The Probability of Miracles (21 page)

“It's lying.”

“You say tomayto, and I say tomahto,” Cam said.

Finally, he smiled. His front teeth overlapped just a tiny bit.

She reached up and slowly peeled the towel away from Asher's brow. “You might need some help bandaging that,” she said as she accidentally brushed her chest against his shoulder. “Looks like it's buried in your eyebrow, so you won't see a scar or anything. Sorry about that.”

“I'm sorry I startled you,” he said. Cam thought she noticed his gaze soften and his pupils dilate. But then she realized it was just a big cloud drifting in front of the moon, changing the light.

“I have a first aid kit in the car. . . . ” Cam offered.

“No, I think there's some in the carriage house. Come on. I want to show you something,” he said as he walked back toward the woods, away from the house.

“I thought it was this way.” Cam pointed toward the front yard.

“Come here,” he said, and he led her to a woodshed. He moved some firewood out of the way to reveal a staircase going down into the earth.

“What is that, some kind of root cellar? Creepy.”

“Sort of. Come on.” He started to descend the staircase, a trickle of blood creeping down the side of his face.

“This is the part of the horror film where you yell at the girl on the screen, ‘Don't
go
. You idiot! Don't go! Why are they always so stupid?'” Cam
told
her mom he could be a serial killer.

“It's completely safe.”

“Right. Cue slasher music. Oh, that's funny. Slasher rhymes with Asher. That could be your new name. If I survive this, that is.” Cam followed Asher down the stairs and into the smell of dirt. The walls around the staircase were just the earthen sides of a hole in the ground, but when she got to the bottom of the stairs, Asher had turned on a light to reveal a bright, capacious hallway, whose white-tiled walls reminded her of the Lincoln Tunnel in New York City.

“What's all this?”

“A secret passageway. This house used to be part of the Underground Railroad, so there are secret tunnels and hiding places everywhere.”

“So that explains how you sneak around. See, there's an explanation for everything. Was your family always so virtuous?”

“No. During Prohibition, my great-grandfather got rich using the tunnels to traffic alcohol. He made a fortune. Come on. I'll show you where it comes out.”

There was a huge sliding exit at the beach disguised as the face of a rock wall. Growing up at Disney must have inured her to imitation landscapes.

Another tunnel opened up into the floor of the carriage house, and a third came up behind a rotating bookcase in the basement of the main house. They exited through this one, Asher spinning the bookshelf. They stepped into what Cam had dubbed Homer's room.

Asher moved over to his tank and stared at him for a bit. “You should let him go, I think. If you're not going to eat him, he should be free to explore the bottom of the ocean.”

He laid his hand on the tank, and Cam could finally read the rubber bracelet around his wrist. FREEDOM, it said.

“Freedom,” she said to him now. “You know, you can't really have freedom if you're just waiting around for the universe to unfold. If you're at the mercy of the universe, you aren't really free.” Homer stopped trying to climb the glass walls of the tank and retreated to his plastic SpongeBob pineapple house.

“That's an interesting perspective. But if you're trying to control the universe, you're not really free either.”

“Yes, I am. I'm free. I have free will. I can control the universe.” Cam held up her arm, pretending to make a muscle. The term
free will
reminded her of the philosophy book in her high school library that had been called
Free Will
until someone had scrawled a
y
at the end of it with a black Sharpie.

“Well, thank you for showing me the bat cave. It's perfect for making my next miracle,” said Cam.

“Not another one.”

“Yes, indeedy. The next one is a doozy.”

“CAM! LOOK AT THIS. YOU HAVE GOT TO BELIEVE NOW!”

Cam had been so soundly asleep she had forgotten where she was. She tried to put it all together. She knew whose voice was calling her, but she thought she was still in Florida, and she couldn't understand why it was so bright in her room. For a second she thought she had died.

“Cam!” Perry jumped on top of the bed and shook her awake, and Cam thought she was getting CPR. Maybe she
had
died. And then, slowly, with much work and concentration, she put it all together. Maine. The garden. Perry.

“Okay. Okay, Peri-stalsis. I'm up,” she groaned. “What?”

“Don't call me that.” The word had something to do with the movement of the intestines.

“You're the one who changed your name, Perimenopause.”

“Stop.”

“Well, what? What is so important that you need to jump on my bed? Is it Christmas? The Easter Bunny? What?”

“It's Mom's garden. You need to come see it.”

“Fine, fine. I'll come see the garden. Can I have a cup of coffee first?”

“No. Right now.”

“Oh, God,” said Cam as Perry dragged her down the stairs and out into the backyard. Cam was wearing boxer shorts and a gray tank top, and her hair was sticking up in all different directions. A crease from her pillowcase stretched across her left cheek.

She didn't know why, because she had been practicing her hope-averseness for a long time, but she noticed that she had a hope. She hoped that Asher was still asleep, so he wouldn't see her like this. She must have begun caring overnight what he thought about her. An interesting development that, like her acceptance to Harvard, would go with her to her early grave.

