“Everybody is a main character to someone,” Bailey theorized, winding his way through the busy hall and out the nearest exit into the November afternoon. “There are no minor characters. Think how Ambrose must have felt watching the news in Mr. Hildy's class, knowing his mom worked in one of those towers. He's sitting there, watching it all on TV, probably wondering if he's watching his mother's death. She might be a minor character to us, but to him she's a leading lady.”
Fern brooded, shaking her head at the memory. None of them had known until later how close up and personal 9/11 was for Ambrose Young. He'd been so composed, so quiet, sitting in math class, repeatedly dialing a number that had never been answered. None of them even suspected. Coach Sheen found him in the wrestling room more than five hours after the towers collapsed, after everyone else had long since gone home.
“I can't reach her, Coach.” Ambrose whispered, as if the effort it took to increase his volume would crack his control. “I don't know what to do. She worked in the North tower. It's gone now. What if she's gone?”
“Your dad is probably wondering where you are. Have you talked to him?”
“No. He's got to be going crazy too. He pretends like he doesn't love her anymore. But I know he does. I don't want to talk to him until there's good news.”
Coach Sheen sat beside the boy who dwarfed him and put his arm around his shoulders. If Ambrose wasn't ready to go home, he would wait with him. He talked about random things--about the upcoming season, about the guys in Ambrose's weight, about the strengths of the teams in their district. He strategized with Ambrose about his teammates, distracting him with inconsequential things while the minutes ticked by. And Ambrose kept his emotions in check until his phone peeled out in shrill alarm, making them both jump and reach for their pockets.
“Son?” Elliott's voice was loud enough for Mike Sheen to hear it through the phone, and his heart seized, afraid of the words that hadn't been spoken. “She's okay, Brosey. She's okay. She's coming here.”
Ambrose tried to speak, to thank his dad for the welcome news, but was unable to reply. Rising to his feet, he handed his phone to his coach. Then, overcome, he walked several steps and sat down once more. Mike Sheen told Elliot they were on their way to the house, snapped the phone shut, and put his arm around the shaking shoulders of his star wrestler. There were no tears, but Ambrose shook like he was overcome with fever, like he'd been stricken with palsy, and Mike Sheen worried for a second that the emotion and stress of the day had made him genuinely sick. After a time, the manic shivering eased, and together they left the room, flipping off the lights behind them and closing the door on an agonizing afternoon, grateful that on a day of unprecedented tragedy, they had been granted a reprieve.
“My dad's worried about Ambrose,” Bailey said. “He says he seems different, and he's distracted. I've noticed that even though he works as hard as he always has in practice, something's off.”
“Wrestling season only started two weeks ago.” Fern defended Ambrose even though she didn't need to. Ambrose had no bigger fan than Bailey Sheen.
“But September 11th was two months ago, Fern. And he's still not over it.”
Fern looked up at the grey-streaked sky hanging heavily above their heads, tumultuous with the predicted storm. The clouds were churning, and the winds had just started to kick up. It was coming.
“None of us are, Bailey. And I don't think we ever will be.”
Fern wrinkled her nose at the childish missive and looked at Rita's hopeful face. Fern was not the only one who had noticed Ambrose. Maybe because he was so involved with wrestling, constantly traveling and practicing with very little downtime, he hadn't had many girlfriends. His unavailability made him an even hotter commodity, and Rita had decided she was going after him. She showed Fern the note she had written for him, complete with pink paper, hearts, and lots of perfume.
“Um, this is fine, Rita. But don't you want to be original?”
Rita shrugged and looked confused. “I just want him to like me.”
“But you wrote him a note because you want to get his attention, right?”
Rita nodded emphatically. Fern looked at Rita's angelic face, the way her long blonde hair swung around slim shoulders and perfect breasts and felt a pang of despair. She was pretty sure Rita already had Ambrose's attention.
“She's such a beautiful child.”
