The Probability of Miracles

  Cam said nothing.

  “Where are you, honey? Are you at home? Is your mother with you?”

  “I think it’s a transitive verb, pass,” Cam finally said. “It requires an object. You can pass a test. Pass a football. Pass gas. You yourself cannot just pass.”

  “Campbell, can I talk to your mom?”

  “She’s not here, I don’t think.” Cam dropped the phone onto the passenger seat. She was drifting. Shutting off. She felt her body float away, and she became ether. She was nothing. Just an idea.

  She was through. With all of it.

  TWENTY-THREE

  CAM HAD ENOUGH RIPTIDE RUSH GATORADE LEFT IN THE CAR TO SWALlow the seventeen tiny pills in two big gulps. Just for insurance, and because she needed to take her car with her into oblivion, she was going to drive off a cliff.

  The only cliff she remembered was the one they zip-lined from to get to the lighthouse. It would be perfect. Cinematic. Like Thelma and Louise. There was even a full moon. She just had to start driving before the drugs set in and she lost all control.

  Already her arms felt heavy as she lifted her seemingly enormous hands onto the steering wheel. The ends of her fingers were tingling, and her teeth were numb. She somehow managed to coordinate her movements enough to back out of the parking lot and swerve down the coastal road toward Archibald Light.

  She fought to stay awake by focusing on the lighthouse’s rotating beam, straightening up a bit every time it swung back into her face. The ambient light from the full moon illuminated the roads, and she rolled down the window, allowing a cool breeze in through the windows. If only the two headlights—was she imagining those?—following close behind would turn off their high beams. She tried to shake them by making a quick left turn without signaling, but the bright, blinding lights trailed her still. “Sssilly headlights,” she slurred, feeling tired. So tired. She sped up.

  The road dead-ended in the playground parking lot. She drove onto the grass, crushing the stupid purple dandelions beneath her tires as she passed the swings and traversed the lawn to the top of the hill, where she stopped, several yards from the cliff’s edge.

  She could hear the waves crashing on the rocks below her. She closed her eyes and put both hands on the wheel. “I love you, Cumulus,” she said. “Now don’t get any Herbie Lovebug ideas and try to save me.” Then she lowered her foot on the gas pedal. “Good boy,” she said as Cumulus lurched forward, picking up speed like a jet about to take off.

  Cam heard the whoosh of the wind and then nothing at all for ten seconds and then an earsplitting pop, which must have been the sound of all of her bones breaking at once. She heard a hiss, which might have been the life seeping out of her, or perhaps it was the sound of the waves.

  Even from behind her closed eyelids, she could still sense the beam from the lighthouse swinging intermittently over her face. She waited for it to stop and reveal the famous tunnel and bright light of the beyond.

  Then she heard someone calling her name.

  Cam awoke in a pool of her own purple Gatorade vomit. “Who’s the genius who induced vomiting?”

  “That would be me. I saw the empty pill bottle.” Asher’s voice echoed toward her as if from very far away.

  “Asher to the rescue,” Cam said groggily. “Did you at least turn my head to the side?”

  “Of course. That’s First Aid 101.”

  “Where’s the bimbo?” she asked, suddenly remembering how she’d last seen him.

  “She’s home,” he said. He lifted her tiny, limp wrist to take her pulse. His fingers gently grazed and then pressed on the vein.

  Cam pulled her hand away.

  “I just need to feel your pulse.”

  “No. I can take it myself,” Cam said, trying in vain to lift her right arm off the ground.

  “Relax, I can do it.” His fingers brushed the inside of her wrist, and she felt a tingling through her arm.

  Cam rested her head on the cool, wet grass, defeated, and stared up into the dark night sky. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again she saw it. A brilliant rainbow stretched slowly across the black night sky. She blinked, but it was still there when she opened her eyes. The colors glowed radiantly for an entire minute before fading to muted pastels.

  “Do you see that?” she asked Asher.

  “What?”

  She was glad he didn’t see it and immediately lump the rainbow in with the orcas and the purple dandelions and the magic sunsets. This was her experience. And it was personal. A message from Lily.

