“Sweetheart,” her mother broke in, “we’ll just think positively. The nerve may grow back. The doctors say it’s possible. We’ll come back in six weeks for more tests to see if things are improving. Meanwhile, we’ll just keep hoping. It’s all we can do.”
Kirby leaned on her crutches and looked down. Her skirt hung loose. Her arms stuck out, long and skinny, from the sleeves of her blouse, and the good leg, lined up beside the cast, looked like a pipe stem.
“For the first time,” Kirby said softly, “I look like a dancer. And now it doesn’t make any difference.”
Nancy turned off her mind. Never again, she swore to herself, would she use it for anything but thinking.
I did this, is what she thought. I did this thing to Kirby.
The knowledge lay heavy within her like a kind of sickness. At night in bed she would play the scene over like the rerun of a movie—herself backed against the locker, looking upward—Kirby appearing on the landing, swaying, and falling. Over and over she would see her sister lying in a crumpled heap at the foot of the stairs with her leg bent under her; she would hear her voice saying, The Cecchetti exams—Ballet South—the scholarship—
I’m evil, Nancy thought miserably. I’m evil and horrible and vicious. I’m like a witch with a terrible power! I put curses on people!
In her nightmares, she would hear her mind shrieking the words that had caused it to happen: She can’t go away—she just can’t go—I won’t let her!
Well, Kirby was home now, all right. She would not be going to Atlanta, or anywhere else, either. And the Kirby who now lived with them was not the one they knew before.
“What you did to Ms. Green was just mean,” she snapped when Nancy tried to tell her the tale of the “dropsy” day. “I would think you could find something better to do with a gift like that than to scare an old lady.”
She was rude to her mother.
“I will not talk to people on the phone or answer e-mails or text messages,” she told her flatly. “Stop nagging me.”
She was nastiest of all to Brendon.
“You’re an ingrate,” she said. “Here’s Mom paying good money to give you music lessons, and you simply refuse to learn. You never practice. You don’t know the names of the notes. You’re not learning anything at all.”
“I know,” Brendon said airily. One of the pleasant—and irritating—things about Brendon was that he never got angry. “I don’t want to read music. It’s a waste of time.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Kirby told him. “To have a gift and not to develop it when you have a chance to—it’s criminal! If I were in your place, I’d be studying every minute before school and after school. I’d be practicing scales and memorizing notes and… and…” She let the sentence fade off because she wasn’t really certain what people did when they wanted to become musicians.
“Well, you’re not in my place,” Brendon said, “so what’s it to you?” He stuck out his tongue at her and loped off, and a moment later they saw him through the windows coasting down the driveway on his bicycle.
That evening after dinner, he sat down at the piano and played all the pieces in Nancy’s sheet music. After he was finished he got up and bowed and let them see that the music was upside down. Kirby, who would have thought that funny once, was so furious that she left the room. They could all hear her climbing the stairs—thud, thump—thud, thump—hanging onto the railing with one hand and shoving herself up with the crutch on the other side.
In the suddenly silent living room the three other Garretts looked at one another helplessly. It was Elizabeth who broke the quiet.
“I’m worried,” she said. “I’m really worried. She’s so—so—different. She won’t see anyone, even Madame Vilar. She won’t talk to any of her classmates on the phone. That nice boy, Paul something-or-other—he says he’s the brother of one of your friends, Nancy—came by the other day, and she wouldn’t see him. She hasn’t opened a textbook, either; at least, I don’t think she has. What does she do with herself all day while I’m at work?”
“She sulks,” Brendon said. “She feels sorry for herself.” He did not say it in a mean way.
“I used to wish that Kirby couldn’t dance.” Nancy made the confession in a small, shaky voice. “I thought then she would be with us more. I didn’t realize how much of Kirby the dancing was. I feel so guilty now. It’s as if without dance, there isn’t any Kirby left.”
