“Annabeth,” he shouted into the phone. “Hey-hey.”
“Hey-hey,” I echoed back.
“Whuss going on?”
Was there a snowstorm over there? Sound of howling winds and rattling flagpoles. Maybe he was on the crab boat, although I didn’t see how that was possible cell service–wise, or how Loreen, Alaskan Booty Queen, fit into the picture. Maybe she was the skipper.
“I’m pregnant,” I said.
“No you’re not.”
“Is she pregnant?” A screech from Loreen.
And Oliver: “It’s just some chick from home starting drama.”
Loreen: “Are you lying to me?”
Oliver: “Loreen!”
Slamming door. A roar from the TV. Someone must have scored a touchdown.
A few seconds later, Oliver came back on the phone.
“That was real uncool, Annabeth,” he said. “We barely hung out and I’ve been gone for two months. You can’t call me up and get all pissed that I’m with another girl. Now she thinks I knocked you up.”
“You did.”
“We used protection.”
“Not the whole time.”
Horrified silence. Terrifying possibilities invoked.
“Oliver?” I said. “Oliver.”
On TV, the cheering continued. They must be passing out free burritos in the stadium, dropping them out of a plane. Oliver stayed quiet for so long I thought he had passed out. I was about to hang up when he spoke suddenly.
“You can do whatever you want,” Oliver said, “but I’m not coming back.”
I kicked an empty flowerpot with my snow boot. “I’m not asking you to come back.”
“Then why’d you call?”
It was my turn to go silent. The words dropped out of my grasp like an armful of library books. Why had I called? Why had I gone to the forest and the curiosity museum? Why had I done any of the things I had done that strange, cold day?
“I just thought you would want to know,” I stammered, and hung up the phone.
45
THE ORCHID HOUSE WAS A KNOT of silence in the middle of a silent garden. It glittered like a broken Christmas ornament in the snow.
I walked across the frozen grass toward the rose garden, not really sure what I was doing. It was getting dark; time to go home. Time to figure out the next thing to do. I pulled my coat around me tight and stuffed my hands deep in the pockets to warm them up. I wished I hadn’t told Oliver. I didn’t even know why I had. I guess I thought you were supposed to, but maybe that was an idea from a TV show.
As I walked around the garden, I pretended I was an explorer on an alien planet. The rosebushes were black and frostbitten, spiky, thorny things in cold beds of dirt. The wedding gazebo was a docking pad for a flying saucer. I came to the duck pond and threw a rock at the ice. It didn’t shatter; it didn’t even make a dent.
I was acting all wrong. Like a mental patient, or a little kid. Maybe I lacked some kind of basic human instinct. Maybe I’d inherited that from him.
I stuffed some snow in my mouth to numb the thought.
“Annabeth,” called a voice from across the pond.
I looked up and saw a fat man with a dog. The dog was snuffling at the snow, digging up a long-lost waffle cone someone had dropped there at the end of summer. The man waved a mittened hand and came lumbering toward me, the dog tugging at its leash behind him. Close up, I recognized him as the nutritionist.
“Hey, Bob,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“Just walking String Bean. What about you?”
“Just thinking about stuff,” I said.
He had earbuds dangling out the collar of his coat. In the quiet of the garden, I could hear the tinny voice talking out of them. Kingdom of Stones.
“My grandmother used to say if you eat snow, you’ll freeze your insides,” said the nutritionist. He looked jolly in the snow, with his dog at his feet. Fresher and happier. Maybe “jolly” is an insulting way of putting it, but I mean it in the best possible way.
“My grandma thinks the chemicals in snow give you cancer,” I said.
“I certainly hope not,” said Bob. String Bean tugged at his leash. I reached down and petted him. “So, how are things going?” said Bob.
“Good.”
“Enjoying gymnastics?”
“Sort of. I mostly signed up for my friend.”
“I talked to the cafeteria manager about serving more vegetarian food.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I’m supposed to give them a list of meal requests. If you want to drop by sometime and help me come up with some ideas, it would be a big help. Otherwise it’s going to be rice and beans. And snow for dessert.”
“Okay,” I said.
String Bean barked at a bird. The narrator of Kingdom of Stones was talking about a pond in which Rae the Stone Maiden had been frozen by a wizard.
“You probably don’t want to miss this part,” I said, gesturing at Bob’s earbuds. “I need to get going anyway.”
Bob nodded and wrapped String Bean’s leash around his hand. “Nice to run into you, Annabeth.”
“See ya later, Bob.”
I felt lighter walking back to my car and I didn’t know why. Maybe I just needed someone to remind me that in a few days, once this was taken care of, life was going to go on as normal. There was going to be cafeteria food and Noe’s half-annoying, half-lovable chatter during gymnastics practice. I wasn’t a freak or a monster, just a kid who wasn’t careful enough. I certainly wasn’t any worse than Oliver.
I got into the cold car and turned the heat all the way up.
In the TV show, the girl in trouble parks by the waterfall and calls her best friend.
I left my phone on the seat and walked to the damp iron railing alone.
Birds were swooping back and forth in front of the colored floodlights they shine on the waterfall at night. I watched them soar and circle, their wings stained pink and green by the light.
I stayed until my hands were frozen and my eyelashes wet with snow. Until I could feel the waterfall inside my skull, and the rocks it crashed against, and there was nothing left to do but go back home.
46
IF YOU COME TO MY TOWN in the winter, you will inevitably end up at the waterfall at night. You will watch those same birds swooping. Maybe you will stare at the water that rushes over the edge and hear the roaring gushing and feel the chill of mist on your skin.
Maybe you will feel, for the first or the thousandth time, how many things in the world are bigger than you.
47
WHEN MOM CAME HOME FROM WORK, she buzzed around the house, all I can’t believe my baby is going to Maple Bay for three days. You would think I was going on a mission to Mars in the morning, the way she beamed and babbled.
We made dinner together, and Mom helped me pack sweaters, jeans, a scarf, a hat, and presents for Ava and Pauline.
“You’re going to have so much fun with Ava. She’s changed so much since she went away. Maybe she can give you some advice about which classes to take.”
She plucked a pair of socks out of my dresser and stuffed it cheerfully into my bag.
I almost told her then, but I didn’t.
48
WHEN MOM WENT TO BED, I walked to the end of our block and called Ava.
It was snowing. Flakes landed on my nose while I waited for her to pick up.
She owed me a favor, I thought to myself. If it came down to it, I could blackmail her into taking me. If Mom or Nan or Uncle Dylan found out that Ava had told me about my dad, they would never forgive her, even though she was crazy when she did it. Even though the first thing she did when she stopped being crazy was write me a letter apologizing, a letter I still had buried in my dresser drawer.