Lark (7 page)
Authors: Tracey Porter
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Issues, #Sexual Abuse, #Death & Dying, #Girls & Women
I’m monstrous and ugly—part tree, part girl, the color of dirt and bark. Leaves cover my face. I blend in with the woods, like a fallen tree or a stump, a branch torn off by a storm. I stand by the trees by my house, watching Ian and Eve walk from her house to mine. I hear Eve describing the games that we played in the den, how we made collages with scented markers and glitter.
“Why are you telling me this?” he asks, drawing her close.
“Because you liked her,” she says. “Didn’t you?”
I wait to hear what he says. I remember how I used to blush when he walked into class, how he smiled and dropped his head when he took the desk next to mine.
“Only a little,” he says. “I gave up quick. She was hard to get to know. I couldn’t have a conversation with her.”
“Not like with me?”
“No. Not like with you.”
I watch him kiss Eve, and I have never felt more dead than I do now. I remember how I liked his voice, and how his eyes always seemed to be dilated. I didn’t have room for him. I cast out Eve as well because she didn’t keep up with her swimming. I was all about practice and regionals, competitions and grades. The week before I died my mother signed me up for an SAT prep course. I was dead when I was alive, and I didn’t even know it.
It’s almost noon, but I’m still in bed, wrapped in my blanket. My mother paces the hall and talks to my dad on the phone, describing how she found me collapsed in the woods.
“It was snowing and she was facedown, crying and hallucinating, talking to Lark.” She’s crying like she doesn’t know what to do. Next she’s on the phone to April, telling her the same thing. When she comes into my room, I pretend I’m asleep.
I hear a car in the driveway and a knock on the door. Moments later, my dad walks into my room.
“Hey, you,” he says. “How’re you feeling?” I let him hold me against him and rock me like he did when I was little.
My mom comes in with a tray of soup and crackers, and a glass of apple juice mixed with sparkling water. My parents sit on my bed and watch me eat. The broth trickles down my throat. My throat feels swollen and sore. Either Lark or I broke my window because one pane is patched with brown paper and tape.
“I’ll go to the hardware store later,” my dad says.
“Can I come?” I ask.
“Maybe,” he says.
“After you see April,” says my mother.
“But it’s not Wednesday,” I say. I’m drowsy and thick, like there’s a cloud in my head. “I don’t want to go. I’m not feeling well.” But my parents say I have to go. They tell me to finish my soup and get dressed.
Strangely, the three of us go in my dad’s car, something that hasn’t happened in years. I’m on the alert, waiting for the fighting to start. But it doesn’t. Seeing the backs of their heads so close together makes me remember what it was like before the divorce. I feel like crying, but I don’t.
April’s cheery and welcoming, especially to my father, whom she hasn’t met before. She ushers me into her office and settles into her big comfy chair. She asks me if I know why my parents wanted me to see her today, and I say it’s because I was outside last night when I should have been in bed.
“Were you running away?” she asks.
“Of course not,” I say.
“Your mother says you were talking to Lark.”
“It was a dream,” I say.
“Your parents wonder if you should live with your dad for a while. They think a change might be good for you.”
I tell April that’s a stupid idea, and when she asks why, I remind her I’m homeschooled.
“Hallie isn’t smart enough to teach me. My mother has a PhD.”
“I don’t think they imagine you staying there for an extended period of time.”
“Whatever,” I say.
“They think the change would do you some good. After all, you have two little stepbrothers there, and a new stepmother you’ve told me you like. . . .”
“I never said I like Hallie. . . .”
“Sorry,” says April. “My mistake. But you have spoken well of her. She’s offered to teach you how to weave, am I right?”
“She’s okay,” I say. “A little too namby-pamby for my taste.”
April shrugs. “Maybe it would be good to spend some time in the home of a namby-pamby woman for a while. The way you’ve described her makes me think she’s rather . . . nurturing.”
“Too nurturing! Those boys are incredibly spoiled.”
