Anything but Ordinary (21 page)

ryce was painting by numbers with her mother. Well, her mother wasn’t painting by numbers; she was painting freehand from a photo of a Swedish winter landscape she found in
National Geographic
. She swirled blue and white to make an icy gray, and used tinges of purple for the shadows. That’s why her mother was so good with color, Bryce knew. She remembered her trying to get Sydney and Bryce to paint pictures when they were kids. But Sydney was more interested in perfecting her version of “America, the Beautiful,” and all Bryce wanted to do was run around catching bugs.

Bryce had spotted an art supplies store in a little nook near the Vanderbilt campus, and asked Carter to stop the car for a second. She had no idea where to begin buying paints, so she chose the most colorful box. And then, thinking about how angry she got when she wasn’t good at things like art, Bryce threw in a couple of paint-by-numbers kits to boot.

Her mother had gotten home from an appointment to find tempera paints, paper, and Bryce at the dining room table, filling in a picture of a basket of kittens.

“Want to join me?” Bryce had asked.

Her mother had burst into nervous laughter. “I haven’t painted in…God knows…” But she picked up a paintbrush lovingly.

“At least you’re good at keeping inside the lines,” her mother joked later, leaning over from her Swedish mountains.

“Yeah, if you want a lesson from me in kittens, just ask,” Bryce said with a smirk.

Her mom chuckled.

Bryce glanced at the
National Geographic
photo again. Pure white snow coated a tall, imposing mountain range. The Alps. Gabby and Greg had seen them in person.

Gabby.

With a last flourish on one of the kitten tails, Bryce whipped out her phone. She would see her friend one more time, she hoped. Bryce dug her teeth into her lip and typed,
Coffee?

It took a little while, but finally, the answer was yes.

Bryce was glad the café had a wall full of windows. It was a shame not to be outdoors on such a beautiful autumn day. Having only a thin pane between her and the orange leaves and cool breeze was the next best thing. Bryce had arrived early to get some iced tea and a scone, and to read. Thanks to Carter’s extended study hours, she was now halfway through
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
But she was having a hard time keeping her heart with Huck and the circus this morning.

People rushed in and out of the café, grabbing coffee and loading themselves into cars strapped with canoes and inner tubes. It was a beautiful Saturday, and everyone was scrambling to soak up the air they’d missed, holed up in their cubicles.

The door chimed. Bryce sat up in her chair. Gabby stepped inside. She had cut her hair, and her brown eyes looked brighter now, her cheekbones sharper, without a dark curtain or a winding braid. She looked around.

“Over here,” Bryce called from the window. She shoved away the little shivers of nervousness she felt when she saw her friend. There wasn’t enough time left to be scared or worried. Gabby would forgive her, or she wouldn’t, but either way, Bryce would tell her how she felt. She could at least do that.

When Gabby spotted Bryce, her lips turned up in a smile. She wore a cardigan over her long linen tank, and jeans paired with ballet flats. When she slipped into the seat across from Bryce, she looked happy. Her face was full. Her cheeks had color.

Gabby set her hands in front of her, folded. She looked at Bryce, waiting.

“You look great,” Bryce said, putting her own hands around her glass of iced tea, glancing at the crescent lemon that drifted around the edges. “I like your hair.”

“Thank you,” Gabby said.

Bryce took a breath. “I called you here because I wanted you to know that I’m so sorry. The sorriest I’ve ever been in my whole life,” Bryce added slowly. “I also wanted to say you were right about me being confused. I know it’s no excuse, but…I was so confused. I was mixed up about the past and the present.” Bryce stopped, staring into Gabby’s eyes, which seemed to be looking through her. She swallowed. “I should have just told you how I felt. About the whole thing. About how hard it was to see you two together. I know it was still so wrong. I’m sorry. I can’t say it enough.”

Gabby gave her a sad smile. “What’s done is done.”

Bryce began to respond, but Gabby held up a hand. Bryce stayed silent.

“I wasn’t marrying Greg to hurt you, but I did. I see that now. And I’m sorry about that, too.”

Bryce shook her head. “We both ended up getting hurt, I think.”

Gabby responded with a nod, her hands still folded. Neither of them said a word for a long time. Cars came and went. The door opened and shut. Bryce wondered if that was all. She wondered if Gabby would leave now. This could be the last time she ever saw Gabby. The girl whose laughter filled up even the largest room. The thought of ending things like this made Bryce squirm with pain.

