Authors: Tracey Porter
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Issues, #Sexual Abuse, #Death & Dying, #Girls & Women
Lark (2 page)
There are secret paths all over my neighborhood, trails of crushed leaves and beaten grass. The animals follow them—wild ones and pets, raccoons and badgers and everyone’s dogs. The paths are narrow, almost hidden. We hear about them from the teenage girls who babysit or from someone’s big brother. We trade information at block parties, gathering in someone’s basement, while our parents drink martinis. The trails lead from one backyard to another, through the old woods near Overlook Pool and Recreation Center. They follow creeks and lead between boulders, ending at the cliff above the river.
The last summer we were friends, Lark and I explored the path from the pool to the cliff. There was a secret place, a fallen tree where you could sit and see the river, that we wanted to find. She was thirteen and I was twelve. We took the fork that led to the river instead of the one that emptied in the cul-de-sac by our street. Our swimsuits were still damp. We tucked our towels under the straps so they hung down our backs like capes. Our flip-flops left ridged prints in the mud. Birds flitted to the water and drank. A flash of red was a cardinal; yellow, an oriole. There were catbirds and hummingbirds, chickadees, too. I learned all the birds from handouts at the nature center when I was little. I colored them so furiously I picked up the grain from the picnic table.
The trail leads behind the new subdivision my dad designed. We smelled the sap oozing from fences in the summer heat. We heard the sounds of families and barbecues. Big Wheels on decks. Bags of ice emptying into coolers. The fizz of soda poured into cups. Sloshing through the creek in the culvert, we scraped a stick against the corrugated tin, the circle of light ahead of us tinged with green.
Once we were out the other side, the trail ended and our neighborhood disappeared. It was like being in a spell cast by a good witch. Generations of fallen leaves gathered against tree trunks and saplings. The ground was loamy and soft as felt. We walked stealthy and silent on the outside of our feet because we didn’t want to scare the animals away. They watched us from tree limbs and burrows—stern, silent owls and a family of foxes, a bobcat twitching the black tip of its tail.
Hundreds of feet below us, the Potomac rumbled and roared. We crept along the edge until we found the huge tree the teenagers told us about, a sycamore struck by lightning that had started to roll down the cliff years ago. It was moss covered and hollow, trapped by the roots and trunks of other trees. We sat there and looked out to the three tiny islands in the middle of the river.
They’re called the Three Sisters. The river swirls and eddies around them. One has a tree growing in the middle. They’re named after three Indian princesses who ran away from home. Their father wanted to marry off the oldest one to a chief in another village, but the sisters loved one another too much to be separated. So they begged the river god to hide their footsteps and let them pass. He agreed, but since he was cruel and they were beautiful, he turned them into three small islands to keep for himself.
That day the noise of the river smothered our voices. We had to yell to hear ourselves, but we wanted the animals to stay with us, so we stopped talking. We took turns throwing stones into the river, trying to reach the islands, trying to say hello to the three Indian girls. We dug past layers of crinkly leaves and dry dirt to the damp soil where the stones were buried. They were rough and gray just like the islands. The stones arced through the air, past the farthest branches of the most far-leaning trees, disappearing once they left our hands. Sometimes they streamed past the canopy of branches, and for a moment we saw them sailing through a patch of blue sky.
Later that summer, something bad happened to me. I tried telling Lark, but she wouldn’t listen and my mom asked the wrong questions. I buried it deep inside me, like the rough stones we found under the leaves.
My legs were shaking and my heart was pounding so hard, I felt the pulse in my ears.
“Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!” I cried. I banged on the window, trying to get the attention of the driver in the next lane, but the windows were tinted black and no one could see me.
“Please,” I begged. I was sobbing now. “Please let me go.” But he didn’t answer. He stared at the road, silent and inexpressive like he was carved out of stone.
He took the parkway to Washington, the one without streetlights that cuts through the woods. He turned onto a dark road that I had seen many times but had never been on. It ended in a parking lot used by maintenance crews and road workers. He parked behind a snowplow and zipped the keys in his pocket. He spoke in a soft voice like he was trying to sound kind.
“I’ve been watching you for a long time. You’re special to me.
“I don’t want to hurt you. I only want to get to know you better.”
The air in the car seemed to expand and get thin. It was like being inside a balloon as it was being blown up. My body was only heartbeat and breath. The car was metal and glass. The man was his face. My hands weren’t even there.
The man said, “I’m going to tie your hands now, so I can keep you safe.”
Somewhere inside me a firm, quiet voice spoke up.
