There it is. An idea for my column blooms in my mind, taking shape quickly. I’m going to write about the crows. They don’t seem to be going anywhere, and their numbers have already been newsworthy. Our local news ran a segment on them last week. I could pick up where it left off, following the numbers, interviewing a bird expert. Maybe I can even figure out what the hell they’re doing here.
While I wait to pitch Mrs. Riley my column idea, I scan the news bulletin board that hangs on the wall. All things Auburn and anything potentially newsworthy goes up here. A pink flyer pinned to the corner of the board catches my eye. “Scholarship” is in bold letters across the top of the page.
Auburn Township Senior Scholarship Essay Contest. Shit. The scholarship is $5,000.
My dad wants me to go to state college. It’s where he would have been if he hadn’t lost his football scholarship. It’s where Mom would have been if she hadn’t decided to stay here with Dad when he proposed. But I hate it. Maybe I could have liked it if I’d found it organically, but they’ve been pushing this school since I was in diapers. I want to get out of rural Pennsylvania. I want to live in a city. And study journalism at one of the best schools for it: New York University.
We’ll never have the money for it. If I do get in, it’ll be on scholarships and loans. Which means every little bit of money I can put toward it will help.
I scan down the flyer. “Submit two thousand words answering the following prompt: What does Auburn born, Auburn proud mean to you?”
Chapter Twelve
IN SCHOOL WE ARE TAUGHT TO begin our papers with a thesis statement.
I like the logic of it. The structure. I write one sentence, and every word thereafter must support that claim. I never could get lost in poetry, the way it can’t seem to follow rules. Mom likes that about it. The sentence fragments and the way it shrugs off proper grammar like an ill-fitting coat. The way words are felt, until that’s all that’s left. No reason. No logic. Not even self-preservation. Mom’s thesis statement became, “My life has meaning because he is in it.” And now every move she makes supports that claim.
I refuse to write in feelings. Journalists seek the truth. They use proper grammar and sentence structure and some goddamn facts.
But tonight, when I sit down to do my homework for lit class, I don’t begin with a thesis statement for my Tess paper. I begin with one for me: I will leave Auburn and go to college.
Now everything I do must support that claim.
Like writing the winning essay for Auburn’s scholarship contest.
Chapter Thirteen
AT HALF PAST THREE IN THE morning, the door to my bedroom creaks, and I’m wide awake the same instant, blood coursing hard into my heart as fear floods my veins.
It was a nightmare. It wasn’t real. His gun isn’t out. The girls are safe. Mom is okay. I try to slow my breathing.
Light from the hallway filters in, casting beams across my carpet.
“Leighton?” The shape in my doorway is small and slight. Juniper.
“Yeah, babe?” I ask. My voice shakes, and I clear my throat to cover it. The rush of adrenaline has left me jittery.
“They’re fighting. Can I sleep with you?”
“Course,” I say, scooting over. With the door open, I can hear it, too. Not all-out yelling, but agitated voices. The foundation of a bad night is there.
Juniper runs through the dark room and dives into bed. I’m about to ask her where Campbell is when another shadow crosses my carpet. She closes the door behind her. The voices are subdued to a dull murmur, but now that I’m awake, the muffled sound irritates me, like having a song playing with the volume turned down low.
“Want to go back to sleep?” I ask.
“Too awake,” Juniper says. Her eyes always make her seem older than she is, but her detached voice in the dark reminds me that she is so little.
“Then let’s play a game instead,” I say.
“Anywhere But Here,” Juniper says.
Campbell sighs heavily and turns away from me. I elbow her, a little harder than I mean to.
“Play with us,” I tell her. I need her. She’s my partner in this—in keeping Juniper distracted.
A softer sigh this time, and she turns around.
“Okay,” I whisper. I run my fingers over the seams of the dragonfly quilt Nana made me, comforted by the texture. In the dark, their blue wings look black, and they remind me of the crows.
I wrap an arm around each of my sisters, one settling toward me, the other ever so slightly resistant. Juniper can still be little, and I have college to look forward to. But Campbell is trapped. And she’s old enough to know it and be angry.
“The Galápagos Islands,” I begin. “There are turtles a hundred and fifty years old. The sun dries their shells after it rains. Soft waves hit the pebbled beaches.”
I don’t actually know what the beaches of the Galápagos are like—rocky, sandy, pebbled? But that’s all right. Anywhere But Here is about escape, not accuracy. “Huge red flowers, bigger than your head, bloom in the forest.”
The house rumbles under us as he runs across the floor downstairs. My mind plays its favorite game: Worst-Case Scenario. What if he’s running toward her? What if he hurts her?
“London,” Campbell says. Her tone could cut a wire. “We pass Big Ben and the Tower of London. We see churches older than the United States of America. We drink tea, and then we take a ride on one of those double-decker buses.”
Something crashes downstairs. The girls jump in my arms, and a small sound catches in Juniper’s throat. Like for an instant she wanted to scream, before she remembered there’s no point. That it could even make things worse. Bring him upstairs.
“This isn’t working,” Campbell says.
“Shadows?” I ask. But they are already climbing out of bed, moving to our grandmother’s armoire. It was the only thing I wanted from their house when it sold. It’s absurdly big in this little room, but I love it.
Some nights we take our time before opening the doors, pretending that we will discover a pathway to Narnia. This isn’t one of those nights.
We squeeze inside, and I reach for the kerosene lantern that I have stashed behind an old box of books. I leave the door partially open to let clean air in and carbon monoxide out. The lantern was Grandpa’s and looks like it survived an actual war, but it works well, and it’s lasted us a lot of nights like this. My gestures in the dark have been rehearsed a dozen times before. My fingers close on a lighter that I keep hidden in a shoe. I turn the dial on the lantern to lower the wick into the vase of kerosene.
Tiny space, lots of books for kindling, small children, and flammable liquid.
I really do have all the great ideas.
But when I light the lantern, I’m greeted by two tired but eager pairs of eyes.
A warm, familiar glow fills the closet. Now it’s an adventure. There’s a twinkle in Juniper’s eyes. The smallest hint of a smile tugging the end of Campbell’s mouth. We are explorers camping on a mountain. We are astronauts, and we’ve just landed on another planet. Any sounds of the house are gone, masked by door after door we’ve put up to keep them out. Masked by our sheer, stark will to not listen to them any longer.