“Why should you feel guilty, dear?” Her mother was surprised. “You had nothing to do with her fall. And I don’t agree. The dancing was just part of Kirby. The rest of Kirby, the daughter and sister part, was what was important to us. That’s the part I’m afraid of losing.” She paused.
“I think,” she said slowly, “I’m going to send her back to school.”
“To school!” Nancy gasped, and even Brendon looked surprised.
“She won’t go,” he said. “If she won’t talk to anybody here, you know she won’t talk to people at school. How can she drag around that cast all day? She couldn’t even sit at a regular desk.”
“If she can get herself up and down the stairs here at home, she can manage to get around the school building. She can take a little folding stool to prop her leg on, and Nancy can walk her to classes and carry it for her. I know it won’t be easy, but I think it’s necessary. She can’t just sit around here any longer, getting more and more depressed.”
Kirby objected violently when she heard her mother’s decision.
“I won’t,” she said. “I just won’t. I can’t think about school now, not after what’s happened to me! How could I possibly think about studying when all my plans for my entire life have just been ruined?!”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to, dear,” Elizabeth said with unaccustomed firmness. “You have a whole life ahead of you, whether you can dance or not. The law says you have to go to school if you’re physically able to, and Dr. Collins says that you are now. Staying home is truancy, and as your mother and legal guardian, I could be arrested for permitting it.”
It was a statement that couldn’t be argued with. The next day Kirby went to school. It was just as difficult as they had anticipated, and in some ways even worse.
Getting on and off the school bus proved to be so awkward that Elizabeth drove the girls every morning. She would stop in front of the side entrance to the school, and she and Nancy would get Kirby and the heavy cast out of the car. Then with Kirby on her crutches and Nancy carrying all their books and a little folding stool, they would make their way slowly and painfully into the building and down the hall to Kirby’s first class.
One thing Kirby flatly refused to do was to try the stairs.
“Once was enough,” she said. “All I need now is to ruin the other leg.”
So she only attended classes on the first floor, and during the periods in which she had second-floor classes she went instead to the study hall, where she sat, her eyes unfocused, seldom bothering to turn a page of whatever book happened to be lying open in front of her. She was going to have to make up classes the next semester.
At first her teachers were sympathetic. They permitted her to come in late to classes and to be excused before the bell rang in order to have the hall clear for her trip through on her crutches.
As weeks went by, however, it became clear that Kirby wasn’t making the slightest effort to be part of the class. She never volunteered to answer a question, she left her test pages blank, and she didn’t take her books home or do the simplest homework assignments, and so their sympathy began to lessen.
Eventually it was replaced by irritation.
“We’ve had other students attend this school with broken limbs,” Ms. Line remarked in English class. “During football season especially there are always a couple of casualties. After a week or so, they’re swinging up and down the halls on their crutches, maneuvering stairs and doing beautifully. A broken leg certainly shouldn’t keep you from reading your assignments.”
Ms.
Green was as nasty as always.
“You don’t read with your leg, do you?” she asked in her most sarcastic voice.
“No, you don’t,” Kirby said. She did not add any explanation. She simply looked at the teacher with flat, expressionless eyes, as though she were seeing right through her.
“There’s something wrong with those Garrett girls,” Ms. Green muttered later in the teachers’ lounge to anyone who would listen. “They’re not normal, either one of them. I’ve had difficult students in my classes over the years, but never any like these two. I’m just glad I’ll be retiring before the third one gets to high school. From what I hear, he’s a perfect monster.”
That day when school let out, Elizabeth’s car wasn’t waiting for them in the faculty parking lot. Instead, Tom Duncan was there.
“Your mother called me,” he said. “She has a flat tire and had to call Triple-A. She said you should call a taxi, but I told her I’d bring you home myself.”
“That’s nice of you,” Kirby said. She let herself be helped into the front seat of his car. Her face was pale and weary, as it always was after a day of hauling herself around on crutches.