You know these woods,
it said.
If you get away from him, you can find the path to your house and he won’t be able to catch you. Make him think you’re too scared to escape.
“No,” I said. “You don’t have to. I’ll go with you.”
Then I got sick, but since I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch there was nothing to throw up but water and bile. He picked up a rag from the floor and wiped my face.
“See,” he said, “nothing bad is going to happen.”
The man reached around to the backseat. I watched him lean over and twist. I heard him grunt with the effort because he was fat. I heard him push the rag under the rubber mat. I waited until he had turned around as far as he could, then I opened the door and ran.
My mother says I have to start going back to school, only I can’t because I’m too tired and I don’t really want to see anyone or leave the house.
“It seems that both of you are interested in the dead,” says Dr. Huber when my mom tells him why I’m not sleeping. He’s always liked that she’s an archaeologist. Now that she’s divorced, I bet he asks her out.
My mother answers a lot of questions. Pale sunlight drifts through the window. He’s talking loudly, like he wants me to join the conversation, but I don’t. Instead I study the dust motes floating in the air. I’m small for twelve, the smallest girl in the seventh grade. It occurs to me that I’m growing smaller. Soon, I may even disappear. This might be a good thing.
Dr. Huber talks mostly to my mother. For a second, I feel like telling him that I am absolutely not interested in the dead, that I couldn’t care less about them, and that what interests me is trees and how girls turn into them if people forget or don’t know, or if no one finds the person who hurt them.
The urge to speak passes. Dr. Huber doesn’t seem very interested anyway. He doesn’t want to know what Lark says, or how she is being very patient and very gentle, even though she is disappointed that I can’t look at her.
He takes my temperature and pulse. Then he looks in my throat and takes blood.
“I’ll call you with the results,” he tells my mother, “but most likely it’s anxiety, caused by the trauma of your neighbor’s death. Let’s give it some time and hold off on medication.”
In the meantime, he tells her to give me chamomile tea and have me listen to a relaxation CD she can buy at the bookstore.
“And she should probably see a therapist,” he says. “Someone Nyetta can talk to so she can get back to her life at school and being with friends.”
Being with friends. I can almost remember it, the way I remember playing with dolls.
“Are you sure you want to go to school today?” asks my mom. She’s worried because I haven’t cried about Lark. I’m on autopilot. I’ve been like this for a long time, only she hasn’t noticed.
I have lots of little secrets from my parents. They don’t know about the stacks of drawings under my bed or the Van Gogh pictures I’ve cut out from their art books and taped inside my closet door. They would complain I’ve ruined books, but they’ll never notice. They haven’t looked at an art book in years. They don’t know how much I know about pen and ink, how you build an image line by line without blending, only short lines or long, no room for error. If you hold the pen too firmly, the ink bleeds over the image. If you hold it too lightly, your line is insubstantial and weak. Which is one of the many reasons I love Vincent van Gogh. I’ve studied his sketchbooks and read all his letters to his brother Theo. He never missed a beat.
My parents are both artists, or used to be. I don’t consider what they do now as art. They want me to be a lawyer.
“But, honey,” says my mom. “You look
so
tired. Don’t you want a day off?”
I tell her I have to go to school, that I can’t possibly miss World Civ because Mr. Haus is reviewing for the test and there’s an in-class essay in English. All this is true. She bites her lip and sends me on my way. Inside my binder I’ve taped a drawing of a man carrying a lantern. Van Gogh drew it in the margins of a letter to Theo. I can’t figure out how he made it light up the dark.
The air is crystalline and brittle. I have a new superfine pen from Japan in my purse. The wind whips my coat around my legs. I wrap my scarf over my mouth and nose so I don’t breathe in the cold. I trudge through the slush to Thomas Jefferson High, home of the Rebels.
I’d forgotten it’s the day of the big game against our archrival, Washington-Lee. A wave of team spirit pushes me through the front door. People rush to get a better view of the pep parade marching through the hall. Cheerleaders shake their pompoms and bounce. The marching band steps high, tilting their instruments and blaring the fight song. In between the band members, the basketball team cruises along. People jostle and push. My new pen falls out of my bag and rolls across the floor.
The band finishes to big applause and several rounds of “Go Rebels! Kill Generals!” Then the five-minute bell rings and everyone scatters. Cheerleaders stuff pom-poms in lockers. Skaters and stoners lift their fists in mock school spirit and slink off to class. Behind me, two boys are talking about Lark.
“Pretty cold,” says one.
