“To Whom It May Concern,
I’m writing in regards to my daughters, Carey and Jenessa
Blackburn.
I removed Carey from her father’s home without his permission while she was in his legal custody.
His name is Charles Benskin, and you can find him through
the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I have issues with methamphetamine and bipolar disorder,
and can no longer care for the girls. You can find them at a camper
in the woods of the Obed Wild and Scenic River National Park. If you enter from the first scenic overlook and follow the river,
you’ll find the camper in a clearing about seven miles out. Please know I’m sorry for what I did.
Sincerely,
Joelle Blackburn
“That’s just a copy. I have more where that came from. You think Ryan Shipley could really like a backwoods freak like you? We only took you in out of pity.”
I stand next to myself— that’s how it feels— and watch helplessly as my arm pulls back and my fist balls, ready to hit her harder than I’ve ever hit anything.
“Go ahead—I dare you, freak,” Delaney hisses, not even trying to defend herself. “Show them who you really are—white-trash garbage whose mother didn’t bring her up right, let alone want her.”
I wish your crack-ass mother had taken you with her—” “She was smoking meth,” I hiss. “And I didn’t ask to come here.” We’re both breathing heavily.
“What’s your problem with me anyway?” I say, the white heat
Delaney laughs, a hollow, bitter sound. “Are you kidding me? I never had either one of them. Not even my own mother! It was all about you. It’s always been about you! Were you alive? Were you dead? Oh, there’s another sighting. No, it’s not her. Were you hungry? Safe? Warm? Carey this, Carey that. It was always All about you.”
I watch the tears slip down her cheeks, the perfect facade melting into one of misery.
“You girls okay in there?” Melissa’s voice is light, calm.
“We’re fine, ma’am. Just finishing up.”
Delaney slaps the dish towel over my shoulder.
“I’m through here,” she says, her eyes hard. I watch her back, straight and proud, as she walks away.
Once she’s gone, I ball up the paper and shove it to the bottom of the garbage. Then I hold on to the edge of the counter for support and cry until I’m all cried out. I’m guessing a good cry has been a long time in the making, and I cry until I’m empty, but a good empty, like the speckled shells left behind by flapping quail babies.
My mind wanders back to the Hundred Acre Wood and I close my eyes, remembering the frosty breeze painting roses on our cheeks and setting the branches chattering; the stars blinking thoughtfully from their perilous heights; the crackling fire accompanying my violin, and Nessa clapping at the end, propped up against me for warmth.
I even yearn for Mama, just for a second, before I snuff out her memory like the candle stubs we read by when the kerosene lamp ran low.
I close the dishwasher after filling the tiny compartment with dishwasher soap like my father taught me. I wipe down the counters and then the stainless-steel double sinks.
Fee-bee. Feeeeee-bee.
The little bird lands on the windowsill, tilting its head curiously, regarding me with sympathetic eyes.
I think of Ryan, of how I played for him, how he made the violin happy again, instead of melancholy and achy. He watched my soul ride the notes to all the private places: happy, sad, unsure, scared. In his eyes, I was CC, not the backwoods freak.
Would that change if he knew? If my life in the woods got around school? If Delaney showed him Mama’s letter?
My breath comes fast, and I work on slowing it down. In, out. In, out. I reckon I’d die if Ryan found out about me—if he looked at me and saw the old Carey with the dirty nails and smoke-smudged face, the ripped jeans and the cat-pee coat.
“I’m taking Jenessa up for her bath,” Melissa says, peeking in through the doorway.
“Yes, ma’am.”
After she’s gone, I splash water on my face and dry it with a sheet of paper towel. I still can’t believe they come from trees. It makes me right sad. I use the sheet to wipe off the R circle, too, clearing the glass in time to see the phoebe ride the current and alight on the barn roof. A streak of light rims the bottom of the door, where my father finishes up the evening feed.
Does he think the same as Delaney? That his daughters are backwoods freaks? White trash? What ever that is, it even sounds nasty. Delaney had to be lying, saying that he’d looked for me. Mama said she sent him letters but that he never wrote back. Why did he let Mama take me, knowing himself what she was like?
I slip up the stairs and close the door behind me, crawling into bed fully clothed, like in the woods.
I listen to Melissa singing to Nessa in the tub. Three blind mice. See how they run. I let the sounds wash over me, clutching at the peace that comes from knowing Nessa’s not a burden to Melissa. She loves my little sister. Anyone can see it.
I pretend she’s our mother, our real mother, and the woods are just a bad dream erased with a bubble bath and a nonsensical children’s song.
