Three months, Grandmother said.
“Anyway, you know what I’m going to ask next,” Megan says.
“I do.”
“How was kissing him?” she says. “No Cheetos breath, I hope.”
“He tasted like cheap beer and he smelled like football practice, and somehow it was perfect.”
Mom and I are in the car, talking and laughing as we drive down a winding country road that meanders through the woods. It’s bright outside, the sky a pale blue, completely absent of clouds, and sunlight sparkles over the creek that runs along the right side of the narrow road.
The dark orb appears overhead, an inky blemish blotting out the sun, but Mom doesn’t see it. She keeps driving, talking, laughing. She doesn’t hear me start to scream. She’s waving her hand to emphasize what she’s saying, and suddenly the darkness shoots upward like a tower made of oil. It arcs over itself and pounds the side of the car.
Mom starts screaming now too, and all of a sudden it’s night. The car spins off the road, plummeting down into a ditch like a falling star, the side of the car wrapped around a gnarled old tree trunk. Thunder crackles in the sky and rain pours down on us. The car begins to fill, not with rain but with blood.
“Mom? Mom, are you okay?” I plead.
She’s staring, dazed, at the steering wheel. I grab her hand and search her for cuts, her arms, her head, her neck. I find none, and none on me either, yet the car is still flooding with blood.
The world had gotten so dark and violent that no one could survive without fighting back, I hear Grandmother say in my mind. And the Yamasee’s hearts were broken, because they didn’t want to kill to live. They couldn’t justify it. So when the water started to rise, rather than wasting their time fighting, they walked deep into the flood, singing as they went. And that was how they were lost.
I start to sing, but my voice trembles with tears of terror. The blood rises higher, up my neck, toward my chin, and my singing breaks into a shriek.
“Natalie,” someone is saying, and it occurs to me now that I’m dreaming. That the voice is coming from beyond. “Natalie.”
I close then open my eyes as hard as I can. My vision swims then adjusts as I sit upright in bed.
“Honey, you were having a dream,” Dad says, kneeling beside me. “It was just a dream.”
I’m still gasping for breath, tears streaming down my face, and I throw my arms around Dad’s neck, waiting for the pounding in my chest to subside.
“Shh,” he says, stroking my hair. “It’s okay, honey.”
“Did I wake you up?” I ask tearfully.
He sits back on his heels. “Actually, no. I got a call from Raymond Kincaid. Their mare’s in labor. I thought I’d see if you wanted to go over to the farm with me.”
I glance around the dark room, eyes darting to the rocking chair, then turn on the lamp. “What time is it?”
“ ’Bout two,” Dad says.
I barely slept last night, and I know I need the rest, but there’s no chance I’m going to fall back to sleep now, not without Grandmother here.
“Matthew’s not home,” he volunteers, anticipating my concern.
“You asked?” I whisper.
“Wanted to make sure Raymond wasn’t on his own tonight, in case it took me a while to get over there,” Dad lies. “Matthew’s out and Joyce is home, but you know how she gets around blood.”
“Well, blood’s not very Country Home & Garden,” I say, and Dad’s head tilts. “Never mind. I’ll get dressed.”
I grab socks, boots, and a sweatshirt from my closet and meet Dad on the porch. He’s smoking a cigarette, which I haven’t seen him do since I was tiny, and he stubs it against the railing before tossing it in the bushes. “Helps me wake up,” he says. “Don’t tell Mom.”
I pantomime zipping my mouth and follow him out to his car. The air is peculiarly cool tonight, and Dad drives with the windows down. No one’s out on the road, and we pull up to Matt’s barn within a handful of minutes.
Dad gets his bag out of the trunk and leads the way up to the foaling stable, a special double stall a hundred yards past the main barn where the Kincaids keep the pregnant mare. The lights are on, and the door’s slid back. Dad knocks lightly against the frame. “Hey, Raymond.”