  “Never mind. What happened?” Aside from feeling heavy and sluggish, she felt fine. No crushed bones. The life had not seeped out of her limbs.

  “You drove into a bouncy house.”

  “A bouncy house?”

  “Yep. From the Fourth of July.”

  “Saved by a bouncy house.”

  “And your seat belt. You must have some hope left, or else you wouldn’t have buckled up.”

  “Hope is its own reward.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It’s just something someone told me once.”

  “The ambulance should be here any minute.”

  “Do we really need one of those?” Cam could hear the waves again, sloshing against the shore. Crickets were chirping. The night rainbow had disappeared. Everything was coming back into focus.

  “You should probably have your stomach pumped.”

  “I don’t want my pomach stumped. I mean, pomach stumped. I mean. You know what I mean,” Cam said, waving her hand weakly in the air. “Uh-oh,” she said, and she sat up and retched, hurling one more time onto the grass. “I guess I’ve ruined Riptide Rush for everyone.”

  “Yeah. And it was the best flavor, too.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  Cam was finally able to sit up enough so that she could survey the damage. The bouncy castle had been orange, red, and yellow. One tiny striped turret of it was still inflated, and it waved back and forth in the breeze. The rest of it was flattened, as if someone had dropped an enormous water balloon from an airplane. Cumulus sat in the middle of the entire mess, his pale Vapor paint glinting in the moonlight.

  “Thank God no one was bouncing.”

  “You can say that again, Ass Whisperer.”

  “Thank God no one was bouncing,” Cam said, and she started to drift off to sleep.

  The hospital in Promise was the size and shape of an elementary school. A small square building with gold linoleum tile, sea foam green–painted cinderblock walls, and old-fashioned nurses who still wore white dresses, white shoes, and winged white paper caps. Cam thought she had woken up in 1965.

  Her mom and Perry sat in puce-colored vinyl chairs in her private room. They had brought Pilly, the little airplane pillow wrapped in a satin pillowcase that her nana had made for Cam when she was a baby. Cam rubbed the cold corner of it between her fingers, and she was instantly calm.

  “I’m fine now that I have Pilly. Can we get out of here?” Her swallowing muscles were sore from the tube jammed down her throat last night.

  “I think we should talk about that, actually.” A small, dark-haired man sat in a chair to the right of the bed holding a yellow legal pad. He had a full-on GI Joe beard that desperately needed a trim, and he fiddled nervously with his pen. Cam hadn’t even noticed him.

  “Oh, come on,” said Cam. “Didn’t anyone warn this bozo?”

  Alicia and Perry just shrugged and went back to texting (Perry) and knitting (Alicia). “You need to talk to him, or they won’t let you out of here,” her mom said without looking up.

  “Is that true?” Cam asked the shrink. “And please don’t answer my question with a question.”

  The shrink was about to speak and then closed his mouth, dumbfounded.

  “Amazing. Do you want to know what happened to my last shrink, or do you just want to sign those papers and make it easy?”

  She and Lily shared the same shrink when they were at St. Jude’s. He was a nerd
y, nervous guy named Roger, who, as they found out by Googling him, had been the 1986 national Rubik’s cube champion. They would torture the poor man by using their sessions to explain the intimate details of their pretend sex dreams. They were discovered finally when Lily got carried away and incorporated a Rubik’s cube into one of her dreams, which was too much of a coincidence, even for Roger.

  “Are you threatening me?” New Shrink asked.

  “How does that make you feel?” asked Cam dispassionately as she glanced up at the TV, pointed the remote at it, and changed the channel. Wheel of Fortune came on, and it was a before-and-after puzzle. “Rubik’s cubic zirconia,” said Cam. And she was right.

  “You’re acting out,” he said.

  “Do you believe coincidence is truly coincidence, or do you think we should pay special attention to it?”

  “What do you believe?”

  “How did I know you were going to say that? Mom? Can you please rescue me from this as—I mean, nice man?” You had to remember who had the power in these situations.

  “I’m enjoying watching you suffer, Campbell.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? You need to ask, why? Campbell Maria Cooper . . .” Her mom’s voice cracked, and she shook her head.

