My father ducks his head in greeting.
“I’ll be with you in a minute.”
“Yes, sir.”
I watch him use the muck rake to pick up the last of the manure, tossing it into a huge wheelbarrow.
“You can sit there,” he says, motioning toward a bale of straw. “Let me just latch the stalls.”
He locks the animals in for the night, the goats watching me with their strange keyhole irises. They’re kind of cute, actually, with their nubby horns, which instantly remind me of Pan, god of the wild, keeper of shepherds and their flocks, nature and mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music. Wooded glens. Violins around campfires. Margaret’s Spring. The goats are a huge hit with Nessa, if not with Shorty, who constantly tries to herd them from one place to another. My father slides the barn door open a smitch and leans in the opening.
“I know it’s difficult to talk about . . .” He pauses to light a cigarette, the smoke curling out the door and disappearing. “But I wanted to ask about your mama.”
I fidget on the bale, plucking a piece of straw just to have something to do with my hands.
“Your mama hit you girls?”
I think of Melissa, and nod. I can’t meet his eyes, either.
“She left you on your own in the woods? More than just that time we found you?”
Again, I nod.
“I know you said your sister stopped talking last year. What I want to know is why.”
I command myself to breathe. In, out. In, out. I’ve rehearsed the words in my head so many times, it should be easy.
“She never talked a lot to begin with, sir. It wasn’t like there were lots of folks to talk to anyhow.”
I see it in his eyes, the struggle not to push.
“Ness was five,” I continue. “After a few months, when she stayed like that, Mama took her to the speech therapist in town.” “Was there a precipitating event?”
“ ‘Precipitating’?”
I know so many words. It’s perplexing to come across so many I don’t.
“Something that upset her. There must’ve been a reason.”
I look at the animals, so warm and safe. The cocoa brown donkey peers at me, waiting for an answer, too. I don’t know what to say. All the prerehearsed words aren’t as easy with my father’s eyes upon me and his forehead creased with concern.
“I don’t know,” I say, trying not to look away, because liars look away. That’s what the man in the woods had said. I tremble, trying not to remember. My father pulls a blanket from a shelf and drapes it over my shoulders.
My teeth chatter the words. “Thhank yyyou, ssssir.”
His work boots are water-stained at the toes after dumping and filling buckets for the animals. Neither of us talks for a long spell, but I can feel his need to know. I think of Perdita, as lost as me:
One of these two must be necessities
Which then will speak, that you must change this purpose,
Or I my life.
“Well, if you think of anything, let me know. We want to help Nessa get past this.”
I nod as I hand the blanket back. “Yes, sir.”
Outside, I let out my breath in a large white cloud. I’m shivering even while my T-shirt sticks to my ribs. I follow along the wall to the back of the barn, sliding down into a squat. I wish I had that paper bag. The lady on the late-night “infomercial” called them “anxiety attacks.” They’re becoming all too common lately.
My father has no idea what he’s asking of me. None of them do. Only Jenessa, who loves me too much to tell—literally. Jenessa, who’s willing to give up her words altogether to keep me close . . . a sacrifice I let her make because I’m too cowardly to say the words myself.
What kind of monster am I, to let a six-year-old bear my sins?
I hate myself, hate what I’ve done. I’ve thought it through backward and forward, and I still can’t find an answer that spares us both.
I wipe away the tears angrily, the wool chapping my cheeks. I cry too easily since coming here. I hate that, too.
As long as Ness is safe, the rest doesn’t matter.
I think of Mama, the tears giving way to numbness. She was only being herself, leaving us in the woods. “Just cuz a person don’t like the truth don’t make it less the truth.” Mama’s brain doesn’t work right. She called it “manic episodes.” Diagnosed bipolar when she was my age. She didn’t have a say in it, either.
Saint Joseph, can you hear me? I don’t know what to do! It seems no matter what I do, a little girl gets hurt. You tell me—what’s worse? Jenessa losing her words, or losing me?
