Across Carina (33 page)

I had never been an artist. I had never thought to paint. But I was trapped, now, in a four-way canvas, and so I supposed I would paint what I knew.

Maybe it will ease my mind. Maybe something will come of it. I doubt it . . . but maybe.

I started with Tyson and my parents. I dipped my brush in the nearest bucket and painted three stick figures on the wall. It was the best that I could do. When I was finished, a yellow streak appeared on the wall beside them. I glanced at the brush, but it was still in my hand. Then another streak appeared, and I watched as Garrett was painted beside the rest of my family.

Then came a voice. It was quiet, but very clear.

“You don’t have to forget him.”

The brush fell out of my hands, speckling the floor, and I stood there, frozen in awe.

The voice was right. I could not exist in either extreme, utterly with or without Garrett. He had to live in my heart, but I still had to live. I knew what that meant now.

More streaks appeared on the wall. Whoever had painted Garrett proceeded to paint me beside him and then Sal at the end of our family line.

“Where is he?” I asked. “Where’s Sal?”

“I’m right here.”

I turned around and there he was, his face aglow. I threw my arms around him.

“Where were you?” I cried.

His eyes began to drift. “Well . . . I don’t know. . . . We were in the elevator . . . and then . . . I’m not sure. . . . But here we are.”

He picked up my brush.

“Are we painting?” he asked.

His breath was steady, as if he’d forgotten all of our adventures.

He doesn’t remember.

I stepped back. I was devastated. If he had lost our memories, then he had lost his feelings for me, too.

He looked so content there in the room with me that I decided not to tell him what had happened with Fleuric. Not yet, anyway. I didn’t want to disrupt his peace.

“I think we’re supposed to paint whatever it is that we want,” I said, sighing. “I can’t imagine how else we’re going to get out of here.”

“Then we’d best paint a chariot,” Sal said.

He smiled, and his eyes were pure gold.

“So you do remember something, then?” I asked.

“Something?” he said. “Jade, aside from the last hour, I remember
everything.
”

I began to cry. “Then why are you so calm?”

“Because I know that we’re going home,” he said, wiping away my tears. “Now tell me what happened.”

I didn’t understand why he had blacked out the last hour or why I had had to suffer Fleuric’s torment alone. I wished that Sal had been there with me, but something told me that it had been my fight and not his.

If only it were clearer.

“The chariots won’t take us to Earth,” I said, trying to wind back my thoughts. My mind was starting to melt into a pool of fatigue and hunger.

“Then we’ll paint something else,” Sal said. “I have an idea.”

He dipped the paintbrush he was holding in the bucket of blue paint, and then in big letters he wrote on the wall:
El, please help us get home.

“I didn’t think you had it in you,” I remarked.

“What?” Sal asked.

“Well, before you weren’t convinced that we could even get home.”

He smiled. “Maybe I’ve changed.”

We painted our plans and our desires, and the more we painted, the more natural it felt. We added texture and shading, and we watched as our dreams expanded into an intricate, eternal canvas. We dared not dwell on when El would save us from our little room. We rejected the notion of time and lived moment for moment. The past, present, and future fused into a looped existence beneath our canopy of dreams. Where we were going we had already been, and what we had seen would come again.

Sal’s stomach rumbled, delivering us back to reality. He painted a hamburger and then licked the wall, swearing that it tasted like a real burger. I pretended not to believe him, but when he wasn’t looking, I painted a mango and smeared my tongue in orange. Mango juice tickled my lips, and I giggled that I was eating paint.

We had gone near mad in our glee as wonder had tumbled upon us from the walls of our new life. Our paintings were alive, and I realized that we had the control. We were not the pawns of men, but the king and the queen of ourselves.

“Paint a door!” I cried out.

I pointed to the only wall that we hadn’t doused in color, and Sal ran to it, his brush dripping onto the floor.

