Ryan ends it with two notes. His rendition.
Fee-bee. feeeeee-bee.
I laugh through my tears. It’s perfect.
“My mom started me on lessons when I was four. She thought she’d have to superglue me to the bench to get me to practice. Instead, I loved it. There were times she had to drag me away for meals, or out into the sunshine because she said I’d become pale as a ghost.”
“Your music is beautiful,” I gush.
I smile at him, the softer, civilized version of myself. The girl from his backyard. The girl from before the woods. All it takes is one thought.
I’m not alone.
Ryan starts to play a piece I’ve never heard before. I close my eyes and ride the notes to their breathless end, my heart free-falling, like during my first elevator ride, then rising up, soaring like the eaglets with all the supporting branches gone, the only thing left being that leap of faith into the vast unknown.
I keep my eyes shut until the room goes silent. When I open my eyes, he’s watching me.
Ryan lowers the lid and pops to his feet.
“I have an idea,” he says.
He reaches into my coat pocket and pulls out my hat.
“I do appreciate a girl who chooses warmth over hairstyle.”
He plays with the tassel for a moment before handing it back to me.
“Put your mittens on, too.”
I regard him quizzically.
He reaches out and zips my coat to my chin, then does the same with his. We walk through the sliding glass doors and into the night. I’m glad for the horse boots, woods-glad. The snowflakes coat us in powdered sugar, and my breath rises like the smoke from my father’s cigarettes, clouding, then disappearing.
“Can I show you something?”
I nod.
“Like this,” Ryan says, falling backward into the snow. I copy him, falling into a spot next to him, my arms and legs outstretched, my head lifted so I can see his movements. He makes long, sweeping arcs with his arms and legs, open and closed, over and over, his boots thudding against each other.
I do as he does, grinning like a fool. Maybe he’s crazy, but this kind of crazy is fun.
“Now, stand up like this.”
I watch him extricate himself by first sitting up, careful not to mar the form. He gets to his feet and leaps to the side. I do the same.
He meets me where I stand, reaching for my mitten with his puffy glove.
“See?”
I stare at the markings.
“Snow angels,” he says.
And they are. “Ooooo. They’re beautiful.”
He squeezes my hand, and I look at my mitten cradled in his glove. Before tonight, the only hand I’d ever held was Nessa’s. I wish he’d never let go.
All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell’d shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burnd like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
I turn back to the angels, marveling. Just like the china angel on the mantel at home. The sweeping robes. The arc of wings.
“My sister would love this. I’ll have to show her how to do it.”
And I have something to show him, too.
“See up there, in the east? Those three stars in a row?”
I point, and he nods.
“That’s the bridge. See those two stars above, and two below? That’s the body. Those weaker stars beneath? They make up the neck. It’s my constellation. The violin constellation.”
Ryan laughs. “I’ll be damned. It does look like a violin!”
“I used to tell my sister when she was younger, ‘If we ever got separated, meet me beneath the big violin.’ ”
Hand in hand, we walk around the house, where he deposits me on the porch. I want to go back to our angels, to the soothing pressure of my hand in his.
“Do you want to know what us less visionary folk call it?”
I nod.
“Orion. Orion the hunter.”
“Orion,” I repeat. I can’t wait to look it up on Melissa’s laptop.
“They do have one thing in common, though.”
“What?”
“They both use bows.”
We grin at each other.
“Will you be okay?”
He motions with his head toward the door and the sound of laughter, music, and nonlethal screams. I’ll never understand why teenage girls like to scream, minus strange men or bears approaching.
“Yeah. I’ll be fine. I’ll find Pixie,” I tell him, my voice ringing out with a confidence I wish I felt. I glance at my watch. “It’s almost time for Mrs. Macleod to pick us up anyway.”
“Then I’ll see you in school Monday. No hiding, you hear?”
He leans down and kisses my forehead, cocooning me for a moment in his puffer arms before stepping back.
“I almost forgot. I have something for you. Close your eyes.” He unzips my coat partway, then stuffs something flimsy into the inside pocket before zipping me back up. “Don’t look until you get home.”
I watch him walk backward, holding me in his eyes, until he trips on something—a rock, a slick of ice—and his arms flail. I chuckle.
Once he’s in his car, we stare at each other through the window as the car warms up. I smile when he traces CC into the condensation on the window, and when he pulls out, I wave until the tail-lights disappear, like stars plunging over the horizon.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care has she,
The Lady of Shalott.
And then I’m back where I started, my teeth chattering, staring at Marie’s front door.
I’m about the only teenager alive without a cell phone, as Delaney pointed out a few days ago, and I reckon at the time I didn’t care. Now I’m wishing I had one something fierce. I’d call Pixie on hers and have her meet me out front.
Back inside, I scan the crowd. I don’t see Delaney or her court. I wave back when Ainsley and Sarah wave, dancing with two guys who look vaguely familiar. Pixie isn’t among them.
Newly brave, I find the wall and follow the smooth cream paint through another doorway into a spacious living room with leather chairs and couches and an entire back wall lined with books. People laugh and talk, and there’s a group of girls sitting on guys’ laps in front of a black woodstove, roasting marshmallows and hot dogs speared by long metal forks.
