On the opposite page is the article about my mom talking to Samuel from Demons ’N Saints. Apparently, the band is supposed to play at her opening of “The Power of Masks.” I skim through a few subheadings and land on one:
Samuel about Asher: “He slept on his girlfriend’s grave for a year.”
I instinctively feel pity and recall when I slept on the kitchen table for almost a year. I wonder if the Demons ’N Saints’ disguise is perhaps part of his grief, but that can’t be the case because the band consists of several musicians, and who knows how long ago that was.
I skim the article.
Actually, it’s understandable that Mom hired Demons ’N Saints. The power of masks.
Oscar Wilde once said, “A mask tells us more than a face.”
Thoughtfully, I tug at my blonde curls and wonder what mask I’ve put on. Silence?
I text my dad the obligatoryI’m fine, then my phone switches off because the battery is dead. I lie back down and stare at the ceiling. So many things fill my head. Without words, I feel like I’m falling apart. But I can’t just tear this mask off like that; I have no idea who I am without it.
A loud noise wakes me up later. I glance next to me, but the place is empty. River isn’t here. I hurriedly open the zipper in the semi-darkness when a sharp voice stops me.
“Don’t come out!”
It sounds like it’s somehow coming from above.
From a slackline?
I listen, but I don’t hear anything except the chirping of crickets. Since I can’t ask, Why not? I wait a while, giving River time to do whatever before I peek out of the tent.
The first thing I see are black birds lying in the moonlit grass—sinister origami cranes that look like they fell from the sky. I carefully climb out of the tent and look around. They’re everywhere in the clearing, which is bordered by the forest like a black frame. Maybe fifty, maybe a hundred.
Something about this sight makes my heart beat faster.
“You shouldn’t have come out.”
I glance up and see River sitting on a slackline between two trees. He looks at me, but his face is in the shadows. Behind him, the moon glows like a rough, shiny silver diamond. I inhale deeply. The line is high. Much higher than the ones he has stretched for me so far, probably fifteen feet above the ground or more. And River isn’t secured.
Of course not.
He could break his neck!
Panicking, I run to the line and accidentally step on a crane. Without thinking, I pick it up. It’s not made of newspaper like the first one but of a finer material, comforting and delicate. My unease doesn’t come from the little paper bird itself but rather from the sheer number of birds. I carefully put it in the shirt pocket of the army-green shirt that has somehow become my nightgown.
Goosebumps cover my bare legs, and it’s only now that I register the cold night air. Shivering, I wrap my arms around my body and keep walking. He must be truly crazy. Why does he always need some kind of kick?
“Go back into the tent, Tucks. You can’t help me. Nobody can.” He sounds lost, just like he did on the track.
I shake my head. This time, I don’t do what he says. Instead, I walk along the line toward the tree where he stretched it—a strangely grown deciduous tree that seems almost lost among all the conifers beyond the clearing—and grab a lower one to pull myself up.
“Go. Back!”
His dark tone makes me pause, and I look up. His expression is as gloomy as the day he almost ran into James’s car. In one hand, he holds a bottle that looks suspiciously like Jack Daniel’s, and in the other, a cigarette.
“You scream in your sleep, Tucks,” he says suddenly, and again, there’s a strange sadness in his words. Without taking his eyes off me, he takes a drag. “And talk.”
Chapter 11
Ihave to hold on to the branch because my knees are weak. Not true! I never talk in my sleep. Arizona and James would have told me. Or did they not hear it?
River looks down at me. “So, you can, after all. That question is clarified.”
He says it like I’m his project. If I can talk in my sleep, my body still knows how it works. Maybe the gap isn’t as insurmountable as I believed. Have I ever wakened myself up with my own scream? But maybe I’ve only done this since I met River.
