folded her hands together. “But things weren’t fine. Rose and I were happy but she—she was unhappy with herself for a long time. When I think back, I wish I’d told her to get help. I wish I’d said more, done more. But I didn’t, and it wasn’t until around the time your parents were first married that she truly felt like a real person again. Your mother probably remembers how Rose was before she was able to really face what had happened to her. You should ask her about it sometime.”
“Why are you telling me this? What are you trying to say?”
“I think you know, Meggie,” she said, looking at me until I looked away, “but I’ll say it anyway. You need help, and you should start by telling your parents what you’ve told me.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, and pushed away from the table, standing up. “I’ll go do that right now.”
“I don’t think this will make you feel better, but you remind me so much of myself when I was your age,” Margaret said as she stood up and headed toward the front door, opening it for me. When she looked back and saw my face, she laughed. “Now you definitely remind me of how I was at your age. Do yourself a favor and go straight home, Meggie. Talk to your parents. Really talk to them.”
“It won’t work,” I said. “It won’t help them at all.”
“Oh, Megan,” Margaret said. “Don’t you get it? It will help you.”
Twenty-One
When I got home, Mom was catching up on TV, sitting on the sofa in the living room fast-forwarding through the commercials with a pile of partially folded laundry beside her.
“Hey Mom,” I said, and she looked up and gave me a huge smile.
“Some day off, right?” she said, and patted the space next to her. “Come sit with me.”
I did, and she went back to folding socks. David’s feet were already so big his socks were larger than Dad’s. When the ads stopped she watched a little bit of TV and then stopped it, turning the television off and looking at me. I stared at the socks.
“So, you’re home early.”
From the way she said it, with a weird catch in her voice, I knew she’d already gotten the call Coach had told me about. I glanced at her, and the look on her face . . . she looked like David used to when he was really little and first started trying to lift his head up. He was so sick that he couldn’t do it. He’d wanted to do it—you could see it—but he couldn’t, and Mom looked like that. Like there was something she wanted to say but couldn’t.
Or wouldn’t.
“Mom,” I said, and when she looked at me my voice dried up. She looked so scared.
It was worse than the smiles, than the too-eager eyes. It was one thing to see my parents pretend. It was another to see that they knew something was wrong and had no idea how to fix it.
That they knew I was broken.
So we pretended, just like we had since I’d opened my eyes in the hospital room. I sat there, scared and lost, and faked a smile while she turned the TV back on and filled me in on what was going on so there was no room for me to say another word.
“Your father’s coming home for lunch,” she said when she got up to put the laundry away. I was digging my nails into my palms, trying to stay calm, to look normal. She was balancing the laundry basket on one hip, grasping it with her right hand while her left fidgeted with the television remote.
“There’s his car now. Hear it?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “He and I have to go out for a little while this afternoon. How does bologna sound? Or would you rather have grilled cheese?”
“Chee
se,” I said. Mom left, and I scrunched my knees up tight into my chest, trying not to hear them talking in the kitchen. I heard the words “school” and “meeting” and my mother sniffed like she was trying not to cry. I had to lie down but it wasn’t like before, wasn’t like when I was being pulled back into memories I now knew I didn’t ever want to have.
I felt sick with anticipation, with something that felt like hope because I knew something was going to happen now. It had to. They couldn’t avoid this—me—now.
But they did.
We ate lunch, or at least they did and I tore my sandwich into smaller and smaller pieces while Dad told us about his morning and then Mom told him about someone at the dealership who needed homeowners insurance. Dad wrote down the info and said he’d give them a call. They were both really happy to get me more soda or another half a sandwich, but were just fine with me not wanting anything too. They didn’t say one thing about school but as they were finishing their food, Mom looked at the clock and said, “Well, George, we’d better get going.”
That was it. That was all they said. They knew I was failing all my classes. They knew I wasn’t working on my independent study. They knew I had missed a lot of school. They knew I hadn’t gone today.
They knew I wasn’t a miracle. They just didn’t say it. Wouldn’t say it.
I didn’t say it either. I just fiddled with my glass of soda and said, “I guess I’ll do some homework. Maybe get out the soccer ball and practice a little.”
Mom and Dad said that sounded great. I was lying and they knew it. They were lying and I knew it. But no one said that.
No one said anything real.
I stayed in the kitchen after they left. Why bother going up to my room? I would be there soon enough, tonight, lying awake waiting for another day to begin. I’d go to school, if I could, and then come right back home and do it all again and again and again. That was how things were. How they were going to be.
My feet were cold. I could feel the floor, slick linoleum rubbing against my toes. I looked down.