The Girl in the Well Is Me (10 page)

10

I
NTERRUPTING CHICKEN

This is what happened:

Where my right shoulder was pressed against the wall, the well suddenly gave way and I fell over sideways into a pool of light and dust and a man caught me cleanly. His name is Marty. It's not a very good name. Anyone would tell you that. I didn't know his name when he caught me. I didn't know I was awake. I thought I was dreaming. There were fish, nibbling, and then I was the fish. I pedaled so fast and hard on my bike that I got away, and I reached my hand into the deep freeze for another ice cream sandwich and Robby said, “Don't look up.” And then the bats swarmed down and I was going to scream, but Hayfield jumped into my basket and I had to get away. Pedaling, falling, and then the wall and the light. I wasn't awake, but I wasn't not awake. Then there were arms. Marty's arms. My gills were useless in the air.

The dream and the thing that was happening in real life were the same, braiding themselves together in a fishtail, mermaid, French braid. Grandma was there, watching, eating cookies, her eyes twinkling with an almost-­smile. (
Twinkling
is one of those details that I remembered later about Grandma. Maybe she had twinkling eyes in real life, maybe she didn't.) The dream swam with fish. I saw that the fish were beautiful. My lungs opened and closed, pulling for air through the dust and grime. Where was the air? I fell through the water bed, drowning, but I didn't want to un-­be, not anymore. Please, no, not that.

Marty held on tight. Marty said my name, over and over again. Marty's arms were tree branches that bent low enough to pluck me up. “Baaa,” said the zombie goats, clambering up to freedom. Goats are amazing climbers, you know. I think it's because they don't think. They just
do
. They're not like, “If I try to climb that, I could slip.” They are already climbing. I knew I should
do
. Do what? I breathed in and in and in. I kept breathing until I was a balloon, red, floating high above the scene, which was packed with people and even TV camera crews from CNN filming my floppy, bleeding body in Marty's tree-­trunk arms.
Well, isn't that nice. I'll be famous.
Mandy, Sandy, and Kandy were crying in a huddle, their braids newly tightened for the small screen.

It's hard to sort it all out.

An eagle swooped low with his beak open and I said, “Please, no!” but he still did it, he popped the balloon and
BAM
, I was back in my body, which hurt in so many ways, like I'd been folded too tight and, in the unfolding, I'd broken into a hundred pieces. My arms and legs just hung there. I felt like a praying mantis, bent and awkward, sticking out at odd angles, all over the place, giraffing, like Kandy. I told my arms to straighten up, but they didn't respond. “Come on,” I told them. Still nothing. Fish don't have arms, so I guess it made sense.

Now, I'm on a stretcher and covered with a really hot blanket. It's too hot. Sweat covers me like my own personal ocean. That feels right though, now that I'm a fish. I miss Marty. Being held by someone is really something when you haven't been held for a while. Probably all fish feel that way. When Marty's hand touched my arm, my eyes opened wide and leaked all the hose water everywhere. He didn't mind. I guess he didn't. Who is he to mind? He's a hero. He'll probably get a medal.

Then Mom is here. “Mom!” I say, and she looks surprised to see me.

“Oh, Kammie,” she says. She's crying. I've made her cry. She's started. What if she never stops?

“Don't cry,” I say. “It's OK.”

“OK,” she says, and cries anyway.

Robby says, “Knock knock.”

So I say, “Who's th—”

But before I can even finish, he yells, “INTERRUPTING CHICKEN.” I've forgotten how to laugh, which is too bad, because right away his face closes like orange curtains crookedly shutting and blocking out the light.

I rearrange my face in one way, then two, then three, until my face has all the expressions at once. “It's funny,” I say.

“Thanks.” He half nods, half glares. “Can we go now?” he says to Mom.

“No,” she says. “We'll go with her.”

So here we are, a family on the Number 7 bus going out of town, except the bus is an ambulance, taking us to the hospital. I miss Hayfield. The ambulance starts and I listen for it to bump into something, but it's hard to hear above the sound of the siren slicing through the air like knife blades, spinning. “Shhh,” I say, but it doesn't hear me. I am lying down and Mom and Robby are on a bench, and no one says anything, and I tell the coyote to run before he gets run over. I whisper it loud in my head so that the silver thread of it can reach him like when you talk into a tin can tied to another tin can on a string. I hope he is safe.

There's so much air up here. Breathing is a relief, I can tell you that.

