(Don't You) Forget About Me (8 page)

“I is a fourth year too,” Wills says. Mom's gaze strays in my direction as I walk into the room, so Wills tugs at her long braid, demanding her full attention.

“Don't be an asshole,” I say to him, pointing my finger.

“I'm not,” Wills protests at the same time Mom warns me with a low “Skylar.”

I roll my eyes at both of them and walk into the kitchen. A pot full of sticky gray oatmeal sits cold and unappetizing on the stovetop. It's the type of food GG loves to make for us: wholesome, nutritious, and tasteless. Sticking a spoon in, I shovel a few gluey bites into my mouth and quickly swallow them down one after another. As I eat, Mom and Wills continue story time in the other room.

“The year Sky was born was the year I decided I wasn't going to be scared and cower inside anymore. ‘This baby needs to see the light,' I said. And so I took her for walks every day, rain or shine, without fail. Our next-door neighbor Mrs. Roberts was an outsider too, and she used to scold me. She said that we hadn't escaped one kind of danger to embrace another. She'd had a brain tumor and was given only a month to live when she moved here. Unlike me, though, she hadn't spent her whole life as a sickly invalid. Maybe that was the difference in our attitudes. I was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis when I was a baby and spent my whole life dreaming of how I'd live if I were healthy. When I finally got that chance I wasn't going to sit inside like some scared little mouse.”

Mom sighs in that gusty way she has, hard enough to make the curtains twitch. “It was a shame really. We had so much in common, we should've been friends. I really needed a friend then, and I guess she eventually realized that she did too. She had a new baby just like me, and one beautiful June morning, instead of yelling out her window that I'd better be careful, she said, ‘Wait for me.' A minute later she came running out with that baby on her shoulder. She didn't even own a carriage, she said, 'cause she hadn't thought she'd ever take him for a walk. Well, I pushed Skylar to the side of her carriage and we laid the two of them babies side by side, and they were just content as can be. So it became a routine, Mrs. Roberts and her baby boy John Paul coming along on our walk with us.”

The oatmeal is gone, but I stand silently by the stove. I know this story. I have heard it so many times that it would be impossible to forget. It is my history. The beginning of being me. I know how it ends too, and I don't need to hear it again. Still I can't walk away until it is finished being told.

“The birds!” Wills interjects into Mom's pause.

“Yes,” she says with an even heavier sigh. “The birds. It was July and Mrs. Roberts was having trouble with the humidity. She'd come from some place on the West Coast with cool ocean breezes. So I told her I would take John Paul on the walk, that the fresh air would be good for him and that she needed the rest. She didn't want to let him go. I didn't understand that then. I do now, but then I kept insisting she let me take the baby, until finally she settled him into the carriage. ‘Good-bye, my sweet boy,' she said, and then she leaned down to kiss him, but I pulled the carriage away before she could. I told her she would make him hot and miserable, but really I was just impatient. When we reached the cemetery at the bottom of our street, I decided to pick some of the wildflowers that had sprung up there overnight. So we went in. I parked the carriage in the shade and tucked Skylar's blanket around both of those babies.”

Mom pauses here. I can feel the transition, from her looking at Wills to almost reliving it.

“After that everything happened so fast. There was screaming and the town sirens went off. I rushed toward the babies, but the birds were already flying in. One sliced right across my cheek, and then a whole flock of them, so many they were just a black cloud, surrounded the carriage. I ran at them, yelling, praying, begging. The cloud lifted, and from the bottom of it, I could see Skylar's little baby blanket trailing along with them. My heart stopped. I was certain they'd carried her away. That's when I heard her high-pitched little scream. This brokenhearted howl. I reached the carriage and it was full of black feathers. I swept them away, and there was Skylar.

“I fell down and wept. I cried until I was sick with it, and then I cried some more. Mrs. Roberts found me. I don't know how, but it was like she already knew John Paul was gone. She stood beside me, staring at Skylar all alone in that carriage for so long, I was scared, not knowing what she would do. But then she just pushed the carriage back home. She must have told your father where I was, because he came to carry me home a little bit later. Later they sent out search crews, swept the Salt Spring and everything, but it was no use. No one ever saw a trace of that child again. Mrs. Roberts left town soon thereafter. Said a long healthy life had lost its appeal.”

A shiver travels from the roots of my hair to the tips of my toes. That story, that loss, always goes straight through me. I was too young to remember. That's what everyone says. But then why do I flinch every time a bird flies by? Why can I still feel those feathers smothering me and blacking out the sky?

I rummage through cupboards, not really wanting anything but needing a moment to catch my breath. Grabbing a pack of Scooby-Doo fruit snacks, I stomp back through the front room.

