“You’ll be sorry!” she screamed. “You’ll be sorry you did this to me.”
Murdoch shrugged. He started the car and put it in reverse. And at the last possible second—I hardly believed it—Nikki let go and stepped away. And we drove off.
I didn’t look back, but I felt her eyes on us all the way out the gate.
52
MY PROMISE
Two years ago now, Emmy. We have not seen her since.
So. Is that all? Is that it? I don’t know. Maybe.
Maybe not.
Yesterday, I turned eighteen. I have plans for my future, and for the first time since you were born, they do not include you. This fall, I am leaving you and Aunt Bobbie and the home we’ve made together in Scituate these last years. I am going to college more than halfway across the country.
I am leaving Callie behind, too, of course. In some ways, this feels less important than leaving you, because Callie has made her home with Ben these past years. But in others, it’s huge, because she is still Callie, still my partner. We spent all those years knowing, at a glance, what the other was thinking or feeling. That hasn’t changed.
At first I hoped that Callie would follow me to Austin, to do her premed major there. But she says probably not. “I’ll think about it. But, well . . .”
I understand what she doesn’t dare say, not yet, anyway. Callie is having those big dreams again. Ben told me that her chemistry and biology teachers think she should apply to this special program that would get her into medical school after only three years of undergraduate work. If she wants.
Which she does.
Once, about a year ago, she said to me, “We were lucky, Matthew. So lucky that I sometimes lie awake at night thinking about it. And thinking about other kids, too. All the other kids out there. Somewhere.”
“I know,” I said. We didn’t need to say more. We never did.
Callie’s teachers, no matter how brilliant they think she is, never will know why she is going to be such a good doctor, such a rare doctor. But I know, and you do, too, Emmy. Callie has taken something from our family that I can’t even put into words. Something I never imagined, back when my whole world was about taking care of her. About making sure she survived.
I am proud of Callie, Emmy. So proud—if a little sad—that she doesn’t need me anymore.
But you. By leaving you, I am saying that you don’t need me anymore, either. That on a day-to-day basis, Aunt Bobbie is enough—with Murdoch and Ben and Callie nearby, of course. That there will be no other emergency, or crisis, or peril that requires me to save you.
The thing is, despite the calm of these last two years, I don’t believe it. I wonder if it would have been better if Murdoch had not come that night. He came too late to keep me from that moment of transformation when I understood I could and would kill Nikki. And he came before I could ensure your safety forever by doing what I would have done.
So now, I must behave like a normal eighteen-year-old, as if all I need to think about is myself and what I want. It’s attractive. Sometimes when I’m alone, I open my letter from the University of Texas, Austin, and I read about my scholarship, and about how much they hope I will accept it, and how promising a young man they think I am. I know they say similar things to everybody. I read it anyway. I eat it up.
I want to go to Austin, and I will. But I do it knowing that our mother will turn up again one day. Next month, next year, five years from now, or when you are grown up. She will come. For you.
Murdoch says no, she won’t. But I know her better than he does.
And even if he turns out to be right, even if she doesn’t return, I also know that our mother is not the only peril in the world. Not the only person who will hurt those she says she loves, or put them carelessly in the way of danger.
So, my little sister. This is what I want to tell you. Even as I move into adulthood and make choices that take me physically far from you—and even as, in time, you do the same in your own life—I will stay alert. My cell phone will always be on, and I will be only a phone call (or an email, or an instant message) away. I don’t just mean while I am in college, Emmy. I mean forever. And I will do what has to be done. I know now that I can.
This, I think, is why I’ve been so driven to write the whole story for you. Not really so that you’ll remember our mother, and not be fooled by her when she shows up. In my heart, I don’t think you have forgotten her, or would be fooled by her. But I write so that you’ll remember me. And so that you will have this in writing, and understand exactly why I say it to you:
As long as I live, when you need help, you will never need to beg anyone to notice. I won’t just hang around thinking I ought to do something to help.
I will act.
53
P. S.
I put away this letter—and I guess it’s still a letter, even though it’s very long—a few months ago. I thought I’d let it sit awhile. Then I’d go over it and see if there was anything I wanted to change.
But now I am adding to it, finishing it, without having reread what I wrote before. I will never reread it. I know that now. This letter, this story, done or not, over or not, is done and over. It is what it is. With this last entry, I close the book.
But before I do, I have just a little more to say. One new discovery that I’m still puzzling over, trying to figure out what it means. And something else, too, smaller, that I concealed from you and that has been eating at me.
The smaller, easier thing first. The little lie that’s been eating at me.
Emmy, I told you that we had not seen Nikki since the night you and I left her behind us at the port. Strictly speaking, that’s true. But it implies that we haven’t heard from her, either, and that is a lie. There are letters, regular letters, handwritten and sent through the U.S. mail, forwarded from our old address. There’s at least one a month, and occasionally there will be a rush of them, one or even two a day for seven, eight, nine days in a row. I get them, and Callie gets them, and some are addressed to you, though Aunt Bobbie and I make sure you never see them. Ben, Aunt Bobbie, and Murdoch get them, too.
