A Sense of the Infinite (11 page)

WHEN OLIVER CAME ON THE PHONE
he was drunk too. It was noisy in the background: thrashing rock music and a sports game on TV. I wondered where he was. It was too early in the day for a bar, and Oliver was underage. Maybe Alaska was just loud.

“Annabeth,” he shouted into the phone. “Hey-hey.”

“Hey-hey,” I echoed back.

“Whuss going on?”

Was there a snowstorm over there? Sound of howling winds and rattling flagpoles. Maybe he was on the crab boat, although I didn’t see how that was possible cell service–wise, or how Loreen, Alaskan Booty Queen, fit into the picture. Maybe she was the skipper.

“I’m pregnant,” I said.

“No you’re not.”

“Is she pregnant?” A screech from Loreen.

And Oliver: “It’s just some chick from home starting drama.”

Loreen: “Are you lying to me?”

Oliver: “Loreen!”

Slamming door. A roar from the TV. Someone must have scored a touchdown.

A few seconds later, Oliver came back on the phone.

“That was real uncool, Annabeth,” he said. “We barely hung out and I’ve been gone for two months. You can’t call me up and get all pissed that I’m with another girl. Now she thinks I knocked you up.”

“You did.”

“We used protection.”

“Not the whole time.”

Horrified silence. Terrifying possibilities invoked.

“Oliver?” I said. “Oliver.”

On TV, the cheering continued. They must be passing out free burritos in the stadium, dropping them out of a plane. Oliver stayed quiet for so long I thought he had passed out. I was about to hang up when he spoke suddenly.

“You can do whatever you want,” Oliver said, “but I’m not coming back.”

I kicked an empty flowerpot with my snow boot. “I’m not
asking you to come back.”

“Then why’d you call?”

It was my turn to go silent. The words dropped out of my grasp like an armful of library books. Why
had
I called? Why had I gone to the forest and the curiosity museum? Why had I done any of the things I had done that strange, cold day?

“I just thought you would want to know,” I stammered, and hung up the phone.

THE ORCHID HOUSE WAS A KNOT
of silence in the middle of a silent garden. It glittered like a broken Christmas ornament in the snow.

I walked across the frozen grass toward the rose garden, not really sure what I was doing. It was getting dark; time to go home. Time to figure out the next thing to do. I pulled my coat around me tight and stuffed my hands deep in the pockets to warm them up. I wished I hadn’t told Oliver. I didn’t even know why I had. I guess I thought you were supposed to, but maybe that was an idea from a TV show.

As I walked around the garden, I pretended I was an explorer on an alien planet. The rosebushes were black and frostbitten, spiky, thorny things in cold beds of dirt. The wedding gazebo
was a docking pad for a flying saucer. I came to the duck pond and threw a rock at the ice. It didn’t shatter; it didn’t even make a dent.

I was acting all wrong. Like a mental patient, or a little kid. Maybe I lacked some kind of basic human instinct. Maybe I’d inherited that from him.

I stuffed some snow in my mouth to numb the thought.

“Annabeth,” called a voice from across the pond.

I looked up and saw a fat man with a dog. The dog was snuffling at the snow, digging up a long-lost waffle cone someone had dropped there at the end of summer. The man waved a mittened hand and came lumbering toward me, the dog tugging at its leash behind him. Close up, I recognized him as the nutritionist.

“Hey, Bob,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“Just walking String Bean. What about you?”

“Just thinking about stuff,” I said.

He had earbuds dangling out the collar of his coat. In the quiet of the garden, I could hear the tinny voice talking out of them.
Kingdom of Stones
.

“My grandmother used to say if you eat snow, you’ll freeze your insides,” said the nutritionist. He looked jolly in the snow, with his dog at his feet. Fresher and happier. Maybe “jolly” is an insulting way of putting it, but I mean it in the best possible way.

“My grandma thinks the chemicals in snow give you cancer,” I said.

“I certainly hope not,” said Bob. String Bean tugged at his leash. I reached down and petted him. “So, how are things going?” said Bob.

“Good.”

“Enjoying gymnastics?”

“Sort of. I mostly signed up for my friend.”

“I talked to the cafeteria manager about serving more vegetarian food.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I’m supposed to give them a list of meal requests. If you want to drop by sometime and help me come up with some ideas, it would be a big help. Otherwise it’s going to be rice and beans. And snow for dessert.”

