My appointment with the judge is approaching fast; I cross off the days on my calendar, and the collection of red x’s grows until they fill the page.
On Wednesday, Dr. Bernhardt arrives at the usual time, his thinning hair neatly combed. “Well,” he says. “This is it. Our final meeting.” He takes a seat and folds his hands. “How do you feel?”
“I feel . . .” I start to say fine, then stop. “I don’t know.”
“Is there anything in particular you want to talk about?”
I fidget in my chair. Our final meeting. The thought is strange. Unsettling. “I don’t think I’m ready,” I blurt out.
“It’s not too late to change your mind.”
I can’t turn back now, when I’m so close. “I haven’t changed my mind. I’m just . . .”
“Scared?”
I don’t answer. It’s obvious. Of course I’m scared. I breathe in slowly through my nose. “I’m going through with this. I’ll do whatever it takes. I want to be independent.”
The muscles of his face tighten. After a moment, he takes off his glasses and polishes them on his sleeve. Without the lenses to magnify them, his eyes look small and watery and defenseless. “Are my visits really that unpleasant for you?”
The question catches me off guard. I shift my weight in the chair. “It isn’t that.”
“What, then? Why are you so desperate to be emancipated? You’re already very independent. The only difference is that I won’t be visiting anymore. And you’ll lose certain legal protections.”
I give my left braid two sharp tugs. Part of it is the fear of being sent back to the group home. But there’s more to it. I don’t know how to explain it in a way he’ll understand. “When I was younger, some of the doctors said that I would never be able to live on my own. That I couldn’t have a normal life. I want to prove them wrong.”
“Having a normal life doesn’t mean never needing help. Besides . . . you’re still very young. You’re a seventeen-year-old girl, already working full-time and paying rent. That’s not unheard-of, but it’s not typical, either. Most children your age are still receiving support, in some form or another. It has nothing to do with your condition.”
It has everything to do with my condition. If not for my condition, I wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. “I made up my mind to be emancipated. So I will be. That’s all.”
He smiles, gaze downcast. “I thought you would say that. Well . . . if it means that much to you, I’ll do everything I can to help you achieve that goal.”
My shoulders relax. I nod once.
He glances at the carnation, still sitting on my coffee table. It’s already dried-out, petals stiffening and crinkling into a brittle sculpture. “I believe this is the first time I’ve ever seen a flower in your apartment.”
I ought to throw it away. But somehow, I can’t bring myself to do it. I touch the piece of tape holding the stem together. Without thinking, I tell the truth: “It’s from Stanley.”
He raises his eyebrows, crinkling his forehead. “Well.” A tiny smile tugs at his lips. “That’s wonderful.”
I hadn’t expected him to be pleased.
“You know,” he says, “you still haven’t told me very much about this boy.”
I tug my braid. “Are you going to put this in the report.”
“No. I’m just curious.”
Where do I even start? There are so many random details I’ve absorbed through my conversations with Stanley, it’s hard to choose. “He likes cats. But he’s allergic to them, so he can’t have one. He owns a pet gerbil named Matilda. His favorite smell is fresh-cut cucumbers.”
“It sounds as though you’re getting closer to each other.”
“We are. But . . .” There’s a quiver in my throat, as if words are bubbling up inside me, trying to escape. I clamp my lips shut, out of habit . . . but somehow, holding everything in doesn’t seem worth the effort. I need to talk to someone to make sense of the confusing mess of my feelings. This is Dr. Bernhardt’s last visit. It might as well be now. “I don’t—” I stop, gripping my knees. My throat stiffens; I swallow until it loosens enough to let my voice through. “I don’t know how to do this. Be someone’s friend. I feel like I’m making so many mistakes. And there are . . . certain things . . . he doesn’t know. About . . . my past.”
He sits, studying me in silence for a moment. “How much have you told him?” he asks quietly.
“Almost nothing.”
He breathes in slowly through his nose, then out. “I don’t want to overstep my bounds. And I don’t know how serious you are with him. But even if you are just friends, if you want this boy to be a part of your life, sooner or later you’ll have to tell him.”
“And if I don’t. What then.”
