The Leaving Season (9 page)

I closed my eyes and allowed myself to breathe in and out, to appreciate the beauty of the world that surrounded
me. I smiled, trying to picture myself from the outside: Meredith Daniels standing under a waterfall in a forest far from home, with no worries in her head, no cares at all? That was crazy.

We stood there for a little while longer—ten minutes or half an hour, I had no way of knowing—and finally, Lee led us back through the cave and to the side of the waterfall pool. I leaned back against a tree and glanced up at the falls. Had I really stood under all that water?

“How did you find this place?” I asked him after we'd taken a moment to relax and refresh with bottled water. “It's so far away from everything.”

“I got lost.” Lee tipped his head back and poured the last drops of water into his mouth. “I was about thirteen. Ran away one night.”

“You got lost? At night?” My mind raced, thinking of all the things that could have gone wrong for Lee. I shook my head from side to side. “It's so risky.”

Lee laughed as he crawled to the edge of the waterfall pool. “Some of the best things happen when I take a risk.” He splashed some water over his face and then flicked some at me with his fingers. “Haven't you ever done something completely new and different?” When I gestured to the waterfall, he added, “Aside from today.”

Risk was not part of my vocabulary. I panicked at the thought of being unprepared, of doing something wrong. “I don't like to do things I can't do,” I said, finally. I heard the
words and started laughing. “That sounds lame, doesn't it?”

Lee laughed. “Yeah, it does. Look, at some point, you don't know things. So you can't do them. And then you do them and then you know how.” He stopped and tilted his head to one side, as if he were thinking about what he'd just said too. “Whatever.”

“But what if I mess up?”

“You're gonna mess up the first time. Maybe even the second. Or third.”

I groaned. Loudly.

“So
what
? Who
cares
?” Lee plunged his reusable bottle into the pool and filled it with clear, cool water—and then poured it over his hair. “I live to fail!” He shook his head like he was Nate's dog Rocky shaking water off his fur after a dip in the creek. “Failing is all I've ever wanted to do.”

“You're kind of insane,” I said.

“Insane in a good way?”

“There is no good kind of insane.”

“Eh. Who cares what you think? You're just a dumb girl,” he said, teasing me.

I pretended to take offense. “You don't care what
I
think?”

“Nope. Don't give a shit.” Lee ran his fingers through his wet hair, combing it down and away from his face. Pearls of water dripped down the side of his nose and he wiped them off with his sleeve. “Why do you care so much what other people think, anyway? No one's perfect.”

Nate was perfect,
I thought. Lee caught my eye and his
smile slipped as he read my mind.

“Not even Nate,” he said. “I tried to get him out here once a couple years ago.” Lee rolled his water bottle in his hands; the rubber covering was torn in places and his fingernails picked at those spots that were coming apart.

“He didn't want to come?”

“I think he was doing something with you that day.”

“Oh. I'm sorry.”

Lee frowned at me. “What are you sorry for? You're always apologizing for shit that's not your fault. Nate could have come if he wanted. He didn't want to.”

“You could have asked him another time.”

“Nope.” Lee pressed his lips together into a line. This was obviously not up for discussion. I could tell by the set of his jaw and the firm way he held on to his water bottle that if you said no to Lee, you didn't get a second chance to say yes.

He flopped onto his back and stared up at the sky. The clouds were thin as wisps, translucent and slightly gray. I rolled onto my side and looked up too. “Why'd you run away?”

“Hmmm?”

“When you were thirteen, you said you ran away. . . . Why?” In the time I waited for Lee to respond, the clouds passed beyond the trees and the sky turned clear blue.

“I didn't like home,” he said simply.

“Why not?”

“Do you like your home?”

“Yes—”

“I don't like mine.” He laughed sharply then and turned his head to look at me; leaves of wet grass tangled in his eyelashes and he blinked a few times. “You know, I was only half-right about Nate not being perfect.”

I sat up. “What do you mean?”

“
He
wasn't, but his family is,” he said with a wistful sigh. “Even that old dog of his. A perfect family.” He brushed the grass out of his face and mock-frowned at me. “And don't tell me they're not.”

I smiled at Lee and shook my head. “Nope. They're perfect.”

He turned away and stared at the sky again. “I always wanted Nate's room,” he said. “When we were kids, he got these glow-in-the-dark stickers of stars and planets and his dad put them on the ceiling for him. I loved sleepovers at his house 'cause those stars were the coolest things ever.”

“Yeah, they were cool.”

Lee lifted an eyebrow my way. “You saw them?”

“Yeah, I saw them.”

“You know you can only see them in the dark. When the lights are off. And the door is closed.”

