A Million Miles Away(57)

This is the last time, she assured herself on the drive over, and she meant it. Her plan was to straighten her hair, avoid the parents, and speak as little as possible.

Meg waved. Kelsey approached her on the yard in her stark white Asics shoes and a Lions Dance Team T-shirt. “Kelsey,” she said, holding out her hand with a close-lipped smile.

Meg looked her up and down, and for a terrifying moment, right in the eyes. Her hand felt as if it had been in the air for hours.

Then Meg shook it. “I’m Meg,” she said, smiling.

“I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Same here.”

Kelsey lifted her shoulders, gesturing ambiguously. “So…” She wondered if Meg could tell she was nervous. “Want to show me your routine?”

They went to the backyard where Meg had set up portable speakers, and Kelsey had to use every ounce of will not to look to the woods, toward Snake Country.

For an hour they worked on Meg’s difficulty with pirouettes. She was too hunched over and springy, an athlete more than a dancer, Kelsey observed, but that wouldn’t stop her. Her footwork was flawless.

“You just need to loosen up a little bit,” Kelsey said, rolling her shoulders. Meg followed suit. “Trust your balance, but don’t trust it too much or it will get away from you and you’ll fall all over yourself like this—”

Kelsey let her pirouette spin out of control, and she fell over on the grass. Meg laughed.

“Try again,” Kelsey said, and as she watched Meg, the back door opened.

Peter’s mother stood in the doorway. Cathy’s health seemed to have multiplied since a week ago when Kelsey had seen her motionless in her hospital bed. Her eyes were bright, and she maneuvered past the patio furniture with confidence.

“You girls working hard?” she called.

“Yes, ma’am,” Kelsey said. “Your daughter just killed a difficult turn.”

“Well, I can’t thank you enough for coming all the way out here.”

“No trouble,” Kelsey said, kicking an invisible spot on the ground.

“I met your sister, I’m told, but I haven’t met you.”

They went through the introductions, and Kelsey wondered how much Cathy remembered, mostly if she recalled the slurred hello in the hospital room, the last time she had seen her son. Her heart broke for the woman, who up close, still had slack on the left side of her face, a reminder of the stroke.

They sat down for lemonade, and Meg gushed about “Michelle” to her mother and to Kelsey, how much fun she was, how Peter was in “serious love.”

Kelsey tried to stay more curious than familiar as Cathy delighted in the fact that Michelle had run “the Kroger mile,” as she called it, swapping stories with her daughter about one time or another, like when Peter was supposed to get his assigned ingredients for lasagna, but brought back an entire frozen lasagna, instead.

Kelsey wished she could tell them that Peter had told her that story, too, on the way to the airport, and he still felt like he had been cheated out of a record time.

But that wasn’t Kelsey’s story to tell.

Several times, as the shadows grew longer across the backyard, Kelsey wanted to stand up and shout, beating her chest, I AM HER!

She wanted to run until she couldn’t run any longer, buried deep in Snake Country, and there she would find Peter, all of her sins forgiven, and they would walk together through the wheat toward the horizon, toward the rest of their lives.

For now, she had to be content to sip on lemonade until all of it was gone.

“I should probably be heading back,” Kelsey said. She turned to Meg. “You feel good about those pirouettes?”

“I feel real good.” Meg nodded.

“Thank you so much for doing this,” Cathy said, standing, pulling Kelsey in for a hug. “And thank your sister for me, too. Tell her to come by again, so I can meet her properly.”

“I will,” Kelsey said, and gave Meg a hard high five.

Maybe it was the fading light, but it looked like Peter’s sister had a strange sadness in her eyes that she didn’t have before. Kelsey must be imagining it. She imagined so much lately.

“Good luck! Let me know how you do!” she called to Meg as she exited the backyard.

They were good people, Kelsey decided, no way around that. Hopefully they were as merciful as they were good, but Kelsey had no control over their reaction. It was all in Peter’s hands now.

Godspeed, she said to the invisible fates at work, and hoped she wouldn’t be seeing El Dorado for the last time.





CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE


Mrs. Wallace’s sparsely attended class transformed into silhouettes as Kelsey stood in front of them, facing the projector. Her baby-doll dress and go-go boots, an homage to the artist’s muse, were bathed in the bright red-and-white light of a Campbell’s Soup Can projected on-screen.

It was her last day of school as a senior at Lawrence High, and she had chosen the subject of her final Art History presentation the night before, poring through Michelle’s old books, selecting the pieces that she liked best. It took her mind off of Peter, or rather, a lack of Peter. He had not emailed, called, or even been online for two weeks. It was torture.

Kelsey gathered herself, trying to concentrate.

“Rather than give you useless biographical facts that you’re probably going to forget, anyway,” Kelsey read off her notecards to the silent room, “I want to tell you what I find most interesting about Andy Warhol.”