Shallow Pond (4 page)

Five

I remember there used to be a picture in Annie's room of her and Cameron taken at the winter carnival back when they were in high school. The two of them were bundled up in hats and coats, his arm around her. They both wore big huge grins on their faces. It was hard to imagine that my sister had ever been that happy, and yet vaguely I could remember she used to be a different person. It made me realize what a complete shit Cameron Schaeffer was.

Did he have any idea what he'd done to her? Did he even care? When he saw her the other night, didn't he notice how different she was from the girl he used to know? If he had a shred of humanity, he might have at least wondered whether he was the cause of that radical transformation.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen that picture of Annie and Cameron. Probably she'd taken the thing down and burned it. That would be the sensible thing to do. Who needed to be reminded about the way things used to be? Annie used to have a bunch of pictures in her room—not just of Cameron but of everyone she knew, including some of our parents. They were all gone now, tucked away in a box somewhere, I supposed, or maybe burned up. If she had it to do over again, I'm sure she would do it differently.

“Is Jenelle picking you up?” Annie's voice startled me. I'd been lying on my bed thinking of her, and then suddenly she was there.

“I told her I'd meet her there,” I said. “I don't even know if I'm going to go.”

“Don't be silly,” Annie said. “You can't miss the carnival.”

“I feel bad leaving you here all by yourself,” I said. It wasn't really true, but I couldn't tell her the real reason I didn't want to go.

“Well, I was planning on taking a hot bath and then turning in early. So I'm afraid I won't be much company.”

This is what happened if you let yourself get tripped up by some stupid romance. The next thing you knew, you were someone whose youth was vanishing before her very eyes, someone who spent Saturday nights taking baths and going to bed early, someone so sad and depressed that it seemed to be making her physically ill.

“It's not easy having him back here, is it?” I asked.

“Cameron?” she asked, like there was some other mysterious guy who had returned to Shallow Pond. “That was all a long time ago, another lifetime.”

The lifetime where she'd been happy and full of hope. The lifetime where she had a chance to get out of Shallow Pond and do something, anything, with her life.

“It's not too late,” I said.

“What? Me and Cameron?”

“No!” I yelled the word, startling both of us. A reunion with Cameron was the last thing I had in mind for her. “I meant it's not too late to go to school or travel the world, or do whatever you need to do to get out of here. It's not like you have to stay here to take care of me.”

“Ah, the self-centered musings of a teenager,” Annie said. She sat down next to me on the bed and began to play with my hair. “You do realize it's entirely possibly that I might be here in Shallow Pond because I actually like it here.”

“It seems highly unlikely,” I said.

“You have her hair,” Annie said. “It's the same exact shade.”

We all had her hair, that same strawberry-blond that was actually a spectrum of shades from light blond right through to fiery red. They mixed together in a reddish blond that sparkled in the sunlight. Photographs could never quite do it justice, not managing to get the sparkling sort of quality, making it look darker.

“Did I ever tell you that it was the winter carnival that convinced her to move to this town?” Annie added. “At least, that's what I was always told.”

She looked out the window, where day was fading rapidly to night. It had been a chilly day and once the sun set, it would be bitter out. Not the sort of night any sane person would want to be wandering around outside. If all else failed, maybe I would be able to use the weather as an excuse.

“She saw the winter carnival and the way everyone in town knew each other, the way everyone was laughing and talking to one another, and she decided that this was the town she wanted to live in and raise her family in. I know you find this hard to believe, but there are some people who think that Shallow Pond is a charming little town.”

I tried to imagine what it must have been like, my mother and father visiting Shallow Pond for the first time. I imagined her appreciating the quaintness of the place. She would have found the winter carnival cute. It's always easy to think of such things as cute when you don't actually live there. She would have imagined what it would be like to settle down there, to raise a family in a town where everyone knew everyone else, where there could be no secrets. Perhaps she thought about growing old in this town, dreamed of someday becoming a grandmother. Not all dreams come true. Surely she never dreamed that her life would come to a sudden early end after the birth of her third child. I could feel a lump forming in my throat as I tried to imagine the mother I never knew. The woman whose hair was the same as mine.

“Did she go with you to the carnival when you were growing up?” I asked.

“Oh,” Annie said. “Sure, we all went.” When I was growing up, I'd always gone to the carnival with Annie and Gracie. I don't remember my father going; maybe that was one of those things that reminded him too much of her. When I was younger, any opportunity I had to make a wish, I always wished that my mother was still alive. Things would have been so different if she'd been there. I think I might have even felt like I belonged in Shallow Pond, that I wasn't just some outcast freak who didn't fit in.

“It's not really my kind of thing,” I said, about the carnival.

“You should go,” Annie said. “Next year, you'll be away at college somewhere and won't be able to go.”

“Something tells me I won't be all that crushed.”

“Just go,” Annie said. “And bring back some of those roasted chestnuts for me.”

I was about to ask her if that was her ulterior motive behind insisting I go, but my phone began to ring. It was Jenelle. She wanted to know where I was. I told her I was just about to leave the house, which was only a small lie.

Jenelle told me to meet her and Shawna by the food stands. That worked out well. I would be able to pick up Annie's roasted chestnuts first thing, before I had a chance to forget about them. Memorial Park was only about a half mile from our house. I was dressed warm enough, so the walk down there wasn't too bad. Part of the way, I walked behind a family with two young kids. It reminded me of what Annie had said about my mother moving to Shallow Pond because of the carnival. This would have been what she envisioned for her life, walking to the carnival as a family, and that's how it had been before my arrival had messed everything up.