“Patrick,” Mr. Kincaid says, standing up beside the mare, who’s lying on her side. “Natalie, good to see you.”
“You too,” I say. It’s half true. Raymond’s way less awkward than Joyce, but as kind as he’s always been to me, the way he used to flip out on Matt at games and practices has always made me cautious around him.
Dad moves into the warmth of the stall and crouches in the hay near the mare’s back legs. Normally it’s best to keep observers away when a horse is in labor—they’re nervous and restless enough as it is—but horses don’t respond to Dad the same way they respond to other people. “How long ago did the hooves pass through?” he asks as he puts on gloves.
“’Bout twenty minutes,” Raymond says. “I called you soon as she lay down and the alarm went off. She’s been struggling on her own this time.”
Dad gives a gentle tug on the foal’s hooves, but he doesn’t have to do much. The mare is groaning and snorting against the hay, and her foal’s legs are passing quickly through her. “Good girl,” Dad says gently. “Good mama, good job, keep pushing.”
The mare snorts again fiercely as Dad pulls on the upper portion of the foal’s back legs, leaning back against the stall wall. Her sounds become more worried, sharp.
“Is she okay?” I ask from the doorway.
“Mama’s fine,” Dad coos. “She just wants this damn thing out, don’t you?”
I come a few steps closer, torn between repulsion and amazement as the slimy, knobby bundle of fluff strains through the mare’s body onto the hay. Within ten minutes, all four legs are through and the foal’s head slides clear, plopping softly against the hay, bleating. “You got a nice little colt, Raymond,” Dad says.
The mare is curling around herself, licking the filmy amniotic sac first from her baby’s back haunch then up toward its mane, and I inch closer, steadying myself against an old support column. The foal’s four legs stick out in four different directions, and it turns its head in toward its mother, nuzzling against her neck as she licks him beneath the soft glow of the lamplight. She’s a horse and she knows how to love her child.
She can’t help it. It wasn’t a decision. No one explained her pregnancy to her, but when she sees the foal, she knows: You are mine, and I am yours.
“Just gonna make sure she passes the rest of the placenta,” Dad says.
But the mare’s licking and nuzzling has slowed. She looks exhausted, and suddenly her head drops to the ground, a low whine wheezing through her nostrils.
That’s when I see the blood pooling in the hay. “Dad,” I say.
“Damn,” he says under his breath. “Nat, honey, go wait outside.”
“Is she okay?”
His eyes flick up to mine. “Outside, baby,” he says.
“Dad.”
Raymond hurries back to Dad’s side, kneeling in the hay.
“Now,” Dad says.
I turn and leave the foaling stable, but I can still hear their voices from out here. The sound travels with the lamplight out along the grass, and I know it’s just a horse, but it’s also a mother, and I’m breathing fast, trembling.
I take off through the field. When I get to the edge I turn and keep walking. In the distance I can see the rental property, a trashed mobile home on a long gravel driveway. The Kincaids—my version of them—have had renters before, but none had stayed long. There’d always been something strange about the house. Everyone could feel it.
I break into a run toward it now, begging the world to change for me. “Grandmother, help me,” I say as I run. I’m nearly there whe
n my stomach drops and I hear the crackle of tires on gravel behind me. I turn to see headlights cutting toward me and run off into the grass as the truck goes chugging past, stopping in front of the house.
Only it’s not quite the same house it was a minute ago. Solid glass replaces cracked windowpanes. The overgrown yard is still filled with weeds and clover, but it’s cut short, the vines hacked off where they were trying to grow up the vinyl siding. Beau gets out of the truck and squints through the darkness at me. “Natalie Cleary?”
“Beau,” I say.
Just then, someone practically pours out the passenger side of the truck and falls straight to the ground. In a momentary flash of panic I worry it’s Beau’s version of Rachel, but I quickly realize it’s a man, mid-twenties though prematurely gray and beer-gutted. “Dammit, hold on a second,” Beau says, walking casually to the other side of the truck and hauling the man to his feet.