The last thing I see before I drift off is Melissa’s crescent-moon smile.
She opens my door quietly, reaches in, and flicks off the light.
“Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
I sure hope they bite Mama.
Marie reads out loud while I stare out the classroom window. “You okay?”
Pixie whispers from the side of her mouth, pretending to take
notes as Mrs. Hadley regards us sternly.
“I’m fine. Shhhh.”
Pixie is amused by this, by my shushing her. With her hair on
fire and her peculiar fashion sense— a canned-corn yellow sundress tied across the shoulders of a tie-dyed long-sleeved t-shirt, with multicolored stripped stockings underneath, laced into combat boots (Delaney owns a few well-worn pairs herself), Pixie couldn’t stick out more if she tried.
“Well, you don’t look okay. You look nervous. Like something’s bugging you,” Pixie says, pressing.
Now I’m the one talking out of the side of my mouth.
“I’m fi n e . You’re going to get us in trouble.”
Pixie pretends she’s concentrating on the book in front of her, fooling Mrs. Hadley, who turns back to the notes on the blackboard.
“Delaney giving you shit about Ryan?”
I stare at her.
“What? Because I said shit? It’s just a word,” she says matter-offactly, turning back to The Great Gatsby, yawning and flipping a page. “Can you believe they make us read this shit?”
She giggles, and I can’t help but grin.
Bored myself, I watch Pixie use her pen to connect the freckles on her arm into the shape of the stainless-steel dipper we’d used to scoop our rabbit stew.
She stares proudly at her handiwork. “That’s the Little Dipper, like I see over our house at night.”
I think of the violin constellation, twinkling down over the camper, and nod appreciatively, my eyes back on my book as Mrs. Hadley turns around.
“Courtney, I’d like you to read the next page, please.” “Busted,” Pixie whispers out of the side of her mouth. I follow the words as Pixie drones on, her dislike of the story comically apparent. But, something else catches my eye— a familiar grin filling up the rectangle of glass in the classroom door. It’s Ryan, pointing at his watch and making exaggerated chewing motions.
Mrs. Hadley marches to the door and throws it open, catching him mid-chew. Pixie uses the moment to ball up a sheet of notebook paper and hit me in the head with it.
“Score,” she proclaims under her breath.
“Look, everyone. It’s Ryan Shipley,” Mrs. Hadley says, and even I have to laugh.
“This isn’t trigonometry! I’ll have to report you, Mrs. Hadley, if you don’t produce my trigonometry class at once,” he says. “Get to class, Ryan, before I report you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, winking at me.
“As you were,” he says to the class, saluting and clicking his heels. Mrs. Hadley closes the door, shaking her head, like we’re all impossible.
I settle back in my seat, smiling, until I remember. I turn slowly toward the left. Delaney looks away and proceeds to make a big production out of folding a sheet of notebook paper into squares.
“Psssst.”
I turn to Pixie, whose eyes are shining.
“You’re soooo lucky,” she whispers. “Ryan definitely likes you. Damn, girl, I wish I were older— believe me, you’d have some stiff competition.”
I force a smile, but my insides jump like I’ve eaten the tumors we found in some of the catfish a few summers back. I can feel Delaney staring at me, but I refuse to look. My mind’s a jumble.
The important question is, Where can I meet Ryan for lunch this time? I reckon the courtyard’s out. It needs to be a place where Delaney and her friends won’t find us.
I scribble like I’m scribbling Gatsby notes, then tear the sheet from my notebook and pass it to Pixie.
Can you pass a message to Ryan for me? Don’t let on, okay? I don’t want Delaney to see. Ask him to meet me in the library at lunch.
Pixie nods, making it appear as if she’s nodding at something Mrs. Hadley is saying.
And that’s that.
“Mrs. Hadley?” Pixie stabs her hand in the air, waving her arm frantically.
“What is it, Courtney?”
“May I have a pass to the ladies’ room?”
Mrs. Hadley checks the wall clock. “The period’s almost over. Can’t you wait five minutes?”
Pixie shakes her head violently, scrunching her face in agony.
As soon as Mrs. Hadley turns to retrieve the girl’s room key, a key that dangles from a block of wood with the room number wormed into it, Pixie winks at me and collects her things.
“Here you go.” Mrs. Hadley motions for her to come to the front of the room.
“Catch you tomorrow,” Pixie says into my ear, “when you can tell me all about it. Bon appétit!” she adds in a strange, high-pitched voice.
I regard her blankly.
“Like Julia Child. You don’t know Julia Child?”
“Is she a sophomore?”
Pixie giggles. “Gawd, girl. You have so much to learn.”
