mother devouring one more paragraph. I wondered at what moment they would realize that I was gone.
I bent over, selecting twigs and fallen branches haphazardly, without any real expertise. I hadn’t joined the Boy Scouts because my mother considered them an organization of Christian zealots. She did think their survival tips were important however, considering the amount of time I spent outside. She found a used copy of the Cub Scout Leader Book as well as the Wilderness Survival Guide at a library sale, and taught me how to make a tourniquet, how to identify edible mushrooms, and how to track a badger. None of this seemed pertinent right now.
I brought the pile of sticks to Betsy, eager for her approval.
“Over there,” she said, motioning to a circle of rocks she had created not far from the opening of the tent.
I dropped the branches on the ground and sat down next to them. I thought of my mother, unwinding her hair from the two frayed braids she wore pinned to the top of her head.
Betsy made a pyramid of twigs, crumpled a piece of newspaper, which materialized from the pack she’d been carrying on her back. She lit a match just as the last embers of sunlight burned beyond the forest, and started the fire. We ate creamed corn and hot dogs, charred from the open flame. I sat next to Betsy, eating quietly, and knew that my parents had probably realized by now that I was missing. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen my mother look afraid.
We talked about school, about the new Everly Brothers album, about Jack Kerouac and whether or not anyone would ever travel to outer space. We even talked about what we would miss. “Double Delights,” Betsy said. (You could only get them from the ice-cream truck that drove through our neighborhood at dusk on summer evenings.)
“Chicken croquettes.” I nodded. My father made them, with thick creamy gravy.
“Smoking candy cigarettes on the train tracks.”
“Sugar on snow,” I said. (Sugar on snow is hot maple syrup on clean white snow. It makes a sort of sticky candy. You eat it followed by a dill pickle and then a plain doughnut. It’s one of the best things about spring in Vermont.)
“They’ve got that in Maine.”
“Oh,” I said. I’d forgotten for a minute about Maine.
“Spying on Mr. Lowe,” she said. She smiled a little wistfully. “My tree.”
The fire was burning low. I followed Betsy into the tent and accepted when she offered me half of her unzipped sleeping bag. We lay on our backs staring up at the roof of the tent, the edges of our bodies just touching: the sides of our hands, our hips, our ankles. The sleeping bag was heavy and warm. My skin, where it touched hers, felt electric.
“I’ll miss my dad, “she said softly.
“Um-hm,” I said, nodding in the darkness. I wanted to squeeze her hand, let her know that I was having second thoughts too, but I worried it would break the spell.
We lay there for a long time, and I waited for her to sit up, laugh, say, “It’s too cold. Let’s go home.” But it only got darker and quieter, and soon the cadence of her breathing changed. She was asleep. And I knew that we weren’t going home. We were running away. For real. I must have laid there for hours, listening to her breathe, trying to discern any restlessness, any fear. But remarkably, Betsy kept sleeping.
Soon I was cold, freezing cold, and I imagined Betsy (had she been awake) would have been cold too. My mother had also taught me the dangers of hypothermia, and so, in all my imagined chivalry, I crawled out of the tent into the almost absolute darkness and added another log to the fire. It took a while for it to catch, and I nearly hollered with joy when it finally did. I was thinking mostly about warmth, and maybe just a little about my mother’s instructions on how to make a signal with smoke.
I must have finally fallen asleep out there, because in the misty half-light of dawn, when I awoke to the distant sound of voices and crashing of branches, my face was pressed against the dirt. I was still brushing dried leaves out of my hair when my father and Mr. Parker emerged from behind a thick grove of trees and arrived at our clearing.
Nancy Butler (whose sister worked at the bank) had apparently come forward as soon as word got out that we were missing. She gave elaborate details as to how much money Betsy had stolen from her father’s pickle jar as well as her own suppositions as to where Betsy and I were headed. One theory was that we were headed to California, you know, like the pioneers. Our fathers set out to find us, and my little midnight campfire, just five miles outside of town, had been a virtual beacon.
Betsy never found out how it was that our fathers happened upon us in the woods. I never confessed. That would have been admitting that I had wanted to be found, and I could never admit that. I guess I knew that if it hadn’t been for that fire, we might have wound up in Maine after all. That even if it was uncertainty I had heard in the quiet conversation we had inside that tent, Betsy had made up her mind, and once she set out to do something, there was no turning back. The reality was that if she had been a bird, she would have flown right into that window, even if I told her it was glass instead of air.
Rain
I must have fallen asleep, because the screaming invaded my dreams. First it was the wind of a vicious storm, and then the howling of a wounded animal. By the time it woke me, it had become the cries of an infant. I sprung off the couch and raced to Shelly’s room, my heart beating so hard my chest ached. I turned on the light before I realized that the screaming was not coming from Shelly, who sat up in bed, startled and groggy.
“What’s the matter, Daddy?” she asked, her voice raspy.
“Nothing,” I said. “Go back to sleep.” I hurriedly tucked in her covers and turned out the light.
Another scream.
“That’s Maggie!” Shelly said, sitting up again.
“It’s okay, honey. I’ll go check on her. Stay here.”
I walked quickly down the short hallway to my own room and knocked before I pushed the door open.
The curtains were open. Outside, the streetlights reflected off the cool green of the swimming pool and illuminated the room, making it look like an aquarium. It was raining; water streamed down the windows in slow sheets. I could see only the suggestion of Marguerite’s body under the covers. Convinced that perhaps it had indeed only been the wind, or an animal, I turned and headed out the door, but just as I was pulling the door shut behind me, she screamed again. I opened the door and turned toward the bed.
Marguerite was sitting up, her arms thrashing as if she were fighting someone off. Her wild punches struck the air, and she wailed, “Noooo!”
“Marguerite,” I said softly.
“Nooo!” she wailed again. She was kneeling on the bed now, her eyes half open and staring out the window.
The shimmering green made the whole scene subaquatic, a watery dream, and Marguerite a wailing siren.
“Maggie!” I said, loudly this time, trying her nickname instead.
She turned to look at me. Her face was streaked with tears, her hair wet with sweat. She was trying to catch her breath, panting with exhaustion. She stared at me, still stunned, for several moments until sleep left her. Her
