The Second Life of Abigail Walker (16 page)

Abby looked out the window. She looked at
the field, the once-green field now fading into brown. She wondered where the fox was. She looked at her hand, the skin perfectly smooth. She wondered if there'd been a fox at all.

“You are very quiet,” Anoop told her at lunch. “Not that you are particularly noisy at other times. But today, you have hardly said a word.”

Abby looked at him. She looked at Jafar. Could she tell them the truth? Would it make sense? It was worth a try, she supposed. Besides, she might as well find out if everyone thought she was crazy. “Would you believe me if I told you someone was out to get me?”

“You?” Jafar looked incredulous. “But you're nice.”

“I would believe it,” Anoop said.

“What?” Jafar exclaimed. “You're crazy!”

Anoop shrugged. “I know what I know. People are cruel, girls especially.” He turned to Abby. “No offense. But I have noticed your friends no longer speak to you. Why is that?”

“Because I told them they weren't my friends,” Abby admitted.

Anoop considered this. “Then can you
blame them for not speaking to you?”

“I guess not. But I wish they would just leave it at that.”

“They have plans to hurt you?” Anoop looked concerned.

“I think so,” Abby said. “I mean, maybe not physically. But they're going to do something to me. They've already smeared yogurt all over my locker. Who knows what they'll do next.”

“Then let us help you.”

“I don't think there's anything you can do,” Abby told him, and then she laughed. She didn't know why she thought it was funny, but it was. She was eleven years old, a kid. Too young to have problems where no one could help. But what could she do if the only people who believed her were other kids?

Anoop looked confused, and Abby smiled at him. “If I think of anything you can do to help, I'll tell you,” she assured him. “But for now I guess I just have to deal with it by myself.”

Anoop nodded. “I understand.”

When they met Marlys in the computer lab, they all took out their latest lists. Discoveries had
been made. Jafar had learned that the wolverine had at least three other names: skunk bear, carcajou, and quickhatch. Marlys reported that the Western tanager was actually considered to be a member of the cardinal family and had been officially reassigned. It was not naturally red, but turned red from the bugs it ate, which in turn were red from the plants
they
ate.

As a rule of thumb, Anoop told them, stay away from grizzly bears.

They all nodded at this wisdom. Abby yanked a loose thread at the hem of her T-shirt. Could Matt be helped by knowing these things? Would it make him better? Really help him finish his poem?

Did it help just knowing someone wanted to help you, even if they couldn't, not really?

Abby looked at her friends. Her friends. Yes, she decided. It did. Later that afternoon, sitting behind the oak tree among the wild weeds, she called to the fox, who she felt was somehow responsible.

“Thank you,” she called out.

And again, “Thanks.”

she thought
she might have to search for days, but no, there he was, sitting beside the girl's chair in the field, almost as if he'd been waiting for her.

Together, the fox and the dog wove their way through backyards and under bushes. They darted across the road and wound their way to the creek, wading across, and then climbing the steep hill. At the top they stopped and looked over a meadow. In the distance, a man was riding a tall, golden-brown horse. As a rule, the fox kept her distance from larger animals, but the dog
nodded his head in the horse's direction, and the fox followed him into the field.

“Wallace!” the man called out, and slowed the horse to a walk. “Where've you been?” He slipped off the horse, holding the reins in his right hand, and walked toward them. The fox looked around for a bush, a clump of weeds, anything to hide behind. But the field had been recently mown. Big bales of hay stood here and there, casting round shadows. The fox had nowhere to go, so she stayed where she was, standing perfectly still.

“Who you got there with you, boy?” the man asked, coming closer. “You find yourself a friend?”

And then he stopped. Opened his mouth, closed it again. Whispered, “A fox?” A grin broke out on his face, and he turned to the dog. “Wallace, you found yourself a fox. Probably the only one for twenty miles.”

The man came even closer. He kneeled down to get a better look. The fox wanted to bolt, but one glance at the dog told her that would be a mistake.

“Look at you,” the man said. “I'd say you
were a red fox, except you're a little more brown than red, and you're on the small side.” He paused, thought for a moment. “Now, you couldn't be—
Vulpes velox
? A swift fox? No, no way. Not here. That's a prairie fox. A desert fox.”

The fox took a step back. Her breath had become fast and shallow. The man's face, so close to her now, she knew it—she recognized this face. She saw it every night, saw it when she was up in the air, when she was falling into the flames, and the soldier beside her—

Was the man in front of her.

He looked older now. When she'd seen him in the sky, both of them thrown into the air by the explosion, he'd looked so much younger, barely grown. Now lines flared from the corners of his eyes.

How had he survived? They'd flown so high.

The fox's legs gave beneath her, and suddenly she found herself on the grass. She'd fallen from the sky into a field. And the soldier—this man—had fallen into a field too.

They were safe.

“I can't believe it.” The soldier leaned forward to look in her face again. “I can't believe you made it.”

The dog issued a brief bark, then turned and trotted back in the direction they'd come from. The fox lifted her face to the man. He laid his hand on top of her head, and then he let her go. She followed the dog back down the hill. When they reached the creek, the dog stopped, turned, looked at her. The fox waited for him to say something. Would she understand it? Did they share a language?

