I Know You Remember Page 3

  I can still hear Zahra’s voice—not her normal speaking voice, but her written voice, the particular rhythm and stress of it. I wonder if it’s always the case that writing with someone makes you close, that their voice becomes one of the voices in your head forever after. Some of her sentences have lodged in my mind and become a kind of music to me over the years. The Starmaiden felt the power of the heavens flow from her fingers. Or: In the misty morning, the Dark-Dancers came up from the depths of the pond. She liked alliteration, liked smashing two words she liked together into a new one. She liked for things to be beautiful and for good to prevail.

  I still look at our old notebooks sometimes. I tried to keep writing the story when I moved to Portland, but without Zahra it just didn’t work. I was the discipline—I kept the plot moving, I kept us diligently working every day—but she was the vision. She was the one who breathed magic into the book—into my life.

  Almost without thinking about it, I step off the paved portion of the trail, toward a barely visible break in the bushes. The trail cuts up a steep hill. Sticker bushes and yarrow crowd around my shins. I keep my eyes peeled for devil’s club, the brutally spiny shrub that grows thick out here. And now I’m on the other side of the crest, heading down into a small valley cut through by a stream. I cross an old, disused gravel road, and the woods open up to reveal the playground.

  It’s long abandoned. Sometime in the last thirty years the city rerouted the paths and closed off this little road to the public. They partially disassembled the equipment, but they didn’t bother taking it all out of here—I guess it must have been too expensive to bother with. Zahra used to call it “Pedo Park” because the idea of a playground surrounded entirely by trees, set back from the road, seemed so dangerous.

  Now I take a few hesitant steps into the clearing and look around. It’s almost entirely as we left it. The merry-go-round sits cockeyed against its base, the nuts and bolts removed. Three spring-loaded animal rockers sit on their sides where they were wrenched from the ground, and a huge truck tire filled with sand smells of rotten rubber and faded urine.

  There’s a mostly intact play structure with a few platforms and a slide down one side. A tattered, weather-beaten sheet flutters where it’s hung. It’s that sheet that makes my heart squeeze. I remember it: we’d put it up for shade, an old flannel flat sheet with Ninja Turtles printed across. We used to sit side by side under it while we wrote. Now it’s torn and frayed, trembling in the breeze.

  I know, then, that no one’s been here since I left it, three years back.

  The quiet feels breathless around me. I look around and see more evidence of our existence. Over that summer different treasures, found or stolen, had accumulated out here. Mason jars of colored sand or bowls of pretty stones—now overturned and cracked from three years of snow. A makeshift vanity under the ancient slide, a magnetized locker mirror clinging to the metal. A coffee tin full of now-dried-up nail polish and lipstick. A stack of pillaged lumber we were going to use to make a bookshelf. We never did finish it.

  Sharpie scrawls cover the wood and metal equipment: drawings of flowering vines, of butterflies, of birds. Nothing complex; we’d never been good artists. But there, where I remember it, I see Zahra’s loopy faux calligraphy across the frame: THE PRECIPICE. The names of our protagonists—Starmaiden and Lyr—are etched to either side.

  I stand for a moment longer, and then I head back toward the main path and continue my hike.

  On the other side of the park from my father’s current house is a busy commercial road. On the other side of that is Walker Court—the trailer park where my mom moved us both the February of my eighth-grade year.

  It hasn’t changed much. When I first moved there I was freaked out—Mom accused me of snobbery, which was probably a little bit right. We’d never been rich, but a trailer park? But Walker Court is like any other blue-collar neighborhood: a mixed bag. A place where lots of different kinds of people live. East Anchorage is the most diverse part of the city, and the families in the trailer park are white and black, Hmong and Samoan, Latino and Laotian. There are neat little yards and potted flowers; there are muddy driveways and cars on blocks. There are noisy, boisterous houses full of noisy, boisterous kids. There are meth-heads and alcoholics and junkies. There are people with regular jobs who like to grill on the weekends.

