ILLUSIONS
WE DROPPED AARON BACK off at Carmen’s, even though I was hoping he’d come over. So now it’s just me and Callie and Jackie, sitting in her living room once again, each of us picking at a doughnut from earlier—even me, despite my plan to boycott them.
“Hey, Callie?” I call across the room, though she gives me no sign that she’s heard. “Callie?” I repeat, louder. She looks up. “Why don’t we go take a walk, get some fresh air?”
She shrugs but finally gives me a small nod in response.
Only a couple of weeks ago I would have missed a gesture that tiny, but I’ve had to train myself to pay closer attention. She stands and brings her half-eaten doughnut into the kitchen.
Jackie mouths, “Thank you.”
Outside, our slow footsteps flip and flop against the sidewalks that line the clean streets as they twist and curve into one another like a maze to which there seems to be no exit.
People talk about being scared in cities, scared of crime, scared of getting lost—but here it’s like you have no choice but to get lost. Every street looks the same, like every house looks the same, like every SUV in every driveway looks the same. What’s scarier than that? I always used to harbor a silent complaint about our neighborhood. It was old and drab and shitty; I’d rather have had something new and shiny, somewhere else, somewhere quieter, with softer edges, more green and less gray. Somewhere like this, I thought. But after spending these last weeks at Jackie’s, I’m beginning to understand why my parents hated places like this. Our neighborhood really wasn’t so bad, considering the worst things that ever happened there involved us.
We turn left or right at each corner without speaking. A middle-aged couple power walk toward us like they’re on a mission, their movements synchronized as if they’ve been programmed that way. The man tips his head and says, “Good afternoon.” And the woman, “Beautiful day.”
I hold my hand up in a greeting. Callie bows her head politely. They would never know that she wasn’t some ordinary twelve-year-old—they might notice that her hair looks more red than blond in the sun, or that her legs have grown so fast they suddenly seem too long for her body, and they’d attribute her awkward, shy manner and her crossed arms and her downcast eyes and her disinterested shuffle as typical of any girl her age. For some reason I want to tell them, No, this isn’t her. She’s not shy, she’s not quiet, and she doesn’t try to make herself small; she owns every space she enters, she’s full of life and is annoyingly honest and has a sharp tongue and would be ruthlessly mocking your matching hats and sunglasses and sneakers under normal circumstances.
But they march on by, never knowing, and somehow that makes me the most sad I’ve been all summer, which is saying a lot.
Callie looks at this group of kids across the street who appear to be her age, maybe slightly younger, playing on a perfectly manicured lawn that lies out before a gingerbread-looking house. There’s a sprinkler that streaks across the yard, ticking off aggressively, like a machine gun as it rotates, the kids screaming and cheering as they run through in their bathing suits and bare feet. A square-shaped bulldog sits on the porch, tied to a post, and though it looks like it’s melting from the heat, its folds and flaps sagging a little more than seems natural, it lets out a low, obligatory woof as we approach.
“Haven’t we passed them, like, five times already?” I ask with a laugh, breaking the silence. I crane my neck to see Callie’s face—she tries to hide the beginning of a smile, but I can see the dimple in her cheek, tugging at the corner of her mouth. We stop for a moment on the sidewalk under the shade of a gigantic tree to catch our breath and wipe the sweat from our foreheads. “Can we sit for a sec?” I ask, though I’m already lowering myself down to the curb.
“I always thought I’d like to live out in the burbs. But this place is weird, isn’t it?” I try to laugh again, but it sounds too fake, too much like Mom, and certainly not a comment worthy of a response.
She shrugs, focusing her attention on the kids. A warm breeze blows a mist off the sprinkler and carries it across the street to where we sit. It hangs in the air just beyond the arc of the sprinkler’s reach, catching a rainbow in its invisible net. I watch her watching it, and I can almost see her eyes light up as they take in the spectrum of colors.
“Pretty, huh?” I offer.
She nods.
“It’s the water.”
Finally she turns her head to look at me, meeting my eyes for what feels like the first time in years.
“It’s like a prism,” I continue. “The ordinary light that we see all the time is white, but when the light passes through the water, it bends it, so all the colors that make up the white light get refracted and reflected out—that’s the rainbow. It’s the only way our eyes can see all the colors. But the really cool part is that it’s not actually there at all. It’s only an illusion created by our eyes and our brains. So even though we both see it, what I’m seeing doesn’t look the same as what you’re seeing because it’s not really, physically there.”
She looks back at the rainbow, thoughtfully, and smiles ever so slightly. Sometimes she appreciates my little anecdotes, sometimes not.
“Cool, huh?”
She nods again and lowers her eyes, studying her hands.
I try to wait, I hold out as long as I can, but—“Callie?” I begin, my voice trembling. She turns her head to look at me, a faint smile still lingering on her lips. “I want you to talk to me. Please. Tell me what I need to do to help you and I’ll do it.” I take her hand. She lets me. Maybe it’s the blue sky, or the rainbow, or the sun—that bright white light washing out all the shadows and the hiding places—that fills me with this desperate need for truth, this need to be honest, to speak, myself.
“I just—I can’t take this. This silence.” I hear my voice fracturing into individual syllables, the words breaking down like the sunlight passing through mist. Her hand suddenly goes slack in mine, her attention back to the rainbow still hovering in space.
“I mean, we need to stick together,” I continue. “We need to be there for each other right now. I know it’s scary—I’m scared too. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I tell her, no idea if she’s even listening. “Look,” I say more firmly, shaking her hand, trying to get her back. “I wish it had been me there that day and not you. I wish I could trade places with you, okay? But I can’t. And I need you. I need you to get better and . . .” I have to stop to catch my breath.
Her gaze seems to find some breach in the physical world, a resting place somewhere beyond the street and the kids and the house, the dog and the rainbow. I can see her only in profile, but I can tell she’s squinting like she’s trying not to cry, like maybe something I’m saying really is reaching her. This is the time. Now, I tell myself. I take a deep breath and ask what feels like the most important question in the world. “I need to know what happened, Callie. What did he do—what did he do to make her do it?”
It’s as if by knowing the actual chain of events that led up to it, maybe I can unravel this jumbled mess, untie all these knots, rewind it, start it over. Have it make sense. Even if I can’t make it end differently, if I can at least understand, then maybe other people will understand and then Mom will be able to come home.
“What really happened?” I continue, spurred on by this need that’s been harassing me for weeks. “I have to know, Callie. And you’re the only one—”
But before I can finish, she snatches her hand back. She stands. She’s walking away—seemingly all in one movement. The air goes still as I watch the shape of her receding down the street, that breeze falls dead and flat, the air sinks back into its own density. Across the street the rainbow vanishes as if it never even existed—and I suppose it didn’t really.
The dog barks once more, having sensed this shift taking place in the atmosphere.
I sit there by myself for a long time, feeling like something has disintegrated inside of me as well. I’m jostled by a sudden crack of thunder in the distance. The kids across the street scream and scatter. The dog jumps up and yelps, begging to be let inside. An enormous black cloud rolls in fast, like a tidal wave in the sky, blocking out the sun. I stand, and for a moment I can’t remember which way we came from. I pick a direction and start walking, the air around me taking form, like hands pushing me from behind, urging me to run. But before I can, the rain comes crashing down over me in heavy, sharp sheets.
No use running now. I’m caught.