Inland (23 page)

THE WINDOW IN MY ROOM LOOKS TO THE WEST.
Every evening, I can watch through its small, steel-reinforced panes as the sun goes down behind the hills. Beyond the hills, the desert. Beyond that, miles and miles away, the restless sea. The week after they moved me in, I found a road atlas in the patient lounge and tracked my journey inland. The route from this room to the beach where they found me is exactly one thousand miles.

The first week, in the unchanging blue-white light of the hospital, I never knew what time it was or how many days had passed. Just like before, so long ago, I’d awoken in a strange place, strange bed, to questions and curious stares. There was the same beeping of the monitors, the same endless parade of question-askers. The lines in my father’s face, though—those were new. Harder. Deeper.

Just like before, she was gone, and I had been left behind.

“Please tell me, Callie,” my father said, after the last police officer had left. “Just tell me the truth.”

“What makes you think I haven’t?” I said, and turned my face to the wall.

The story I told is the one they told me. It was obvious, of course: that I’d left, run away, because I didn’t want to be sent to Wyoming. That I’d been gone four weeks, which I spent hitchhiking and hiding, stowing away in the backs of trucks and keeping out of sight. They knew what had happened, they said; all I had to do was fill in the blanks. They told me not to lie.

I didn’t. I told them I didn’t remember the names of any driver who’d picked me up. I told them I didn’t remember the make and model of a single car. I told them that if I did, I wouldn’t tell them anyway. I made angry faces and rolled my eyes whenever they pressed for more, but they didn’t press hard. Not for a run-of-the-mill rebellion, just some dumb, troubled, selfish teenager who was not just diagnosed schizo-affective, but already had a room ready and waiting at the asylum. I was just another runaway, angry and scared and crazy, who was lucky to turn up alive on a beach instead of dead in a ditch somewhere.

They’d heard the same story enough times before; they were glad to congratulate themselves that this one had a happy ending.

—

But this is not the end.

Sometimes, on visiting days, I catch my father looking at me like I’m someone he doesn’t quite recognize. Sometimes, he swallows and clears his throat like there’s something he wants to say. And sometimes, I wonder if I should tell him a story. A strange one, and sad, about a girl who only wanted to go home, who really thought she could. I’d tell him about how it felt to be loved, deeply and surely and fiercely and forever, in a place so cold and faraway that not even the sun could touch it. I’d tell him about the way she held me in the deep, and how we shine in the dark like starlight. I’d tell him that he shouldn’t cry for me, for any of us, when there’s so much beauty waiting just beyond the edges of the earth.

I’d tell him the truth: that I don’t know why they found me on that rocky beach at daybreak. I don’t know why I was left behind. But I’ll take my pills, and I’ll talk to the doctors, and I’ll be good, so good, such a very good girl, if only they’ll let me go back.

At night, the wind that blows across the desert is as dry and airless as a tomb.

My breath is turning ragged again. It’s only a matter of time.

IT IS NOT YET SUNSET
when the little girl slips barefoot out her door. She steps carefully across the street, across the empty driveway, through the unmown grass. She passes down the long dock that leads to the river, one hand stretched in front of her to clear the way. The spiders, emboldened by the lack of traffic along the wooden walkway, have taken to stringing their webs between the posts.

When she drops to her seat and dangles her feet in the water, the green glass pendant on its long, golden chain lays heavy and cool against her thigh.

Nobody believed her when she told them where she’d gotten it. Three different policemen had taken turns, asking her where and how and when, frustration showing on their faces as the day wore on. They reminded her that this was serious, that her friend’s father was very worried, and urged her to be honest.

They said, “We’re not angry, nobody’s angry, we just need you to tell the truth.”

She must have told the truth a hundred times, her story always the same. Eventually, they’d stopped asking. That was when she heard one of the men saying that he didn’t think she’d seen Callie at all—that she’d had the necklace all along, that she was lying because she’d stolen it.

But it wasn’t stolen. It wasn’t. She’d told them that a hundred times, too, until they threw up their hands and left.

One of the policemen, the one with kind eyes who patted her shoulder and told her after everything that she was a very good girl, had pulled her mother aside on his way out the door. He’d kept his voice low, but she heard all the same.

“It’s not her fault,” he said. “Kids this age, they’re just not reliable witnesses, even when they do know something. And between you and me, the way these things usually end . . . it might be best if she doesn’t remember.”

But she did.

She does.

She remembers, and always will. She remembers that the sun was going down, the sky all painted in pinks and purples, when she’d wandered down to the river. And that it was even later, the last of the light leaking out of the sky, when she bent down and reached out with one small hand to receive the beautiful present. She had looped it around her neck and promised solemnly to take the very best care of it, as the night creatures began to sing.

She would pretend to forget, like they wanted her to, but this was how it happened.

The moon was heavy and full in the sky as she sat with her friend for the last time.

“I’ll miss you,” she said, and the older girl smiled, and silently kissed her cheek. She turned to where the others waited, arms outstretched. They went. She followed.

Her skin had gleamed like silver as she swam down into the dark.

A
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Inland
was born at a kitchen table in the world’s most charming Wicker Park apartment, where Jessi Lansgen made a pie while I talked about mermaid myths, missing mothers, and a story that I wasn’t quite sure how or whether to tell. This book was not the most amazing thing to come out of her kitchen that day (that would be the pie), but I’m so grateful for that conversation, and all the other ones, too.

Thanks to Yfat Reiss Gendel at Foundry Literary + Media for her tireless work, steel nerves, and excellent hysteria-calming skills. Thanks to Julie Strauss-Gabel for insightfully guiding this story from “sloppy” to “creepy.” Thanks to Tara Fowler, Melissa Faulner, and everyone at Dutton for bringing this book together from the inside out.

More thanks: to my father, who was a valuable source of information about hospital settings and medical conditions that might have (ahem) aquatic implications. (If it makes sense, it’s thanks to him. If not, it’s definitely my fault.) To my mother, who sent me every article under the sun about
gills
. To Mardie Cohen, who answered all my questions about Floridian culture, and then some. To Amy Wilkinson, who listened to me fret about revisions more than any human being reasonably should. To Olivia Tompkins, who graciously read anything I threw at her and answered all my questions about What the Kids Are into These Days. To Mary Dorn and her camera, the most amazing lifesavers in a photo-related pinch. To Noah Rosenfield, who was always up for a discussion of family drama and watery graves.

And to Brad Anderson—beloved husband, most trusted reader, maker of delicious steaks, and all-around best guy in the world. Thank you for everything.