I giggled. “Yeah, I saw them.”

“Well, well, aren't you the tart?” he teased, but his gaze was sharply inquisitive.

I felt my cheeks grow warm and I knew I was blushing, but I wasn't about to divulge anything. Not to Lee. “I had a good time today,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Way to change the subject.”

“You can say you're welcome.”

“Give me your phone,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Come on, give it here.”

I was digging in my backpack even as I asked, “Why?”

“You gotta commemorate your first trip to the falls,” he said. He took my phone and tapped the screen a few times. “Get over here and lean in.”

“Why don't
you
sit up?”

“Because I have the phone. Now do it.”

“Please.”

“Please—now do it.”

I scooted down on the grass, laying next to him so my face would be in the picture with his. He held his arm out in front of us and yelled, “Cheese!”

We looked like idiots and I told him so.

“Speak for yourself. I look dashing.”

“And insane.”

“Dashing and insane. The best ones are.”

I teased him back. “Is that what your girlfriend thinks?”

“I hope so.” He laughed and it sounded like the cackle of a wild man.

I took my phone back from him and stared at the picture. Just behind our silly faces, I could make out a part of the waterfall. I tried to imagine Nate here, standing beneath the wall of water or hiking to the top. Would he have liked this place? Would he have been proud of me for
doing this, for trying something new?

At the end of the day, I made Lee drop me off at the community garden, where Abby had a huge list of chores for me. In spite of the hours I spent hiking, I felt refreshed, as if I'd just awoken from a long nap.

It was the waterfall. It must have been.

Later in the week, Emma knocked on my door, wrinkled notebook paper in hand, pen tucked behind her ear. “Middie, can you read my essay?”

Her story about Nate, I remembered, the one that would help her get her next badge from Brownies. While I read the paper, she wandered my bedroom, touching everything she saw: makeup on the vanity, books on my shelves, clothes in my closet. I allowed her free rein for just about everything, but when she got to my phone, I put the brakes on. “Nope. Not yours.”

She didn't turn the phone on, but she also didn't put it down. “It's not fair. Everyone else has one. Why can't I?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her pretend to chat on the phone, turning her head this way and that, admiring herself in the mirror. I tried not to laugh, but it was pretty cute.

Nate Bingham is my sister's boyfriend,
I read.
He is very smart and very tall and very good-looking
.

My breath hiccuped and Emma turned sharply to me. “Is it bad? Did I write it wrong?”

“Um . . . you used ‘very' three times.”

“Well, yeah, 'cause it's important. Very, very, very.”

“Uh-huh.” I kept my eyes on the page.
Nate is really, really helpful to other people, and he always gives me a present when he sees me.

“Um, Emma?”

“Hmmm?” She glanced in the mirror at me. “I probably didn't spell everything right. I get confused sometimes.”

“Um, were you confused about present tense and past tense?” I asked carefully.

Her expression was quizzical. “Huh?”

“You know what present tense is, right? ‘I am.' ‘She is.' ‘He is,'” I said, holding tightly to her essay.

“Oh yeah, I know that.”

“So . . .” How was I going to put this delicately? “You wrote ‘Nate is.' Instead of ‘Nate was.'” When she didn't react, I added, “You know Nate's not coming back, right?”

I half expected her to roll her eyes at me but instead she said, quietly, “I know what ‘dead' means.”

I tried not to look startled. “Okay . . . so why did you write it in the present tense?”

Emma tapped a finger at the side of her head; the nail, bitten and chewed to a nub, was covered in purple ink. “Because he's alive for me up here.”

“Emma!” Mom called up the stairs. “You left your science project down here.”

“My volcano!” Emma's mouth formed a little O and she dashed out of my room, dropping my phone on the bed almost as an afterthought. I turned back to her essay, almost afraid to read what she'd written, but it turned out to be a very sweet story about Nate showing her how to tie knots for—what else?—a Brownie badge. My sister had a one-track mind. No doubt that would change once she finally got a cell phone.

I kept reading, making mental notes about spelling and punctuation errors, but then I got to the last line and I gasped:
Nate was going to be a awesome doctor but he died and now I am inspired to be a doctor too.

Tears clouded my eyes as I stared at Emma's heart in my hands. I carefully placed her paper on my nightstand, right next to my computer. I tabbed open the application to Lewis & Clark. The
incomplete
application.

Tell us about an experience that defines who you are.

Emma had done that. She had told the story of Nate's importance in her life; his death not only inspired her, it defined her. My nine-going-on-thirty-year-old sister. Part
of me wondered if I could crib it for my own essay—without the knot-tying lesson, of course.

