I wasn’t supposed to do this, to bring Waipo in; the incense memories were meant only for me. How was I supposed to know?
Each breath is tight, like there’s thick rope wound over my ribs, binding my bones together. A storm starts behind my eyes, shooting a monstrous headache across my temples.
I gather up what I can: just three pieces of incense. Three more chances to call up the memories, see the colors of the past, and try to understand.
67
My phone chimes to alert me to a new email and I couldn’t be more relieved. This is what I need right now. Exactly this kind of distraction, something to take me away from the feeling of ruin and failure.
There are six messages in a row from my father, lined up in my in-box like a checklist. Most of them I haven’t bothered to open. There’s one saying we’ve been in Asia for a week, and how much longer do I want to be here? I’m feeling the slightest bit guilty for my radio silence, so I tell him I’m fine, I want to stay another week. Want, I say, not need, though that’s the word pounding in my chest.
What I need is more time to follow these memories and understand them. What I need is time to gather materials and weave a new net, set my trap for the bird. But obviously I don’t say any of that.
Then I click into the newest email, the one that brought me the alert. A message from Axel.
FROM: [email protected]
TO: [email protected]
SUBJECT: (no subject)
There was this one day last summer when we sat in Caro’s car outside those woods. We talked about the idea of being in love, and there was something weird there. I always wanted to ask you about it. I never figured out how to ask.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Is he asking now?
68
SUMMER BEFORE SOPHOMORE YEAR
How about I teach you, Leigh?” said my mother. She sat on the piano bench, twisting to look at me. “Just some basic.”
I pushed up off the couch and shook my head out of habit, softening it with a smile. “Not today, Mom.”
She watched as I gathered up my pencils. The guilt was settling over me; should I have said yes? I’d been turning down the offer for years. It wasn’t like I didn’t want my mother to teach me. I was just never in the right mood. And I worried that I wouldn’t be good enough.
“Maybe you go out with Axel and Caro,” she suggested. “You sit in here with me too much.”
The guilt tripled. Could she tell that I was just itching to leave the house? I’d been grounded for the whole summer, for that ridiculous disappearing act, said Dad, even though it was his fault I ended up at that camp to begin with. I hadn’t seen Axel in ages—the part of my punishment that felt the most unreasonable—and the thought of him was a cobalt bruise I kept bumping.
After my mother’s treatment at the beginning of the summer, I’d ditched my plans to find a job and started spending all my time with her. I would’ve done that even if I hadn’t been grounded. The smile she’d been wearing for the last few weeks—so genuine, so radiant—had me convinced that she was really recovering. But I also worried that once I was gone every day, when school started again, she’d sink back into her darkness.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had to give her as much of myself as I had, that I was the pillar holding her upright.
“Go,” she said, like she could see the internal war I was waging. “Your summer almost over. Enjoy your time.”
I made myself nod. Things were, after all, a bit better. Mom was seeing a therapist. She was a month into a new medicine. Dad and I were breathing easier.
So I sent off some texts, feeling guilty as the responses that came so immediately sank a cool relief into my bones. Caro had the idea to go out near this creek we always passed on the way to school. She wanted to take pictures under the moonlight.
The August evening was hot and muggy, though not as bad as earlier in the day. The sky was already brown like a river, with streaks of fire chasing the clouds. Fireflies were out and winking, making their slow weave through the air.
Caro popped the trunk to pull out lights and tripods and swaths of gossamer. Axel and I carried sketch pads and clip-on lights just for the hell of it, and Cheslin lagged behind us with a pile of thrift-store dresses in her arms, all velvet and satin and taffeta, pearl buttons and shiny ribbons.
We trudged through an overgrown field, the stiff grass reaching up to our thighs. Caro led us into a dark copse of trees where the hawks were always flying in and out, and we could hear the gurgling of water.
“This is nice,” Axel said, so quiet I was pretty sure he meant it just for me.
“It is,” I said.
“We haven’t done anything like this in a while.”
Could he see it in my eyes, the color of my missing him?
“Here,” Caro called out, stopping where there was a gap between the thick trunks. “This is perfect.”
We all helped drape the fabric. We wedged flashlights between branches, set collapsible reflectors on the ground to redirect the beams. By the time we were done, the sun was gone. The moon had emerged, though it stayed half swallowed by the clouds. It made for an eerie sight, pale beams crisscrossing through branches, lighting up the gossamer.
Cheslin powdered her face and started pulling dresses on over her tank top and shorts. Caro moved her half into the shadows, and in front of the camera, Cheslin became a ghost.
“It’s a new series I’m working on,” said Caro. “Called Dead Girl Cheslin.”
Axel and I found a fallen log to sit on, but it was too dark and both of us were too distracted to actually draw. We looked on as Cheslin became a goddess, a sylph, a creature of resurrection. We watched as Caro’s world narrowed down to Cheslin and Cheslin alone. The camera wound and shuttered.
At one point, Cheslin began to shed her clothes. Off came the shorts, the tank. She unhooked her bra—
“Whoa,” said Axel, his one syllable puncturing the air.
“Oh,” said Cheslin, turning her face. She blinked as if seeing us for the first time. “Does it bother you?”
He coughed and waved his hands out in front of him as if to say, Continue.
Cheslin shrugged. “It is, after all, just a body.”
Caro grinned.
My face burned. Did Axel think Cheslin was hot? She was nymphlike, with those elegant limbs and that long, honeyed hair. She had a natural grace to her that I would never have. While she shimmered, I was stained in charcoal.
Cheslin threw her hands wide and rolled her eyes upward. She looked like something out of a horror movie. A breeze poured her hair to the side.
“Yes,” Caro was saying. “Yes, that’s perfect.”
My body was tightly wound, tuned up like a piano string. I was pretty certain that I wasn’t interested in girls, but sitting there watching this felt voyeuristic. Heat funneled through my center, pooling in my stomach. I wanted to feel what Caro and Cheslin were feeling. I envied their thrill.
“Let’s go,” Axel said to me, standing up abruptly.
Simultaneously reluctant and relieved, I followed him out of the trees. Caro and Cheslin didn’t even notice us leaving.
It was stuffy in the car; we settled into the back and left the doors wide open.
“Sorry, it was just getting a little weird for me,” he said.
My eyes took in the amount of space between us. There was plenty of room for us to spread out, and yet somehow we’d ended up close enough to feel the heat of each other’s bodies, drawn together like magnets.
I swallowed. “It was kind of weird.”
Mere inches away from him. I thought of what Cheslin had said: It was just a body.
Ignore the fact that it’s Axel’s body. Ignore the fact that you saw that body almost naked just a month and a half ago. Ignore the fact that you want to see that body again.
Just. A. Body.
“It was almost like we were watching them have sex or something. Only they weren’t even touching.”