Waves of Light (9 page)

M
y reflection stared back at me, my eyes determined. Yes. I
will
go to Vivian’s house today. I will find an abandoned object for Frankie, and I won’t obsess over Andrew and Annabelle. I dropped my forehead against the cold glass and groaned. Sometimes being a girl was lame.

“Sadie,” Dad called from downstairs. “You ready to go?”

I lifted my head and stared myself down. “You can do this, Sadie.”

“Sadie?”

“Coming!”

Higgins followed me downstairs, nosing my hand all the way. Even though Dad pointed out all the reasons we shouldn’t bring Higgins to the cleanup, I promised to watch him and give him a bath afterward and be completely responsible. I needed someone to bury my face in when
Annabelle became too much. Higgins sat on my lap with his head hanging out the Jeep window, tongue and ears flapping, as we drove. I held my arms up to block the drool flying out of his mouth, but he kept turning to me and giving me a “What’s your problem?” look, making me laugh too hard to shield myself.

“It’s good to hear you laugh,” Dad said. “I’ve been worried about you, Sades.”

“I’m fine,” I said, my automatic response.

“Well, if you weren’t, I’d understand.” Dad rubbed his hand across the steering wheel. “We both want Mom to come home, and I know the flood was a huge blow for you.”

I shrugged. “I’m fine” slipped out pretty easily now, but a further explanation might break down the wall I’d carefully constructed. And that couldn’t happen — not even with Dad. I needed that wall right now, especially now, on our way to see Annabelle.

“It’s okay to feel upset, Sadie. To let people help you,” Dad said, as though he’d read my mind.

Maybe. But how could anyone help me? Annabelle was here to stay, Andrew felt whatever he felt about her, the flood damage couldn’t be undone, and Mom probably wasn’t going to get any better — at least not the way I wanted her to. I could whine and complain all I wanted, but none of those facts would change.

Life just wasn’t fair. I’d told Frankie that unfairness was an opportunity for something better; now I wasn’t so sure. In fact, I was almost convinced I’d been flat-out wrong.
Maybe I should tell Frankie that tonight when I sent her whatever drawing I was supposed to send to her.

When I’d originally planned the hunt, I’d planned to send her hopeful pictures. Images to remind her that life isn’t always disappointing. Now, though, I was pretty sure life was simply unfair and you had to deal. No silver lining.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Dad said.

I scratched Higgy’s ear, trying to get a grip on my emotions. “Umm … Viv’s statues. Andrew thinks the force of the flood will have cracked them all. Do you think that’s true?”

“That’s highly likely. Vivian is almost sure they’re all gone. But she loves to reuse things. So even if we can’t salvage the statues, it’s worth looking for any ceramic pieces we can save.”

“She won’t want to use them, will she?” I frowned. “They’d be reminders of what happened.”

Dad pulled into Vivian’s driveway. “It can’t hurt to find what’s here, no matter what.”

I climbed out and went directly to the area where the statues were buried. No one was here yet, and I was glad Dad had pushed me to hurry. I looped Higgins’s leash around a nearby tree and went back to the Jeep for the shovel.

“I’m going to start over by the house,” Dad said. “You’ll be all right on your own?”

“Yeah. Higgy’s here to keep me company.”

Fortunately, it hadn’t rained for the past few days, so the dirt was relatively dry as I started digging. Farther down,
though, it was still damp, and I was head-to-toe mud by the time Annabelle and Andrew arrived. Together, of course.

I pushed the shovel into the ground and wiped sweat off my forehead with my sleeve as they got out of Helen’s car. I was most likely just smearing mud across my face. My almost-unburied statue looked good, though. No cracks to be seen. Maybe I could at least prove Andrew wrong.

Annabelle walked over to me while Andrew went to talk with Dad. “Wow, look at you! Is it broken?

I looked down at the mud-caked statue. “So far so good.”

Annabelle crouched down to look closer. “What’s that, though?”