“What do you mean?” asks the other.
“Having a pep rally so soon after Lark Austin was found dead.”
I turn around to see a junior named Ian. He writes music reviews for the paper. I recognize him from the photo by his column. He catches my glance, then drops his eyes to the floor. He seems embarrassed or shy. The crowd thins, and I spy my pen under the drinking fountain. I slip it into my bag and rush off to class.
The day goes on, simultaneously numbing and exhausting. For the second year in a row I didn’t get Studio Art, my first choice for electives. Instead I have Debate with Ms. Curren. She assigns us to topics and teams. I’m placed on the side against stem cell research, with Darren and Scott, two boys who live for basketball, and Judith, an honors student with short hair and ennui. We push our desks together, then I pull out my binder and start drawing Van Gogh’s traveler carrying a lantern in the dark. All three of them, I am surprised to learn, are in the Animal Rights Club.
“Why?” I ask, noticing Judith’s huge leather purse.
“Because it’s an easy way to get your community service experience,” says Scott. He moves his hands when he talks, like he’s spinning a record. “You bake some brownies for a bake sale, go to the shelter, walk the dogs around the block, and
bam!
You’re looking good for college!”
“Colleges love animal rights,” agrees Judith. “That’s how my sister got into Bard. She was president of the club in her senior year.”
Darren is unhappy about our assignment. “Hey, Mizz Curren!” he yells. He lifts his elbows and taps his chest when he talks. He’s so animated, the chain on his wallet jingles. “We’re all for stem cell research, you know, to help the babies and all the folks with bad hearts and diabetes. We can’t debate against it!”
Ms. Curran nods empathetically. “Yes, Darren, it can be a challenge to develop an argument for a position you
deeply
oppose. But in the long run, nothing will help you defend your ideas more effectively than learning how to compose an argument for the other side.”
“See, bro,” says Scott, “that’s what I told you she’d say.”
Darren takes off his cap and turns it around. Judith checks her nails. I’m filling in the man’s coat with crosshatching. Ink flows from my pen, drenching the paper, smearing the lines. I’m off. If Darren and Scott would shut up, I’d control the pen better.
Hours tick by. Between classes I clutch my binder and edge through the crowd. In algebra, I will myself right back into the man’s walk in the night, rays of his lantern piercing the darkness.
Finally the last bell rings. Everyone’s pumped up, making plans about who’s driving to the game, who’s having an after party, and which one is worth going to. The marching band assembles at the flagpole, playing “Hit Me Baby One More Time,” keeping spirits high until game time. The blare of the trombones and beat of the drums make me nauseated. Alyssa, Boston, and Beth are in attendance, yelling, “Kill Generals! Kill Generals! Kill Generals!” at the top of their lungs. They imitate the cheerleaders and fall over themselves laughing, Alyssa because she’s too good of an athlete to take cheerleaders seriously, Boston and Beth because Alyssa’s their queen.
I come home to NPR blasting through the speakers my dad installed last Christmas. I dump my books on the window seat and wander into the kitchen. My parents are busy in their studios. Mom, part owner of Hand-Made ceramics gallery, is busy at the wheel, throwing teapots. Dad’s color coordinating tiles and countertops for a huge house that’s trying to look like Mount Vernon. The developer cut down fourteen trees to build it. It has a great room, a spiral staircase, and a four-car garage. When Dad showed me the plans, I told him he had sold his soul.
“And it’s ugly. With a huge carbon footprint,” I said. “No one will buy it in this economy.”
“Let’s hope you’re wrong,” he said. “Your college tuition depends on it.”
I’ve been overhearing my parents talk about money. They sit at the breakfast table with the laptop and stacks of bills. We’re overextended, they say. My mom’s store might close, and my dad has only one project going, not like the days when he and Mr. McCall built the town houses near the pool.
Somewhere behind the blueprints of all the McMansions and the subdivisions are my dad’s old canvases and paints. He used to paint landscapes. There’s a shelf of glass jars with perfect lids, the ones that you shake to blend tertiary paints. By now the pigments must be dried and cracked. One drop of water would turn them back into paint.
My dad emerges from his studio, well meaning and quizzical. “How was school?” he asks.
“We had a pep rally,” I say, putting the kettle on for tea.
“No kidding,” he says, sounding shocked. “Well . . . I suppose it’s best to get things back to normal.”
“Whatever normal is,” I say. It seems girls getting kidnapped and murdered is fairly normal. The window above the sink is edged in frost. I touch it with my fingertip, enjoying the slight burn.