“He’s irresistible, though,” Asher said, lifting Buddy onto his lap and pretending to squeeze his cheeks. “Look at that face.”
“He is the ugliest thing I have ever seen.”
“I know,” said Asher, “but he’s one of God’s creatures.”
“Oh, my God, fine,” said Elaine. “I’ll figure it out, Campbell, but you need to help me.”
“Is it okay if I start next week?” Cam asked. “This week, I’m taking Asher on a trip.”
“No, you’re not,” said Asher, stiffening in his chair.
“I didn’t know Asher went on trips,” Elaine said, intrigued.
“We’re going to Disney World. You’ll like it there,” said Cam. “It’s another ‘Magic Kingdom.’” The idea had been seeded, and now it was growing like a plant in her mind. She wanted to prove to him that he could leave. He could leave, and the world would not fall apart. He needed to know that he didn’t have to stay here picking up the pieces like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life. She was going to shoo him like she had the flamingos.
“That’s nice, but how are you going to get him on a plane?” asked Elaine.
“I don’t do planes, Cam Chowda,” said Asher.
“We can work on that,” said Cam. “What’s with the Cam Chowda?”
“Just testing it out.”
“I don’t like it.”
“How ’bout just Clam? Or Clampbell?”
“Absolutely not.”
Alicia was not on board with the Disney idea either.
“Absolutely not,” she said as she banged a kitchen cabinet shut. “Are you kidding me?”
“It’s entirely free. From Make-A-Wish. We can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. And you could visit Izanagi.”
“Campbell. Look at you. You’re living a normal life for once. Your energy is back. Your skin is clearing up. You’re eating, working a summer job—dare I say, falling in love? Why would you want to jeopardize that? It’s been so nice to see your smile.”
“How am I jeopardizing anything? If Promise has done this, it will still work when we get back.”
“If you leave, you’ll have to start all over when you get back. You’ll undo everything. What if you break the spell?” Alicia leaned with one arm on the kitchen counter. With the other hand, she pretended to smoke a plastic drinking straw.
Cam was starting to make her own rules about the magic, or whatever it was. She would go to Disney because the Make-A-Wish letter was a sign. It was showing her what to do next. She wasn’t going to get addicted to Promise and let the town develop the crazy grip on her that it had on Asher.
She tried to see her mother’s point of view. She knew the story. “My only job is to keep you alive, Campbell,” Alicia had said. “That’s my primary responsibility as your mother.” So far, she had protected Cam from crib death, choking hazards, drowning in the bathtub, strangling in the cords from the blinds, being scalded by water from teakettles, getting hit by a car, drinking bleach, falling out the window, being kidnapped, and diving into shallow water. She thought she was in the clear. The only thing left on her danger radar was a drunk-driving accident on the way home from the prom. She didn’t expect to be blindsided by this illness. And she was powerless against it. It was difficult for Alicia, Cam knew. But somehow she also knew that she was going to do this anyway. She wanted to honor Lily’s final request and show Asher where she came from.
Upstairs she set up a little henna tattoo parlor, where she planned to paint Asher’s entire arm with a Samoan tattoo.
“We’re leaving tonight,” she told him.
“There is the issue of the plane,” he said.
She wanted to ask him, “What are the chances that you and your parents would die in separate unrelated airplane incidents? It’s practically statistically impossible,” but she knew not to reason with him. His fear was irrational, number one, and number two, logic, per se, did not always play itself out in Promise. “That’s why we’re here,” she said, motioning to the tattoo setup. “I’m going to protect you.”
She’d found the ink and the brush at the gift shop in town, and she showed him a few of the designs he could choose from. Most of them were complex, diagonal patterns of straight and swirling lines, and they all included large solid patches of black, which proved the mettle of the tattooee because those were the most painful to sit through.
“I’m not really proving my mettle, though, if you’re using a paintbrush instead of a shark’s tooth,” Asher pointed out.
“It’s just symbolic, metaphorical. It will give you strength.”
“This isn’t metaphor. It’s replica.”
