Look Both Ways (26 page)

“Well, okay. Geez, Merry. This should be you.”

“I’m off men,” Merry said. “But yes, it should be me. Put your shoes on.”

“I can’t bend over,” said Mallory. So Merry fastened silver sandals with minute heels on Mallory’s feet. Together, they walked downstairs. Tim mimed a heart attack. Drew, who was already there, talking to Adam, turned around. In his gray cutaway, Drew Vaughn looked like an old-time movie star. And whatever remark he had prepared wouldn’t come out of his mouth, which wouldn’t stay closed.

“Drew, flies are going to fly into your mug,” Campbell said. “You knew she was pretty.”

“I can hold three full-size pizzas in one hand,” Drew said.

“I’m in awe,” Mallory told him. She smiled. “Not of you. Of the pizza skill.”

“These days I’m always saying things I never imagined I’d say. Brynn, you’re gorgeous.”

“Thank my sister. It’s all painted on.”

“Some things can’t be painted on.”

“To the Green Beast,” said Mallory.

“My dad lent me his Lexus,” Drew said. “And my mom wants to take several hundred photos.”

“Told you,” Merry said.

Campbell got out her own camera. “That’s good. Then she won’t mind if I do. I might not see Mallory this clean again until her wedding day.”

Mrs. Vaughn made them pose next to the lilac bushes, the fireplace, the waterfall in the backyard, the car, and the picket fence. Drew finally said, “Mom. Halt. You’ll have us driving out to the water tower next.”

When they escaped, Drew said, “I’m actually looking forward to dancing after that. Ordeal by digital.”

But they ate first, although Mallory had to confess that she couldn’t finish her cannelloni or she’d bust out of the fabled gown. Fortunately, Drew had grieved over Pam Door, so his waistband was a little loose and he was able to finish her portion. Just before they turned into the school drive, Drew pulled over to reach into the backseat and give Mally her corsage, a black orchid with a silver band.

“It’s what your name means,” he said.

“My name means unlucky,” Mallory said, as he slipped it over her wrist.

“I don’t call you Mallory. Brynn means dark. But tonight, you’re anything but.”

And Drew kissed her. It wasn’t her first kiss, but somehow, Mallory didn’t think of Cooper. She reached up—far up—since Drew was taller than her father and let her arms rest lightly around his neck. She kissed him back and something thrummed between them that was almost like a promise and almost like a memory. Carefully, Drew released her. But Mallory put her chin up and kissed him again, not just for all the times he had made her feel safe, and loved, and home, but because he was cute and funny and smart and she felt like kissing him. She could feel his body’s surprise as he pulled her closer. It was, like her mother always said—just biology—and pretty terrific. Oh, Mallory Brynn, what a girl you’ve become, she marveled!

“Let’s go dance,” she said at last. “We’ll be the only people who know how.”

The gym was decorated on the theme of Old Hollywood. Life-size figures of Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe lined the walls between movie posters. Couples posed for photos in someone’s 1950s Thunderbird parked under an arch of neon. Mallory and Drew made up stories about each of the couples—who was here on a pity date, who would end up getting married, who would break up by the end of the night.

At midnight, when Drew dropped her off, kissing both her eyelids, Mallory was as tired as she’d ever been after any run. She’d had a blast and was almost regretful that she wasn’t allowed to date for another year.

Meredith was waiting up, and, obligingly, she and Mally texted the known universe with pictures that compared how much more beautiful Mallory looked than Pam Door—although Pam had been named prom queen.

U NO WHO REALLY WAS, Neely texted.

UR DRESS WAS, Mally replied.

She decided to shower again to remove the layers of makeup and hair gel, and when she reached up to unclasp her necklace, she panicked.

Had she worn it?

Of course not.

It wouldn’t have gone with her dress.

But had she removed it? Where was it on her dresser? Meredith’s dresser was a tangle of jewelry, photos, and makeup. But Mallory’s was empty.

Where was it?

Mallory clutched her throat. She pulled her T-shirt up off the floor and shook it. “Merry, my necklace is gone. I had it on tonight or at least when I went running, and it’s gone, Mer.”

“Maybe it’s in the hamper with your soccer junk from last night. Don’t go psycho. I’ll vacuum in the morning. And you didn’t have it on. Just our earrings and the clip in your braid. It could be anywhere.”