“You’ll be getting a walking cast soon now, won’t you?” Mr. Duncan commented. “That will be lighter and easier to handle.”
Kirby nodded listlessly. Her face had its usual I-don’t-care look.
Nancy handed her sister her books and said, “I don’t need a ride, thank you. I’d rather walk.”
“Get in, Nancy,” Mr. Duncan told her. “You’re going to get a ride whether you want one or not. I want to talk with both of you.”
His tone was so firm that Nancy was startled. She glanced at Kirby and saw that she was equally surprised. In all the months that they had known Tom Duncan, he never had spoken to them in any way except gently and politely.
“Get in,” he said again, and to her own astonishment, Nancy found herself climbing into the backseat and pulling the door closed behind her.
For a moment they sat there in silence. Then Mr. Duncan said, “A number of reports have come to my office, Kirby, about your attitude in your classes. You must know that if you don’t pull your grades up tremendously by the end of the next marking period you stand a good chance of being forced to repeat your freshman year.”
“I guess so,” Kirby said. “It doesn’t matter.” She leaned back against the seat as though she were too tired to hold her head up.
“It may not matter to you,” Mr. Duncan said, “but it does to your mother. She has had enough unhappiness lately without your adding to it. If you fail a grade, she’ll feel that she’s failed, too.”
“I don’t see how our mother is any of your business,” Nancy said. “Whatever problems she and Kirby have are between them.”
“Your mother is my business,” Mr. Duncan said quietly. “She always will be. I love her dearly, and it’s very important to me to see her happy.”
“I don’t believe it,” Nancy said, but she did. Suddenly all the things that she had been trying so hard not to admit to herself came snapping into place. “You can’t love her,” she said. “Besides, she doesn’t love you.”
“She might have learned to,” Tom Duncan said, “if you had let her. It would’ve been a good thing for her. She did love me once, you know.”
“She did?” Kirby’s eyes widened in astonishment. For the first time in weeks, she actually looked interested. “You mean, way back when you were teenagers?”
“And before that.” Mr. Duncan spoke softly, and his eyes held the look of remembering. “Your mother and I grew up together. We played together in elementary school. We dated each other in high school. We had the same friends, the same interests, the same ideas about what would make a solid, happy life. I always planned to marry Elizabeth, and I don’t think it ever occurred to her that she wouldn’t marry me. Then, during her senior year of high school, I went off to college.”
“Yes?” Kirby prompted, looking at him with fascination.
“That was the year,” Tom Duncan said, “that a handsome young journalist came here to do a photo shoot. He hired some of the prettiest girls in town to work as models. Your mother was one of them.” He paused. “When Richard Garrett went on to his next assignment, your mother went with him—as his wife.”
“How romantic!” Nancy said softly. Despite herself, she was enchanted by the story. “I guess there’s nobody in the world who can compare to Dad!”
“He was handsome and dashing and adventurous,” Mr. Duncan admitted. “He was all the things I wasn’t, and Elizabeth fell in love with him. She wouldn’t listen to anybody. Not to me—not to your grandmother—”
“You mean our grandmother didn’t like Dad?” Kirby asked in astonishment. “I never knew anybody ever who didn’t like him!”
“Oh, she liked him,” Mr. Duncan said. “As you say, nobody could help it. But she knew that he wasn’t right for your mother. Richard Garrett was made to be an adventurer, not a husband. And Elizabeth was made to have a family and a more stable life. She tried—they both tried, I guess—but the strain, the constant uprooting, were just too much for her. So the marriage ended, just as your grandmother predicted.”
“What do you mean, she predicted it?” Nancy asked sharply. “You mean, to you?”
Mr. Duncan nodded. “When I came back from college, I went to see her. I was heartbroken about losing Elizabeth. Your grandmother—she was a very special person—looked at me and said, ‘Tommy, it isn’t going to last. It can’t last, and I know it. But when it ends and Elizabeth comes home again, I won’t be here. It will have to be you who picks up the pieces.’ ”
“Well, you can’t,” Nancy told him determinedly. “Nobody can take Dad’s place—not with Mom and not with us. They’re going to get back together again. They have to.”
