“I think you’re underestimating your parents,” Margaret said, but she was wrong.
When I got home, Mom was there, in the kitchen, defrosting chicken.
“The school called,” she said, “so I came home early to see how you’re doing.” The microwave beeped and she opened the door, poked the chicken with a shaking hand, and then restarted it. “You’re feeling all right, aren’t you?”
I knew why the school had called. I hadn’t shown up for any classes. They had to call.
“I’m fine,” I told her, and waited to see what she’d say.
“Of course you are,” she said—of course, of course—and smiled at me. “Do you want something to eat?”
“Sure,” I said and ate chocolate chip cookies while Mom finished defrosting the chicken and then put it in the oven. She didn’t ask me anything else, and her hands never stopped shaking. I ate cookie after cookie but I still felt hollow inside, and when I went upstairs and lay down I knew I didn’t want to close my eyes.
Sixteen
After that phone call, things started to change at school.
My teachers started asking me to pay attention. They started asking me why I hadn’t done my homework. They asked me to please stop looking around and focus.
I didn’t pay attention. I didn’t do my homework. And I kept looking at the empty seats in my classes, and Carl or Sandra or Henry or Walter would be there. They could sit and wait for me forever. They had nowhere else to go. They’d never told me that, but then, they didn’t have to. Just them being there was enough.
Too much.
The extra time I’d been given for tests disappeared. I started getting them back with red Fs scrawled across them, and the understanding nods I’d gotten when I presented my empty hands instead of homework were replaced with frowns and more scarlet Fs. My guidance counselor pursued me in the halls, pressing me to turn in part of my independent study and set a schedule for the rest. She suggested that I come by her office, told me that we needed to talk. She said she noticed I’d been absent a lot. She said some of my teachers were concerned.
She didn’t mention my parents.
After that phone call, things changed at school, but not at home. There everything was the same. Everything was fine, and on Sunday, I sat between my parents in church, squeezed in by their love, and wanted to scream.
I didn’t, though. I just sat there, standing when I was supposed to, sitting when I was supposed to, a smile pasted on my mouth and my hands clamped into fists, nails digging into my palms. I saw Margaret looking at me, but pretended I didn’t see her.
The next day, David said he didn’t feel well. Mom made him go to school and that night, at dinner, he sneezed and coughed the whole time.
“I’m cold,” he said as we were supposed to be eating our meatloaf, and sneezed twice in a row.
Dad looked at him when he said that, concern on his face. Mom did too, and watching David light up under their gazes made something inside me hurt.
“Why don’t you excuse yourself and watch whatever you want on TV. If you’re getting sick, I don’t want Meggie to catch it,” Mom said. Dad nodded and the two of them looked at me. Me, not him.
David stood up and pushed his empty chair into the table hard, making it rattle. No one said anything when he left the room.
I asked to be excused after that and went to the living room, stood in the doorway looking at David. He was lying on the sofa watching some cops arrest an old guy who was driving on a suspended license. I wanted to say something but David turned up the television as soon as he saw me.
“David,” I said, and then paused because I didn’t know what else to say. He looked at me, and then he turned the TV up more, coughing as he did. Mom and Dad still didn’t come to check on him.
At home things were the same, but at school they kept changing.
My guidance counselor called Mom and Dad to talk about the work I wasn’t doing and the deadlines I’d missed for my independent study. They never told me about the call. I only found out because of Coach Henson.
He came up to me in the hall as I was leaving school, as I pushed past Carl, who was standing in a corner tapping one fist against his chest.
“Meggie?”
I jumped when I heard Coach’s voice, and when I looked over at him he was frowning, the lines on his forehead and between his eyes mirroring his mouth. I forced myself to smile, and knew it hadn’t come out right.
“I need to talk to you,” he said, glancing away from my bared teeth. “I was in guidance earlier, and they’re calling your parents. Apparently they’ve talked to your mother before but . . . anyway, it sounds like you’re having some problems with your grades and your independent study.”
I shrugged.
The furrows on his forehead and between his eyes grew deeper. “Look, no one is saying you aren’t capable, and I’m telling you about the calls because I believe in you. I know there have been big changes in your life and with change comes . . . well, change. But turning your back on your talents, your team, and not following through on assignments—that’s not acceptable, not on any level. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I wasn’t sure he even understood what he was saying, but I could tell he meant well. Everyone did. Everyone wanted me to keep being a miracle.
“Thanks, Coach,” I said, and went home.
Mom and Dad didn’t talk to me about the phone calls. Instead, Mom came up to my room that night. I was sitting cross-legged on the bed, staring gritty-eyed out the window. Once in a while I checked the clock to see how much time had gone by. It was always less than I thought.
“I came to see how you are,” she said, and put an arm around me. I looked at her fingers, felt them tremble on my arm.
“Fine,” I said and felt her hand relax.
“Studying?”
I looked at the closed books on the floor by my desk, the notebook lying caught in the footboard at the end of the bed. Dust was starting to mark its edges.
“I thought we might talk,” she continued, as if I’d answered her question. “You seem—you haven’t been talking about school much. How is it?”
