Still Point (2 page)

You can feel the energy in a place. It has a lightness or heaviness; it presses on you or it lifts you up. A place has its own mood, inviting you in or casting you out. This place felt sad, isolated, even a little regretful. I was afraid that if I stood and listened closely enough, I would hear a low whine seeping through the windows.

I absorbed the quiet sounds of the neighborhood and tried to reinsert myself into this life, like a plug into an outlet. The wind blew through the plastic leaves, a familiar clatter, and trains wheezed in the distance, the electric start and go of breaths. A plane buzzed somewhere in the sky. They were all artificial noises. I waited for something to happen—for a siren or a crash or a shout. Maybe I was waiting for someone to stop me so I'd have an excuse to turn back. But I never chose the easy path. That seemed to be my motto in life.

I had lived here for seventeen years, so why did I feel like such a stranger? It's an odd feeling to realize you don't belong where you came from.

I knew that the longer I stood there, the more I'd second-guess myself, which is a waste of time. I learned that once you make a decision, you need to see it through. If you don't, you'll lose faith in yourself, and that's when you'll let other people make decisions for you. Now I knew better.

I tossed my bag over my shoulder and took my time walking to the front porch, my gray tennis shoes brushing the smooth stone walkway. I searched my heart for an attachment to this place, for memories to pull me in and hold me tight. I waited for the feeling of home to swell up inside me like a reassuring, steady pulse. But I didn't feel anything, just a wave of detachment. On the front porch, two wicker rocking chairs greeted me beside a small wrought-iron table. On the table stood a flowerpot full of yellow plastic geraniums, pale and motionless, beautiful in a frozen way. Doubt crept her fingers up and down my spine. I looked once more down the street and envisioned Scott's car. I could still change my mind.

Familiar barks filled the silence. At least someone would welcome me home. I heard footsteps inside, and my mom threw open the front door and stood behind the screen, shocked, her mouth frozen in a circle. She was dressed in a pair of black leggings with a long gray tunic sweater. Her brown hair had light caramel highlights. I had always been impressed that even though my mom hardly ever left the house, she still made it a priority to get dressed every day, to style her hair, even put on the small details of earrings and bracelets. I was happy to see she hadn't given this up. It made me feel like there was still hope of bringing her closer to my world.

“Maddie,” she said, her voice so light it was almost a laugh.

Baley, our chocolate Lab, scratched at the door, and my mom opened it before the dog tore a hole in the screen. Baley scooted around her and almost knocked me over when she lunged at my stomach with her enormous paws. I knelt down and caught her around the shoulders because I needed to hug somebody. As soon as I stood up, my mom threw her arms around me, almost greedily, as if she'd been starved of physical contact. I leaned against her and she was laughing and it made me laugh but then I heard a choking sound and her back was shaking. I held on while she cried into my shoulder. I felt terrible in that moment, terrible that I'd stayed away for so long, terrible that I went almost a year without her. I couldn't get that time back, but all my doubts about coming home vanished and made room for solid confidence, so solid that both of us could lean on it.

“I'm glad you're happy to see me,” I said, and she pulled me away, and even though there were streaks of tears on her face, these narrow canals running down her cheeks, her eyes were shining.

“What are you doing home?” she asked.

“I want to take Dad up on his offer.”

She opened the screen door, and we walked inside. Baley clung to my side, and I nearly tripped over her.

“You're willing to work with him?” She studied me. “Or are you here to spy on him?” She knew me too well. A door creaked open down the hall.

“I'd like to hear the answer to that myself.” My father's voice streamed into the room like a cold front pushing over a warm front. His dress shoes tapped against the laminate floors, and he appeared in the foyer. He looked more skeptical than relieved to see me, but he still smiled.

“You never informed me you were coming home,” he said.

Nice greeting,
I thought. “Sorry,” I said. “I figured it was a standing invitation, or did I need you to sign a permission slip first?” I mentally kicked myself. It was too easy to spar with my dad, and anger wouldn't get us anywhere. I needed to start over with him. I needed to have a clear head.