  I stand outside Zahra’s trailer for a few minutes, my fingers fidgeting against one another. It suddenly occurs to me that her family could have moved. The yard is choked with weeds, and the teal-and-white paint job is peeling away. I don’t remember the place being so run down.

  But then I see their two enormous shaggy mutts, Deshka and Yukon, ranging across the yard, wrestling over a Kong toy, and I know they’re still here.

  I can’t keep the grin off my face as I jog up the steps to the door. Even with everything that’s happened, even with my mom’s death, I’m excited. I’ve played this moment in my head for three years. I knock at the door, and then clasp my hands together, waiting.

  Footsteps behind the door. A man’s voice shouts something; someone responds from deeper inside. Then the door swings open.

  It’s Zahra’s dad—Mr. Gaines, though he always told me to call him Ron. He looks down at me blankly for just a moment before his face flashes into the wide, easy grin I remember.

  “Ruthie Hayden! What the hell are you doing here?” It’d be weird to hear any other parent I know say that—but from Mr. Gaines, it’s just a jovial welcome. Zahra’s parents are what my mom used to call “free spirited.” Her dad, a stocky black man with long, neat locks, paints houses under the table. Her mom, a sweetly plump white woman, seems to cobble together a bunch of hobbies that may or may not make money—she sews stuffed toys and beads earrings, puts together astrological star charts and cans pickles. She sets up booths at the fair and the farmer’s markets every year. They’re a raucous, odd, funny family, loud when they laugh and when they fight. Zahra talked to them like they were friends or irritating roommates, nagging at them to clean up after themselves and pay the bills on time even when she was a kid.

  “Hi, Ron.” I let him hug me, getting a pleasant whiff of his musky aftershave.

  “Come in, kiddo, come in.” He opens the door wide. “Charity, you’ll never guess who’s here.”

  The living room is much as I remember. A cotton tapestry with a celestial pattern hangs on one wall; the TV chatters softly, turned on for noise and then forgotten. A lanky teenage boy is draped over the sofa, staring at his phone; it takes me a moment to recognize Zahra’s little brother, Malik.

  “Wow,” I say. “Malik, you’ve grown.” I realize immediately that I sound like a grandma. It’s a stupid thing to say. But he doesn’t even look up. I feel a little pang of disappointment—when he was younger, he used to laugh and banter with me. Now he just gives a sullen little nod.

  Charity, Zahra’s mom, comes to the door of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. Her eyes widen a little. “Ruthie?”

  “Hi.” I give a shy little wave. “It’s good to see you.”

  She comes in and hugs me, too. “What are you doing here? Are you visiting your dad?”

  “No, I . . . I’m back.” I hesitate. “My mom passed away last week.”

  “Passed away” doesn’t feel right; “passed away” describes a quiet death, a gentle release after a long decline. For a moment the image of my mother tipping into the chasm comes back to me. I blink it away. Charity looks stunned. She stares at me for another second, then hugs me again.

  “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry. That’s . . . awful. I never knew your mama well but she seemed like such a nice lady.”

  “Yeah,” I whisper into her shoulder. “Thank you.”

  “So you living with your dad now?” Ron gives a little frown. I realize they probably remember some of the stories about him. I nod.

  “Yeah. But he’s sober. He’s do
ing good.” I lick my lips. “Anyway, I’m just happy to be home.”

  “Come on in, sit down.” Charity leads me into the kitchen, where the big oval table takes up most of the room. “Can I make you some tea? I’ve got rose hip, peppermint, chaga . . .”

  “No, thank you, I’m okay.” I glance around. “I was hoping to catch Zahra. Is she home?”

  Ron and Charity exchange glances. There’s a moment of tension that passes so quickly I’m not sure if I imagined it.

  “No,” Charity says. I can’t read the tone. “She’s been gone all weekend.”

  “I think she’s camping with her friends,” Ron says. Charity shakes her head.

  “I told you, her tent’s still in the shed,” she says. She gives me a tense smile. “She didn’t tell us where she was off to. She’s probably off with her boyfriend.”

  Boyfriend. She has a boyfriend. It’s not a big deal, of course, but it annoys me that I didn’t know.