“Can we…” Bryce finally spoke up. “Start over?”

Gabby’s head tilted. She thought for a moment, her eyes bright. Her hands flattened on the table. “I think so,” she said with a smile.

Bryce raised her eyebrows, breaking into disbelieving laughter. “Really?”

Gabby shrugged. “You know I can’t hold grudges.” She broke off a piece of Bryce’s scone and popped it into her mouth. “Besides, something tells me it wouldn’t have worked out anyway with Greg,” she said with a bitter smile. “Guess where our dear friend is now?”

“I don’t know,” Bryce said, leaning forward. He hadn’t contacted her.

“Me neither,” Gabby said, nodding at the look of surprise on Bryce’s face. “Right?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“He took his grandmother’s old van and all his camping stuff. He won’t answer anyone’s calls.”

Bryce rolled her eyes. He had dreamed of new inventions and trips to space and questions like whether colors could match up with sounds. Maybe he was better off sailing from one new landscape to another.

Gabby laughed and Bryce joined in. As her shoulders heaved, she fought to conceal the pain shooting through her chest. These days, Bryce got a little dose of pain every time she did anything besides sitting. She shrugged it off. Her heart was soaring.

“He wasn’t ready for either of us,” Gabby said thoughtfully, their laughter fading.

Bryce lifted her iced tea in agreement, then told Gabby about Carter and the “senior prom,” and her night out with Sydney, minus the vision and the blood.

Gabby said they could go out whenever she came back to visit, but she was leaving tomorrow for D.C.

“You’re going, then?” Bryce had allowed herself to hope that now that Gabby was back, she’d be there with her until the very end.

“I sure am,” Gabby answered. “I won’t be able to start until second semester, but this way I can get my bearings before I start school.”

“You’re going to live there all by yourself?”

Gabby looked at Bryce as if she should know the answer. “You told me I could do it! Don’t go back on me now.”

“Of course not,” Bryce pushed out. “I just wondered if things might have changed.…”

“Well.” Gabby paused, smiling to herself. “I don’t want to bring up the past again, but…sometimes when something bad happens in a place, you want to get away from it as soon as it happens. You know?”

“Yeah,” Bryce said, swallowing tears. No tears. Not today.

She hadn’t gotten to know the grown-up Gabby for long, but Bryce knew she’d do well up there. She had a way of winning people over, of making them feel good about themselves without even trying. She was smart enough that she’d move up in her class. She’d ace her exams, and then she’d meet someone at a function, and they’d give her a job on the spot because of the way she carried herself, like she already knew she’d been chosen for it.

She was the girl who could rock a tiara at a club and consume a three-hundred-page novel in a day. She was the girl who could lift herself out of the muck and forgive a betrayal from her closest friend, just like that.

Bryce wrapped her arms around Gabby and held her tight until she moved to go.

She held Bryce’s hands for a squeeze, and turned to the door. “See you soon, Bry! I’ll call you from D.C.”

The door chimed closed.

Bryce watched Gabby through the wall made of windows for the last time. Through the leaf-filled parking lot, into her black VW, seat belt on, checking her mirrors.

Maybe Bryce would see her again. Not in Nashville, Tennessee, but maybe.

Gabby reversed and pulled away.

Maybe somewhere else, Bryce thought.

ryce looked in the mirror. Her hair had grown to the middle of her back. It’s my twenty-third birthday. Weird. She tried it aloud.

“It’s my twenty-third birthday.”

Bryce had pledged not to think about her death a month ago, but she couldn’t help it. She thought about it today.

Well, there actually wasn’t much to think about. It hadn’t come, that was the main point. Four weeks had passed since the night Carter told her; then five weeks had passed. Now the month of September was long gone.

Bryce was still getting headaches and becoming short of breath, but she had trained herself to take everything slow. Nobody expected her to be fast anymore, anyway, so it was easy to lie low. She remembered to bring everything she needed from downstairs up the stairs in one trip. She took a lot of hot baths. Sydney had stopped going out every night once school started, so Bryce didn’t need to make any excuses for why she was staying in.

If not for the occasional look from Carter, she might have even forgotten that time was running out. With all the rest Bryce was getting, she had very little stress. Without stress, she had no visions.