“Maybe she’d spoil you. You could use some spoiling. After all, you’ve been through so much.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Really,” says round-faced April. “Your father’s departure, your parents’ divorce, your mother’s anger, the violent death of the person you most looked up to . . . these are all very difficult experiences, very draining, exhausting events for anyone, but especially for someone your age.”
It’s cold in her office. I pull the pink-and-blue quilt off the ottoman and wrap it around my shoulders. It’s decorated with hobbyhorses and ABC blocks.
“They’re worried that you were talking to Lark last night.”
“They don’t have to be. Lark won’t visit me anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because I let her down.”
“How did you do that?”
“I wouldn’t look where the knife went in. Now she’ll really die. That tree where she was killed is swallowing her up.”
“Oh, dear,” says April. “Why would the tree do that to her?”
“Because that’s what happens to girls who are killed the way Lark was. Don’t you know?”
“No,” says April, “but I’d like to. Will you tell me?”
“Some trees have a girl in them.”
When I’m done, April sends me out to the waiting room and asks my parents inside. I sit on the floor, looking through a basket of broken toys and torn books. An assortment of Happy Meal toys, Lego key chains, and metal cars with missing tires are all tangled together in the mane of a My Little Pony.
April should do something about this
, I think. It could make kids think she doesn’t really care about helping them.
Upstairs in the attic, Ian and I sweep down the rafters and wash them with pine soap. We paint the walls white, scrub the one tiny window, hang a few clip lights and strings of Christmas lights from the beams. My dad and Ian carry up a worktable and chair and an old velvet armchair I found at the flea market. When it’s spring, my dad says, he’ll put in skylights so I’ll be able to paint by natural light. Shelves of my dad’s old paints and brushes, glass jars of pigments, and all my Van Gogh books line one of the walls.
Ian sits in the chair while I take his picture.
“I hate this,” he says.
“Just look at the camera,” I say. “Or don’t.” I take a few of his profile, amazed at how long his lashes are. I look through the photos carefully, searching for the right one. I’ll paint him in wild blue and orange, swirls of celadon in the back.
It’s the night of the wake, and Ian walks me to Lark’s door and rings the bell. A woman named Carole asks us inside. She says she’s Lark’s aunt. Ian kisses me good-bye, and the door closes behind him.
The foyer is shockingly bare. The table where the family left keys and letters is gone. The family photos have been taken down, leaving dark rectangles on the walls. Bolts of bubble wrap and boxes are stacked in the corner. I ask where Lark’s parents are, but Carole says they decided not to stay.
“I don’t think they realized how hard it would be to see all of Lark’s friends. . . .” Her voice trails off. “It’s too much for them right now.”
In the living room, different groups of Lark’s friends acknowledge one another with small glances and smiles. Nyetta, the girl down the street, sits on a love seat with her mother and father and her father’s new wife. Girls from school stand around the fireplace while Lark’s friends from gymnastics gather around the sofa. They wear the red-and-white ribbon from their uniform in their hair. Mothers stand around a card table in the corner of the room. They take turns arranging platters of food and serving drinks. I wish I could join them so I’d have something to do. Instead I make my way to the girls from school. Alyssa is there. I’m surprised at first, but then I remember how she knew Lark from the pool and stayed on the swim team long after I left.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hi,” I say back.
“This is pretty horrible, isn’t it?” She lets her hair fall over her face, like a veil so we can confide. Away from Boston and Beth, she’s more calm and subdued.
“Yeah,” I answer.
“I hear you’re going out with Ian. That must be kinda weird . . . him being the only guy Lark ever really liked.”
“I didn’t know Lark liked him,” I lie. “I wasn’t as close to her as I used to be.”
“No one was. But she liked him, I could tell.”
I get a little flustered and jealous, which she must have noticed, because she rushes to add that she didn’t think Ian ever liked her. “Not to be mean . . . but Lark kind of disappeared from us, didn’t she? I remember when you two were best friends.”
