Miracle (17 page)

A huge white car drove by when it was so late even the crickets chirping in the grass had gone quiet. It looked like one of Mrs. Harrison’s cars. She lived in a huge, old house beside Reardon Logging and made a ton of money renting out rooms to people who worked there and couldn’t afford a place of their own. She wore the same three dresses over and over again, and supposedly never did anything to the house, but once a year she’d have someone take her to Derrytown and come back with a big new white car. Then she’d sell her old one. There were about six of them in town now, and they were always easy to spot.

The car slowed down, and Joe’s voice called out the window, “Hey, Meggie.”

“What are you doing with one of Mrs. Harrison’s cars?”

“Bought it from her. Figured since I was already paying her rent and needed a car . . .”

“You’re living there?”

“Yeah. I think this thing is bigger than the room she’s got me in. It’s like driving a boat.” He laughed. When I didn’t, he turned the car off and got out. “What are you doing here?”

“I—some stuff happened at home. I have to go back in the morning. Are you going to leave your car in the middle of the street?”

“Who’s going to be out driving now? Besides me, of course.” He walked across Margaret’s yard. I waited for him to ask what happened but instead he sat down next to me and said, “Do you want to go home?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

He grinned at me. “You could always rent a room at Mrs. Harrison’s. You’d get to share a bathroom with six other guys and also listen to her talk about how much her feet hurt whenever you pass her on the stairs.”

“Do you—do you miss living at home?”

He was silent for a second. “When Beth was alive, I just wanted to get out of there. But after she died and everything
fell apart, I missed it. Missed her, missed my parents, missed everything even though things were never all that good. And now I can’t even go there anymore. So yeah, I miss it. And you know what the worst thing is?”

I shook my head and wrapped my arms around my knees.

“No one can see how sorry I am about Beth, or how much I miss her, or how I’m not the same guy who slept in detention while his sister died. I can say it, but it’s not—if people could somehow see it, if there was something in me or on me that showed it then . . . then maybe my mom would want to talk to me or my dad . . . I don’t know. It’s stupid.”

“It’s not. I wish I had a scar or something from the crash. Something that would make my parents see I’m not a miracle. That I’m whatever the opposite of a miracle is.”

“Why the opposite?”

“Because I didn’t even remember the crash until today. I said I did, but I didn’t. I knew that meant something was wrong with me, I knew I should remember. But now that I do, it hasn’t made things better. I remember everything and what happened . . . I’m not a miracle, and I already knew that. I just—I still feel as bad as I did before. Worse, even. What I saw . . . what happened . . .” I broke off, shuddered.

He was silent for a long time. “Maybe people like us . . . maybe we don’t get better,” he finally said. “I feel just as bad
now as I did the day I came home and saw Beth’s bare feet hanging out the door. Maybe you and I have to learn how to live with what we saw. With what we know.”

I pressed my hands against the porch, anchoring myself. “Do you really think that’s true?”

“It sucks, so I figure it must be. Are you all right?”

I shook my head.

“Me either. Can I—is it okay if I sit with you for a while?”

“Yeah,” I said, and so we sat on the porch and looked out into the dark together.

“So why are you out here?” I said when the sky had started to lighten. “Were you . . . did you see me on your way home from a . . . you know. Thing. Or whatever.”

“No,” he said. “No thing. Or whatever. I’m not seeing anyone right now. I was just driving around.”

“You were just driving around in the middle of the night?”

“You go running in the middle of the night.”

“That’s different.”

He laughed and I felt something strange stretch my mouth. I touched one finger to it.

It was a smile.

“How come you’re not seeing anyone?”

“I don’t know. I guess maybe I’ve been spending a lot of time hanging out with this person who likes to talk in the
middle of the night, and I feel like she gets me. I actually like her more than I’ve liked anyone in a long time, so . . .”

I looked over at him, shocked, and my heart started pounding fast and hard. But not from fear. From something else, something new.

“You could say something,” he muttered, staring at the ground. “Anything, really.”