I knelt down too. A ragged crack showed just above the dirt line. The mud held the statue together now, but soon, once I’d cleared it all away, the statue would topple.

“It’s still worth unburying, though.” Annabelle gave me a sympathetic smile. “She might be able to patch it, or use parts of it, or something.”

A long-ago conversation with Vivian came back to me. She’d forced me to draw over my mistakes, no matter what happened, and make art out of the mess. The statue, coated with grime and cracked in at least one crucial place, was too much to salvage. It would be like trying to patch your heart together after it had been ripped in two. Suddenly, I couldn’t bear this anymore. I didn’t want to dig up statues. I understood why Vivian had simply walked away. Better to start over than deal with this kind of pain.

“Sadie?” Annabelle was saying. “Are you okay?”

I’d completely lost focus. Instead of showing my “Everything is fine” face to Annabelle, I was crumbling. Right here in front of her.

“I’m fine,” I forced myself to say. The words left a bitter taste in my mouth, but I managed a smile. “Just a little muddy.”

“Oh!” Annabelle beamed. “I brought towels and wet wipes and hand sanitizer. And some first-aid stuff too, just in case. I’ll get you something to clean up with.”

She ran over to the car. Every step she took, even when she wasn’t trying, looked like a dance. She hurried back, her arms full of supplies, with Andrew in tow.

“So, it’s broken, Sades?” Andrew looked genuinely disappointed. No I-told-you-so look at all. Still, he must be thinking it.

I shrugged. “You were right. No point in unburying these, really.”

Annabelle handed me a wet wipe, and I used it to clean my face and hands.

“Your dad said she might be able to reuse the ceramic pieces.” Andrew leaned close, testing the looseness of a yellow-glazed piece.

They might as well stick needles in me, or poke and prod me in all the places that hurt. All I wanted was to get away from them. I didn’t want Vivian to salvage the pieces. I wanted her to have them back, whole and fixed. I couldn’t imagine delivering one of these statues to her just so she could dig out the ceramic shards and use them in another
piece. Vivian didn’t pick and pry. She tossed dishes at the wall — wild and free — and all the energy and emotion went into her piece.

“We should let it go,” I mumbled.

Andrew looked up from the statue. “What?”

“Just let it go,” I said, louder now. “It’s broken. She won’t want it. I know she won’t.”

He reached out to touch my shoulder. “But Sades, you worked so—”

“I have to go.” I untied Higgins and hurried out into the forest.

Higgins pulled at the end of his leash, so I unclipped him and let him take the lead. I didn’t mind following. Not wanting to come back empty-handed, I looked for something to use for the next clue in the scavenger hunt:

I scanned the forest floor for options. Leaves, flowers, mushrooms. Nothing abandoned. Higgins and I wandered through the underbrush until I almost gave up.

And then I saw it, tucked under a curling vine and half-buried in the dirt. I called Higgins, clipped the leash to his collar, and took out my sketchbook. I sketched quickly, capturing the chain and the curve of gold just as they were right now. Still, my fingers itched to pull it out and examine it. I finished sketching and jotted a line under my picture, “The prince dropped his pocket watch while trying to catch up
with the girl who ran off into the forest, seeming to disappear …”

If only Andrew would chase after me. But he wouldn’t, not as long as he was busy with Annabelle.

I wriggled the watch out of the ground and brushed it off.

“What is this, Hig?” I asked.

He cocked his head, questioning.

The initials DH were etched into the gold cover. Vivian’s husband’s name had been David, and their last name was Harris. Could this have belonged to him? I ran my fingers over the initials.

Annabelle’s laughter rang through the trees, and I closed my eyes. I’d found what I’d been looking for, and I’d drawn my sketch. Probably now, I should go back to the others.

Please help me
.

