The Probability of Miracles (9 page)

Cam wavered for a second. Trying was usually better than not trying. But not in this case. The road trip was changing her a bit. Now that they'd gotten the momentum going, she wanted to finish what they'd started.

“
A'ohe I pau ka 'ike I ka halau ho'okahi
,” she said. It was a popular hula adage that meant:
All knowledge is not contained in only one school.
“No more trials, Mom.”

All the last trial had done was diminish her immune system to the point where she got shingles (a seventy-year-old-man disease) and yeast infections all over her body, including her tongue. She couldn't close her mouth for three days. The “science” of these trials just didn't add up. You didn't demolish someone's immune system to make her healthy. Promise, Maine, made just as much sense. Cam grabbed a banana and made her way out of the kitchen.

Lily crashed into her. She was bounding into the kitchen dressed in some child-size Daisy Dukes and a calico halter, asking her mom if she'd finished packing the picnic basket.

“You let your mom pack the picnic basket?” Cam asked.

“That's the last of it,” said Kathy, as she put the Brie and apricots into the basket.

“Thanks, Mama.” Lily gave her mom a squeeze. Lily was kind of a spoiled brat, but she somehow made it an endearing part of her personality. Finally she turned around to look at Cam. “You're wearing that?” she asked. Cam was still in the oversize, off-the-shoulder FRANKIE SAYS RELAX T-shirt that she wore to bed.

“I just woke up,” said Cam. “It seems a little early for a picnic.”

“Ryan has to be somewhere this afternoon. Come on! Get dressed.”

Back in the guest room, Cam muttered to herself as she put her cargo pants back on and topped them with a plain black tank top. She combed her hand through her hair, and that was it. She was not going to try to impress anyone.

She was contemplating whether or not to even wear earrings when she heard a horn blaring from the driveway. She grabbed her biker bag, ran outside, and was mortified to find an idling yellow Hummer.

“Come on!” Lily said as she pulled Cam by the hand toward the enormous vehicle.

“God, Lily. Don't you think J. C. would drive a Prius?”

“Don't be such a buzzkill.”

“I'm sorry I'm so reluctant to destroy the planet with my Humvee. I should be more of a sport.”

“Campbell!” Lily dismissed her friend and then literally skipped toward the truck, the picnic basket banging against her legs. Cam had to help her open the monstrous door.

“Where's Andrew?” Lily asked as she glanced at the empty backseat.

“Lacrosse,” said Ryan.

“Is he coming?” Lily persisted.

“Nope.”

“Ry-an. Why didn't you tell me?”

“It's not a big deal, Lil. Come on,” Ryan said.

“At least let me go get a book or something to entertain myself,” Cam begged. She tried to turn back toward the house, but Lily pushed Cam's skinny butt into the backseat.

Ryan had curly red hair, ivory skin, and freckles. He was, in fact, a tiny bit pimply, but nothing too repulsive. Everything about him seemed new, nascent, hairless, like he'd just hatched from some alien egg and arrived onto planet Adulthood. Everything except his voice. He had a deep, booming actor's voice, and when he said, “Cam, it's nice to finally meet you,” Cam could see how Lily could let herself get sucked in. Even so, she wished she had just stayed home and gone to the movies with her mom and Perry.

At the park they climbed to one of eastern North Carolina's few hills. Cam mourned the loss of her quadricep muscles with each tiring step, but the air was cool and just refreshing enough to fuel her and to bring some color to Lily's cheeks. They got to the overlook, a cliff with a view of the entire “lake,” which was mostly a man-made reservoir of sorts, an Army Corps of Engineers marvel, a flooded soybean field. Still, it was beautiful with the sun sparkling off of it and the clear voices of the loons and boaters echoing all the way up to them at the top of the hill.

Ryan spread out the checkered blanket and insisted on a little prayer before helping Lily set out the food. He made sure she ate something before he would touch a morsel.

“You have to eat, Lily. Come on,” he said, creating for her a perfect bite of cracker with pimento cheese and a slice of pickle, Lily's favorite snack.

He had been chivalrous and entertaining during the entire hike, lugging all of their stuff and starting friendly, small-talk conversations. He must have taken the same southern etiquette classes at the “club” that Lily had growing up, which made them a good couple, Cam guessed.

Lily took one bite and then covered her nose and mouth with a napkin. In seconds the napkin was bright with Lily's blood. A nosebleed. “Shit!” said Lily.

“Squeeze it.” Cam reached over to hand Lily a cloth napkin and searched through the cooler for an ice pack. She helped Lily tilt her head back and pressed the ice pack to the bridge of Lily's nose. Even Lily's front teeth were red with blood. “Is this happening a lot?” Cam asked. Aside from Lily's frail appearance, this was the first sign Cam had seen that Lily was not totally in remission.

“Yeah. It's my new thing.”

“Nice. Well, I had a seizure in the dollar store parking lot, if that makes you feel any better.”

“Awesome,” said Lily. “I'll be right back.” She made her way to the cabin of outhouses that was about a hundred yards behind them in the woods. “You two get to know each other,” she said, still holding her nose.

Cam sat down on the blanket and washed the blood off of her hands with some water from the water bottle. She and Ryan stared out at the lake. “So.” Cam was still feeling a little fidgety. “I'm to get to know you,” she said as if she were in a Jane Austen novel.