What if I tell them and they don’t want me anymore?
I roll up the leg of my jeans, my skin moon white in the darkness. I run my mitten over the scar, flat and gray, like a rut in the back of my calf where the flesh rubbed away. The metal edge of the folding table had done that. I hadn’t felt it happen until afterward.
“Charles! Carey? It’s freezing out here! Jenessa is hoping Carey will give her her bubble bath. Are you two coming in?”
I’m surprised when my father covers for me.
“Carey went for a walk—I told her not to go too far. Tell Ness that Carey’ll have to give her a rain check.”
“Well, don’t you be too long, then. I have water on for tea.”
“I’m just finishing up, and then I’ll be in.”
Their voices ring out clear as crow caws carried on the back of the frigid air.
A few minutes later, I hear my father’s footsteps crunch through the snow and the sound of boots knocking against the back stairs before the door clicks shut behind him.
It’s only a matter of time. I know it for sure now. And then I won’t be able to stay here—either because the law won’t let me or because it won’t be good for Jenessa and her new family.
I reckon Miss Charlotte Bronte summed it up best.
Speak words of kindled wrath to me
When dead as dust in funeral urn
Sank every note of melody
And I was forced to wake again
The silent song, the slumbering strain.
I don’t care about myself. Not really. I might be a coward now, but I wasn’t when it really counted. If there are consequences, so be it. It’s why I’m not like Mama. It’s why we made it, Jenessa and me, and why we always will.
12
If you ask me, it’s a strange teenage ritual on a Saturday night to gather together at someone else’s house to eat snacks and drink pop. I mean, didn’t we all just eat dinner, pop included?
“That’s not the point,” Melissa says, amused. “It’s a chance to get to know your classmates and make friends outside school. You’ll have fun,” she says with a grin. “I wouldn’t imagine the Carey I know to be scared by a little party.”
“Who’s scared?” I fire back, taking the bait, but still. “Anyway, I promised Pixie I’d go. Her mother won’t let her go otherwise.”
Delaney, eavesdropping in the doorway, rolls her eyes. I put away the last of the silverware, the cleanup helping burn off nervous energy.
Nessa likes to listen to our conversations from the kitchen table after its cleared, where she swings her legs and draws pictures of Shorty and my father scrunched beneath rainbows that take up half pages, or of Delaney and Melissa smiling beneath bulbous yellow suns. The drawings aren’t half-bad, actually. They crowd the refrigerator doors, held in place by tiny black magnets. I count another three drawings taped to the pantry door, and one sketch of our woods through Jenessa’s eyes, framed and hung on the dining room wall—the first Nessa ever drew for Melissa.
That one’s my favorite, drawn in old, familiar Bic, the trees scratching the page with a straight-lined elegance, the camper in the clearing, the creek running off the bottom of the paper. Nessa could be an artist, one day.
“It’s nice of Carey to take Courtney to the party,” Melissa says, giving Delaney an impromptu hug as she passes.
“Mom, really.
You’re messing up my hair.”
“I’d imagine she has one tough row to hoe,” Melissa continues, “being young and accelerated. It doesn’t surprise me you two would hit it off.”
I bristle. “Why? Because we’re freaks?”
I watch Melissa climb barefoot onto the counter to put away the crystal bowls on the cabinet’s top shelf. My father doesn’t like it when she does that. He wants her to use the step stool, even if it’s a pain to unfold and heavy to drag in from the hallway closet.
Melissa climbs down and turns to me.
“Freak? Where did you hear that?”
We both look at Delaney through the archway, where she languishes on the sofa, reading Star and People. Freak’s a word she’d use forever if I admitted that, one, I don’t know who any of the people in People are, or why some of the older women look like cats—cats with huge lips—and two, to me, the teens look bizarre with their blinding white smiles, impossibly perfect hair, and expensive purses and bags. Ness and I could’ve lived in the woods for a year, maybe two, with the money it costs to buy one of those “Louis Vuitton” bags.