He ushered us all into the kitchen, and my mom grabbed a couple of mugs out of the cabinet for coffee. He sat down next to me at the table. It was the closest I had been to him in a year, and it made the hair on my arms stand out, my own tiny quills jumping up in protection. I studied his face—it seemed to never age. His high cheekbones arched above his broad mouth, so defined that they looked chiseled. I was so busy looking at him, I didn't realize he was giving me the same physical critique. He always studied me a little too carefully, like he was looking at me through a magnifying glass for any cracks or imperfections—for something he could fix.

“You put on some weight,” he noted. Normally this isn't something a girl wants to hear, but in my case it was a compliment. I looked like myself again. I was healthy.

“Elaine fed me really well,” I said. “Did you know we eat three meals a day in Bayview, all together at the table, all homemade?”

“Is that right?”

“Have you had home-cooked food lately?” I asked. “You can actually taste it. There are even grocery stores, here in Corvallis, but most people don't know they're out there because local stores can't compete with online advertising.”

“Maddie—”

My mom shot me a warning look that told me I'd already overstepped my obedient boundary, and I pressed my lips together, but Dad looked like he was enjoying my lecture.

“Thanks for the tip,” he said, and sipped his coffee. I pressed my palms down firmly on the table.

“Dad, you told me if I came home, we could talk. Is this what you call talking?”

He looked at me. “You want to talk about grocery shopping?”

“You agreed that if I came home, we'd work together.” I searched his face for any hesitation. “If that offer doesn't stand, you need to tell me right now. Don't waste my time. Are you really willing to work with us?”

My mom stood against the kitchen counter, studying my dad in a way that surprised me; she seemed to be wondering the same thing.

He let out a slow breath and took another sip of coffee. I sat back in my chair. Okay, so maybe I could give my dad five minutes to accept that I was home before I assaulted him with ultimatums.

“I came home because you're my family,” I told them. “I don't want to build a wall and have to live in one world or the other. That's not an option. That's not any kind of answer to this.” To my dad I said, “You spend your life building walls.”

“And your gift seems to be scaling them,” he said with a small grin.

I shrugged.

“Have you ended correspondence with your friends?” he asked, and I nodded. “And they won't be contacting you?”

“I think they're pretty mad at me right now.”

“And Justin—you've ended that as well?”

I swallowed and nodded.
Not exactly “ended,”
I thought. If he comes looking for me, I can't really help it. Clare still lived in town, and Scott and Molly. Gabe was moving here as well. My dad couldn't keep track of my movements if they weren't online. I just had to believe my friends would come after me. It was part of my gamble.

“I am willing to work with you, Maddie, but first I need to see that you're serious about this. You're on a one-week trial.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but my dad was already shaking his head.

“If you pass, we'll talk.”

I narrowed my eyes and smiled, a fake smile, no teeth. “I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I wasn't on some kind of probation,” I said, but my dad wasn't amused. There was too much truth to my words to make it a joke.

“I'm serious, Maddie. No leaving the house unless you're escorted by me or your mother. No sneaking off.”

My eyes instinctively moved to the kitchen window, and I visually estimated other windows around the house that I could crawl out of. There was a tree outside my bedroom window. I mentally imagined the branches and tried to remember if they formed a ladder. Then I realized I'd never actually climbed a tree. I wondered how bad a fall from a two-story window would be. I wondered if turf grass provided any kind of padding.

My dad read my mind. “Our screens have security latches, so don't think about crawling out of a window in the middle of the night.”

I started biting my nails. I could turn the sensors off; that wouldn't be hard.

He smiled again. “And don't think you can hack your way around the sensors. I just installed a new house security system. Its signal is sent straight to the police. I wouldn't tamper with it.”

“Is it meant to keep people out, or in?”

A call buzzed on our wall screen, and my dad looked at the incoming number.

