The baggage claim emptied as suitcases were lifted, car seats were unpacked, and golf clubs retrieved. I sat on the top of my suitcase, my blue duffel and backpack leaning against my feet. It had been a long trip. Four planes total—Bangor to Boston. Boston to Atlanta. Atlanta to Orlando. Orlando to Sarasota. It was like spring in fast-forward, snow to sunshine in eleven hours. I stared as the cars slid past, knowing only that Aunt Sara had a minivan. “Blue,” my mother said. “Light blue.”
For weeks before my trip south, my parents had been reorganizing, regrouping, re-creating. The
re
words had blown into our lives shortly after Ash died. “We just need to reposition, reprioritize, reassess,” my father said. Like everything in our lives had been one way, and now it was going to be another. It was as if we’d had a piece of art hanging over our sofa, a painting of the ocean with a setting sun, the sky bright with reds and oranges and yellows, then one day someone came in and told us it was upside down. That instead of the ocean, the blue was actually the sky, and instead of a sunset, the bright colors were actually a meadow filled with flowers.
It was my mother who first broke the news. “Cameroon,” she told me, and for a second I thought she was talking about coconut cookies. “It’s in Africa. West Africa, near Nigeria.” And suddenly, the vague ideas about their doing something for others and making a difference in the world had details and a date. The talk about Third World countries and famine and the AIDS epidemic had focus and an itinerary.
“When are you going?” I asked, thinking late summer or fall. Sometime after I left for college.
“In six weeks,” she said. “March nineteenth.” She paused slightly, as if the reality of what they were doing had forced its way past passport photos, vaccinations, language lessons, and mosquito netting. “It took us by surprise, too, Ella,” she said, fiddling with the blanket folded on the foot of my bed. And the way her voice sounded, I knew by “it” she meant Ash.
“What about me?” I asked, but I knew the answer was the one I had already realized. Instead of pulling together, circling the wagons against our pain, my parents had drifted away. Like parental attachment in reverse. “What about school?” I was still three months short of high school graduation.
“They said they’d let you graduate early.”
I tilted my head at her. There was something else there. Something she hadn’t told me yet.
“Aunt Sara said you could live with her until you start at Vermont.”
“In Florida?” I asked.
“We thought you’d love it.” I sat and watched my mother touching the satin edge of my blanket, smoothing it between her thumb and her forefinger, sliding her fingers past one another along the fold. “No school. No responsibilities. Just time to relax.”
“Just think of it as an extended vacation before you have to buckle down again in the fall,” my father said from the doorway. They waited in silence, my mother still rubbing the edge of my blanket, my father leaning against the jamb. I wondered briefly what would happen if I just said no. Would they stay? Would they realize that instead of losing one child, they were in ways losing two?
“Okay,” I whispered, knowing that no matter where I was, Florida or Maine or Cameroon, nothing was going to fix what was really wrong. Nothing was going to change the fact that my brother was gone, and that even when they were right there in my room, sitting on my bed and standing there in my doorway, my parents were gone, too.
I remember hearing the van before I saw it, wheels squealing on the hot asphalt as it took the corner too fast. It came to an abrupt stop in front of where I was sitting under the overhang of the terminal, out of the sun, but not out of the heat. The automatic door slid open. Out spilled the theme song from
Blue’s Clues
and an empty juice box. “Get in,” said Aunt Sara, leaning back in the driver’s seat to peer out the door. “Quick, before they wake up.” I didn’t know who “they” were until I leaned into the back of the van to position my suitcase behind the passenger’s seat. “They” were three children. A boy, a girl, and an infant of unknown gender. All in car seats, all asleep. I pulled my hand back and watched the door close in front of me. As I slid into the passenger seat and pulled my seat belt across my lap I had the sinking feeling that maybe my time at Aunt Sara’s was not going to be quite as advertised. Words like
relax
,
regroup
,
reprioritize
seemed like they were about to morph into
rediaper
,
re-dress
,
redirect
, and
regurgitate
. Suddenly six months in Florida seemed like a really long time.
