Fade: To fall slightly off the board backward.
UNLIKE CHIP, Iris is a great driver. Even in snow, which is falling more like rain now, making a mess of the roads. I show her how to disengage the four-wheel drive and she snakes along Route 12 and onto Wampanoag Road. The late-afternoon sun is glinting off every reflective surface it touches, blinding me. I avert my eyes and listen to the rush of water being expelled by my tires because I’m worried the flashes might cause another one of my level-fifty freak-outs.
When Iris turns onto Mount Pleasant Road, I realize she’s heading to the cemetery. Not my favorite place, but I have to admit it’s sort of beautiful right now. The blitz of salt trucks and traffic is absent, leaving the isolated sound of my tires laying fresh tracks in the untouched snow.
I look at Iris and she smiles like she’s aware of my eyes.
“Do we have unfinished business here?”
“More like new business.” Iris cuts me a quick glance before turning onto a new road. “I couldn’t stop thinking about the county clerk’s office. Your face when that lady said she couldn’t find anything about your mom; I get it. I really do. You’re not the only one having a hard time with this project. So in a way, I guess I lied to you too.”
Iris parks my truck in front of an engraved monument. A life-sized marble angel is weeping over the slab of granite; the tips of her unfurled wings swoop to the base, taut and primed.
“That’s my mom’s grave,” Iris says without looking my way.
“I … I’m sorry,” I say, my tact rivaling a donkey’s. Rejecting all the sympathy handed to me taught me nothing about how to behave when the situation is reversed.
“I appreciate that, especially coming from you. It’s been a year now, so it’s getting a little easier to talk about.” She looks down and picks at one of her thumbnails. “She was driving my car when she got in the accident. That’s how it got totaled.”
“Oh,” I say. Then Oh. Shit. She means that’s how she died.
“I don’t want you to think she was a kook or anything but before the accident I heard her telling my dad she felt like someone was following her, watching her. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but I get that feeling, too, sometimes, like I’m being watched.” Iris shakes her head. “I don’t know. She was intuitive, always reading her friends’ fortunes from the deck I use now, but so much more accurate than me. The last time she read my cards, she told me an unexpected peril in the near future would change my life. And unfortunately, she was right. That dang Cat card was prominent in my reading too. Just like yours. I laughed it off. Which was pretty stupid of me, in retrospect.”
“It’s not stupid,” I say. “I wasn’t sure about the card reading until you showed up at Monarch Night and saved my life. But that’s because I was raised by a shrink who fed me science and skeptic’s milk even though my mom had phenomenal intuition. She once told me not to ride my new skateboard on my eighth birthday, because she had a hunch. I figured she was just being a worrywart so I didn’t listen. Broke my arm in two places at Sully’s house three hours later.”
“Actually,” she says, “that kind of intuition is part of the reason I wanted to talk to you today.”
“Um, okay. We can do that.” I guess. I swallow hard wondering if there was something in my cards she didn’t tell me. “I’m glad you brought me here, Iris. Your friendship means a lot to me.”
She chuckles. “That’s what my name means. Almost verbatim. Your friendship means so much to me.”
“No, it doesn’t. You’re making that up.”
“Look it up sometime. All the women in my family were named after flowers. My mom’s name, Ioana, means violet. Even Fiorello means little flower in Italian.”
That explains the pens.
Iris grins but it’s short-lived. “I’ve never told anyone this, but on the day of the accident my mom was on her way to pick me up at school because I was being a jerk about taking the bus. She was late getting out of a doctor’s appointment, rushing. She called my cell to say she would be there in twenty minutes, but she never made it. A truck hit my crappy, old Pinto from behind and my mom crashed into the ravine. The car caught fire, they say, in minutes.”
I know the ravine she means. It’s at the intersection of Cutter’s Cross, one of the scariest roads in town because there are breaks in the guardrail and nothing but drop on the other side.
“I knew about your mom’s accident because my dad died around the same time, I just…” I look at my lap, regret sinking me lower. “When I saw how much it hurt you to be at school last year, I didn’t know what to say.”
“It’s okay, Theo. It’s not like you didn’t have your own bag of grief to carry around.”
True enough.
She leans against the door, twisting a silver spoon ring around her right thumb. “I think I need to explain why my dad had such a strong reaction to you at the carnival. We got into an argument about it when I got home from Monarch Night and he saw you and Chip driving away.”
“Shit. Sorry about that, Iris. I didn’t mean to cause problems for you at home. If you can’t hang out, just tell me. It’s okay.” I try to hide my disappointment but my mouth twists to the side involuntarily.
