The High Season(96)

A look came over Jem’s face then that gave Ruthie a different picture of her daughter. The strong person she would become. No. Already was. “Not family.”

“I don’t know, sweetie.”

“Please, Mom!”

“Let me sleep on it. It’s time for bed now. It’s time for sleep. We can talk more in the morning.”

Murmuring, she drew up the covers again. In the moonlight she placed her head close on the same pillow. She whispered in Jem’s hair. Not your fault, baby, not your fault, Doe is fine, everything will be okay. Still whispering, she felt the moment Jem slid into sleep. She lifted on one elbow to watch her. The moon was so bright.

Despite all of it, this terrible, terrible night, she felt the bright presence of hope.

Pool toys and fortunate landings and the light of the moon. Miracles abounding.





63


EVERYTHING HURT, AND all they gave her was extra-strong ibuprofen. A torn ligament in her knee, two bruised ribs from hitting a branch on the way down (which, apparently, was lucky because it broke the fall). She had landed like a circus performer, the doctor said approvingly. Feet first. Doe had no memory of hitting the pool or what came after until the ambulance. The last thing she remembered was running across the lawn, jumping in the castle, punching Lucas, telling Jem to jump, and then…liftoff.

Somewhere along the way she’d lost Lucas’s watch. She had put it in her pocket and now it was gone.

Nothing lost that was hers. Nothing broken.

Lark had not come. She had not called, or texted.

Doe swung her legs over the bed. “You need rest,” the nurses all said, and then they woke you up every fifteen fucking minutes to check your whatevers. Now it was the next day. Shari had gone for coffee and breakfast. The relief of her absence was something, anyway. She had a crashing headache but it wasn’t from injuries, it was from Shari, talking, making plans. Doe would be released as soon as the doctor came. The doctor would be here soon they kept saying. That was two hours ago.

    The bouncy castle was front-page news. It was THE BIG BOUNCE in the New York Post and MANTIS BASH CRASH in the Daily News. She wouldn’t want to be Lark at the breakfast table this morning. It was only a matter of time before they blamed her lack of experience for the disaster.

Doe was fighting a great tug, that embarrassing, savage need of every dumpee to have the last conversation. Even though you knew the last one had already taken place. One more, you cried. There was always more to say and even more to take back.

She kept replaying Lark’s line in her head, that the privileged had to look for goodness just like everybody else. Wasn’t that just like Lark, to think that everybody looked for goodness? Doe never had. She had looked for the opposite. So she could be ready.

She would never have the last conversation. She would not be able to explain, to sum up what made her so broken, to explain what it’s like when you’re wired to feel every innocence that was lost.

She’d have to learn to be a better person. Was that something you could learn? Was Shari finally right about something other than laundry? Could she forget the tampon in her nose, and remember the tuna sandwich?

The last thing Shari had said to her was “Phoenix.” With no job and no money, they had nowhere else to go but to her aunt. Shari was going to wait until it was later and then call the odious Belinda. It would be hell, but for a girl who had always cultivated options, Doe had run out.

Doe mapped the route on her phone. Turned out there were a thousand ways to get to Phoenix, basically. Despite Shari’s pleas for “scenic stops,” Kansas City barbecue or New Orleans or the St. Louis arch, Doe was headed for a straight line down superhighways. When you blow town, you blow town.

“I read somewhere that the next thing that’s going to go is water,” Shari had said. “And isn’t it like a desert there already? I’m sure Phoenix knows what it’s doing, though.”

    “Yeah,” Doe said.

“They have museums there. I looked it up. And fancy hotels. With concierges. Spas! We’ll get killer jobs. We won’t have to stay with Belinda long.”

Doe lay back down again, weighted by her mother’s buoyancy. She had been raised by a child.

The luck of the exile: You get to choose where to go. Well, not if you’re leaving Syria. But if you’re a pretty girl with a good brain, a dependable car, and $422.15 in your bank account, sure. She’d heard on a podcast that most Americans couldn’t find $400 if they had an emergency. She was $22.15 ahead of the game.

Jem and Ruthie had come earlier (waking her up—after this experience she would sleep for days) and she had endured Ruthie’s weepy thanks and Jem’s tears. Ruthie had kissed her on the forehead and said she was her friend for life. Which was a first, for Doe.

Then Ruthie had left to find Shari, who was out in the hallway somewhere, and Jem had looked at her miserably and Doe had felt worse, because they had an asshole in common.

Jem picked at the hole in her jeans. “Everyone keeps telling me it’s not my fault.”

Doe sighed. “You didn’t make the wind. You weren’t the crew. You weren’t the curator who forgot the instructions and didn’t tell the crew to take the things down. And you weren’t the guy who fooled around with a fifteen-year-old. First time?”