Invisible (42 page)

“Eric!” Brenna called, hooking her arm through his, acting like she didn’t even see Peyton standing there. Acting like she couldn’t even tell they were in the middle of a big fight. “You ready?” She pulled him away, Eric not resisting even one little bit. Maybe it wasn’t the guy from bio Brenna had been really interested in.

The thought nailed Peyton right in the heart.

The bell rang and the hall emptied, lockers banging and doors closing, until Peyton was the only one there.

People weren’t all that different from squid. People ate their own kind, too.

 [DANA]

J
ULIE SET THE SLEEPING BABY IN MY ARMS, AND
tucked the blanket around the small form, cocooning the infant in sunshine yellow.
She looks just like you did when you were a baby
.

I’m not keeping her
.

Dana
. Chiding.
You don’t mean that
.

Yes, I do
.

You’re just overwhelmed. That’s normal. You’ll feel better after you get some sleep
.

Don’t tell me how I’ll feel. She’s just going to mess everything up
.

You won’t be alone. I’ll help you every step of the way. You know I will
.

Don’t. I’ve already made up my mind
.

Time gathered itself like whorls of yarn along a silver knitting needle.

Maybe I could take her
, Julie said at last, softly.

So easy.
Tell Frank she’s yours. Tell him you wanted to surprise him. You didn’t want him to know until you were sure
.

Had I spoken too quickly? Would she see through me? I sneaked a glance. She was looking at the sleeping baby. Tears running down her cheeks.

So it was done.

I’d figured it all out by the time I got to Julie’s house. Frank and Peyton would have to leave town. Frank could find a job somewhere else; his skills were transferable. Peyton could start her senior year there, make new friends, make a fresh start. She wouldn’t be happy, but she’d understand. She’d have to.

Frank’s truck was in the driveway, but Julie’s car was gone. The whole week I’d been there, the car hadn’t been moved, and I’d gotten used to seeing it there. So who was driving it now?

I hesitated at the front door, then knocked twice, hard, before stepping inside. “Frank? You here?”

He was in the kitchen, glass raised to his lips. “What do you want?”

Five o’clock and he was already digging into the whiskey. Things hadn’t gotten better. “I just talked to the people from the EPA. They found nano zinc, Frank. It’s in the plant, the water, the ground. It’s everywhere.”

“Well, good for you. You win.”

“It’s not about
winning
.”

“No? Then, what is it about, Dana?”

“The whole town’s poisoned. It’s not safe. You and Peyton need to move.”

“Quit my job? Sell the house? You bet. I’ll get right on that.”

“I’m serious, Frank. This is what killed Julie.”

Finally, he lowered his glass. “The EPA say that?”

“No. But they will.”

“What
did
they say?”

“They have to do more testing. But it’s just a matter of time …”

“So even though this nano zinc’s everywhere, they’re not concerned. They’re not closing down the plant.”

“You can’t listen to them.”

“You’re the one who called them in. Which way is it, Dana? We listen to them, or we don’t?”

“I thought they could help.”

“You just wanted them to rubber-stamp this crazy notion of yours.”

“It’s not crazy. They’re looking into it. They’re worried about it.”

“But they’re not doing anything.”

“It’s the government,” I snapped. “They’re the ones who put lead in paint. Look at asbestos. Thalidomide. They’re not going to do anything until more people die. You want Peyton to be one of them?”

“Leave my daughter out of this.”

“She’s not your daughter.”

He started to laugh, then saw the expression on my face. His eyes went blank with confusion. “What are you talking about? Julie tell you that?”

“She’s not Julie’s, either. She’s mine.”

“Right. She looks just like Julie.”

“And me.”

His gaze settled on me, as if he was forced to see me for the very first time.

“That’s why Julie and I moved to Hawley that summer. Not so she could be closer to nursing school, but so no one would know I was pregnant.”

He set the bottle down.

“You came home for Christmas that year, remember?” I continued. “Of course you’d think Peyton was yours.”

“You’re lying.”

“It was a big surprise, wasn’t it, finding out Julie had had a baby? She’d never said a word.”

“She said it was because she didn’t want to get my hopes up.”

“You must have suspected something, but you bought it anyway. Because you
wanted
to believe it.”

“Get out.”

“The way Peyton holds her spoon with her thumb overlapping? The way she sometimes walks around with just one sock on, sleeps on her stomach with her head in her pillow? That’s me, Frank. She’s mine.”

Red crawled up his cheeks and his eyes went hard. I stumbled back a step as he raised his arm.

“You stay away from her, you interfering bitch! I raised her. She’s my daughter—”

The sudden crunch of footsteps outside, the slam of a door. A car was pulling out of the driveway, tires squealing against asphalt.

By the time we reached the door and looked out, all we could see was the car accelerating down the street.

Peyton had heard everything.

 [PEYTON]

C
ORAL REEFS ARE BUILT BY LIVING CREATURES
called polyps that shape limestone shells all around their soft, vulnerable bodies. They live two to three years, and when they reproduce, they release larvae that settle on the tops of other corals to begin making their own limestone houses. Because they’re so tiny, reefs grow only about an inch a year. Scientists estimate that the coral reefs around today are between five and ten thousand years old. Over a million different species of animals and plants live in them. It’s the most diverse habitat on earth
.

