If You Find Me(28)

“Hold out your arm.”

I do. Melissa buckles on the thin straps of a wristwatch. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe she’s giving it to me.

“Mom!” Delaney squeals.

“You have my watch from college graduation. You have plenty of watches, Delly,” she calls out as Delaney stomps down the hallway.

“’Don’t worry about Delly, She can have one of my other ones, if she wants another that badly.”

Now, I stare at the tiny hands, no thicker than a strand of Nessa’s hair, as they tick tick tick around the face. The watch is delicate, with a golden rectangular frame and a creamy mother-of-pearl face, with blond leather straps and a tiny gold buckle to hold it in place.

It’s fine—right fine. I’ve never owned anything so fine before.

I fill in the last question and put down my pencil. I decide I love pencils. Such a convenient invention, if ever there was one. Stretching my legs, I peer out the windows on the back wall. The glass is rectangle-shaped, and the consecutive panels stretch from waist height to high above my five feet, seven inches.

I survey a courtyard filled with children Nessa’s age and younger, swinging on swings and hanging from bars and climbing a roundshaped cage with ladder rungs.

Women dressed like Mrs. Haskell cart folders in their arms and talk to grown folk who watch the children from benches. Some of the women remind me of Mama—worn-out clothes and hair askew, puffing on cigarettes like no one’s business, and, even from my perch, quite obviously putting on the dog, plain as a slice of moldy muskrat meat.

A river of feelings courses through me when I think of Mama. Her memory snaps around me like a cheap bear trap that’ll never let go.

Where is she? Why did she leave us? She could’ve at least said goodbye to Nessa.

I jump at the sound of the door opening. A shiny-headed man peeks through.

“I’m looking for an empty room.”

“You can have this one, sir.”

“Don’t forget your papers,” he says, pointing.

[page]Tripping over my feet, I gather up the sheets and slide past him through the doorway, careful not to touch.

Feeling sneaky, I peer through the tiny glass window in Mrs. Haskell’s office door. True to her word, she and Jenessa are bent over some sort of puzzle made out of yellow, blue, red, and green wood pieces.

I watch them for a moment. Nessa is smiling. That’s all I need to know. I continue toward the waiting room.

My father sits in a chair in the corner, sunlight pouring in from a window above as he reads a newspaper. He folds it and drops it on his lap when he sees me.

“How did the test go?”

“Fine, sir.”

I sit in the chair farthest from him, swinging my feet.

“Glad to hear it. Do you mind if I take a look?”

I walk over and reluctantly hand him the pages. The place where my hand held the paper is wrinkled and damp. It’s impossible to miss the look on his face as he scrutinizes the top sheet, looking up at me and then back at the page.

I lean forward to see what he’s stuck on, following his line of vision. It’s just my name at the top, like Mrs. Haskell told me to write.

My father looks up again, his brow furrowed.

“What’s wrong, sir?”

“You were supposed to put your age on here—”

“I did. See there—” I motion at the page, uncomprehending. “It’s right under my name.”

“But you put down fifteen.“

“Yes, sir.”

My stomach does a wobbly cartwheel, realizing something I haven’t yet. It did the same when I saw him in the woods.

He lets out a long, slow breath, which smells like toothpaste and cigarettes.

“You were born fourteen years ago, Carey.”

Blood beats in my brain like a drum.

“Fifteen, sir.”

My father looks away, squinting into the afternoon light. He shakes his head no. The room shrinks around me, like I’m Alice and I ate the tiny cake. My eyes refocus, and my mind uses all its energy to wrap around his words.

“Fifteen,” I say again, emphasizing thefif, as if I can make it true by repeating it.

“Fourteen. I’m sorry, Carey.”

The hallway is a blur as I run down it, out the front door, and through the parking lot. Can’t breathe. I squat behind his truck, panting, my T-shirt sticking to my back.

No! I can’t be fourteen when I was fourteen already! Mama couldn’t have been that screwed-up!

My mind fills with the whooshing and crashing of the Obed River. The whispering trees, calling for me, wondering why I’ve left them. I’m just like Mama.

I want to go home! MY home!

The eaglets. I concentrate on the eaglets. Ness and I watched them every day after they’d hatched. She was still talking then.

“Oh no!” Nessa cries. “The eaglet’s nest is fattin apart. Look, Carey. It’s bwoken!”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes it is. Look at it!”

I gather her onto my lap, her cheeks slick with tears.

“No, Ness. Over time, the mama eagle pulls away the straws one by one until the babies are left balancin on the branches“

“You’re lyin, Carey Blackburn! Why would she be that mean?”