Set Me Free (28 page)

Then she was back at the cabin, standing in her doorway—the one place that had ever been only hers—looking out at the high
desert, at the mountains in the distance, at the azure expanse of sky above her, and at that moment, Caliban’s words floated
to the surface of her mind, and suddenly, she understood. She had never loved a place the way she loved this place. She had
never felt so at home. She had never believed that a place could save her. She had only believed that about activism, about
words. She had never felt that way about love.

Caliban understood this, how a place could give you freedom. In the middle of his enslavement, his desperation, his beatings,
he had hope because he could look at the sky and dream. She felt she had never seen the sky before she got out here. She was
glad it was getting dark. She leaned her head against the door frame. She watched and waited. The stars came out at last.

A
MELIA

Stolen, Oregon
Friday, October 25, 1996

Two weeks had passed since Amelia and Elliot’s tangle in his office. They’d reached an uneasy kind of truce, but things were
far from warm. He’d apologized to Amelia and said he wanted to talk to her more about Benson as things developed further.
She’d said she didn’t care anymore—Ponderosa was his school, after all, and yes, she did believe he was a wonderful headmaster—and
all that was mostly true. The explosion in Elliot’s office had somehow taken the edge off her panic. She had no idea what
would result if her two worlds did collide.

She felt as though she and Elliot were two separate celestial bodies orbiting opposite each other around the same star, each
obscured from the other by the glowing thing between them. It was a lonely feeling. She didn’t yet know it was the feeling
that comes with growing up.

Which is not to say that she had been sitting home mourning the downfall of her relationship with her father. On the contrary,
over the last few weeks, Amelia’s social life had blossomed. The other kids at school now spoke to her. They treated her like
a friend, and she knew the reason for that inclusion was Victor Littlefoot’s respect for her. She didn’t know where his loyalty
had come from, but it felt amazing. Lydia was loyal, but she didn’t have any power. Everyone liked her, sure, but she was
a known entity, and hence held no sway. But when Amelia mentioned to Victor that it mattered to her to have a lot of people
show up at Helen’s first day of Shakespeare, he got the job done. When they were walking down the hallway in opposite directions,
he stopped her for a conversation. He waved to her from the basketball court during break. He sat at her lunch table on more
than one occasion.

The trail of the lost baby had fallen cold, but Amelia didn’t think about that much. What mattered to her about the lost-baby
mission was riding in Victor’s pickup and hearing stories about
Chicago and getting to look at Victor up close when he laughed. If anything, she liked believing that this baby project would
take years of research. She liked that Victor had said he hoped they could keep this project a secret between the two of them.
She didn’t ask why. She just thought: “Hours alone with Victor Little-foot? Yeah, I think I can handle that.”

That first day they asked around at the Rudolph Ranch. The oldest rancher they could find was monosyllabically unhelpful.
His longest sentence consisted of gesturing out at the great expanse of field and saying, “Not exactly a place for babies.”

“Do you remember if anyone abandoned a baby here? It would have been nine years ago.” Amelia loved watching how politely Victor
spoke.

The old man glanced at Amelia and shook his head as if they were crazy people. The skin around his eyes was deeply lined,
as though he had been squinting for centuries. “We bought this ranch seven years ago,” he said. “Hell if I know.”

So that was the first dead end. When they got back in the car, Victor laughed, then said grimly, “Lucky you were with me.
Did you notice he only looked at you?” They sat in the car for a few minutes as the rancher’s dogs eyed them from their spots
in the sun. “Do you remember what the baby looked like?”

Amelia shrugged. “I don’t know. It was just a baby, you know?”

“Indian or white?”

“I don’t remember. I guess I didn’t really notice that kind of stuff then.”

Victor turned on the motor and made a U-turn on the rancher’s gravel drive before saying, “Yeah. Neither did I.”

T
HEY SHOT A
Friday afternoon in late October checking the Bend library for records, but they didn’t know what they were looking for.
They checked birth records, but all they ended up with was a list of names of local children born in 1987. Victor and Amelia
realized they couldn’t just walk up to people’s houses and
ask if they’d ever abandoned a child when it was baby. But they figured that as long as they had the official birth registration
records of all the babies born in or around Stolen, Oregon, in 1987, they had a start.

“But really,” Amelia said as Victor was driving her home, “do you think someone abandoning their baby would actually register
it with the local authorities?”

Victor shrugged. “Maybe the baby wasn’t abandoned.”

“That doesn’t make sense either. Babies don’t crawl, don’t drag a blanket by themselves, and then hang out on it smack dab
in the middle of the wilderness.” She glanced out at the late-afternoon light beaming through cracks in the thick cloud cover.
This was her favorite kind of day, when she imagined herself as the kind of person who could look at light shafting from the
heavens and fervently believe in God. She felt emboldened. “We don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

All the energy spent looking for the baby had awakened something ancient and familiar inside of Amelia: the feeling of enchantment
she’d shared with Victor when they’d been little and had played those make-believe games combined with a grown-up sense of
purpose. As children, they’d pretended to be fairies, but they’d also been ranchers and elk hunters and schoolteachers and
traders. She remembered the long days when they seemed to slip out of the Ponderosa world into a sweeter place that looked
like their regular world but glowed with unspoken possibilities.