“I'll take that in my office,” he said.

I watched him stand up and leave the room and felt like he had become more distant than ever.

“I have some good news,” my mom broke in. I raised my eyebrows at the wide grin on her face. It gave me hope. They would let me out one night a week?

“You made it home just in time to order a dress.”

My face scrunched. “A dress?”

“For the National Education Benefit. It's on Friday.”

My eyes widened. The dreaded formal event. The Thompsons. Damon Thompson, who had willingly fed me into the teeth of the detention center, and his arrogant, chauvinistic son, Paul, who was even happier to see me locked up. I shook my head decisively.

“No way,” I said.

“Madeline—” My mom's tone shifted into her guidance voice, and I cut her off.

“Mom, do you honestly expect me to sit through a benefit parading the gifts of digital school, after what I just experienced?”

She looked down, her face guilty. “I think your father would want you to be there. Believe it or not, he is proud of you.”

I smirked. “Are you sure?” I asked. “I'm not exactly a spokesperson for his program.”

“Well, I'd like you to be there. It would mean a lot to
me.
”

I thought about this. I considered who else might make an appearance, and the idea of seeing Justin was all the encouragement I needed.

“Fine, but I get to pick out my dress,” I warned her.

 

I sat in my room and unpacked my duffel bag, but nothing I owned fit with my new life. Tennis shoes for running, flip-flops for the beach, sunglasses, a raincoat, tank tops so I could feel the sun on my skin. A paper journal stuffed with pencils and pens. None of these things were necessary in the digital world. I looked at my empty desktop. I thought of Elaine's desk in Eden, full of mugs crammed with pens, baskets of letters and papers and magazines, spiral notebooks and markers. I set the leather journal on my desk. It looked strange there, the faded red leather juxtaposed against the hard glass desktop that served as a digital keypad.

I already felt lonely. I thought it would take weeks, but it had only taken minutes. I felt the urge to escape pulling at my arms and my legs and my heart.

My life here was one room. It was an extreme cutoff, like running through a wide, open field and then suddenly walking a balance beam. And I've never had very good balance. At least now the balance beam didn't intimidate me. My steps were as solid as ever, like walking in shoes with metal tips. I guess that's what confidence is, not worrying so much about the steps you take.

I'm thinking about myself this week. Feeling sorry for myself. I'm heavy with me. What's the point of thinking about me, really? Where will it get me, other than stuck, alone, centered on myself, which only makes me feel too huge to handle?

So instead of sitting around dwelling on this tiny island of me, I'm going to spread myself larger and concentrate on things around me, and then I'll become smaller. I become irrelevant and then I stop suffocating.

I remember, when I was young, my mom gave me a book called About Me. It's a two-hundred-page interview of yourself. But what's the point? Why be so self-indulgent? Why not interview someone else? Why not learn two hundred pages about something other than yourself? Why do we get so fixated on ourselves? Where does that lead us, other than in circles? The happiest people aren't necessarily the most successful, or the most popular, or the most talented. They're the ones who are interested in the people around them.

I miss him right now.

I realize I don't need him to feel whole. I've found that place now. I don't need him to feel complete or confident or self-assured. I've found that person already. But I still need him in another way. In the same way water needs a shoreline—even if it recedes, it still needs a place to come back to. In the same way migrating animals still need a destination, and dust always needs a place to settle. It's the same way things are pulled to other things, instinctively. I still need him in that way. I would still be receding, still be unsettled, still be wandering a little in the sky, without him.

It was cloudy outside and the air was balmy and humid, carried in on an east wind. I went outside to our backyard with Baley for the first time since I'd been home and that's when I noticed rosebushes had been planted along a gravel path that snaked in a loop around our yard. Their colorful blooms bordered both sides of the trail, like a rainbow fence full of blossoms. I inhaled a deep breath through my nose, and I could smell the sweet perfume and the soapy aroma of the petals. My mom stood on the deck, next to a green umbrella shading a patio dining table we had never used.