Some of the letters are ordinary, crazy in their ordinariness, full of motherly questions about school and advice to dress warmly in the winter and to eat vegetables. But some of the letters, most of them, are rants. Certain themes return again and again.
I love you.
I miss you.
I hate you.
It’s Murdoch’s fault.
It’s Matthew’s fault. (By the way, she never blames Callie or you, or Ben or Bobbie.)
I’m going to kill you.
I’m going to kill myself.
You’ll be sorry.
None of the letters contain information about Nikki and her life, though they are usually postmarked from some tourist city, like Las Vegas, Orlando, or Atlantic City, and written on hotel stationery: Comfort Inn, Holiday Inn Express, the occasional Hilton or Marriott. We can only guess where she lives, how she lives.
At first, I found the letters enraging, and also terrifying. I will not pretend that I am not still afraid of her. A letter would arrive, and I’d feel as if Nikki herself were there. I could almost see her hands in motion. Her nails. Panic would push at me from inside, and I’d spend the next few days with an accelerated heart rate, looking over my shoulder. Where did she live, could she be tracked down, how could we—how could you—be kept safe? Should I get a gun? Thoughts like these would claw frantically and repetitively at my mind.
And then . . . I don’t know. A year passed, and then two. And lately, well, it’s not such a big deal anymore. A letter comes, and my throat closes up only for an instant, and honestly, Em, I’m almost bored. I don’t open them anymore. I look at the postmark and I put it away to give to Murdoch.
Is she still dangerous to us? Maybe. Anybody can be dangerous. But once she was all-powerful in our lives. She was the queen bee and we served her. Now she’s dangerous like a mosquito. A mosquito might b
ite you. It might carry malaria. But most of the time, a mosquito just whines and buzzes. And even if it bites you, even if it draws blood, well, so what?
Let her write her letters. Let her live her life, wherever she is, whoever she’s with, whatever she’s doing. I can almost see her on a bar stool somewhere, trying to pick up the man on the next stool. She’s older now, she’s not finding it as easy as she used to.
You know what? I almost have it in me to feel sorry for her. Almost. And sometimes now, I think maybe it was good that Murdoch showed up when he did that night. Maybe it was good that I didn’t kill her.
The other day, I realized this, Emmy. And that was what made me think that there was no need, really, to conceal the letters from you. You, too, should understand that Nicole Marie O’Grady Walsh is only a mosquito in our lives.
Murdoch volunteered to keep the letters, to keep the originals safe and give copies to the police just in case, some unlikely day, she comes back. He was never alarmed by the letters the way I was, even though, as I said, he got them too. I have a suspicion, in fact, that he got more of them than any of the rest of us.
That brings me to the other thing I wanted to tell you. For me, this story ends where it began: with Murdoch. I’m thinking that if I write it all out here, the thing that I just found out about him, I may grasp something I can feel myself straining for. Some bit of understanding that’s been out of my reach.
I had dinner with Murdoch the other night, the day I sent in my official acceptance to UT. We went to this place way up in Essex where you could eat mounds of fried clams and onion rings. We sat at a picnic table outside near the water. I wouldn’t be seeing much of the ocean in Austin, Texas, Murdoch said. He was proud of me, he said.
“And don’t worry,” he said. We both knew what he was talking about.
“I won’t,” I answered. “Not too much.” I told him my mosquito theory. “I only just understood this,” I said.
“It’s good,” said Murdoch. “A mosquito. Yes.”
We ate the rest of our clams in silence. You could hear the surf washing up on the sand. The sun began to melt into sunset pinks and blues, and these little white lights that were strung all over the clam shack’s outdoor dining area came on.
“Do you remember the day we met?” I asked diffidently. “I don’t mean your first real date with Nikki, when she brought you home for dinner and introduced us. But did you ever realize that we really met, sort of, almost a year before that? It was a Saturday night in August, at the Cumberland Farms store.”
Murdoch frowned. “The Cumberland Farms?”
“Yes.” I described the scene to him meticulously. I didn’t look at him until I was done.
He said simply, “Yes. I remember that night. So, that was you and Callie? You were those kids?”
“Yeah,” I said. I took a deep breath, and then I told him how I’d looked for him after that. Looked, and looked, and looked. “I was only thirteen,” I said. “I thought—I don’t know what I thought. But I was impressed by you. By what you did.”
A pause. Then: “I ate too many clams just now,” said Murdoch. “Let’s walk some.”
We walked slowly along the beach. And I know Murdoch, so I kept quiet, and eventually he said, “Matt?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry. You were looking for some hero, weren’t you? Batman, Spider-Man, something like that. A savior. You thought you found one in the Cumberland Farms. But I wasn’t it.”
It was true, I thought. That was what I had wanted, and I had not gotten it. But I had been a child. Now I wasn’t. It had been too much to expect. I had understood this for a while now.