“Stop telling him those stories,” I growl, not even looking in their direction.

Sliding my feet into the flip-flops I left in the front hallway, I yank the door open. Humidity hits me like a wet blanket. Big lazy raindrops plop one by one from the sky, so slowly that someone swift could dash between them and get from one end of the town to the other and stay completely dry. I am not that person. The day has barely begun, and I am already tired. I'll be soaked before I reach the end of the driveway.

It would be so much easier to go back upstairs and take one of the pills I salvaged from the toilet. Getting it down without gagging might be difficult, but I'd soon forget where I'd last seen it swimming.

Something heavy lands on my shoulders. I turn and Mom is standing behind me. She places Piper's old yellow rain slicker—the one she found at the Goodwill and fell in love with—on me.

I have avoided Piper's old clothing. Wearing it would feel too much like she was dead and never returning. But also she was so much in everything she wore. Piper didn't simply wear clothes. She fell in love. Her red cowboy boots. This yellow rain slicker. Daddy's awful old brown sweater full of moth holes.

The slicker rubs against my skin just long enough for me to smell it and realize Piper has finally left that too. Her scent, a mixture of coconut shampoo and the red-hot candies she loved to chew, used to cling to everything she'd touched. Now the yellow rain slicker just smells like mildew.

This is why I am leaving the pills behind today. To find Piper. To bring her back home. I can't forget that, but I'm afraid that I will.

I shove my arms into the raincoat's sleeves. Mom leans in and pinches the snaps closed, starting down at my knees and not finishing until she reaches the one that closes it around my chin. Finally, she flips the hood up.

“It's just rain,” I say, but the sharp-edged tone I usually use with her is gone.

She takes a step back. “You can never be too careful.”

She doesn't add “in this town.” She doesn't need to.

I nod, turn, and walk outside. Mom stands in the doorway, watching me.

“Where's Sky going?” I hear Wills ask.

“On an adventure,” she says, and I guess that's the only thing you can say to a four-year-old. It beats “I don't know where she's going, and I don't know if she'll make it back.”

SHE'S LIKE THE WIND

Four Years Ago

THE TRAIN CONTINUED TO ROAR PAST ME AS I
watched you slowly swim toward shore, your arms chopping through the water as if it were your enemy. I made the same wish that I did every time—that you would finally be tired of playing this terrible game of chicken with the train.

You were twelve the first time you tried to walk the bridge's mile-long length. I stood at the far end and watched you shrink. Then the train whistle blew. You turned and started running back toward me, though there was no way you would ever make it. The whistle blew louder, or maybe that was the brakes screeching, and just when the train would've swallowed you, you threw yourself over the side of the bridge and into the water below. Ever since then you'd been trying to outrun that train. And I'd been watching it with my heart beating so hard I might as well be running alongside you.

You finally hauled yourself onto dry land and collapsed into the scrub grass. Chance barked at you the whole time, scolding. You flicked a wet hand at him, and with a yelp, he retreated to hide behind me.

“You're going to drown one of these days,” I said.

For a long moment you didn't say anything, just stared out at the water that everyone else in Gardnerville feared. Almost no one in this town can swim. Fear of the water starts with the Salt Spring, but it doesn't end there. A few years back the Gardner-ville town council put on the addition to the school with the pool, hoping it would encourage more people to learn to swim and lose their fear. An outsider was brought in to hold lessons, but he left after three months. He said it was because he only had three students, but everyone knew the town was more than he could take. It happened that way for a lot of newcomers.

“Last time you said one of these days I wasn't gonna jump fast enough and the train was gonna run me over,” you finally replied with a laugh.

“That could happen too.”

I didn't add that you wouldn't be the first to die that way. We both knew that people who wanted to leave Gardnerville but weren't brave enough to board the train threw themselves in front of it instead.

“Come on, Pollywog, you know the train wouldn't dare run me over. It would jump into the Salt Spring rather than take me down.” You grinned at me in that wild sort of way you had, daring me to contradict you.

And of course I didn't. I couldn't.

Sitting up, you fixed your gaze on the train tracks. The grin faded but not the wildness. If anything, it flared. “Someday I'll outrun that train. You ever consider that outcome, Pollywog? One of these days, I'll run so fast and so hard that I'll become a stream of light. And then I'll burst into a million pieces. You'll try to collect them all, 'cause you and Mom and Dad will think I'll need to be buried and cried over. But you won't be able to. The pieces will be scattered everywhere; you won't even know where to begin looking. And when you do find one, it'll be so bright and hot and shiny that it'll burn through the toughest gloves and scorch the flesh beneath. So you'll have to leave me behind and you'll think it's sad, but it won't be, not really. 'Cause someday you'll be dead too and laid down under the dirt where no one can see you. You'll be forgotten. But people will find those pieces of me forever, and that's how they'll know I was part of something special.”

