If You Find Me(62)

There I am in black and white, in profile. From that angle, my violin case, slung over my shoulder, assumes the shape of an angel’s wing.

The picnic in the woods.

It’s the second photograph, though, that causes my breath to catch in my throat and sends me tumbling down Alice’s rabbit hole.

A towhead girl and a gangly boy sit side by side in backyard swings. Her flaxen hair falls over one eye. His skinny arm is dwarfed by a neon green cast. Both wear grins for miles.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I wanted to, but when you didn’t remember me... I don’t know. I thought for sure you’d remember me.”

I touch my cheek where he touched it, smooth my hair like he smoothed it, to feel what he felt. My cheek is winter cold, but soft, and so is my hand. His grip had been gentle and warm; hesitant, at first, and then bolder once we’d fixed things.

A starburst of headlights penetrates the front window, and it can only be one person. I search the face of the chiming clock as the beams wash over it. Five minutes to one, with our curfew extended an hour from the usual midnight. She’ll just make it.

I hang my coat and take the stairs two at a time, closing the door to my room and forgoing the light. I hide the photographs under a sheaf of papers on the desk. I’m not ready to share them yet.

It was an awesome night, Saint Joseph. Did you hear Ryan play?

I barely breathe as Delaney climb the stairs. Hallway light spills under my door. The shadow stands there, walks away, then returns.

“Good night,” I call out to her sarcastically, waiting. But there’s no fun in it.

The shadow hesitates.

Before I can rethink it, I throw open the door, grab her by the upper arm, and pull her in.





[page]13


“Hey!”

She tugs her arm from my grasp and turns up the light.

“Like that hurts,” I say, bolder after tonight. “Why do you have to be such a bitch?”

“ ‘Bitch’? The high-and-mighty Carey, cussing? Where’d you learn that?”

“From the high-and-mighty Delaney. Get over it.”

“What’s your main problem, Blackburn?”

“You! You calling me ‘backwoods freak’ in front of people. Enough, already!”

Delaney rolls her eyes. But I refuse to let it go. I say the next softly, like a sucker punch to the gut.

“You know, if you call me a freak, you’re calling Jenessa a freak, too.”

My words pain her. Her eyes shift from angry and flashing to ashamed.

“Anything else?”

“I reckon there is. I want the letter from Mama—all the copies.”

“Oh, you do? And what do I get?”

Like she doesn’t know.

“My silence. I won’t say anything to my father or your mom about tonight.”

We size each other up like the waddle badger and the shuffle fox, those few times they’d crossed paths. Claws and teeth ready, but not necessary unless absolutely necessary, and everyone knows absolutes are rarely absolute. Especially after feasting on fermented blackberries.

“Fine. And for your information, I wasn’t planning on showing the letter to anyone anyway.”

“Oh, so you reckoned you’d blackmail me with it instead? It’s obvious how much you hate me.”

And it’s like I flipped a switch—one waiting, all this time, to be flipped.

“I don’t hate you. For someone so smart, you can be so dense. I’m just—” She hatts and begins again, the clouds speeding up across her face. “It’s not all about you, okay? I mean, I get it. You lived in the woods, cold and hungry with a drugged-up mother doing who knows what to survive. You have dibs on the monster bites of attention. I get that. But it doesn’t make it any easier for me. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck, to be constantly shoved into the background.”

The shame washes over me in waves. She’s right. She’s absolutely right.

“I didn’t mean to make it all about me. I wasn’t trying to—”

“I know. And that’s exactly what I’m saying—it’s complicated. The whole effin’ thing is complicated. You . . . me—we’re complicated.”

She crosses her arms and turns away. I take the leap.

“I reckon it’ll take time, Delaney. That’s all. That’s what Mel— your mom said.”

She collapses onto my bed, her head on my pillow. She looks like someone different. Just a girl, like me.

“It was tough in the woods, huh?”

I swallow hard, nodding.

“I saw your sister’s back.” Her eyes are sorry, sharing the weight. “I die, thinking of Nessa out there,” she whispers.

“I protected Nessa right fine.”

“I’m sure you did. I didn’t mean— Dad said—your father said you had a shotgun.”

“Yup.”

“Did you ever have to use it?”

I curl up in my mind like the accidental-hedgehog into a prickly ball of leave-me-alone. And then, whether a shift of light or shadow, the walls crash back into place. I’m the old Carey again. She’s the old Delaney.

I lie. “How do you think we ate?”

“Meat well-done, I hope. Or you’d both have worms.”