doing okay for a few months. My grades had gone back up and I had stopped seeing the school counselor. But moving shattered any progress I might have made. I think I cried the entire time. It was like I was being forced to look at all these things from my old life and then bury them in boxes forever. It must have been unbearable for Mom. But the one pacifier to the whole situation, which Mom made sure to constantly remind me of, was that our new house was just around the corner from Beth’s.
I restack a few of the boxes off to the side to gain access to a cardboard poster tube in the corner. The plastic cap makes a hollow pop that echoes through the room.
The map is not nearly as big as I remember it to be, stretching barely the length of my arm. Random boxes make for an uneven display surface, so I unfurl only the top left corner and press it against a stack at eye level. The rest of the map uncoils sloppily off to the side. A slight tear grows through a state that may or may not be Wyoming.
Well, I was right. Oregon is yellow. Ohio is blue.
But beyond that, there’s no real information about the state except for its capital, Salem, a couple of brown triangles indicating the Cascade Mountain Range, and a tiny cartoon horse with a cowboy on top. I squint forward, as if something secret might suddenly emerge if I just stare hard enough, long enough.
Then I spot it. A fleck at the peak of the cowboy’s hat. It looks like a pinprick. It looks like his plan to leave us.
Another wave of nausea crashes over me and I get clammy. My hand shakes as I carefully reach forward, as if I were adjusting one of the logs in a campfire.
But the fleck sticks to my damp fingertip. It’s dust. It’s nothing at all.
A plastic tarp rustles and I jump. My sweaty bare feet slip on the attic floor and I fall hard into one of the boxes. A corrugated corner jabs my pathetically untoned bicep. I touch the red spot softly and find it’s already tender and lumpy, a definite bruise in the making. Across the room, the tarp flutters again. From the ground, I can see it’s draped over a hissing heat vent.
I pull my knees up to my chin and wonder what it is that I’m doing up here in the first place, and what kind of grand revelation I expect from a stupid third-grade classroom map.
I fight through gusts of fall wind, the tails of my scarf flapping wildly behind me. I sink my face into the folds until my eyelashes bat away woolly strands. Autumn has peaked, and the trees are on fire with color.
As I wait for a stoplight to change, I find myself underneath one insanely bright orange-leafed tree. I stare up at the netting of delicate branches splayed overhead like the inside of an umbrella. It’s chokingly beautiful.
So I take out my camera from my bag and snap my first real picture. Maybe I could make a collection, like flashcards of beautiful things that I could look at whenever I’m feeling down. Or maybe that’s dumb. I doubt the pictures could ever look as good as the real thing. Especially Polaroids. As cool as they are, they always seem a little bit out of focus.
The sidewalks are mostly deserted, save for random old ladies shuffling along with carts commandeered from the Giant Eagle parking lot, or smiling young moms pushing strollers and chatting into their hands-free cell-phone wires. After a few minutes of brisk walking without any real game plan, I’m on the main drag of tiny mom-and-pop stores on West Market that have somehow survived all the strip-mall development.
The temperature is pretty chilly, so I zip up my navy-blue hooded sweatshirt and cram my hands into the shallow pockets. The flashing bank clock across the street says it’s almost three. Since Akron High School is about as far away as my house at this point, I decide to head over in that direction and meet up with Beth and the girls. It’s weird, but it feels like forever since I’ve seen them.
Akron High is your typical brick fortress, surrounded by usually green, but now crispy brown, lawns. I can see students inside three floors of classrooms. The parking lot off to the side displays the vast spread of wealth in town — boxy maroon four-doors from the mid-90s reflect in the polished chrome rims of the sleek silver imports parked next to them. Company allegiance is printed in the white letters circling each tire. Firestone and Cooper and the local favorite, Goodyear.
I walk up and down each row until I find Maria’s orange Volvo, Goodyear tires. The car is pretty beat up, with dents and dings in the metal and rips in the beige interior, but it always gets us where we need to go. The funniest thing is the back left seat, which we all call the Period Seat. Once Maria tossed a lipstick over her shoulder and it melted in the summer heat and stained the cloth just like a period. It went unused after that, but now that there are four of us, someone always has to sit in the Period Seat. We take turns, rotating around from shotgun. Beth always jokes how just sitting in that seat gives her cramps.
I jump up on the hood and wait until the sound of the final bell catches on a cool breeze. When it does, Maria is the first to walk out. She sees me and blows me kisses with both of her mitten-covered hands. Beth is right behind her. She has on a pair of brown wide-leg polyester pants, stolen out of her granny’s suitcase when she last came to visit. Her pace quickens when she spots me, and the fabric bells swish wildly around her ankles. She comes up nose-to-nose with me and grabs the strings on my sweatshirt. One hard yank and the hood shrinks until only my lips are exposed.
“Where were you? I must have called your house a thousand times!” She sounds pretty pissed. And worried. “Are you okay?”
I hop off the hood and stretch my arms like a worn veteran of many drunken nights out. “Mom let me ride out my hangover in bed. She even delivered me a full breakfast. Eggs and toast and all that.”
Beth rolls her eyes, still semi-annoyed at me but happy to see that I’m doing all right after last night. She shrugs off her book bag, which I hold while she puts on her jean jacket. Rain clouds swarm overhead in remarkably fast motion.
“Weird! So she wasn’t pissed?” Maria walks around to the back of her car, pops the trunk open, and carelessly tosses her books inside one by one.
“Nah. She gave me a No Drinking Lecture, but I’m not grounded or anything.” The truth is, I bet my mom was just happy that I came home in one piece. The power of pity is an amazing thing. I should remember that.
Maria slams the trunk closed and cozies up to me against the side door. “Did she get any dirt on your dad? I mean, Jim?” She whispers the last part, almost as if she doesn’t want Beth to hear. But she does hear. Her head spins toward us really fast.
I rub the sole of my left sneaker back and forth over the gravel. When I look up, Beth is walking over to us. “It’s nothing, trust me,” I say.
“Ruby. Spill it.” Beth rubs her hands together and blows on them to keep warm.
It’s not that I don’t want to tell her. More than anything, I’m embarrassed by the whole situation and for what Maria might think about everything. But I ignore the redness burning up my cheeks, unbutton my lips, and recite the two new facts I’ve learned this morning.
“A forest ranger? You’ve got to be kidding me,” Beth snarls. “Hopefully, karma will strike and a big pine tree will fall on him.”
Maria digs in her purse for her favorite lip gloss. She squeezes a dollop on her bottom lip and smoothes it out with her pinky. “Yeah. Tiiiiimber.”
Over Beth’s