“Okay,” I said.

String Bean barked at a bird. The narrator of
Kingdom of Stones
was talking about a pond in which Rae the Stone Maiden had been frozen by a wizard.

“You probably don’t want to miss this part,” I said, gesturing at Bob’s earbuds. “I need to get going anyway.”

Bob nodded and wrapped String Bean’s leash around his hand. “Nice to run into you, Annabeth.”

“See ya later, Bob.”

I felt lighter walking back to my car and I didn’t know why. Maybe I just needed someone to remind me that in a few days, once this was taken care of, life was going to go on as normal. There was going to be cafeteria food and Noe’s half-annoying, half-lovable chatter during gymnastics practice. I wasn’t a freak or a monster, just a kid who wasn’t careful enough. I certainly wasn’t any worse than Oliver.

I got into the cold car and turned the heat all the way up.

In the TV show, the girl in trouble parks by the waterfall and calls her best friend.

I left my phone on the seat and walked to the damp iron railing alone.

Birds were swooping back and forth in front of the colored floodlights they shine on the waterfall at night. I watched them soar and circle, their wings stained pink and green by the light.

I stayed until my hands were frozen and my eyelashes wet with snow. Until I could feel the waterfall inside my skull, and the rocks it crashed against, and there was nothing left to do but go back home.

IF YOU COME TO MY TOWN
in the winter, you will inevitably end up at the waterfall at night. You will watch those same birds swooping. Maybe you will stare at the water that rushes over the edge and hear the roaring gushing and feel the chill of mist on your skin.

Maybe you will feel, for the first or the thousandth time, how many things in the world are bigger than you.

WHEN MOM CAME HOME FROM WORK,
she buzzed around the house, all
I can’t believe my baby is going to Maple Bay for three days
. You would think I was going on a mission to Mars in the morning, the way she beamed and babbled.

We made dinner together, and Mom helped me pack sweaters, jeans, a scarf, a hat, and presents for Ava and Pauline.

“You’re going to have so much fun with Ava. She’s changed so much since she went away. Maybe she can give you some advice about which classes to take.”

She plucked a pair of socks out of my dresser and stuffed it cheerfully into my bag.

I almost told her then, but I didn’t.

WHEN MOM WENT TO BED, I
walked to the end of our block and called Ava.

It was snowing. Flakes landed on my nose while I waited for her to pick up.

She owed me a favor, I thought to myself.
If it came down to it, I could blackmail her into taking me. If Mom or Nan or Uncle Dylan found out that Ava had told me about my dad, they would never forgive her, even though she was crazy when she did it. Even though the first thing she did when she stopped being crazy was write me a letter apologizing, a letter I still had buried in my dresser drawer.

The phone rang and rang.
Nine weeks
, I thought to myself. The internet said nine weeks was an okay time to do it. At least I wasn’t too late. At least I wasn’t in denial for months, like Mom was, or paralyzed by distress. At least I had Ava to call, and money from my ice-cream job, and a bus ticket to a town far away. I was better off than a lot of people. There were so many ways it could have been worse.

In case of emergency
, says Wilda McClure in
How to Survive in the Woods, enumerate your advantages
.

I stood in the snow and enumerated, and on the eighth ring Ava picked up the phone.

“HEY, LADY,” SHE SAID.

I swallowed hard. “Hey,” I said.

“Are you still coming tomorrow?”

Her voice was cheerful. It was hard to get used to the new Ava. Sometimes the change still startled me.
I went through a real shitty time in high school and I’m sorry I inflicted that shittiness on you
, she’d written in her letter.
I think in some ways I was jealous because everyone loved you so much, and I felt like I came second to you and Max. I’m sorry about your dad and sorry you had to find out in such a horrible way. If you ever want to talk about it, I’m here, even though I understand if you don’t like me very much anymore.

I shivered. The truth was, I never wanted to talk about it. Not with Mom, not with Ava, not with anyone. It was too disgusting. It made my skin creep. And even though Ava had taken back some of the terrible things she had said, in my worst moments I still felt like an interloper.

Ava was waiting for me to answer.

My voice trembled. “Yeah.”

Snowflakes were falling around me in dense flurries. The houses on the street were quiet and dark.

