Bridget, April 3, 2015: Three weeks before the birds fell
In the beginning of spring, sixth period, immediately after lunch, always dragged on forever. Something about the last of the melting snow from a late winter storm, the rising temperature combined with the rain. Everyone yawned, huddled deeper into their sweatshirts, their heads popping out like turtles. No one listened. Teachers gave quizzes just to keep everyone awake.
Bridget had gone to the office in the morning, her fingers scanning the attendance sheets until she saw the name Lucia Hamm in the absent column. The girl was inches away from truancy and no one seemed to care.
Bridget cleared her throat at the administrative assistant, a dandelion-puff head of a woman, who grumbled and grouched at Bridget no matter what she did anyway. “Did anyone call Lucia’s house?”
Bridget studied the small flower arrangement on the desk in front of her. A coffee mug, a ball of daisies and carnations like a scoop of strawberry ice cream. Nate’s scrawled handwriting on a rectangular card. To Ginny, Happy Birthday. We’d all be lost without you! Nate.
Bridget forgot her name was Ginny. To be fair, Ginny had started last year, right before Bridget’s leave.
Ginny reached out, her long red fingernails snatching the coffee mug back, out of Bridget’s reach and tucked it behind the desk. “We haven’t had a phone number for that girl since she started high school and her father disappeared.”
“I don’t understand, how does a student just skate through the system like this?” Bridget slapped the attendance sheet on the counter and Ginny rolled her eyes.
“She’s eighteen now.” As if this negated the need for help, as if seventeen was a world away from eighteen. As if overnight, they were no longer children.
Bridget still held out hope that Lucia would show up to seventh-period creative writing. Ask for help, admit to needing someone, anything. She’d never known her to.
Bridget texted Tripp. She’s not in school today.
If you can’t find her by 6 p.m., we’ll file a report. I’ll go back to the mill today. Tripp’s reply was immediate, like he’d had his phone in his hand, waiting. Then another quick buzz. Are you ok?
Bridget was so used to people asking her this question, or subtle variations of it: Are you ok? How are you doing? Do you need anything? Often the question was accompanied by a casserole, a bottle of wine, an edible arrangement delivery. Bridget was grateful, but sometimes being on the receiving end of everyone’s pity was grating. Today, the question, framed by a new situation, felt fresh, almost thrilling.
Fine. She hit send, then texted a smile emoticon. He didn’t write back.
At least now, she had a purpose, something to keep her busy besides her frozen dinner and her red Solo cup of cabernet.
Seventh period passed, as did eighth, and then the final bell. Bridget closed the door to her classroom and waited for the commotion in the halls to die down. Her feet bounced as she sat, restless, and her heart pattered irregularly.
She checked her phone a hundred times between four and five o’clock; nothing from Tripp. The minute hand inched toward the twelve as she waited for the buzz of an incoming text, Tripp telling her he found Lucia or, alternately, to meet him and they’d file a report together, but nothing came. She’d stayed late to read journals; she’d fallen behind with the craziness of the past few days. They weren’t hard to keep up with, just a check to make sure the students were doing them—class topic assignments and a few sentences, at least three days a week. Generally, they wrote much, much more.
The one black-and-gold-trimmed journal flashed at her from the bottom of the pile. She pulled it out and fanned the pages, the smell of smoke and must wafting up. Bridget’s thumb ran along the edge of the pages until she found the latest:
I can’t ever go back to that hell. He is such a useless prick, a fucking tool. He’s so high he doesn’t know I’m his sister or he doesn’t care and now all I can think of his breath that smells like garbage close to my face, so close I can’t breathe, and he’s so heavy. I’ll have a scar forever, on my neck for the whole world to see. I hate it here. I hate this town. I hate everyone.
I will never go back there, no one can make me. I have nowhere else to go.
Underneath the entry was a drawing, a delicate, finely drawn wrist, with a lotus flower tattoo. A black raven resting in the outstretched hand, the feathers black and wispy, its head turned. One exquisite eye seemed to watch her from the page. A large disembodied hand clamped down over the forearm, above the tattoo but below the elbow. The knuckles were knotted and the fingernails ratted and torn. The smaller hand, delicate and drawn with a pencil, the fingertips curved up gracefully, cupping the bird under the tail feathers, its claws hidden from view. The fingernails were shaded in, but not black, and they were elegant, manicured. The large hand looked quickly sketched with charcoal, the lines thick and smudged, like maybe it was drawn later. Underneath, quickly scrawled: wrist to floor, hand like an ape.
There was no date at the top, but it was the last entry in the journal, handed in two days ago. Bridget thought of Lenny, his hair slick with grease, those dark marbled teeth, and felt her stomach turn. She wondered what it all meant. Did her brother abuse her? Hit her? She fought back, got away. And then went where, to the mill?
She stood, reaching her hands high above her head, raising her chin to the ceiling in a long-forgotten yoga pose. When Holden was alive, she used to go to class late in the afternoon, stretching her muscles, her long legs to the sides, up to the ceiling, feeling the expansion of big breaths in her chest. Sometimes she thought the only time she could breathe was in that class.
The clock above her desk clicked to six fifteen.
A trip to the bathroom, then she’d leave. If Tripp didn’t call her before then, she’d decide what to do. Her stomach rumbled and she clicked her dry tongue against the roof of her mouth.
The halls were silent, only a faint hum of pipes working underneath her feet and up the walls. A distant squeak of a janitor’s wheeled bucket. Even the bathroom lights were dimmed and every soft thump, squeak, and bump echoed in the dark building. She rarely stayed this late.
She looked down the hall. The science wing ran perpendicular to the English wing, the building shaped like an H, with the English Department dominating the connecting hall between everything else—language and math—and science.