The Paper Palace(24)

“Why not?”

“He was being a complete asshole,” I say, and he laughs. Gina waves to us from the break, beckoning. Jonas waves back. He leans in to the mesh window. “Can I come in?”

“No.”

“Then will you hear my confession?”

“I’m not sure three Hail Marys are going to help much,” I say.

He presses the palm of his hand against the mesh. “Elle—”

“Don’t,” I say. But I put my hand up against his. We sit like this, silent, unmoving, palm to palm through the fine mesh.

“I’ve been in love with you since I was eight.”

“That’s a lie,” I say.





1977. August, the Back Woods.


In the tree cover above me, there’s a window. I lie on the mossy banks of a stream, gazing up at the almost perfectly-square patch of sky. One minute it’s solid blue, the next a cloud floats past like a painting on the ceiling of a church. A sea gull swings into frame. I can hear its searching, mournful cries long after it disappears from view. I reach into my pocket and grab a Tootsie Roll. This is where I come almost every day now. Occasionally my mother asks me where I’ve been and I say, “Around,” and she seems fine with that. I could be hitchhiking into town with a serial killer and she wouldn’t notice. It’s all Leo and Anna, all the time. They argue about everything. It’s been like this since Leo and Mum got married. I dread sitting down at the table for dinner. It starts out okay—Leo lecturing us about China or why the Pentagon Papers are still relevant. But pretty soon he starts in on Anna. He doesn’t approve of her friend Lindsay: she dresses like a hooker; she’s overdeveloped and under-intelligent; she thought the Khmer Rouge was a lipstick color; her parents voted for Gerald Ford. Why did Anna get a C+ in math? How can she sit there without helping while her mother serves us? Her skirt is too short. “Why are you looking, creep?” Anna says, and when he gets up out of his chair, she runs to her room and locks the door.

“It’s just hormones,” my mother tells Leo, trying to smooth things over between them. “All teenagers are a nightmare. And girls are worse. Wait until Rosemary hits puberty.” He has promised to make an effort. But it’s been worse since we got to the woods. Leo has decided to “put his foot down.” He sends Anna to our cabin if she back-talks, and Mum refuses to interfere. “I’m sorry, but I can’t be constantly refereeing,” she says to Anna. Anna lies on her bed refusing to cry, and yells at me if I try to come in. One morning in July, Anna and Leo were having such a humongous fight at breakfast that Mum threw an egg at the kitchen wall. “I honestly cannot take another minute of this. I’m going next door to see my father and Pamela.” She handed me a banana. “I recommend you find somewhere else to be for the day if you don’t want to go deaf.”

I was walking to the ocean, thinking about how I was going to poison Leo—how I’d have to be the one to save Anna since Mum wouldn’t—when I tripped on a root and tore my flip-flop apart. I sat down on the path to shove the Y back into the buttonhole. Under the low-hanging branches of the trees was a faint trail—probably a deer path. I crawled into the woods and followed the trail until it dwindled and dead-ended in a thicket of catbrier. I was turning back when I noticed the sound of running water. Which made no sense, because everyone knows there’s no running water in this part of the woods. That’s why the Pilgrims kept going to Plymouth after they landed on the Cape. I pulled the brambles aside bunch by bunch with my towel, stepped through the tangle, trying not to scratch my legs too badly, and emerged from the overgrowth into a small clearing. In the center was a freshwater spring, burbling out of the ground into a narrow stream. The looming trees had backed away, leaving a carpet of velvet moss below. I lay down on the bank and closed my eyes. Poison might be too obvious, I thought. Maybe Anna and I should run away from home, move here. We could build a tree house with a platform and a roof made out of branches. We’d have fresh water; we could catch fish on the beach—early, before anyone else was awake; collect cranberries and wild blueberries so we wouldn’t get scurvy. I started to make a list in my head of the supplies we’d need: empty Medaglia d’Oro cans with plastic lids for watertight storage, wooden matches, candles, fishhooks and line, a hammer and nails, a cake of soap, two forks, a change of underwear, sleeping bags, bug spray. Mum was going to be sorry she let Leo punish Anna and never took Anna’s side. Maybe not right away, but eventually she would miss us.



* * *



—

But it’s almost Labor Day now, and the only survival supplies I have managed to collect are two rusty coffee cans, an old pair of pliers and a few candle stubs. High above me, a flock of birds write a V for victory, like a fleeting thought winging its way away across the chipped blue sky. A shadow falls across my face. I freeze. Try to make myself invisible.

“Hello.” A small boy—maybe seven or eight—is looking down at me, his approach so silent I never heard him coming. He has thick black hair that reaches his shoulders. Pale green eyes. He’s barefoot. “I’m Jonas,” he says. “I’m lost.” He doesn’t seem upset or scared.

“Elle,” I say. I’ve seen his family on the beach. His mother is a frizzy-haired woman who yells at us if we leave our apple cores in the sand. They live somewhere in the Back Woods.