After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away (17 page)

Instead I hear my voice, mumbling and sullen, saying, “I don’t know. I don’t know why I took it.” My nose is running, I’m wiping it with the edge of my hand the way my eight-year-old cousin Mikey is scolded for doing.

“‘Don’t know,’ Jenna? What do you mean?”

I mean what I said! I don’t know.

My poor uncle is staring at me blank faced. It’s funny how you never really look at some people, especially older relatives. To be somebody’s uncle must be, like, the biggest bore, even worse than being somebody’s aunt.
You aren’t really my uncle,
I’m thinking.
It’s just Aunt Caroline who is my aunt.

If I’d known what was waiting for me in this house, I would’ve stayed away. Could not have faced them. So ashamed, they found Dr. Freer’s paperweight in my desk! (I wasn’t trying very hard to hide it. Every night I’ve taken it out to hold in my hand. It’s been several weeks now, I’d begun to think Dr. Freer would not notice it was gone.) It makes me angry to think of Aunt Caroline going into my room and poking in my things. Not just my desk but my bureau drawers, my closet. I have a journal I write in sometimes, but it’s always in my backpack, and my backpack is always with me, so she couldn’t look in that.

I guess Mom looked in my room sometimes. I guess most mothers do. If you want to have secrets, you can’t keep them anywhere in the house because the bottom line is
the house is not yours it is theirs.

The bottom line is even if you love your mom (or your aunt),
you can’t trust them
.

For sure, the McCartys think that they can’t trust me now. (They can’t.) They think I’m emotionally unstable. (I am!) Probably I have a cache of drugs hidden somewhere in my room. (Wish I did! But I’m too smart to keep drugs in my room.)

All this while my uncle is saying how Dr. Freer telephoned my aunt, told her that she suspected me since the paperweight was missing after my hour with her, but she’d decided to wait until my next appointment, thinking that I might return the paperweight, but I’ve been canceling my appointments. And so…

“Dr. Freer is disappointed, Jenna. But not angry. She has asked Caroline to come with you to your next appointment with her, when you can return the paperweight and explain…”

What? What’s Uncle Dwight saying?

“…in fact Dr. Freer thinks your action might be a major breakthrough, since prior to this, you’ve been severely repressed and uncommunicative….”

The blood in my ears is pounding harder. I’m sitting with my arms folded tight, clutching at my sides.
Go to hell! All of you!
In another room a TV is playing. Mikey’s after-school cartoons. I wonder if when I see Aunt Caroline, she will smile sadly at me and wait for me to apologize, and if I do, she will hug me and cry over me.

Let them love you in my place. Please, Jenna.

“I’m not going back to Dr. Freer. Nobody can make me.”

“Jenna! How can you—”

“I’m not!
I am not.
”

Suddenly it’s like we’re trapped together. Or we’ve fallen into the water together, flailing against each other and struggling not to drown. Uncle Dwight is scolding me, and I’m saying okay then, send me away, and he says of course no one is going to send me away, and I say, “But you don’t want me, do you? Why would you want me?” and Uncle Dwight says, “Of course we want you, Jenna, we love you,” and I’m laughing to hear this—
love! we love you!
—for why would anybody love me if they knew me? I’m on my feet, and Uncle Dwight is on his feet, and our voices are raised, and there’s a look on Uncle Dwight’s face like he’s wary and guarded and frightened of me, for what if I begin to scream, I’m so impulsive and emotional, so unstable, can’t be trusted. I’m saying in this really nasty voice that’s a copy of Trina’s voice when she spoke to her mother, “You aren’t really my uncle; it’s just Aunt Caroline who is my aunt,” and quickly he says, “That’s ridiculous, Jenna, of course I’m your uncle, you are my niece, I’ve known you for most of your life,” and this is a surprise to me, that Uncle Dwight would say such a thing, and I realize that it’s true: This man has known me most of my life, and I’ve hardly given him a thought and could not say the color of his eyes or guess his age. And I say, “I don’t want you to love me! If you knew me, you wouldn’t love me! I steal things, and I do worse things,
you and Aunt Caroline don’t know
.”

Uncle Dwight stares at me—I’m so like Trina quivering with some kind of weird rage. I’m clumsy, colliding with a chair that I almost knock over when I turn to run out of the room.

10

Won’t. Can’t make me.

Don’t love me—I don’t love you.

The blue sky I wanted.

Send me away then.

(Where?)