He painted a doorframe, and I filled it in. Then he added a doorknob, and we laid our brushes down, waiting. After a minute I tried to turn the doorknob, but my hand merely slid against the paint.

“You try,” I told Sal.

He hesitated, looking at me.

“You’ve got this,” I said.

“El?” he called out. “El, I’m going to open this door, and then Jade and I are going home. Thank you for getting us to this point. We won’t forget it.”

I held on to Sal. He reached for the door, and it jutted out of the wall at his touch. I didn’t question why it had worked for him and not for me. I had known that the door would come to life. He had not. But now he did.

Together we walked through our door and into the next moment.

We stepped into someone’s front yard. To our left was a barn-shaped house. To our right was a yellow house with a wraparound porch. I recognized them both. I did not, however, recognize the house in front of us. Its front door opened, and Sal and I ducked behind a tree.

“Thanks, Mom. I’ll be back around ten,” a familiar voice said.

“Justin,” I whispered.

I would have known his voice after a lifetime away.

So the house that I didn’t recognize—it was his. It was the one that his family had built after the fire. I had forgotten that they had been building it on the same lot as the old one, there on Vaden Street.

“Who’s Justin?” Sal asked.

Right. I’d never mentioned Justin. There had not been the time or the place.

“He’s my friend,” I said after some hesitation.

I knew that that was all Justin would ever be to me, and I was content with that now.

I peeked around the tree and watched him get into his car and drive away. I held my breath. My chest ached.

“What’s wrong?” Sal asked. “We’re safe now.”

“I’m scared,” I said.

“I’m scared, too,” he said.

I shook my head. “I’m just shocked to be back. I didn’t think that we’d make it.”

“You knew all along that we’d make it.”

“I knew that we could, but I didn’t know if we would.”

“And I knew that we would if we could, and you helped me see that that was possible.”

“I think you helped me more than I helped you.”

Sal laughed pensively. “Nonsense.”

His lips were wavering between a smile and a frown, and his eyes were scrambled with hazel and gold.

I didn’t understand. We had been so happy moments ago. And yet I did, because our return was bittersweet. Sal had been away an especially long time. Our lives were about to change, and neither of us knew what that meant.

“What year do you think it is?” he asked.

I thought about it for a moment.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Justin looked about the same as when I left. I don’t think too much time could have passed.”

“Maybe,” Sal said. “Maybe not for you, anyway. For me it will be different. My family and friends . . . if they’re even still alive . . . they won’t look the same.”

He quieted, and then he began to look up and down the street.

“Where do you live?” he asked.

We were still in front of Justin’s house. It was located at the bottom of a hill, at the heart of a T-shaped intersection. I pointed to the top of the hill, where my house was tucked behind trees and the curves of the Earth on Cherry Street.

“Then let’s go,” Sal said.

I nodded, but I didn’t move. He grabbed my hand and tried to pull me.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Your family will be thrilled to see you. You have nothing to worry about.”

Except for how I abandoned them
.

“Maybe you should give me a few minutes with them alone,” I said. “I promise I’ll come right back for you.”

Sal eyed the top of the hill, but my house wasn’t visible from where we were standing. His lips quivered—barely, but I saw.

“I’m coming back, Sal. I won’t leave you.”

“I just don’t want to be a burden on anyone,” he said.

He began to pace, and I watched him, telling him that he was not a burden and that he should wait for me—I
would
return. I held him close, and then I climbed the hill.

As I passed one of my neighbors’ houses, I noticed that their yard was blooming with pansies and violas. The flowers could not compare to the ones that I’d seen in Carina, but they were bright and lovely nonetheless. I was surprised to see them in autumn.

The sun was directly overhead, but there was a breeze, just slight enough to cool me without making me shiver. The day was warm, as if we were in the middle of spring.

Just ahead, there was a group of children playing soccer in the street. The breeze carried their shouts and footsteps down the hill to me, and I wondered why they weren’t in school.

Unless they’re on spring break. . . .