  “What?” Cam asked. “Please don’t cry.” It was impossible for Cam not to cry when her mom did, because of that oldest-child, emotional-umbilical-cord thing.

  “Campbell. I have never, ever, ever in my life, for one moment given up on you.”

  “That’s true,” said Cam.

  “No matter what.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s like you are my heart, beating outside of my body.”

  “What does that make me, your liver?” Perry mumbled.

  “No, you’re my heart, too. My other heart.”

  “Whatever,” said Perry.

  Alicia set down her knitting and stood up. “Cam, last night you gave up. On me. On all of us. On everything. And you broke my heart. I couldn’t believe you could do that to us.”

  “I wasn’t doing it to anybody, Mom. I was just doing it. I just had to do something. I’m sorry.” After a moment of heavy silence, she said, “I wore my seat belt.”

  “Oh, wonderful. Thank you, Campbell. Doctor Zimquist, I think we’ve got it from here. She wore her seat belt. So it’s fine.” Her mom laughed through her tears and gave Cam a hug.

  “Lily—” Cam blurted as she leaned her head into her mother’s hug and burst into tears.

  “I know, honey. I know,” said her mom.

  Perry came to the bed and joined in the group hug.

  After a moment Alicia looked up. “Dr. Zimquist,” she said, “I think this is what you call in the business a breakthrough. We get to them pretty quickly because we have no time for years of therapy. Can you draw up the papers, please?”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  IT HAD BEEN TWO DAYS SINCE SHE’D HAD HER STOMACH PUMPED, AND the whole experience had set her back a little. Cam had gotten used to a certain rounding and browning since she’d arrived in Promise. She had begun filling out. The angles of her joints had become less distinct, and her skin had returned to its natural pigment. But since the episode, she’d become cold, pale, and frail.

  Sitting on her bed in the widow’s walk, covered with seven blankets, Cam watched The Sound of Music on her laptop. People who knew her (Lily and . . . Lily, that list went) were surprised that this was one of her favorites.

  Of course there were movies she liked better: Chinatown, Ghost World, Best in Show, Midnight Cowboy, Citizen Kane, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind . . . There were even some movie musicals she preferred, American in Paris, for example. Or even Dirty Dancing (Patrick Swayze, may he rest in peace).

  The Sound of Music, though, was her grounding film. The one she came back to whenever she needed to shut out the world, slow things down, and start over. It had to do with how the sadness percolated beneath the hopeful melodies. It seemed real to Cam that no matter what, there was still sadness.

  Even the happy moment at the end, as they’re crossing the Alps to freedom—when Christopher Plummer hoists Gretl onto his back. Even that moment is suffused with the sadness of them leaving their homeland forever.

  Cam had watched it 257 times.

  She pulled her seventh blanket tighter under her chin and pulled her sleeves down to cover her hands. Maybe hope and sadness can coexist, she thought. That felt like a significant idea. Maybe Cam could hope without denying that huge part of herself that needed to be sad. She didn’t have to sacrifice one for the other. Maybe all people were both hopeful and sad in every moment of their lives.

  Julie Andrews started up the “Lonely Goatherd” puppet show and won the captain over with her flushed and sweaty innocence. He was just about to take the guitar from Liesl and sing “Edelweiss.” It was Lily’s favorite part—aside from Baroness Schraeder’s restrained, tearful good-bye on the balcony, of course. She and Lily both loved Baroness Schraeder. It was the name of Lily’s imaginary punk band.

  The thought of Lily being gone forever destroyed Cam. It was as if Cam’s soul, if you believed in things like souls, had been vacuumed out of her body.

  She hadn’t even gotten to say good-bye.

  Cam thought again of the night rainbow. She tried to stop herself from thinking that the rainbow was a sign—a final message from Lily, letting her know that everything would be all right. Part of her knew it must have been a hallucination from the drugs. But it seemed so real. And it was exactly how Lily had described it a year ago when she talked about what she would see when she died. That flash of color, that blinding lightness, against a midnight sky.

