“You know what that is,” Nick said, looking up at the sky. “That’s the sound of freedom.”
THE RISING SUN
was just starting to poke through the leaves of the willow tree when I sat up with a start.
Annie. I had completely forgotten about Annie. I promised I’d help her get the school gym ready for senior portraits, which were happening today. The assistant photo editor, Jason Gaits, canceled at the last minute, again. Something about needing to stand in line all night for the release of some new video game. Nerds, it turned out, were even less reliable than the general population. Apparently, now I was too.
I pulled my phone from my bag. There wasn’t a single missed call or text from Annie, which made me feel terrible. It was so unlike her. Annie was never one to hold back feelings or bottle her frustration. Her silence spoke volumes. It meant she was really mad. Or worse, that she had given up on me.
I gathered my things and headed toward the house. It was only six o’clock, but the kitchen light was already on, which signaled my mother was up half an hour earlier than normal. I usually made it to my room with a few minutes to spare before I heard her stirring.
I hesitated before opening the door as a sinking thought occurred to me. The reason I didn’t hear from Annie was that she must have come over to pick me up, only to discover that I was gone. My heart rate quickened. Did she ring the bell? Did my mother now know that I had lied to her about where I was going? But then I remembered that there weren’t any missed calls from my mom either; nor had she waited up for me, so she mustn’t have had any idea.
I crouched down and peered through the window. The kitchen was empty. This was my chance. The scent of baking banana muffins hit me the second I walked in the door, and it didn’t turn my stomach. If anything, it made me hungry. I glanced at the timer on the stove to see how long I had before my mother would appear. Two minutes and thirty-eight seconds. I stopped in my tracks. Exactly the amount of time I was dead. I took it as a symbol that everything was turning around.
Maybe there really is such a thing as fate after all
, I thought as I hurried to my room to get dressed.
My mother was in the kitchen when I appeared a few minutes later, showered and dressed for the day.
“You’re ready early,” she remarked, glancing at the clock.
I breathed a sigh of relief, now fully convinced that Annie hadn’t blown my cover. “Having a bake sale?” I asked as she placed a set of muffins in a tin. There were five identical tins waiting on the counter.
I already knew that she wasn’t going to bring up my explosion in the greenhouse last night. I could always detect her mood within the first three seconds of a conversation. If her tone was clipped,
then she was still harboring resentment. If it was warm, it meant all was forgiven. And if it was breezy, like it was this morning, then I knew that whatever residual frustrations she may have felt had all been channeled into the muffins. Baking was my mother’s version of meditation. It was how she was able to sweep almost anything under the rug, no matter how lumpy the rug got.
She shook her head. “Just trying to salvage some rotten bananas. I can freeze whatever doesn’t get eaten.”
She was the perfect suburban housewife. The American Mrs. Dalloway. Watching her flit around the kitchen, I knew for certain that I would never be like her. It wasn’t just because we were different, but because I didn’t
want
to be like her. A sudden wave of compassion overcame me. I felt sorry for her—and for what I’d done to her plants. I reached for a piece of broken muffin that had fallen on the counter. It was still warm. “These are great,” I said, taking a bite.
“Oh good!” My mother’s face lit up. “So, what
are
you doing up so early?”
The funny thing was, I was up this early every day. She just didn’t know it. “I’m helping Annie with senior portraits.” At least that was my plan, to try to make it up to her. But first, I needed to apologize. In person. If she was ignoring me, a text or phone call just wouldn’t cut it. “Mind if I take some with me?” It was the closest thing to a peace offering I could come up with at six thirty in the morning.
Now my mother was really beaming. She got out her Tupperware and loaded up a container. “One bin’s good,” I said as she reached for a second one.
“How did studying go last night? I didn’t hear you come in.”
