On the edge of everything was the terror Lena felt when she fell. She remembered the sounds her mouth made, the way her body refused to do anything she said. The girl walking into the bedroom, the way it still hurt to breathe because her body was bruised from the fall. The three seconds, bullet out of gun, bullet into mother, the spray, the sound of pens on paper. Wasn’t it ridiculous, she felt, how something that had only started in May was crumbling and rearranging so much of who she was, how she was. How could almost three months be so big in proportion to 21 years? Kelly’s breath became slower. Lena let go of his hand, went to her room to sleep.
Her friends left early the next morning. Alone in the house, Lena went back to her grandmother’s shoeboxes. She found a photo, yellowed and square, of her grandmother as a teenager. Miss Toni was holding a book in one hand, a small handful of wildflowers in the other. Long grass obscured her knees. A tree in the background looked familiar. Her grandmother was smiling big enough that you could see the gap between her front teeth. She rarely did that. Lena’s eyes kept cutting to the tree, the grass, the wildflowers. It was a guess, but Lena was almost certain her grandmother was in the meadow near Long Lake.
It wasn’t impossible. Her grandmother had grown up only 30 miles away. It was probably nothing. A trip to the country to see a lake, a meadow crowned in purple clovers and the August wildflowers worth having a picnic in. Maybe she had known—or maybe they were distantly related to—someone in the area. And it was probably nothing: Lakewood was probably just a small mid-Michigan town then. A lot of churches, a lot of donuts, bad winters. Lena’s hands shook as she set the photograph down.
Part 2
22
Dear Tanya,
Yesterday morning, my mom told me to quit my job. She said stay here, we can figure it out, we have savings now. Deziree showed me some research she had done about negotiating medical debt. There was still time, she said, for me to register for classes. We have a cushion. She didn’t know how much we really have. I had only put four thousand dollars in her bank account, and I have a new, separate account that she couldn’t see or access. My mom said she could try to find something real. I take calls and do appointments now in the main office. I have a system that keeps me and everyone else organized. Deziree was talking to me like I was my grandma, like I needed to be convinced. I drank some coffee, ate some fruit, found it in me to say that I liked working at Great Lakes Shipping Company, I liked living in Lakewood. My voice, bordering on content. I don’t want to do it forever, but it’s a good life change. And we’ll be in incredible shape if I can do this for a year.
Your job pays a lot of money, my mother said. I waited for her to continue. I felt suddenly that she knew what I was doing in Lakewood. It was her tone. The slow way she spoke. I kept my eyes on my food because I knew to make eye contact would mean we would have to be honest. We would have to have another conversation: this pays for your pills. For the first time in over 15 years, you get to have an ordinary, boring life. I can give up a year for you to have that for forever.
But that was probably paranoia speaking. Because she said next I might never want to leave. I’ll get comfortable.
I told her when she gets a full-time job, we’ll talk it over again. My voice was not as kind as I meant for it to be. My phrasing was completely wrong. One of the reasons why I love my mom is every feeling is on her face. It makes me trust her. She looked ready to shake me, she looked like she understood my point.
I’m writing this back in Lakewood. I start doing studies again tomorrow. This afternoon, I had a follow-up appointment with Dr. Lisa. We did shapes, colors. I told her who the president was, what day it was, how long I’ve been gone. I wrote things down. We looked it over together. My handwriting looked different before—straight up and down, not leaning, less connection between letters. I had written some words down wrong. Pirple instead of purple. Brownie instead of cereal. Lint instead of drove. So, she assigned me to write in a journal every night. I decided for 20 minutes each day, I would write the boring things down for them to see. Then I would write you a letter.
You probably know this—the schools you went to were much better than mine—but when a person performs an experiment, they’re supposed to have a hypothesis. Something they’re attempting to prove. With Madison’s experiment, the only hypothesis I can assume is: What can we do to make a child completely turn on her parents? With mine, they claimed they’re testing a medication. But what does it do? It was just a pill to help us memorize words? Well, why?
Lakewood is isolated from all major highways. You have to drive 15 miles south to connect to the interstate. The closest town is 10 miles away, but it’s really just a few streetlights, a party store, a bar called JJ’s, and a gas station surrounded by a cluster of ranch-style homes. The roads here are redder than other places. It’s mostly farmland outside of town, but there’s the woods behind Great Lakes Shipping Company, a small state park six miles outside of town, and Long Lake. The water here is terrible. I’ve become a bottled water person when I’m home. I know it’s irresponsible. And the people here are different. They’re so, so mindful. I don’t mean in like a meditation way. I mean, they’re always aware of each other, the people around them. There’s the usual Midwestern judginess, but everywhere I go I feel noticed. Some of it is the I-only-encounter-black-people-from-watching-conservative-news-stations look. But.
Could it be possible that the entire town is somehow not real? There were so many people working in the facility I was in. Is it like some sort of fucked-up Disney World? Everyone except us, the guests, were in on it. But what about Charlie, his friends? When I did a street view of Lakewood, there were the donut shops, the Methodist and Lutheran churches, the gas station where I filled up, my apartment. Maybe it wasn’t that widespread.
But my phone doesn’t let me search for research studies.
My apartment is still very clean. Someone had gone through my refrigerator when I was away, threw away all the rotting food. They bought me new produce, fresh milk, and eggs. A sticky note on the fridge where someone had written Welcome back! with a smiley face below it.
Do you remember that city in South America that was in the news, maybe six months ago? They had changed their name to McDonald’s. I think it was maybe in Peru. There was a crisis there after an earthquake, and someone had convinced the town’s leaders that changing the name might help them get some sort of corporate sponsorship. They painted every house red and yellow. People started dressing in those colors, but some took it further: Ronald McDonalds roamed the streets. A man dressed as the cheeseburger robber guy. People were writing op-eds and blog posts about whether it could possibly be real. It seemed like a fucked-up corporate stunt. Some offensive attempt at advertising. Another theory is it was for a movie. But it was real. I think of it now as proof people are realizing governments can be absolutely worthless. The only dependable way to survive today is to put your faith in the power of other people wanting to give you money. Online fundraising. Corporations that still pretend to care what consumers think. They want to be able to say, See, look how benevolent we are, think about this instead of how we’re polluting the ocean and not paying our workers enough.