Miracle (12 page)

“I get it,” I said, my voice fast and loud, too loud. “You know what I am.”

I was afraid to move. I knew if I did I’d do something. That I’d hurt her. When she finally left, a kiss on my cheek and a whispered, “Good night,” I uncurled my stiff body and lay there, wondering what would happen when I couldn’t pretend to be what they needed. What it would take to make them see I wasn’t a miracle at all.

Seventeen

When the house was silent and dark, I climbed out the window and went for a run.

I ended up in the same spot I had before, the empty space between town and the road that ran around it. I stood there for a while, moonlight shining over me, but even though it looked just like it had the other night, it wasn’t the same.

I didn’t pass any trucks on my way home. I didn’t see anyone.

When I got back to my street there was a truck at the far end, at the beginning of the road. It was pulled over to the side, its lights and engine off, and I realized it was Mr. Reynolds’s. Joe was sitting inside. He didn’t seem to see me and I watched him for a second, sitting there staring into the dark, and wondered what he was thinking about. He looked like he wanted to be alone. I could understand that.

I started walking back to my house. There were shadows on the side of the road, the trees, and they seemed to be reaching for me. I tried not to look at them.

“Hey,” I heard, and turned around to see Joe leaning out his truck window. “How come you didn’t say anything when you walked by?”

“You looked like you wanted to be alone.”

“Oh. So it wasn’t . . .”

“Wasn’t what?”

“Nothing.” He sounded upset.

“Okay. Bye.” I didn’t know what else to say. I turned away and started walking again.

I waited to hear the truck turn over and even moved a little toward the side of the road so he could drive by, but I didn’t hear anything. I glanced over my shoulder and Joe was leaning out the window again. He still looked upset.

“Look,” he said. “The other night you said all this stuff about everyone and we—you know, we talked, but now you don’t even—you could have said something to me.”

“You looked like you wanted to be alone.”

“How would you know what I look like when I want to be alone? Up until you started jogging in the dark we’ve said maybe four words to each other.”

“I—wait. You’re mad I didn’t say ‘hi’ to you when you were
sitting alone on the side of the road in the middle of the night?”

“It sounds stupid when you put it like that.” He sounded embarrassed. “I just thought . . . oh, forget it.”

We sort of stared at each other for a second. He looked away first, looked down at the road. In the moonlight, his black hair shone. Beth’s hair had been almost the same color and I realized that’s who he’d been thinking about, sitting in the truck in the dark.

I scuffed one sneaker along the road. “Did you—did you ever tell Beth about the time you tried to drive to Grant’s?”

He looked at me, surprise on his face, and then he laughed. “You remember that?”

“Let’s see, the police calling on a Saturday morning to say that the seven-year-old next door had driven into my dad’s car? Yeah, I might remember that.”

He got out of the truck, shaking his head, and hopped onto the hood. There were faint green stains on the knees of his jeans again. “You know I couldn’t even reach the pedals of my mom’s car? It only rolled down the driveway because she’d forgotten to put the parking brake on so when I started it . . .” He made a forward motion with one hand. “Man, did I get in a lot of trouble for that, and all because I wanted to go to Grant’s and get that cereal with the marshmallows shaped like baseball bats. And then Grant’s closed almost right after and
for the longest time I thought it was because of what I did.”

“Really?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. Do you remember when they closed?”

I nodded. “I didn’t get why it was such a big deal that Mr. Grant died at first, you know? And then the store was gone and if we ran out of milk or something, we had to drive out of town to get it. Oh, and I’ve never seen those cups of ice cream with the little wooden paddles anywhere else. I used to look for them every time we went to the grocery store.”

“I’d forgotten about those,” Joe said. “I used to love them. Beth—” He looked down, rapped one hand softly against the truck hood. “I took her into Grant’s after it was closed once. Her class was going on a field trip to Derrytown to see animals in a petting zoo or something, and she couldn’t go because animals made her asthma real bad, so I told her I’d take her someplace.”

He looked up and smiled at me. “She said she wanted to go somewhere no one else in town could go. So I pried open the back door and took her inside. Remember that picture of Mrs. Grant that was up front by the cash register? It was still there.”

