Tumble & Fall (34 page)

Carly calls him from the deck. He knows it’s time to go. He looks around his room, the boxes of video games he had hopefully stored in the closet years ago, only to keep dragging them out so often that they’d taken up permanent residence at the foot of his bed. He wonders what his room would have been like in Arthur’s bunker. He wonders who will stay there instead.

Carly asked him at lunch, as they ate peanut butter sandwiches on the living room floor, listening to Ramona’s old record collection and just hanging out—an entirely normal afternoon made extraordinary by the fact that it had never once happened before—if he’d ever considered staying in the bunker.

“You weren’t tempted?” she asked. “You know, to survive?”

Caden shrugged and took a bite of the doughy crust. “It never felt like a real option,” he said. “And I guess if I’d thought about it, I would’ve realized that it wasn’t so much a question of
if
we’d survive down there. It was more did I
want
to.”

He left out the part about Sophie. It would have been more complicated, he knows, if she’d wanted to stay. Who knows if he would have had the courage, or motivation, to escape on his own?

But maybe she was right. Maybe they had met for a reason. They needed each other to get home, even if going home meant they wouldn’t be together.

He can’t remember the last time he made his bed, but he makes it now. He closes a dresser drawer, wedged open by a pile of T-shirts. It feels important to leave things in place.

He turns out the light and joins Carly and Ramona on the porch. Ramona has tears in her eyes as she pulls the sliding glass door closed behind them. As they start down the driveway, she grabs Caden’s hand, then Carly’s, as if they’re toddlers, about to cross a busy street.

SIENNA

The arbor is finished when Sienna and Owen return from the woods.

Ryan had finally been convinced that any and all caterpillars had made their initial escape, along with the other creatures in the forest. Even Sienna noticed an eerie quiet as they made their way back down the path. No birds chirping, no whistling cicadas, no rabbits or squirrels rustling in the underbrush.

Denny is stringing the simple arrangements they’d made that morning to a vine wrapped around the wooden arch. Owen hurries to lend a hand, and Ryan tags along.

Sienna watches a group of people as they lug a wooden cart up the path from the parking lot. On the cart is an oddly shaped box, covered in foil and reflecting the low glare of the sun. Plastic tubes have been fitted together in a sort of figure eight, and a funnel at one end opens into a glass ball that rolls and spins as the cart bumps over the sand.

“What is it?” Dad asks, standing behind her shoulder.

“I don’t know,” Sienna says. “Some kind of machine.”

Dad clears his throat. “I have a favor to ask,” he says timidly. “It’s kind of a big one, so feel free to say no.”

Sienna turns to face him. “A favor?”

Dad nods. “Denny and I have written our vows, and we plan on keeping things very simple, but we need somebody to stand up there with us. You know, make it sort of official.”

Sienna looks at the tops of her bare feet. “Official?” she asks. “Don’t I have to be, like, ordained on the Internet or something?”

“We’re not all that concerned about it being legal,” he says, nudging her playfully in the shoulder. “I just thought it would be nice if you’d say a few words. It doesn’t have to be specifically about us. It can be anything. Whatever all this—marriage, love—whatever it means to you.”

Sienna glances over her father’s shoulder to where Owen is cutting into one end of a stringy vine with his teeth. He catches her staring and gives her a shrug and a smile, as if he’s still working out the chain of events that landed him here, doing this, tonight.

“Okay,” Sienna agrees. “I’ll do it.”

ZAN

Despite being constructed mostly of cardboard and plastic, the Forgiving Wheel weighs a ton.

They drag it up the path and onto the beach, away from the food, just below a bluff where two of their neighbors will soon be getting married.

“How romantic,” Miranda had said when she’d seen the arbor going up. Joni and Zan shared a look. It was the first time either of them had heard their mother use that word in earnest, and it sounded almost like it hurt. But they didn’t doubt that she meant it.

Something had happened to Miranda when Joni showed up. Zan had expected more of a climax, more questions, more demands for her sister to explain where she’d been. But by the time Zan had come down for breakfast, earlier that morning, Joni and Miranda were sitting quietly side by side, sipping tea and talking, as if things between them had never been any other way.