I picked up the pen Emma had left behind and tapped it against the screen as I tried a few sentences in my mind.

The death of Nate Bingham had a tremendous influence on my small town of Roseburg.
I shook that one away. It was too cold, too impersonal.

Nate Bingham was beloved in my small town. He had friends in every part of the community, in the high school, and . . .
Ugh. Boring.

Nate Bingham was the love of my life and his death crushed my world.

No!
I shoved the thought out of my brain as fast as I could. I couldn't write that. I couldn't. Although true, it was
too
intimate, too revealing. The pen in my hand trembled and I felt a wave of panic grip my chest as I thought about Nate.

Unlike my sister, I didn't find inspiration in his death. I found terror and sorrow and abandonment. How could I write about an experience that defined me when I had no idea who I was? I half wished I
could
use my sister's story. It would be so easy to say,
This is who I am now; this is who I will be.
But I didn't know.

Was I the girlfriend Nate left behind? Was I the sister Emma and Allison wanted me to be? Was I the daughter my parents expected? As I'd told Lee, I was no risk-taker. I was neither adventurous nor spontaneous, two qualities he
insisted Nate had possessed, which made me wonder: Had I been keeping Nate from doing things he wanted to do?

I reached for my cell and tapped the screen until I got Lee's number. He answered on the first ring. “Yo. 'Sup?”

“What else didn't Nate do with you?”

“Huh?”

“He didn't climb the waterfall because of me.”

“Well, no, he was busy—”

“What else didn't he do?”

There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. “I dunno. Stuff. Why?”

“I want to do it.” I stood and walked to the window and stared up at the sky. No stars tonight, just a half-moon covered in clouds. “Stuff you wanted to do with him.” I paced the small bedroom; where before it had been cozy, now it felt cluttered. I wanted to get out and do things. I wanted to be inspired. “I want to try things I've never tried before,” I told Lee. “I can be spontaneous too.”

“Telling me you're spontaneous is not being spontaneous.”

“You know what I mean!”

“Calm down, Yoko, I get it.”

“And stop calling me that. I don't want to be Yoko anymore.” I stopped, took a breath. “Look, you'll think of something, won't you?”

“Yeah, yeah, I'll think of something.” He ended the call abruptly and I fell onto my bed, feeling suddenly wiped out.

A moment later, my phone buzzed with a text from Lee:
tomorrow tree fort

“Tree fort? What the . . . ?”

And then another:
make sandwiches

I started to text him back when a third came in:
I like pbj

What do you do in a tree house? At night? In the rain?

“You brought the sandwiches, right?” Lee asked me when I'd climbed to the top of the tree in our neighbor's yard. The fort had been forgotten when the last son went to college, but it was still (mostly) intact. Hidden away by thick foliage that had grown over the wooden supports, the fort's floor was sturdy and sound, but there were some holes in its roof.

Which we didn't realize until the first drops of rain fell.

I passed him a sandwich wrapped in Saran even as I searched my backpack for something to put over my head. “What's wrong?” he asked when he caught a look of concern on my face. “You live in Oregon, for god's sake.” He scooted to the open door and dangled his legs over the side, like a kid sitting on a too-tall chair. The ground was fifty feet down, but because everything was overgrown, I could hardly see the grass below. If either of us fell, we would disappear into the leaves as if we were diving through the surface of a pond.

“You gonna melt in the rain?” Lee crumpled over.
“I'm melting, melting. . . .”
He whined like the green-skinned Wicked Witch.

“No, but I'm usually inside at night.”

“Well, that's your first mistake right there.” Lee unwrapped the sandwich and inspected it. “What kind of jelly is this?”

“Strawberry jam.”

He sneered. “You couldn't use grape like a normal human being?”

“I
made
this jam. Well, Emma and I made it. She had a Brownie project.”

Lee's eyes lit up. “Ooh! Did you bring brownies?”

“No,” I said with a smile.

He shook his head as he licked some of the jam that squished through the slices of whole-grain bread. “Not bad for an amateur.” He swallowed the whole thing in about four bites. “Got any water?”

I rummaged around in my backpack. “Somewhere . . .”

“Never mind.” Leaning his head out the door of the fort, he stuck out his tongue to catch rain in his mouth. He was nearly off the edge, holding on to nothing and in danger of sliding off and down. Way down.

I grabbed hold of his elbows and pulled him in. He toppled backward and collapsed onto my feet, his face grinning up at me, inches from mine. “What the hell, Middie?”

I let him drop him on the floor. “Acid rain,” I teased.

