“Meggie?”
I jumped, and Mom put a hand on my arm.
“Sweetie, we’re home, and whatever you’re thinking about must be good because it was like you weren’t in the car at all for a second there.” She grinned at me, please-be-all-right-please-you-are-a-miracle shining in that grin and even stronger in her eyes.
I unbuckled my seat belt and got out of the car to get away from her, from everything. Mom waved as she backed down the driveway, returning to church. I waved back even though my arm felt like it was stuck in drying cement.
I couldn’t walk up the driveway. I couldn’t even move. I knew if I did something horrible would happen. I tried to keep standing, but my knees were shaking so bad I had to sit down.
The driveway was hot. When winter came, it would come hard, but for now the last of summer held on, creating a heat shimmer everywhere I looked. I didn’t like that, how everything was blurred around the edges, and stared down at the driveway.
Dad had paved it when David was four, after he’d tried to ride standing up on his kiddie bike and fell, scraping his face and arms on the gravel. Now the driveway was smooth and dark, and the heat of it radiated through the long skirt Mom had brought home for me on Friday, something she’d “grabbed” while out in Derrytown loading up on stuff at the warehouse club. She and Dad hadn’t said anything about the weight I’d gained, the way the muscles in my legs had become coated with a soft, shaking layer of fat.
I liked it. I’d always been skinny, so skinny that Dr. Weaver was forever asking Mom if I was eating. When I was born, he’d told her I’d always be sickly and weak, a child to worry over, to keep away from anything strenuous. Then David came along and he was even scrawnier than I was and sickly for real.
But David filled out, became blond and angelic-looking with soft little dimples of skin around his elbows and knees and chubby little cheeks that he’d never quite lost. I stayed brown-haired and scrawny, but I didn’t get sick, and the first time I played soccer I never wanted to stop. I’d stayed totally flat-chested until I was fourteen though, and even then grew just enough to fill an A-cup. I’d hated that, but liked how strong I was, how I could run and kick. I liked feeling my body work.
I didn’t want to think about it now. My heart beating. Me breathing. I didn’t—I didn’t get why any of it was still happening. I felt like it could stop anytime.
I closed my eyes and lay down on the driveway, let the heat of it soak into me. I ran one hand up my side, trying to make sure I was still there, and stopped at my chest. I had actual breasts now, and I poked at the side of one. I completely got why guys loved them now. They were so soft.
“What are you doing?”
I opened my eyes and saw a pair of jean-clad knees down toward the end of the driveway. Up, up, I looked, all the way up to a beautiful, puzzled-looking face. Joe. If I’d known before that all I had to do to get him to talk to me was come home from church and lay down on the driveway on a Sunday afternoon . . .
I never would have done it.
I never was the kind of person who did stuff like that. I was the kind of person who laid out in the backyard wearing a T-shirt over my bathing suit to hide my flat chest and everything else. I was the kind of person who always wore my seat belt, cleaned my room, and did my homework. I was the kind of person who freaked out over pop quizzes or running a mile a tenth of a second slower than usual. I was the kind of person who didn’t know what to do when things went wrong.
I was the kind of person who should have died when the plane crashed.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” I was the kind of person who wouldn’t have been able to say anything to Joe until long after he’d left.
Was. Now I just didn’t care anymore.
“Like you’re lying on your driveway feeling yourself up. Did Reverend Williams replace the grape juice with wine at Communion?”
“Nope.” I lifted myself onto my elbows, looking at him. “So, you’ve been standing around watching me?”
“What?” he said, clearly startled, and small stripes of red bloomed on his face, across his cheeks. “I didn’t—wasn’t—”
“Oh, get over yourself,” I said. “So you were watching me. If you came home and lay down on your driveway—with your shirt off, of course—I’d look.”
“Like I could lie down on my driveway without your parents seeing and calling the cops. Ever since I got back, it’s like they’re waiting for me to come over the fence swinging an axe or something.”
