Margaret was inside practicing on the organ. She took one look at me and stopped playing.
“You told them.” It wasn’t a question.
I nodded.
“You need water,” she said, and pulled a bottle of it out of her enormous purse. “It’s warm, but it’ll do and besides, your face is as red as a tomato, so come on, sit down and drink a little water, okay?”
I did.
“It pays to carry a decent-size purse,” she said and frowned at my empty hands. “That’s advice you should definitely take to heart. Do you even own a wallet?”
She was acting so normal that I was able to open the water and drink it. She went back to the organ and started practicing the song she’d been playing again. She only stopped once, to tell me to finish the water, and when she was done she shuffled her music together and stood up. Her knees made a loud cracking sound.
“Used to jog when I was younger,” she said. “See what you have to look forward to? Now, come on, get up, and get you something to eat. I have some leftover soup I need to get rid of.”
“I—”
“Fine, I’ll open a new can just for you.” The words sounded like Margaret but her voice was soothing and kind. Understanding.
She called my parents when we got to her house. She didn’t ask if it was okay or anything, just told me she was doing it and said I could talk to them if I wanted.
I didn’t, so I went into her study and sat on the floor looking at Rose’s bears.
“I wanted to let them know where you are,” she said when I came back to the kitchen after she’d called that my soup was ready. “They’d like to come pick you up.”
“No,” I said. It came out louder than I meant it to.
Margaret didn’t look surprised, though, just said, “All right. Go wash your hands.”
When I came back from the bathroom she was on the phone again. I could tell it was with my parents because I heard her say, “Well, George, I appreciate that,” and I went right back into the study and picked up one of the bears. I wondered if Rose’s memories were like mine, if she’d seen something like what I had. If she had, how had she ever been able to make anything like this?
Margaret came back when I was still holding the bear and said, “Your parents and I have agreed that I’ll drive you home in the morning.”
“Oh. Thank—”
Margaret shook her head. “Not necessary.” She smiled at the bear, then motioned for me to hand it to her. “Rose was happiest when she was making them, you know. I think they took her away from everything.”
“What do you do about your memories?”
Margaret sighed and stroked the top of the bear’s head as she put it away. “Think about Rose. Pray. Go talk to Dr. Lincoln, who I’ve mentioned to you and your parents before. He really is a nice man, Meggie. Terrible posture, but you know how tall people slouch. You should go see him.”
“And do what?”
“Talk to him, I would think,” she said, squinting at me. “Now come on, your soup is getting cold.”
So I ate soup with her and then sat on her sofa while she made more phone calls. She knew a lot of people, and they must have all been old like her because she talked a lot about arthritis and the weather. She usually mentioned Vietnam too, and sometimes she’d say, “Yes, Rose would have liked that.”
After every call she’d ask me how I was feeling. I always said I was fine. After her fifth phone call, she sat next to me on the sofa and started eating a candy bar. When she broke off part and held it out to me, I ate it.
“You know what the worst thing about bad days is?” she said. “People try to cheer you up by saying tomorrow is another day or worse, a fresh start. I suppose everyone wants to think that something better must be coming.”
I nodded. “Or no one wants to say, ‘Sorry, your day sucks but you’ve still got to get through it.’”
She smiled and handed me another piece of candy bar. “You will get through today, Megan.”
“Why? Because I’m a miracle, the girl who survived Flight 619?”
Margaret sighed. “No. I mean you’ll get through it because it’s after eight already and there’s not much of today left. Now, I have to go call my friend Bill and I’ll be a while, especially if he starts talking about his back.”
He did, and when she finally got off the phone she yawned and then got me a blanket and pillows for the sofa. “Your father told me you like to run at night. He doesn’t seem too fond of it. I’m guessing you like it, though?”
I nodded.
She patted the pillows. “It makes you feel better?”
I nodded again.
“You’ll stay in town and won’t go near strange cars?”
When I looked at her she said, “People do pass through here from time to time, you know. And don’t answer me with another nod.”
“I don’t leave town and I won’t talk to strangers. I just—I just like to run.”
“Fair enough, but if you track dirt into the house, you have to clean it.” She handed me a house key. “This was Rose’s. Don’t lose it.”
“Thank you,” I said, and she waved one hand at me and went to bed. I sat on the sofa for a long time and then I got up and went outside. I didn’t run. I just sat on her porch. I was careful not to think about anything. I just stared straight ahead, into the dark.
A huge white car drove by when it was so late even the crickets chirping in the grass had gone quiet. It looked like one of Mrs. Harrison’s cars. She lived in a huge, old house beside Reardon Logging and made a ton of money renting out rooms to people who worked there and couldn’t afford a place of their own. She wore the same three dresses over and over again, and supposedly never did anything to the house, but once a year she’d have someone take her to Derrytown and come back with a big new white car. Then she’d sell her old one. There were about six of them in town now, and they were always easy to spot.
The car slowed down, and Joe’s voice called out the window, “Hey, Meggie.”
