The Sweetness of Salt (20 page)

chapter

49

It was impossible to stay inside, to sit still anywhere, after I hung up with Greg. I walked rapidly along Main Street on legs that somehow managed to keep me upright and moving. The fact that I had no destination did not enter my mind. Just the act of breathing was enough. A swell of black sky, perforated with electric bits of stars, stretched out above me. The street lamps threw yellow halos of light down the sidewalk, but everything else was dark. It was almost midnight. Even the Dunkin’ Donuts at the end of the street was dimmed, the store emptied and shut tight until morning. I pushed on, up the little hill, past the high school, and stared down at the fork in the road. I didn’t want to go look at the yellow house. I didn’t want Aiden. I didn’t want Milo. I didn’t even want Sophie at that moment.

What
did
I want? The question reverberated back and forth inside of my head. “What do I want?” Had I ever asked myself that question before? Even once?

I want the truth.

I kept going, heading down the road Sophie and I had walked only a few weeks ago when I had first come to town. Had it really only been a few weeks ago? It felt like years now, a lifetime. The smell of rain drifted out from the grassy field we had stood in front of just before she had told me. Or had tried to tell me.

What had she been planning to say? Was she going to tell me she had drowned Maggie that day? That she had held our little sister underwater to stop her crying, to shut up the incessant, nerve-racking noise? Had that been it? I sank to my knees, staring toward the inky horizon. For a long, long time I looked, peering through the shadows, but there was nothing to see.

Nothing at all but black.

After a while I reached into my back pocket and took out my phone. I stared at it for a few minutes before flipping it open, then dialed the number and pressed the phone to my ear.

“Milo?”

“Julia! Everything all right?”

“I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No, I’m just up reading.” He paused. “So what’s up? What’s been going on? How are things with you and Sophie?”

“It’s…” I caught the word “fine” on the tip of my tongue and drew it back in. “We’re still going through some things,” I said instead.

“Good things?”

I hesitated. “Maybe eventually. Right now it’s pretty hard.”

“Okay.” I could hear him adjusting his position. “Julia?”

“Yeah?” My voice cracked.

“What is it?”

It was such a simple question, such a short, tiny question. But for some reason, I remembered the old story about a little boy who noticed a leak in the dike that separated his town from the sea. The boy blocked the leak with his finger until help arrived, ultimately saving the town from a flooding disaster. I felt like that little boy right now. Except that I had withdrawn my finger and was standing there, watching the water rush out.

“Milo,” I whispered. It was right there. Everything, about Sophie. The mental hospital. Maggie. Drowning. My mother’s ear. But what I said was, “That night in the car…when I leaned over and kissed you.” I closed my eyes, safe again, remembering how soft his lips had felt against mine, how his skin smelled up close, like heat and musk, how our noses had bumped at first and then fit against each other, side by side, perfectly. “Why did you pull away from me?”

I waited, hoping he had heard me. I knew I would not be able to ask again.

“I’ve played and replayed that moment a million times in my head,” he said finally. “I’d do anything to take it back.”

“You would?”

“Yes,” Milo said. “And everything I said after Melissa’s party too. About not wanting to lead you on, and just wanting to be friends. That was all crap. It wasn’t the truth.”

“What is the truth?”

“I was trying to tell you the truth, that night of the prom…”

“What was it?”

He cleared his throat. “How I really feel. About you.” He took a breath as if the words had been choking him for months. “And how much it scared me, because for the last two years, I’ve been watching my parents turn into these two crazy people. I mean they used to love each other more than anything in the world, but now they can’t even be in the same room together. And I don’t know. Seeing them change so much made me scared when I realized how I felt about you. I guess maybe I thought it was too risky, or…God, I don’t know. I tried to figure it out from all those poems I read, but none of them gave me any answers. But Julia.” He paused. His voice was louder, as if the words, exposed now between us, were not so frightening after all. “I love you.”

“You do?” I whispered.

“More than anything.” Milo’s voice was steady. “I’ve loved you ever since the first day of senior year when I read that line of poetry out loud and I turned around and you were looking at me from the backseat of Zoe’s car.”

I closed my eyes. I remembered it, Whitman.
“I am to wait…and to see to it that I do not lose you.”

“You had your hair pulled back,” Milo continued. “And you were wearing a blue shirt that made your eyes look like little pools of water. Except that I barely got to see them, because you looked away so quickly.”

I was speechless. I had been staring at Milo from the safety of the backseat, my eyes roving slowly over his hair, which hung down in little rivulets behind his ear, the blue denim of his shirt, and his baggy khaki pants. And when he had said that line—as he had done countless times before—I whispered it back, to myself, silently.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” I whispered.