“Are you?”
He grinned. “I might now.”
I started to say something but the wind rustled behind us, pushing through the trees. I couldn’t see his smile anymore, just saw red, hungry and waiting, all around me.
I turned around to look at the trees. To see where they were. To make sure they weren’t any closer. If I wasn’t careful, they’d surround me, scratching me as I moved, waiting to grab me, swallow me—
“Hey, are you all right?” Joe had come up the driveway and was leaning over a little, snapping his fingers next to my face. “Megan?”
The red—the haze—it was fire and it was here. It was inside me. I could feel it hissing, a strange sharp pain that snapped inside my head.
It made me want to scream. It made me want to run.
I pushed myself up and smacked into him, hitting my head on his chin.
“What are—shit!” he said, and took a step back. “I almost bit my tongue off! What the hell is wrong with you? First you go into some sort of trance, then you—Jesus.” He brushed the back of his hand across his face. “Crap, I did bite my tongue.”
“Trance?”
“You were staring at the—” He gestured back at the trees. “I wasn’t sure you were even breathing because you were so still you looked half dea . . .” He trailed off, wiping his mouth again, and I knew, suddenly, what he was thinking about. Who.
And it wasn’t me.
“Do you miss Beth?”
He looked at me and then down at the ground, a picture-perfect image of grief, and I was sorry I’d asked. I didn’t want posturing, pretending. I’d had enough of that.
Then he said something.
“I don’t miss how she went through my stuff,” he said, looking up and off into the distance, at something—someone—only he could see, and I saw his grief was real. It was still there, raw inside him. He still missed Beth enough to remember that she wasn’t perfect. He still missed her enough to see her as real.
“I don’t miss how she was so smart she would say stuff I didn’t understand. But I miss the way she got excited about weird stuff like vinegar and would read everything she could about it. She . . . you know, she could have done anything, been anything, but she never got the chance. I hate that she didn’t get that like you did.”
“Oh. I mean, yes, I got a second chance. I’m very lucky.”
He looked at me then. “Yeah?” He didn’t sound like he believed a word I said.
I looked back at him and saw I could tell him the truth, or at least part of it. I could tell him, and he’d get it, somehow.
He must have seen that and not wanted any part of it because he turned around and walked away. He didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t look back.
I didn’t feel anything watching him go. I didn’t even wish I did.
Nine
There were four people on the plane with me. Carl, casting glances at my pretzels and telling stories. Walter, tugging at his hat and talking excitedly about trees. Sandra, arms cut with muscles that flexed whenever she moved, fiddling with her seat belt and jiggling one leg. Henry, with his weathered face and brown hair combed flat with dandruff flaking in his part.
Four people, all gone.
And then I started to see them.
When I went outside to my car one morning, Carl was standing by it, Sandra and Walter just behind him.
“Missed a chance to grab lunch earlier,” Carl said. “Why is it that there aren’t any vending machines in a
irports? Seems like it would be a great place to put them.”
“Stop it,” I said. “This isn’t real. You’re—you aren’t here.” Mom tapped the kitchen window, waving at me and mouthing, “Did you forget something?”
I forced myself to wave back, to shake my head.
Walter cleared his throat and said, “When my sister went to Japan, she said there were vending machines everywhere.”
Carl shot him a look. “Japan? Who the hell is talking about Japan? You’re not from around here, are you?”
“No.” Walter flushed and tugged on his hat.
“Look, I just want to get home,” Sandra said. “My daughter’s been sick, and now my husband’s got her cold, and I hate flying and just want to get this over with.” She raised her voice a little, and looked at me. “Why are we waiting here?”
I got in the car then. I backed down the driveway. I didn’t look back to see if Sandra and Carl and Walter were still there. Still waiting.