She didn’t miss the burning pain, but she had to admit she missed the memories. She didn’t care about seeing the future, or whatever it was she saw. Five minutes from now, Bryce would be eating Carter’s birthday breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes and applewood-smoked bacon. That was her future.

“There’s the birthday girl!” Bryce’s mom greeted her.

Her dad was leaning over the counter, reading the paper. “Do you have comfortable clothes on?” Aside from a bear hug, that was his only birthday greeting.

“When do I not?” Bryce asked, confused. “Why do you ask?”

“You’ll see,” he said, rubbing his hands together.

“No no no…” Bryce heard from the stove. Carter was overseeing Sydney as she worked the bacon. “Don’t flip it. It doesn’t have the right crispiness. You can tell by the bubbles.”

“Just stick to your pancakes and let me do my job,” her sister muttered. “Oh, hey, Bryce.”

“Bryce!” Carter lit up, crossing the kitchen with batter stains on his shirt. He still refused to wear an apron, greeting her with a savoring hug and a kiss that said he hadn’t seen her in years. The same way he did every day.

“Sit, sit, sit.” Bryce’s mother ushered her to the table.

No one was allowing Bryce to do any work in the kitchen. But that meant they weren’t allowing her to sneak handfuls of chocolate chips, either.

Bryce looked over her shoulder to Sydney, who was avoiding crackles of bacon grease with her tongs in the air.

“Did you get the present I left on your bed?” Bryce called.

“You’re not supposed to get other people presents on your own birthday,” Sydney said, flipping a strip of bacon. “Only old people do that.”

Bryce took this to mean yes. While Carter studied at the Vanderbilt Library yesterday, Bryce had finished with Huck Finn and wandered over to the computers, searching until she found what she was looking for. Last night before Sydney got home, Bryce left a printout on her pillow.

SAVANNAH COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN—PRODUCTION. SOUND DESIGN. PERFORMING ARTS. MUSIC MANAGEMENT
.

Sydney gave her sister a one-sided smile over the stove. She’d consider it on her own time, but Bryce at least wanted her to know that when she got tired of the Nashville industrial district, there were options. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Moving her in the right direction. She knew what it was like to get caught up in your own little world.

Bryce’s thoughts were interrupted by scuffles and whispers. She started to turn around.

“Don’t!” a chorus of voices let out.

Bryce snickered and obediently stayed put.

She had given her parents a present, too, but she knew they wouldn’t accept it on what was supposed to be “her” day, so she just set it on the mantel. She wondered when they would notice the framed original of their prom picture, back out of storage, next to a framed print of the picture Bryce took of them. They had gotten the pose exactly identical. In love, then and now.

Two flicks of a lighter. A whispered, “One, two, three…”

“Happy birthday to you…” Her father’s deep, out-of-tune voice stuck out from the chorus of Sydney, her mom, and Carter singing to her.

Bryce turned around. Her mother held a tall stack of chocolate chip pancakes with two candles stuck in them. Bryce laughed and put her hands on her mouth. “Oh, yum!”

She could almost taste the melted chocolate. Everyone stood around her.

Bryce closed her eyes to make a wish, but she was coming up blank. She couldn’t think of anything. She squeezed her eyes tighter and gave a nervous smile, knowing they were waiting on her. But everything seemed to have fallen from the sky exactly how it should have, even the bad stuff. This is how it was, and she couldn’t imagine it any better.

Carter touched her shoulder. Bryce opened her eyes to the two bright flames. She enjoyed the sight of them flickering, bright and alive, and then she blew them out.

Soon the clatter of forks and knives joined the chatter of stuffed mouths, and everyone had to tell Carter to shut up when he started criticizing his own cooking.

“So.” Carter finally changed the subject, biting off a strip of bacon. “Jane’s expecting a visit sometime. They have a card for you in the neurology wing.”

“You told them it was my birthday?” Bryce looked at him accusingly.

He winked at her. “They have your paperwork, Bryce. They know your DOB.”

“Well played,” Sydney said, popping a bite of pancake into her mouth.

“Yeah.” Carter cleared his throat. “My dad and I…were there, and spoke to them yesterday.”

Bryce put down her fork. “Your dad?”

“Yes, where is this mysterious father and when do I get to ask him which sports teams he supports?” Bryce’s father asked between chews.