Miranda was different with Daniel now, too. Not once, but three times, Zan had seen them kiss. Real kisses, on the lips. With feeling. Zan hadn’t seen them so much as touch each other in years. She knows that part of it is the uncertainty that surrounds them, the fear of what’s to come, but she can’t help but wonder if things would be the same if Joni hadn’t come back. There’s a real chance that Miranda would have run herself into the ground, ignoring them all and keeping things in order, right up until the very end.

Daniel parks the machine in the hole, still on its rickety wooden cart, and takes a few steps back.

“How does it work?” Zan asks.

Daniel looks at her with a familiar glint in his eyes. Never is he happier than when he gets to explain his projects, the worlds he’s been living inside for however long. He loves the solitude, she knows, the time to create on his own, but he loves sharing even more. It’s why he’s always done installations. The real art, he says, happens when other people get involved.

He pulls open a wooden drawer from the cart, the size of an index card, and removes a stack of colored notepaper. From another, identical drawer, he reaches for a handful of stubby pencils, the kind you’d use to score a round of mini golf.

“First, you write it down,” he says.

“Write what down?”

Daniel shrugs. “Whoever, or whatever, you want to forgive,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what it is, just as long as it’s something you want to leave behind. It dies here, is the point. In this machine.”

He taps the side of the machine’s stocky body, and an electric whirring starts up from inside.

“What’s in there?” Zan asks.

“This,” he says proudly, as Joni and Miranda join them on his other side, “is what happens when you stick your paper down the chute.”

Daniel lifts a piece of notepaper from the pile and folds it in half before sending it down the first series of tubes. There’s some sort of suction from the body of the machine, then a faint flickering sound, until the paper reappears, torn into tiny pieces of colored confetti and whirlpooling around the bottom of the deep glass bowl.

“Look closely,” Daniel commands, and the three of them bend down to peer into the globe. The paper has been cut into perfect miniature stars.

“Wow,” they coo in unison. It really is beautiful, Zan thinks, but it’s nothing compared to the look of pure wonderment that lights up Daniel’s face.

“So who goes first?” Daniel asks.

CADEN

The food has barely been touched.

There’s definitely enough to go around. Caden imagines all of his neighbors cleaning out their refrigerators, concocting strange combinations of ingredients, like the casserole that appears to have been made out of bread, eggs, and ketchup, or the salad starring droopy lettuce, a full bunch of green grapes, and canned pineapple slices. If, somehow, they’re all stranded out here for the rest of their lives, or at least until some form of help arrives, they could make do. But for now, Caden decides, he’ll pass.

He’s not exactly hungry, and can’t imagine anybody else is, either. The beach is crowded and looks strangely festive from far away, but as they get closer and he can see people’s faces, he recognizes the familiar looks of frozen panic and quiet, ambiguous alarm.

The biggest crowd is gathered by a pit in the sand, beneath one of the taller bluffs. Carly motions for them to follow her over, and they arrive just as Mr. Lowe, the art teacher, is explaining his latest project.

Caden feels kind of sorry for Mr. Lowe. He was always working on these complex installations that nobody ever seemed to really understand. But as Caden watches him now, gesticulating wildly as he demonstrates his new machine, he sees something new. Maybe it was never really about other people understanding at all.

Carly, obviously, goes first. Caden watches her scribble something on a piece of neon purple paper and fold it meticulously into a small, perfect square. She feeds it through a tube, and an impressive growl kicks up from the body of the machine. At the other end, Daniel waits, pouring little purple shreds into a paper cone and handing it back to Carly.

That’s it? Caden wonders, as he shuffles ahead, waiting to take his turn. He can’t imagine how transformed he’ll feel, watching a piece of paper get torn up and handed back to him in an inverted party hat.