“The truth has a way of coming out, sooner or later. The best you can do is choose the time and place. I’m not speaking as your social worker. Consider it a piece of advice from one adult to another. Keeping secrets from the people closest to you will only cause you pain.”
I open my mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. I’m shaking.
“It doesn’t have to be everything at once,” he says. “Start with the easier things, and then . . .” He leaves the rest of the sentence unspoken.
He’s right. Stanley has told me so much about himself, and I’ve revealed so little. I can’t keep hiding behind walls.
I know what I need to do.
“Where are we going?” Stanley asks.
The two-lane highway stretches out before us, fading into the horizon. Winter-brown cornfields glide past on either side. “It’s a surprise,” I say.
“Is it a new restaurant?”
“No.”
“Secret gateway to a parallel universe?”
“You’re getting warmer.”
He laughs.
We’ve been driving for almost two hours. We’re far out in the country now. The fields are vast, dotted with small houses and silos. Pale clouds blanket the sky in a uniform layer, so solid and thick it looks like a person could walk on it. We pass a dilapidated fence with a line of crows perched atop it. Their heads turn, following us as we drive past.
As I turn down Oak Lane, my heartbeat quickens.
I am about to reveal something to him that I haven’t revealed to anyone for a long, long time. It’s not the thing in the Vault—God, no. But even so, this won’t be easy.
“I have to admit,” he says. “I’m completely stumped. We’re in the middle of nowhere. What could you possibly want to show me out here?”
I pull into a gravel driveway and park. “This.”
The yard is overgrown with weeds and wild bushes. The house itself stands a ways back from the road, smothered in shadow. There’s no car in the driveway. The windows are dark, and a yellow sign is tacked to the door—probably a foreclosure notice. Who knows how long that’s been there.
I open the car door and get out.
Stanley’s brow furrows. “Whose house is this?”
“It’s mine,” I reply. “Or rather, it used to be.” I lead him around to the backyard, where an old, rusted swing set stands next to a wooden horse on a spring. I sit in one of the swings.
Stanley gingerly sits in the other. The structure creaks in protest, but it holds us both.
The tips of my black sneakers are stained with mud. I kick the damp earth beneath me. “I lived here with my mother until I was eleven years old. After that, I lived in several different foster homes, but that didn’t work out. I was a difficult child. Eventually I was transferred to a group home for teenagers with emotional and behavioral issues. That didn’t work out, either. I didn’t get along with the other girls. There were several who were accustomed to being in charge and getting their way. I refused to submit to them, so they did everything possible to break me. They hid tacks in my shoes and dead insects in my bed. Once, a dead mouse. And, of course, once they found out I was afraid of water—” I break off, unable to continue, but the memory looms large in my head—two laughing older girls shoving me into a shower stall and turning it on full blast, icy cold, holding me down while I screamed. “It was pretty bad,” I continued. My voice remains flat and neutral, but a tremor has crept into my hands. “I kept running away and getting in trouble with the law, until finally Dr. Bernhardt helped me get my own place.”
“Who?”
I realize I’ve never mentioned Dr. Bernhardt to Stanley. “A social worker. If not for him, I would probably be dead or in prison by now.” In retrospect, I probably should have shown him more gratitude for that. Soon, if all goes well, his visits will be over. I’ll never again hear him fussing over the lack of fruit in my kitchen. My feelings about that are a bit more complicated and ambiguous than I anticipated.
I take my Rubik’s Cube from my pocket and fiddle with it as I stare at my house, the familiar back porch made of yellow pine. Even the birdbath is still there, though now cracked and empty.
I haven’t been back here since the incident. I was sure that by now, I’d be panicking, but somehow I’m not. Maybe because Stanley’s here, too.
A few tiny raindrops strike my face like icy pinpricks. Dark clouds mass in the sky, and more drops fall. “When I was little,” I say, “whenever something was bothering me, I used to come out here and swing as hard as I could. I would imagine that if I swung far and high enough, the momentum would carry me straight into the sky, and I could fly away.”
“Fly away from what?”
“Everything.”
Wind whistles through the trees, and they creak like the timbers of an old ship.