She found herself saying, “It’s weird, but you know, back then, I sort of felt like we’d had some kind of spell cast on us.
Like we were playing in some magic kingdom.” She was staring straight ahead, a smile on her lips, but suddenly, she felt afraid
that Victor would make some crack about Disneyland, about how woo-woo she was being, so she took a quick look at him. He glanced
at her, silent, a smile on his lips too. She went on. “You know what freaked me out about the baby is that a little bit of
me believed that
we
made it up, that
we
made it happen.” She rushed ahead. “Oh, not
that we lied, but that we made that baby appear out of thin air, you know? And then it got swallowed back up.” She stopped,
embarrassment now silencing her.

“Wow,” said Victor. He smiled appraisingly. “You sound just like my grandma.” He laughed out loud. “She’s got some interesting
theories about the whole baby thing.”

“You’ve talked to her about it?” Amelia felt a pang of jealousy.

“Yeah.” Victor shrugged noncommittally.

“Does she know anything?”

“Nah,” he said.

“But that’s perfect! She must know everyone in the area. Have you interviewed her? Like, formally?” Victor was focusing on
driving. Amelia pressed him. “We should talk to your grandma,” she said. “We could borrow my dad’s tape recorder and interview
her—”

“No,” Victor said sharply, and in one move his fingers went to the radio dial and began fiddling. He turned the country station
up so loud that Amelia could barely hear herself think, and he dropped her off without making any plans for the following
Saturday.

T
HE PHONE WAS
ringing as Amelia raced up the stairs two by two. Elliot still wouldn’t buy an answering machine (“Anyone who needs to reach
me that badly can leave a message in my office”), and Amelia hated the gnawing curiosity that came when she missed a call.
Apparently, Elliot was across campus at his office, so she burst through the apartment door, flung her backpack onto the couch,
and dove for the telephone: “Hello?”

“Hey. Is this Amelia?”

“Yeah.” She was winded. “Yes, it is.”

“Hey, it’s Sadie!”

Amelia was genuinely surprised. “Sadie. Wow. I didn’t think you’d call.” Then she was embarrassed and covered with this: “Well,
I know you said you would, and I’m glad you did. I mean, it’s great to hear from you!”

Sadie laughed. “Oh, ‘Melia, you sound just like yourself! I miss you. How
are
you?”

“Good, fine, I mean things are crazy.”

“Please tell me life sucks without me. How’s your dad? Have you told him how he ruined my life?”

Amelia laughed. “I don’t think he remembered what a pain I can be sometimes.”

As the two girls chatted back and forth, Amelia grew comfortable. She asked, as nonchalantly as she could, “How’s Wes?”

“Oh my God. Wes.” Sadie paused. “He’s been… down. But he’s applying to Juilliard. Apparently, Jackson Rice called in an audition.
Friends in high places.”

“Great,” said Amelia. She wondered if Sadie knew yet about the exact nature of Wes and Jackson’s “friendship.” But then Sadie
didn’t falter over Jackson’s name, so that was a sign that Wes’s secret was still safe.

“Don’t you want to know why I’m really calling? I mean, beyond just catching up?”

For a moment Amelia’s breath caught in her throat. The twinge of shame sharpened and flashed and flooded, and she was afraid
that somehow Wes wasn’t as neatly contained a topic as she’d hoped. She remembered Wes’s angry glare, the hard way he’d pressed
the money into her hand. She said, “Sure. What’s up?”

“Be sure not to sound too excited.”

“Tell me, tell me, tell me!” Amelia feigned eagerness. Sadie loved it when she talked like a little kid.

“It’s nothing much unless you count the fact that yesterday old Sylvester, our crazy headmaster—oh yeah, you know him, I forgot—called
an assembly and announced that a bunch of us are going to come to Ponderosa Academy in the spring! They’re setting up an exchange
program between our schools! Did you know?”

Amelia hesitated, and that was all the answer Sadie needed.

“Why didn’t you call me? I can’t believe you were holding out.
I mean, I knew your dad was the headmaster of Ponderosa, but I didn’t know he was such a big fucking deal. Isn’t it cool?
I’m already filling out my Ambassador application. You have to talk to your dad if I don’t get in. I absolutely have to come
see you. Wes might come too, if I can convince him you’re actually interested in seeing him. He’s got some weird thing about
you. I think he’s, like, in love or something. What. Ever. But seriously, Amelia, we have to see each other before the spring.
You have to come over the holidays. If I’m not in Aspen. But I don’t think we’re going until New Year’s…”

As Sadie droned on, Amelia conjured up the dorm room where Sadie was sitting, the smell of the stale air, the cool rainy windowpanes,
the mismatched linoleum tiles on the floor. She could intuit Sadie’s exact sprawl on the bed, and she imagined Wes letting
himself in and finding a spot in the corner from which to flip his lighter on and off, a freshly rolled cigarette tucked in
the divot of his mouth. She imagined the brother and sister until the picture was complete. Only then, in knowing exactly
how they looked and smelled, and the grayness of the light, and the sad sound of a muffled cello rumbling up through the floorboards,
did Amelia feel ready to see that it didn’t matter whether they came, or what happened when they arrived. Sadie and Wes belonged
to her past, and that past was over, set in Portland. Sure, she had to straighten things up a bit before they came. But she
could do that. She had time to do that. Sadie and Wes would be coming to Ponderosa Academy in the spring, and the spring was
a very long time away.

C
AL

Stolen, Oregon
Saturday, October 26, 1996