“What are you doing with one of Mrs. Harrison’s cars?”
“Bought it from her. Figured since I was already paying her rent and needed a car . . .”
“You’re living there?”
“Yeah. I think this thing is bigger than the room she’s got me in. It’s like driving a boat.” He laughed. When I didn’t, he turned the car off and got out. “What are you doing here?”
“I—some stuff happened at home. I have to go back in the morning. Are you going to leave your car in the middle of the street?”
“Who’s going to be out driving now? Besides me, of course.” He walked across Margaret’s yard. I waited for him to ask what happened but instead he sat down next to me and said, “Do you want to go home?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.”
He grinned at me. “You could always rent a room at Mrs. Harrison’s. You’d get to share a bathroom with six other guys and also listen to her talk about how much her feet hurt whenever you pass her on the stairs.”
“Do you—do you miss living at home?”
He was silent for a second. “When Beth was alive, I just wanted to get out of there. But after she died and everything fell apart, I missed it. Missed her, missed my parents, missed everything even though things were never all that good. And now I can’t even go there anymore. So yeah, I miss it. And you know what the worst thing is?”
I shook my head and wrapped my arms around my knees.
“No one can see how sorry I am about Beth, or how much I miss her, or how I’m not the same guy who slept in detention while his sister died. I can say it, but it’s not—if people could somehow see it, if there was something in me or on me that showed it then . . . then maybe my mom would want to talk to me or my dad . . . I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not. I wish I had a scar or something from the crash. Something that would make my parents see I’m not a miracle. That I’m whatever the opposite of a miracle is.”
“Why the opposite?”
“Because I didn’t even remember the crash until today. I said I did, but I didn’t. I knew that meant something was wrong with me, I knew I should remember. But now that I do, it hasn’t made things better. I remember everything and what happened . . . I’m not a miracle, and I already knew that. I just—I still feel as bad as I did before. Worse, even. What I saw . . . what happened . . .” I broke off, shuddered.
He was silent for a long time. “Maybe people like us . . . maybe we don’t get better,” he finally said. “I feel just as bad now as I did the day I came home and saw Beth’s bare feet hanging out the door. Maybe you and I have to learn how to live with what we saw. With what we know.”
I pressed my hands against the porch, anchoring myself. “Do you really think that’s true?”
“It sucks, so I figure it must be. Are you all right?”
I shook my head.
“Me either. Can I—is it okay if I sit with you for a while?”
“Yeah,” I said, and so we sat on the porch and looked out into the dark together.
“So why are you out here?” I said when the sky had started to lighten. “Were you . . . did you see me on your way home from a . . . you know. Thing. Or whatever.”
“No,” he said. “No thing. Or whatever. I’m not seeing anyone right now. I was just driving around.”
“You were just driving around in the middle of the night?”
“You go running in the middle of the night.”
“That’s different.”
He laughed and I felt something strange stretch my mouth. I touched one finger to it.
It was a smile.
“How come you’re not seeing anyone?”
“I don’t know. I guess maybe I’ve been spending a lot of time hanging out with this person who likes to talk in the middle of the night, and I feel like she gets me. I actually like her more than I’ve liked anyone in a long time, so . . .”
I looked over at him, shocked, and my heart started pounding fast and hard. But not from fear. From something else, something new.
“You could say something,” he muttered, staring at the ground. “Anything, really.”
I looked at him and thought about how I used to see him, and how I saw him now. Who I’d thought he was, and who he really was, and said, “I think you’re even better looking inside than you are outside and that—well, that’s a lot.”
“Meggie,” he said, almost helplessly, and for the first time in a long time my name sounded sweet to me. His pinkie brushed against mine, and I didn’t move my hand away. We stayed where we were, silent, until the sky turned a pale milky pink and he had to go to work. I missed his pinkie resting against mine after he left.
I was still sitting on the porch when Margaret came out, stretched her arms up over her head, and then sat next to me. “Was that Mrs. Harrison’s car parked out in the road in the middle of the night?”
I looked over at her. She was frowning at her flowerbeds.
“I need more mulch,” she said and then looked at me. “When Joe first came back to town, I’d never seen anybody look as miserable and lonely as he did. He’s looked happier lately. Is that because of you?”
I shrugged. She squinted at me, then pushed her glasses up her nose and got up. “Do you want some breakfast before I take you home?”
“Can I sit here for just a little while longer?”
“Sure,” she said, and patted my shoulder. “I’ll give you a few minutes. Look, Meggie, you’re always welcome here, all right?”
“Thanks.”
“But next time you’re here and Joe comes by, it had better be daytime, and he’d better not walk all over my flowerbeds. Got it?”
I smiled at her. “Got it.”
She tried not to smile back, but I saw a grin quirk the edges of her mouth. “Good.”
Twenty-Three
When I got home, Mom and Dad were waiting for me. They looked like they wanted to hug me but I hung back until they stepped away. I could hear David up in his room, stomping around getting ready for school. I’d seen him through his window when I’d come up to the house. He’d looked out and saw me, and then turned away.