For a second I forgot that’s where I said I was going last night. It was getting hard to keep the lies straight. Before I had a chance to answer, my dad walked in, scanning the room for his briefcase. I hadn’t seen him in a few days. Neither in the house nor from my perch in the garden. Noah darted in right after him, making a beeline for the fridge. Everyone knew to stay out of his way until he’d eaten his breakfast. He was never a morning person, even as a baby. As Noah poured milk into his cereal bowl, my father rummaged through his files, and my mother continued boxing muffins, I realized it was the first time all four of us were home at the same time, in the same room, since the night I came home from the hospital. That felt like a lifetime ago. I had gotten so used to our being apart that it felt strange being here together. Maybe because with each of us caught up in our own worlds, we weren’t really together, and none of us was really present, not in a way that mattered. Not in the way I felt when I was with Nick.
• • •
It was six forty-five when I finally made it out the door. I calculated that it would take me twenty minutes to get to Annie’s on foot, not that I really knew since I never walked anywhere. Nobody in Vista Valley did. But I knew someone would be up, if not Annie herself. Her parents sometimes started seeing patients as early as seven in the morning. Annie and I used to spy on them from her bedroom window, coming and going up the side path to her parents’ offices in the back house, trying to see if we recognized any of them. Vista Valley was a small community, so
we often did. Like the parent of some kid from school. A shopkeeper. Or the time we saw Señora Smith, our freshman year Spanish teacher, walking up the path. I used to feel sorry for them, wondering what could be so bad that they were willing to risk public humiliation just to talk about their problems. The sessions were supposed to be strictly confidential, but these things had a way of getting out. It had been a long time, though, since Annie and I had perched together in her window. Since I had even been to her house.
A chorus of birds started singing as I got to the corner of Annie’s street. They flew out of a tree and started coasting along next to me, like they were my own personal escorts. I felt just like Amy Adams in that movie
Enchanted
, where animals and birds and insects fell in love with her and followed her everywhere she went. It also made me think of the night before, of standing next to Nick, our arms touching as the green parrots flew out into the moonlit sky. Breathing in the sweet morning air, everything around me seemed so vivid and alive. Not just the birds, but the way the sun cast shadows off the tree branches, the sound of a dog barking in the distance, the delicate curve of a rose petal that had fallen to the ground. All these details added up to something beautiful, something that reminded me of Nick.
Annie’s mother answered the door. She was still in her robe, clutching a mug of coffee. “Olive, hi.”
“Hi,” I said, wiping a bead of sweat off my brow. “Is Annie home?”
“Come in, honey,” she said, opening the door wider. “Annie’s
still in her room. You look like you could use a glass of water.”
I followed her into the house. I’d forgotten how bohemian it was. Her parents decorated it with all sorts of eclectic things they had collected on their travels. Indian tapestries hung from the wall. African facemasks lined the mantelpiece. An old Chinese wooden door had been repurposed into a coffee table. Candid family pictures in mismatched frames were haphazardly placed in every nook and cranny, some on top of a pile of books that looked like it was on the verge of toppling over. I was also now remembering how much I used to love spending time here. How it used to make me feel like I had escaped and gone somewhere else. There was an ordered chaos to the place that made it feel lived in. Comfortable, like a real home. Just not mine.
When we got to the kitchen, Annie’s mother poured me a glass of water straight from the tap. We only drank bottled water at our house.
“Thanks, Mrs.—I mean Dr. Irving,” I said.
She gave me a look. “God, it really has been a while if you’ve forgotten that I will only answer to Nancy. Mrs. Irving is my mother-in-law. I’m not that old yet. At least, I hope not.”
“You’re not,” I laughed, breathing in the delicate floral scent of the candle burning on the counter. Its flame cast a soft, pleasant glow against the orange-painted wall behind it.
“Coffee?” she asked, refilling her mug.
I shook my head no. She was acting like my coming over at seven o’clock on a Thursday morning was the most normal thing in the world. It was one of the reasons I knew she was a good therapist, that she actually helped her patients. Unlike Dr.
Green, who just wanted to remind you she was a doctor every chance she got.
“Do you mind if I go see Annie?”
“Not at all, honey. I’m glad I had a cancellation this morning so I got a chance to see you. Mitch is with a patient now, but I know he’ll be sorry he missed you.” She reached over and squeezed my arm. “You look really happy.” She said it not in the pitying, trying-to-make-me-feel-better-because-I-must-be-crazy kind of way, but like she really meant it. Probably because it was true.