I whispered the prayer before I stopped to think. Did I want to bring God into this? The watch seemed to warm in my hand. Was it just my imagination? Maybe not. I needed reminders that God is here, helping me, listening to me. Was it so impossible that he’d respond to my prayer this way? God had shown up in very tangible ways for me so far. Sometimes, I could almost feel him put his hand on my shoulder.

I curled my fingers tighter around the watch, drawing the warmth into my skin.

Stay with me. I need you
.

Once the watch cooled, I slid it into my backpack along
with my sketchbook and pencils. I grabbed Higgins’s leash and took a deep breath before heading back toward the others.

I
don’t know why I didn’t expect it. Maybe because Andrew was homeschooled, I didn’t expect Annabelle to show up at school. But here she was, sitting in Frankie’s newly vacated desk.

Abby and Erin sat on the adjoining desks, talking and laughing with her as though school was a slumber party in disguise. Annabelle seemed to fit in better — in my town, my school, my life — than I did. I was once again the new girl, and she’d been here forever, even though she’d just shown up.

I dropped my backpack on the floor by my desk and slid into my seat just as Ruth came through the door. I resisted the urge to put my head on my desk. I was Sadie the Strong. Sadie the Happy. Sadie the Not Bothered by Annabelle Barging Into My Life and Taking Up All the Space So the Rest of Us Have to Shuffle Around the Edges.

As soon as Ruth saw Annabelle, her face lit up. She bounded halfway across the room before she even glanced my way.

She called out, “Hey, Sades! What are you doing over there?” and then she hurried off to join Abby, Erin, and Annabelle.

As though sitting at my own desk was strange. As though I, like everyone else, should stick like chewed-up gum to Annabelle’s side.

Fortunately, Ms. Barton came through the door next. “Morning, class.”

She looked toward the disturbance at Frankie’s old desk. “Oh, good morning, Annabelle. I didn’t expect you for a few more weeks.”

Annabelle smiled. “Dad wanted to open the boathouse. We have lots of early bookings.”

“Well, we’re glad to have you.” Ms. Barton set her books on her desk. “I see you found Frankie’s desk. She’s left us, so you’re welcome to sit there for the remainder of the year.”

As though Annabelle could slip into the space that Frankie had left behind. The trouble was, Annabelle made my life feel like a lie. I’d thought Ruth liked me more than anyone else in Owl Creek, with the exception of Cameron, of course. And I’d become too comfortable expecting special treatment from Andrew after our candlelit Christmas Eve and prank-filled Valentine’s Day. Yet Annabelle changed all of that simply by showing up.

My hands shook as I took out my pencil and flipped to the right page in the math book. Ms. Barton explained
how x related to y, but I couldn’t focus. On a good day, I struggled to keep up in math. Today, I was fully lost. Still, I wrote numbers in long strings down my page, sticking to the plan. I’m busy. I’m fine. Everything is all right.

I volunteered for classroom cleanup during lunch period so I could avoid eating with Ruth and Annabelle, and I spent the day with my head down. I had to put up with Annabelle tonight at play rehearsal too, so I had to save up my patience.

I hung back as long as I could after the final bell rang, but Ruth was still in the hallway when I left the classroom.

“Hey, Sades.” She crossed the hallway, her face serious.

“Hey.” I mentally prepared my I’m-fine speech.

Ruth looked both ways down the hallway, but we were alone. “Look,” she said. “You’re upsetting Annabelle.”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. “I’m what?”

“You’re obviously avoiding her, and she thinks she did something wrong.”

“Why does Annabelle care what I do?” Exasperation laced my voice, but I didn’t know how to hide it. “She has plenty of friends.” Like all of mine, for instance.

“She just … I just … Can’t you try to be nicer to her?” Ruth asked.

“I’ve hardly spoken to her, Ruth. How is that upsetting her?”

“We all thought the two of you would be such good friends, and we built it up. I guess we shouldn’t have. Is this really about Andrew? I didn’t think you were like that, Sadie.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, all caught up in the drama. I told you that Andrew and Annabelle are just friends.”