I looked at him and thought about how I used to see him, and how I saw him now. Who I’d thought he was, and who he really was, and said, “I think you’re even better looking inside than you are outside and that—well, that’s a lot.”

“Meggie,” he said, almost helplessly, and for the first time in a long time my name sounded sweet to me. His pinkie brushed against mine, and I didn’t move my hand away. We stayed where we were, silent, until the sky turned a pale milky pink and he had to go to work. I missed his pinkie resting against mine after he left.

I was still sitting on the porch when Margaret came out, stretched her arms up over her head, and then sat next to me. “Was that Mrs. Harrison’s car parked out in the road in the middle of the night?”

I looked over at her. She was frowning at her flowerbeds.

“I need more mulch,” she said and then looked at me. “When Joe first came back to town, I’d never seen anybody
look as miserable and lonely as he did. He’s looked happier lately. Is that because of you?”

I shrugged. She squinted at me, then pushed her glasses up her nose and got up. “Do you want some breakfast before I take you home?”

“Can I sit here for just a little while longer?”

“Sure,” she said, and patted my shoulder. “I’ll give you a few minutes. Look, Meggie, you’re always welcome here, all right?”

“Thanks.”

“But next time you’re here and Joe comes by, it had better be daytime, and he’d better not walk all over my flowerbeds. Got it?”

I smiled at her. “Got it.”

She tried not to smile back, but I saw a grin quirk the edges of her mouth. “Good.”

Twenty-Three

When I got home, Mom and Dad were waiting for me. They looked like they wanted to hug me but I hung back until they stepped away. I could hear David up in his room, stomping around getting ready for school. I’d seen him through his window when I’d come up to the house. He’d looked out and saw me, and then turned away.

“Meggie,” Mom said. Her lips were trembling. “We’re so glad you’re home. And we—” She glanced at Dad, then back at me. “We need to talk.”

“I have to talk to David first.”

“David?” Dad said. “Sweetheart, you can talk to him later. Right now what’s important is—”

“This is important to me,” I said, and went upstairs. David was coming out of his room.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.” He tried to walk around me.

“Can I talk to you?” I leaned over to block him. He flinched and then tried to hide it, scowling at me.

“I gotta go wait for the stupid bus.”

“It’ll just take a second.”

He tried to push past me.

“Wait.” I grabbed the side of his backpack to stop him, hanging on even though I was holding something disturbingly damp and mushy.

“Quit it.”

“David—”

“Let go of my backpack!”

“Fine, I’d love to.” I dropped my hand, rubbing it against my leg and trying not to think about why it was so sticky. “Look, I just wanted to tell you—”

He pushed me. “I don’t care. All Mom and Dad ever talk about now is you. Everything is about you. You get to do whatever you want just because you were in some stupid plane crash.”

I wanted to push him back. I moved away so I wouldn’t. “People died, David. I—I saw them. That’s not stupid.”

“But Mom and Dad said you were the only one who lived after the plane crashed.”

“They don’t know what really happened. I . . . I had trouble remembering for a while.”

“Like you forgot?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.” He looked at the stairs and then back at me. “How come?”

“I don’t know. I just did.”

“But now you remember.”

I nodded.

“Is that why you ran away last night?”

“I didn’t run away.”

He smirked.

“Fine, whatever, David. Look, I just wanted to tell you . . . remember what happened in the kitchen? When I—when I hit you? And then that time in the bathroom? I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah, okay. Can I go now? If I miss the bus I won’t get to read Robert’s sister’s diary. She writes these poems about guys. It’s really funny.”

“Oh. Sure. Bye.”

“Bye.” He moved past me and started down the stairs.
Halfway down he came back and hugged me. “I’m glad you didn’t die, Meggie.”

I hugged him back. “Thanks.”

“All right, let go. You stink.”

I did, laughing for what felt like the first time in ages. He grinned at me and then ran downstairs. I waited until I heard the front door slam, and then I went to talk to my parents.

I knew I had to do this, that I had to stop pretending for them. I needed to know why they needed me to be fine, to be a miracle, but it was hard to walk toward them.

