“You...” he murmurs into the silence. A few crickets chirp. “You don’t know what you’ve done... oh, God... you’re my last chance.”
Breathe. Simply. Keep. Breathing.
He sighs deeply, and the sound weighs heavily on me. “You think I saved you, but I didn’t. Most of all, I saved myself today. I’m a selfish fucking person. That’s what everyone says. Well, mostly Zozoo.” He inhales, as if wanting to add something, but then he climbs out of the tent. I hear him working on the car, humming a melody to himself that sounds lonely, a bit like a song about death and farewell. It reminds me of the time Mom left us.
I was seven, and that was the moment I felt a void in my heart for the first time. Like something had been ripped out of me and left me broken. She hadn’t woken us up, and only Dad was sitting at the breakfast table, looking twenty years older and like an old man. Dad grew up in an orphanage and was always a serious man, but that day, he forgot how to laugh.
“Your mom left us,” he said in a somber voice, his eyes red and swollen.
“Is she dead?” a wide-eyed Arizona wanted to know.
“No, she packed her things and left. She wants to go on with her life without us.” A letter on the table was all she had left him.
James probed in his inimitable way. Arizona complained that Mom wouldn’t be baking us any more birthday cakes and that Dad wouldn’t know what she wanted for her birthday.
It took me forever to find the courage to even ask my dad a question. “When is she coming back?” I squeaked softly. Afterall, moms don’t just leave; only a few fathers do that every now and then.
When I asked, the color drained from his face, and his eyes darkened. “Never!” he shouted. “Never, ever again. Don’t you understand, you stupid child?”
His words were like thunderbolts striking my heart, and I felt like I was having a stroke.
But even though Dad was yelling, I didn’t believe him. Mom would come back. At the time, I thought I had understood the meaning of Tolstoy’s saying about waiting, and that it was some sort of magical agreement between Mom and me. A secret code.
Every night, I snuck into the kitchen because the window overlooked the driveway, and I wanted to be the first to hear her car, the slamming of the door, the slapping of her heels on the gravel. Every night, I opened the window, sat on the old wooden table, and waited. I wanted to be patient until things were okay.
I waited through the spring and many hot summer nights until the fall, when the wind was cool and smelled of dead leaves and farewell. I was still waiting when the first snow blew through the window. I often fell asleep on the kitchen table and woke up almost frozen the next morning. When I finally went to bed with disappointed hopes, it was usually six in the morning.
I remember I had many colds during that time. Dad bought tons of cough syrup, but he never wondered why I was always sick.
Strange. Just as I feel like I’ve been falling ever since, I also feel like I’ve never stopped waiting, even though I’m no longer sleeping on the kitchen table. Mom was the only one, besides Ari, that I could talk to freely. And suddenly, she was gone—without saying goodbye, without a word.
Something about it made me close myself off to the outside world. I didn’t know how I would live in a world without my mom, and everything changed overnight. Mom had always beenmy bridge to the life out there, which scared me then, and still does now. For a long time, I lived in two worlds, the outside world without words, and at home, the inside world, with words for Arizona, James, and sometimes Dad.
Maybe everything would have stayed the same. It could have worked. A girl might be able to live in two worlds, albeit under extreme conditions. However, after the incident, my inside world got even smaller, now only existing in my head. Everything else, including my home, became the outside. I locked myself in and hid the key so well that I couldn’t find it again.
Maybe I should look for it. For a moment, I listen to the melody that flows through the night like a dark stream. I feel it like a bittersweet vibration and a tremor in my limbs, as if my body is responding and finally connecting with something from the outside world again.
After a while, River falls silent, and I smell cigarette smoke and hear a soda can being opened. Judging by his footsteps, he’s pacing in front of the tent, muttering something to himself that I don’t understand. Is he listing the states? What is he saying?
I think I’m going crazy; there’s too much new stuff bombarding me. Also, my throat burns so much, like I swallowed tons of sandpaper. I have to write Dad a letter tomorrow; I can’t go through this another night.
It feels like hours before River re-enters the tent. He sits quietly next to me, and I feel his gaze a second time. It rests on me, gentle and still, yet crackles like fire against my skin.
“I have to save you, Little Lost Girl. I’m sorry, but I have to.”
His words stretch out in the silence, and I picture him lying with his head on the Old Sheriff’s rail, a fallen angel with arms like wings.
I’m sorry, but I have to. It sounds strange. Not like it’s a good thing, more like it hurt. Yet his voice sounded so gentle. It wouldbe a sentence for my Beautiful Words book, but that’s floating somewhere down Willow River.
Eventually, he falls asleep, or at least his breathing sounds like it, and I can’t wait any longer. Almost silently, I slide out of the blanket and unzip the sports bag near the tent flap. I search the contents with one hand, looking for the set of keys that River put in his pocket earlier. At least, that’s what it sounded like when he returned to the tent. I feel clothes and small crackling packets at the bottom and wonder if they’re the drugs he uses to get high. It doesn’t shock me because a lot of the rich kids at Kensington do coke, ecstasy, or whatever. Sometimes, I think the Hills are so bored with their daddy’s money that they can’t get a kick out of life other than by getting high or torturing others. And who knows? Maybe the stuff was in Chester’s Porsche.
I continue to search quietly. My throat is so dry, I can hardly swallow.
Where’s the damn key?
I stroke the sides and feel a bunch of keys. I give River another glance, but he doesn’t move, so I push the flap away and climb out of the tent.
Morning mist hangs like a blanket over the meadow, and the air feels so moist you could quench your thirst simply by breathing. I can almost feel the Fanta running down my throat. I hurry barefoot toward the Porsche.