In the hospital, Robby fidgets with his watch strap and Mom rocks back and forth, like she is rocking me, but she isn't allowed to rock me because I have some broken parts. That's what the X-­rays say. We all have broken parts, that's the truth, but mine really hurt. My arm and my leg and all my ribs on one side, say the X-­rays. The X-­ray machine is really beautiful. Not the machine itself, but the pictures on the screen. Up there, in the light, it looks like I am made up of pieces of glass that all band together to form the shapes of legs, arms, and ribs. There are little lines in almost everything. There's this song that Record Store Dave played me that says, “There are cracks in everything, that's how the light gets in.” I guess that's also how it gets out. I guess that's also how I made my own stars down there in the well, leaking my silvery light all over the place.

After the X-­rays, I get taken upstairs, then downstairs, then up, and then down. All the while flocks of doctors flap around me, their wings gentle against my face. That's nice. I like that part. The soft, being-­taken-­care-­of parts. The medicine drips into my arm through a tube. I'm filled up with silver, it shines through all my veins and everywhere. It's such a relief.

The trouble is that time is opening and shutting like a black hole, speeding up and slowing down, stretching inside me like a cat yawning. I lose a day or two days and I wake up and go to sleep. Mom is there and then she isn't. Robby is and then isn't. The hands on the clock twirl around and stop.

“Robby,” I whisper, wet wool dripping down my chin. I clear my throat and the frogs hop free. “Robby, can we climb a tree when I get better?”

He looks up. He's been playing a game on his phone. I don't know what it is. I want to ask, but the words are too hard to figure out. “The trees here are crap,” he says.

Ribbit, ribbit
, I agree, but not out loud. I nod instead. I still feel mixed up. Which way do the words go?

“Maybe we can find one.” He shrugs. “I guess we can try.”

“OK,” I say. OK OK OK OK. Those OKs bounce around the hospital room like Ping-­Pong balls. In the distance, I hear sirens. They sound nice, like the kind of wind that holds birds up and sends balloons on journeys. I imagine the ambulances whizzing down the main street, like mine did, the person inside watching the whole town pass by backward and upside down, like moving through time in reverse. Mr. Thacker told me once that time can go forward or backward, that somewhere there is a parallel universe where time goes the other way. It made sense when he said it. But when I think about it, it falls apart. How can time go backward? Can people get younger? Can they unfall into a well?

“We should get some records,” I say to Mom, who is there beside me. Her hair is flattened on one side like she slept in a chair, which I guess she did. “And a record player.”

“We'll get one in the new house,” she says.

“New house?” I say.

“I found a place to rent,” she says. “It has a yard.”

“Can we have cats?” I say, my heart full up with fur and fear.

She half-­smiles. “Yes,” she says. “Cats.”

“Good,” I say, and then I'm sleeping again, curled up on the gold-­flecked floor in the sun, cats pressed all over my body, like gentle living cushions, carrying me home.

I dream about Dad, mowing the lawn. He's wearing handcuffs. It's hard for him to push the mower, but I can't help him. I shout at him to stop, but he doesn't answer because he's wearing ear buds that are attached to this huge record player. On the label of the record, the word silence spins in circles. Dad sweats and pushes the mower and the grass grows and grows.

The real true reason why we moved to Texas is because the prison is behind the warehouse. The prison is right here. This is how it is now. Mom goes to see Dad on Saturdays. Robby and I do not. We aren't ready. Maybe we will be one day. That day is not yet. The rest of the week, she packages up stuff, stuff, and more stuff into cardboard boxes in the warehouse. She comes home with cuts on her hands from the box cutters. She comes home with blisters splitting open on her feet like eggs. She comes home and puts food in the fridge and leaves for her other job where they call her Deena the Dancer. I think she likes herself best as Deena the Dancer. She hates beer, but she likes to have the job, and she dances while she works. I think maybe she shouldn't because she already has blisters, but Mom is Mom. I can't stop her. Mom's name is Deena. Dad used to call her Dancing Deena. She always liked dancing, but when he said it, he was trying to be funny. I think her coworkers now just call her that because she literally dances while she stirs. Dad wasn't literal. He was always making something mean something else.

Dad was always trying to be someone he was not. I do that, too. I
did
that. I was trying to be an _andy. I'm not an _andy. I'm Kammie. I like skating and horses and climbing trees and riding so fast on my bike that my hair ripples out behind me like the wake of a boat. I like dogs and cats, and I even like Rory Devon (the cat
and
the singer), even though it's not cool to admit it. I've lied. I've been a liar. I don't want to be a liar. I'm not my dad.

“I'm not a raisin, Mom,” I say, in my dream, but I guess it leaks through because I open my eyes and her face is a walnut that cracks open with a smile and I add, “You're a nut.”

