Mistwalker

THIRTEEN Willa

“I wish you’d quit climbing on my trellis,” Bailey’s mom called out.

One hand on the second-story window and one foot on the trellis, I leaned over and offered an apology through the window. “Sorry, Ma. I was trying to sneak up on her.”

Ma Dyer came to the window, lifting the sash so I could hear her more clearly. “Works out better for everybody when you come through the door. My clematis lives and you get cookie dough.”

Hopping down, I pointed toward the back, then headed that way. Bailey and her mother were the only people in Broken Tooth who locked their doors. Bailey because her mom insisted on it. Ma Dyer because she liked choosing the time and place when she’d socialize. By day, she did medical transcription. By night, she liked to paint. If it weren’t for my mom and Bailey, Ma Dyer might have been a straight-up hermit.

The deadbolt chunked, and the back door swung open. I got one foot inside and found myself gathered in warm, fleshy arms. Even though I towered over her, Ma Dyer managed to wrap me up completely. The kitchen smelled of onions and garlic. The cookie dough was for eating, not baking.

With a shake, Ma Dyer set me free. Reaching for the bowl of dough, she dangled it from her fingers, toward me. “You don’t come around much anymore, kid.”

“I’ve been sticking close to home.”

Ma Dyer snorted, moving so I could open the silverware drawer and claim a spoon. “That’s not what your mother says.”

Shrugging, I skimmed my spoon into the bowl. “I bet.”

“It’s not my business.” Ma Dyer shrugged. “But she’s having a hard time right now. Try to help her breathe a little, will you?”

Though she didn’t mean anything by it, the advice rankled. Since the funeral, there was always somebody asking about my parents. Wanting to know how they were. If I was being strong for them. Telling me to take care of them.

All along, I tried. The bills got paid; the phone got answered. I donated my boyfriend for sternman when Daddy wouldn’t let me go myself.

If people didn’t ask how I was, that was fine. It was my fault, a disaster I built with my own two hands. People were good enough to keep that to themselves. Still, it seemed backwards that everybody expected me to take care of everything.

I did it because Dixons are proud, and they keep their own. I would have done it anyway. It was everybody whispering it in my ear that left me full of sour, bitter anger.

Had anybody taken my dad aside and reminded him to care for me? I knew Mom hadn’t gotten that advice, because it would have insulted her. She would have ranted the air blue about it and probably made me pancakes.

Losing Levi had been a direct ticket to the hall of mirrors. Everything distorted. Nothing certain. I scraped up a buttery mouthful of dough, then dropped my spoon into the sink.

“Fanks for the cookies,” I said.

Then I took the stairs two at a time. Photos quivered on the wall, all the way to the landing. Bailey grew up step by step—her hair crazy white blond when she was a baby. With each school picture and summery snapshot, it grew darker. Her eyes grew more thoughtful.

The bathroom door opened, and Bailey padded into the hall. Swathed in orange terry cloth, she looked like a steamed tangerine. Smiling curiously, she tightened her towel. “What’s up?”

“Chicken butt,” I replied. I hooked a thumb over my shoulder. “Ma caught me on the trellis. She punished me with cookie dough.”

With a laugh, Bailey started down the hall to her room. “That’ll learn you.”

“Won’t it, though?”

I ducked into her room and helped myself to the bed. With my gaze, I traced the patterns we’d made with the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling. We grew up with real astronomy: a constant, nagging awareness of the moon, the stars, the tides. So in sixth grade, we made up our own constellations.

While Bailey dressed, I drew outlines in the air with my finger. The witch ball. Captain Jack’s rum. The bloodworm. My throat tightened, though I wasn’t sure why. We had a year yet. Our stars were immovable.

“So how’s things?” I asked.

Bailey pulled a sweatshirt over her head. “With Cait? Still weird. With SAT prep? Still terrifying. Oh, and my best friend. She went and got a little barmy, so I’m worrying about her, too.”

“Screw her,” I said with a snort. Rolling onto my side, I stuffed Bailey’s pillow under my head. “I saw the Grey Man. Up close.”

Another snort and Bailey hauled her hair from her collar. “What have you been smoking?”

“I’m being dead level with you, Bay.”

“Okay. I don’t want to upset the delicate nature of your fish senses or whatever, but here I go. Don’t freak.” Twisting her hair into a loose knot, Bailey fixed it with a pencil and then flopped at her desk. One of her toy tops wobbled, threatening to hit the floor. Scooping it into her hand, she set it on the floor and spun it. “There’s no such thing as the Grey Man, baby.”

“What if I told you I really, really have seen him?”

Bailey stepped on the top to still it. Picking it up with her toes, she tossed it out of the way and came to sit beside me. Her hands were still hot from her shower, radiating heat right through my jacket. “Then I’d be really, really worried about you.”

“He made me cocoa.”

“Why are you messing with me?”

Things were a lot simpler back in our fake-constellation days. We’d believe anything together, back then. The time that had passed had cured us of fantasy, though. Even if I spilled out the whole truth, she wouldn’t be convinced. Not unless I carted her to the lighthouse and made her sit down for a cup of tea with Grey. That would happen half past never, by my clock.

I sighed. “I don’t know. I’m just mean, I guess.”

Bailey used me for a chair. Leaning against me, she planted her bony elbows into my back. Echoing my sigh, she rolled her head to look at me. “You seen Seth?”

“I’ve been trying not to.”