“Meggie,” Mom said. Her lips were trembling. “We’re so glad you’re home. And we—” She glanced at Dad, then back at me. “We need to talk.”
“I have to talk to David first.”
“David?” Dad said. “Sweetheart, you can talk to him later. Right now what’s important is—”
“This is important to me,” I said, and went upstairs. David was coming out of his room.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.” He tried to walk around me.
“Can I talk to you?” I leaned over to block him. He flinched and then tried to hide it, scowling at me.
“I gotta go wait for the stupid bus.”
“It’ll just take a second.”
He tried to push past me.
“Wait.” I grabbed the side of his backpack to stop him, hanging on even though I was holding something disturbingly damp and mushy.
“Quit it.”
“David—”
“Let go of my backpack!”
“Fine, I’d love to.” I dropped my hand, rubbing it against my leg and trying not to think about why it was so sticky. “Look, I just wanted to tell you—”
He pushed me. “I don’t care. All Mom and Dad ever talk about now is you. Everything is about you. You get to do whatever you want just because you were in some stupid plane crash.”
I wanted to push him back. I moved away so I wouldn’t. “People died, David. I—I saw them. That’s not stupid.”
“But Mom and Dad said you were the only one who lived after the plane crashed.”
“They don’t know what really happened. I . . . I had trouble remembering for a while.”
“Like you forgot?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.” He looked at the stairs and then back at me. “How come?”
“I don’t know. I just did.”
“But now you remember.”
I nodded.
“Is that why you ran away last night?”
“I didn’t run away.”
He smirked.
“Fine, whatever, David. Look, I just wanted to tell you . . . remember what happened in the kitchen? When I—when I hit you? And then that time in the bathroom? I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah, okay. Can I go now? If I miss the bus I won’t get to read Robert’s sister’s diary. She writes these poems about guys. It’s really funny.”
“Oh. Sure. Bye.”
“Bye.” He moved past me and started down the stairs. Halfway down he came back and hugged me. “I’m glad you didn’t die, Meggie.”
I hugged him back. “Thanks.”
“All right, let go. You stink.”
I did, laughing for what felt like the first time in ages. He grinned at me and then ran downstairs. I waited until I heard the front door slam, and then I went to talk to my parents.
I knew I had to do this, that I had to stop pretending for them. I needed to know why they needed me to be fine, to be a miracle, but it was hard to walk toward them.
I was angry—angry and scared and still full of everything that had happened. Everything that I’d remembered. And part of me wished I could forget it all, erase the memories that had returned. The horrible things I’d seen.
Carl was sitting at the bottom of the stairs. He wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at his pictures of his wife, his family.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, but he didn’t hear me. He couldn’t.
Mom and Dad could, though. I took a deep breath and went into the living room where they were waiting for me.
They both stood up when I came in, like I was a guest, and the love and hope and fear on their faces rattled me. I backed up a step, leaning against the door, and they sat down.
“Plenty of space here,” Dad said, patting the area between him and Mom on the sofa.
I sat on the floor. Dad’s face fell but I didn’t move, just waited for him to speak.
He didn’t, but Mom did.
“Yesterday, you said some things to me,” she said. “You didn’t—Meggie, you didn’t remember the crash?”
I nodded.
“But in the hospital you said—”
“I wanted to go home. I wanted . . . I wanted you to be happy. To stop looking at me.”
“Looking at you?” Dad said.
“You were—you just stared at me. All the time, that’s what you did, and I just wanted you stop. I thought if I said I remembered and we went home . . . I thought that at home, everything would go back to normal. That I would. That you would.”
“But we . . .” Dad said, and then trailed off, seeing something in my expression. “All right. We tried too hard at first, Meggie. But we were so glad to have you with us. When we got that phone call and had to drive to Staunton, your mother and I thought you were dead. You can’t know what that felt like. And then finding out you were alive—”
“It was a miracle,” Mom said, and my stomach twisted, my throat got tight. “You surviving was a—why do you look so upset?”
“You know why,” I said, my voice quiet. Broke. “I told you. I’m not a miracle.”
“But you lived—”
“Yeah, I lived. But there’s something wrong with me and you and Dad know it. I don’t sleep. I can’t handle going to school. I’m afraid of trees and I run every night because I can’t stand being around myself but can’t get away. I walk around and wonder if I’m even alive, but all you do is smile and pretend. Why can’t you see that I’m not a miracle at all? Why can’t you admit that I—?”
I broke off because I was shaking now, scared.
Waiting.
Dad stared at me. His face was pale and he suddenly looked really old, worn-out and sad and scared.
“Meggie, sweetheart,” he said and then stopped, folding his hands together and staring down at them like they knew something he didn’t.
“It’s my fault,” Mom said and looked at me, so much pain on her face and in her voice that I wanted to look away but couldn’t. She looked like how I felt, and I watched as she got up and walked over to the window.