And she says, “You are, too.”

And together we say, “Let your freak flag fly.” Her walnut face breaks open wider still and I see that inside, she's a chocolate chip.

“I hate raisins,” she whispers and her voice is soft like cotton, like a rabbit. “I like my cookies with chocolate chips. We'll make some. When you're home.”

“We will?” I say, but my ribs hurt each time I breathe in.

“I can take a day off,” she says. “I'll take a day off and we'll make cookies and I'll take them to your dad. He's allowed to have cookies.”

“We can keep them,” I say. “We can eat the cookies.”

“We can share,” she says. “Just one.”

“Just one,” I say.

The siren sings outside. The medicine drips into my arm. Inside me, the silver melds my bones together, leaving shiny perfect scars. I sleep and wake up, and wake up and sleep, which is the first step to being better. To going home and cleaning out the oven. To mixing up that cookie batter, the raw egg spinning in the bowl until it foams, the flour turning it into dough, and us adding the chocolate chips, like we used to do, back when we were rich and didn't have anything we thought we had, back when we were raisins.

“I love you,” she says, but I'm already asleep when I say, “
Je t'aime, Maman
.
” I'm already dreaming. Sometimes, in dreams, the fish are the best part, the way the sun shines down through the water at them, the way they dart like they are flying, soaring into the waving weeds of silent sound that vibrates all around them, always, the music that plays below the surface of everything.

11

M
e

While I am in the hospital, Mom and Robby move the cats and all our things from the trailer into the house, so when I get to go home, I go to a new home. The new house is yellow. The paint flakes on the outside like dandruff, drifting down onto the concrete walk that goes all the way around the outside in a square. There are four leggy rosebushes trying to climb up under the back window, which is the window to my bedroom. It's the best room because of the way the sun shines in through that window in the afternoon. When I walk into my room for the first time, those darn cats are all over my bed, like a pile of laundry, spread out everywhere. I breathe in the cat smell of them. The litter box is in the basement. The house has three floors: basement, main floor, and the attic upstairs, which has been converted into my mom's new bedroom. The walls are white and there are sheer curtains on the window that billow in the wind.

“Mom,” I say. “This room.” I don't know how to tell her how great it is. I don't know how to say thank you.

“You know,” Mom says, “I always imagined this room. I just never imagined that it was in Texas.” I laugh, even though it's not quite funny. The fact that she's trying to be funny is worth throwing a giggle her way.

For a few days, I get to stay home while she goes to the warehouse. She got a promotion there and quit the brewery. Now she's a warehouse supervisor, just like Kandy's dad. She says he doesn't say much to her. She says that sometimes he sweats so hard that his plaid shirt starts the day one color, like orange, and ends it another, like dark red.

“That's completely gross,” I say.

“He's nice enough,” she says.

“I bet he doesn't smell nice,” I say, and she smiles wide enough that I can see the fillings in her back teeth.

There's a tree in the backyard, but Robby and I haven't climbed it yet. “I'm thinking about it,” he says, when I ask. “Leave me alone.” But he brings home broken pallets from behind the warehouse. He brings home tools and nails. Soon, I think, we'll start to build. Soon we'll have a place to stand, where we can look out into the neighbor's yards, where we can see things that will make us better. Maybe.

“When?” I say.

“God,” he says. “Give me a break, OK, Kammie? Everything isn't about you.” And he goes into his room and slams the door so hard that the silver linings on all my bones shiver like glitter inside me.

“When?” I say, following him, and I think I maybe hear him smile, just a little.

“I'll tell you later,” he says, and disappears into some music that he's playing too loud through the speakers that Record Store Dave loaned him.

Then one day, Record Store Dave comes for dinner. I'm not sure how it happens or why, and I don't care. I think maybe my wish worked, in the well. I threw myself in, instead of a coin, so of course it did. I have to count for more than a dime.

Record Store Dave dances with me in the kitchen, his beard moving a bit while he sways. He has piercings in his ears and he wears black glasses. “Hipster,” says my mom, but she's teasing. She
likes
him. Dreams come true, I think to myself. Sort of. Not all dreams are Disneyland. It's just dinner, it's not Happily Ever After, which might not exist. Grandma used to say, “Happy endings are for fairy tales.” Everyone is wrong sometimes, even Grandma. Record Store Dave dances with Mom in the kitchen, too. That's a lot. That's something. Her smile is silver and it glitters in the candlelight.