He sort of mumble-slurs something as Beau pulls his arm around his shoulder and starts dragging him toward the front door. “I can walk,” he protests.
“Fine,” Beau says, dropping him. “Walk.”
The man takes one swaggering step before collapsing on the front step. Beau lifts him back up and ushers him through the doorway. A minute later, Beau comes back out, and I cross the lawn to him, throwing myself against his chest. He wraps his arms around me tightly. “You okay?”
“I think I just saw a horse die.”
He pulls back and ducks his head to look into my eyes, a smile tweaking the corner of his mouth. “Are you serious?”
“Why are you laughing?” I say, angry.
“I’m relieved.”
“Relieved?”
“Hell, Natalie. You showed up at my house in the middle of the night in a panic. What was I supposed to think?”
“Sorry.”
“Come inside.”
I glance back to the barn on the hill beyond the cornfield. “My dad’s back there with Mr. Kincaid,” I say. “I shouldn’t be gone too long.”
“No, not too long,” he says, scooping me up in his arms. I’m still tingling with shock, but I’m laughing as he kicks the screen door open.
“If you carry me in like this, we’re technically married,” I tell him.
“That so?” he says, lids heavy, smile wide, as he takes me inside. “I can live with that.”
He sets me down on my feet, the floorboards creaking in the dark space, and he walks me up against the wall to kiss me.
A deep snore shakes the wall. “So nice you finally got to meet my brother, Natalie Cleary,” Beau says, smiling.
“Real nahs. I wish he weren’t so uptight and formal, though. How will I ever feel comfortable here?”
“Yeah,” Beau says, tightening his arms around my waist and lifting me up, squeezing a squeal and a laugh out of me. “It’s sorta like living in the White House.” He carries me like that, laughing, down the hall to a partially open doorway and into his tiny room, setting me down onto his single mattress on the floor and lying down beside me.
I’ve never seen a room that managed to be both so bare and so messy. His blue flannel sheets are rumpled, his clothes all over the floor. Crumpled water bottles spill over the trash can, and the outdated lamp sitting on the floor beside the mattress sprays yellow light across the wood laminate walls. There’s one thing, though, that’s completely out of place. Along the far wall there’s a long smooth credenza made of bright reddish-gold walnut, its natural finish showing a slice of blond curving through the center and a darker grain on either side, thin stainless steel spindles holding it up a few inches off the floor. It looks like it was made from the most beautiful tree in a Japanese forest. It’s the kind of thing that begs to be touched. Beau’s eyes follow mine to the lone piece of artwork. “That actually belongs in the White House,” I tell him. “During Jackie’s reign, of course.”
“Right, President Jackie,” he says, then after a pause adds, “I made that.”
“You did not.”
“What, you think I couldn’t make a pretty thing, Natalie Cleary?”
“I’ve heard you play; I know you can make pretty things,” I say. “I guess I didn’t expect them to be quite as pretty without a piano.”
“No piano,” he says. “That used to be a beat-up armoire the Kincaids threw out. I used the inside of the doors for the front.” A strand of hair falls across Beau’s cheek to the corner of his mouth, making me think about riding in his truck that first night we spent together, when the wind trailed his hair across his face and I wanted so badly to move it.
“I should go,” I say.
He kisses me, sliding a hand down my thigh and lifting it over his hip. “You should stay.”
“My dad might be waiting for me.” I’m dizzy with his closeness, pulsing with warmth everywhere he touches me. I shift my leg off him, and he sits up, but I don’t move.
He’s silent for a long moment. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Nothing, why?”
“You wanna go to Derek’s party with me?”
I groan as I remember the mass text invitation. “My version or yours?”
“Whichever,” he says with a shrug.
“Whichever I want or whichever we can get to?”
“Either.”
