"I'm not upset because I'll miss you," Mom said. "I'm upset because you get to go to New York and I'm stuck here. It's not fair."
*
Lori, when I called her, approved of my plan. I could live with her, she said, if I got a job and chipped in on the rent. Brian liked my idea, too, especially when I pointed out that he could have my bed. He began making wisecracks in a lockjaw accent about how I was going to become one of those fur-wearing, pinkie-extending, nose-in-the-air New Yorkers. He began counting down the weeks until I left, just as I had counted them down for Lori. "In sixteen weeks, you'll be in New York," he'd say. The next week. "In three months and three weeks, you'll be in New York."
Dad had barely spoken to me since I announced my decision. One night that spring, he came into the bedroom where I was up on my bunk studying. He had some papers rolled up under his arm.
"Got a minute to look at something?" he asked.
"Sure."
I followed him into the living room, where he spread the papers on the drafting table. They were his old blueprints for the Glass Castle, all stained and dog-eared. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen them. We'd stopped talking about the Glass Castle once the foundation we'd dug was filled up with garbage.
"I think I finally worked out how to deal with the lack of sunlight on the hillside," Dad said. It involved installing specially curved mirrors in the solar cells. But what he wanted to talk to me about was the plans for my room. "Now that Lori's gone," he said. "I'm reconfiguring the layout, and your room will be a lot bigger."
Dad's hands trembled slightly as he unrolled different blueprints. He had drawn frontal views, side views, and aerial views of the Glass Castle. He had diagrammed the wiring and the plumbing. He had drawn the interiors of rooms and labeled them and specified their dimensions, down to the inches, in his precise, blocky handwriting.
I stared at the plans. "Dad," I said. "you'll never build the Glass Castle."
"Are you saying you don't have faith in your old man?"
"Even if you do, I'll be gone. In less than three months, I'm leaving for New York City."
"What I was thinking was you don't have to go right away," Dad said. I could stay and graduate from Welch High and go to Bluefield State, as Miss Katona had suggested, then get a job at The Welch Daily News. He'd help me with the articles, like he'd helped me with my piece on Chuck Yeager. "And I'll build the Glass Castle, I swear it. We'll all live in it together. It'll be a hell of a lot better than any apartment you'll ever find in New York City, I can guaran-goddamn-tee that."
"Dad," I said, "as soon as I finish classes, I'm getting on the next bus out of here. If the buses stop running, I'll hitchhike. I'll walk if I have to. Go ahead and build the Glass Castle, but don't do it for me."
Dad rolled up the blueprints and walked out of the room. A minute later, I heard him scrambling down the mountainside.
IT HAD BEEN A mild winter, and summer came early to the mountains. By late May, the wild bleeding hearts and the rhododendrons had bloomed, and the fragrance of honeysuckle drifted down the hillside and into the house. We had our first hot days before school was out.
Those last couple of weeks, I'd go from feeling excited to nervous to just plain scared back to excited in a matter of minutes. On the last day of school, I cleaned out my locker and went to say goodbye to Miss Bivens.
"I've got a feeling about you," she said. "I think you'll do all right up there. But you've left me with a problem. Who's going to edit the Wave next year?"
"You'll find someone, I'm sure."
"I've thought of trying to entice your brother into it."
"People might start thinking that the Wallses are building a dynasty."
Miss Bivens smiled. "Maybe you are."
*
At home that night, Mom cleaned out a suitcase she'd used for her collection of dancing shoes, and I filled it with my clothes and my bound copies of The Maroon Wave. I wanted to leave everything from the past behind, even the good things, so I gave Maureen my geode. It was dusty and dull, but I told her that if she scrubbed it hard, it would sparkle like a diamond. As I cleared out the box on the wall next to my bed, Brian said. "Guess what? In one more day you'll be in New York City." Then he started impersonating Frank Sinatra, singing. "New York, New York" off-key and doing his lounge-lizard dance.
"Shut up, you big dummy!" I said and hit him hard on the shoulder.
"You're the dummy!" he said and hit me hard back. We tossed a few more punches and then looked at each other awkwardly.
The one bus out of Welch left at seven-ten in the morning. I needed to be at the station before seven. Mom announced that since she was not by nature an early riser, she would not be getting up to see me off. "I know what you look like, and I know what the bus station looks like," she said. "And those big farewells are so sentimental."
*
I could hardly sleep that night. Neither could Brian. From time to time, he'd break the silence by announcing that in seven hours I'd be leaving Welch, in six hours I'd be leaving Welch, and we'd both start cracking up. I fell asleep only to be woken at first light by Brian, who, like Mom, wasn't an early riser. He was tugging at my arm. "No more joking about it," he said. "In two hours, you'll be gone."
Dad hadn't come home that night, but when I climbed through the back window with my suitcase, I saw him sitting at the bottom of the stone steps, smoking a cigarette. He insisted on carrying the suitcase for me, and we set off down Little Hobart Street and around the Old Road.
The empty streets were damp. Every now and then Dad would look over at me and wink, or make a tocking sound with his tongue as if I were a horse and he was urging me on. It seemed to make him feel like he was doing what a father should, plucking up his daughter's courage, helping her face the terrors of the unknown.
When we got to the station, Dad turned to me. "Honey, life in New York may not be as easy as you think it's going to be."
"I can handle it," I told him.
Dad reached into his pocket and pulled out his favorite jackknife, the one with the horn handle and the blade of blue German steel that we'd used for Demon Hunting.
"I'll feel better knowing you have this." He pressed the knife into my hand.
The bus turned down the street and stopped with a hiss of compressed air in front of the Trailways station. The driver opened up the luggage compartment and slid my suitcase in next to the others. I hugged Dad. When our cheeks touched, and I breathed in his smell of tobacco, Vitalis, and whiskey, I realized he'd shaved for me.
"If things don't work out, you can always come home," he said. "I'll be here for you. You know that, don't you?"
"I know." I knew that in his way, he would be. I also knew I'd never be coming back.