Lost Lake (26 page)

Bulahdeen turned to run away, but the girl called to her. “Stop!” She put the book away and smiled. “What a surprise to see you. You look like a wood nymph. You have beautiful hair.”

Bulahdeen didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what a wood nymph was. And no one had ever told her that her hair was beautiful. It was wild and strawberry red and never fully contained with a dirty scarf and an old clip she’d found in a nearby dump site.

“I’m Maudie. What’s your name?”

Several seconds passed. “Bulahdeen.”

“You’re from the End of the World, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not supposed to be here. But I’m not supposed to be here, either. So let’s not be here together. Come, sit with me. I’ll share my food with you.”

Bulahdeen sat on the very edge of the quilt, and Maudie handed her a sandwich. Bulahdeen ate, timidly at first, then voraciously when she realized how good it was. Maudie rested back, the book on her stomach, and looked up at the sky through the trees. She told Bulahdeen about the book she was reading, a story set in a place called England, involving a man who had a madwoman in his attic but who was in love with a young woman who taught a little girl who lived in his house. It was all very confusing to Bulahdeen.

Maudie suddenly sat up. “What’s your favorite book?”

“I don’t have one,” Bulahdeen said, eyeing the rest of the food on the quilt.

“Don’t you like to read?” Maudie asked, handing Bulahdeen an apple.

“I don’t know how.”

“Where do you go to school?”

“I don’t go to school.” Maudie just stared at her. So Bulahdeen told her about her family and her life—all of it. She hadn’t meant to talk so much, but no one had ever listened the way Maudie listened. By the time she finished talking, the food was all gone—she’d eaten it all without realizing—and the sun was setting.

Maudie reached over and brushed some of Bulahdeen’s hair behind her ear. “You can’t change where you came from, but you can change where you go from here. Just like a book. If you don’t like the ending, you make up a new one.” There was yelling coming from the direction of the main house on the estate, and Maudie quickly stood. Someone was calling her name. As she gathered the quilt and the empty waxed-paper packets, she said hurriedly, “In two years, I turn eighteen. My dad thinks I’m going to marry Hamilton Beatty, because he wants me to. But I’m not. I’m leaving when I turn eighteen. I’m going to see the world! Meet me back here tomorrow, Bulahdeen.”

“Why?” Bulahdeen called after her.

Maudie turned and smiled. Bulahdeen would always remember that smile, how beautiful it was, how it made Bulahdeen’s stomach feel jumpy and wonderful. She’d never felt anything like it before.

Hope.

It was the first time she’d ever felt hope.

“Because we can change your ending, too,” Maudie said, then ran away.

That was the day everything changed.

Maudie taught Bulahdeen to read. She got Bulahdeen enrolled in school. And nearly every day, Maudie and Bulahdeen met in the woods and ate and read to each other, and Maudie told Bulahdeen of all her plans when she would turn eighteen.

On the day of her birthday, Bulahdeen picked blackberries and made Maudie a crown of clover, and met her at their spot, only to find a wooden box sitting on the folded quilt instead. Inside the box there was a large stack of paper, envelopes, pencils, and postage stamps. There was also a small package and a note, which read:

I had to leave in the middle of the night. Daddy found out my plans and locked me in my room. I’m going to my aunt’s house in Boston. Here is her address. Write to me there, Bulahdeen. Write to me about how you’re making your own ending, and I’ll tell you all about mine.

Bulahdeen opened the package to find it was the copy of
Jane Eyre
Maudie had been reading when they’d first met.

Of course Maudie made it out. She had the means to make her own ending.

But no one got out of the End of the World.

Still, Bulahdeen wrote to Maudie. Every day at first, then every few months, when she’d collected enough events to fill a sheet of paper. Bulahdeen excelled at school, which didn’t mean anything, really. She still went home to the same place and slept on the porch and waited for her life to play out.

The summer she turned fourteen, her aunt Clara made a bed for her in the corner of the kitchen because she needed the help. Several of Bulahdeen’s cousins, cousins not much older than Bulahdeen, now had lap babies and hip babies and babies on the way, and all they seemed to do was eat and poop.

