“This will be good for her,” Dad says softly.
“I hope so.”
“At least it will get her away from home. It’s quiet here.”
Mom whispers, “She’s hardly spoken for days.”
I hold still and stop counting. I wait to hear more, but minutes pass, and then the whistle of Dad’s snore begins, followed by Mom’s even breaths.
My hands lose track of the years. It’s too dark to start over.
At three or four in the morning, I jolt awake. I fix my eyes to constellations that have been painted on the ceiling. I try not to blink for too long because when I do I see Ingrid’s face, eyes shut and lips still. I mouth biology facts to keep my head clear. There are two stages of meiosis and then four daughter cells are produced, I whisper almost silently, careful not to wake my parents up. Each of the daughter cells has half the chromosomes of the parent cells. Outside, a car passes. Light sweeps over the ceiling, across the stars. I repeat the facts until all the words cram together.
Twostagesofmeiosisandthenfourdaughtercellsareproducedeachdaughtercellhashalf thechromosomesof theparentcellstwostagesofmeiosis . . .
Pretty soon I start to smile. It sounds funnier and funnier each time I say it. And then I have to grab my pillow and bury my face so my parents don’t wake to the sound of me laughing myself to sleep.
5
On a hot morning in July, Dad rents a car because he has to go back to work. But Mom and I stay in Northern California like it’s the only place we’ve heard of. I sit in front and navigate, keeping us within the invisible boundaries on the map—no farther north than a few miles into Oregon, no farther south than Chico. We spend the summer wandering through caves and forests, surviving crooked roads, and eating grilled-cheese sandwiches at roadside restaurants. We only talk about the things right in front of us—the redwoods, the waitresses, the strength of our iced teas. One night, we discover a tiny old movie theater in the middle of nowhere. We see a children’s movie because it’s the only thing playing, and pay more attention to the kids laughing and yelling than we do to the screen. Twice, we strap flashlights to our heads and grope through lava caves in Lassen National Park. Mom trips and shrieks. Her voice echoes forever. I start dreaming about the cardigan man. In the middle of the forest, he drifts toward me in a tux with a red bow tie. Darling, he says, and holds out his phone. I know Ingrid’s on the other end, waiting for me to talk to her. As I reach for it, I notice—surrounding me are green trees, brown earth, but I am in black-and-white.
In the mornings, Mom lets me drink coffee and says, “Honey, you’re pale.”
6
And then, out of nowhere, September comes.
We have to go back.
fall
1
It is 3 A.M. Not the most logical time to take a photograph without lights or a flash or high-speed film, but here I am anyway, perched on the hood of the boxy gray car I should be able to drive by now, camera tilted to the sky, hoping to catch the moon before a cloud moves across it. I snap frame after frame at slow shutter speeds until the moon is gone and the sky is black.
My car creaks as I slide off, moans when I open the door and climb into the back. I push down the lock and curl up across the cloth seats.
I have five hours to get okay.
Fifteen minutes go by. I’m pulling the fake fur from the front seat covers even though I love them. I can’t stop my fingers; white tufts are falling everywhere.
By four-thirty I’ve thrown several thrashing fits, given myself a headache, put my fist in my mouth and screamed. I need to get the pressure out of my body somehow so I can finally fall asleep.
In the house, my bedroom light clicks on. Then the light in the kitchen. The door swings open and my mom appears, clutching the collar of her robe. I reach between the seats and over to my flashers, click them twice, watch her shuffle back inside. I have one frame left, so through the windshield I take a picture of the dark house with its two lit-up rooms. I’ll title it: My House at 5:23 a.m. Maybe I’ll look at it one day when my head isn’t pounding and try to make sense of why, for every night since I got home, I’ve locked myself in a cold car just a few steps outside my warm house, where my parents are so worried they can’t sleep, either.
Sometime around six I start dreaming.
My dad wakes me with his knuckles tapping my window. I open my eyes to the morning light. He’s in his suit already. “Looks like there’s been a blizzard in here,” he says.
The backs of the seat covers are furless. My hand aches.
2
I walk the long way to school, my new schedule folded into the smallest square and stuffed deep in my pocket. I pass the strip mall; the Safeway and its sprawling parking lot; the lot of land for sale where the bowling alley was before the town decided bowling wasn’t important, and leveled it. On a Friday night two years ago, I darted onto one of the lanes and took a picture of Ingrid sending a heavy red ball toward me. It rushed between my feet as I stood there, one foot in each gutter. The owner yelled at us and kicked us out but later on forgave us. I have the photograph on my closet door: a blur of red, Ingrid’s eyes fierce and determined. Behind her: lights, strangers, rows of bowling shoes.
I stop at a corner to read the headlines through the glass of a newspaper box. Something must be going on in the world: floods, medical breakthroughs, war? But this morning, like most mornings, all the Los Cerros Tribune has to offer me is local politics and hot weather.
As soon as I can, I get away from the street because I don’t want anyone to see me and pull over to offer a ride. They would probably want to talk about Ingrid and I would just stare at my hands like an idiot. Or they wouldn’t want to talk about Ingrid and instead there would be a long silence that would get heavier and heavier.