Alicia was sprinkling the garden with a hose, and Cam shaded her eyes from the sun. Did it ever rain here? She stood back and admired her handiwork in the daylight. The sun reflected off of the heavy round tomatoes and the shiny aubergine eggplants. The zucchinis seemed to have grown two inches since last night.

“Can you believe this, Cam? I just planted these yesterday.”

“Well, you did use Miracle-Gro. That stuff really works, I guess.”

“Cam.”

“Okay, okay. That is seriously amazing.”

“It is,” said Alicia. “I'm going to make a pie and enter it into the pie contest today.”

Cam had forgotten that it was the Fourth of July. She had promised her mother she would go with her to the town celebration.

“What kind of pie?” Cam asked, surveying the garden for any kind of pie ingredients. She hadn't stolen any rhubarb.

“Pizza.”

“Mom, you can't enter a pizza in the pie-making contest.”

“Who says?”

“I don't think they will recognize it as pie,” Cam said. “Honestly, I don't think they will recognize it as food if it doesn't have lobster on it.”

“Well, we have one of those. I can make a lobster pizza.”

“Don't even think about it,” Cam said. “Homer is not food.” Maybe Asher was right. She should set him free. Let him see the world.

“Get dressed, Cam,” said Perry. “The parade starts in an hour.”

“You'll have to take her to the parade, so I can make my pie.”

“It's pizza.”

“Yes. Pizza pie. Tomato pie. That's what they call it in Brooklyn.”

According to Cam's iPhone, they were exactly 478 miles from Brooklyn. This was extremely obvious as she and Perry walked down to Main Street and the heart of Promise's Fourth of July jamboree. Cam had never been to Brooklyn, but she guessed that they didn't have jamborees there. Or quilt shows in churches or lemonade stands run by Brownie troops or sack races or bouncy houses or stilt walkers dressed up like Uncle Sam. They definitely did not have prizes for the largest strawberry or a little kids' bicycle parade complete with red-white-and-blue streamered handle bars and ribbons in the spokes.

When they got to the lobster pound, Perry squealed and pulled her toward someone dressed in knickers and a curly white wig. Asher was supposed to be one of the Founding Fathers, but Cam couldn't tell which one.

“Who are you?” Cam asked.

“John Hancock.” He carried an enormous quill for signing the Declaration of Independence. He waved it at her now with a flourish.

Just then, the high school marching band rounded the corner playing a John Philip Sousa march, and Asher–John Hancock swept them all to the curb so they wouldn't get run over. Out in front of the band was a blonde girl in white go-go boots and a sparkly red leotard. Her hair was up and she wore a tall white hat that shaded her eyes. But Cam recognized something about her. “Is that—”

“Sunny.”

“Whoa,” said Cam. She had not pegged Sunny as a joiner. And definitely not as a twirler.

“Her mom makes her do it,” said Asher. “Apparently she's pretty good, and she can get a scholarship.”

“For twirling that thing around.”

“Ayuh.”

“Huh.”

“Yep.”

“Whoa.”

“Whoa.”

“I know.”

“Speaking of scholarships, Slasher: Doesn't the quarterback of the state champion team usually get one of those? You get one of those, and then you marry the head cheerleader, go to business school, have three kids and a dog, become VP, CEO, chairman of the board, get a house in Malibu.” She counted the list off on her fingers. “That's the trajectory of a champion quarterback, Asher. It's written in the Stars 'n' Stripes.”

“Ayuh.”

“So.”

“So, you girls want to do the scavenger hunt?” he asked, changing the subject. “I'm in charge, and it's pretty fun.” Asher handed Perry a list of things to find.

They decided to split up. On the top of Cam's list was a green balloon. She scanned the streets for green, but the only things that weren't red, white, and blue were the flamingos. A few had wandered away from the flock and strutted down Main Street like aliens from another planet.

As Cam was looking down at her scavenger list, Alec with a
c
snuck up behind her and slid a hand around her waist. She bristled (in disgust or arousal, she wasn't sure—she was confused when it came to Alec), but all the hair on her body suddenly stood on end. “Oh, so you know me today?”

“I am sorry,” he said. “Autumn, she is very, how you say? Jealous.”

“Right. Well, I am very, how you say? Revolted. Revolted by you, so you may remove your hand.”

“Campbell, come on. Let's go get a cup of coffee. Autumn is busy. Sunny makes her wave flags around with the band.”

“No, Alec. I will not have coffee with you, thank you very much. I'm in search of a green balloon.”

As Cam walked away, she started to feel dizzy. Her palms were sweaty. She was having trouble catching her breath. Would they know who to call if she died there on the spot? Would she never get to say good-bye?

Maybe it was how she woke up this morning, but she was thinking about death a lot today. She thought about how it would happen. . . . Her lungs slowly filling up with fluid, drowning in her own bed, suddenly finding herself without breath, and then without sight or hearing, and then eventually without even the capacity to dream. Without love. That was the saddest and scariest part about it. To be suddenly, eternally without love.

Cam tried to stop these thoughts because they were not helping the situation. She began to hyperventilate, and then she fell over, and once again, everything went dark.

“It was a panic attack, Campbell,” Alicia told her.