“I drove you all the way out here just to stare at an abandoned house,” I say. “This probably isn’t the sort of surprise you were expecting.”
“No,” he says quietly. “But I’m glad you brought me here.”
The muscles in my back relax a little. I swing lightly back and forth, back and forth. The rocking movement is calming. But a dull ache has spread across the inside of my ribs. There’s a brief flash of memory—I am very small, maybe three or four years old, and Mama is pushing me on the swing. I close my eyes. In my memory, the world feels clean and bright and new. Sunlight dapples the green grass. When I open my eyes, the yard is empty and gray again. “‘My heart has joined the Thousand,’” I murmur, “‘for my friend stopped running today.’”
“What’s that?”
“It’s from Watership Down.”
“Oh . . . right. That’s what the rabbits say when one of them dies?”
I nod.
His brows knit together. “Did someone . . .”
“Not recently.”
I always thought those words were the most accurate expression of grief I had ever encountered. When you lose someone, the heart itself becomes one of the thousand enemies—a force of destruction, ripping you apart from the inside, like a knot of shining razor wire. Sometimes, the only way to survive is to kill your heart. Or lock it in a cage.
Thunder rumbles.
“Do you want to head back?” he asks.
Maybe he expects me to be bothered by the rain and thunder. It would be a reasonable assumption, considering how the sound of water affects me. But I shake my head. It’s strange. I can’t stand fireworks or explosions. Or silverware clattering, or glasses clinking together. Sometimes, even ticking clocks make me want to crawl out of my skin. But I don’t mind thunder. I find it calming.
A gust of wind makes the rocking horse sway back and forth. Its spring squeaks.
“Alvie . . .” He bites his lower lip, and I know he wants to ask me something.
I wait.
“What happened to your mother?”
I look down at the Rubik’s Cube in my hands, and my fingers tighten on the smooth plastic. I knew this was coming, of course. Stanley’s aware that I never met my father, but I haven’t said anything to him about my mother. It’s only natural for him to be curious. And I surmised that bringing him here, to this place, would trigger certain questions about my past. I mentally prepared myself. Still, my hands start to shake. “She—” My voice stops as if it’s hit a wall inside me. I force myself to finish: “She died.”
“How?”
I look at him. My mouth opens, and for an instant, words tremble in my throat. Then they retreat, and all that comes out is a small, choked sound. I lower my head.
“It’s okay,” Stanley says, very softly. “You don’t have to answer that.”
I don’t say anything else. I don’t dare. I close my eyes and breathe. In and out. The tightness in my chest loosens.
Rain falls thicker and faster from the sky, the drops stinging my skin, but it feels good. It calms my nerves. I slip the Rubik’s Cube into my pocket. “What happens if you get your cast wet,” I ask.
“It’s fiberglass, so it’s no big deal. I could even go swimming with it, if I wanted. Not that I ever go swimming.”
I start to ask why not, then I realize—of course. The scars.
I watch the rain running in rivulets from the swing set and dripping from the wooden horse.
“Years ago,” I say, “whenever there was a storm, I would sneak out of the house. I would lie on my back in these woods, and I would let the rain pound down on me and listen to the thunder. And I’d forget about everything.”
He looks at me. In the dim light, the blue of his eyes is bright, almost electric.
He rises from the swing and stretches out on the grass. For a moment, I can only stare in surprise . . . then, slowly I stretch out next to him. He reaches for my hand. I slip my fingers between his, and we watch the sky darken as the storm sweeps in. I shiver in the cold, teeth chattering, rain soaking through my coat and plastering my shirt against my body. His hand is warm against mine.
Lightning darts across the sky, filling the woods with pale blue light. Goose bumps ripple across my flesh, and a thrill darts through my body, licking my insides like a flame.
We lie on our backs, clutching each other’s hands, as the storm rages all around us and the trees lash back and forth and the wind howls, high and sharp. I know this is dangerous—we could be struck by lightning, we could get hypothermia from being drenched with cold water. But maybe that’s why it’s exciting. Maybe it’s like Stanley going to the ice rink. We have to do risky things sometimes, to remind ourselves that we’re still alive.