I paused to really study my surroundings. The trees were plump with leaves and flowers, and the grass was a deep green. The air smelled of soil and rain.

Sal had said that time moved slower in Carina, but I hadn’t realized that my two weeks away would cost me what seemed to be six months of Earth time.

I felt ill to think that my family had been without me for so long. I wondered if they had accepted my absence from their lives—if I had drifted out of their minds into the same abyss that had taken Garrett.

I had almost lost them.

The roof of my house was visible now. I kicked off my shoes and ran, and the pavement was warm and coarse with gravel that wedged between my toes. When the second-story windows came into view, I saw that they were open to lure in spring. I ran faster, and my heartbeat quickened, its pound loud enough to mute the world. Wind bowed the trees into perennial arms that pointed toward my house. I followed them and reached the top of the hill, breathless over the mourning of my past and the promise of my future.

Finally, I could see my house in its entirety. And there was my dad, on the front lawn, painting the first-story window shutters. He was faced away from me, his hands steady at work.

I walked to the end of the driveway and waited for him to turn around. As he bent down to dip his paintbrush into the bucket, he glanced in my direction. I thought that maybe he saw me, but his eyes quickly reverted to the shutters. He swept his brush unevenly across one of the panels, and then it dropped.

He looked back again, this time with intent. We stared at each other across the yard. I couldn’t believe that I had been gone for six months and that I’d almost stayed longer. But I was home now, and it was no illusion.

The sight of me infused my dad with a smile, and I ran across the grass to him, into his open arms. He cradled me, my head beneath his chin, and even at eighteen I felt like a little girl being comforted after a fall off her bike. My dad had always been there for me. His entire life with my mother had been for Tyson, Garrett, and me.

In the middle of our embrace, the front door of the house opened and then closed.

“Honey, where’d you leave your keys?” I heard my mother say.

And then I heard her walk down the steps.

“I need to look for . . .”

She trailed off.

I peeked around my dad and there she was, her head cocked at the scene. I stepped away to reveal myself.

She screamed. Then she covered her mouth and screamed again, her eyes in a swirl of joy and disbelief. She threw her arms around me, and we stood there for a while, not speaking, only feeling.

My parents called to Tyson, and he scurried out of the house with a cup in hand. When he saw me, he jumped, and his drink splashed all over him. He didn’t say a word.

I wondered what he knew. There was only so much that my parents could have told him at four years old.

His lips set into a straight line, a budding smile. His tiny chest rose and fell through several deep breaths. I could hardly see his eyes behind his sunlit tears. All I wanted was to hold him.

He opened his mouth, but said nothing. My parents beckoned him to join us, and finally he pattered over and spoke.

“I love you, Jade. I’m so happy you decided to come home.”

He wrapped himself around my legs and wept on my bare feet.

Amid the fuss, I had almost forgotten about Sal. My family had ushered me into the house and was now gathered around the kitchen table waiting to hear what had happened. They wanted to know things—normal things—like where I had been and if I had been taken.

“Well,” I said slowly, “I do have a story to tell you guys. It has all the answers that you’re looking for. I just—”

“Take your time,” my mother said, stroking my face. “We’re just happy that you’re home.”

I managed a half smile. “Thanks, Mom. Me too.”

I
was
happy to be home, but I didn’t know how to tell my story. I didn’t know where to start.

This would be easier with Sal.

And then I realized—that was precisely it. I needed Sal.

I was quiet for a moment as I took a deep breath and thought of how I could ease him into the conversation. But there wasn’t really a way. Not an easy way. I just needed to start talking.

“I brought someone back with me,” I said. “A friend. His name is Sal.”

My mother retracted her hand. Her smile was lost. My dad stood up and stared at me.

“It’s not what you think,” I told them. “Please just meet him before I explain anything.”

My mother eyed the door. “Where is he?”

“I’ll go get him,” I said, pushing back my chair.

She swallowed, nodding. My dad, however, stepped between me and the doorway.

“How old?” he asked.