  “She didn’t tell you where she was going?” I ask.

  Charity purses her lips, but Ron just gives a little shrug. “She’s old enough to make her decisions,” he says.

  I nod. Even at thirteen her parents gave her a lot of freedom. She didn’t have to check in every few hours the way I did. They didn’t pay attention to what she read or watched; I had to borrow all George R. R. Martin’s books from her and hide them because my mom thought they were too “sexy.” So it’s not such a surprise that her parents don’t know where Zahra is. Still, it feels like there’s something they’re not telling me.

  “Um . . . how’s she been?” I ask, glancing from one of them to the other.

  Another little pause. Then Charity smiles. “Oh, you know. Typical moody teenager.” Her tone is light but I can feel something fraught beneath it. I glance at Ron.

  His eyes are sad, but he gives a little shrug. “She’s good. Keeps busy with school and her friends and all that. Always got something going on.”

  I nod. I guess I get that. In Portland there were full days when I didn’t see my mom, between school and music rehearsals. But I’d never been as close to my mom as Zahra had been to her parents. And “typical moody teenager”? That had never been Zahra’s thing. If anything she’d always been mellow, easy to talk to.

  “Hey, do you mind if I leave her a note?” I ask. “I’ve been texting her but it’s been a while. She might not have my number anymore.”

  “Of course.” Charity nods toward the hallway. “You remember where her room is?”

  I stand up. “You don’t think she’ll mind?”

  “Nah, go ahead,” Ron says. He hesitates, then he pats me on the shoulder. “Glad you’re back, Ruthie, even under the circumstances. Things haven’t been the same without you.”

  Zahra’s room is at the very end of a cramped hall. For a moment I think it must be the wrong room. Nothing about it feels familiar. I freeze a few steps in, feeling like I’m somewhere I shouldn’t be.

  Three years ago this room looked like an extension of Zahra. The walls were dark gray, with white twinkle lights tacked around the edges. She’d made an impromptu canopy with some spare pink tulle from one of her mom’s crafting projects. She’d drawn flowering vines all over one wall with colored chalk, and scrawled across another, in wide looping letters, a quote from The Hobbit: “Even dragons have their ending.” Zahra was the only person I’d ever met who was reflexively creative—she didn’t spend a lot of time planning or thinking or analyzing; she just made things, because the desire took her. I’d come over to her place and find her cutting up a T-shirt into a strappy halter, or gluing glitter to a plastic barrette. I always asked where she got the idea, and she’d just shrug. “Dunno,” she’d say. “I was just messing around.”

  Now, though, there’s no sign of that Zahra. No twinkle lights, no tulle, no uncapped paint pen drying out on the desk next to a half-drawn sign. The room is small and tidy, the bedspread smooth across the mattress. A utilitarian lamp sits next to the bed; the one small window is covered with blue-and-white striped curtains. There are no stuffed animals, no empty cups or art supplies or scented candles.

  But weirdest of all, there are no books.

  The last time I’d been in this room, every surface had been stacked high with books. Old crusty paperbacks she’d inherited from her parents, cheap book-fair copies of chapter books, water-damaged picture books. It was a riotous, haphazard collection. For some reason she had three copies of A Light in the Attic but had to borrow my edition of Where the Sidewalk Ends. She had the second, fourth, and fifth Harry Potter books but was missing the rest; she had a stack of true crime books and a copy of Alaskan Bear Tales, filled to the brim with terrifying stories of people being mauled to death, and an ancient stack of Sweet Valley High books from her mom’s own childhood. She read like it was breathing, like she had to do it to live. She read everything she touched, without pausing to consider if it was relevant to her interests or not.

  Now, the only books I see are a stack of textbooks on her desk. U.S. Government, Fundamentals of Physics, Intro to Psychology. For a few heartbeats I stand in the middle of the room, feeling almost dizzy.

  Maybe she got an e-reader, I think. Maybe she threw all the books out. But this room feels like a stranger’s room.

