Her stomach and throat connected. Her heart thundered in her ears. She sliced through the water without a scream, proud as a peacock.
Cold water streamed up her nose; something grazed her leg. She kicked out and up, racing toward oxygen. Swimming in Kentucky Lake meant sharing this gigantic pool with fish. Only she hadn’t kicked a fish, and the sting in her upper thigh wasn’t from entering the water wrong.
She’d landed on a water moccasin that did not appreciate being kicked.
Swelling, nausea, throbbing. All at once. Pain tied her like a dock rope. She clawed her way to the surface.
In the next cove, Billie McCaffrey baited a hook and asked her father, “Did you hear that?” Her dad was listening to headphones and hadn’t heard anything. She pulled the earpiece away, and said, “Anchor up. Drive to the cliffs.”
Janie Lee’s right leg was already a heavy, useless appendage. By then she’d pieced together that there was poison in her bloodstream, spidering its way up to her heart. By then she’d pieced together that she could die.
She was thinking about God. Wondering if there were violins in Heaven.
She was not thinking about Billie McCaffrey, even though she had often thought of Billie McCaffrey, until she and her dad showed up and hauled a nearly unconscious Janie Lee into their boat.
They were front-page news: Minister’s Daughter Dives into Snake-Infested Water to Save Best Friend.
The paper declared them best friends, and it was so.
Janie Lee gained momentary hero status at school and the instant affection of Woods, Mash, and Fifty. A group of four became a group of five, and Billie McCaffrey made true and dear friends with a girl. They’d been nod-at-each-other classmates before—now they were magnetized. Two town daughters—one the boyish offspring of a local minister, and the other the daughter of a drug dealer—fell into cahoots.
Some people said they fell in love.
Some people were always making assumptions.
PART TWO
EINSTEIN WAS AN IDIOT
There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud.
—CAROL SHIELDS
14
The Saturday morning the Corn Dolly ballot is due for release, Woods and I are on his bed, heads touching, watching the book television. A much-needed break. At his prompting, we pulled double duty this week. Community service projects and the painstaking process of clearing unwanted things from the elementary school lot. Save the Harvest Festival is alive and well, and so far it’s making me want to wallow in a vat of Icy Hot and sleep for a year.
All week we met at 6:45 and worked for a solid hour before school. “Chop. Chop. Get her done,” chirped Woods, the happy overlord. Post-school, we went to our assigned senior citizens. I’ve reroofed a shed, I’ve painted a bathroom the color of lilacs, I’ve made approximately four million trips to Goodwill and three to the dump. Yay for dirty, sweaty redemption. I am behind on homework, have eaten a dozen homemade cookies, and have ignored the mysteries of kissing altogether. Yay for dirty, sweaty distractions.
I was too bone-tired to stand over the Daily Sit and glue another damn anything to anything. So when Woods texted, and didn’t want nothing other than company, I biked over. I noted that he was very clear about “not wanting nothing other than company.”
His mom vacuums in the hallway. I wish she’d suck up our impatience. The newspaper should be out already. Woods has already trekked to the Fork and Spoon and claims there is nothing to report.
“What did they make you sing?” I ask.
He groans. “Elvis.”
“Glad I didn’t get up for that.”
“Whatever. You get up with the sun.”
Fable. The sun is not involved. If I go to bed at one, I’ll wake up at six. Thus far, five hours is my limit. Before anyone else in my house woke, I spent three hours on the Daily Sit. To no avail. “Do you know how many layers of newspaper it takes to make something the depth of a couch?” I complain.
“I’m sure you’re counting.”
I was. But Davey added some layers when I was in the shower, and accuracy went out the window.
“That reminds me.” Woods retrieves his keys from his pocket, drops them on my stomach. “Grandy sent you her newspapers. And some aluminum cans. They’re all in my trunk.”
I drop the keys on his crotch. “On my bike, genius. You’ll have to drop them off later.”
We watch the book television some more. Woods changes the channel three times, lands on a cartoon. Mrs. Carrington finally stops vacuuming and starts clanking in the kitchen. I’m massaging my own shoulders thinking I’ll never finish anything. Woods has two vertical worry lines stretching from his eyebrows to his hairline. These occur every time he focuses on stuff he can’t control.
Is he thinking about me? Is he thinking about how terrible our kissing attempt was?
In an alt-universe, where Janie Lee said nothing the night of the fire, we would continue through graduation in normalcy. A single sentence set us on a course of redefinition, of pairs, of benefits. Benefits were always my lowest frequency setting. Now I think about them, well . . . frequently. And I think about them with everyone. Even Fifty. I want to Dial-soap my brain.
Woods has no upper lip to speak of. Why do I know that? Because I’m staring at his mouth.
His mouth is forming sentences about the Harvest Festival, KickFall, and the Corn Dolly nominations.
“Who do you think will make the ballot?” he asks.
I draw a large, ironic heart shape in the air with my fingers. “Tawny, of course.”
“Obviously. But who else?”
“There’s not a woman in Otters Holt who wouldn’t be happy to win the Corn Dolly. Especially if it’s the last one.”
“Oh, it ain’t over. Not by a long shot.”
There’s such a fine line between things Woods plans to do and things Woods has done that he assumes we’ve already saved the festival, even if no one comes out for KickFall.
Woods props himself up on an elbow, pulls at a loose thread on his comforter. “What about you? You want a Corn Dolly?”
“No,” I say quickly. I love the Corn Dolly and what it represents in Otters Holt, but I would never pursue one.
I was seven, maybe eight. I’d seen an old movie—The NeverEnding Story—and as I was prone to do at the time, I obsessed over the main character. Who went on adventures. Who flew on luck dragons. Who faced shit down like a pro. Following Wednesday-night church, I marched myself into the bathroom with scissors and gave myself a haircut that resembled the main character’s. Nearly a foot of dark hair was on the tile floor.
Dad found me. He must have said something like, Elizabeth, what have you done? And I must have said, Daddy, I’m Atreyu. Those words are hazy, but I do remember the words that followed: “Elizabeth, Atreyu is a boy. You are a girl.”