A folding table set up against the side wall holds a huge crystal bowl, from which a pretty girl with glasses and a sorrel ponytail ladles a red liquid into blue plastic cups. She motions for me to come over.
“Punch,” she says, holding out a cup, “to get you into the spirit.”
I take the cup gratefully, my throat scratchy from the cold, dry air.
“How much?” I ask nervously.
“Free. Or as much as you want.” She giggles.
I take a big swig and instantly choke, white lightning spraying through my mouth and nose. The girl jumps back in disgust.
“Jesus!”
“Sorry!” My eyes water. I wipe my face with the napkins she shoves at me.
“You practically barfed all over me. You better have nothing contagious.”
I don’t tell her how me and Nessa got our shots two weeks before starting school, like we were Shorty or something. I also don’t tell her about the itchy, pearly pinworms wriggling in the toilet bowl. We’d taken medicine for that, too.
The girl stares me down as she picks up her punch cup and throws back the contents in one gulp. She slams the cup down on the table.
“Ahhhh.”
“What is it?”
“It’s grain alcohol. What’d you expect?”
“Moonshine?”
“Yep. I almost saved up enough for the ‘quipment and the ingredients.”
“Moonshine.”
“I could sell it and make a pro
fit. You, of all people, should be glad of that, girl.”
My body will buy the still and the ingredients:
7 pounds baker’s yeast
42 pounds brown sugar
4 pounds treacle (a thick, dark syrup produced durin’ raw sugarcane refinin’)
1 pound hops
“Where’ll we get treacle, Mama?”
“You let me worry about that, girl.”
The dormouse talked treacle at the Mad Tea Party.
Why not. The woods are their own sort of Wonderland.
“What if I had to drive a vehicle home?”
“Then you’d better hope it’s a beater, and you’d chew this.”
The girl flips a few foil-wrapped sticks at me.
I unwrap one and fold the gum into my mouth. “Thanks.”
“Hey—aren’t you Fiddle Girl?”
Before I know what I’m doing, I shake my head no.
“Sure you are. FYI, the kiddie drinks are in the cooler in the kitchen. Pop and juice, the G-rated kind.”
I pick my way through a jungle of bodies, slowing down to listen to a shaggy-haired guy in the corner play guitar for two girls. Not bad.
Back in the great room, I notice the massive staircase winding to the second floor. The bodies thin out as I ascend. On the landing, I hesitate before a dark hallway of closed doors.
I rap on the first one.
“Pixie?”
No answer.
“Pixie, are you in there? It’s time.”
“Go away!” a male voice growls, startling me, and I almost trample a cat with a pushed-in face. It hunches its back and hisses at me before skittering off.
What if something happened to Pixie? I’m in charge.
I never should have left her alone.
I knock on the next few doors, but there’s no answer. I feel along the wall for a light switch, but I can’t find one.
Would any of the guys hurt a little girl? What if they were drunk?
“Pixie!” I yell above the music. “Pixie!”
I have no choice but to go back to the first room, where I hear rustling, then silence.
Gently, I try the knob, surprised when it turns. Ever so slightly, I push the door open, my eyes adjusting to the light. There must be thirty candles burning, at least.
“What the hell are you doing in here, freak?”
I see much more than I want to—a guy’s bare buttocks rising and falling over a girl, also naked, her breasts exposed as she twists out from under him.
The guy looks over his shoulder, eyes narrowed. “Didn’t you hear her? GET OUT.”
“Get the fuck OUT!” Delaney yells, half-hysterical.
I slam the door behind me, falling to my knees in my haste. Her shrill voice penetrates the wood.
“Shit, Derek! She knows!” Her voice quivers, on the brink of tears. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”
I fly down the stairs, knocking into Marie at the bottom. She glares at me like Delaney does as she works to steady a silver platter of small sandwiches.
“Watch where you’re going. And for your information, the second floor is off-limits.”
I’m so not in the mood. “I reckon someone should’ve told Delaney that,” I snap.
She looks nervously from me to the upstairs landing.
I take one of the sandwiches. “Thanks.”
She rushes up the stairs.
“There you are! Where’d you get the food?”
I whip around, Pixie stands with her hands on her hips, cheeks flushed, the hairs framing her face curly with perspiration.
“Marie has a platter. Wait a minute—there I am? Where’ve you been? I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“You have any more gum?” she asks, watching me chew.
I’m still new to gum. I tend to chew it like cud.
I hand Pixie the sandwich, instead, which she inhales, her words garbled.
“I wish it were bigger. They call these finger sandwiches. I’m thinking of home and a honking big PB&J on pumpernickel—you know, the thick slices?”
I’m so relieved to have found her, I almost forget what I saw upstairs. Almost. I imagine my father’s face on fire as he shouts at Delaney. I imagine Melissa’s eyes, black as marbles, her arms locked across her chest, and I get it: It’s the same out here as it is in the woods—the silent shame of young girls having babies. Even Mama didn’t want that for me.
I see Delaney moving rhythmically in the bed, a smile on her face . . . a smile . . . until she saw me.