Lark’s aunt invites us upstairs to her room, which is still unpacked and only slightly different from the last time I was there. The bed is made, the same flowered quilt and embroidered pillows, and her desk is still covered with schoolbooks. Above it used to be pictures of pop stars and movies that she loved, but now a collage of photos from her meets is pinned to the wall. In one Lark flies over the top uneven bar in a back flip. Her gaze is focused, thighs pulled, feet pointed, hands ready to grip. I can’t imagine anyone being stronger, or knowing her body in space better than Lark did, and I wonder how this could have happened to her. Why couldn’t she fight him off?
Lark’s aunt steps to the middle of the room. “We’ve put a few of Lark’s things on her dresser,” she says. “Tiny things she collected or wore. Please choose something you’d like to keep.”
Very neatly arranged on the dresser with the marble top are Lark’s hair ribbons and charms, bracelets strung with glass beads or woven from embroidery thread, a tiny pink jewelry box shaped like a heart, silver rings with mother-of-pearl and turquoise, a silk butterfly for her hair, a necklace with one half of a broken heart. On the other end of her dresser is the collection of tiny porcelain animals she’s had since she was little. None is bigger than a thimble. There’s a tiny pony on its hind legs, a line of ducklings, a pink-and-gray pig, a tiger, and an elephant. At the end are two yellow birds with gray wings and black faces.
Larks
. . . , I realize, and I go back to the day when we were very little and she showed me a picture of a lark in a book of birds. We were in the study, which always felt like a grandfather’s room because it was filled with comfy old furniture. A granny-square afghan was spread over the back of the sofa. It felt so safe to be surrounded by oak walls and books, the sound of the dryer in the background, shafts of sunlight falling through the window.
I pick up one of the birds and touch the curve of the feathers with my finger. Its beak is open. Singing. Nyetta has joined me at the far end of the dresser.
“I’m choosing this,” she says, staring at the little bird resting in her palm.
“Me, too,” I say.
She lifts her head and looks at me. She’s tiny with dark circles under her eyes like she’s either sick or can’t sleep. She tilts her head so she can see me from the corner of her eye.
“She used to visit me.”
Off to the side, Lark’s friends are talking softly and looking over her things on the dresser. Everyone is delicate and well mannered, like we’re each playing a role. I look at Nyetta in her dark dress and stockings, not sure if I’ve heard her right.
“She wanted me to see her . . . where the knife went in. But I couldn’t.” She looks down at the floor like she’s ashamed. “I was too scared. The knife went in here,” she says, pointing to her side. “It went between her ribs.”
She’s matter-of-fact about it, which frightens me more. I don’t know what to say, but it seems best to take her seriously.
“When’s the last time you saw her?” I ask.
“Three nights ago,” she says, “but she won’t come back. She’s mad at me.”
The little bird is in my pocket. It’s so tiny I can close my hand without touching it. Nyetta balances hers in the palm of her hand. She bounces it slightly, like she’s encouraging it to fly. She’s rapt in the gesture, and for a moment she looks like any imaginative girl you might see.
“Go on, Lark,” she says. “Eve will help you. She won’t let you get trapped in that tree.”
Roots snare my feet, pull my legs to the taproot. I try calling the three sisters for help, but my pulse is too weak. They watch me from their own trees, crying as I’m pulled deeper into the tree. The tree twists my arms into branches, encases me with heartwood and sap. The wound in my side hardens and scars, an ugly burl in the trunk. My pulse snags. I’m static and fixed, scarred with the buds of fallen leaves, forced to look at the place where I died. Under the bark, my heart still throbs.
The doorbell rings. It’s Eve and some boy about six feet tall, carrying a white pastry box.
“Hi,” says Eve. I didn’t notice her eyelashes the other night. She doesn’t have many, but each one is perfectly pointed like the ends of a star. I stare at her so hard she has to take a step back.
“We brought you cupcakes,” says the boy, offering me the box.
“You went to Heidelberg,” I say. “My favorite bakery.” I look longingly at the castle etched on the gold sticker. I used to think it was where the princess pricked her finger. Ian and Eve both wear navy blue peacoats with long Harry Potter scarves wrapped around their necks. They’re standing so close, their arms are touching. I bet they can feel each other through their coats. “Come in,” I say.
