Then Belsum said they had scientists study GL606 and those scientists said it was perfectly safe, but that was because those scientists worked for Belsum, but that turned out not to be illegal. Then it turned out Belsum measured the amount of GL606 that was in the water and issued a statement saying that amount was the amount that was safe, but that turned out not to be illegal either. Then it turned out that it is very expensive to run for government office and the people who had done so successfully had had their campaigns paid for by Belsum. And they were the ones who decided whether or not things were illegal.
That is how I know Mab’s idea to get River to take pictures of the bottles of water under his sinks will not work. Russell says notoriously. These cases are notoriously hard to try successfully. That means cases like ours are famous for failing.
That leads Mama to her second plan, her then-save-the-world plan.
“Go to college and become lawyers,” she says to all three of us, even though you cannot become a lawyer by going to college but have to go to college and then go to law school.
“Go to college and become lawyers and make the world a better place,” she says, even though lawyers do not make the world a better place, and even though she has a lawyer, Russell, who is already not making the world a better place or even removing Belsum from it.
“Go to college and study hard and learn everything,” Mama says, “and get far, far away from here.”
And if you say, “I do not want to get far, far away from here. I want and have to live at home because that is what home means. It means where you live,” Mama will say, “Then move somewhere else, and home will be there.”
But she is being too literal.
Three
Winter is hard for me. Cold makes my muscles stiffer, less flexible, less predictable than usual. Snow makes even Bourne’s ultra-accessible sidewalks and streets impassable or—worse—not quite impassable. You think you can make it. You are making it! Sidewalks have been cleared and salted. Snow has been shoveled and removed and not just a tiny strip down the middle but edge to edge. Your power chair is powerful indeed … until suddenly a tree branch laden with ice and snow snaps and falls across your path, or you swerve right to avoid black ice and wind up stuck in a snowbank.
Saturday morning is not cold enough to snow. The temperature will hit sixty by noon. But chilly mornings remind me my precious solo outings are numbered, at least until spring, and at the bar last night, Tom promised he had wonders in store if I stopped by the depot. So first thing this morning, that is what I do.
When I get there, he’s all the way under a huge touring van with “The Dendrites” airbrushed on the side. He says band vans are the easiest to convert into wheelchair vans—it’s all the extra room they left inside for drum kits and visits from groupies—and he can get them cheap because there’s always a surplus. Engines may not last forever, but they last longer than rock bands and are easier to fix. I tap Tom’s foot gently with my front right wheel, and he rolls out from under.
“Mirabel! Excellent.” He stands and shoves out of the way the ambulance stretcher he repurposed as a mechanic’s creeper. “Come on. Your pile’s over here.”
I follow him through the converted old garage, past what look like stacks of junk but are really citizen-specific solutions Tom’s collected, built, and repaired. There’s a stack that’s five deflated inner tubes, a coil of wire, and one of those orange hazard cones. There’s a stack that’s clothesline, a box of extra-large binder clips, and a heap of dog tags. There’s a stack that’s nothing but two balls of twine and fourteen two-liter soda bottles with their ends cut off.
My pile is a solar panel, four black mats, four wooden boards. I smile at him, hold my hand to my heart. It’s gratitude plus a Christmas-morning sort of excitement. My items aren’t wrapped, but they might as well be. They’re gifts. And their purpose—at least for the moment—remains a mystery.
“The boards are for the ramp into the house,” Tom explains. “Replacements. You’ve got rot. I know your mom likes the wood, but there are so many more durable materials out there for a wheelchair ramp.”
“Natural materials are healthier materials,” my Voice mocks my mother. It can’t do impressions, but Tom’s heard this from Nora enough times it doesn’t have to.
“As I keep telling her”—he laughs—“that’s only true if you’re licking them. If you’re just rolling over them, wood is not ideal.”
“What else is new?” Sarcasm is also hard for the Voice, but in Bourne, ideal is too high a bar.
“I also rigged up a portable solar charger, just in case of power outages or, I don’t know, a zombie apocalypse. It won’t work when it’s rainy. Or at night. But on sunny days, you can attach it to the back of the chair, and it’ll collect energy as you go.”
“Enough to outpace zombies?” my Voice asks.
“Well, they’re slow,” Tom says. “But don’t go too far, and make sure you save power to get home. You don’t want to get stranded when the sun sets.”
Always good advice for an apocalypse.
“I also found some weighted rubber mats to help you navigate cords when you do have power. I’m giving you a few because they’ll work for anything. You can just lay them down over whatever’s in your way and get right over.”
If only.
“Thank you,” my Voice says.
“My pleasure.”
“Thank you,” my Voice repeats in the exact same tone, no change of inflection to mean the difference between polite appreciation and the ocean-deep gratitude I owe Tom for making my life a life. But he gets it anyway. After all, my Voice is largely his work as well.
He starts to load what will fit into the giant sack he attached years ago to the back of my chair like a luggage rack but finds it already full. Nora’s sent him three dozen pumpkin cupcakes. He makes the swap, and we fist-bump. When I turn for home, I’m giddy with my prizes.
And as if all that weren’t miracle enough, just outside Tom’s door, I all but run over River Templeton.
“Mirabel!” A flash of panic as he leaps out of my way but then, undeniably, delight to see me.
“Sorry!” my Voice says.
“No, no, I’m sorry,” he says.
“Sorry!” I tap again. It’s the first time he’s been alone with my Voice, and I wonder if he’ll think it’s strange—I’m strange—to have a conversation with.
“No, it was definitely my fault.” He does not seem to think it’s strange. I remember when he came to the house and couldn’t stop staring. The novelty of me has worn off, I guess. Other girls would be unhappy about this development, of course, but I am not other girls. “I was distracted.”
I type, quickly but there’s still a lag. “By what?”
“The limitations of your hardware store.” He indicates it with his chin as if there might be more than one hardware store in town. There is not. “My mom wants an extra key for the side door, but your hardware store doesn’t have a key-copying machine.”
“Church,” I tap.
“Huh?” he says.