Lost Lake (Lost Lake, #1)(66)

“Don’t you like to read?” Maudie asked, handing Bulahdeen an apple.

“I don’t know how.”

“Where do you go to school?”

“I don’t go to school.” Maudie just stared at her. So Bulahdeen told her about her family and her life—all of it. She hadn’t meant to talk so much, but no one had ever listened the way Maudie listened. By the time she finished talking, the food was all gone—she’d eaten it all without realizing—and the sun was setting.

Maudie reached over and brushed some of Bulahdeen’s hair behind her ear. “You can’t change where you came from, but you can change where you go from here. Just like a book. If you don’t like the ending, you make up a new one.” There was yelling coming from the direction of the main house on the estate, and Maudie quickly stood. Someone was calling her name. As she gathered the quilt and the empty waxed-paper packets, she said hurriedly, “In two years, I turn eighteen. My dad thinks I’m going to marry Hamilton Beatty, because he wants me to. But I’m not. I’m leaving when I turn eighteen. I’m going to see the world! Meet me back here tomorrow, Bulahdeen.”

“Why?” Bulahdeen called after her.

Maudie turned and smiled. Bulahdeen would always remember that smile, how beautiful it was, how it made Bulahdeen’s stomach feel jumpy and wonderful. She’d never felt anything like it before.

Hope.

It was the first time she’d ever felt hope.

“Because we can change your ending, too,” Maudie said, then ran away.

That was the day everything changed.

Maudie taught Bulahdeen to read. She got Bulahdeen enrolled in school. And nearly every day, Maudie and Bulahdeen met in the woods and ate and read to each other, and Maudie told Bulahdeen of all her plans when she would turn eighteen.

On the day of her birthday, Bulahdeen picked blackberries and made Maudie a crown of clover, and met her at their spot, only to find a wooden box sitting on the folded quilt instead. Inside the box there was a large stack of paper, envelopes, pencils, and postage stamps. There was also a small package and a note, which read:

I had to leave in the middle of the night. Daddy found out my plans and locked me in my room. I’m going to my aunt’s house in Boston. Here is her address. Write to me there, Bulahdeen. Write to me about how you’re making your own ending, and I’ll tell you all about mine.

Bulahdeen opened the package to find it was the copy of Jane Eyre Maudie had been reading when they’d first met.

Of course Maudie made it out. She had the means to make her own ending.

But no one got out of the End of the World.

Still, Bulahdeen wrote to Maudie. Every day at first, then every few months, when she’d collected enough events to fill a sheet of paper. Bulahdeen excelled at school, which didn’t mean anything, really. She still went home to the same place and slept on the porch and waited for her life to play out.

The summer she turned fourteen, her aunt Clara made a bed for her in the corner of the kitchen because she needed the help. Several of Bulahdeen’s cousins, cousins not much older than Bulahdeen, now had lap babies and hip babies and babies on the way, and all they seemed to do was eat and poop.

Bulahdeen didn’t pay much attention to the men in town. If it was one thing she’d learned, it was to avoid them. But one day, when she was alone in a nearby field collecting dandelion greens to boil, out of nowhere came Big Michael, young and mean. His eyes were light blue and close set, and Bulahdeen had caught him staring at her sometimes when she would hang out a line of diapers.

He smiled at her and then picked a dandelion in full fluff from the ground. He blew on it, and tiny bits of fluff stuck to her hair like dust. He reached over to pick them out, but she backed away. Quick as a flash, he grabbed her and fell to the ground with her, face-first, the force knocking the air out of her chest. Then he was on top of her, grabbing at her skirt and pulling it up. He lifted himself slightly to pull at his own pants, and that’s when she twisted herself around enough to catch him in the side of the face with her elbow. The pain was like fire in her bone, and, from the sound he made, it didn’t feel too good for him either. She managed to knock him off of her, and she scrambled away on all fours before picking herself up and running faster than she’d ever run in her life.

Her aunt Clara found her in the kitchen later, cradling her arm, clothes torn, covered in dirt. The only thing she said to Bulahdeen was, “Next time, don’t fight so hard. It’s easier that way.”

That’s the moment Bulahdeen realized that she did fight. And she’d fought because she hadn’t wanted that ending. She’d wanted something else. Not this. It had been six years since Maudie had left, and Bulahdeen hadn’t received a single letter from her. Still, that night, Bulahdeen wrote to her at the address she’d given her, and told her everything that had happened. She told her she wanted things to change but she didn’t know how.

She started staying longer at school, helping the teachers clean their rooms, because she wanted to stay away from the harm of home as long as possible. Then one of the teachers hired her to help bathe and feed her elderly mother in the afternoons.

One day, as Bulahdeen was leaving the home after feeding the elderly woman, hurrying because she wanted to get back to the End of the World before dark, the next-door neighbor stopped her and invited her inside. She was the local librarian and, out of the blue, she offered Bulahdeen a place to stay in the home she shared with her husband, who happened to be the police chief. They didn’t have any children, and they were getting up in years, she said. She saw the way Bulahdeen tended to the old woman next door, and she said she’d give Bulahdeen room and board if she helped out with chores around the house and at the library.