A horn bleeps outside. Delaney rushes to find her coat, then pops her head through the doorway.
“I’m going now. Bye!”
Melissa stops her.
“Are you sure you don’t have room for Carey and Pixie, Delly?”
I cringe. Adults can be so optimistic. Delaney’s face could wither one of Nessa’s smiling paper flowers into a petalless, slumped brown shoot.
“Sorry, Mom. We’re going to Kara’s house first, and then the party. I can’t make the girls wait.”
Melissa looks at me, and I’m the slumped brown shoot. Not that I’d go to the party with Delaney anyway. I’d rather eat skunk, which (thanks, Saint Joseph!) Nessa and I never had to do.
“We understand. Have fun, honey. No drinking, and wear your seat belt! And no texting while driving, you hear? Anything untoward, and you have them stop the car and I’ll come pick you up.”
Delaney groans. “And I’d be the laughingstock of high school.”
“I don’t care. At least you’d be a live laughingstock!”
The front door slams behind her just as my father comes in from the back.
“Who’s slamming doors around here?”
Jenessa raises her hand and giggles.
“Oh, you think so, huh?”
He descends on Ness with tickling fingers, her bubbly laughter loud and infectious, so close to real words, I almost expect her to talk out loud. Smart as the shuffle fox, she slides under the table, but it’s obvious she doesn’t really want to escape.
“That’s enough now,” Melissa warns. “She just ate dinner.”
Still laughing, my father helps Jenessa back into her chair, her hand so tiny in his large one. I know it’s considered impolite, but I can’t help staring at him. It’s like finding something you didn’t know was yours, and the only way to get to know it is to look and look. With his tousled hair and wide smile, he looks younger and happier than he did that first day in the woods. He doesn’t look like a guy who doesn’t care about his daughters.
Everyone loves Nessa. Melissa, Delaney, Mrs. Haskell, Mrs. Tompkins, the entire second-grade class, and obviously, my father. It should be hard for Ness, like it is for me, but for her, it’s not. It’s like when we went food shopping with Melissa last weekend and on the way home, the SUV caught one green light after another.
Lucky. Easy. That’s how it is for Jenessa.
I smile at her, a pink smile, seeing the candy necklace she’s gnawing on. She must’ve gotten it at school. Or from Melissa. She’s eaten most of the candy beads, except for the pink ones.
A strong rap on the front door, and we all turn our heads.
“I’ll get it,” my father says.
I watch from my chair as he greets Courtney and her mom. I’m surprised by how young Pixie’s mom is.
“Would you like to come in?”
Pixie’s mom shyly holds out her hand. “I’m Amy Macleod. Carey is all Courtney talks about.”
Pixie turns almost as red as her hair. “Mom!”
“Let me take your coat,” Melissa says warmly.
I’ve been ready for ages. My puffer coat hangs on a peg by the door, with thick wool mittens the color of dusty rose shoved in a pocket apiece. I’m wearing the new boots, which cling like a second skin all the way to my knees, and which, Melissa says, fashion trends aside, are really equestrian boots.
I reckon they look good with my black leggings and the chunky jay-colored cable-knit sweater that almost skims the tops. Even Delaney had looked me over appreciatively, for the split-second before she caught herself.
“I have an idea,” my father says. “How about I drop them off at the party, and you two ladies can visit, perhaps have a cup of tea?”
“That’s a wonderful idea, Charles. What do you say, Amy?”
Pixie grins, looking from me to her mom and back again.
“I think that sounds lovely.”
My father takes Amy’s coat and hangs it on the peg where mine used to be.
“After you, ladies,” he says to us, with Pixie hanging on his every word.
It’s obvious she’s never had a father, either. I puff up like a Christopher robin. I don’t mind sharing at all.
Pixie giggles as my father gives us the lowdown before letting us out of the SUV. We’re parked in Marie’s driveway, the birthday girl, one of Delaney’s closest friends. The whole sophomore class has been invited. From the looks of things, almost all have come.