“What’s wrong?” Ava said.

I didn’t answer.

“Annabeth,” she said more sternly, “what’s wrong?”

“I need a favor,” I said.

THE NEXT DAY, MOM DROVE ME
to the Greyhound station to catch the bus to Maple Bay. It had snowed all night, and the fire hydrants wore fat white hats. Parked cars had sheets of snow draped over their windshields. They looked like hospital patients.

“Did you remember your toothbrush?” Mom said. She acted happy on the drive, but I could tell she was as nervous as I was. She hugged me and I tensed involuntarily, afraid she would detect my still-undetectable condition through both our snow coats.

“Give Pauline a hug for me,” said Mom. “Ava too.”

“I will.”

She gave me a twenty-dollar bill for no apparent reason and kissed me on the cheek. “Love you, Annabean. Have fun up there.”

“Love you too.”

THE BUS RIDE TO MAPLE BAY
had a million stops. Every bus station had the same crumbly look as all the others, a concrete lip where people waited with their overstuffed bags, dirty yellow lights. Every highway exit had the same fast-food restaurants and gas stations. I slumped against the window and tried to pick out a tree or plant, some green thing my heart could curl its tendrils around and try to befriend. Why had we done this? I thought to myself. If nobody loved it, why? It was insane to build places that nobody loved. It was insane to cover all that was green and tender with parking lots and garbage bins.

I wondered if anyone else felt that way, or if I was just a freak. As the bus huffed and belched and pulled back onto the
highway, a loneliness overcame me that was worse than anything I’d felt all year.

Midway through the morning, Noe texted me.

are you still mad at me?

i didn’t realize you thought i was promising to go with you.

i thought we were just talking and having fun.

It was so like Noe to wait until a time when we wouldn’t see each other for several days to start a dialogue like this.

i don’t know
, I texted back.

it was the way you came back from the gym expo

and didn’t even bother to talk to me

like i should just adapt to your plans

A few seconds later, a string of texts from Noe came back.

i don’t want you to adapt to my plans

you should always do what you want, k?

you’re so incredible and smart

you don’t need me to tell you what to do

I stared at my phone. I didn’t have the energy to contradict her or call out all the truths she wasn’t acknowledging. It was easier to snuggle into the familiar ritual of flattery and reconciliation; easier to be lovable Annabeth, pliant and understanding, than to let out a more disruptive version of myself. I thought of the sunny afternoon when I told her about Oliver, and tears pricked at my eyes.

i know
, I typed back.

i just got scared

i don’t want to lose you

you won’t lose me

we’ll visit all the time

i’ll come stay in your dorm room

and you’ll come home on breaks

: )

steven says you’re fascinating, btw

we talked about you for like an hour

aww

he was all, “she’s an undercover badass!”

and i was like, “i know!”

you guys are the best

oh

bus is stopping

have to pee

talk soon

talk soon

In a McDonald’s bathroom noisy with flushing toilets and keening hand dryers, I splashed cold water on my face, shook out my stale ponytail, finger-combed my hair. Beside me, enterprising women were brushing their teeth, putting on lipstick, taking swipes at their armpits with deodorant sticks.

“You done with the sink?” a woman said, elbowing in beside me and planting her enormous purse on the water-spotted countertop.

“Yeah, sorry,” I stuttered. I wished I could feel as confident
as her. Swing my purse around. Take out a can of perfume and spray it at myself with such gusto that anyone in a six-foot blast radius must duck or be scented with Eau de Sex Sugar.

I trudged back to the empty bus, climbed on, and rummaged in the overhead bin for
How to Survive
. The seats with their detritus of squashed sweaters and half-drunk soda bottles looked like the little shrines people make at gravestones; plastic flowers gone crooked and leaky from wind and rain.

Our next rest stop had a mini grocery. I circled around the aisles, picking things up, inspecting them, and mentally disqualifying them. Everything was too expensive: two dollars for a flimsy little Oats ’n Honey bar that wouldn’t fill me up, a dollar twenty-five for a waxy, red, poisonous-looking apple, three dollars for something called a Yogurt Parfait, which was a plastic cup with white stuff at the bottom, then purplish jelly, then some oaty stuff that was supposed to be granola but surely couldn’t be. I could hear Noe’s voice inside my head, reading the ingredients lists out loud.
Gelatin, delicious. Chocolate milk? You might as well drink a cup of corn syrup.