I was angry—angry and scared and still full of everything that had happened. Everything that I’d remembered. And part of me wished I could forget it all, erase the memories that had returned. The horrible things I’d seen.

Carl was sitting at the bottom of the stairs. He wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at his pictures of his wife, his family.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, but he didn’t hear me. He couldn’t.

Mom and Dad could, though. I took a deep breath and went into the living room where they were waiting for me.

They both stood up when I came in, like I was a guest, and the love and hope and fear on their faces rattled me. I backed up a step, leaning against the door, and they sat down.

“Plenty of space here,” Dad said, patting the area between him and Mom on the sofa.

I sat on the floor. Dad’s face fell but I didn’t move, just waited for him to speak.

He didn’t, but Mom did.

“Yesterday, you said some things to me,” she said. “You didn’t—Meggie, you didn’t remember the crash?”

I nodded.

“But in the hospital you said—”

“I wanted to go home. I wanted . . . I wanted you to be happy. To stop looking at me.”

“Looking at you?” Dad said.

“You were—you just stared at me. All the time, that’s what you did, and I just wanted you stop. I thought if I said I remembered and we went home . . . I thought that at home, everything would go back to normal. That I would. That you would.”

“But we . . .” Dad said, and then trailed off, seeing something in my expression. “All right. We tried too hard at first, Meggie. But we were so glad to have you with us. When we got that phone call and had to drive to Staunton, your mother and I thought you were dead. You can’t know what that felt like. And then finding out you were alive—”

“It was a miracle,” Mom said, and my stomach twisted,
my throat got tight. “You surviving was a—why do you look so upset?”

“You know why,” I said, my voice quiet. Broke. “I told you. I’m not a miracle.”

“But you lived—”

“Yeah, I lived. But there’s something wrong with me and you and Dad know it. I don’t sleep. I can’t handle going to school. I’m afraid of trees and I run every night because I can’t stand being around myself but can’t get away. I walk around and wonder if I’m even alive, but all you do is smile and pretend. Why can’t you see that I’m not a miracle at all? Why can’t you admit that I—?”

I broke off because I was shaking now, scared.

Waiting.

Dad stared at me. His face was pale and he suddenly looked really old, worn-out and sad and scared.

“Meggie, sweetheart,” he said and then stopped, folding his hands together and staring down at them like they knew something he didn’t.

“It’s my fault,” Mom said and looked at me, so much pain on her face and in her voice that I wanted to look away but couldn’t. She looked like how I felt, and I watched as she got up and walked over to the window.

“My parents said something to me the day I told them I was pregnant with you,” she said. “I’ve never told anyone but your father this, but they said I’d reap what I’d sown. They said everyone I loved would suffer like I’d made them suffer. I was so scared, but then you were born and you were—you were so beautiful, so perfect, that I knew you were a sign that God forgave me for hurting my parents even though they couldn’t.”

She gripped the curtains in one hand. “But then the phone rang the day you were supposed to come home from camp and your father answered it. He said your name and I—”

“It was like every light in the world went out,” Dad said. “Like we—like we were dead too. With David, we knew he had a chance. We knew we could help him. But with you there was nothing we could do. No chance to save you. And then you were alive, and we swore nothing would ever hurt you again. That you would be safe no matter what. That you would be fine.”

He cleared his throat, blinking hard, his eyes wet. “Meggie, Margaret mentioned Dr. Lincoln again last night, and I—I think you should go see him. I think we all should go see him. Would you be willing to do that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t know if I could talk about the crash. Just thinking about it was bad enough. “Can’t we—isn’t this enough? I’ve told you everything, I’ve told you how I really feel and that . . . you see that now, right?”

Dad started to nod, but Mom shook her head. “I—I think you need help. I think we all do. I think you’ve felt alone for a long time and I . . . I think you have been. I don’t want that for you and I promise . . .”

She broke off and looked at me like she saw me, just me and not a miracle. “I promise that we will try to be what you need. I promise you won’t be alone anymore.”

Twenty-Four