Was she really trying to talk to me? Was she finally going to say she knew something was wrong with me?
“It’s—I don’t know.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t feel like I used to. I feel . . . different.”
“Of course you do. You haven’t exactly had a regular summer, you know. So it’s no wonder that things seem a little strange now.”
“It’s more than a little strange,” I said, and looked at her. “I don’t feel like I’m really here. I feel like part of me is . . . different.”
“Part of you is different, Meggie. I believe that when a miracle happens it changes that person, and a little piece of them belongs to . . .” She pointed up at my ceiling and then smiled at me.
I stared at her.
I stared at her, and I—I wanted to hit her. I wanted to hit her so badly I was shaking with it. “You think that how I feel is—you think I’m part God?”
“No, nothing like that.” She reached for me and I drew back, pushing myself as far away as I could. Her smile trembled, but she kept talking. “You’ve been touched by Him and I just—I wanted you to know that your father and I love you and that we know how special you are. Maybe other people don’t see how much, or don’t understand what you’ve been through, but we do. We know—”
“I get it,” I said, my voice fast and loud, too loud. “You know what I am.”
I was afraid to move. I knew if I did I’d do something. That I’d hurt her. When she finally left, a kiss on my cheek and a whispered, “Good night,” I uncurled my stiff body and lay there, wondering what would happen when I couldn’t pretend to be what they needed. What it would take to make them see I wasn’t a miracle at all.
Seventeen
When the house was silent and dark, I climbed out the window and went for a run.
I ended up in the same sp
ot I had before, the empty space between town and the road that ran around it. I stood there for a while, moonlight shining over me, but even though it looked just like it had the other night, it wasn’t the same.
I didn’t pass any trucks on my way home. I didn’t see anyone.
When I got back to my street there was a truck at the far end, at the beginning of the road. It was pulled over to the side, its lights and engine off, and I realized it was Mr. Reynolds’s. Joe was sitting inside. He didn’t seem to see me and I watched him for a second, sitting there staring into the dark, and wondered what he was thinking about. He looked like he wanted to be alone. I could understand that.
I started walking back to my house. There were shadows on the side of the road, the trees, and they seemed to be reaching for me. I tried not to look at them.
“Hey,” I heard, and turned around to see Joe leaning out his truck window. “How come you didn’t say anything when you walked by?”
“You looked like you wanted to be alone.”
“Oh. So it wasn’t . . .”
“Wasn’t what?”
“Nothing.” He sounded upset.
“Okay. Bye.” I didn’t know what else to say. I turned away and started walking again.
I waited to hear the truck turn over and even moved a little toward the side of the road so he could drive by, but I didn’t hear anything. I glanced over my shoulder and Joe was leaning out the window again. He still looked upset.
“Look,” he said. “The other night you said all this stuff about everyone and we—you know, we talked, but now you don’t even—you could have said something to me.”
“You looked like you wanted to be alone.”
“How would you know what I look like when I want to be alone? Up until you started jogging in the dark we’ve said maybe four words to each other.”
“I—wait. You’re mad I didn’t say ‘hi’ to you when you were sitting alone on the side of the road in the middle of the night?”
“It sounds stupid when you put it like that.” He sounded embarrassed. “I just thought . . . oh, forget it.”
We sort of stared at each other for a second. He looked away first, looked down at the road. In the moonlight, his black hair shone. Beth’s hair had been almost the same color and I realized that’s who he’d been thinking about, sitting in the truck in the dark.
I scuffed one sneaker along the road. “Did you—did you ever tell Beth about the time you tried to drive to Grant’s?”
He looked at me, surprise on his face, and then he laughed. “You remember that?”
“Let’s see, the police calling on a Saturday morning to say that the seven-year-old next door had driven into my dad’s car? Yeah, I might remember that.”
He got out of the truck, shaking his head, and hopped onto the hood. There were faint green stains on the knees of his jeans again. “You know I couldn’t even reach the pedals of my mom’s car? It only rolled down the driveway because she’d forgotten to put the parking brake on so when I started it . . .” He made a forward motion with one hand. “Man, did I get in a lot of trouble for that, and all because I wanted to go to Grant’s and get that cereal with the marshmallows shaped like baseball bats. And then Grant’s closed almost right after and for the longest time I thought it was because of what I did.”
“Really?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. Do you remember when they closed?”
I nodded. “I didn’t get why it was such a big deal that Mr. Grant died at first, you know? And then the store was gone and if we ran out of milk or something, we had to drive out of town to get it. Oh, and I’ve never seen those cups of ice cream with the little wooden paddles anywhere else. I used to look for them every time we went to the grocery store.”
“I’d forgotten about those,” Joe said. “I used to love them. Beth—” He looked down, rapped one hand softly against the truck hood. “I took her into Grant’s after it was closed once. Her class was going on a field trip to Derrytown to see animals in a petting zoo or something, and she couldn’t go because animals made her asthma real bad, so I told her I’d take her someplace.”