“Bend down and look at the statue,” Mark says. I bend slightly, peering at the figure of Cinderella. “Lower. Think six-year-old child.” I bend farther, nearly kneeling in front of the bronze statue, this one featuring Cinderella in her peasant dress. The soft splashing of the fountain to her left invites anyone with a penny to make a wish. “Do you see it?” he asks. I squint at the statue, looking into the folds of her dress and the curls of her hair for an answer.
“Mark, I’m sorry. I don’t—”
“Ella,” he says, kneeling just behind me. “Not at her. At the castle.” He places his hands on either side of my head, letting his fingers rest against the curve of my jawline, and tilts my head upward slightly. I look past her kerchiefed head to the mural painted on the castle wall. Then I see it. A crown, hovering there, just over the statue’s head.
“I see it,” I say, feeling his fingers on my neck, hot against my skin.
“See?” he says, letting his fingers trail through the back of my hair. He takes my arm and pulls me to standing. “She was a princess even before anyone knew it.” I turn to face him, feeling the mist from the fountain blowing over us in the breeze. He leans toward me, and I close my eyes. I feel the brush of his lips on mine, so soft that for a moment I’m not even sure if he’s actually kissed me or if I’ve just imagined it. The flags snap in the air overhead as the wind picks them up. Then the press again, a little harder, more solid, more sure. He places his fingertips on my jawline again, this time letting them trace the side of my neck and brush my collarbone.
I concentrate on kissing him back, moving my lips against his. And I realize that I
do
have to think about it, concentrate on it, because I find my mind wandering . . . back to the look on Luke’s face when he saw Mark walking toward us in the dark. And from there I start to think about Luke in general, that I told him to follow his heart. What a crock that is. Like I’m some sort of expert.
“That was nice,” Mark says, leaning his forehead against mine. He’s right. It was nice, not nice in the way that I want a kiss to be, but nice in the “having lunch with you was nice” or “she seems nice” or “a glass of lemonade on a hot day is nice” way. And I realize I should say something, too.
“It was,” I say.
“Ella,” Mark says, leaning back so that he can look at me, “I like you.” I tilt my head at him and wonder how that can be. How can you like something you don’t know anything about? But the way he says it with that earnest look on his face, which he seems to have about just about everything, makes me nod at him.
“Me too,” I say, and it’s true. I do like him. I like him, and kissing him is nice. And maybe for now that’s enough, because maybe letting someone know me past the costume, past this summer, past this very moment, is just too much. He leans toward me again, but I turn slightly so that I’m looking back at the castle. His lips brush at my cheek.
“You know, yesterday when I was walking down the aisle, I thought I saw someone.” Mark follows my gaze, looking up at one of the narrow windows in the towers. “Do you think it’s haunted?” I’ve been thinking about this all day, how sometimes things aren’t what they seem.
“Maybe by Roy Disney,” he says, and it makes me look at him, surprised to hear him make a joke. I smile at him, but he continues. “There’s an apartment built inside the castle. I hear the bigwigs use it for parties.” I turn back to look at the castle, framed by the dark sky. I guess I have to amend my thoughts. Apparently, sometimes things are just what they seem.
“Well, it’s instead of playing quarters again,” Amy says.
“Tell us the rules,” I say, not so much because I want to play, but because I am tired of quarters and tired of everyone just getting drunk and stupid and making out in corners. I think the only one in the room besides me that’s on Amy’s side is Jesse, and that’s only because he’s shy half a head of hair and one eyebrow after the other Merry Men found him passed out in the bathroom.
“It’s easy. You just write down one secret on a card. One that no one knows about. Then we put all of the cards into this hat,” Amy says, lifting her set of mouse ears with SNOW WHITE stitched in curly yellow thread across the back. A gift from Jeff on our double date.
“So when do we drink?” Anna asks. Most of the guys laugh, probably less because it’s funny and more because they’re hoping to make some time with Winnie-the-Pooh’s melancholy friend.
“I’d like to help her find her tail,” whispers Buzz Lightyear.
Amy keeps on talking, probably thinking the same thing I am. That anyone dumb enough to get into her costume naked can’t really spare any brain cells. “One at a time I’ll draw a card and read the secret. Then everyone has to guess whose secret it is.”