11

It’s the day after my uncle and the glass paperweight. It’s the day after my aunt tried to speak with me, but I shunned her and ran to my room. It’s the day after the night I decided I could not run away because maybe I did love them, maybe they loved me. Somehow Crow would know this. Crow would say, Chérie!
Take care, it’s a big step to the street
. I’ve been watching for Crow from inside school. From my hidden place. Even if Crow glanced in my direction when he left the building alone, headed for his motorcycle parked in its usual place against the rear chain-link fence, even if he turned to stare toward me, sensing that someone is watching him, even then he wouldn’t see me because I am not visible.

“I wish.”

12

Here’s how it ends.

My aunt and my uncle say okay, I can return the paperweight to Dr. Freer by mail.

I tell them THANK YOU.

(I am sincere, not sarcastic.)

(I mean I am
truly
sincere, not sarcastic.)

In the kitchen, where Aunt Caroline can look on (if she wishes, I’m not trying to hide anything), I wrap the beautiful glass paperweight in tissue paper so it can’t crack. There’s a gift box Aunt Caroline has given me out of a closet. This also has tissue paper in it. Carefully I place the paperweight in the box. I ask Aunt Caroline if I can have three lemons out of the refrigerator, and Aunt Caroline is surprised but says, “Why, certainly, Jenna. I wasn’t planning on using lemons tonight.”

“Thank you, Aunt Caroline. I really appreciate it.”

By this time Becky and Mikey have joined me. So curious about what Jenna is doing!

The lemons are bright yellow, just the right size to fit in my hand. Somehow, you never look at lemons. (Who looks at lemons?) But these lemons are beautiful, I think. Crow would wonder what I was doing the way my aunt and my little cousins are wondering, but he wouldn’t judge me, the way he doesn’t judge his father.

From Crow I am learning (I am beginning to learn) it isn’t perfect people you love but people you know, you love.

It’s a long way to loving my dad, though. For sure.

Upstairs in my room I tried to write an apology to Dr. Freer, but it sounded so phony, I hated it. This is a better way, I think. On one of the lemons I print, with a red marker pen, “SHAME.” On another lemon I write, with a black marker pen, “SORRY.” On the third lemon I write, with a green marker pen, “DON’T KNOW WHY/ JENNA.”

These three lemons I place inside the box. More tissue paper; then I shut the box and wrap it in tinsel-colored paper (left over from Christmas, but you can’t tell, the paper hasn’t been torn or wrinkled), place it inside a larger, brown mailing box, and address it to “DR. MEGHAN T. FREER” at her office on Summit Street.

My little cousins are utterly mystified. Why lemons, why am I mailing lemons, who is Dr. Freer? Aunt Caroline shakes her head, says, “Why, Jenna! What a strange way of…” then changes her mind and says, “What a good idea, Jenna. Thank you.”

I mark the box “FIRST CLASS PRIORITY MAIL.” It will be expensive, but I’ll pay for the postage myself.

13

In April, this happens.

Early April there’s still snow. Broken slabs of bluish ice at the lake. Trina Holland is friends with me again—I guess—kind of hurtful, pinching my arm to make it bruise: “Baby, lookin’
good
.” Sure I’ve been anxious. Trina hasn’t called me much, so when she does, one night when I’m in my room doing homework, saying there’s these really cool older guys who want to hang out with us, at somebody’s grandparents’ lodge at Yarrow Lake, where they broke in, these are “fantastically cool” guys Trina has met through T-Man, “so, Jenna, come outside, and we’ll pick you up in, like ten minutes, is that cool?” quickly I say, “All right,” I hear myself say, “All right,” and Trina says, “Okay, baby, but know what? You can bring something, like, for the party, like I am,” and I don’t know what Trina means, Trina clicks off, so I can’t ask her. Then I’m laughing I’m so excited, unless I’m panicked, thinking,
I can’t
do this, can’t sneak out
except I’m thinking,
Maybe Crow will be there—Crow is an older guy.
I’m throwing on clothes, washing my face and slapping on makeup like Trina’s, makeup that comes in a tube, and lipstick, midnight plum, which is Trina’s totally cool/sexy lipstick that completely changes my face, because without makeup my face is washed-out and plain and I hate it, but with makeup I’m okay-looking, I guess.

Lookin’ good,
Trina says. That sharp look in Trina’s eyes meaning she likes me again, just barely.