Fern heard her mother speaking from the kitchen, talking to Aunt Angie who sat by the screen door watching Bailey and Rita sitting in the swings in Fern's backyard. Fern needed to use the bathroom, but had come in through the garage instead of the screen door so she could check on the turtle she and Bailey had captured by the creek that morning. He was in a box filled with leaves and everything else a turtle could ever want. He hadn't moved and Fern wondered if maybe they had made a mistake to take him from his home.
“She almost doesn't look real.” Fern's mother shook her head, pulling Fern's attention from the turtle. “Those bright blue eyes and those perfect doll features.”
“And that hair! It's white from root to tip. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it,” Angie said. “And yet she's brown as can be. She's got that rare combination of white hair and golden skin.”
Fern stood awkwardly in the hallway, listening to the two women talk about Rita, knowing that her mother and aunt thought she was still in the backyard. Rita had moved to Hannah Lake that summer with her mother, and Rachel Taylor, a pastor's wife to her core, was the first to welcome the young mother and her ten-year-old daughter. Before long, she was arranging lunch dates and inviting Rita to come play with Fern. Fern liked Rita. She was sweet and happy and willing to do whatever Fern was doing. She didn't have a very good imagination, but Fern had enough for both of them.
“I think Bailey's smitten.” Angie laughed. “He hasn't blinked since he laid eyes on her. It's funny how kids are drawn to beauty just like the rest of us. Before you know it, he's going to start demonstrating his wrestling skills and I'm going to have to find a way to distract him, bless his heart. He begged Mike to let him participate in the wrestling camp again. Every year it's the same thing. He begs, he cries, and we have to try to explain why he can't.”
There was silence in the kitchen as Angie seemed lost in her thoughts and Rachel prepared sandwiches for the kids, unable to protect Angie from the realities of Bailey's disease.
“Fern seems to like Rita, doesn't she?” Angie changed the subject with a sigh but her eyes stayed fixed on her son swinging back and forth, talking non-stop to the lovely little blonde beside him. “It's good for her to have a girlfriend. She spends all her time with Bailey, but she's going to need a girlfriend as she gets older.”
It was Rachel's turn to sigh. “Poor Fernie.”
Fern had turned to walk back down the hall toward the restroom but stopped abruptly. Poor Fernie? She wondered with a jolt if she had some disease, a disease like Bailey's that her mother hadn't told her about. “Poor Fernie” sounded serious. She listened intently.
“She's not pretty the way that Rita is. Her teeth are going to need some major work, but she's still so small and she hasn't lost most of her baby teeth. Maybe when all her permanent teeth grow in it won't be as bad. At the rate she's growing, she's going to be in braces when she's twenty-five.” Fern's mother laughed. “I wondered if she would be jealous of Rita. But so far, she seems unaware of their physical differences.”
“Our little, funny, Fernie,” Angie said, a smile in her voice. “You can't find a better kid than Fern. I am thankful every day for her. She is such a blessing to Bailey. God knew what he was doing when he made them family, Rachel. He gave them each other. Such a tender mercy.”
But Fern was rooted to the spot. She didn't hear the word blessing. She didn't stop to ponder what it meant to be one of God's tender mercies. She's not pretty. The words clanged around in her head like pots and pans being jostled and banged. She's not pretty. Little, funny Fernie. She's not pretty. Poor Fernie.
“Fern!” Rita shouted her name and waved her hand in front of Fern's face. “Hello? Where did you go? What should I say?”
Fern shook off the old memory. Funny how some things stuck with you.
“What if you say something like, 'Even when you're not around, you're all I see. You're all I think about. I wonder, is your heart as beautiful as your face? Is your mind as fascinating as the play of muscle beneath your skin? Is it possible that you might think about me too?'“ Fern paused and looked at Rita.
Rita's eyes were very round. “Oh, that's good. Did you write that in one of your romance novels?” Rita was one of the only people who knew Fern wrote love stories and dreamed of having them published.
“I don't know. Probably.” Fern smiled sheepishly.