Pixie yawns so wide, I see her uvula.
“I was in the study, playing Scrabble with some of the freshman girls. You were the one who disappeared. With Ryan,” she says, teasing me.
I grin, the happier events of the night playing on a loop. Lips. Vivaldi. Snow angels. Lancelot.
She grabs my arm and turns it, checking my watch. I trail her to the coat closet, where she finds her coat easily, slipping it from the hanger, and I help her put it on, like I do for Nessa. She turns to me as she wraps her scarf around her neck.
“This had to be the most amazing night of my entire life. I wish it weren’t over already.”
“Mine, too.” I giggle. I feel like I could hug the world, like a big snow globe wrapped up in my puffer arms.
“I knew he’d kiss you,” she says, leaning in to me.
“I didn’t even know he’d be here.”
“I did. He asked me on Friday if you were going”—her eyes glint conspiratorially—“and I told him, ‘Hell yeah.’ ”
I laugh, realizing how much people underestimate Pixie. She comes in such an adorable package, but she’s really light-years ahead of all of us.
She takes my bare hand in her gloved one. Each finger of her gloves is a different color.
“C’mon. I don’t want my mom waiting too long.”
We wrangle our way to the front door, but I stop and turn when I hear a familiar voice.
“Hey!”
Delaney leans over the second-floor balcony, her perfect hair a perfect mess. One collar blade of her white button-down blouse stands on end, but it’s not that. Something’s different.
And then I see it. Her eyes aren’t defiant, superior, or icy. They’re terrified.
Pixie pulls at me to go. I stare at Delaney for a long moment, waiting for the sisterly braille to kick in. It doesn’t.
I turn and follow Pixie out the door.
“You girls have fun?”
Heat escapes in pockets out of Mrs. Macleod’s open window. Pixie climbs into the front seat. I slide into the back.
“It was awesome, Amy!” Pixie sighs.
“Mom, please.”
“It was AWESOME, Mom! I had the best night of my entire life. We ate birthday cake and danced all night, and the house was huge. There was this glass fireplace in the great room, and everyone was so nice to me.”
“Cake?” I poke Pixie in the back.
“Um-hmm.”
“Seat belts, please.”
Pixie sighs, her face dreamy as she turns to me.
“Thanks, Carey, for the best night of my life.”
“How about you, Carey? Did you have fun?”
Pixie giggles. I nod at Mrs. Macleod, and blush.
“It was quite a night,” I agree, making a face at Pixie, then smiling at her mom, who smiles back in the rearview mirror.
We drive home through the slippery darkness, Pixie oohing and aahing over the Christmas lights strung across the houses, each display different, each amazing in its own right.
I remember Jenessa’s face when we drove through town and she saw the lights for the first time. She thought it was her fairy world come to life.
There have been so many moments when we’ve smacked up against reality, struggling to gain our bearings and find our way clear. But not the lights. The lights are magical. Ness is young enough to make this world her real one, a place where sober people string lights on houses and trees, whole rooms exist for canned goods, and a fat old guy
in a red suit leaves presents for children on December 25.
“Wait until we get the tree,” Melissa says, her eyes shining. “A fresh-cut tree, with pine scent wafting through the house!”
“Imagine that,” I tell Jenessa, her eyes wide, unblinking. “A tree inside the house—hung with ornaments and even more lights!”
At our farm, it’s dark and silent as the snow stops falling for the first time in days. Our own Christmas lights, ginormous bulbs of red, green, yellow, and blue, have been switched off for the night.
“Would you like us to walk you in?” Mrs. Macleod offers as I undo my seat belt and zip my coat.
“Thank you, ma’am, but I have my keys,” I pull the ring from my pocket and jangle it, “and it looks like everyone’s asleep. I’ll be okay. Thanks for the ride.”
“You’re welcome, Carey. Thanks for taking Courtney to the party. I know it meant a lot to her.”
“You’re welcome, ma’am. She had a good time. We both did.”
“Hello! I’m right here!”
I chuckle as I close the door. Pixie scrambles over the seat and stretches out for a nap across the back, waving good-bye with her eyes closed.
I let myself into the house, shushing Shorty as he bays once, sniffs the party on me, then licks some off my hand. I struggle with my boots, leaving them standing in the mudroom, and pad down the hall in my stocking feet.
The fire in the living room is a pile of dying embers—sad, somehow. I perch on the rug before it, my knobby knees hugged to my chest. Good old Shorty, waiting until he heard the dead bolt click before disappearing up the stairs, back to Nessa.
I pat my pocket, remembering, my fingers closing around two shiny rectangles of paper. When I turn the key of the Tiffany lamp, there’s just enough light to see.
There I am in black and white, in profile. From that angle, my violin case, slung over my shoulder, assumes the shape of an angel’s wing.
The picnic in the woods.
It’s the second photograph, though, that causes my breath to catch in my throat and sends me tumbling down Alice’s rabbit hole.
A towhead girl and a gangly boy sit side by side in backyard swings. Her flaxen hair falls over one eye. His skinny arm is dwarfed by a neon green cast. Both wear grins for miles.