“You helped us,” I said. “I was too close to see what was happening at first, but you got Ben and Bobbie to pay attention. You organized them, you encouraged them. And it worked. We’re all okay now. We’re okay, we’re free. And she’s a mosquito.”
“I almost didn’t help,” Murdoch said quietly. “I almost ducked out. I wanted to. I wanted to run out on you. It just seemed—too much. When you came to me. When I understood how much you needed help.” He paused. Then he said carefully, “I couldn’t see my way clear at first. At first, the only thing I could think of to do was something I shouldn’t do. It took me a long time to figure something else out. And I knew you were waiting, hoping. I knew you were disappointed in me. I knew you were depending on me.”
“What you did was enough,” I said. “We didn’t need a superhero. Just an adult who acted to help us when I asked.”
Those words sounded so sane, so reasonable, out there in the warm safe evening ocean air. I sounded so sane, so reasonable.
But I swear to you, Em, as I said those words, I had a flash of understanding. Murdoch had just said that the only thing he could think of to do was something he shouldn’t do.
And that slotted in with my realization in the dockyard. He’s just like me.
“Let’s head back to the truck,” I said.
“Are you okay? You look funny.”
“Yeah. I ate a bad clam or something.”
We went in silence. I could feel Murdoch’s concern, but I didn’t look at him. I just focused on my feet. We got into the truck.
“I’m going to get you home,” Murdoch said.
“Wait,” I said. “I need to tell you something.”
“Matt, what is it? You’re sweating. You really are sick.”
I said, “I’m not sick. Well, I am, but it’s not physical. Listen. I have to tell you something.
“I wasn’t looking for a superhero, Murdoch. I mean, we can call it that if we want, but the truth is, I was looking for somebody who would kill her. I thought maybe you would do it, if you knew her—if you knew and liked us. Because of the way you stepped in for that boy. Suddenly I understand now that that was what I thought. That was what I hoped for.”
It was full dark now, outside of the truck in the parking lot. I waited for Murdoch to speak. When he didn’t, I said, “I didn’t even let myself know that was what I was thinking. But I realize it now.”
There was enough light so that I could see how Murdoch’s hands were gripping the steering wheel.
I swallowed. I added, “And I know why I thought that, too. I recognized something in you. You’re like me, aren’t you, Murdoch? Like us? You had a mother like ours, didn’t you?” I thought of how I had always tried to get him to talk about his childhood, his parents. And how he’d always refused.
He was silent.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know it’s not my business, but—”
“Not a mother,” said Murdoch steadily. “A father.”
“Oh,” I said.
It was so long before he spoke again that I thought he wasn’t going to. But then he said, “You’re right, Matthew. I am like you.
“You, twenty-some-odd years later. Someday—not tonight, I think we’ve had enough for one night—I’ll tell you about my father.
“I haven’t killed anyone since I went after my father at thirteen. I won’t kill anyone again, even when I believe they deserve it. But still . . . yes, you found someone who could have killed your mother. I just—I wouldn’t. I promised myself. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I said. I told Murdoch, then, about the five minutes.
We sat in silence.
Then Murdoch said, “I’m glad I came when I did. In the dockyard.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m still not sure.”
“Trust me,” Murdoch said. “Trust me on this, son.”
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So. Emmy. Little sister. You’re never going to read this, are you? I’m never going to give it to you. I didn’t write it for you. I wrote it for me.
I wrote it to work my way through the story of what formed me. I wrote it to examine the past and figure out who Murdoch was, so that I could figure out who I was. I wrote it to understand who I am, and how I ought to act in the world.
I think I have m
ade a beginning.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With thanks for help in time of need, with this book and in life, to Franny Billingsley, Toni Buzzeo, Pat Lowery Collins, Rebekah Goering, Amy Butler Greenfield, David Greenfield, Jennifer Jacobson, A. M. Jenkins, Ginger Knowlton, Jane Kurtz, Jacqueline Briggs Martin, Walter M. Mayes, Mary E. Pearson, Miranda Pettengill, Dian Curtis Regan, Anita Riggio, Maxwell Romotsky, Miriam Rosenblatt, Joanne Stanbridge, F. Peter Waystack, Elaine Werlin, Susan Werlin, Deborah Wiles, Ellen Wittlinger, and Melissa Wyatt.
And thanks, as always, to my editor, Lauri Hornik.
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rules of survival
DISCUSSION GUIDE
the rules of survival
The Rules of Survival is the story of a teenage boy who is trying desperately to save his younger sisters, and himself, from the very real dangers of life with a very disturbing and dangerous woman: their mother. It’s a riveting read guaranteed to generate intense discussion among students, not only about the book, but also about real life.
The book’s many strengths make the novel a compelling choice for discussion. These include the following:
• Strong, resilient children who protect one another
• Realistic and easy-to-follow language; short chapters make the book more accessible to reluctant readers
• Plot and format draw readers into the story quickly; there is an unusual and involving writing style that uses direct address (“you”) as narrator recounts past events to an unseen listener