“No drinking. No smoking. No drugs. Got it, girls?”
“Yes, sir.”
Pixie pulls a serious face, but she can’t keep it up.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Blackburn. I’ll keep Carey out of trouble.”
My father and I exchange glances, but neither of us corrects her. That’s when I realize she doesn’t know about Delaney and me.
The winter air is exhilarating, when you’re snug in a puffer coat. I pause in the driveway, squinting into the headlights as my father honks once and then backs out onto the road.
Marie’s house is at least the size of one million of our campers put together.
“Scared?” Pixie says, reading my face.
Two freaks out past their bedtime, I think, like Delaney had cracked earlier, cackling like a Halloween witch.
“No,” I say, drawing myself up taller. “Contemplative.”
“ ‘Contemplative’? What is this, a funeral? You’d better file away those SAT words for tonight, Blackburn. It’s time to par-TAY.”
Pixie dances crazy, and I grab her arm before she slips on the sleekness coating practically everything. Even though Melissa says everyone uses salt. Salt, to melt ice from steps and walkways. And no, not the kind we use on our chicken or steak.
“That woulda sucked. Thanks, Carey.”
I think of Mrs. Macleod, who looks just like Pixie, red hair and all.
“You look just like your mom, you know.”
“Everyone says that. Probably because she looks so young. She got pregnant with me in high school. She was fifteen. I’m not supposed to say or anything.”
I think of Ness. “It’s hard to raise a baby when you’re that young.”
“I know. I told my mom how you used to take care of your sister all the time, before you moved here, and she said I could go tonight, if I went with you. I still can’t believe she said yes!”
“Yup, that’s me.” I smile wryly. “Old reliable.”
“You kinda are, though. I guess we both are,” she adds, sighing.
“But not tonight. I reckon we’re going to guzzle pop and eat unnecessary snacks with the best of them!”
“You don’t get out much, do you, Blackburn?”
“Like you should talk.”
We stand side by side, admiring the house. It’s breathtaking, draped in Christmas lights, both clear, twinkling bulbs and long strings that mimic icicles. I’ve never seen anything
like it in my whole life. Lights on houses and spiraled up the trunks of trees, even. The lights sketch the dark into a fairy world, like straight out of one of Nessa’s picture books.
“By the second week of December, whole neighborhoods will be decked out. We’ll take some drives so you girls can see the lights,” Melissa had promised, and it was a promise she’d kept.
I knew a little about Christmas from before the woods, although I was so young, I don’t remember much. Jenessa, on the other hand, has spent her life Christmas-free. We’d been too busy surviving to celebrate.
Pixie pulls on my coat sleeve. “Let’s go in. I don’t want to spend my whole first party shivering in the driveway!”
I hold her up all the way to the front door.
“You’ve got some heels on those shoes, huh?”
She blushes with delight that I’ve noticed.
“No tiptoes. See?” She rings the doorbell.
“I think we’re supposed to just go in,” I say nervously.
But then the door opens and Marie peeks out, regarding us with lofty amusement.
“If it isn’t Pixie Macleod and Fiddle Girl,” she purrs.
Pixie gives a little hop in place and Marie smiles.
“Oh hell, if you’re that excited, come on in.”
“Thanks,” Pixie gushes, pulling me in behind her.
The noise is like an assault—the house vibrating with laughter and music and chatter. My heart thumps sideways, out of rhythm with the driving beat.
“Look!”
Pixie drags me into a room off the hall. There’s actually a whole separate room for coats.
“Feel that in your chest? Isn’t it cool? It’s dance music, like at the clubs.”
I keep my coat on. I’m wishing I had my violin case, just to have something to hold on to. Even worse, I’m wondering if there’s a way to get a spare case and take the handle off. I could hold it in my pocket, where no one could see.
Pixie tugs my sleeve.
“Aren’t you going to hang up your coat?”
“I think I’ll keep it on.”