“I tried to, I guess, after I gave you the Christmas card with the e. e. cummings quote. But you didn’t really seem like you were into it.”

“I have it taped to the top of my desk,” I said. “I read it every single night before I go to bed.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I do. I love it, Milo.” I pulled on my bottom lip. “How could you not think I was into you after I kissed you on prom night? I mean…I’ve never done anything like that before. With anyone!”

“It couldn’t have been that terrible,” Milo said. “Especially since you were thinking of someone else.”

“Oh, Milo. No I wasn’t. I just said that so I wouldn’t look like such an idiot. There wasn’t anyone else.”

“And I guess I kind of freaked, thinking it was gonna be real.”

“But…” I pushed. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Yes,” Milo answered. “Definitely. But I guess I was just kind of…Jesus, Julia, I don’t know. I think I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to live up to your expectations after that.”

“What expectations? I never put any…”

“The ones I imagined you’d have,” Milo interrupted. “I never really thought I had any kind of a chance with you. Cheryl and Melissa, well, they’re pretty, but that’s about it. But you…you’re such an amazing person. Smart. Beautiful. Kind.
Smart.
The valedictorian! I don’t know. I guess I just thought I’d never be enough next to you.” He coughed lightly. “It was stupid.”

“No,” I whispered, struggling not to cry. “It wasn’t stupid. I know what you mean.” There was a long pause. I lifted my hand up in front of me and stared at it. Then I put it down again. “What about Cheryl?”

Milo was quiet.

“At the party,” I insisted. “I saw you there, sitting with her, letting her touch your shoulder and everything…”

“I’m embarrassed to say this,” Milo answered. “But as long as we’re finally saying everything…” He cleared his throat. “The only reason I sat down next to her was because I knew she still liked me. I was betting on the fact that she would do something like that. I don’t know; I guess I wanted to make you jealous.”

“Jealous?” I repeated. “Why?”

“It was a crappy move,” Milo admitted. “I thought I needed to do something drastic, you know? Something that would tell me how you felt about me.”

“Letting your ex-girlfriend manhandle you was your idea of getting me to pay attention?”

“I know,” Milo’s voice was miserable. “It was dumb.” He paused. “But it worked a little. Didn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said reluctantly. “It did.”

“This is so much easier, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“Just saying it like it is,” Milo answered. “Being straight with each other. It’s scary telling the truth.”

“It is,” I said. “But it’s worth it, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely.”

“I miss you, Milo.”

“I miss you too. When I think about the fact that you’re so far away, it actually hurts—physically. I must sound like a total dork, but it’s true. I hate that you’re not here. I think about you all the time, Julia.”

Neither of us said anything for a moment, basking instead in the warmth of the moment.

“Julia?” Milo asked finally.

“Yes?”

“Come home soon.”

part

three

chapter

50

I sat on the side of the road for a long time after Milo hung up. I might have been too stunned to stand. Or maybe I was afraid that if I did, the warm, safe feeling inside my chest would disappear.

Milo.

All along, he had felt something for me—something real!— and I hadn’t known.

Me, the “most intelligent” girl in the senior class. The valedictorian, who got a 1680 on her SATs, but couldn’t read between the lines of all the silly, stupid gestures a boy who adored her had made.

How was it that the truth about one thing could make you feel so good—and that the truth about something else threatened to destroy you?

Something—a dog? a coyote?—howled in the distance. Above me, the sky split open as a half moon slid between the shadows. The howling sounded again, a low, mournful cry of someone waiting to be found. In front of me, the field grass rustled with movement. I stood up quickly. I didn’t know what kind of wildlife lived in Vermont, but I was not interested in finding out.

Turning around, I headed back down the road, toward town. A breeze began to blow, rustling the grass on either side of me. The smell of wet asphalt and jasmine filled the air. And then I stopped, remembering the gorge. It was the only place Sophie had ever mentioned to me. Where she went when she needed to think. How would I find it, though, from here? In the dark? I had no idea how far along this road the gorge was. But there was someone—actually, two people—who would.

WELCOME TO EAST POULTNEY.

I peeked out of the side window of Jimmy’s truck as the sign—a wooden placket planted on the edge of a circular-shaped road—glowed under the headlights. In the middle of the circle was a beautiful white clapboard church. Its steeple cut through the darkness like a glowing needle, and its doors were bright red.

“Park over there, Dad,” Aiden said. “By the bridge. Then we can just run down to the gorge.”

Aiden had opened the door when I’d rung their doorbell, looking surprised and then frightened as I burst into tears. “Julia? What is it? What’s wrong?”