I see him before he sees me. Light brown hair, fine like my own, but his is slightly wavy. Eyes that light up an open face, with a smile that tunnels under my skin as if I’ve bitten off a piece of the sun and the warmth now lives inside me.
I reckon I sound like a goober, but there aren’t enough words to describe the pull. It’s like Nessa’s magnets. Indigenous. I think of the men in the woods. But somehow, Ryan stays Ryan. I remember what Delaney said in the kitchen, before things got so emotional.
I rinse Jenessa’s plate, licked clean by Shorty when Melissa wasn’t paying attention.
“Girls like me?”
Does she mean the woods?
“You know you’re gorgeous. There’ll be lots of guys liking you for how you look.”
My face heats up, thinking of guys liking me at all.
“Believe me. Been there, done that. Don’t let it go to your head. High school boys are all about one thing: getting into your pants. You’ll see.”
I stare at her, horrified. The men in the woods were bad enough. Not boys, too.
Not Ryan.
I smile as he catches sight of me.
Why does he like me? Because it’s obvious he likes me. Is it because I’m new? Is it the violin? Could it be like Delaney said?
All of a sudden, I’m unsure. What am I doing? I think of Delaney and Mama’s note. I think of the circles burned into my shoulder and the white-star night, which makes my stomach jump. It’s strange how those times feel realer than here, no matter how many days lengthen the distance between then and now.
I keep my eyes on Ryan’s, touching my violin case reflexively. I see relief flood his face, as if he wasn’t sure I’d show. He meanders in my direction while smiling hello at students along the way. I slide down into the study carrel. What am I doing?
I know nothing about boys and whether they like me, let alone how to handle girls like Delaney, especially if she tells people about the woods. I’m playing with fire, and I know what happens when people play with fire. I mean, I wouldn’t even know what study carrels were if the sign—no food or drink allowed in the study carrels—wasn’t posted on the wall above me.
“Hey. Pixie told me to meet you here. Why all the cloak-and- dagger?”
I don’t know what he means, but I get the gist.
“It’s a long story,” I say, stalling as I search the library for Delaney and her court—namely, Ashley, Lauren, Kara, and Marie, but, just as I suspected, the library isn’t their hangout of choice.
“Let’s get out of here, CC. It’s lunchtime, after all.”
I smile when I hear his stomach grumble and mine answer in kind.
Ryan slings my knapsack over his shoulder. I grab my violin case, still not sure why I constantly drag it around. I don’t want to be “Fiddle Girl,” as Delaney called me, either at school or at home. I don’t want anyone to make me play . . . to make me remember Mama, or being in the woods.
The best place for the instrument would be to shoved at the back of the closet shelf. But each morning, I can’t bear to leave the thing behind. I think of Ness’s old blankie, a “security blanket,” Mama called it, worn to a rag. I just wish my version wasn’t so clumsy to carry around.
“I know where we can go,” Ryan says, leading me through the library and its maze of books and out the back door, through a grotto of trees. We cross a sizable snow-encrusted field, the kind people chase balls around, and before I can react, he takes my free hand and leads me into the woods.
The trees grow thick, like in the Hundred Acre Wood, and I smell the familiar old twang of earth and shade. Ryan doesn’t know it, but I’m more Carey among the trees than anywhere else. I breathe in the musky aroma of old leaves and freeze-dried earth. We find a large flat rock.
“You have a strap on your violin case. Like a guitar case.”
“Yeah. Mama—my mother—glued it on. So she could carry it over her shoulder.”
“Just stand there for a second, okay? Don’t move.”
I freeze while he pulls out a camera from his pocket. The click is loud in the stillness.
“Done. Come sit.”
I do.
“May I?” he asks, and I nod. I watch him open my knapsack and pull out a crumpled brown paper bag, which he sets in the space between us. “I brought a bag lunch, too.”
With a flourish, he pulls a banana from a side pocket, a foil- wrapped sandwich from another, and a Baggie of black disks with white between them from a zipped compartment inside his coat. “Do you like Oreos?”
I nod, acting like I know what he’s talking about.
I empty my sandwich, a green apple, a Baggie of Pringles, and two small containers of apple juice onto the rock. Ryan grins. With a flourish, he pulls a dented package of something named Twinkies from the depths of the same pocket that housed the banana.
We survey the spread before us.
“It’s a feast,” I say, forgetting myself. And it’s true. Where I come from, this is a bona fide feast.
“It’s a winter picnic,” he says, “and this will be our tablecloth.”
He removes his scarf and spreads it on the rock. I help him move the food onto it.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, waiting for him to laugh at me, but he doesn’t.