“It’s not you, Theo. It’s your uncle. Apparently, my mom’s appointment on the day of her accident was with Dr. Maddox. I knew she was having scary dreams and paranoia. I didn’t know she was seeing a psychiatrist. But somehow my dad has himself convinced your uncle was negligent in letting her drive away from his office that day. It seemed like there was other stuff tangled up in what happened, but he got all aggravated and wouldn’t answer any of my questions.” Iris against the door. “Anyway, I thought you should probably know.”
“Dr. Maddox isn’t really my uncle, if that helps. He was my dad’s best friend. Their relationship was sort of complicated.”
For a second I can’t help but wonder whether I made that delineation for her or me, like corroborating something about their longtime friendship might make the cheating easier to take.
“It’s okay, Theo,” Iris says. “Dr. Maddox was her shrink, not her babysitter.”
I chew the inside of my cheek to keep from telling Iris about the affair since I haven’t fully processed it myself. I know it would feel like shit if she and Chip hooked up. I’d hate it. But would I hate him? I don’t know for sure, but I’m positive I have to tamp my anger down to a simmer before Uncle Phil and I talk. He’s never been one to react in the face of strong emotions, so I’ll need to be smart about my approach.
Iris touches my knee, snapping me out of my headspace. “You want to hear something kind of cool?”
“Definitely. Tell me something cool.”
“After the funeral, my dad pulled me aside and told me that my mom named me Iris because of her love for the flower. But my dad went along with it because in mythology Iris was the personification of the rainbow, a psychopomp who escorted the newly deceased into the afterlife. He liked that, being a cemetery sexton and all. And I know this might sound crazy, but I hope, in some way, that means I was with my mom when she crossed over.”
A lump lodges in the hollow of my throat. Her reaction to me bringing up rainbows makes more sense now.
“It doesn’t sound crazy at all.”
“Good. Because doing readings with my mom’s fortune-telling cards makes me feel close to her, even when it makes me sad.”
“I understand that completely. It’s the same for me with diving.”
The ring she’s been non-stop twisting around her thumb drops onto the floor mat, and our conversation stalls while she bends beneath my steering wheel to retrieve it. I make a move to help her, but freeze fast when I spy the inky lines of a tattoo, peeking between the space where her shirt and jacket meet her jeans.
“Got it,” she says, slipping the ring back on her right thumb as she leans back into the seat. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You have a tattoo?”
She nods, pulling her shirt down in the back even though she’s up against the seat. “Don’t ask me about it.”
“Can I at least see it?” I ask. Because there’s only one other cliff-jumping girl with dark hair and body tattoos that’s ever left an impression on me, and right now the similarities are too real.
Iris closes one eye, lips pursed. “How about we answer one-for-one questions, since we’re supposed to be working on our projects, and we’ll see if we get to the tattoo? I’ll go first. Tell me something that bothers you about your everyday life.”
Easy.
“My grandfather started drinking after my dad died and being around him is like babysitting a grizzly bear. Can I see your tattoo?”
“It’s sort of intense. Tell me something nobody knows about your mom?”
She’s cheating, but I take a deep breath and let a bigger truth rip. “When I was thirteen our house burned down and my mom got trapped inside. My parents were fighting a lot before that happened, and afterward, my dad, shut everyone out. He stopped talking to my Uncle Phil, for the most part, and to me about anything important.”
“I didn’t know your mom died in a fire,” she says.
“It’s not something I like to talk about. Can I see your tattoo now?”
Iris narrows her eyes.
“It’s important. Just for a second.”
She sighs deeply, conceding, then turns and lifts the back of her shirt.
“Holy crap.”
Iris glances over her shoulder to read my face. “It told you. It’s intense.”
“It’s not that, Iris. It’s you. You’re, um…”
“Not what you expected?”
“More than I expected, actually.”
Because what if she’s her? The girl with the dark hair and body tattoos who made me believe it was okay to jump when I was ten years old. She was too far away for me to see any detail. But that’s impossible. It was three years before I saw Iris jump from the same spot wearing a yellow one-piece, her torso fully covered. It has to be a coincidence. They can’t be the same person. Iris was ten years old at that time, same as me. The girl I saw was a teenager even if nobody saw her but me. Not even Mom. Unless it was a dream state, way back then and I just didn’t know.
But did Mom? I remember her looking around nervously.
“You’re so much more like me than I ever imagined,” she said, “and that makes me incredibly happy. But you have to be careful what you say to anyone but me. Don’t blurt out everything you see, okay? Not everyone will understand.”
