Jan had brownish-gray hair cut in a mom-bob, and she was dressed in her work slacks and blouse, even though it was the weekend. “Kelsey, my dear,” she said when I emerged from the room—hair in a bun to hide the fact it hadn’t been washed, foundation to hide the dark circles, smile to hide the fact that I still hadn’t shaken the moment, the one that circled and dug and made itself at home: one second, one muscle cramp, between here and gone.
“Hi, Jan,” I said, taking the package from her outstretched hand. The new phone my mom had requested, in a box that must’ve been sitting outside the gate since yesterday—I hoped Jan hadn’t noticed. “Oh, I didn’t know it had arrived yet,” I said.
“Same number,” my mom said. “Just need to program it again.”
“Kelsey,” Jan said, taking her normal seat in the living room, in the loveseat across from the couch. “Sit, please. Let’s talk.” Beside her on the floor was a brown box with no lid, filled with my missing things. My backpack, dirty and singed, my purse, the strap dangling from a single side, the red umbrella that used to be in the backseat, the spokes bent at unnatural angles, the handle either crushed or melted.
It all smelled faintly chemical, like gasoline. I pressed my lips together, tasting it in the air, and wondered if Mom could sense it, too. But she was looking beyond Jan, through the large windows at the back of the living room, her head tilted slightly to the side. I followed her gaze and saw a girl sitting on the stone wall past the gate, kicking her legs.
An exit, thank God. “It’s Annika,” I said. “I was just on my way out,” I added.
My mom raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
Jan twisted around on the couch, squinting. “How can you even see that far?”
Annika was an easily identifiable blur, even from the distance: her hair exceeded normal volume by at least three hundred percent, she was always wearing colors that would somehow catch the eye, and she had the inability to sit still. Besides, this was where she’d always wait for me. It was as close as she ever got.
The stone wall at the edge of the property was our first line of defense, though it was more of a deterrent than an official barrier. There was an open gap in the front of the wall, a makeshift driveway where I used to park my car. Then came the high metal fence, with a discreet electrical cable lining the top and a locked gate toward the back, and another in the front, encircling the yard. There was a small stand-alone booth with a door and a window just inside the gated entrance, to the left, I guess in case someone actually hired a security guard to man the gate.
But between the fence and the outer wall the weeds ran wild, vegetation climbing up the stone, thick and unruly. “It looks like the perfect place for snakes,” Annika had complained, and I had to agree. She never came any closer. Her side of the wall was all mowed and landscaped with shrubbery and a pond with a constantly running fountain.
“It’s her,” I said, with one more glance to the box at Jan’s feet. “I have to go. Can we talk later?” Because I couldn’t completely brush Jan off. There were lines to walk, after all.
“All right,” Jan said. “Listen, I’ve spoken to the school. It’s too late to add on to the bus route, so Cole and Emma will be picking you up Monday morning. At least until you get the car situation taken care of.”
I considered it one of my greater accomplishments that I kept my face passive and my thoughts unvoiced. “That would be great,” I said, because of all the things I’d either inherited or learned from my mother, the art of the lie was the most useful.
—
Annika swung her legs like a little kid, the heels of her shoes bouncing against the wall. She wore gray tights and black Mary Janes and a purple skirt so short it was a good thing the tights were opaque.
“I’ve been calling you all day,” she said once I got close enough to hear.
“I’m sorry, I lost my phone.” I leaned against the wall beside her.
“Oh, I was starting to wonder,” she said, leaning closer, her eyes roaming over me from head to toe. She scrunched up her nose at my bun. “I heard.”
The scream of metal, the rush of air, the scent of burning rubber, and my nails skimming metal—
I placed my hands flat against the stone wall, trying to ground myself. You made it. You’re here.
She patted the spot beside her on the ledge, and I used the grooves between the uneven stones for footing.
To me, Annika always seemed like she came from a different world. She layered her clothes, unmatching: bright tights under plaid skirts, or the other way around, boho tops and jewelry that chimed like music when she walked, and long, wavy hair she’d coil around ribbons or push back from her face with a scarf or bandanna.
She also had this vaguely unplaceable accent, not quite European, but something deliberate and alluring.
“It’s from all the travel,” she’d told me once. A year of school in France as a child, another in England, before her mom divorced her State Department husband and settled here with Annika and her older brother, who was off at college now.
“I cannot believe,” she was saying as I hauled myself up beside her, “that I had to hear about this from my mother, of all people. Normal people tend to call their friends when they nearly die, you know.” Annika looked at me the way I imagined I must look at her: like she was caught between being captivated and confused. I thought it was probably why we remained good friends, despite the long stretches of silence, the distance, and the differences. She was foreign, and interesting, and unplaceable, like her accent. And I was the same to her. Our worlds were so far from each other that they circled back around and almost touched again.
“I didn’t nearly die,” I said. I felt her gaze on the side of my face, wondered if she could read the lie in my expression. Wondered what normal people tended to say, or not say, to their friends. “I had a car crash. And I wasn’t really in the mood to relive it.”
“That’s not what the papers say,” she said, the corners of her lips tipping down. They were shiny, covered in a pink gloss that might’ve even had sparkles, and it was hard to take anything she said too seriously.
“The papers?”
“Mm,” she said, turning sideways, her hands on the stone between us, her nails painted electric blue. “According to Thursday’s paper,” she began, using some faux-official voice, “thanks to classmate and volunteer firefighter Ryan Something-or-other, Kelsey Thomas, the young woman miraculously pulled from the car over Benjamin’s Cliff, walks away without a scratch.” Her fingers circled my wrist, warm in the autumn chill. “Someone took a picture of your car after it fell. Quite the sight, Kels.” She paused, and in that gap, I pictured it—the car, falling. Me, still clinging to the edge. “So don’t tell me you didn’t nearly die. A reporter showed up last night, hoping us neighbors might have a status update for them. Nosy bastards.”
I felt my shoulders deflate, my back slumping. “Ugh,” I said. My name. In the newspaper. My mom was going to flip. She was big on privacy—so big, in fact, that I was probably the only student not on one of the vast assortment of social networking sites. I only had an email account because it was required from school so teachers could send us assignments. I was sure she wouldn’t have gotten me a phone if it didn’t also double as a GPS. “Isn’t that illegal to print my name? I’m a minor.”
“Apparently not,” she said. “Or else someone missed that memo.” I decided this was something best kept from my mother, for her own peace of mind.
“You home for a while?” I asked, itching to change the subject.
“Fall break. Just the week.” Annika’s newest boarding school worked on some nontraditional schedule, not really adhering to typical holidays, and I could never remember when she was supposed to be home. “I emailed you when I got home last night, when I couldn’t reach you.”