The Wish(13)
“I love this room,” my aunt said with a sigh, setting my suitcase on the floor. “It’s so comfortable.”
“It’s nice,” I forced out. After she left me alone to unpack, I plopped down on the bed, still in disbelief that I was actually here. At this house, in this place, with this relative. I stared out the window—noting the rust-colored wooden planking on the neighbor’s house—wishing with every blink that I’d be able to see Puget Sound or the snow-capped Cascade Mountains, or even the rocky and rugged coast I’d known all my life. I thought about the Douglas fir and red cedar trees, and even the fog and rain. I thought about my family and friends who might as well have been on another planet, and the lump in my throat grew even bigger. I was pregnant and alone, marooned in a terrible place, and all I wanted was to turn back the clock and change what had happened. All of it—the oops, the barfing, the withdrawal from school, the trip here. I wanted to be a regular teenager again—hell, I would have taken being just a kid again instead of this—but I suddenly remembered the blue plus sign on the pregnancy test, and the pressure began to build behind my eyes. I may have been strong on the journey, and maybe even up until then, but when I squeezed my teddy bear to my chest and inhaled her familiar scent, the dam simply burst. It wasn’t a pretty cry like you see in Hallmark movies; it was a raging sob, complete with snorts and wails and quivering shoulders, and it seemed to go on forever.
*
About my teddy bear: she was neither cute nor expensive, but I’d slept with her for as long as I could remember. The thin coffee-colored fur had worn away in patches, and Frankenstein stitches held one of her arms in place. I’d had my mom sew on a button when one of her eyes had popped off, but the damage made her seem even more special to me, because sometimes I felt damaged, too. In third grade, I’d used a Sharpie to write my name on the bottom of her foot, marking her as mine forever. When I was younger, I used to bring her with me everywhere, my own version of a security blanket. Once, I’d accidentally left her at Chuck E. Cheese when I’d gone to a friend’s birthday party, and when I got home, I cried so hard I actually puked. My dad had to drive back across town to retrieve her, and I’m pretty sure I held on to her for almost a week straight after that.
Over the years, she had been dropped in mud, splashed with spaghetti sauce, and soaked with sleep drool; whenever my mom decided it was finally time to wash her, she’d throw her in the laundry along with my clothes. I’d sit on the floor, watching the washer and dryer, imagining her tumbling among the jeans and towels and hoping she wouldn’t be destroyed in the process. But Maggie-bear—short for Maggie’s bear—would eventually emerge clean and warm. My mom would hand her back to me and I’d suddenly feel complete again, like all was right in the world.
When I went to Ocracoke, Maggie-bear was the only thing I knew I couldn’t leave behind.
*
Aunt Linda checked on me during my breakdown but didn’t seem to know what to say or do, and apparently she decided it was probably best to let me sort through things on my own. I was glad about that, but kind of sad, too, because it made me feel even more isolated than I already did.
Somehow, I survived that first day, then the next. She showed me a bicycle she’d bought at a garage sale, which looked older than I was, with a cushy seat big enough for someone twice my size and a basket on the front hanging from massive handlebars. I hadn’t ridden a bike in years.
“I had a young man in town fix it up, so it should work fine.”
“Great” was all I could muster.
On the third day, my aunt went back to work and was out of the house long before I finally woke. On the table, she’d left a folder filled with my homework, and I realized that I was already falling behind. I hadn’t been a great student even in the best of times—I was middle-of-the-pack and hated when my report cards came out—and if I hadn’t cared much about acing my classes before, I was even more apathetic now. She’d also written me a note to remind me that I had two quizzes the following day. Even though I tried to study, I couldn’t concentrate and already knew I was going to bomb them, which I promptly did.
Afterward, maybe because she was feeling even more sorry for me than usual, my aunt thought it might be a good idea to get me out of the house and drove me to her shop. It was a small eatery and coffee bar that offered a lot more than just food. It specialized in biscuits that were baked fresh every morning and served either with sausage gravy or as some sort of sandwich or dessert. Beyond breakfast, the shop also sold used books and rented out video cassettes; shipped UPS packages; had mailboxes for rent; offered faxes, scanning, and copies; and provided Western Union services. My aunt owned the place with her friend Gwen and it opened at five in the morning so the fishermen could grab a bite before heading out, which meant she was usually there by four to start baking. She introduced me to Gwen, who wore an apron over jeans and a flannel shirt and kept her graying blond hair in a messy ponytail. She seemed nice enough, and though I only spent about an hour in the shop, my impression was that they treated each other like an old married couple. They could communicate with a single glance, predicted each other’s requests, and moved around each other behind the counter like dancers.
Business was steady but not booming, and I spent most of my time thumbing through the used books. There were Agatha Christie mysteries and westerns by Louis L’Amour, along with a good-sized selection of books by best-selling authors. There was also a donation box, and while I was there, a woman who’d come in for coffee and a biscuit dropped off a small crate of books, almost all of them romance novels. As I riffled through them, I thought to myself that if I’d had less romance in August, I wouldn’t be in the mess I was in right now.