“So you care about us, just not as much as you care about your father.”
Nathan shrugs but holds her gaze. “He’s family.”
“There are more important things than family.” She turns her head away from me when she says it, as if I won’t hear if I can’t see. “And there are other families besides yours.”
He smiles sadly and opens his hands, like what can he do. “It’s my legacy.”
I don’t know if he means GL606 and what it wrought are his legacy, or the need they engendered for him to risk everything by trying to fix it. But it doesn’t matter. Because I’m starting to realize: so far, we’ve been doing everything wrong.
One
I am learning magic.
I am learning everything.
I have stopped going to tutoring altogether. Mrs. Radcliffe gave me shit about it. Petra gave me shit about it. Even the Kyles gave me shit about it. I could tell them it wasn’t helping anyone anyway. I could tell them they should hire someone with training and a degree in teaching kids with poisoned blood instead of foisting it off on Track A as if the only skills required are average intelligence and showing up. I could tell them I don’t owe them anything since drawing the long straw was just as likely as drawing a shorter one, and I didn’t get to pick my straw any more than anyone else did. But among the things I don’t owe them is an explanation. So I don’t tell them anything.
Instead, I am learning magic. Making small objects disappear and reappear, picking your card, reading your mind. River isn’t supposed to show me how. I know the whole magician’s code thing sounds cheesy, but I get it too—it’s not really magic, so if everyone knew how to do it, it wouldn’t be cool anymore. Sometimes in order to preserve the enchantment, you have to know less.
In history, from across the room, he palms a quarter then motions for me to look in my shoe, and there it is. In calculus, he passes me a note folded like a rose. I unfold it, and instead of lying flat, it makes a heart. In the cafeteria, he guesses what Monday has in her lunch. (She is unimpressed, and in fairness, how many sandwiches besides egg salad and how many fruits besides bananas are yellow and easy to pack in a paper sack?)
After school, we hold hands and walk with lovely lazy slowness (if she weren’t annoyed at me, Petra would say “perambulate”) in the woods behind my house or around Bluebell Park. We hang out downtown and wander in and out of the few stores, feed each other bites of whatever’s hot at the Do Not Shop. We sit on the steps of the church and just talk. You wouldn’t think we would have anything in common, since he has been so many places and I have been so few, since his dad is rich and mine is dead, since what his family does for a living took living away from mine. But I might never run out of things to say to River. We sit and talk for three hours after school and then go home and call each other. We stay up late whispering into the phone, and I still have so much to tell him by first period that I have to write him a letter instead of taking notes in World History. It’s not because he’s new anymore since I’m getting used to him. It’s because everything about him makes me feel bright—luminous—and there is nothing to do with that feeling but put it into words.
It’s freezing in the mornings, chilly all afternoon, the sky clouding up right after lunch or staying gray all day, fall racing toward its end. It’s not like there’s much of anywhere for us to be together inside, though. We can’t hang out at his house where his angry, brooding mother is, or at mine with Monday and all her books and anxieties and yellow things. We can’t go to the coffee shop or the drive-in or the mall because we live in Bourne instead of on TV. So we bundle up and stick to our outdoor haunts. It’s a good excuse to hold hands, to stay close.
The steps of the church are cold through my jeans the day he is teaching me the disappearing-key trick. We are sitting there, freezing, giggling, wriggling the key free from our sleeves, when Pastor Jeff trudges up the wheelchair ramp pushing Pooh. I haven’t seen her in ages. Guilt grabs me by the ears and shakes my face. I stand to go over and give her a hug.
“Don’t you dare,” she says, and my heart drops.
“Oh Pooh—” I start but she interrupts.
“Don’t you apologize to me, Mab Mitchell.” Then her voice dips to a too-loud whisper. “This is what we trained for!”
“It is?”
“A secret boyfriend. An affair that just might kill your poor mother. Heavy petting and who knows what-all else.” I blush so hard it hurts. “So don’t you feel bad about not coming to read to a blind old lady. I can read to myself, thank you very much.”
While I am thinking about whether I can play this off to River later as the ramblings of what Petra would call senescence, it gets worse. “Still, I need to hear all the details. Obviously. I think you’ll agree I’ve earned them. Come for bulgogi and hamburgers soon as you can, and plan to tell me absolutely everything. I miss you. But don’t hurry. I’ll wait. I’m very patient.”
I nod mutely, but she’s not done.
“And Mab, honey? Try not to sin actually at the church. It’s bad for your karma.”
Pastor Jeff laughs. “I should do more with karma. That’s a good angle.” And they continue inside. We hear her say to him, “Romeo and Juliet, those two. I’m so happy for her!”
To cover my embarrassment, I take the key back from River and try the trick again, but my palms are sweaty and I have the same problem he did the first time he tried to do it for me. The key slips from my palm, up my sleeve, and when I try to wiggle it out, it goes the wrong way, down my shirt and into my jeans. Since I’m not going to take them off in front of him, I excuse myself, slip inside, use Pastor Jeff’s facilities—I think of Pooh’s advice not to sin at the church, but what can I do?—and bring the key back out to River.
“Speaking of taking your pants off,” he says, “I have a great idea.”
Which is how I find out there is something to do with that bright feeling besides put it into words. The place we can be alone, the place that isn’t my house and isn’t his house and isn’t the church steps or the park or the school, the only place really, is the plant. And after all, we have the key. I just retrieved it from my underwear.
Same as last time, Hobart is there and no one else. He’s thrilled we’ve come and wants to chat—about the weather, about the holidays coming up, about the enormous dog Donna Anvers bought last week to help guard the nursery. “Is she crazy? No one wants anything she’s got in there anyway,” says Hobart, which is a fair point though I wonder whether he’s just miffed that a dog got the job over him, a professional security guard. But we’re anxious to be inside, so we say goodbye and hustle in and pull the door shut against the chill behind us. Inside is just like last time: sleeping. I smell nothing—no chemicals, no people—and all around us is quiet, deep, no machines running, no one there to talk, but everything building, waiting, nearly ready to go.
We stop on the threshold of the only room that looks lived in, which must be his father’s office. There are papers on the desk, a computer, phone, and printer, and against one wall, a long, soft-looking blue sofa.