I’m wearing jeans, boots, a cable-knit sweater over a T-shirt. My down-filled jacket with the hood.

Sneaking out of the house! I’ve sort of done this before, slipping out without telling anybody where I’m going, but during the day, not at almost eleven o’clock at night. A school night. Trying not to laugh, I’m so nervous. This is weeks after the thing with Dr. Freer, my aunt and my uncle trust me again or anyway act like they do, if they have doubts, they keep them secret from me. Nobody will see that I’m gone, I’ve shut the door to my room and the lights are out inside, nobody will knock on my door—they’ll be thinking I’ve gone to bed. Anyway, I think only Uncle Dwight is still up, watching TV news downstairs. On my way out the back door, I sneak into the dining room, where there’s a cabinet with wine bottles, liquor, mixes, so I reach inside, to the back row of bottles, where I figure whatever I take won’t be missed, and my fingers close on a heavy long-necked bottle, Smirnoff vodka.

“Trina, this is a mistake maybe…”

“Chill out. Nobody’s gonna babysit you.”

At first at the party Trina is edgy too, nobody’s paying much attention to us, even T-Man who’s hanging out with the guys from Lebanon. There’s Gil Rathke, who’s a big-muscled guy in his twenties with a shaved head and a wiry little beard, there’s Ross Skaggs, who is maybe older, a loud barking laugh and a gap in his lower teeth like one is missing, another guy people call Osk (like Oscar?) and of the guys, we know only T-Man and Jax Yardman, who are trying to act important. Of the girls, there’s only Dolores who we know, the others are older, like in their twenties, their names are Audra, Nancy, Lindy, Marcia, and they work at a hair salon in town, one of them’s a dental assistant, one works at the 7-Eleven out on Route 35, which was where, just a few hours ago, the guys met her, invited her to the lake to the party, except she has a two-year-old at home, wants to tell people about him in a guilty-drunken voice but the party is too loud, music too loud, it’s a German heavy metal rock band that’s like spikes through your head, nobody wants to listen to her, including me.

“Baby-Mousie, let’s
dance
.”

Mousie is a name the new guys are calling me. Like, nobody knows that I am Jenna. Trina has told them I’m seventeen, like her. Still, I look kind of young. The youngest at the party. This guy with a buzz cut and a look to his face like it’s been singed in a fire is asking am I “Mousie” all over or just where you can see, and I’m laughing too hard to answer, so Trina answers for me: “That’s for us to know and you to find out, see?” Trina is dancing with me, Trina is teasing how clumsy I am, dizzy-dazed though I have not been smoking weed like the others, only just drinking, one slow sip at a time from a plastic cup because I am worried about being so far from home. T-Man drove for miles to Yarrow Lake, not the usual way but back roads, this isn’t a part of Yarrow Lake known to me, not many houses close by and everything so dark. By moonlight you can see the lake, which is beginning to thaw in the daytime but at the shore there are sharp-looking slabs and layers of ice. This place we’re in, it’s freezing cold except where there’s space heaters turned on high and the wire coils are fiery red. The guys tried to start a fire in the big stone fireplace, but there’s mostly garbage in it, the kindling is wet, logs are wet, there isn’t much fire, only smoldering, and the chimney must be blocked so smoke is backing up into the room, so windows have to be opened, doors are opened, there’s a sound of glass breaking like somebody got impatient and broke out a window. Trina is handing me another “zombie cola,” which she says is basically vodka so okay for her and me both, in case somebody smells our breaths, like Trina’s mom, or my aunt and uncle, it won’t be detected like other drinks with a stronger smell. “And if, like, that happens, Baby-Mousie, you leave me out of it, okay?” Trina is twisting my wrist like she’s teasing, but actually it hurts. One of Gil Rathke’s friends with eyes like headlights and giving off heat like the fiery red coils wants to dance with both Trina and me at the same time, but my legs are too clumsy, so it’s just him and Trina careening around the room, shouting with laughter.

My head is so dizzy; I’m trying to stop the spinning by lying on a leather sofa pushed back against a wall and shutting my eyes. There’s a buzzing in my head like electricity. I’m beginning to worry I will be sick to my stomach, the zombie colas are so strong. If I am sick, Trina will be disgusted with me, and the guys will laugh at me, I will be so ashamed. A while ago one of the older girls, I think her name was Audra, pressed her hand against my forehead, saying I didn’t look so great and how old was I, who brought me here, but Trina told her, chill out, Mousie is cool.