“I only have one regret.” He hands me half of his meat loaf and ketchup sandwich. I hand him an apple juice and half of my PB&J.
“Which is?” I take a swig of my juice.
“That you can’t play violin with food in your hands,” he says.
I laugh. “I reckon it’d be worse if I were a singer.”
“I love to hear you play.”
I chew my sandwich slowly, and when the familiar heat flushes my neck and face, I let it. Deep down, I like the way it feels. What’s wrong with that?
“I don’t mind playing for you,” I say, giving him a quick look.
I stay still as he reaches out with his fingertips and lightly traces the purple callus under my chin.
“I still think you should play for people—in the Memphis Symphony, maybe, or in the school band.”
I take the Twinkie he hands me, closing my eyes in delight as the cream filling twinkles on my tongue.
“My mother played in public, and she found it so stressful. She lost the joy, she said. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost the joy.”
I search for phoebes in the branches above us. Looking up that way, I see the branches spiral out in overlapping circles, trunk to trunk to trunk, forever and ever.
“You’re not your mom, though,” he says.
I feel it again, the rattling. Someone walking over my grave. I look into his face and see so much, I have to look away. It’s like if I look too long, he’ll know about me.
The only person I’ve ever been close to is Jenessa. It’s amazing to see the same potential for closeness in his eyes.
“I know. But I already stick out so much, coming here in the middle of the semester, not knowing anyone. Being younger.”
“Pixie can help you there. She’s in the same boat, and she sure doesn’t mind sticking out.”
We laugh, thinking of Courtney. If only I could borrow a cup of her gumption . . .
“Where did you live, before you came to Tupelo?”
I can’t tell him we lived in the Obed Wild and Scenic River National Park, tucked away like termites inside rotting, lightning-split trunks. But I can tell him the surrounding town.
“Wartburg. With my mom and my little sister.”
“Where did you go to school?”
I use the word Melissa so generously attributed to my and Nessa’s prior education.
“We were homeschooled.”
I see an understanding enter his eyes.
“That explains soooo much. So the high school experience is totally new to you. I get it now.”
I drain my juice, nodding. “It’s like a whole new world.”
We fall into a comfortable silence, broken only by the snow cover sliding from the oak and hickory trees surrounding us.
“So, Delaney’s your sister.”
I stare at him, mouth open, food on my tongue.
“No worries. I can keep a secret.”
I chew, absorbing the gravity of this breach of my secret life. Does anyone else know? I swallow the food in a lump.
“Delaney is my stepsister. My father married her mother. We don’t share blood or anything.”
“And you’re not the best of friends, obviously.”
“Not yet.”
We both smile at that. Then I surprise myself.
“I reckon it’s tough, Jenessa and me popping up out of the blue like we did.”
Ryan nods, but he’s gone to school with Delaney for years and knows her better than I do. Perhaps because of Mama or my bond with Ness, it means more to me than it does to Delaney.
“What’s your stepmom like?”
“That’s easy. She’s wonderful. She really is. And she’s amazing with my sister.”
“What about your mom?”
“Mama?”
He takes a bite of banana, offering me a bite. I shake my head no.
“Was your mom good with your sister?”
I take another bite of Twinkie. Again, I don’t know how to answer. I’m not used to sharing, especially information about ourselves. After all those years sworn to secrecy, I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to it.
“She tried to be. She did her best by us, I reckon. But she had her own stuff to deal with.” The lie tastes bitter, tainting the moment. I wish I’d never said the words.
Ryan stares off into the distance, avoiding my eyes, like he knows I’m lying. All of a sudden, I’m feeling naked as the trees without their snow cover.
“I reckon you know something you’re not saying,” I venture. “I’m not stupid.”
He scrutinizes my face, then looks away. My leg begins to jiggle. I rest my arm on my thigh to make it stop.
“I don’t know if I should say anything.”
“Please,” I say quietly, swallowing the lump in my throat. “Just say it.”
I watch him reach inside his coat pocket and pull out a piece of white paper folded in squares. My heart pounds as I think of Delaney and the R circle on the window glass.
He already knows. He’s trying to find a way to “let me down easy,” as they say on TV.
I take the paper from him, my hands shaking, and unfold it on my lap, smoothing out the creases. But it isn’t Mama’s letter. It’s worse.
I see a picture of a little girl with a Po doll in her arms, below the words missing and endangered. The words disappear as I stare at the little girl, who still looks like me. Five years old, barely. Top middle teeth missing. Wearing a stripey maroon pullover, hair still pumpkin-seed blond. Easy smile. So easy, I ache at the sight of it.