Soft laughter bubbled from Bailey. Digging one elbow in, she leaned over to whisper. “He’s pretty miserable.”

Closing my eyes, I sank into the bed. Breathing Bailey’s perfume, still tasting the buttery-salty-sweet of the cookie dough in my mouth. This room was familiar as my own; maybe more than mine. This is where I spilled my secrets, and I was safe enough to let my heart lurch here. The breaking up was ugly; the being together had been good.

There was more of the latter than the former, so I said, “I don’t want him to be.”

“Uh, Denny?”

“I’m not happy,” I clarified. “I just wish things were different.”

Agreeably, Bailey nodded. She looked to a faraway place, probably one where senior year and two different colleges weren’t looming. She plucked at the seam on my jacket, fingers working without thought. “I liked it better when we had everything planned out.”

Didn’t we all? Sometimes, it seemed like it should be possible to give up now. To reboot back to fourth grade, when we were old enough to have our own minds but young enough that nothing mattered. It seemed like it should be possible, but it wasn’t.

Everything ended: fishing season, summer break, fourth grade . . . There was no comfort in that. So I reached back to pat her awkwardly. Then I picked the one thing that I knew would make her recoil.

“At least nobody cuts the crusts off your tuna fish anymore.”

Spasming, Bailey elbowed me in the gut in her hurry to flail off the bed. “Gah, I hate that! I hate it! If you cut the crusts off, it’s a goo sandwich! It’s just goo, Willa! Augh!”

Yeah, it was inconsequential, but it was nice to know that some things did stay the same.

All around me, the world was a secret.

Every door in Broken Tooth led to a story I was never gonna know. Walking home in the dark, I glanced at houses, familiar addresses. There had been enough block parties and co-op parties and Christmas parties that I knew what plenty of those foyers looked like.

But the lives behind them: mysteries. I felt like a mystery too. As much as Bailey and Seth knew me, they didn’t know me. Likewise me for them. It was the kind of talk I usually walked away from at the bonfires. You got the Jewett twins high and they were regular philosophers.

“What if we’re somebody else’s dream?” Amber asked once.

Ashley’s eyes went wide, and she held out her hands. Like they might suddenly disappear on her or something. Staring at them, she murmured, “What if they wake up?”

Then Nick dropped a SweeTart down Ashley’s top. That was real enough that they stopped worrying about being the spark of an idea in a space alien’s brain. It seemed to me like Levi smoothed that over. I didn’t remember how. He was subtle.

My brother was subtle. And sweet. And starting to go hazy in my memory.

I hadn’t been to his grave since the funeral because he wasn’t there. I’d been in his room a hundred times. Mom had sent me up there to get his leftover laundry, so she could wash it and donate it.

It never got washed. It was still sitting in a basket in our basement.

Levi’s books, I thumbed through, then gave to Seth and Nick. The manga, I gave to the school library because he always complained they wouldn’t buy any of the good stuff. His CDs, I parceled out; some I kept. Posters, I packed, along with his ribbons from school science fairs. The trophy he got for a Washington County talent show. The stack of report cards he kept in his desk, because he was actually proud of his grades.

Those went to the attic. I made his bed. I left the curtains half open, all his drawers completely closed. And I stacked his sheet music on his desk.

Levi wasn’t coming back. Every time I went in there, I went in knowing that. He didn’t need his Death Note figures anymore. He wasn’t gonna screw up the alphabetical order on his shelves ever again. He didn’t care if I made his bed wrong; it made no difference if I arranged his shoes with the right one on the left.

He wasn’t at the graveyard, and he wasn’t in that room anymore.

Still, sometimes, it felt like he should have been somewhere. Alone, outside, at night. That’s when I missed him. That’s when I felt absence, the presence of nothing. The first couple weeks after he died, I dreamed him. We were always outside. Walking to the wharf. Climbing down in the caves. Watching the harbor seals on the shore.

When I dreamed him ordinary like that, it hurt when I woke up. It was an ugly trick of the brain. Dreams resurrected Levi; waking put him back in the grave.

He’d always been one door over from me, even when he was brand new. There was a picture of me, all of two years old, on an ugly couch that moved to our garage a couple years back.

Somebody had put Levi in my arms—I was a little kid, and he was a big baby. He filled my whole lap. My hand rested on his downy head, and he dozed away, unafraid. I was nothing but a pink triangle of a nose and a fall of hair.

I didn’t know him then. And I didn’t know him the last time I held him either. Like all the doors on Thaxter Street, his was closed. I knew the foyer, but the rest was a mystery. It always would be.

Instead of going home, I walked down to the water. Fog drifted in, and the lighthouse beam cut through the night. Sitting on the rocks, I shivered in the dark. It wasn’t comfortable, and I was gonna have to bolt sooner rather than later. But I wanted a minute. Some quiet.

If I’d told Levi about Grey, he would have believed me. Probably would have written a song about it. Maybe even waited for me after school to ask more questions that would have turned into a comic book. He probably would have named the character in the book Emma, though. He’d had the hots for Emma Luchies since second grade.

Covering my face with my hands, I breathed heat onto my own skin. Levi was gone, but parts of him remained. Shadows, glimmers—unmade memories built on expectations. For just a moment, I wasn’t alone. And then, just as quickly, I was.

Waiting for the light to pass overhead again, I wondered if I could sleep in a town without a beacon at night. Nick said it took him forever to get used to Broken Tooth because he didn’t have train tracks behind his house.

It was funny, the things you could live with and the things you learned to live without.