“Brace yourself for more replica to come, Slasher. We’re going to Disney World.”
Cam played Samoan drumming music and she got busy painting. “Try to be completely still and silent,” she said. “It will help you to get into a trance for the plane.”
She started with a curving pattern around his pectoral muscle and then worked her way around the shoulder and bicep. The contours of his body proved to be a very distracting canvas.
“Stay still,” she said.
“It tickles, Campbell,” he said, and he pulled her in for a kiss. “Hey, what’s that?” he asked, pointing to a tiny, perfectly round little blue spot on her forearm.
“It’s nothing,” she told him. “I probably knocked into something on the boat. Be still,” she said, and she painted and painted until the drumming on her iPod had stopped. She wasn’t going to worry about a blueberry spot. They had disappeared before. They would probably disappear again.
TWENTY-NINE
THERE REMAINED THE ISSUE OF PERRY. THEY WERE SNEAKING OUT tonight, but Cam didn’t know whether she should take Perry with them. Everyone else on the trip would be older—Cam had invited Sunny, Royal, Autumn, and Grey—and could prove to be bad influences. But she would love to spend some time with Perry back at home. And Perry, originally so comfortable in Maine, was beginning to show some serious signs of homesickness. She had been moping around a little and spending more time in front of the TV. She even asked Nana to share a room with her.
In the end they decided to bring her. They couldn’t tell Perry about it beforehand, though, because Cam knew she could not keep a secret. They would have to snatch her from her bedroom in the middle of the night.
Asher called it “Operation Tween Extraction.”
The stakes were high. Alicia, a light sleeper, was already on her guard. And when Alicia was on her guard, she was a vigilant scout. One of the major disappointments of Alicia’s parenting life was the fact that Cam never broke curfew. She had been ready for it. The first night Cam took the car out alone, Alicia painted her face black, put branches in her hair, and sat inside a bush, ready to pounce on Cam when she came home a minute after midnight.
Cam never did come home late, though, and upon hearing the snapping of gum coming from the bush, just said, “Hi, Mom,” and walked into the house.
“Watch out for trip wires,” Cam told Asher as they tiptoed down the hall toward Perry’s room.
“Is all of this really necessary?” he asked. She’d made him dress in black and wear a headlamp. He carried a coiled rope around his shoulder and held a roll of duct tape in his hand. He looked ridiculous.
“Affirmative.” Cam giggled.
Their other challenge was keeping Perry quiet. Their target was a squealing, screaming, giggling beast. They might need to bind and gag her. Only temporarily, until they got her in the U-Haul.
Nana snored like a bulldog as they cracked open the door. They shuffled into the room in their socks. Cam pointed furiously to the suitcase on the floor and then to the dresser, indicating that Asher should pack up some clothes for Perry. He pointed to himself and shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “Me?” Cam nodded her head, “Yes, you,” and then she got busy.
She rolled Perry over on the trundle bed mattress near the floor, grabbed her hands, and sat her up.
“What?” Perry
moaned as her head lolled to the side.
“We’re going on a trip,” Cam whispered.
Nana rolled over with a snorting growl.
“Where?” Perry asked. Her eyes were still closed.
“Orlando,” Cam said. “Just for a couple days.”
“Ya—” Perry started to let out a joyful scream, but Cam quickly covered her mouth. Perry mumbled beneath her palm as Cam motioned to Asher to come to the bed and pick her up. Asher hoisted Perry over his shoulder, Cam grabbed a suitcase, and they all crept toward the front door. Perry whisper-screamed in excitement as she pounded Asher on the back with her fists.
Outside they dumped Perry into the U-Haul with Sunny, Royal, Grey, and Autumn. None of them had a big enough car for everyone, so they’d decided to take the Vagina Train. “Thanks for bringing me, you guys!” Perry screamed out loud now.
“Here.” Cam tossed in the suitcase.
“What’s this?” Perry asked.
“Your clothes,” Cam answered, getting impatient. She pulled down the rolling door to the trailer and locked it shut.
“Wait!” Perry whined. She pounded the side of the U-Haul.