Annie didn’t hear me approaching. She was too busy talking to her computer screen, which I couldn’t see from the door.
“Hey,” I said.
She turned with a start and immediately slammed her laptop shut. It reminded me of how I reacted when my mom came barging in unannounced, especially when I had something I wanted to hide. But I was surprised and a little bit hurt to see Annie react that way with me; I was supposed to be her best friend. “What are you doing here?”
“Sorry. I was going to call but I was worried you wouldn’t pick up.”
“You were right.” She got up and started collecting things off the floor.
It stung, but it’s what I deserved. “Were you talking to Jessica?” She was already dressed and was even wearing makeup.
“Yes.”
“How’s it going?”
“She’s fine.” I had meant how were things going between
them, but from her tone I could tell I wasn’t going to get much more out of her. I purposely left the question vague because I didn’t know how she’d take it. Annie still hadn’t explained the true nature of her relationship with Jessica, and I sensed that there was more to it than she was letting on. Maybe she thought I wouldn’t understand. But I did, now more than ever. Because love was love and when you felt it you wanted to share that feeling with the rest of the world.
“Look, I’m really sorry I wasn’t there last night.”
“Are you? Because I get the distinct impression that if given the choice, you’d do it all over again.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You don’t look very sorry.”
I caught my reflection in the mirror hanging above her desk. My cheeks were flushed from running, my hair was windswept, and my eyes were wide and clear. Annie’s mother was right. I did look happy. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t also feel bad for letting her down. “I know I messed up. I was—”
“Just save it.” She got up and started making her bed as if I wasn’t even in the room. “I don’t need to hear about how you forgot because you were with Nick and that it won’t happen again. I guess I was just hoping that things would be different now that Derek was out of your life. All this time I thought he was to blame, but I was wrong. You’re the one who has consistently chosen a guy over your best friend.”
I wanted to dive into her bed and hide under the covers. Annie didn’t throw insults or blame around just because. She only did it when she had good reason. And that’s what made
this all burn even more. “You’re right,” I finally said. “I was being selfish.”
She was packing her school bag now, pulling books off her desk. But she paused long enough for me to know that I had gotten through to her. Remembering the muffins, I handed her the plastic container. It was still warm. “Here, I brought these for you.”
“Freshly baked muffins. In Tupperware? Are you turning into your mother now?”
We stared at each other, Mexican standoff style, until we both busted out laughing.
“What?” I said, throwing my arms up. “It’s a peace offering. And they’re really good.” I opened the container and shoved one in my mouth. “See?”
“Hey, those are mine,” she said, grabbing the muffins from me.
“I really am sorry, Annie. I didn’t mean to let you down.”
“So, you were out with Nick?” she asked, ignoring my apology. I nodded. The memories from last night started flooding back just hearing his name. “From the look on your face, it seems like it might even have been worth pissing me off.”
I laughed and felt myself blush. “Do you want to hear about it?” The truth was that I was dying to tell her, but I wanted to make sure she wasn’t still mad.
“Go on,” she said, dropping her bag and settling down on her half-made bed. “I want every single detail.”
I hopped up next to her and started with how Nick had to pick me up a few blocks away so my mom wouldn’t know where
I was going. I told her about the abandoned church, the stained glass, and the rickety spiral staircase. I described the breathtaking view, what it was like looking down at the city, and then how the green parrots awoke and flew out into the night. I also told her what it was like being around Nick. How it felt so natural, like I didn’t have to try or pretend. How we didn’t need to talk to fill our silences, how he made me see things I didn’t even know existed. The only part I left out was the way Nick sometimes drifted off like he was somewhere else, and how a darkness settled over him when he did. I couldn’t yet explain it to Annie, not when I didn’t fully understand it myself. The last thing I said was something I wasn’t even conscious of until it came out of my mouth. “I also feel pretty when I’m with him. Not just on the outside. It’s like I feel happy being me.”