“Did you tell her the story about you and the cereal?” The wind picked up and the trees scraped, branches screeching. I tensed, pleating my fingers into the hem of my running shorts, twisting the fabric.

“Yeah. She thought it was funny. Of course, she thought it was funny because I didn’t know you had to use the gas and brake pedals to drive. You know, you look like you’re gonna fall down. Do you want to—?” He pointed at the truck hood. I looked at it, and then up at the trees hanging over it. None of them were close enough to touch it.

I walked over to the truck and sat on the hood. I leaned back a little as I did, bracing my hands behind me. It was easier to turn my head and keep an eye on the trees behind us that way. “Thanks.”

He glanced at me, then looked back at the road. “I still can’t believe you remember the car thing.”

“My father, the insurance guy, having to file a claim for an accident caused by a seven-year-old? He still tells people—well, you know how it is. Everyone tells the same stories over and over and over again. There’s like, what, ten of them for the whole town?”

He laughed. “Eleven.”

“Well, it’ll hit twelve about ten minutes after David turns sixteen and manages to talk my parents into getting his learner’s permit. You’ve seen the damage he can do on a bike.”

He didn’t laugh at that, just rapped one hand against the truck hood again. “People are saying . . . I’ve heard some stuff about you at work.”

“Yeah, I was in a plane crash. I know that.”

“No, not that. Other stuff, like how you’re never in school, and when you aren’t there you’re . . . um . . .”

I stared at him. “What? Hanging out with the town lesbian? Let me guess, you want details. I mean, guys like lesbians, right?”

“Meggie—” He reached out and put a hand on my arm. “I just meant that I’ve heard you’re voluntarily hanging out with Margaret.”

I pushed his hand off. Hard. “
Gay
Margaret. Right?”

“God, you sound like the guys at work. I said Margaret. You know, old and really crabby? Gives out boxes of raisins on Halloween and says things like, ‘You look just like your grandfather. He was beautiful, but kind of soft in the head.’”

“Oh.” I said. “Yeah. I . . . we’ve talked a few times. Well, she does most of the talking. Did she actually say that stuff about your grandfather?”

“Yeah.”

“To you?”

He gave me a look.

“Okay, stupid question. But when did you two ever talk? I mean, you don’t go to our church or anything.”

“Back when Beth was—it was because of Beth. She really loved stuffed animals. Remember that?”

I nodded.

“She couldn’t ever have a dog or anything like that, you know, so she had this whole zoo in her room instead. And Rose . . . Rose gave her a bunch of teddy bears one year, right after Christmas.” He paused. “You went to church with her, so you know why she had the leftovers.”

I nodded again.

“It sucked for Rose,” he said quietly. “But it was nice for Beth. She loved those bears. And then—well, you know how Beth was. Rose told her she’d made them and Beth decided she wanted to learn how. So my mom called over there and once a week until Rose died, Beth would go over there and make bears with her. And whenever I had to pick her up Margaret would always tell me stories about my grandfather and how he was before he left town and my grandmother. And while she was doing that she’d make me—”

“Drink a glass of milk. She still does that. Doesn’t care if you hate it either.”

He laughed, leaning toward me, and his breath blew warm against my cheek. “You know the stuff I said earlier? I thought—I thought maybe you were blowing me off because of what I said the other night.”

“Why would I do that?” Usually when someone was this close to me, I wanted to move away, but I felt okay with him.
I felt like he looked at me and saw me. The real me, and not a miracle.

“I don’t know. I said some . . . stuff.”

“So? I said some stuff too.”

“So we both said stuff, huh?” He grinned at me, and even though the trees were swaying, leaning in close, for a second I only saw his smile.

Eighteen

Two days later, Jess spoke to me.

I had gotten to school late, my legs aching as I cut across the parking lot. I’d kept running at night, the same long looping track around town, and the muscles on the front of my thighs and on the back of my legs hurt constantly. Even my calves were sore.

