This is never going to work. Maybe for Jenessa, but not for me. I’m like Ness’s broken-legged chipmunk, which had to be shaken and poked out of the birdcage once it healed, preferring the familiar, even if the familiar was a jail. Home is home.
A tree for every word of Pooh ever spoken. The Lady of Shalott curtseying before a minuet. Lancelot bowing, his hair a ripple of sun-bleached wheat. My “puffed-up library“ as Mama called it, a scooped-out nook carved by ancient tree roots in the high bank, close enough to be by Ness, yet far enough away to be alone. Boards wedged between rocks becoming shelves that housed whatever books I was reading at the time.
In Obed, I was queen of the world. In the zone, violin wailing, all the animals stopped to listen to a bow coax music from wood.
Here, there’s always noise. Pointless sounds. Electric lights humming, keyboards clicking, phones chirping, music playing, people chattering. My head is Thanksgiving Day-full, and I hate it.
But it doesn’t matter, because I need to be where Nessa is, and Nessa needs to be with me. She sacrificed her words because of the white-star night. I’ll sacrifice my sanity, if it means keeping her here.
Back at my father’s house, with all the pomp and circumstance of an Obed red-shouldered hawk funeral, I shove my violin to the back of the highest shelf of my closet, pull some white rectangular boxes in front of it, fuss a little more, then stand back, satisfied.
I’m not that girl anymore. The fiddler in the woods is dead. I’m like a wild bear balancing on a ball in the circus: I’m no longer one or the other. I’m The New One. The One I Don’t Know Yet. And, as Delaney likes to say, it kinda sucks.
After dinner, a quiet one with Delaney at school for a late cheer practice, I sit cross-legged on my bed, my geometry book open on my lap. It doesn’t take long to work out the answers to the problems in the notebook next to me, even though my mind keeps returning to Ryan and the look on his face.
I can’t let Mama ruin one more thing.
I have to apologize. I know it. And yet I hesitate even as I imagine it, walking up to him and saying the words. No one warned me that being close to people meant hurting sometimes, both them and you. And then I think of Mama. If I’d learned anything, it should’ve been that.
A small knock and a short bark, and I can’t help but smile.
“Come in.”
Shorty climbs onto the bed in stages, eventually stretching out next to me, using my thigh as a pillow. I pat the bed.
“Come sit for a minute, Ness.”
Jenessa climbs up and snuggles against me. Her skin smells like cake. Like Melissa’s famous butterscotch cake, and, on further inspection, I see flour on her shirt. Dried batter above her lip. I push the books and papers to the end of the bed with my feet.
“You look good, Ness. You look healthy and happy.”
What she does next surprises me.
“I am,” she says softly. Me and Shorty sway toward the sound of her voice, like flowers to the sunlight. “I love it here. Don’t you?”
Her eyes are pleading, hoping. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how perceptive she is, especially where I’m concerned. Her silence makes a person forget her quick memory, the braille way she reads people, her mind sharper than the waddle badger and the shuffle fox combined.
I remember what the speech therapist told Mama.
“If she talks, don’t make a big deal out of it. We don’t want to give her mutism any more power than it already has. The same goes for her silence.”
“It’s nice here, yes,” I tell her, forcing a smile. And it’s not a lie. It is nice here, with a warm bed, new clothes, a quiet belly, toasty toes. We can even go barefoot in winter. We even have slippers.
“I like Melissa. Isn’t she nice?”
I have to lean in close to hear her, but even so, it’s progress— whole sentences of it.
“She’s wonderful. It’s obvious she thinks you’re wonderful, too, Ness.”
I pull her closer, breathing her in. Strawberry shampoo. Baby powder. She rests her head on my chest and my heart swells. Regardless of how I feel about myself, I’m so happy for her, I could bust.
“You’re not ever gonna leave me, are you, Carey?”
I watch her hands play with Shorty’s ears, arranging them on his head as if they were a hairstyle. I’m sad that she doesn’t know I won’t.
“Wherever you are, I’ll be there. Remember?”
“Like in the Hundred Acre Wood,” she says, lifting her head to check my eyes. “You said we’d always be together.”
“And I meant it.”
But, for the first time that I can remember, she’s not sure she can believe me. It makes my chest ache all over again.
I recite one of her favorite Poohisms. “ ‘If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together. . . . there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But, the most important thing is, even if we’re apart . . . I’ll always be with you.’ ”
She looks up at me, and for a split second, I see her campfire eyes shining back at me, the ones from before the white-star night.