  Captain von Trapp refused to hang the swastika in the front hall. “How silly of me; I meant to accuse you,” he said to the creepy Nazi sympathizer. Another of Lily’s favorite lines.

  It was strange, but Lily felt so close. Closer than she had when she was still on the planet. Cam could practically feel her snuggled up next to her in this bed. And it made her feel safe . . . dare she say, hopeful? And less afraid.

  Julie Andrews was teaching Kurt the Austrian folk dance when the Captain cut in.

  Maybe if you thought about them, people never really disappeared. It sounded so corny, but there was a scientific explanation for it, too. If you believed that thoughts were energy and energy is matter (E=mc2 ) and matter never disappears, then a person can never truly leave you unless you stop thinking about them. Everything you shared with a person is still there swirling around in the universe. Love, Cam had to admit, might be real. And love endures. Relationships endure. Because thoughts are energy, energy is matter, and matter never disappears.

  Cam needed some fresh air.

  She stepped out onto her balcony and looked through her telescope. It was almost 11 A.M., so she panned right until she could focus on the gray dock behind the lobster pound where the burly, amber-haired cook, Smitty, was about to take his daily swim. Every day he emerged from the back door of the restaurant in his navy blue swim trunks and held his big furry belly in his hands as he walked to the end of the dock. He dove in, swam to a buoy out in the bay, and swam back. When he hauled himself back out of the water, the belly was essentially gone. He didn’t have washboard abs or anything, but he was changed somehow by the water.

  She searched for the cemetery. She panned over to the hillside graveyard and scanned the dark gray gravestones that stuck out of the earth like petrified tongues. Zenobia Drake McClellan 1895–1995; Allastair Dubois 1907–2007; Amanda Hawthorne 1887–1987. Almost every one of the beloved sisters, brothers, mothers, and fathers in the Promise cemetery, with the notable exception of Lisa and Thomas Whittier 1955–1994, had lived exactly one hundred years.

  Maybe this place was a little bizarre. She wouldn’t go so far as to say “enchanted,” no. But it was definitely bizarre.

  “Mail call!” Perry screamed. She had been given strict instructions to leave Cam alone, so instead of clambering up the stairs as u
sual, she threw a big package up through the hole of the spiral staircase. It landed with a thud on the top stair.

  Cam stared at the plain manila bubble envelope. She didn’t recognize the handwriting on the outside. See, she thought, bizarre. No one was supposed to know where to find her. No one had this address. She tore into the envelope.

  A familiar white frame fell out onto the bed. It was the picture of Cam and Lily at St. Jude’s. They had been sitting on Lily’s bed playing Risk, conquering the world from their hospital room. Alicia asked to take their picture and they bent over the board to hug each other. Clear bags of menacing-looking fluids hung from the IV poles behind them, and their arms were bruised with “tracks” from being poked so many times. Still they smiled. Without their hair, they looked almost like sisters.

  Lily had BeDazzled the entire frame with sparkly, silver hearts. She knew how much Cam hated sparkle of any kind, which is exactly why she had done it. Cam smiled. It was the kind of thing you do for someone you love.

  Cam ran her finger over the lumpy hearts, stuck to the frame with a glue gun. She exhaled, and it felt like she’d been holding her breath for a very long time.

  The next thing she opened was a comic book. Not just any comic book. Chemosabe and Cueball Take Manhattan, completely finished by a real comic book illustrator and produced with a glossy Marvel cover.

  Cam shook the bubble envelope once more and a final slip of paper fell onto the bed. She immediately recognized the Hello Kitty skull-and-crossbones envelope. Lily’s personal stationery. Just seeing Lily’s handwriting, which was shakier than usual, on the outside of the envelope was almost too much to bear.

  Cam could not open it. She would save that for another time. For now, she lay back on the bed, sinking deep into the comforter, surrounded by her miracle mail.

  Cam brought her big yellow Homer bucket to the beach. It was an industrial-size tub that used to be filled with spackle, the kind of bucket some city kids used as drums. She flipped it over and sat on it, pressing the rim deep into the sand. She crossed her legs and stuck her hands in the pockets of her hoodie, pulling it tight around her to shield her from the stiff ocean breeze.