At the park I threaded my way past the kiddie area, with its face-painting and bouncy castle, to get to the food stands. The air was rich with the smell of roasted chestnuts, and even though I thought they tasted disgusting, the smell made me hungry.

“Finally,” Jenelle said. “We thought you were never going to get here.”

“My feet are numb,” Shawna told me, but I decided that wasn't really my fault. She was wearing the impractical kitten heels again.

“Didn't you realize you'd be walking around on the frozen ground?” I asked.

“Yeah, but nothing else matched,” Shawna said.

“You can tell the doctors that when they have to saw off your frostbitten feet.”

“The guys just went off to get us some hot chocolate,” Jenelle said. “Let's grab a table.”

The park's pavilion was decorated and lit up for the occasion. It almost made you forget that it was late January and bitter cold outside. Almost. Half-frozen people huddled at the tables warming themselves with paper cups full of steaming beverages. Shawna spotted a table off to the side and moved toward it as fast as her kitten-heeled feet could go. We sat down, and a few seconds later Dave and Frank showed up with six cups of hot chocolate and Zach Faraday.

“Look who we ran into,” Frank said, in a wooden voice that sounded completely fake.

“Seriously, Shawna?” I asked. “You couldn't have coached him any better than that?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Shawna said, in a voice that was only slightly more believable than her boyfriend's.

“This was just an impromptu meeting,” Dave said. “It didn't seem right to make Zach spend his first winter carnival all alone.”

I'd known Dave my entire life, and I knew for a fact that he had never before used the word “impromptu.” This whole thing had been staged for my benefit, and I felt like an idiot. I should have known they'd do something like this.

“If you want me to leave, it's okay,” Zach said.

I did want him to leave, but it wasn't like I could say that out loud, not without sounding like the biggest bitch in the world.

“It's fine,” I said without looking at him. Instead I stared at Jenelle, who was clearly the brains behind the operation. “I'm just annoyed that the people I thought were my friends feel compelled to pull stunts like this.”

So we all sat there at the chilly picnic table sipping our hot chocolate in silence. No one seemed to know quite what to say. I almost felt bad for Zach, but then I glanced over at him and saw how cool and calm he looked and changed my mind. No one had the right to be that unflappable.

“Hey, the bonfire starts in like ten minutes or so,” Dave said. “Then after that we could go skating.”

The bonfire, where Shallow Pond ceremoniously burns each year's discarded Christmas trees, is pretty much the headlining event of the winter carnival. You know how people use the term “watching paint dry” to describe something really boring? Well, watching Christmas trees burn is sort of like that, only less exciting.

As we walked from the pavilion over to the bonfire, Jenelle and Dave and Shawna and Frank paired off. Normally I felt a little awkward walking on my own, usually trailing them by a few steps, but tonight I wasn't alone. By default, I found myself walking alongside Zach. Still, there was a good three feet between us. There was little chance anyone would mistake us for a couple.

“So,” Zach said, “they have this thing every year.”

“Every year,” I agreed. “And sadly, this is what passes for excitement around here.”

“I think it's kind of cool,” Zach said. “It feels sort of friendly and homey.”

“Apparently, that's a pretty common reaction. It's what convinced my mother to move to Shallow Pond.”

“Is she here tonight?”

“She's dead.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“It's fine,” I said. “I never even knew her.”

I quickened my pace just enough that I wouldn't have to walk right alongside Zach, and he had enough sense to not try to keep up with me. It was weird, but I'd never needed to explain my family situation to anyone before. Everyone in Shallow Pond knew about the Buntings. We were those poor girls who everyone pitied. It would be awesome to go somewhere where no one knew about my dead parents or me and my sisters, where I was just some normal, average girl.

“Gracie!” someone called. I turned around, but I didn't see my sister. Instead I saw Mrs. Mullen, who worked with Gracie at the grocery store, headed in my direction. She stopped short and squinted at me through the Coke-bottle lenses of her glasses, apparently realizing her mistake. “Sorry, you're Gracie's sister, aren't you? You don't know where she is, do you?”

“She's here somewhere,” I said. This seemed to satisfy Mrs. Mullen, who wandered off in the direction of the frozen pond.

“You have a twin?” Zach asked.

“No,” I said. “Just two older sisters. People are always mistaking us because we have the same color hair.”

“That must be a pain,” Zach said.

“It is.”

“But it would be cool to have sisters.”

I remembered what Jenelle said about Zach being an orphan. I wasn't even sure if it was true, and I wasn't about to ask him. Still, I wondered what things had been like for him. Had he grown up all alone? Did he live with grandparents or relatives or something?

“What's that supposed to be?” Zach asked.

We were walking past one of the ice sculptures. Ben Roberts, who had a tree-cutting business, carved the ice sculptures for the carnival every year. The problem was, he didn't really have any artistic talent, so his carvings never really looked like much of anything.

“Ice sculpture,” I said.

“Yeah, but of what?”

This one was sort of egg-shaped; well, a lumpy sort of egg with something kind of spiky protruding from one side. Perhaps it was supposed to be some sort of face in profile, or maybe a furry woodland creature. It was hard to say.

“It's sort of like a guessing game,” I said. “You have to use your imagination.”

“Oh,” Zach said. He squinted and tilted his head as if that might bring the lumpy statue into focus.

Standing there looking at Zach looking at the ice sculpture, I felt a bit of my resolve evaporating. It wasn't that I was overwhelmed by his good looks or his charm, though God knew he had both in abundance. I felt something else. I couldn't explain it, but it was almost like Zach and I had known each other for a long time. He had that comfortable sort of feel, like an old pair of jeans that fits just right. I wondered if that's the way it always feels when you meet that someone who you're supposed to be with, your soulmate.