“That’s not the one I packed,” Asher said.
“It’s not?” asked Cam.
“Nope.”
Cam lifted the back of the U-Haul door to find Perry holding up a pair of Nana’s enormous, silky white underpants.
“Whoops,” said Cam. “You’ll have to make do.” And she shut the door, ignoring Perry’s continued pounding on the side of the trailer.
“I packed some cute stuff for her, too,” Asher said regretfully.
Grey and Royal had to practically carry Asher onto the plane. He made it as far as gate C4 at the Portland airport when he started to turn the gray-green color of faded camouflage pants. Cam was starting to second-guess herself, but she knew if he could get through this, he could do anything. Like Operation Tween Extraction, it was do or die.
The other boys surrounded Asher, held him by the forearms, and helped him walk down the Jetway to the plane.
“Is he drunk?” the attendant asked as they boarded the early morning flight.
“Not yet,” said Grey. He was the loose cannon of the group and someone to keep far away from Perry, Cam noted.
“Did you at least bring my notebook?” Perry asked. “I wanted to show Izanagi.”
“He’s at the top of your list of people you want to see?” Cam asked.
“Close to the top. Why?” Perry asked. She shambled down the gateway, wearing Nana’s blue slippers and an enormous slippery pink jacket from one of her grandmother’s tracksuits.
“No reason. I just thought you’d have other priorities.”
Cam could imagine twenty things she’d like to see before even making a call to Izanagi. And that reminded her to call Jackson. She’d love to check in with him to see how his bouncy, trouncy summer was going.
On the plane, Cam wished she had some of that Ativan to give Asher as he sat petrified in his first-class seat, but she’d been permanently banned from tranquilizers.
“Sit on top of him, Cam,” said Sunny. “It’s called a cow press. The weight and pressure calms autistic kids. It works.”
Cam sat on top of Asher, trying to press all of her weight into him. She did feel him relax a bit underneath her body, but when the plane took off and they had to sit side by side, Cam couldn’t tell what seemed louder: Asher’s heartbeat or Alicia screaming “Cam!” thirty thousand feet below when she woke up and noticed they had gone.
THIRTY
“COME ON, PERRY AND PERRY,” CAM SAID. ASHER WAS SO GIDDY AFTER having survived the plane flight, Cam had begun calling him Perry 2. “Asher, if you skip, I might need to break up with you.” He was too cool and stoic to ever really skip, but there was a jaunty little hop to his gait as he walked around the lake.
After huddling around the map, arguing for some twenty minutes about where to go and what to see, the group had finally dispersed. Sunny and Autumn had gone to the water park, Royal and Grey to the sports bar on the boardwalk, and Cam, Asher, and Perry to the World Showcase at Epcot.
“What? I’m happy. You were right, Cam. I needed to do this.” On the plane they had discussed Asher’s fear of leaving Promise. Some of it had to do with a lifetime of overhearing the townspeople gossip about how the “magic” of Promise was related to his family. He had developed the notion that if he left, the magic would leave with him.
“Promise will always be magic, Asher, especially to you,” she had told him. “Because it is your home. The magic thing about home is that it feels good to leave, and it feels even better to come back.”
Cam realized how true that was as she walked around Epcot. As much as she liked Maine, this place was her place. The sky was her sky. The flora, even if it was pristinely manicured and carved into the shapes of circus animals, was her flora. She took a deep breath of the heavy, swampy August humidity and enjoyed how it seemed to ease the pain in her lungs. How had Lily known she would need this?
“Oh God,” said Perry. “Did you just tell her she was right? Never tell her she’s right. It goes straight to her head. She usually is right, but it’s better for everyone if you keep her a little off balance. A little insecure.”
“Is that how you manage me, Perry?”
“One of the ways,” Perry answered.
“Here,” Cam said to Asher as they approached their first “country,” the pinkish-gold pyramid of the Mexican Pavilion. She handed Asher a pair of black mouse ears on either side of a plastic top hat. They were the groom’s ears, reserved for people honeymooning at Disney. Cam had stolen them, and a pair of white bride’s ears for herself, from the little office behind the entrance.