At last the wind dies down, and the driving rain tapers off into a light patter. I sit up, my clothes plastered to my body with water and mud. “Are you all right.”
For a few seconds, he doesn’t answer. He’s still lying on his back, smiling up at the sky. “That was . . .” He lets out a breathless laugh. “Wow.” He sits up, rakes a hand through his wet hair, and smiles—a dizzying, beautiful smile. He’s panting, flushed and soaked. “I’m fine. What about you?”
I examine my own inner state. I feel . . . calmer, somehow, and lighter, as if a weight I’d been carrying around is gone. “I’m good,” I say.
I help him to his feet. His teeth are chattering.
“We should go back to the car,” I say.
We trudge out of the forest and across the muddy field, drenched and shivering. When we get into the car, I turn the heat on full blast. Rain taps against the windshield.
We don’t talk during the drive home. But it’s a comfortable silence.
When we pull up in front of Stanley’s house, it’s very late. He clears his throat. “You want to come in? I could make some coffee. And we could change.” He glances down at his wet, muddy clothes.
I nod.
Inside, he starts a pot of coffee and changes into fresh clothes. He lends me a T-shirt and sweatpants, and I have to roll up the sleeves and pant legs. We sit together on the couch, sipping our coffee, its heat chasing away the chill of the rain. The smell of hazelnut and chicory fills my nose, and something else; a pleasant, bookish smell that permeates Stanley’s home, like a natural extension of his own scent. The room is bright and warm, a sharp contrast to the darkness outside.
“Thank you,” he says.
“For what.”
“Today. I know it took a lot of courage.”
“I didn’t do much.”
“Alvie? Give yourself some credit.”
Our eyes meet. Strange feelings well up in me, sudden and powerful, and after a moment, I have to look away. A faint alarm bell clangs somewhere in my brain, letting me know that I’m approaching a danger point; my emotions are starting to overload. I need to withdraw, to reassess and process everything I’ve experienced today. I set down my coffee cup and say, “I should go.”
“Wait.” He sets down his cup, too, and wets his lips.
A branch taps against the window like a skeletal finger. A flash of lightning momentarily lights the sky, and the branch’s shadow stretches across the wall, long and black. I grip the edge of the couch.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately,” he says.
The alarm bells in my brain clang louder. Pull back. “About what.”
“Us.”
At the word, I twitch, fingers digging into the upholstery.
The air has shifted. Though my eyes are open, I can see the doors of the Vault in front of me. They’re dull gray, flecked with rust, so close and real I could touch them. I blink rapidly. “Can we talk about it later.”
“I really need to get this out.” He runs a hand over his hair and rubs the back of his neck. Then he picks up his coffee cup and sips it, as if taking time to collect his thoughts. His hands are shaking. As he sets the cup down, it rattles against the coffee table. “I’ve wanted to say this for a while, but I waited. Because what we have now is really important to me, and I don’t want to lose it.”
There’s a tiny crack on the wall, near the floor; my mind latches on to it.
“I wanted to take things slow. But I feel like I need to know where we stand. I need to know what this is. What we are. And I . . .”
“Stanley,” I blurt out.
He stops.
I’m having trouble breathing. The wall crack is jagged and dark, and it seems to grow, opening into a void. “I need to go.” I start to stand.
“Alvie, please.”
The words freeze me.
“Don’t run away. Please.”
I’m sliding backward, falling deeper and deeper into myself. My body’s gone numb. I’m floating somewhere outside it, above it.
“Just let me say it, and then you can go, if you still want to. I—”
“Stanley.” My voice is faint and hoarse.
“I love you.”
The words hang in the air between us, and for the space of a breath, there is nothing. No reaction, no movement—as if we’ve plunged off the edge of a cliff and we’re hanging suspended in midair, the world frozen in that single breath before the plummet.
“Alvie?”
“You can’t,” I whisper.
Something has shifted in his expression. His brows draw together. “But I do. I . . . I know you might not feel the same, but—”
“Stop.” My hand drifts to my chest and clutches, fingers clenching and twisting on my shirt, over the ripping pain beneath. “Just—just stop talking.”
Stanley reaches across the space between us, and I flinch away.