Bulahdeen didn’t pay much attention to the men in town. If it was one thing she’d learned, it was to avoid them. But one day, when she was alone in a nearby field collecting dandelion greens to boil, out of nowhere came Big Michael, young and mean. His eyes were light blue and close set, and Bulahdeen had caught him staring at her sometimes when she would hang out a line of diapers.

He smiled at her and then picked a dandelion in full fluff from the ground. He blew on it, and tiny bits of fluff stuck to her hair like dust. He reached over to pick them out, but she backed away. Quick as a flash, he grabbed her and fell to the ground with her, face-first, the force knocking the air out of her chest. Then he was on top of her, grabbing at her skirt and pulling it up. He lifted himself slightly to pull at his own pants, and that’s when she twisted herself around enough to catch him in the side of the face with her elbow. The pain was like fire in her bone, and, from the sound he made, it didn’t feel too good for him either. She managed to knock him off of her, and she scrambled away on all fours before picking herself up and running faster than she’d ever run in her life.

Her aunt Clara found her in the kitchen later, cradling her arm, clothes torn, covered in dirt. The only thing she said to Bulahdeen was, “Next time, don’t fight so hard. It’s easier that way.”

That’s the moment Bulahdeen realized that she
did
fight. And she’d fought because she hadn’t wanted that ending. She’d wanted something else. Not this. It had been six years since Maudie had left, and Bulahdeen hadn’t received a single letter from her. Still, that night, Bulahdeen wrote to her at the address she’d given her, and told her everything that had happened. She told her she wanted things to change but she didn’t know how.

She started staying longer at school, helping the teachers clean their rooms, because she wanted to stay away from the harm of home as long as possible. Then one of the teachers hired her to help bathe and feed her elderly mother in the afternoons.

One day, as Bulahdeen was leaving the home after feeding the elderly woman, hurrying because she wanted to get back to the End of the World before dark, the next-door neighbor stopped her and invited her inside. She was the local librarian and, out of the blue, she offered Bulahdeen a place to stay in the home she shared with her husband, who happened to be the police chief. They didn’t have any children, and they were getting up in years, she said. She saw the way Bulahdeen tended to the old woman next door, and she said she’d give Bulahdeen room and board if she helped out with chores around the house and at the library.

Those two years with the Bartletts were the safest she’d ever known. And not a single night went by that she didn’t lie in her bed and wonder at the turn her life had taken. She had no idea how she’d gotten so lucky.

Until the day before she left for college.

That’s when the librarian handed her a stack of letters. They were all the letters Bulahdeen had sent to Maudie at her aunt’s address in Boston.

Maudie had never made it to her aunt in Boston. No one knew where she went. No one knew what happened to her. Over the years, Bulahdeen had made up hundreds of stories about Maudie’s whereabouts, none of them the truth. That was Maudie’s ultimate victory. Her ending was her own. No one else could touch it.

But Maudie’s aunt in Boston had read all of Bulahdeen’s letters, enchanted by this depiction of the rural South. She’d begun to look forward to them. When the letter about the attack had reached her, she’d panicked. She hadn’t known what to do. She’d contacted the police chief in the town where the postmark came from, and he’d told her to send the letters to him. When he’d gotten them, he’d been charmed and then alarmed, and he’d shown them to his wife. She’d recognized the name. It was the redheaded girl who’d helped tend to the elderly woman next door.

That’s when Bulahdeen truly understood what Maudie had been trying to tell her all along. And she’d never once wavered in her faith that endings were never absolute.

Not until now.

She’d spent enough time in this life to know that not everything will go your way. She’d read enough books to know that they weren’t all happy endings. Still, it broke her heart a little after the party when Eby finally told Bulahdeen that she had changed her mind, but that it didn’t matter, because Lazlo was going to fight her.

Bulahdeen recognized people who could make their own endings, as easily as she could recognize the taste of a fine summer wine, and Lazlo was one of those people.

That meant they weren’t going to win. Not because they didn’t want it more, but because they didn’t have the power he had to make it happen.

He was kidnapping their ending, and there was nothing more Bulahdeen could do about it.

She simply had to close the book and walk away.