The conversation was fuzzy, dreamlike. Ruth should know me well enough not to say these things to me, but the words kept coming out of her mouth.

“You’re acting so weird,” Ruth said. “What’s going on, Sadie?”

“I’m fine,” I tried for a convincing smile.

“You’re sure?” She eyed me carefully. “Because it’s really important that—”

“What? That Annabelle’s happy?” The last word came out with a bit of a snarl, so I adjusted my smile before I said, “I’m just tired today.”

“Annabelle …” Ruth looked like she really wanted to tell me something but couldn’t, for whatever reason. “She needs friends, that’s all.”

“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.

Ruth sighed. “Nothing. Never mind. Are you going to rehearsal tonight?”

“Yep,” I said.

We turned to walk down the hallway, the silence deep between us.

Later, at rehearsal, I found Penny in her office collecting props.

“Oh perfect, Sadie. This stuff needs to go out to the Thompson’s porch for the first scene.”

I helped her carry the baskets and odds and ends for the cart outside.

“Sit anywhere,” Penny said. “You’ll be our guinea pig. For the show, we could put out chairs or picnic blankets or something, just so the audience sits in the right place.”

Outside the Thompson’s house, the obvious place to sit was the lawn, so I found a spot on the grass that didn’t look too wet.

“Yep. We need picnic blankets.” Penny sat next to me. “Or everyone’s going to be walking around with wet bums.”

Penny played the intro music on her iPhone, amplified by the portable speaker. As the song wound down, Ted sauntered into the yard, pulling an imaginary cart.

“So that’s the cart you’re building,” Penny whispered. “It needs to be big enough to hold the music box and some boxes and bags — those can all be very light, filled with nothing — because the cart also has to be light enough for him to pull.”

An impossible problem, but since we were talking about Ted who could lift a hundred-pound speaker over his head, maybe it wasn’t such a big deal. The cart would be on wheels, too.

Ted knocked on the door and told Bea and Jasper, who played Annabelle’s parents, that he had bad news. He was a surprisingly good actor, with the perfect mix of charm and creepiness that his character needed. I could see how the parents would believe him; but as an audience member, I still doubted that he was a good guy.

Annabelle’s character was named Rose. Ted, supposedly the king’s messenger, handed over the baskets of odds and
ends that were supposed to be presents from the king. Then he took Rose by the hand and led her away from the cabin, while Rose’s parents cried on one another’s shoulders.

“That’s our cue,” Penny said as Ted headed out into the trees. “Someone will lead the audience to the next scene. We’ll send them on a different path than the way Ted is going, so he can set up before they arrive.”

We slowly walked along the audience’s path, with Penny timing the walk. Penny described the tiki lanterns they planned to place along the path, and showed me how the trees and well-placed screens would block the audience’s view of the actor’s path.

Each scene in the forest built on the last one. In each new scene, dancers joined Rose’s dreams, and she became more sad and hopeless. At the end of the sequence of three scenes, as the dance ended, Ruth helped Annabelle unbind her feet so she could escape into the woods.

We went to the last platform, which had been built on a rotating turntable. My storefronts would line the front, and then the platform would slowly spin around to show the inside of the bakery on the other side. Andrew’s scene with Annabelle was coming up, and I couldn’t watch it today. I showed my notes to Penny and whispered that I had to go.

“Don’t you want to see the final scene and the dance?” she whispered back.

“I’ll save it for next time.” My voice quavered.

She grabbed my hand and squeezed. For a moment, I felt like the curtains had been pulled away, and Penny could see
all the way inside of me. Something made me look back at her, hold her gaze.

“You’re going to be okay, Sadie,” she finally said, letting go of my hand. “I promise.”

I blinked at her, trying to figure out what had just happened. People often said things like this; but for some reason, her words felt like a real promise. One I could count on. The promise stayed with me, solid and warm, as I walked back across the field.

You’re going to be okay, Sadie
.