Static fills my head, growing louder. No—not static. Water, rushing and swelling, pressing in around me, swallowing me in icy blackness. My vision blurs, and the room tilts. I lurch to my feet and back away until my back hits the wall.
“Alvie? What’s going on? Talk to me.”
I shake my head, braids swinging. “No.” The word escapes on a breath, faint and panicked. “No. No.” My knees buckle, and I crumple to the floor, hands pressed to my temples. Stanley is still frantically calling my name. I hear him dimly, his voice muffled and distorted, and when I look up I can only see a blurred shadow coming toward me. He stretches out a hand.
I hit him. I don’t decide to do it; it just happens. I watch my fist flying out, watch it connect with his jaw.
He cries out and stumbles backward, almost falling to his knees. At the last instant he grabs the arm of the couch, steadying himself, and he stares at me, eyes huge, face white as a skull. There’s a red mark on his face. His hand drifts slowly up to touch it. We stare at each other across the room.
There’s a sensation of falling, as if the floor has vanished.
I have to get out of here. Now.
I run out into the night, panting, and get into my car. My hands are shaking as I start the engine, and I drive away without looking back, windshield wipers slicing through the rain. A dull roar drowns out my thoughts, and I can’t tell if it’s thunder or if the sound is coming from within me.
In my mind, the image of Stanley falling to the floor replays over and over. I don’t think I broke any bones. But the impact was hard enough for me to feel all the way down my arm.
He’s not safe around me. I need to get far, far away.
I drive and drive. When I finally stop, I’m staring out at a dark expanse of water. A lake. The lake. The one where I went with Mama so many times.
Moving like a sleepwalker, I get out of the car. Cold rain hammers my head and back, drenching my shirt. The sky is dark. The water froths and churns like the storm clouds above; when lightning flashes, the waves reflect it, so there’s no boundary between sea and sky, and the whole world—except for the thin line of shore beneath my feet—is a dark, roiling mass. My feet carry me forward. The water pulls me to itself as if there’s a fishing line hooked into my navel, running into the cold depths of the lake, trying to drag me down. Lightning cuts the sky in half, blinding me for a few seconds.
It’s calling me. The lake is calling. I love you, Alvie.
No, no. Clutching my head, I run back to my car.
Once I arrive back at my apartment, I collapse onto my mattress. I’m still wearing Stanley’s clothes. They smell like him, that mild, warm smell, like cinnamon and old books. I rip them off, ball them up, and shove them into the deepest corner of the closet, and I stretch out naked on the sheets, gasping, but it’s not enough. I still feel like I’m suffocating. My apartment’s heater rattles; it’s old and only half works, and the air is frigid, but despite that I’m bathed in sweat. If I could peel off my skin like a wet suit, I would.
My hands shake as I pick up my cell phone and turn it on. There’s one missed call from Stanley. He’s left a voice mail. My thumb hovers, trembling, over the button. I raise the phone to my ear and play the message.
“Alvie, I . . . when you get this, call me. We can talk about this. Whatever’s going on, however I hurt you—”
I stab the button with my thumb, deleting the message.
I can’t go back. If I stay with Stanley, I could seriously injure him. Any stupid little thing could set me off, trigger a meltdown; I could put him in the hospital without even trying. But even then, he would smile through the pain and forgive, because he doesn’t understand that I’m a monster. He’ll keep feeding the monster and giving it shelter and loving it even as it eats him, piece by piece.
Just like Mama.
I shut my eyes and breathe in slowly. A strange, cold calm descends, and in that space, I know what I have to do. I have to let him go. For his sake. If I leave him now, it will hurt him, but he will recover. If I stay . . .
A memory flares, sharp and clear—a cold hand slipping from mine.
I always knew, deep down, that it couldn’t possibly work between Stanley and me. I was living in a fantasy, but I was too selfish and deluded to admit it. I wanted to experience—if just for a little while—what normal felt like. It was a dream, and now it’s over, and he’s suffering for my stupidity. I can’t take back what I’ve done, but I can keep things from getting any worse. Sever the cord, quick and clean.
I send a text message. It would be better if we didn’t see each other again.