Thinking it over gives me a little thrill. This is a chance to meet the Others, to be around people without any of the pressure. It’s a chance to practice moving between the worlds too, which might bring me closer to finding Grandmother. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s go. To your version.” He nods, but then something occurs to me. “What if I slip? What if I can’t stay in your world?”
“Then I’ll come find you,” he says.
“What if you can’t?”
He cups the side of my neck. “I’ll find you, Natalie. I promise.”
Maybe it shouldn’t be enough, but it is.
Beau walks me to the front door and kisses me goodbye. When I look back at the house, he’s gone, the windows broken and yard overgrown. I’m slipping back and forth between the two worlds and I don’t even know how. I walk back to the barn and find Dad sitting in his car, staring at the steering wheel.
“Dad?” I say, getting in across from him.
“Foal made it,” he says quietly then starts the car. “Foal made it.”
I touch his elbow. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s life,” he says. “It’s all right, sugar. It’s all right.”
We start to crackle over the driveway. I’m thinking about Grandmother and her warning, about Megan being so far away, about my blowout fight with Matt, and everything else there is to fear in the world. I can get swept away in those things, drown in them for hours, fixate on something like the death of a horse until standing up feels like climbing a volcano I know is about to erupt. “Sometimes the whole world feels like that horse to me,” I say aloud. “Does that make sense? Like everyone’s just groaning and screaming through the pain, hoping something better comes out.”
Dad nods. “It makes sense.” He reaches over and stretches an arm around my shoulders, kissing the top of my head. “I feel that too.”
“The bad things get exhausting,” I say. “Sometimes I just want to be somewhere else.” I can’t explain what I mean, but I imagine a place like outer space. Where nothing exists.
Dad’s eyes soften as we pull onto the road. “Honey, you’re a smart kid, and you’re sensitive too. That’s not a bad thing, but it is a hard thing. For you, the dark’s going to feel a whole lot darker, and you won’t be able to hide from it.” He pauses for a second then goes on. “But I want you to listen to me. Listen good.”
It sounds like something Grandmother would say.
“You don’t know everything,” he says softly. “Not yet you don’t. And when you see those good things—and I promise you, there are so many good
things—they’re going to be so much brighter for you than they are for other people, just like the abyss seems deeper and bigger when you stare at it. If you stick it out, it’s all going to feel worth it in the end. Every moment you live, every darkness you face, they’ll all feel worth it when you’re staring light in the face. Okay?”
I swallow the knot in my throat. “How do you know?”
He smiles and rustles my hair. “Because you’re like me. And when you came home with us, everything changed. I saw my whole life for what it had really been, and even though I was goddam terrified of all the things that could happen to you, when I looked at you it was like all the bad things had been a dream, and I was finally waking up. That’s how I know, sugar cube. This is only the beginning. If you want the good, you can’t give up.”
19
“I think it’s great that you’re going to Derek’s party,” Mom says from the doorway as she slips on her dangling earrings.
“Really? Great?” I say. “Have you met Derek?”
She purses her lips. “Admittedly, he’s not my favorite of your friends. But I know how hard it’s been for you being apart from Megan, and growing apart from Matt. You only have a couple more weeks here before vacation, and then you’re pretty much off to Brown.” Mom looks wistful despite her best attempts at tranquility. The summer trip always has this effect on her. It’s the one time of year where everyone’s happy and connected and engaged simultaneously, and that’s because she carefully plans it that way. This year, with Brown looming, the trip feels different, like we’re planning one last hurrah before our family splinters. “You should take advantage of that time,” Mom says.
“You want me to get wasted.”
“Natalie,” Mom says, touching her hand to her chest. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Kidding,” I say.
“Will there be drinking at the party?” she says, suddenly worried.
“No,” I lie, trying to keep my eyes from flicking sideways.
Mom grabs a pump of hand lotion from the bottle on the top of my desk and rubs her palms together. “If you need a ride home, you know you can call, right? I’d always rather you were safe.”