“I doubt it,” Tom Duncan said shortly. “But it doesn’t matter. Your mother made a promise to you, Nancy, and she plans to keep it. And I—well, I’m not going to fight you. She’s the one who would be hurt in the process, and I can’t have that.”
“You—” Nancy stopped, her mouth half-open for more words of protest. “You’re—giving up, then?”
“I said I was, didn’t I?” His voice was quiet.
Kirby stared at him, her blue eyes incredulous.
“But I thought you said you loved her,” she exclaimed in bewilderment. “How can you give up like that—without any reason? How can you give up the thing you want most in the world?”
“Because wanting doesn’t make things so,” Tom Duncan said gently. “None of us can have everything just the way we want it. There comes a time when we have to accept that fact and build our lives in new directions. Your mother has. And I can. And you—?”
He was not looking at Nancy, only at Kirby. Behind the pain in his eyes there was something else—an odd look—a look you might expect to see in the eyes of a father.
“And you—?” he asked.
“Leave her alone!” Nancy cried. “You don’t have any right to talk to her that way! Leave her alone; leave all of us alone!”
But Kirby was nodding.
“Yes,” she said in a low voice, “I can, too.”
And though her eyes were filled and shining, she did not cry.
Launching the boat was a lot harder than building it. The worst of their problems was how to get it down to the water. Greg’s workshop was a quarter-mile inland, and the boat, by the time they had it completed, was eight feet long, at least a yard wide, and extremely heavy.
“We’ll never be able to carry it,” Brendon said. “We can barely lift it. We shouldn’t have put all those orange crates on the back.”
“We had to have those to hold the treasure,” Greg reminded him. “We can’t have it sliding off the deck and sinking! It’s the seats that are too heavy. We didn’t need those.”
“We have to sit on something, don’t we?”
The seats had been Brendon’s idea. They were made from two chairs they had found
at the dump and had built to stand high like lookout towers. In his heart Brendon did have to admit that they were not necessities, but the thought of riding high above the water was so enchanting that he knew even now that he could not possibly do without them.
“We’ve got to find something to wheel it on,” he said. “Like a boat trailer.”
“My dad’s got a golf cart!” Greg’s freckled face brightened. “That would do for one end. And I’ve got a skateboard.”
“That ought to do it,” Brendon said. He eyed the boat appraisingly. “We can put the paddles and shovels on top of it and one of us can steer and the other push from behind.”
There was no question about where they were going to launch it from. They had decided that weeks before. A hundred yards down the beach from the Garretts’ house, a curve of rock enclosed a little inlet piled with seaweed. People seldom swam there, even in the warm months, because of the fishy smell and the sharp shells. A boat that was launched there would not be seen from either direction until it was out past the rocks and well on its journey toward the sandbar. Even then there would be little likelihood of detection, since people rarely strolled the beach on winter afternoons.
They attached the skateboard with a leather belt that Greg took from his father’s closet.
“It’s alligator,” he said. “That should be strong enough to hold it.”
They propped the back of the boat on the golf cart.
Their most nerve-racking moments were those spent wheeling the boat out of the workshop and down the Russo driveway to the street. Dr. Russo was at his office and Mrs. Russo was running errands, but there was always the chance of neighbors stopping them to ask what they were doing and where they were going.
Once they reached the beach road, they relaxed a little. Several cars did pass them, and heads hung out windows with interested backward glances, but none of the cars contained people they knew.
“I sure hope your mom doesn’t drive by right now,” Greg said. “Isn’t this about the time she gets home from work?”
“Not today,” Brendon told him. “She took off early to drive Kirby to the doctor. She gets her cast off today, and they’re going to do some more tests on her leg.”