“What do you want to know?” Ryan asked.

“Honestly?”

“I'm an open book,” he said.

“I want to know your intentions,” Cam said, keeping with the Jane Austen vocabulary.

“Intentions?”

A sibilant breeze whispered its way through the pine needles overhead, and in the distance Cam could hear the knocking of a woodpecker.

“Yeah. Like with Lily. She thinks you love her,” said Cam. Ryan sat up straight and crossed his legs. Probably feeling shifty at the mention of the word
love
.

“I intend to enjoy whatever time we have left,” he said, grabbing a nectarine from the basket.

“What about the other chick?” Cam asked.

“What about her?”

“Are you breaking up with her?”

Ryan stared out at the lake, threw the nectarine up into the air, caught it, and took a sloppy bite. With his mouth still full of nectarine—
What happened to the etiquette
, thought Cam—he turned to Cam with a steely-eyed stare and said, “Now what would be the point of that?”

“Of what?” Lily startled them. A tiny smear of dried blood still tattooed her forearm, but there was otherwise no sign of the nosebleed.

Ryan got up and walked away.

“What's with him?” Lily asked.

“No idea,” said Cam.

At dinner that night, after Cam made the mistake of eating off of her “charger plate,” Perry read out loud the embarrassing list of miracles she'd recorded so far in her notebook from Izanagi. Only Perry could find miracles on I-95.

Arguments could be made for some of the more elusive items on the list, like
#3 Alicia hasn't lost her patience since Atlanta
, or
#7 McDonald's French fries
. But when she started listing things like gas engines and cranes under
The Miracle of Transportation
, Cam had to draw the line.

“That's
technology
, Perry, not a miracle. Anything that can be studied under the guise of an
-ology
is disqualified as a miracle.”

“What about angelology or unicornology?” Perry asked.

“Or theology.” Lily's dad, Malcolm, smirked. He had a broad, handsome, clean-shaven face that was just on the verge of being jowly.

“I give up,” Cam said.

“So Cam, how was your date with Andrew?” Kathy winked. In this family, everything awkward was laid out in the open at the dinner table, like the poor chicken carcass that sat cold, naked, and ashamed as the wind whistled through its bones.

“He stood me up, actually,” Cam said, taking a huge bite of corn on the cob so that people would stop asking her questions.

“He had lacrosse,” Lily threw out quickly, meeting her mother's accusatory stare with her own.

“Well, what did you think of Ryan, then?” Kathy continued.

Cam knew she was cooked. “He's really nice,” she said carefully.

It was difficult for her to quell the compulsion to tell the truth, and when she did manage to tamp it down, it was obvious to everyone that she was lying.
That's what they must teach in those etiquette classes
, thought Cam.
Etiquette is really just politely lying to people's faces
. She wished she could do it now.

“Uh-oh,” said Malcolm. His face was rosy, and Cam suspected he'd had too many chardonnays. “If she says he was ‘interesting,' we know she hated him.”

“He
was
interesting, though,” Cam insisted, knowing she was fighting a losing battle. “And polite.”

“Ohhh, Lily,” Malcolm joked, shaking his big head back and forth. “She doesn't like him one bit.”

“I never said that,” Cam insisted. “I like him, Lily. He has a great voice.”

“Okay,” Kathy interrupted. “Who wants peach pie?”

Everyone was silent for a moment. Alicia stood up, clearing some plates. “I'll help you with dessert.”

As the moms swept into the kitchen, Lily gestured at Cam with a stern look on her face.
Upstairs
, she seemed to be saying.

“But I like peach pie,” Cam said out loud.

“Then take yours in my bedroom.”

Cam followed Lily up the stairs, balancing her triangle of pie on a saucer and dreading the inquiry she knew was coming.

“Why don't you like him, Cam?”

“I do like him! I said he was great,” Cam insisted.

“No, you said he was nice and interesting and had a good voice—which, coming from you, means that you hate his guts.”

“Lily, I only talked to him for ten minutes. How could I possibly hate his guts?”

Lily stared into Cam's eyes, trying to ferret out the truth. Finally, she gave up and let her face relax into a smile. “I just want you two to like each other.”

“Okay,” Cam said. “Want to work on the graphic-novel-slash-screenplay? I brought it with me.” Cam rose excitedly and pulled it out of her suitcase.

“Sure,” said Lily. “Let me just say good night to Ryan. Five minutes. I promise.” She slipped out the door and headed down the hall.

But as five minutes stretched into half an hour, Cam slid their project back into its envelope, suddenly painfully aware of how immature it seemed. Writing a comic book. It seemed like the geekiest thing in the universe. Only an extreme social outcast or a ten-year-old would ever dream of attempting it.

Cam was alone except for Lily's bright-haired troll doll collection. They kept staring at her, and she cringed in embarrassment. She covered her head with her pillow and willed herself to sleep.

The next morning, Cam went to wake Lily up to say good-bye. Lily's bedroom was white. Lily white. All white except for one huge magenta painting of an abstract gladiola on the far wall. The white was intended to ease tension, according to Lily's therapist, who made her paint over the black walls previously spray-painted with the purple names of Lily's favorite bands. The white stressed Cam out, though. What if you accidentally spilled something? It was too much pressure.