“Here! Write it down,” Rita squealed, pulling out a paper and a pencil and shoving them into Fern's hands.
Fern tried to remember what she had said. It came out even better the second time. Rita giggled and danced up and down as Fern finished the love note with a flourish. She signed Rita's name dramatically. Then she handed the note to Rita, who pulled some perfume from her backpack, gave the paper a spritz, folded it up, and addressed it to Ambrose.
Ambrose didn't respond immediately. In fact, it took him a few days. But on day four, there was an envelope in Rita's locker. She opened it with shaking hands. She read silently, her brow furrowed and she clutched Fern's arm as if she was reading a winning lottery ticket.
“Fern! Listen!” she breathed.
“She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;”
Fern’s eyebrows shot up and disappeared beneath her too-long bangs.
“He's almost as good a writer as you are, Fern!”
“He's better,” Fern said dryly, blowing a stray curl out of her eyes. “The guy who wrote that is better anyway.”
“He just signed it with an A,” Rita whispered. “He wrote me a poem! I can't believe it!”
“Uh, Rita? That's by Lord Byron. It's very famous.”
Rita's face fell, and Fern rushed to console her.
“But it's awesome that Ambrose would quote . . . Lord Byron . . . in a letter . . . to you, I mean,” she reassured haltingly. Actually, it was pretty awesome. Fern didn't think many eighteen-year-old guys regularly quoted famous poetry to beautiful girls. She was suddenly very impressed. Rita was too.
“We have to write him back! Should we write a famous poem, too?”
“Maybe.” Fern pondered, her head tilted to the side.
“I could make up my own poem.” Rita looked doubtful for several seconds. Then her face lit up and she opened her mouth to speak.
“Don't start with roses are red, violets are blue!” Fern warned, knowing intuitively what was coming.
“Darn,” Rita pouted, closing her mouth again. “I wasn't going to say violets are blue! I was going to say, ‘roses are red and sometimes pink. I'd really like to kiss you, I think.’”
Fern giggled and swatted her friend. “You can't say that after he's just sent you She Walks in Beauty.”
“The bell is going to ring.” Rita slammed her locker shut. “Will you please write something for me, Fern? Pleeeeeaase? You know I'm not going to be able to come up with anything good!” Rita saw Fern's hesitation and begged sweetly until Fern caved. And that's how Fern Taylor started writing love notes to Ambrose Young.
1994
“Whatcha doin'?” Fern asked, plopping down on Bailey's bed and looking around his room. It had been a while since she'd been in there. They usually played outside or in the family room. His room had wrestling paraphernalia, primarily from Penn State, all over his walls. Interspersed with the blue and white were pictures of his favorite athletes, shots of his family doing this and that, and piles of kid's books about everything from history to sports to Greek and Roman mythology.
“I'm making a list,” Bailey said briefly, not lifting his eyes from his task.
“What kind of a list?”
“A list of all the things I want to do.”
“What do you have so far?”
“I'm not telling.”
“Why?”
“'Cause some of it's private,” Bailey said, without rancor.
“Fine. Maybe I'll make a list too, and I won't tell you what's on it either.”
“Go ahead.” Bailey laughed. “But I can probably guess everything you're gonna write.
Fern snatched a piece of paper from Bailey's desk and found a Penn State pen in a jar of change, rocks, and randomness that sat on his nightstand. She wrote LIST at the top and stared at it.
“You won't just tell me one thing on your list?” she asked meekly after staring at the paper for several minutes without coming up with anything exciting.
Bailey sighed, a huge gust that sounded more like a perturbed parent than a ten-year-old boy. “Fine. But some of the things on my list I probably won't do right away. They might be things I do when I'm older . . . but I still want to do them. I'm going to do them!” he said emphatically.
“Okay. Just tell me one,” Fern pleaded. For being a girl with such a good imagination, she really couldn't think of anything she wanted to do, maybe because she went on new adventures every day in the books she read and lived through the characters in the stories she wrote.