Ramona is next. The crowd of people has fallen completely silent around them, and it feels like even more have arrived from the outskirts of the beach. She steps slowly to the machine and takes a pencil from the box. She looks across the machine at Carly, and then turns around to find Caden. He doesn’t know why, or how, but something about seeing her there, the pencil ready in her hand, about to take their lives, her mistakes, everything she wishes she could take back, and put all of it into a few words, a silly sentence … he wishes he could rip the paper from her hands.

Maybe it wasn’t always the best, what they had growing up. But it was what they had. And look at Carly. She was well on her way to winning every award their school ever offered. And yeah, maybe he had some work to do, but he was all right for the most part. Wasn’t he?

Why did they need some machine to tear them apart?

Ramona writes deliberately and carefully onto one side of the paper. Caden looks around and sees that a few people are crying. Ramona tucks the paper into the tube and the machine rumbles to life.

As Daniel hands her the cup of shredded confetti, she does something so unexpected that Caden thinks he’s hallucinating. She takes the cup and falls into Daniel’s arms, hugging him tight, as if they’re the best of friends.

Caden feels an unfamiliar lump swelling in his throat. He doesn’t know why, but he feels like crying now, too. Maybe it’s because he’s never seen Ramona hug another person in his life. Whatever happened in that machine, she needed it.

When his turn comes, Caden debates stepping back. Nobody is keeping track of who has done their forgiving. He could easily duck back to another part of the beach. But he doesn’t. He picks up a pencil and a piece of green paper. He thinks for a moment, and then he begins to write:

I forgive my parents.

Both of them.

He stares at the words for a few moments, before adding:

(We do the best we can.)

He folds the paper and sends it down the narrow tube, watching the green square flit and shake as it’s sucked into the covered midsection. He hears the metal scraping of a fan, or some other sharp-edged device, and watches as the little green flecks fill the bottom of a clear glass container.

Daniel reaches in and scoops them up with the cone, smiling as he hands it to Caden.

Caden peers into the cup as he walks to join his family by the water. Stars, he realizes, pressing one of the smallest paper cutouts into the tip of his finger.

They’re everywhere today.

SIENNA

They decide to do the wedding just before sunset, after most people have been given their turn at the machine.

Sienna is surprised that Dad even cares that people are watching. She’d assumed it was Denny’s doing, that Denny wanted her wedding to be more than just a quiet exchange of words between two people, that she wanted the whole world, or at least the whole neighborhood, to know what was happening.

But Dad is the one who keeps pushing for an audience. At first, Sienna was hurt. If this is something that Dad is only doing to make Denny happy, what does he care who knows about it?

But as she watches the people spilling onto the beach from the road, greeting each other with warm hugs or pats on the shoulders, she starts to get it. It’s not about the wedding. It’s about people standing together, being together, and facing whatever happens, together.

Ryan, who has been all over the Forgiving Wheel since they found out what it was, runs back to drag the rest of them over to the growing crowd. Owen holds her hand and squeezes it as they watch from the back. The crowd pushes slowly forward as more and more people take their turn.

“What are you gonna write, Ry?” Sienna leans down to ask her brother.

“It’s personal,” he answers. His face is set and serious, and Sienna wishes she hadn’t pried. She pulls him in for a hug. He struggles at first, his arms stiff and tense at his sides, but she doesn’t let go.

“You’re an okay brother, you know,” she says.

Ryan pushes her away. “That’s an understatement.”

Owen laughs quietly as they take a few steps closer to the machine.

Ryan goes first. He is, so far, the youngest participant, and Sienna notices a ripple effect in the crowd of people leaning closer to watch him at work. She knows what they’re thinking. What can a person so young have to forgive?

Sienna’s heart swells with pride as she watches him grip his small fist around the pencil. She has no idea what he’s writing. Maybe something about caterpillars, she thinks.

But probably not.

When it’s her turn, she works fast. She’s thought about it, and though she had a hard time choosing just one, she decided she didn’t have to. There were no rules.

I forgive you, Mom. It wasn’t your fault.

She pauses, and then adds on a separate line:

I forgive myself.

ZAN

All Zan can think of are apologies.