Vilmer’s Barn has large cross-beam sliding doors, a high loft window, and a half-hexagon-shaped metal roof. Once upon a time it had a vibrant paint job, but the weather has worn the bright-red colors into a lovely gray-and-maroon smudge. It’s well built, sturdy considering its age. There’s a narrow rafter stretching from loft door to loft door, nearly thirty feet in the air: Vilmer’s Beam.
Unfortunately for us, the barn isn’t full of straw and hay as it was the last time we walked Vilmer’s Beam. The Harvest Festival’s tables, chairs, and vendor booths are stacked and stored in neat rows beneath the beam, and it would take too long to move everything. Everyone cusses. Gerry, who trails Thom, who trails Davey, suggests that we’re all off our nut. I’m inclined to agree.
I am tugged backward by my sweatshirt. The rest of the group files wearily by, Fifty in the lead, leaving me with Davey. His arms are folded over his chest. He is dubious. “Why?” he asks.
I give a very Billie answer. “Because we said we would.”
“Do you do everything you say you will?” he asks the way someone might ask, And if Woods jumped off a cliff, would you jump too?
A million comebacks are on my lips. “Yes” comes out first.
“I’m not worried about you.” He nods toward Janie Lee. Then, in the same fortuneteller voice in which he’d said, You’ll burn down the church, he comments, “This is a bad idea.” But that doesn’t change anything. We’re still going to walk the beam. He knows it. I know it.
Despite my confidence, we all have reservations. Fifty’s digging a rut with his foot the way baseball players do when they step into the batter’s box. Mash is a new shade of puking green.
Gerry and Thom park themselves at a table to watch. Like a row of monkeys, Mash, Fifty, Janie Lee, Davey, and I follow Woods to the loft ladder. I’m between the two least experienced walkers—Janie Lee and Davey. No problem. Rung by rung, higher and higher, we climb.
We are almost to the top. I touch Janie Lee’s ankle. She stops, and I climb the side of the ladder, hanging out over the barn. “Are you okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Just checking,” I say.
But she is not okay, and I don’t know whether to call her on it and make a scene or let her push through. She nearly steps on my fingers to keep climbing. I swing back around and continue ascending the ladder. When I arrive at the top, I position myself under the eaves so Davey has room to join us. Thomas and Gerry are a million miles away. Our line begins inching across the beam like kindergartners walking to the playground, Woods at the lead. Everything on point.
“One foot in front of the other,” Janie Lee says to no one in particular. Certainly not to me.
The looming beam stretches out yard on yard. Her fear is so palpable that no amount of internal chanting releases my anxiety that she will fall. Woods is nearly to the middle. With one hand solidly on the rafter that divides the barn, he throws a decadent come-and-get-me smile.
Janie Lee, in the way of all Lost Boys, chooses that moment to step forward. One step. Arms at her sides. Two steps. Arms outstretched. I follow slowly, checking on her to the front and on Davey behind. He is sure-footed and lithe. I focus on Janie Lee.
The timber beneath our feet is old, several inches wider than a railroad tie, and uneven. Janie Lee must feel the slight give in the lumber, especially with all of us up here. She hits the quarter mark. Fifty’s taking a breather in the middle, where Woods stood only moments before.
Everyone moves quickly, wanting this over with.
Fifty’s on the other side of the support as she’s grabbing on when I hear her say, “I can’t believe you got me into this,” and he says, with a low laugh, “You got yourself into this the moment you and the other two pieces of the trinity got Billie on the ballot.”
I realize instantly that I was not supposed to hear this. I would not have heard this if I had been spaced apart from Janie Lee the way everyone else was spaced. But Fifty didn’t see that I sneaked in close, worried, ready to steady her if I needed to.
“Fifty, shut up,” Davey says from behind me.
My arm hair is on high alert. “What are y’all talking about?”
Janie Lee turns carefully to me, lips quivering. “It was nothing.”
“We’ll tell you when we’re on the ground,” Davey says.
“Yeah,” Janie Lee agrees.
“No.” I am emphatic. “You’ll tell me now.”
This is not the place to have an argument, particularly this argument. There is so much dead air between me and the tables below. Janie Lee has her arms snaked around the center post, but I’m standing on an eight-inch-wide death trap.
In my peripheral vision, Gerry and Thom stretch their necks with concern. “You all right?” Thom calls up.
I yell back that we are fine. Cool sweat slides by my ear. Woods and Mash are reaching the other side and hooting, unaware. I am silently imploding.
“I want an answer,” I say.
Her mouth is a gun, firing very quiet, very painful bullets. “It wasn’t anything,” Janie Lee says.
But Davey, sliding closer, disputes her claim, firing his own weapon. “Woods, Janie Lee, and I talked to the committee about you. We thought it would help. After the fire.”
“So they didn’t pick me?”
“Well, of course they did,” Janie Lee says.
“You three manipulated them.” My eyes ping from Janie Lee to Davey. His arms jut out to his sides like frozen propellers. All that drumming, all that pent-up energy, and he has the nerve to be still now.
She gives the reason. “We all felt bad about the Hexagon of Love thing. We were trying to make it up to you.”
“By pitying me?” Tremors attack my knees, work their way into my voice. “But I guess poor Elizabeth McCaffrey could never be a girl on her own terms. I should have known.” And that’s the real source of my shame. I am ridiculously stupid for not seeing that my nomination had Woods Carrington’s name written all over it.
Janie Lee and Davey both give some version of “That’s not what anyone meant,” but there is nothing else to mean.
“Easy, Billie,” Davey says, propeller arms stretching slowly to me.
My body is a rolling boil in this shitty barn pot. The stale barn air licks my nose. I am having an emotional earthquake. If I fall I won’t land on hay. The world tilts. Chairs and tables shimmer like holograms. If I fall I will break things.
“Billie.” Thom tries to calm me from just below; I suppose he has heard it all. If I speak—ask for help—the weight of words will tip my balance. My arms seesaw wildly.
A tear splats on a table below. My sunglasses shake away from where they were tucked in the front of my shirt. I don’t know where they end up, only that I heard them land on something solid.
“Deep breath.” Davey sounds as if he’s inside my head. He stretches out a blurry hand. I am spinning. I try to make contact.
This slight adjustment wrecks my remaining balance.
I am falling. Time slows down. I don’t scream. Or if I do, it’s lost in Thom yelling and Gerry squealing. Davey grabs me—a mistake. My momentum is too strong and he’s not anchored to anything.
We go over the edge, each of us throwing an arm around the beam. My chin slams into the wood. I bite my tongue, and lose my hold. I drop again. I am suspended by my fingertips, mouth and eyes exploding with fear. Falling is inevitable. And to think: I was worried about festivals and first dances. Janie Lee screams; Davey says, “It’s going to be okay”; Thom’s crashing below, as he upends tables and creates space: they are all so loud. So very, very loud. My head has gone quiet in preparation.
I fall first.
Davey is right behind me.