Jimmy had come up behind him, baseball cap off, his white hair comfortably mussed. He’d been the one to pull me inside as I began rambling about Sophie and the gorge, leading me into the kitchen with slow nods of his head and a soft, steadying hand along my back. It wasn’t until I sat down at the table—a roughly hewn slab of wood, complete with real tree branch legs—that I realized I was inside the little yellow house. It didn’t smell like apples or cedar. It smelled like guys’ deodorant and burned toast. There was no wide window in the kitchen or any jelly glass full of wildflowers on the table. The table was cluttered with tools: wrenches and screwdrivers, small drilling bits, and a hammer. It was a mess. And it was lovely too.

Now Jimmy swung the truck around the wide gravelly arc and parked. I got out of the car and stared around at the houses skirting the edges, straining forward, as if Sophie might appear magically through the dark. But there was no sign of her. I stayed close to both men, grateful for their presence, as we passed the East Poultney General Store. Next to the general store was a smattering of clapboard houses with white picket fences and weather vanes, and beyond them, a stately brick home labeled the Horace Greeley House. I bit down on my tongue so I would not yell Sophie’s name. Despite my panic, I knew that breaking the silence in that tiny town would have been like standing up in the middle of SATs and screaming at the top of my lungs.

Jimmy and Aiden turned abruptly past the Horace Greeley House, heading down another road, more of a path, really, heavily forested and pitch-black. I moved with them, my chest tightening like a fist. Loose gravel crunched under my feet and the wind blew through my hair. I shivered. In the dark, I could see part of the small makeshift bridge Aiden and I had stood on just a few days ago, and then the sound of rushing water. I ran to it, clutching the sides of the bridge as I looked over into the belly of the gorge. It was as dark as ink.

I leaned over farther, squinting desperately for some sign of Sophie.

“Sophie!” I called hoarsely, trying to keep my voice low. “Sophie! Are you down there?”

A sound, small and faint, drifted up from a spot next to one of the birch trees. It was indecipherable, but there was no mistaking Sophie’s voice.

“She’s hurt,” Jimmy said grimly. “Let’s go.” The three of us raced to the end of the bridge until we reached the tattered path that led down the side of the gorge.

Aiden turned around then and grabbed my arm. “You stay here. It’s dangerous down there. We’ll get her.”

I shoved him back. “No way.”

He let go. Slipping and sliding, I half fell, half crawled my way down behind both of them, until I reached a level part of the ground.

“Sophie!” I called again. “I can’t see where you are! Say something and I’ll move toward the sound of your voice!”

“Uuunnnhhh…” The voice came again out the dark, pleading, desperate. I struggled toward it, pushing past the thick scrub and hanging branches, steadying myself carefully along moss-covered rocks. But Aiden and Jimmy had already found her. Through the dark, I could make out the shadow of two shapes hovering over a third.

“Sophie!” I was next to her all at once, clutching her around the shoulders, pressing my face to her cheek. She was shivering violently, but her face was burning hot. Her braids, damp with mud, clung to the sides of her neck, and her bandanna was missing. “Sophie, what happened? What are you doing down here?”

She pointed toward her foot, which was lodged in between two rocks. Jimmy and Aiden were already examining it. “I came down…” Her voice, which was barely a whisper, slipped out between her chattering teeth. “Just to sit. And think.” She pointed to her foot again with a shaking hand. “I tripped and fell. My cell phone fell out of my pocket, and my foot…got stuck. I think it’s broken.” She tried to balance herself up on her elbows, but winced from the movement and sank back down again.

“Hold on,” I said, looking up at Jimmy and Aiden. “They’re going to get you out, Sophie.”

“We need a flashlight,” Aiden said. “I can’t see anything.”

Jimmy nodded urgently. “And a blanket. In the trunk.”

Aiden disappeared into the blackness, his shoes making heavy scraping sounds as he crawled back up the side of the gorge.

I leaned over to get a better look at the rocks trapping Sophie’s foot. The one on the left was as large and wide as a mattress, but the other was only about half that size. Both of them, however, were half submerged in water. The space in between, where Sophie’s foot was caught, was frighteningly narrow. I moved directly into the water, gasping as the frigidness swirled around my knees. It could not have been over twenty degrees. My body had already started shivering. Sophie had been down here, her left leg submerged to the knee, for God knows how long. How was she still conscious? And talking?

I stared down at my sister. For a split second, I wondered how much more of her I didn’t—and might not ever—know. And in the next second, I realized it didn’t matter. What mattered was how much I loved her. Right now.

Wrapping my arms around her again, I leaned in and cradled her head in my arms. “Hold on, Sophie, okay? We’re going to get you out of here. I promise. Just hold on.”

She reached up and grabbed my elbow and she did not let go.