I’d been there during that conversation. It was . . . it had happened. It was real and I could remember all of it now. We’d been in Staunton, waiting for the plane. I could see the thin blue airport carpet, scuffed with shoe prints. Sandra had turned away when I’d shrugged after she’d asked why we were waiting, looked out the airport window. There had been nothing to see except asphalt and then, past that, a drainage ditch and a fence. We couldn’t even see our plane.
I drove to school, my hands wet and shaking on the steering wheel, and told myself it was just a memory. That’s all it was. They weren’t real. They weren’t here.
But they were, and after that first time, I couldn’t get rid of them. Couldn’t stop seeing them. When the sun rose, I would peer out my bedroom window and see them sitting on the lawn waiting for me. On the way to school, I’d see Carl cracking his knuckles. Walter would be at school, in the halls tugging nervously on his hat. Sandra would be in the kitchen when I got home, reading the little airline safety booklet and frowning.
They were dead. I knew that. But I saw them anyway, and I felt something when I saw them.
I was scared, and I didn’t like that.
I didn’t like that at all.
I would close my eyes when I saw them, tell myself I could make them go away. That they were just in my mind.
But when I opened my eyes, they were always still there.
School got harder. I couldn’t concentrate, my mind gritty with exhaustion and fear. And then Coach Henson asked me to come back to soccer. “Team needs you, Megan,” he said when I came into school one morning. “Needs your skills. Your strength. You’ll come to practice today, won’t you?”
“I—” I said, and beside him Henry shook his head, dandruff snowing from his hair, and waved at Carl, who was standing right beside me.
“Can get bumpy up in the hills,” Henry said. “Is all that damned luggage yours?”
I nodded, terrified.
“Fantastic,” Coach said. “I knew I could count on you.”
“Don’t mind Henry,” Carl said. “It won’t hurt him to deal with a suitcase or two. Say, you don’t have anything to eat on you, do you?”
Henry wasn’t there. Carl wasn’t there. I wasn’t really seeing them. I wasn’t. I watched Coach smile and told myself I had to try and be the Megan I was supposed to be.
So I tried. When classes were over I went down to the practice field. I didn’t see Carl or Sandra or Walter or Henry anywhere. Maybe it would be okay. Maybe I really could play soccer again.
We ran first. Warming up, Coach yelling encouragement and telling us to move. My body felt strange, not light and in danger of floating away like it usually did. Instead, I felt awkward, slow. Weighed down. My lungs hurt, and I couldn’t get into an easy rhythm.
I kept going, though, and toward the end of the last loop around the field, I felt something inside me relax. I felt my body moving, saw the last curve of the field, the patch of grass where we always stopped. It was dented and yellowed from where everyone stood, sweating and ready to play, and when I finally got there, my lungs were on fire and my whole body hurt. The muscles in my legs were trembling, and sweat was pouring down my face. But I felt good. I felt connected to myself in a way I hadn’t since I’d opened my eyes and found out I was a miracle.
I felt real.
Then I saw the soccer balls. Coach tipped them out, pointing and yelling as he kicked one to each of us. “Stacey, get over there! Kathleen, hustle! Megan, let’s focus on the attack! Wait a minute, what’s with your shoes?”
I hadn’t worn my cleats. They were still on the roof. And when the soccer ball came toward me, black and white circling round and round, everything got dark, my vision narrowing like I was going to faint.
I staggered back a step, the ground a pinpoint I could hardly see, the sky a speck of fading blue that seemed wrong. False. I knew what was really there. What was underneath.
I knew that past the blue was smoke and flames and the burning sky; the hidden one, real one, would crackle red and wrap itself around me. I saw pieces of clothing and shoes and a soccer ball melting together, burning as a hand touched mine, its skin cracking and blistering and—
I bit the inside of my cheek as hard as I could. It hurt, and blood filled my mouth, the world coming back as I spit, watched red spatter the ground.
I backed away from the soccer balls, from the field. I backed up until everything was a blur, Coach’s questions a buzz in my ears, and then I went home.