It was cold out now. Fall had come the way it always did, dropping in overnight and sucking the last of summer dry. I had felt it showing up, the wind chilling my legs as I’d run last night, my breath misting as I’d climbed up to my room before reluctantly dropping inside.

When I walked into school, Jess was standing there, waiting. The bell for first period had already rung and we were the only two people in the hallway. She didn’t look at me and I figured
she was waiting for Brian. She was twirling her hair, and her curls caught on her promise ring, covering the tiny diamond.

“Hey,” she said, tugging her fingers free, her voice shaking the way it always did when she was upset, and I knew then she’d been waiting for me.

“Hey. Lissa said . . . she told me about you and Brian. Congratulations.”

She smiled at me, her face lighting up. “Thanks. We looked at rings and there was this one that’s so beautiful. I told Lissa that when I tried it on I just knew—”

She paused, tilting her head a little to one side, curls falling over her forehead, and her smile faded, her eyes filling with tears. “You don’t care, do you?”

“Jess . . .” I looked down at the floor, already scuffed with shoe prints even though the day had just started, and felt like that. Worn out. Down. “I know how much you love him, and . . .”

“And what?”

“And you’ll be happy,” I said. “You’ll be really happy together. Look, I gotta go to the guidance office and talk about my independent study, so—” I looked at her. She was trying to look angry, but she’d always been terrible at it. She just looked hurt instead. “I’ll see you in class, okay?”

“Can’t you stay and talk for just a second? I’ve been so mad at you for blowing me off and making Lissa cry, and I’m still
mad at you, but I think that if we talk then maybe . . .” She kept talking and I tried to listen. I really did, but her words slid right off me.

She made a noise, a strangled furious sob, and said, “I get that you don’t care, okay, but Meggie, it’s like you’re not even here. Like now, when I was talking, you weren’t even listening. You looked—” her voice cracked, and she took a step toward me. “What’s going on with you? Why don’t you want to talk to me anymore?”

“I—” I started, and then shrugged.

“That’s it?” she said, her voice rising. “That’s all you do anymore, you know that? You say one word, maybe two, and then you shrug and vanish. It’s like you don’t care about anything. Something is seriously wrong with you.”

Trust Jess to get it right, to really see me and come right out and say what no one else would. Everyone looked at Jess and saw a quiet, sweet girl. Almost no one got that there was more to her, that she always saw things for how they were and not as everyone wanted them to be.

For the first time in ages, I smiled at her and meant it. I saw her, and really felt our friendship.

“You’re right,” I said, and I felt our friendship, knew it was gone. I’d ruined it, and knowing that hurt. It hurt a lot.

“Meggie?” she said, blinking like she was surprised, but I
turned away and walked back outside, back into the cold.

I drove home. Mr. Reynolds was sitting in the backyard when I got there, his breath frosting the air as he sipped a beer and stared at a picture of Beth. He’d come home the morning after Joe and I had talked by the side of the road, and he’d left as soon as Joe came home from work that night, carefully backing the truck down the driveway and driving off. He didn’t come back until Joe had to leave for work in the morning.

He did that every day, went out at night, all night, and then sat in the backyard during the day, drinking and looking at that picture and never seeing Joe.

I never even saw them speak to each other.

I thought about that, their silence and Mr. Reynolds sitting by Beth’s grave like everyone knew he did. Mr. Reynolds, sitting by Beth like he could somehow soak her in before he left town again.

For some reason, it made me think about my parents.

My parents, who had started to wait up for me every night, sitting in their bedroom until they heard me swing up onto the roof and drop into my room. I would hear them moving around as I lay down to wait for sleep that wouldn’t come, see the light from their room flicker off.

They’d stopped asking me how I felt and whenever I caught them looking at me I saw a deep, sad fear in their eyes. They
knew something wasn’t right about me, and I knew that was why they’d stopped asking me how I was. Why the fear was there. It hurt but I would see them watching me and knew that if I told them what was true, if I told them how lost I really was, it would break their hearts, and I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I’d seen how much they’d suffered when David was born and even after they’d been told he’d get better. After he did get better.

I wasn’t so sure that I could.