“Sounds fun,” Luke says, and I look over at him, but he won’t meet my gaze. Ever since that night in front of the castle, he’s been going out of his way to avoid me. Or maybe he’s just not going out of his way to see me. It’s not like Dale has that many reasons to interact with Cinderella.
Amy passes out the index cards and pencils with Mickey and Donald eraser toppers. I get Mickey. The room gets quiet as everyone thinks of a secret to write on their card. Only Mark seems to know one right off, scribbling on his card, which is propped on the arm of the couch beside him.
“No fair telling us something lame. Like you have a secret desire for green olives,” Cassie says from where she is sitting on the floor in front of Luke.
“Unless you like to have green olives during sex,” one of the Merry Men says from the other side of the pool table.
“Gross,” Anna says, making Amy cut her eyes at me. From what we’ve seen, nothing seems to be off-limits for her.
“Hush,” Devin says. She has her long hair pulled up in a bun on the back of her head. It’s so dark and shiny, they just let her use her real hair instead of wearing the Jasmine wig they gave her. She’s so beautiful that part of me wanted to dislike her right off the bat, but she’s nice, too, giving everyone cookies from the care packages her mother sends her and always smiling; you can’t help but like her. Mark gets up and walks over to where Amy has the hat sitting on the table. He drops his folded card into it and picks the hat up by one of the ears, passing it to Jesse, who’s leaning against the wall. I tap my pencil against the card as I watch the hat make its way through the cluster of Army Men from
Toy Story
sitting around the pool table and then out onto the porch, where my fairy godmother is too busy kissing Goofy to notice.
“Ahem,”
Cassie says, separating the couple long enough for them to drop their cards into the hat. Most of my secrets are too stupid. Like, I still sleep with the blanket I got when I was six. I write half an answer, then stop and tap my pencil’s Mickey head against my lips. I bite down hard on Mickey’s ear and look over at where Luke is sitting. He’s not writing, either. He’s staring past me through the sliding glass doors, his card dangling from his fingers. Cassie waves her hand in front of his eyes, breaking his concentration. His lips twitch slightly, and he considers his card again, but as soon as Cassie turns away, he looks up. This time directly at me. I think he’s going to look away again, like he’s been doing for more than a week now, but he doesn’t. And we sit there looking at each other until I feel a bump against my arm. The hat. I panic and drop my card in before I have anything much written down. I look up again, but Luke is back to staring at the card on his knee. I watch as the hat makes its way toward him. Cassie takes the hat, drops her card in, then snatches Luke’s card and drops his in, too. He starts to say something, but then he just shrugs and frowns. The hat makes its way all the way back to Amy, who drops her card in.
“Who wants to do the honors?” she asks, dipping her hand in and mixing the cards.
“You do it,” Jesse says from the floor. He’s now lying flat on his back, his eyes closed. Amy places the hat on the table in front of her and takes out a card.
“Okay,” she says, “first secret.” She looks at me and raises her eyebrows, but before she can read it aloud, someone bangs on the door.
“EMERGENCY MEETING,” a voice booms from the hall—one of the chaperones not wanting to come in and witness anything they actually have to address. “EVERYONE TO THE CONFERENCE CENTER. TEN MINUTES.” The room gets quiet for a moment, but soon everyone is talking at once. Pulling on sandals and throwing away beer bottles.
“I wonder if they settled the strike?” Mark asks, coming up behind me and placing his hand on the small of my back.
“I wonder if they found out about the fountain,” Jesse says, making the Merry Men laugh. I watch as Amy takes the inverted mouse ears full of our deepest secrets upstairs to our room.
Luke slides past me, and I almost say something, but I see Cassie on his other side, pulling him away from me. We all walk together in twos and threes across the courtyard and past the teacups, no longer spinning, grouped together as if waiting for giants to come and sip from them.
“What do you think?” Amy asks, catching up to me and looping her arm through mine.
“I don’t know,” I say, and I realize that of all the things I’ve been thinking and saying and doing, that’s about as honest as I can be. I just don’t know.