My voice comes from far, far away.
“Where did you get this?”
I’m breathing fast. I can’t stop; soon, I’m panting like Shorty after chasing tennis balls, and the trees seem to run in circles around me.
“Here, take this. Put it over your mouth and breathe in and out as deeply as you can.”
I take the lunch bag and follow his instructions. In. Out. In. Out. Until the trees slow to a stop and the ground sinks back into place. Ryan reaches out to steady me, but before I can stop myself, I push him away.
“Where did you get this?” I wave the flyer at him, my voice on the verge of hysteria.
“My mom. I was talking about you, and she remembered some old newspaper clippings. She saves newspaper clippings in a scrapbook. The flyer was in there, too.”
“How many people have seen this?”
I flinch as his eyes register surprise, then hurt.
“No one! I wouldn’t do that. Why would I do that? I just thought—”
“What? That it’d be fun to humiliate me?”
“It’s not like that.” Ryan pleads with me. “CC, I didn’t mean—”
“My mother is not a kidnapper! This is Bullshit.”
I don’t know why I’m lying to him. I don’t know why I’m protecting her.
“Forget it. Let’s just—”
Ryan watches helplessly as I scramble to my feet. I’m glad to see him off balance—just like me. I shove the flyer into my knapsack before slinging it over my shoulder. I snatch up my violin case, smacking his knee with it. Reaching out, he places his hand over mine as I clutch the handle tight.
“I’m sorry, CC. I didn’t mean— I wasn’t trying to—”
“I don’t want anyone to know about Mama!”
How many other people have seen this flyer? How many people remember? Is that why they stare at us? Because they know? Do they know about the woods, too?
I wrench my hand from his and make my way back to the building, marching through the footprints we’d made on our way out, my heart as cold as my toes, but my anger colder.
This was a mistake, coming here. I’ll never be the same as these girls, no matter how many pairs of bedazzled jeans I own.
Back in the library, I hide in a different carrel, unseen by Ryan as he sags through the library, his face stormy, his eyes devoid of their usual light.
You did that. You hurt one of the only people who bothered to be kind to you.
My chest aches. I don’t know the right words for it, but it aches so hard, I can’t breathe. My innards feel tangled as a net of bluegills. I reckon I’m just so sick of the tangles.
Even though Mrs. Haskell used the word, too, I still don’t want to believe Mama stole me. Mama took me away to protect me— she wasn’t the bad guy; my father was! But then, why do none of the stories add up? Why isn’t he the man Mama made him out to be?
Without realizing I’m doing it, I reach across my left shoulder and rub the burns on my back. Like Mama’s worry beads, I think, and stop.
Can you even hear me out here, Saint Joseph? Is it too loud for you to hear me?
I think of our lives in the Hundred Acre Wood, the days painted yellow (phoebies), rusty crimson (Christopher robins; to Jenessa, all robins are “Christopher robins”), blue (with blue jays, or possibly tears), and the woods themself, a living thing, unfurling in shades of beauty, pain, misery, awe, joy, all swirled together, never running out of new and different combinations.
Mama did what she had to do. She saved us.
Then why the burns? Why the switch?
I ignore the bell when it rings, and I do know the term for what I’m doing—cutting. Cutting class. I blend into the other students in the library, pretending I have independent study hall like everyone else.
Over in the reference section, I find a book on national parks. I leaf through the pages until I find Obed Wild and Scenic River National Park. I study the pictures. The familiar tide of homesickness washes over me.
This is never going to work. Maybe for Jenessa, but not for me. I’m like Ness’s broken-legged chipmunk, which had to be shaken and poked out of the birdcage once it healed, preferring the familiar, even if the familiar was a jail. Home is home.
A tree for every word of Pooh ever spoken. The Lady of Shalott curtseying before a minuet. Lancelot bowing, his hair a ripple of sunbleached wheat. My “puffed-up library,” as Mama called it, a scoopedout nook carved by ancient tree roots in the high bank, close enough to be by Ness, yet far enough away to be alone. Boards wedged between rocks becoming shelves that housed what ever books I was reading at the time.
In Obed, I was queen of the world. In the zone, violin wailing, all the animals stopped to listen to a bow coax music from wood.
Here, there’s always noise. Pointless sounds. Electric lights humming, keyboards clicking, phones chirping, music playing, people chattering. My head is Thanksgiving Day–full, and I hate it.
But it doesn’t matter, because I need to be where Nessa is, and Nessa needs to be with me. She sacrificed her words because of the white-star night. I’ll sacrifice my sanity, if it means keeping her here.