I circled for ten minutes, deliberating, half swooning under the too-bright fluorescent lights. All around me, people were grabbing things off the racks and buying them, filling paper cups with soft drinks from the machines against one wall, retrieving sunburned-looking hot dogs from the heated glass display case on the counter. I had that terrible feeling like in
musical chairs, when the music stops and everyone else has gone for their chair and you run around the circle in a panic and you
just can’t find one
.

Finally I spied some discount cinnamon rolls, on special two for ninety-nine cents.

Two cinnamon rolls for ninety-nine cents. It sounded pretty Special to me. It wouldn’t pass the Noe test, but I was getting desperate. I took them back to the bus and ate them one after the other, unpeeling the sticky spirals until I got to the nutty place at the middle. When I was finished my hands were covered in sugar goo. I crumpled up the plastic wrap they had come in and tucked it into the seat pocket in front of me. The bus rumbled and bounced over the highway. A few minutes later I was not feeling good.

“Excuse me,” I said to the woman sitting next to me. “I have to get out.”

She grunted and moved her legs grudgingly. I clambered over them and staggered down the aisle to the very back of the bus, where there was a tiny bathroom. Before the flimsy door shut behind me, two very Special cinnamon buns had curdled into poison inside me.

I am a skinny person. There is not room in my stomach for so much burning slop. But still it came surging up my throat,
retch retch retch
, until I was dizzy, seeing spots, and had to grab at the grubby stall walls for balance.

I rinsed my mouth at the dirty sink. I was pretty sure the whole bus had heard me heaving. Back in my row, the woman who was sitting next to me had changed seats—so much the better.

I sat down carefully and took a sip of water from the bottle Mom had made me bring. I felt so nauseous from the shuddering and the cinnamon buns and from the thought, urgent and terrifying, that things at the clinic would not work out (the river would rise! the horse would stumble! a log would fall across the road!) and I would be stuck with a drooling, screaming Oliver-baby I did not want and could not love. I stuck my earbuds into my ears and played
The Velvet Underground
, but I kept thinking about everything that could go wrong.

I must have looked like I was crying or something. An old woman bundled up in a bright pink snowsuit moved herself across the aisle to sit beside me.

“Where are you headed, honey?”

I grappled with the earbuds, collected myself, and smiled at her. “Maple Bay.”

“Is that home?”

I shook my head. “I’m supposed to go on a tour of Northern University.”

“You look too young to be going to university.”

“I’m seventeen.”

“Where’s home for you?”

I named my town.

“Oh, I love it there. The Botanical Gardens.”

The old lady had violet eye shadow and violet nail polish to match. I imagined her house. It would have an upright piano and a basket full of magazines and a mischievous poodle that barked at the mailman.

“You’ve been to the Gardens?” I said. “I work at the ice-cream shop in the summer.”

“You do?” she said. “How lovely.”

The bus rolled over a pothole. I felt my throat rise, and made a grab for the paper barf bag in the seat pocket. The old lady patted my shoulder sympathetically.

“Was that you throwing up in the bathroom?” she said.

I cringed. “Sorry,” I said. “I know it’s gross.”

“Would you like a ginger pill? I get sick on buses too.”

She dug a small bottle out of her purse and held it out to me. I shook my head. “It won’t help.”

“It’s good for all kinds of motion sickness.”

“It’s not that kind of sickness,” I said. “It’ll be over soon.”

I don’t know why I said it like that, so obvious. I guess I was hoping the old lady would turn out to be a magic spirit friend who would give me wise advice and send me off with a talisman, an eagle feather or a mantra to repeat in my darkest hour.
Everyone deserves a second chance, honey cakes. Be strong.

Rumble rumble rumble
, went the bus. The old lady dug in
her purse again and pulled out a religious tract. In a high, quavering voice she began to read out loud.

“Lord, drive out the forces of Satan—”

I popped up from my seat, grabbed my backpack, and fled to the back of the bus.

“Was that old lady reading Scripture at you?” said the heavily mascaraed twentysomething girl I wedged myself next to. She was wearing a ripped black T-shirt and had a backpack shaped like a teddy bear.

I nodded.

She popped her gum. “Crazy bitch.”