“What do I do with these?” he asked, reluctantly beginning to remove his Red Sox cap.
“Wear them,” she said.
Cam secretly loathed the nerdy couples who honeymooned at Disney World. It was like they were too immature to realize that they were actually “grown-up married” and not just “pretend married,” going on a pretend honeymoon to the pretend countries of Epcot. Cam always wondered what happened to them when they got home and had to face the marriage realities of joint bank accounts and layoffs and health insurance and taxes and the fact that she always left the kitchen cupboards open and he would never in his life think about cleaning a toilet.
But it was okay for Cam and Asher to wear the wedding ears because they really were pretending.
Plus it got them straight to the front of the line.
“If you guys are married,” Perry said, “what does that make me?” She applied some lip gloss to accent her gorgeous outfit. Today she wore one of Nana’s short-sleeved polyester shirts as a dress. It had three huge purple diagonal stripes going from the right shoulder to her left knee. She’d belted it with Nana’s purple bathrobe tie, and it hung loosely off of one shoulder.
“My illegitimate daughter from my teenage pregnancy,” Cam said. Really, Perry looked like some lost dancer from an eighties music video. All she needed were a headband and some leg warmers.
“Of course,” said Perry, and they gave each other a little exploding fist bump.
“Cam?” someone behind them said.
Cam turned to see Alexa Stanton herself, the girl on whose lawn Cam had tried to dump Darren the plastic flamingo. Only she was dressed head-to-toe as Cinderella. So she got the part, Cam thought. She and Alexa were friends once. In kindergarten, they saw The Wizard of Oz together and then spent weeks playing flying monkeys on the playground, trying to process the trauma of it all. Things changed in second grade when someone—probably her mother—told Alexa not to mingle with the entertainers.
Look who was entertaining now. Alexa-rella wore a pale blue ball gown. A yellow-haired wig was plastered over her ears.
She took Cam by the elbow and swept her behind a rack of sombreros. “Cayum, are you may-rried to him?” she whispered out of the side of her mouth.
“Why is that
so hard to believe?” Cam whispered back.
“No reason,” Alexa whispered.
“Well, it was nice catching up with you, Cinderella. Tell the prince I said hello,” Cam said.
Alexa composed herself, cleared her throat, and in her best Cinderella voice said, “Yes. I shall send your regards to the prince.” She lifted up her skirts and floated away toward the China Pavilion.
While Asher rode the speedway with Grey, Cam and Perry did all the things they used to do together as kids while their parents were performing and they had run of the park. Space Mountain, the Country Bear Jamboree, Pirates of the Caribbean. They bought egg creams at the soda fountain on Main Street and made their way to the Haunted Mansion.
The two sisters sat on the stone wall in front of the spooky old house and waited. They’d asked the rest of the group to meet them here at nine, so they could show everyone how they climbed up the wrought iron latticework of the mansion and watched the fireworks from a secret perch on the roof.
“So maybe you should give me some sisterly advice before school starts up again,” said Perry. Her face was flushed from spending the entire hot day trapped in the polyester “dress,” which was now splotched with chocolate and ketchup.
“Um. Okay.”
“You’ve never given me any before.” Perry stirred her egg cream viciously in between her tiny staccato sips. She always made the drink last longer than Cam’s, so she could taunt her with it.
“You never seemed like you needed it,” Cam said. “That’s the thing about being the youngest—you come out relaxed and cool and knowing exactly how to get what you want.”
“That’s true. But you can give me some advice, anyway. Just so you feel like you’ve fulfilled your role as an older sister.” Perry held out her glass to measure it against Cam’s and make sure she had more egg cream left.
“Well, let’s see,” Cam said. “How about, ‘don’t be like me’—that’s good advice. Like in high school, you should join something. Not color guard like Autumn and Sunny. God. That doesn’t teach you any applicable skills. But something. The tennis team might be cool.” Cam thought for a minute. “Be yourself,” she continued. “And be kind.”