“I want to be a hero.” Bailey looked at Fern gravely, as if he was disclosing highly classified information. “I don't know what kind yet. Maybe like Hercules or Bruce Baumgartner.
Fern knew who Hercules was and she knew who Bruce Baumgartner was too, simply because he was one of Bailey's favorite wrestlers, and according to Bailey, one of the best heavyweights of all time. She looked at her cousin doubtfully, but didn't voice her opinion. Hercules wasn't real and Bailey would never be as big and strong as Bruce Baumgartner.
“And if I can't be a hero like that, then maybe I could just save someone,” Bailey continued, unaware of Fern's lack of faith. “Then I could get my picture in the paper and everyone would know who I am.”
“I wouldn't want everyone to know who I am,” Fern said after some thought. “I want to be a famous writer, but I think I will use a pen name. A pen name is a name you use when you don't want everyone to know who you really are,” she supplied, just in case Bailey wasn't aware.
“So you can keep your identity a secret, like Superman,” he whispered, as if Fern's storytelling had just reached a whole new level of cool.
“And no one will ever know that it's me,” Fern said softly.
They weren't typical love notes. They were love notes because Fern poured her heart and soul into them, and Ambrose seemed to do the same, answering with an honesty and a vulnerability she hadn't anticipated. Fern didn't innumerate all the things she/Rita loved about him, didn't rave on and on about his looks, his hair, his strength, his talent. She could have, but she was more interested in all the things she didn't know. So she carefully chose her words and crafted questions that would allow her access to his innermost thoughts. She knew it was a charade. But she couldn't help herself.
It started with simple questions. Easy things like sour or sweet, winter or fall, pizza or tacos. But then they veered into the deep, the personal, the revealing. Back and forth they went, asking and answering, and it felt a little like undressing--removing the unimportant things first, the jacket, the earrings, the baseball cap. Before long, buttons were undone, zippers were sliding down, and clothes were falling to the floor. Fern's heart would flutter and her breaths grew short with every barrier crossed, every piece of metaphorical clothing discarded.
Lost or Alone? Ambrose said alone, and Fern responded, “I would much rather be lost with you than alone without you, so I choose lost with a caveat.” Ambrose responded, “No caveats,” to which Fern replied, “Then lost, because alone feels permanent, and lost can be found.”
Streetlights or stoplights?
Fern: Streetlights made me feel safe. Ambrose: Stoplights make me restless.
Nobody or Nowhere? Fern: I'd rather be nobody at home than somebody somewhere else. Ambrose: I'd rather be nowhere. Being nobody when you're expected to be somebody gets old. Fern: How would you know? Have you ever been nobody? Ambrose: Everybody who is somebody becomes nobody the moment they fail.
Smart or Beautiful? Ambrose claimed smart, but then proceeded to tell her how beautiful she (Rita) was. Fern claimed beautiful and went on to tell Ambrose how clever he was.
Before or After? Fern: Before, anticipation is usually better than the real thing. Ambrose: After. The real thing, when done right, is always better than a daydream. Fern wouldn't know, would she? She let that one slide.
Love songs or poetry? Ambrose: Love songs–you get the best of both, poetry set to music. And you can't dance to poetry. He then made a list of his favorite ballads. It was an impressive list, and Fern spent one evening making a mix CD of all of them. Fern said poetry and sent him back some of the poems she'd written. It was risky, foolish, and she was completely naked by this point in the game, yet she played on.
Stickers or crayons? Candles or light bulbs? Church or school? Bells or whistles? Old or new? The questions continued, the answers flew, and Fern would read each letter very slowly, perched on the toilet in the girl's restroom and then spend the rest of the school day crafting a response.
She commanded Rita to read each missive, and with each note, Rita got more and more confused, both by the things Ambrose was saying and the answers Fern was giving. More than once she protested: “I don't know what you two are talking about! Can't you just talk about his abs? He's got amazing abs, Fern.” Before long, Rita was handing over the notes to Fern with a shrug and delivering them back to Ambrose with complete disinterest.