“Where it is, is somewhere on the path. I know it. Somebody already has it. I should never have been wearing it. Not to run. It was too nice a piece of jewelry for that. And it was the only thing I have left of Cooper. Maybe the only thing I’ll ever have. I’m going to bed.”

“I’m sorry, Ster.”

“I’m sorry too.”

They carefully restored Neely’s dress to its garment bag, and Mallory again anointed her face with another kind of cream she found in Merry’s drawer. Then she fell into bed, muscles aching from the run and the dance, feet throbbing from the unaccustomed shoes, and punched her pillow to just the right softness.

She told the visions of Cooper’s chin and Drew’s broad shoulders to get lost and prayed not to dream.

But she did, and in the dream, she saw Eden.

Eden was wearing her ceremonial white deerskin dress, her hair in tiny plaits that sparkled with black and silver beads. Her feet were bare, and she stood in a pool of sparkling, sunlit water. In her hand, she held Mallory’s necklace. Sadly, gently, she nodded and smiled.

Good-bye,
Mallory thought.
Be safe.

She woke up solemn. It truly was the end of something.

Still, for weeks, Mallory searched for the dream catcher on every run she took, three times a week. But she never dreamed of Eden again or saw any sign of the necklace.

The Saturday after school ended, Campbell, sure she’d wrench her back or break an arch, decided to take her first run since Owen’s birth.

Jog, not run,
Campbell insisted.
Slow jog, like walking with a slight bounce. Like walking and swinging your arms. Slow.
She insisted that Mallory come with her. Campbell had twenty-five pounds to lose and was determined to lose it by mid-July. At this point, she said, she wouldn’t wear a bathing suit in front of Adam.

“You have to hide me,” Campbell said, when she passed the hall mirror. “People will wonder if I’m an advertisement for doughnuts. If I fall, call the hospital.”

It was a glorious morning, the first morning with the real promise of summer held behind its back like a surprise. Although there had been a downpour just two nights before, the long, full days of sun had dried things to the texture of a freshly laundered shirt. Since early morning, trucks and minivans rumbled past the Brynns on the way to the farmers’ market at the end of the road, where flower sellers couldn’t shove flats of perennials into the hands of eager gardeners fast enough to please them.

“Good,” said Campbell, as one of her friends trundled past with a wagon piled with rosebushes and lilies. “No one under the age of eighty will be home on a morning like this. Either they won’t recognize me or they’ll have cataracts.” Mallory and her mother stretched and set off at a sedate trot.

But they hadn’t hit the end of their driveway when Mallory had to stop to tie her shoe.

“I’ll catch up,” she called to her mother and knelt to make a careful double loop.

And then she saw it, in a tiny puddle of leftover rainwater that sparkled in the sun—the garnet a dot of bright blood. Eagerly, her heart quickening, Mallory tugged and finally dislodged the chain and the dream catcher, dirty but undamaged, from the oddly shaped hollow in the ground—where it had lain perhaps for weeks, as the last dregs of the long winter and muddy spring melted away. But no, she thought, it had been warm on the day of the junior prom, warm enough for her to be comfortable on her run in a sleeveless tee.

The snow had melted a month before that late April night. If the necklace had been there, she’d have seen it.

Mally’s first impulse was to call out to her mother, who was gamely trudging up Pilgrim Road, to wait until she could bring the necklace back inside. She couldn’t risk losing it again, not until she got a jeweler to make sure the clasp was intact. But when she studied the clasp, she saw it was closed and whole.

And so, Mally slipped the chain carefully over her head.

It was only when the necklace was safe around her neck and against her skin, cold and gritty, but gloriously in its place, that she looked down and examined the curious-looking depression in the mud just a foot off the curve of her driveway.

It had dried in the sun, holding the necklace secure in the spring mud. Only a teaspoon of water still stood in the pool, a round, scooped-out mark with five separate parts, like a palm with four thick fingers. Mallory reached down and placed her own fingers lightly against the hollow spot. As distinct in every detail as a perfect fossil, it was a paw mark twice the size of Mallory’s hand.

The author wishes to thank my beloved friend, physician Ann Cullison Collins, for invaluable information on emergency-room procedures and protocols.

 

Again, I wish to thank my Cree Indian relatives, especially my cousin Rain and my late Aunt Patricia, for their tales and sense of the magic as poignant and possible.

 

I thank my son, Marty, and his friends for lifting a corner of the teenage girl and my daughter, Mia, for endless round-offs and back flips in the service of literature.