A shell, right there, in the dirt.
Blake smiled.
“Don’t doubt me, Mila,” he said.
My body pulsed with energy as I left the schoolhouse. I could see clearly in the dark even without a lantern to guide me. When I inhaled, I tasted air and ocean and grass. I felt the softness of my sweater against my skin, the coldness of the night, the thump of my feet against the ground. My heartbeat was its own music.
Ghosts glowed in the distance but I didn’t mind them. I moved steadily forward, strides long and purposeful, past the main house to the garden and through it until I reached the rows of strawberries. The sky was clear, the moonlight bright enough that I could spot the berries hidden among the waxy leaves. Twist of stem, berry in my palm.
They tasted like sugar and the soil they came from. Soft between my teeth, and sweet. I held one in my mouth, lay on my back between the rows, let my body melt into the cold ground.
Tiny bright stars studded the black sky, more of them and brighter than I’d ever seen.
Boom, boom, boom beat my heart.
I was not afraid of anything.
Once I had eaten my fill and was headed back, a light shone through the thickening fog. A leap and a spin. The dancing ghost, still yards away but closer to me than she’d ever been. I stopped to watch her—we were miracles, all of us—but her light hurt my eyes and I had to turn away. Another figure, not glowing, leaned against the wall of the second cabin.
“Hey, Mila,” he said as I neared him.
“Hey, Billy,” I said, amazed by the clear lightness of my voice.
“You doing okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“All right.”
I lifted my hand as a gesture of departure, and he nodded and went inside. I walked straight to the bathroom to prepare for bed and then, finally, to my cabin door.
As soon as I let myself in, my exhilaration left me. In its place came an ache—from my hip to my ribs to my shoulder—an ache I remembered from sleeping on the hard floor of Blake’s house. I felt a sting on my foot. Touched it and felt wetness between my fingers. Saw a half-moon of blood in the spot where Blake’s shell had sliced me.
I went through the motions of building the fire. I pressed a tissue against my cut to blot the blood. I climbed, shivering, into bed. I rubbed my sore hip. I rubbed my shoulder. I closed my eyes and saw Blake. Wondered, again, whether his ghost had followed me here.
I searched for something of comfort, but not even the moon was visible through the skylight, so thick was the fog. Tears dampened my pillow.
I wished Grammy was there to sing to me, to rub my back in circles like she used to.
“There’s a somebody I’m longing to see,” I sang to myself instead.
I remembered every word.
I sang until the song was over, and then I sang it again.
celebration
A KNOCK AT MY DOOR WOKE ME. It was morning, and as I eased myself out of bed I was surprised that the ache in my side remained even in daylight. I checked my foot—a dried speck of blood but nothing more. I didn’t know what to make of it—didn’t know what to feel.
Before unlatching and opening the door, I glanced at myself in the mirror and smoothed my hair, relieved to find I still looked like myself.
Lee was on my doorstep, smiling, a breakfast tray in his hand.
“Happy birthday!” he said. “You’re a whole decade older than me now.”
“And you’ve brought me breakfast in bed?”
“Julia sent me. She made you pancakes and bacon. And she sent a plate for me, too, but she said not to stay too long because sometimes people like quiet mornings on their birthdays.” His smile widened. “But, I mean, it is Saturday. So if you don’t want a quiet morning, I can stay as long as you want.”
“Come in,” I told him, laughing, and I barely felt the soreness anymore. I was full of light. Lee and me in my little cabin. “I’ll warm it up in here,” I said.
“We’ll have an inside picnic.”
“That sounds amazing!”
I piled the logs and crumpled the newspaper, smiling through all of it, and when I turned, Lee had set the tray on the rug by the bed. Two heaping plates and a small pitcher of syrup. Butter in a little dish. A glass of milk. A mug of coffee with cream.
I sat across from Lee on the rug. He was dressed in his pajamas and I was in my nightgown. The room smelled like maple, and the night before was gone.
“Would you like syrup, milady?” Lee asked in a formal, unidentifiable accent, holding the pitcher daintily between two fingers.
“Why yes, good sir,” I said, and he poured, and we ate until our plates were empty, and I felt like a girl from a novel or a movie. I felt like a girl from a different time. And all the while I told myself, Remember this feeling. How perfect this is. Remember Lee’s sweet face and his proper manners. Remember the maple and the salt. Remember the warmth of the coffee in your mouth. The crackling of the fire, the glow of the room in the early morning when it’s just you and Lee and the world is safe.
“Julia told me I should let you relax. And that you don’t have to help with the harvest today. So I can go now and take these back and you can read or draw or just . . . do whatever!”
He stacked the plates and the silverware, set our cups back on the tray. I watched his expression of expectancy, could tell he was hoping I’d say something.
“Or . . . ,” I said. “Maybe you could come back in a little while and we can go exploring.”
He beamed. “Okay, if you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“Julia said to make sure you were sure.”
“I’m sure that I’m sure. Let me get that door for you.”
He slipped out, the tray clutched in his arms. “I’ll be back soon!”
“I’ll be here,” I told him. Before I closed the door, I heard the rumble of the truck, saw Billy and Liz roll down the gravel drive toward the highway. Liz was driving. Billy saw me and waved from the passenger seat, and I waved back, feeling wistful in spite of my plan with Lee, wishing they would have at least invited me along to wherever they were going.
* * *
___
I thought of Billy and Liz again later that afternoon, when Lee and I had returned from a hike through the hills behind the farm and found the truck still gone.
“What do you want to do now?” Lee asked me. We were sitting together in a patch of grass near the rows of vegetables, catching our breath. “We could draw or tell fairy tales again, if you want.”