But the dog didn't speak. He nodded to the creek, and the fox knew it was time to cross back over, return to her field. On the other side, she stopped to shake the water off her fur. Turned to look back. The dog was still there.

He nodded once.
Stay close to her.

And then he trotted back up the hill.

you're the
first one here!” Kristen announced when she opened the Gorzcas' front door Friday night. “Why don't you go ahead and take your stuff to my room? Everybody else should be here soon.”

Abby nodded and trudged up the stairs with her sleeping bag and backpack.
The only way out is through
, she told herself. She'd get this night over with and figure out a way to never have to do it again.

Kristen's room was at the end of the upstairs hallway. Right before school started, Mrs. Gorzca
had painted large pink and brown polka dots on two of the walls, the ones without windows. Kristen's bedspread had the same design, and her curtains did too. Abby put her things down in front of the brown velveteen love seat across from Kristen's closet and sat down to get the full effect of all the dots. They were nice, she thought. Cheerful.

Then she noticed the small round table made of white plastic to the right of the love seat, next to the wall. A plate filled with Kit Kats, Snickers, and Reese's Cups—all of Abby's favorites—sat at its center, and Abby pondered whether or not to eat one. Her candy supply had run dangerously low, but ever since she'd been bitten by the fox, she hadn't wanted candy so much. Every once in a while, sure. But not every day. She hadn't thought of that until now. That was strange. Different.

She looked at the shiny wrappers. She'd had dreams like this, candy everywhere, and nobody to say no. There were so many, no one would notice if she took one. Besides, she could use some fortification. This was going to be a long, miserable night. She grabbed a Snickers bar
from the plate and tore into it. She didn't want to be caught eating. Taking big bites, she chewed fast, then shoved the empty wrapper into her pocket.

She suddenly felt ravenous, as though she hadn't eaten for days. She shook a pair of Reese's Cups from their package and finished them off in four bites, then grabbed a Kit Kat and used her teeth to tear the paper.

As she split the candy bar in two, she heard somebody giggle. There was a rustling in Kristen's closet, and somebody else said, “Shh.”

Abby went cold all over. Or hot. It was a weird sensation of freezing and burning up at the same time. The Kit Kat fell to the floor, and Abby looked at it. Maybe if she kept looking at it, this moment would stretch and stretch, until her whole life was just this moment of staring at the brown candy on the brown rug.

Another giggle came out of the closet.

“I know you're in there,” Abby said flatly, picking up the Kit Kat bar from the floor. What should she do with it? Eat it? She wanted to eat it, but she knew she shouldn't. Not here. Not in
front of them. She looked around for a trash can but didn't see one, so she put the candy back on the plate. “You can come out now.”

Georgia and Rachel burst out of the closet, falling over each other. “Careful!” Rachel yelled. “You'll break the phone!”

“We got it! On video!” Georgia crowed to Abby, holding up a tiny cell phone. “We're going to post one of you pigging out on YouTube!”

So they finally figured out what to do
, Abby thought.
Took them long enough.
She felt oddly calm, as though she no longer existed in her body, but floated outside of it. She noted that Myla, Bess, and Casey weren't here. Maybe they'd had enough, Abby thought. Maybe they were nice after all.

Kristen burst into the room. “Did you get it?” she squealed. Georgia held up the phone triumphantly. “Oh, my God! I can't believe it! That is so awesome!”

Abby stood up. “I'm going.”

Kristen walked over and pushed her back down on the couch. “Oh, no you're not. What are you going to tell your mom? That you're a
little piggy? She'll put you on a diet before you have time to blink. And what will your dad say? We can send him the video as an e-mail attachment. I'm sure he'd get a big kick out of it.”

Abby sat perfectly still. She felt trapped. Was trapped.

“We're going downstairs to eat pizza,” Kristen informed her. “The candy bars are your dinner. We'll let you know when you can come out.”

The girls left the room, laughing and pushing into one another. Abby stared straight ahead. She breathed in deeply through her nose. She thought about her starfish collection.

She started to cry anyway.

Stop it
, she told herself.
Just stop.
But she couldn't stop. She thought everything had changed, but nothing had. She wasn't different at all. She was still a girl who stuffed herself with candy bars, a girl everyone else laughed at. Nothing new about that. Stupid, fat Abby stuffing her mouth. No wonder people hated her. She deserved it.

Stop it.

Abby spun around. Who said that? She walked over to the closet and looked in. Empty except for Kristen's clothes and shoes and two tennis rackets. She went to the window and looked out. There, in a patch of silvery moonlight, stood the fox.

So she hadn't imagined the fox after all. She opened the window. “What should I do?” she called out, and the fox looked at her with what seemed to Abby sympathetic eyes.

The wind answered with a sudden rustling of leaves. A crow answered with a loud
caw, caw
. The fox looked at her for a long moment, as if waiting for Abby to answer her own question.

Abby nodded. “Okay.”

The fox slipped into the shadows. Abby closed the window.

She grabbed her sleeping bag and backpack from the floor in front of the love seat. She thought about grabbing the rest of the candy from the plate, but she didn't really want it now. She went down the stairs, opened the front door, and left without saying good-bye.