“… sometimes the things I see aren’t always absolute.”
“Dreams, and dream states, can express hidden desires,” Uncle Phil said.
My heart starts beating so hard I’m sure it’s audible. I keep staring at her indigo tattoo. Barbed wire wrapping around her hips likes she’s bound, every spiky strand run through with flowers.
Iris looks at me again. “Whoa. You’re completely gray.”
I feel gray. Numb. “Do you ever wear a two-piece bathing suit?”
“Sometimes. I was wearing one on Monarch Night, but it was so chilly my friend loaned me one of her wetsuits. Why?”
My palms are sweating. I rub them on my jeans. “Um, do you think people can have certain abilities like fortune-telling but without cards?”
“Of course I do. I come from a long line of women with preternatural abilities. What are you getting at, Theo? You keep … Your face keeps changing color.”
“Remember that girl I told you about, the one I saw jump from the cliffs when I was ten?”
“Babysitter crush girl?”
“Yeah. She had tattoos on her torso too. Maybe it was a sign. Like I knew we’d meet someday.”
“Now you’re the one making stuff up.”
“I’m not,” I say, but laugh it off like a joke. Just in case my mom was right about blurting out everything I see. “Can I ask why barbed wire?”
“Because I felt—still feel, actually—somewhat responsible for my mom’s death. The flowers are irises and violets, which represent my mom and me, obviously. And the barbed wire is meant to cut as deep as the pain I felt when she died. But most of all, the tattoo reminds me not to be selfish. Not that I’d ever forget.”
I’m so used to her being the brave girl who jumps off cliffs and climbs trees, unafraid of anything, that seeing her with caution signs inked over her body makes me want to pull her close and rub the barbs until they’re smooth. Taking away the sadness and pain that’s represented by her tattoo.
But I don’t.
I knew how I felt about Iris the minute I saw her soar past the edge of the cliff so I leave the situation wide open for her to tell me what she wants, if I’m what she wants, especially if there’s history between our families.
“I think it’s really beautiful,” I tell her. “Intense and beautiful, like you.”
I ask myself again if I’d hate Chip if he hooked up with Iris. I might. I think I honestly might. But her? I don’t know if I could ever hate her.
She stops spinning her ring and without another word climbs over the console into my lap, straddling me. I recline the passenger seat back as far as it will go as her mouth crashes onto mine. Her grief gathers up my own in an avalanche. Our bodies, pressed this close, makes me swell with want and Iris responds with a small moan that might make me lose my mind completely. Willingly.
She pulls the knitted beanie off my head and kisses me again, then unzips her puffy coat and slides free, tossing our outerwear in the backseat. I slide my hands inside her shirt, over smooth skin, warm enough to melt the snow on the roof. I caress the lines of her tattoo with careful hands, tracing the barbs from memory before inching higher, watching her face. She smiles and nods. All systems go.
After we’ve touched every inch of each other, we lay there, her head on my chest rising and falling with my breath. I lean forward and search for a song on my sound system, then lean back. I stroke her hair, listening to “Wild Horses” by The Rolling Stones as her dark strands slip between my fingers, and I think about how intertwined we are by members of our families. Barbed.
And I wonder if I’ll ever feel the same way about another girl.
Iris turns her head to look at the display. “I love this song.” She bolts up suddenly, pushing off my chest. “Is that the right time? Theo, we have to go.” She starts buttoning her shirt, climbing back into the driver’s seat. “I need to get home before eight. You should probably drive.”
We dash around my truck like a game of musical chairs and I start the engine. The rain has stopped, but everything including my brain is a slushy mess as I pull away from her mom’s gravestone.
Iris reaches into the backseat for her coat and pulls forward the newspaper that was left on my windshield. “For someone who doesn’t read the Monarch Monthly, you sure took care of this one.”
“Someone left that on my truck a few days ago. I think it was the PTA.”
“Theo, this paper is from 1994. Whoever left this for you removed it from the school’s newspaper archives. They’re all wrapped in this same plastic.”
“I bet it was Les. He left me a note saying we needed to talk. I didn’t put the two things together.”
“He could be trying to help you with the project.” She snaps the paper open and starts flipping pages. “Or not.”
“Why? What’s it say?” I shoot her a quick glance while driving and notice the furrow of her brow.
“There’s a Post-it Note pointing to an article about your mom. Maybe you should pull over.”
“Just tell me.”
