He smiled at her and then picked a dandelion in full fluff from the ground. He blew on it, and tiny bits of fluff stuck to her hair like dust. He reached over to pick them out, but she backed away. Quick as a flash, he grabbed her and fell to the ground with her, face-first, the force knocking the air out of her chest. Then he was on top of her, grabbing at her skirt and pulling it up. He lifted himself slightly to pull at his own pants, and that’s when she twisted herself around enough to catch him in the side of the face with her elbow. The pain was like fire in her bone, and, from the sound he made, it didn’t feel too good for him either. She managed to knock him off of her, and she scrambled away on all fours before picking herself up and running faster than she’d ever run in her life.
Her aunt Clara found her in the kitchen later, cradling her arm, clothes torn, covered in dirt. The only thing she said to Bulahdeen was, “Next time, don’t fight so hard. It’s easier that way.”
That’s the moment Bulahdeen realized that she did fight. And she’d fought because she hadn’t wanted that ending. She’d wanted something else. Not this. It had been six years since Maudie had left, and Bulahdeen hadn’t received a single letter from her. Still, that night, Bulahdeen wrote to her at the address she’d given her, and told her everything that had happened. She told her she wanted things to change but she didn’t know how.
She started staying longer at school, helping the teachers clean their rooms, because she wanted to stay away from the harm of home as long as possible. Then one of the teachers hired her to help bathe and feed her elderly mother in the afternoons.
One day, as Bulahdeen was leaving the home after feeding the elderly woman, hurrying because she wanted to get back to the End of the World before dark, the next-door neighbor stopped her and invited her inside. She was the local librarian and, out of the blue, she offered Bulahdeen a place to stay in the home she shared with her husband, who happened to be the police chief. They didn’t have any children, and they were getting up in years, she said. She saw the way Bulahdeen tended to the old woman next door, and she said she’d give Bulahdeen room and board if she helped out with chores around the house and at the library.
Those two years with the Bartletts were the safest she’d ever known. And not a single night went by that she didn’t lie in her bed and wonder at the turn her life had taken. She had no idea how she’d gotten so lucky.
Until the day before she left for college.
That’s when the librarian handed her a stack of letters. They were all the letters Bulahdeen had sent to Maudie at her aunt’s address in Boston.
Maudie had never made it to her aunt in Boston. No one knew where she went. No one knew what happened to her. Over the years, Bulahdeen had made up hundreds of stories about Maudie’s whereabouts, none of them the truth. That was Maudie’s ultimate victory. Her ending was her own. No one else could touch it.
But Maudie’s aunt in Boston had read all of Bulahdeen’s letters, enchanted by this depiction of the rural South. She’d begun to look forward to them. When the letter about the attack had reached her, she’d panicked. She hadn’t known what to do. She’d contacted the police chief in the town where the postmark came from, and he’d told her to send the letters to him. When he’d gotten them, he’d been charmed and then alarmed, and he’d shown them to his wife. She’d recognized the name. It was the redheaded girl who’d helped tend to the elderly woman next door.
That’s when Bulahdeen truly understood what Maudie had been trying to tell her all along. And she’d never once wavered in her faith that endings were never absolute.
Not until now.
She’d spent enough time in this life to know that not everything will go your way. She’d read enough books to know that they weren’t all happy endings. Still, it broke her heart a little after the party when Eby finally told Bulahdeen that she had changed her mind, but that it didn’t matter, because Lazlo was going to fight her.
Bulahdeen recognized people who could make their own endings, as easily as she could recognize the taste of a fine summer wine, and Lazlo was one of those people.
That meant they weren’t going to win. Not because they didn’t want it more, but because they didn’t have the power he had to make it happen.
He was kidnapping their ending, and there was nothing more Bulahdeen could do about it.
She simply had to close the book and walk away.
After having leftover cake for breakfast because, for the first time anyone said they could recall, Lisette had slept in, Devin and Kate walked outside into the bright muggy morning. Jack was still waiting with worry in the dining room. Bulahdeen, who had been unusually quiet, was now on the dock, standing at the very end, a tiny lone figure surrounded by water. The lawn was messy, but not as messy as it had been when the party had ended last night. It looked like someone had come out and cleaned after everyone had left. Devin remembered her mother carrying her to their cabin then. She’d set her down on her bed, then she’d crawled in next to her.
“We’re not going anywhere for a long while. But no matter what happens, we’ll get through it together,” Kate had whispered. “I’m here. I’m not going to leave.”
When Devin had woken up, her mother had still been curled beside her. It had been the best feeling. She hadn’t moved for nearly twenty minutes, staring at her mother’s face, loving her so much that she would have done anything to preserve that moment, to stick it in a jar like a firefly and watch it forever. But then she’d finally had to get up and go to the bathroom.
As they stood there, looking at the lake, Devin was quiet, tilting her head, listening to something only she could hear through the chirping of the birds and the rustling of the trees.
“Are you all right, kiddo?” Kate asked.
“He’s still anxious.”
“Who?”
“The alligator. Can we go for a hike through the woods to the cabin again?” Devin asked.
“Sure. I’ll get some bottles of water from the kitchen,” Kate said.
“Can I go down and see Bulahdeen? I won’t go anywhere. It’s a Devin promise,” she said when her mother hesitated.
Kate nodded, and Devin raced to the dock, feeling the fairy wings against her back and wishing she could fly. The thought of hovering above the earth, weightless in a lilac sky, appealed to her, in the same way imaginary friends appealed to her, or talking alligators. Not long ago, back in her old life, she had started to feel a restlessness, a pressure, as she outgrew all her clothes and needed the feel of her mother’s hand in hers less and less, that possibilities were becoming more finite, and everything was becoming more real.
It didn’t feel like that here. She was glad they were staying longer. It still didn’t feel as permanent as she thought it would feel, but at least they weren’t going back to Atlanta. She decided to be glad for that. If they went back, her mother might change again. And Devin liked her exactly as she was. Her dad was gone, but her mom was here. She was here.
She slowed as she reached Bulahdeen, then stopped by her side. “Hi, Bulahdeen! What are you doing out here?”
Bulahdeen brushed at her eyes under her sunglasses.
Devin instintively reached out and took her hand. Her fingers felt like green wood. “What’s the matter?”
Bulahdeen smiled and squeezed Devin’s hand. “It’s nothing for you to worry about, baby.”
“You look sad.”
“I am,” Bulahdeen said. “I am sad.”
“Why?”