That’s never their only story.
We are all anthologies. We are each thousands of pages long, filled with fairy tales and poetry, mysteries and tragedy, forgotten stories in the back no one will ever read.
The most we can do is hold out our hands and help each other across the unknown. For in our held hands we find pathways through the dark, across jungles and cities, bridges suspended over the deepest caverns of this world. Your friends will walk with you, holding on with all their might, even when they’re no longer there.
Two years after the accident, I published a dream soundtrack.
It was released by a little publishing house out of Minneapolis called Brace Yourself Books. Not even they knew what to do with it. The market for an album soundtrack for a movie that doesn’t exist is a pretty small one.
When I received the four printed albums from my publisher, though, I left school and boarded an Amtrak train bound for St. Louis. When I arrived, I took a bus to Winwood Falls, where I hiked a mile past pink brick mansions with shell fountains to a cemetery called Ardenwood. With a map I took the self-guided walking tour past mausoleums of famous writers and captains of industry, peeling off when I found a section for the new graves.
Whitley was up a stone path on a hill. Standing in front of her marble headstone made me cry, because the quote that Linda had chosen was from one of Jim’s best songs, “Immortal She.” The fact that she’d had the insight to comb Whitley’s Instagram and find it meant that maybe I’d been wrong about her too. Maybe she’d understood her daughter all along.
She lives on, fireflies in my head.
I will not forget her when I am dead.
She is my memory, she is my song.
She is the road when the car is long gone.
She is the pillow on my bed.
She is my words, unsaid.
When the sun goes dark and the earth is bereft,
She’ll live in the echo the silence left.
I set the little album by the flowers and walked away.
Next, I boarded another Amtrak, bound for New Orleans, and then a bus with broken air-conditioning to Moss Bluff, a town with Spanish moss giving every street corner the shadowed scruff of a three-day beard. I walked the eight miles to Kipling’s.
To my surprise, the house was just as he’d described it: a rambling white mansion of peeling paint, with a white peacock wandering the yard. I’d always thought he exaggerated his life, but in fact, he left out all sorts of colorful details, like the green Cadillac sitting in the middle of the driveway, weeds growing through the floor like hair overtaking old men’s ears.
I left the album on the porch swing. When I looked back, I saw a bent-over gray-haired woman in a green housedress examining it. She looked after me, puzzled.
Then Los Angeles: two days on the train, barreling past deserts and strip malls and palm trees. I took a bus to Montecito, where I walked to Cannon’s house, a cream-colored Victorian. I slipped the album into the mailbox and jogged down the steps as a car alarm sounded. A man across the street stopped watering his lawn to look at me.
Three days later, I arrived in Providence, Rhode Island. I had read seven mystery novels and twelve magazines, and was out of clean underwear, with a kink in my neck. I walked the final four miles feeling a strange sense of calm, arriving at Ziegler Auto Repair just after dusk.
There was no one in reception. Most of the lights were off. I stuck the album in the window next to a sign, COFFEE 99￠. As I was leaving, the door to the garage opened.
“Can I help you?”
I turned. It was Martha’s dad. Though I had never met him, they had the same chin, the same thick glasses. He was wearing oil-streaked coveralls, wiping his hands on a rag.
I introduced myself, telling him I was an old friend of Martha’s.
“Of course. Beatrice, right? That’s so nice. It’s not often I meet a friend of Martha’s.”
“I’m here because I made an album. Sort of. I wanted her to have it. It’s a soundtrack for a movie that doesn’t exist about four unlikely superheroes. They all have these hidden powers. Anyway, I wanted you to have a copy.”
I held out the album, and he took it, turning it over. He put those thick glasses away and took out reading glasses, placing them on the end of his nose.
“Ah.” He glanced up in surprise. “You dedicated it to Martha?”
I nodded.
“?‘To Martha. Who saw me and still believed.’ How about that.” He smiled at me, pointing toward reception. “You know, I got her posters up in the waiting room. She always had a vision of the world that lay beyond. Even when she was little. Nothing much scared Martha.”
I let him show me her things, drawings she’d made as a child, a collection of paintings featuring an owl with purple feathers, blueprints of a winged invention she’d made. He showed me the work of Martha’s older sister too, a girl named Jenny who had painted incredible canvases of oceans, hiding entire ink kingdoms and words inside the waves.
“Everything is on loan to us,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes. “Even our children.”
He offered me a root beer, but I refused, explaining that I had to go.
“Maybe I’ll come back sometime,” I said.
“Well, sure. You’re always welcome.”
I left him staring after me, turning the album over in his hands, doubtlessly sensing there was much more I hadn’t told him.
Then I was on the bus, staring out the window at the darkened sky. At one point I saw a streak of orange light along the horizon, but it was only the track lights on the ceiling of the bus. The shimmering leaves of the passing branches seemed somehow electric and alive, more than usual, and though I wanted to believe it was some hidden world opening up for me again, I sat back against the seat and told myself the truth.
This time it was just the wind.
I’d like to thank my editor, Beverly Horowitz, for shepherding me through my first adventure into the world of young adult books. From our first conversation three years ago through the many drafts, her wisdom, humor, and awake-all-night meticulousness were an education and an inspiration. I am also deeply indebted to my agent and friend, Binky Urban, for following me into uncharted territory, always providing unerring advice and insight.
I am especially grateful to the many creative thinkers at Delacorte Press who worked tirelessly on this book’s behalf, especially Noreen Herits, John Adamo, Colleen Fellingham, Alison Kolani, Tamar Schwartz, and Rebecca Gudelis. Thanks also to Kate Medina and the team at Penguin Random House, whose commitment to writers and readers, no matter the trend, never fails to awe.
I would like to thank Felicity Blunt, Roxane Eduard, and Mairi Friesen-Escandell for introducing this book to readers abroad; Ron Bernstein for his film rights expertise; Brenda Cronin, Seth Rabinowitz, and Nicole Caruso, confidants and sounding boards; and Anne Pessl, first-draft champion, seer of all blind spots, and wonder-mom.
Most especially I wish to thank to my three Fates, David, Winter, and Avalon, whose vision of the world and reverence for all stories, great and small, are my daily joy.
Finally, I would like to thank every young reader who has ever approached me at a bookstore. It was you who whose passion for characters who empower and overcome inspired me to write this story.