Bryce’s gaze was locked on Carter across the table. He hadn’t mentioned his dad visiting Sam. Was he happy about it? She couldn’t tell.

“Well,” Carter said, returning Bryce’s look with a small smile, “you may run into him over there if you’re back at the hospital sometime.”

“What made him do it?”

“I told him your story,” Carter said, his chin up. He looked around at her family. “And how the Grahams never left your side, and how they got a miracle.”

“We sure did.” Bryce’s mother leaned her head on Bryce’s shoulder. “We sure did.”

When Bryce pushed away her plate, her dad got up from his chair. “Are you ready?”

“I guess.” Bryce laughed.

Her mom handed her a sweater. They were going out back.

Carter discreetly helped Bryce down the stairs, his hand around her waist. As they passed through the basement doors, she shivered. It was an unusually cold October day.

“Ugh,” Sydney said as they walked, folding her arms over her chest, where the word
DUBSTEP
was printed in neon pink. “Why won’t winter stay away?”

They came to the barn. Maybe Bryce’s present was more power tools. Thanks to Bryce and her dad, and sometimes Carter, the barn was no longer just patched up, it was transformed.

Bryce’s dad bypassed the door, however, and they followed him toward the pasture.

As they came around the barn, Bryce’s eyes fell on a familiar-looking blue tarp. They had pulled the half-finished plane out of the barn when they started work, but Bryce hadn’t laid eyes on it since then. Her dad pulled the tarp away with a flourish, like a magician revealing a trick. “Ta-da!”

The old two-seater looked pristine, not a bolt out of place. It had been painted deep cherry red, facing a thin landing strip mowed through the dry grass.

“You finished it,” Bryce said in awe.

“I helped,” Sydney said proudly.

“I thought you were doing your homework,” Bryce teased, punching her sister on the arm. She smiled at the thought of her sister and her dad handing each other tools, laying out tape for the paint.

“That too.” Sydney rolled her eyes.

“Alrighty. Let’s do it,” Mike said, taking two pairs of aviator goggles out of his pockets. Everyone turned to Bryce. She watched her sister’s eyes land on the plane, and back to her.

“Sydney should go,” Bryce decided.

“Really?” her father asked.

“Yeah. Sydney gets first ride for her painting job. And her excellent secret-keeping.”

“I mean, I don’t have to.” Sydney fidgeted.

“No, come on, Syd,” Bryce urged. “You know you want to wear those goggles.”

“It’s true.” Sydney grinned and climbed into the plane with their father.

Bryce, her mother, and Carter all stood to the side of the landing strip as Sydney and her father took off. The little plane kicked up dust, sped down the runway, lifting up just yards before the tree line, heading due east as it started to soar. From the ground, they all began to cheer.

Bryce closed her eyes and thought of her father and sister. Through their eyes, she saw it: the hills where the grass was burned gold, the flaming red trees. She heard them whoop at the top of their lungs. And then, like a jewel nestled inside the valleys, she saw the twirling green of a river. The Cumberland? No. The Mississippi.

Through her closed eyes the colors of the landscape bended and looped through one another like ribbons. Whirling through the air, over, under, the water glistening bright. She could hear her father and Sydney shouting and laughing at each other. Bryce opened her eyes.

Finally the plane circled back around and landed, not exactly gracefully, but in one piece.

Bryce’s father hopped out first and then helped Sydney, whose hair was tousled from the wind, her cheeks flushed pink.

“Who’s next?” he said. “Beth?”

“I don’t know, I already did my hair,” Bryce’s mother said, patting it down. Bryce’s father knit his brow.

“Oh, I’m kidding!” she cried. She laughed and climbed in, repeating, “Oh, brother, oh, brother,” as she struggled to wiggle the goggles into place.

As he helped his wife into the tiny seat, Bryce’s father turned back to them with a wink. “See you kids back at the house. Your mom and I might be a while.”

Bryce’s mother blushed and gave a wave. “Ignore your father.”

Bryce and Sydney watched their plane take flight, soaring through the sky. She kept her face turned up, squinting whenever the sun broke through the thick clouds.

She heard her father’s laughter, her mother’s squeals, and caught her sister’s eyes, shining as she shivered in the chilly morning. Sydney tucked her arms into her T-shirt, and Bryce put a hand on her sister’s shoulder, rubbing it to warm her up. They were together. They were happy.

This was where she belonged.