When I got there, I went in the bathroom. I put two fingers in the left side of my mouth, stretching it wide as I stared at myself in the mirror. There was a raw red spot inside my mouth. It hurt when I touched it. I pulled my fingers free and watched my face settle back into place, blank and pale except for the dark circles under my eyes.
I had been here before. I stared in the mirror and saw rain falling all around me, felt it slapping my hair, my face, and my feet.
I’m cold and tired and my head hurts and I saw—I trip over something, a tree, a rock, my own feet, and I don’t mind that I will hit the ground. I would like to close my eyes. But my mouth, which is open, panting, snaps shut and my teeth catch on skin, tearing. I spit, red more red, and the wind blows through the trees, pushing me forward, and I go, one foot in front of the other in front of the other in front of the other because I know what is behind me and I don’t want to see it.
I left the bathroom. I went to my room, shut the door, and opened the window.
Up on the roof, I could feel the sun hot on the bottoms of my feet, burning through my shoes. The ground looked far away. The trees didn’t. Around me were my soccer shoes, the afghan I’d gotten, and the clothes I’d been wearing when the plane crashed, the ones Mom and Dad had saved in a bag I wasn’t ever going to open again.
I looked down at the ground. I had fallen into it before. Maybe I should have stayed there. I leaned over more, closer.
Carl stared up at me, mouth open and hands reaching toward me. His face was bloody, melting.
I almost lost my balance and felt my heart hammer in my chest as I slipped to my knees, my hands scrabbling over the hot roof as I tried to steady myself.
David got off the bus and walked through Carl on his way to the house. I blinked hard, wiping my eyes with one hand.
Carl was gone; I just saw ground now. I climbed back into my room and shut the window, then closed the curtains.
At dinner, I told Mom and Dad I wasn’t ever going to play soccer again.
Dad opened his mouth, shocked-looking, but Mom put a hand on top of one of his and he closed it.
“Are you—are you sure about this?” Mom said, and then bit her lip like she’d said something she shouldn’t have.
“I’m sure,” I said, and she smiled but I knew she’d almost asked me something else. Almost asked me if I was all right. If anything was wrong. But she hadn’t.
She hadn’t, Dad hadn’t, and they weren’t going to. I was a miracle, and they needed that. I didn’t know why, but
I could see it in how they looked at me. In all the things they didn’t say.
“I got an A on my math test,” David said.
Once upon a time Mom and Dad would have made him get his test and stuck it on the fridge. They would have told him how proud they were. Once upon a time they looked at him and saw proof of a special gift they’d been given, a baby who hadn’t been expected to live but had. A miracle.
No one said anything to David now.
“I hate you,” he told me before he went to bed, opening my bedroom door and hissing the words at me. “Mom and Dad act like you’re perfect, but everyone else knows you’re crazy.”
“No,” I said. “You’re the only one who does.”
David looked surprised, and then he made a face at me and slammed my door.
Dad called out, “Meggie, are you all right?”
I got up and opened my door. David was standing at the top of the stairs, looking down into the living room where Mom and Dad sat. He looked so lost, so hurt.
“I’m fine,” I said, and shut my bedroom door so I wouldn’t see him cry.
Ten
Jess was waiting at my locker after second period the next morning. I ducked into the bathroom and locked myself in a stall. I heard her come in, saw her feet pause by the stall door as the bell rang, but I knew Jess. She could never be late for class. She’d be gone when I opened the door.
She was, but there was a note shoved into my locker, Jess’s round handwriting sprawled across a piece of notebook paper. Call me. Please.
I crumpled the note, watching the words disappear, and then, instead of going to class or even the library, I went home.
Mom showed up about an hour later, tires screeching as her car flew up the driveway, and she stayed home with me for the rest of the day. She felt my forehead constantly, said she’d heard there was a bad cold going around. She said I needed to rest. We watched her soap opera and made cookies.