Dad writes me an e-­mail.
Thanks for the cookies. Your mom says you baked them
, it says.
I hear you fell down a well. Brave girl. Love, Dad
. That is it. I read it over and over again. I don't know what it means
. I hear you fell down a well. Brave girl.
Was I brave to fall or brave to get out? I didn't have a choice anyway. I was just a passenger. I just happened to take the ride.

On my first day back at school, I see Kandy at the entrance. She's smiling and waving. At
me
. I walk closer. “So that's how it's going to be,” I whisper. “Thought so.” I try to make my face smile, but it won't do it. I try to remember what I meant to do. I try to hate her. I don't have to try
that
hard. When I get close enough, I can smell her Smash Hit perfume. Her hair is braided tight around her face, so tight it's pulling her eyebrows up, making her look surprised.

Everyone is staring. I don't know
anyone
. I never bothered with anyone but The Girls and now I'm alone.

I pause in front of Kandy, still deciding.

Then her eyes go up to my hair. (Mom let me dye the tips of it silver. “You look like a hedgehog,” said Robby. “No, she doesn't,” said Mom. “She looks like a dream.”)

I touch the ends of my hair and think about what I'll say next.
I hate you.
Or,
Hi.
I'm kind of torn. I'm kind of scared.

Then Kandy smirks. “Your hair,” she says. “It's so super . . .
interesting
.”

My hair is soft, like a cat's fur. It's grown a bit in the last six weeks. Mom trimmed it carefully to hide the flaws. It isn't great, but it
is
pretty, in a weird way. In my way.

“Thanks,” I say. “I like it.”

Kandy makes a sound, like she's choking on something she's trying not to say. “You would,” she says, letting the laugh out.

I keep walking. I don't look back.

I walk past Sandy and Mandy at the door to the main office where I go to pick up my new schedule. The semester has changed and the classes are different now. My legs feel funny, like I'm walking on the moon and I'm wearing the wrong boots. Gravity is either too much or not enough. I want to go home, but I can't. This can't possibly be scarier than the well. My heart is racing like goats trampling in a herd.

I miss you, my
friend
, I tell my imaginary coyote. He's gone, but it doesn't matter. I mean, I made him up in the first place, so he can always be here if I want him to be.

My first class is art. The door is heavy and when I finally swing it open, the room smells like pastels and wax. I walk in and everyone stops talking and stares. I don't know what to do with all those eyes, nibbling at me all at once, wanting something. I think about Mom.
Let your freak flag fly
, she'd say.
Weird is wonderful.

“Hi,” I say to the room. It comes out croaky, like I'm still in the well.
Ribbit, ribbit
, says the frog. I clear my throat and start over. “Hi. I'm Kammie. I'm the girl in the well. The girl in the well is
me
.”

There is a silence and then slowly, a boy in the back starts clapping. Then someone else. Then another person. My eyes fill up with tears because I didn't expect anyone to be nice. Not really. Because they know about Dad. Of course, the news put
that
story together. The embezzling, the sick kids, me in the well. I thought these kids would hate me, like Tracy Kelliher. I thought they'd think I deserved it.

I meet the eyes of the boy who clapped first and he grins wide, and his smile is like a door opening to a room I want to go into, but I'm scared of doing it. The seat next to him is empty. I make myself walk over to it, even though my legs are noodles. Each step is totally impossible, but I do it somehow. I sit down. My ribs are throbbing. “It takes months for ribs to heal,” said the doctor. “Just try to keep breathing normally.” “Even when it hurts?” I said. “Even then,” he said.

I breathe. I pick up a pastel that's lying there on a blank white piece of paper. I start to draw. The pastel is soft in my fingers, and smooth. I don't know what to draw. I make shapes.

“Hey, Well G-­g-­girl,” the boy says. He has those glasses, like Record Store Dave, and a stutter that I like. He takes a deep breath. “I'm Axel. I'm new.”

“Hi,” I say. “I guess I'm sort of new, too?”

He nods.

I know that I'm blushing because he's cute and he's talking to me and I can't look right at him, it would be like looking at the sun. After I got out of the well, I saw tiny sunspots on everything for days. I still kind of get them, like shadows of a dream that's already slipping away, scars burned into my retinas that make little memory ghosts. I keep my eyes on the paper. I color over the pattern of dots that I see. I like the way the drawing flows out under the soft end of that pastel. I like the way the colors slide onto the white of the paper, filling it up. I like how it feels like something good is happening, finally, right there in the art room at Nowheresville Middle School with the hot Texas sun shining through the window, illuminating the dust from all of us, drifting up toward that dazzling light outside.