  The one personal touch is the French bulletin board, photographs laced under the straps. I step close to it and check out the pictures. They’re all candid, but well composed, obviously taken with a good camera and developed with care. They’re all of people I don’t know—a few kids laughing at something in the hall at school, several action shots of snowboarders. A girl with a beanie pulled down over her red hair, smirking playfully. A boy with a short black Mohawk, sitting on a dock and staring moodily out over a lake. I try not to be hurt that there’s not one of me.

  I take a deep breath and pull a notepad from my purse.

  STARMAIDEN—

  I’M HOME FROM THE GREAT BEYOND! GIMME A CALL WHEN YOU CAN, CAN’T WAIT TO SEE YOU.

  <3

  LYR

  I think about crumpling it up for a moment and starting again, without using our old fictional alter egos. She might think it’s cheesy, embarrassing, at this point. The girl who lives in this impersonal room surely would. But instead, I leave it on her desk. Maybe she’ll see it as self-deprecating, playful.

  Or maybe, I think, barely daring to hope for it. Maybe it’ll remind her who she really is.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “AND LORD, WE ASK that this meal provide sustenance to our bodies and give us strength to enact your will.”

  It’s the next morning. My first day of school. Dad and Brandy got up early and put together an enormous breakfast. Eggs, bacon, pancakes, fruit—the works. Which would be really sweet of them, if they’d just let us eat it.

  “We ask that you give your blessing to our family, and let these two young women flourish under your guidance,” he goes on. “Give them the wisdom and fortitude to make good choices, and the humility to follow your teachings.”

  Darkness pushes in at the windows. I’d forgotten how heavy an Alaskan morning could feel, how smothering the sky gets as the days shorten. Waking up on those cold black days feels like a fight against your own body. Like a kind of violence, even, forcing yourself out of the warmth of bed and dream. Mom used to play music to wake me up. She’d start with something gentle—Chopin, maybe—but if I stayed in bed too long she’d blast the opening number to Oklahoma!, which never failed to send me tumbling out of bed, scurrying to turn it off in irritation.

  The thought makes me close my eyes tightly over my clasped fingers.

  “Lord, we ask that you give us strength against temptation.” His voice doesn’t waver, but I can hear a subtle shift in it. A sharp, metallic note. “Thank you for another day of sobriety.”

  I sneak a glance around the table. Dad never used to be religious, but I guess it’s part of w
hat’s helped him stay clean. I know he, Brandy, and Ingrid go to Victory Evangelical, the biggest fundamentalist congregation in Anchorage. I’m personally not a big fan. Victory’s pastor, Dale Worthen, is old-school fire and brimstone. They used to go out and protest every pride parade, every ballot initiative that would protect LGBTQIA rights. Mom hated the guy—I still remember her gearing up for a counter protest, painting a sign that said GOD IS LOVE in rainbow colors.

  “In Jesus’s name,” Dad says, “amen.”

  “Amen,” Ingrid and Brandy say in unison. I say it, too, a half second too late.

  Silence lingers over the table for a moment. Then Dad gives an awkward little smile. “Well, let’s eat, everyone. Before it gets cold.” He picks up a platter of hash browns and starts to serve himself. Brandy and Ingrid take that as their cue to dig in, too.

  I don’t know if it’s the darkness, or the prayer’s strange urgency, but I’m not very hungry. I poke listlessly at a pancake, then give up and pour myself a cup of coffee.

  “Did you sleep okay, Ruthie?” Brandy asks, taking a bite of hash browns. “It sounded like you were up pretty late.”

  “Oh, I . . . I’m sorry if I bothered you,” I say. “Just nerves, I guess.” This morning I woke up in yesterday’s clothes, my well-thumbed copy of The Hobbit splayed on the bed next to me. My go-to book for new beginnings. I always go back to see if Bilbo will have the courage to set foot out his door and on that trail once again.

  “No, no, you didn’t bother me.” She has a smile that borders on fragile, a tremulous little curve of the lips. “I just want you to know you can always come upstairs and hang out if you want. I’m a night owl, too.”

  “Chronic insomniac, more like,” Dad says.