“Ha! Good one!” he said, pointing a finger at me as he sat up again. “You're thinking of my health, and that's funny.”

I had to duck a little as I investigated the tree fort, seeing
as how it was originally built to accommodate young boys. It was pretty bare bones as far as “man caves” go. Shaky Wi-Fi signal. No electricity, of course. And that hole? Directly in the center of the fort. Each time I passed under it, I got a shower of water on my hair.

“Hey, what is that?” I heard Lee ask. When I glanced over at him, I saw him jut his chin in the direction of a child-size table, a relic from the boys' youth. “Underneath. There's a stack of something.”

I lifted the small table up, uncovering a hidden pile of comic books. I picked up a handful of them and fanned them toward Lee. “Spider-Man. Superman. Richie Rich?”

Lee clapped his hands. “Yes! Bring 'em here!” He was next to the open door again but this time kept his feet inside. He saw me hesitate and then sighed. “There is
no
light over there. How can we read them?”

“We're reading them?”

“What else do you do in a tree fort? You eat sandwiches and read comics.”

Lee took the stack from me as I sat down and then, with a wicked grin, held up a copy of
Playboy
. “I know what I'm reading tonight.”

Oh yes, I blushed—fifty shades of red. “Lee!”

“It was between Superman and Spider-Man.” He held up the other comic books to show me. “Boys will be boys. You want me to read you one of the fascinating and informative articles?”

“Uh, no. Just keep it to yourself.” I quickly looked away.

“Have you never seen porn before?” He sounded incredulous.

“I have two sisters. When would I see
Playboy
?”

“Well, there's Nate.”

“Nate did not look at porn.”

Lee threw back his head and laughed so loud and long that I was afraid we'd be caught by the neighbor who owned this tree. “Oh yeah, right. Nate didn't look at porn.” He paged through the magazine, his eyes lingering on every photograph. “Trust me, every guy looks at porn.”

I refused to let him get to me, so I picked up a Superman comic and thumbed through it. I had to shift closer to Lee in order to share the beam of moonlight coming through the open door of the tree fort, but I avoided the magazine in his hands. “Nate didn't. And if he did, I don't need to know that.”

“Aw, come on. Naked bodies are beautiful.” I squirmed like a kid; I couldn't help it—and Lee reveled in my discomfort, ostentatiously flipping the pages of the glossy magazine and making little moaning sounds. “Oh yeah, that's nice,” he said to the airbrushed models. “Very,
very
nice.” He opened the centerfold and turned the magazine sideways. “Now, those can't be real, can they?” He leaned next to me and thrust the centerfold in my face. “What do you think? Real or fake?”

I shut my eyes. “Stop it!”

“What do you think, honestly? I want a woman's opinion.”

I felt a smile on my lips. In spite of myself, Lee could make me laugh. “I have no opinion. I don't know.”

“They're awfully . . . full?” he went on. “Kind of puffy, which makes them look really weird.” He tsked. “I don't know. Why would a pretty girl do that? The bigger the better, I suppose some guys like that. Not me. I like the au naturel look. No enhancements needed. If they're flat, they're flat, you know?”

“Oh my god, Lee, stop talking about breasts!” My hand flew to my mouth, covering my giggles.

Lee feigned shock. “Breasts? How crass of you, Meredith. I'm talking about her lips. It looks like she's had collagen injections.”

I tore the magazine from his hands and was about to fling it away when I stopped and looked at the model. She did have puffy lips, it was true, and they didn't look natural. “You're right,” I conceded. “They do look enhanced.”

Lee held up his hands. “See? That's all I was talking about.” Then he narrowed his gaze. “Now what about her breasts—”

“Lee! Stop!” This time I did toss aside the magazine. It landed back underneath the tiny table.

“Shhh!” He placed a finger to his lips. “Do you want to get us kicked out?” He rolled back on his butt, doing awkward somersaults until he landed in a corner of the tree fort. Only two of the corners were dry. He sat in one and I took
the other. The distance between us was about eight feet; if we each stretched our legs in front of us, our toes would touch. I pulled my knees up to my chest and listened to the rain falling lightly on the leaves. According to my phone, it was nearly midnight. I'd managed to sneak out the back staircase near my room just after my parents went to bed.

“First night in a tree fort?” Lee asked quietly. When I nodded yes, he glanced around him, up at the ceiling, at the walls and door. My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I could see a smile tease out dimples in his cheeks. I'd never noticed them before. “Not so bad, huh?”

“A little cold, but yeah, not bad.” I hugged my legs tighter and rested my chin between my knees. I felt my eyes begin to close but each time I shivered, I woke up again. At least the rain had stopped.