I was speechless. You'd been weird like this a lot lately. You'd say the strangest things as if they were totally normal. I never knew how to respond. Usually, I tried to laugh it off. Pretend it was all a joke. Which was exactly what I did this time.

“Um, Piper, how much of that salt water did you swallow?”

You laughed. “Too much, Pollywog. Too much. Although not as much as the first time. I can still see the way you were staring at me when I finally came out of the water. You said to me, ‘Gosh, Piper, I didn't know you could swim.' And I said, ‘I didn't either 'til just now.'”

Standing, you grabbed the bottom of your T-shirt and twisted it so that the water dribbled out. “This train was faster than usual, didn't you think?”

“It was the water train,” I said, picking up one of the water jugs you'd dropped onto the ground and shaking it as a reminder. Not that you needed one. This was the errand you had invited me on.

“Oh, that's right.” Gracefully, you swept three of the jugs into your arms with one swooping motion. “Our weekly allotment of natural springwater, which, unlike this natural salt water, will not increase your chances of going mad.” You said this last bit in your deep theatrical voice, the one you used when you were trying to make me laugh. You knew exactly how much your train running upset me. This knowledge wasn't enough to make you stop. But you always tried to make it up to me afterward, going into extra-sweet-sister mode.

Usually, I gave in quickly, but that day I wasn't just upset about the train running. Your strange story was still bothering me too. So instead of laughing away the tension between us, I picked up my water jugs and started walking. You fell into step beside me, while Chance ran ahead.

“You know,” you said, “they say the creeplings got the way they are 'cause their mother drank the Salt Spring water every day. Took baths in it too. Then after the five of them were born, she put the water in their bottles. She wanted them to be different. To be special. And I think everyone agrees that she got her wish.” You paused for dramatic effect. “What do you think of that?”

I shrugged. I'd heard that story. I'd also heard the one where people said the creeplings' mother was in love with our father. According to the gossip, the woman was so much in love with Dad that she wanted him to leave Mom. Everybody knew he'd never do that, but she must've thought that maybe if she got pregnant he'd change his mind. Except he didn't. Then she thought that maybe if her kids came out incredible and different, it would change his mind. Having quints is pretty incredible. He still didn't care though. I didn't know if she tried anything else after that. I didn't know if any of that was true. But if it was, I felt sorry for her. It took her a long time, longer than most, to realize he wasn't capable of caring.

“You think they're related to us? Like, our half siblings?” I was certain this very question was the reason you'd brought it up.

But you brushed it off. “Oh, I don't know. Probably. Probably not. Take a peek inside their heads if you really want to know, I guess.”

“No thanks,” I said with a shudder.

“Oh, poor Pollywog. You've gathered enough scary stories to give your nightmares a nice variety.”

“I haven't,” I quickly protested. In some families you get known for being someone not able to keep a secret, but I was known for not being able to resist taking them. I hated it. And you knew it too.

You kicked a cloud of dust at me. “Don't get all scrunch-faced with me, Pollywog. I didn't mean it as a bad thing. Just think of all those people out there.” You flapped your hand back in the direction we'd come, to the train tracks that disappeared into the mountain and the rest of the world that lived beyond it. “Their nightmares must be so boring. If they were smart, they wouldn't take money for the natural springwater they send us. They'd insist on a trade instead. Our water for theirs. Then they could have a taste of the awful and awesome things we excel at.”

Normally I'd agree. And then we'd spend the rest of our walk thinking up clever ways to insult the idiots that made up the rest of the world that wasn't Gardnerville. But I was still upset, so I said nothing and shrugged again instead.

You poked me in the side. “Don't shrug, Pollywog. It's nearly as bad as Mom's sighs.”

Taking a deep breath, you did such an excellent imitation of one of those infamous sighs that although I fought it, I couldn't keep a snort of laughter in. You did it again and again, until I was laughing so hard I could barely walk. Then you finally stopped and laughed with me.

“You can't stay mad at me, can you?” you said later as we were walking home much slower, weighed down by the jugs now heavy with water.

I did my own imitation of Mom's sigh, with a little bit of a groan thrown in for added comic effect. You laughed. I did too.

But that sigh was genuine. I felt it down to my toes.

Since you've been gone, Piper, I've become as bad with the sighing as Mom. Sometimes it's the part of a sob that I just can't hold back. Sometimes the sigh's more like blowing out birthday candles to make a wish. And sometimes I do it hoping that it'll make you appear—even for just one instant—to laugh at me and tell me to stop.