Polyps feed at night by poking their tentacles out to catch plankton. Because these tentacles sting, they also protect the polyps from predators. But it’s an inefficient feeding process, not enough to sustain them. It’s the microscopic algae inside the polyps, converting sunshine into food, that really keep the polyps alive. Algae require tropical temperatures, a certain level of salinity, ample sunlight, and a current that’s not too fast or too sluggish in order to thrive. So when you come down to it, over a million species rely on something so fragile it almost doesn’t exist, and so microscopic it’s invisible
.

•  •  •

Her mom’s lucky charm smacked against the glass. Her books slithered out of her bookbag and thudded to the floor.

Eric’s house flew by, hunkered down and smug, like all the houses beside it. Another turn, the road curving up and down and she flew into the air for an instant, a stomach-assaulting moment of pure joy when gravity let go, and then the car of its own accord leaped the curb and crashed to a halt in front of the nursing home where her mom had taken her for countless visits.

Not her mom. She was Dana’s daughter.

The entrance doors were closed—someone had once tried to make a run for it. Peyton punched the automatic button and the doors opened slowly like butterfly wings. She strode by the nurse writing at her desk and the old man in his chair, awake today and grinning at her. She’d smack his hand if he reached up toward her. The papers tacked to the bulletin board fluttered as she ran past them. Down the hall past the dining room, where people worked setting up the tables, the steamy smells of overcooked food swarming into the hall.

Her grandma’s room was empty. Instead, she sat playing cards with Mrs. Gerkey and two other old ladies in the games room, holding their cards in special little grippers so the cards stayed put and didn’t shake to the table.

“Hello, Peyton,” Mrs. Gerkey said.

Peyton ignored her. She put her hands on her grandma’s thin wrists, the skin papery soft over the bones. “Who’s my real dad?” Her grandma’s eyes widened. “I don’t think I know you, dear.”

“Yes, you do!” She gave her grandma’s hands a shake. “I’m Julie’s daughter.”
Not Julie’s daughter
. “Frank’s daughter.”

Her grandma pursed her lips together, then nodded. “Yes. That’s right. Frank’s daughter, but not really.”

Not really
. That was a laugh. “Who
is
my real dad?”

“Dana got herself in trouble. I should have seen it coming.”

“Peyton,” Mrs. Gerkey said. “None of that matters. You need to calm down.”

Calm down? Was the old witch kidding? “It does matter. It matters to me.”

“What matters is that Dana did the right thing,” Mrs. Gerkey said.

“What do you know about anything?” Peyton snatched back her hands. “She gave me away, like I was garbage. How is
that
the right thing?”

“Don’t talk to your grandma that way,” Mrs. Gerkey chided.

“I can talk to her any way I want,” Peyton shot back. “She’s
not
my grandma.” She leaned down and spoke the next words into Miriam’s startled face. “I never loved you, either.”

She should drive to Fargo. It was only an hour away, but what would she do when she got there? The Twin Cities lay hours away and she wasn’t really sure how to get there. Eric would have helped, but not now. Hawley? Yuck—that was even smaller than Black Bear. It didn’t even have a DQ. There really was only one place.

She swerved off the road and down the long driveway to the plant. The workday was over; there were only a few cars in the parking lot. She skewed into an end space and climbed out, holding her face to the hot sun. Birds cawed nearby; the lake glinted between the trees. She ran for her thinking rock.

She
was
her mom’s daughter. Of course she was. They looked just like each other. Didn’t they have the same trick of jiggling their right foot when their legs were crossed? Didn’t they love the same movies and think kiwi were slimy? When Peyton looked in the mirror, she always saw herself, but with her mother gently shaded in, as if the two of them were together occupying the same space.

She pulled her cigarettes from her bag. Just two left and they were a little bent.

What about her dad? She didn’t look like him, but then, she never had. Who was she, if she wasn’t his daughter? They hung out together. He’d taught her to fish and ride her bike. When they went camping, the two of them sat out by the campfire after her mom had gone to her sleeping bag, and he told her about the stars in the sky. He’d been the one to approve buying such an expensive aquarium. He’d been the one to look up how to become a marine biologist. They both loved her mom, equally. If that didn’t unite them, nothing did. But there was part of him she’d never known, that part that didn’t talk about what had happened overseas, the cold scary stranger who emerged whenever he’d been drinking. He was her dad, but he wasn’t just like her, not the way her mom had been. He was all Peyton had left. Maybe he really didn’t love her, either.

Who did this make her? Joe Connolly’s daughter? There was nothing special about him at all, nothing that told her they had anything in common.

Who did this make her mom, the woman who’d lied to Peyton every single day of her entire life? What else had she lied about? Nothing made sense anymore.

She scrabbled through her purse for her lighter, pulled at all the pockets, took out her wallet to look beneath. No luck. She rested her chin on her bent knee and stared out at the lake. So Dana had gotten pregnant. What was the big deal about that? Lots of kids got pregnant. A girl in her class had a three-month-old, and one of the sophomore girls was pregnant, wearing tight shirts that rode up on her belly. What was so horrible about Peyton that made Dana want to give her away? And her mom want to keep it a secret?

She needed her lighter. Jumping down, she made her way around the building toward the parking lot. She couldn’t go home again. She could never look her father in the face. She was afraid
of what she’d see there. She never wanted to see Dana again. Eric teased into her mind, but she pushed him away. She wasn’t Eric’s girlfriend anymore, not Julie and Frank’s daughter, but someone else. Someone she hadn’t figured out.