He looked up and smiled at me. “She said she wanted to go somewhere no one else in town could go. So I pried open the back door and took her inside. Remember that picture of Mrs. Grant that was up front by the cash register? It was still there.”
“Did you tell her the story about you and the cereal?” The wind picked up and the trees scraped, branches screeching. I tensed, pleating my fingers into the hem of my running shorts, twisting the fabric.
“Yeah. She thought it was funny. Of course, she thought it was funny because I didn’t know you had to use the gas and brake pedals to drive. You know, you look like you’re gonna fall down. Do you want to—?” He pointed at the truck hood. I looked at it, and then up at the trees hanging over it. None of them were close enough to touch it.
I walked over to the truck and sat on the hood. I leaned back a little as I did, bracing my hands behind me. It was easier to turn my head and keep an eye on the trees behind us that way. “Thanks.”
He glanced at me, then looked back at the road. “I still can’t believe you remember the car thing.”
“My father, the insurance guy, having to file a claim for an accident caused by a seven-year-old? He still tells people—well, you know how it is. Everyone tells the same stories over and over and over again. There’s like, what, ten of them for the whole town?”
He laughed. “Eleven.”
“Well, it’ll hit twelve about ten minutes after David turns sixteen and manages to talk my parents into getting his learner’s permit. You’ve seen the damage he can do on a bike.”
He didn’t laugh at that, just rapped one hand against the truck hood again. “People are saying . . . I’ve heard some stuff about you at work.”
“Yeah, I was in a plane crash. I know that.”
“No, not that. Other stuff, like how you’re never in school, and when you aren’t there you’re . . . um . . .”
I stared at him. “What? Hanging out with the town lesbian? Let me guess, you want details. I mean, guys like lesbians, right?”
“Meggie—” He reached out and put a hand on my arm. “I just meant that I’ve heard you’re voluntarily hanging out with Margaret.”
I pushed his hand off. Hard. “Gay Margaret. Right?”
“God, you sound like the guys at work. I said Margaret. You know, old and really crabby? Gives out boxes of raisins on Halloween and says things like, ‘You look just like your grandfather. He was beautiful, but kind of soft in the head.’”
“Oh.” I said. “Yeah. I . . . we’ve talked a few times. Well, she does most of the talking. Did she actually say that stuff about your grandfather?”
“Yeah.”
“To you?”
He gave me a look.
“Okay, stupid question. But when did you two ever talk? I mean, you don’t go to our church or anything.”
“Back when Beth was—it was because of Beth. She really loved stuffed animals. Remember that?”
I nodded.
“She couldn’t ever have a dog or anything like that, you know, so she had this whole zoo in her room instead. And Rose . . . Rose gave her a bunch of teddy bears one year, right after Christmas.” He paused. “You went to church with her, so you know why she had the leftovers.”
I nodded again.
“It sucked for Rose,” he said quietly. “But it was nice for Beth. She loved those bears. And then—well, you know how Beth was. Rose told her she’d made them and Beth decided she wanted to learn how. So my mom called over there and once a week until Rose died, Beth would go over there and make bears with her. And whenever I had to pick her up Margaret would always tell me stories about my grandfather and how he was before he left town and my grandmother. And while she was doing that she’d make me—”
“Drink a glass of milk. She still does that. Doesn’t care if you hate it either.”
He laughed,
leaning toward me, and his breath blew warm against my cheek. “You know the stuff I said earlier? I thought—I thought maybe you were blowing me off because of what I said the other night.”
“Why would I do that?” Usually when someone was this close to me, I wanted to move away, but I felt okay with him. I felt like he looked at me and saw me. The real me, and not a miracle.
“I don’t know. I said some . . . stuff.”
“So? I said some stuff too.”
“So we both said stuff, huh?” He grinned at me, and even though the trees were swaying, leaning in close, for a second I only saw his smile.
Eighteen
Two days later, Jess spoke to me.
I had gotten to school late, my legs aching as I cut across the parking lot. I’d kept running at night, the same long looping track around town, and the muscles on the front of my thighs and on the back of my legs hurt constantly. Even my calves were sore.
It was cold out now. Fall had come the way it always did, dropping in overnight and sucking the last of summer dry. I had felt it showing up, the wind chilling my legs as I’d run last night, my breath misting as I’d climbed up to my room before reluctantly dropping inside.
When I walked into school, Jess was standing there, waiting. The bell for first period had already rung and we were the only two people in the hallway. She didn’t look at me and I figured she was waiting for Brian. She was twirling her hair, and her curls caught on her promise ring, covering the tiny diamond.
“Hey,” she said, tugging her fingers free, her voice shaking the way it always did when she was upset, and I knew then she’d been waiting for me.
“Hey. Lissa said . . . she told me about you and Brian. Congratulations.”
She smiled at me, her face lighting up. “Thanks. We looked at rings and there was this one that’s so beautiful. I told Lissa that when I tried it on I just knew—”
She paused, tilting her head a little to one side, curls falling over her forehead, and her smile faded, her eyes filling with tears. “You don’t care, do you?”