*   *   *

After having leftover cake for breakfast because, for the first time anyone said they could recall, Lisette had slept in, Devin and Kate walked outside into the bright muggy morning. Jack was still waiting with worry in the dining room. Bulahdeen, who had been unusually quiet, was now on the dock, standing at the very end, a tiny lone figure surrounded by water. The lawn was messy, but not as messy as it had been when the party had ended last night. It looked like someone had come out and cleaned after everyone had left. Devin remembered her mother carrying her to their cabin then. She’d set her down on her bed, then she’d crawled in next to her.

“We’re not going anywhere for a long while. But no matter what happens, we’ll get through it together,” Kate had whispered. “I’m here. I’m not going to leave.”

When Devin had woken up, her mother had still been curled beside her. It had been the best feeling. She hadn’t moved for nearly twenty minutes, staring at her mother’s face, loving her so much that she would have done anything to preserve that moment, to stick it in a jar like a firefly and watch it forever. But then she’d finally had to get up and go to the bathroom.

As they stood there, looking at the lake, Devin was quiet, tilting her head, listening to something only she could hear through the chirping of the birds and the rustling of the trees.

“Are you all right, kiddo?” Kate asked.

“He’s still anxious.”

“Who?”

“The alligator. Can we go for a hike through the woods to the cabin again?” Devin asked.

“Sure. I’ll get some bottles of water from the kitchen,” Kate said.

“Can I go down and see Bulahdeen? I won’t go anywhere. It’s a Devin promise,” she said when her mother hesitated.

Kate nodded, and Devin raced to the dock, feeling the fairy wings against her back and wishing she could fly. The thought of hovering above the earth, weightless in a lilac sky, appealed to her, in the same way imaginary friends appealed to her, or talking alligators. Not long ago, back in her old life, she had started to feel a restlessness, a pressure, as she outgrew all her clothes and needed the feel of her mother’s hand in hers less and less, that possibilities were becoming more finite, and everything was becoming more
real.

It didn’t feel like that here. She was glad they were staying longer. It still didn’t feel as permanent as she thought it would feel, but at least they weren’t going back to Atlanta. She decided to be glad for that. If they went back, her mother might change again. And Devin liked her exactly as she was. Her dad was gone, but her mom was here. She was
here.

She slowed as she reached Bulahdeen, then stopped by her side. “Hi, Bulahdeen! What are you doing out here?”

Bulahdeen brushed at her eyes under her sunglasses.

Devin instintively reached out and took her hand. Her fingers felt like green wood. “What’s the matter?”

Bulahdeen smiled and squeezed Devin’s hand. “It’s nothing for you to worry about, baby.”

“You look sad.”

“I am,” Bulahdeen said. “I am sad.”

“Why?”

“Because this place is special. If I can’t save it, does that mean I can’t save the rest of my endings? My husband Charlie’s ending? The ending of the girl who saved my life when I was little? If I lose this place, I lose my sense of possibility, and that’s the only thing that has kept me going.”

“That’s what I like about this place, too,” Devin said. “Anything is possible.”

“Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. They can’t all be happy endings, can they?” Bulahdeen paused, then turned suddenly to see Selma standing behind them, holding a white Chinese paper parasol over her head in one hand, her high heels in another. “Selma, I didn’t hear you come up,” Bulahdeen said coolly.

“I took off my shoes so I wouldn’t fall into this cesspool,” Selma said.

“What’s a cesspool?” Devin asked.

“A place beautiful women avoid,” Selma told her.

“What is it, Selma?” Bulahdeen asked. “Did you want something? There are no men here, and it’s not like you to come out here only to spend time with us.”

“I just passed Kate, sitting over there.” Selma waved in the direction of the lawn. “She wanted Devin to come up when she was ready.”

“Go on, baby,” Bulahdeen said, turning back to the water.

Devin and Selma walked down the dock in silence. Selma was so pretty, but sometimes, Devin thought, if she touched her, she would find that she was as sharp as wire. “Why don’t you like anybody here?” Devin asked her.

Selma’s mouth set into a thin line. She hesitated before she said, “Because they don’t like me.”

“Sure they do. They all do. I do.”

“You’re one in a million, kid,” Selma said as they stepped off the dock and she stopped to put back on her shoes.