The Charm Bracelet(57)

She shut her eyes, and could feel her mother sitting beside her on her bed in the cabin. Arden could hear Lolly’s voice reading:

ALICE:

But I don’t want to go among mad people.

THE CHESHIRE CAT:

Oh, you can’t help that. We’re all mad here.

Arden smiled.

My mother was trying to teach me the secret to life long ago, but I never listened!

She lovingly carried the book to the counter and bought it.





part eight




The Snowflake Charm

To a Life in Which You Become a Person of Many Dimensions





Thirty




Arden sat on the edge of her childhood bed and clicked on the lamp.

The lamp—like her mother—was made up of an amalgam of mismatched, colorful parts: The base was an old red lantern while the shade was fringed like a skirt from the musical Chicago. The light and the fringe both moved and flickered as if dancing together.

Arden propped up a few pillows against the birch bark headboard and picked up her copy of Alice in Wonderland, smiling at the memory of Jake and of purchasing the book earlier in the day. Without thinking, she opened the book to a random page, something she used to do when she was a child. She once regarded it as a sort of an omen, the page and its words a sign meant to tell her something meaningful about her life. Arden had learned in journalism school, however, that there were three kinds of readers: Ones who always opened a book or magazine to page one, and started from the beginning; readers who always read the last page first (Arden could never understand those readers); and readers who randomly opened to a page somewhere in the middle to gauge their interest.

I still see it as an omen, Arden thought, shutting her eyes and turning to a page.

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

Arden gasped, and then reread the line she had just stumbled upon.

Life really is quite simple, Arden thought. Begin at the beginning.

She suddenly thought of Jake’s kiss earlier in the day.

He is giving me a new start, she thought.

Arden drew her arms around herself and shivered at the invisible breezes that always seemed to find their way through the cracks in the logs of the old cabin.

Is it the chill? she thought. Or his kiss?

She hopped out of bed and went in search of a blanket to ward off the chill. Arden unlatched the trunk at the end of the bed. It was stacked with childhood memorabilia: Yearbooks, plaques, ribbons, as well as other mementoes from her past. A signed picture of Shaun Cassidy, a Wonder Woman belt, a “drinking happy bird” sipping from a glass of water she’d always had sitting on her desk, a corkboard covered with old pins.

Arden started to pull out her old yearbooks, but stopped herself, dropping the trunk lid and moving her search to the dresser. Every drawer was filled with long-ago Dolly costumes: Dresses missing half their sequins, threadbare boas, snagged gloves.

Arden’s heart skipped a beat.

Memories shoved away for far too long, she thought.

Arden moved toward her old closet, the warped door opening with a loud squeak. She zipped through hangers filled with her old clothes and her mother’s winter jackets, thinking a blanket might be somewhere in the midst.

Nothing.

That’s when she noticed, illuminated by the bare bulb that hung from the ceiling, the bottom of a quilt, its ends dangling over the edge like her feet on the dock.

She reached up, standing on her tippy toes, but the quilt was just out of reach. Arden turned, searching the bedroom for a stepping stool or a sturdy chair. She walked over and pressed down on the top of the trunk, but it felt flimsy to the touch.

I can do this myself, Arden thought, turning back to the closet. This is why I run and spin.

Arden crouched and jumped, but in midleap, her arms got entangled in the hanging clothes. She made it only a few inches off the ground before the hangers came flying off in a shocking jangle that sounded like a wind chime in a hurricane.

“Mom?” Lauren yelled from the bedroom next door. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Arden yelled back. “Just dropped the book I’m reading.”

“Sounds like you dropped a library.” Lauren laughed.

That was as graceful as my dance with Jake, Arden murmured to herself.

She picked up the fallen clothes, and then pushed all the hangers to one end of the closet to give herself room.

Here we go again, she thought, leaping into the air.

Arden’s fingers snagged the end of the quilt, and, at the very last minute, she yanked it off, grunting at its unexpected heft.

As Arden descended, she saw white, and wondered if she had hit her head.

But as she looked up, she smiled: It was snowing.

Falling all around her were hundreds of homemade snowflakes—their lacy silhouettes softly drifting about, as if she were trapped in a snow globe.

Mom and I made those decades ago, Arden thought, remembering when they used to hang the snowflakes on the cabin’s windows at the holidays.

Arden sat down on the floor as if pulled by force, and pulled the quilt around herself, watching it snow, finding herself in the middle of an unexpected blizzard of memories.

When it stopped, Arden gathered the snowflakes into a pile and stretched out, resting her head on them.