“It says, ‘Former Andover Prep Star Athlete Suspended from Stanford University Swim and Dive Team.’”
What the—
I jerk the wheel and pull over to the side of the road. “Can I see that?”
Iris passes me the newspaper and I read the rest out loud.
“‘Championship springboard diver Sophia Rogan maintains she was prescribed stimulant medication for focus by a licensed psychiatrist that in no way enhanced her performance, but was either unable or unwilling to supply a medical exceptions report to the reviewing board. The Division I athlete was last seen leaving a training session in Ellis Hollow, Massachusetts with Mitch Mackey, a highly sought-after local sport’s psychologist, and famed gymnastic coach—Ioana Dalca—known simply to her students as JoJo.’”
“What?” Iris grabs the edge of the paper when she hears her mom’s name and reads the rest. “‘The springboard diver refused to answers questions on whether or not she will be filing for appeal. For now, the NCAA has ruled out prior knowledge by the Stanford Cardinal’s swim and dive coaching staff, but additional routine drug tests have been scheduled for every member of the team.’ Did you know about this?” Iris asks.
“No. Did you? I knew my mom did some dryland training there during college breaks, but I didn’t know your mom was JoJo of JoJo’s gym. I mean, I wouldn’t have because she goes by her maiden name, right?” I manage to take a breath before a different realization dawns on me. “You’re a gymnast?”
“I was a gymnast when I was younger, but I hated everything about it: the training, the pressure, the early mornings. My mom and I fought about that sometimes.”
My world feels like it’s tipping on its axis. Tripping on its axis with my mind.
Iris squeezes my arm. “Oh my gosh, Theo. That’s why I recognized your mom’s name when we were talking to Coach Porter. Sophia Rogan was the name of the student who taught my mom about jumping from Pikes Falls. Why on earth would Les leave this for you? It doesn’t add anything to your family history project.”
I stare straight ahead through windshield. My parents told me Mom left school because she was pregnant with me, unless the two aren’t mutually exclusive. That’s a shitty thought. Even shittier than the idea of Les dropping off these articles to get arise out of me.
“He’s fucking with me,” I blurt. “Les wants to go to Stanford and I’m his competition.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Les I know. Plus, this photo is of the 1988 team. Isn’t that the same photo that was missing from Coach Porter’s trophy case? Les works on photography and design, not editorial. Maybe he was trying to get you a copy.”
“I didn’t tell him it was missing. Did you?”
Iris shakes her head. “You think your coach may have gone to the archives looking for a replacement photo?”
“Coach Porter wouldn’t leave me something like this. He’d bring it to me privately.”
Iris bites her lip, trying to figure it out, but I’m one step ahead of her this time.
“Les was throwing around a few self-righteous slings on Monarch Night when he saw Chip and me putting Adderall in our beers. And later that night, after I got home, someone left an article on my windshield about the fire that burned my house down. It said my mom had been the subject of headlines over the years. You really don’t think it’s possible that Les would try to get inside my head and mess me up so he can get ahead with diving? I didn’t see this drug-related article until today so I never reacted to it. Maybe he was upping his ante.”
“Okay,” Iris says, “Adderall and ante aside. It still doesn’t explain why the arrow on this article is pointing at the diver next to your mom.”
Iris the journalist in true form hands the article back to me so I’ll take another look.
The photo is on newsprint that’s over twenty years old so it’s far from perfect, but my mom is front and center. 1988 Individual Springboard Diving First Place Winner: Sophia Rogan, Andover Preparatory Academy. Everyone on the team is wearing wide, cheesy grins, except the girl standing next to my mom, giving her the stink-eye. Second Place Winner: Luanne Cole, Ellis Hollow High School. She’s black. Her hair is pulled back tight like all the other divers, and she’s tall like Mom. Almost too tall for a diver. I resurrect images of every person I’ve met, flipping faces in and out of my consciousness in search of a match, but come up empty-handed.
“I don’t know. Maybe the Post-it moved. I don’t remember ever meeting anyone named Luanne Cole.”
And yet something is nagging at the back of my mind, telling me I’m wrong.
“You have to be in journalism or part of the school newspaper staff to get access to the archives, but I can poke around for any follow-up articles about your mom’s suspension if you want? Maybe the claims were unsubstantiated.”
I put my truck back in gear. “That would be good to know. I’ll ask my grandfather and uncle about the articles, and find out if they know anything about this Luanne person.”
“What about Les?”
“Don’t say anything to him,” I tell Iris. “If he is doing this to mess me up, I’m not gonna give him the satisfaction.”