I COULD ALMOST SEE A line drawing itself between us. But it was a different kind of line than the one that stood between me and my parents, me and my friends, me and Mallory, even. This line was curving, closing in on me, stretching at the ends like arms reaching around. It was trying to become a circle instead of a line, a circle without ends and limits, a circle that was making my world smaller and smaller, crushing me with each breath I took.
Somehow, I knew if I let that line close around me, I’d never be able to escape its boundaries. As I looked out across it, there he was, looking at me, waiting for an answer. And so the words just spilled out of my mouth, smooth like butter, one after another, as if I’d rehearsed them a million times, as if they were really mine:
“I want to take pictures,” I lied.
If only I could’ve stopped myself there.
“I want to travel the world and take photos on every continent,” my voice said. “I want to work for National Geographic someday. I want to see my work in art galleries. I want to do something special. I want to be someone.” I could hear the passion in the words, feel the emotion like a lump in my throat, heat simmering in my chest.
Except all that fire—it didn’t belong to me.
These were Mallory’s words. I’d heard them before, me sitting in our barn, her standing there emoting, dreaming, sermonizing, that vinegar-floral-sulfur scent of her makeshift closet darkroom chemicals still disintegrating into the air, making my head fuzzy. I would sit and listen as the photographs dried out, the breeze whipping them against the strings they were pinned to, thwap thwaping like the beat that underpinned her future. I knew the tune so well, it was easy to repeat.
When I glanced over at him, he was looking at me the way people always looked at Mallory, like they were in awe, under a spell, so I quickly added, “I mean, I just want to get outta here. Like everyone else.”
“No, that’s—that’s not like everyone else at all. That’s a real dream.”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged, the relief and guilt tugging at me with even force, rocking my mind back and forth. I tried to convince myself that Mallory might actually be okay with me borrowing her dream for a little while. “All right, well, now you have to tell me yours. What’s your college dream?”
“It’s going to seem so bland in comparison.”
“No, it won’t,” I assured him. “Tell me.”
“Okay,” he began. “Well, I’ve always loved space. Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve wanted to know everything I could about astronomy and the universe and stars and planets and black holes. I’ve never wanted to do anything else. So that’s what I’m going to go to school for.”
“What are you talking about? You want to be, like, an astronaut or something; that’s way cooler than what I said.”
He started laughing. “I’m not sure I’d ever want to actually leave Earth, but something in astrophysics or aerospace would be pretty cool. Sometimes I think I’d like to teach. Be a professor.”
“Wow, you must be really smart, then.”
“I don’t know about that.” He looked straight ahead at the road, but I could tell he was trying hard not to smile, which was pretty irresistible. He cleared his throat and added, “I’m just a geek.”
Mile by mile, the endless fields began to give way, houses popping up sparsely at first, then with more volume. A few businesses entered the mix, until the ratio flipped and it was more businesses than houses. When we entered New Pines proper, Chris slowed the car down to precisely thirty-five miles per hour, like the speed limit sign demanded.
And just like that, I felt something of Mallory stirring in the space around me. I glanced over my shoulder into the backseat. So did Chris, although he didn’t know what we were looking for. Had she been sitting there, right in the middle grinning at us, one arm hanging over each of our seats, it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least. I wished even for a flicker of a second she had been there. But, of course, the backseat was empty.
“You know, I’ve driven through New Pines a lot,” I said, because he was expecting me to say something. “But I’ve only ever stopped here once before. When we were kids. We were on our way to the beach—I think that was the first and last family vacation we ever took.”
New Pines is halfway between Carson and the coast. It’s probably the size of Carson, but it’s one of those small towns that has somehow been able to turn its history of decline around and transform itself into a funky, hip, crunchy little touristy place where people stop on their way out to the beach, whereas Carson just slowly fizzled out.
“Who’s ‘we’?” he asked.
Had I said “we” out loud? I wondered.
“My family and I,” I said, deliberately omitting the specifics. It was years ago when we came here, back when our parents were still together. I was nine, so Mallory was maybe ten or eleven.
A montage of images flooded my brain: pink ice cream—strawberry—dripping down the side of a giant waffle cone onto her arm, her tongue licking the trail it left behind; her arm reaching across the table, tipping my ice cream cone into my face, mashing it into my nostrils. It was birthday-cake flavored, I remember that, with swirls of sky-blue frosting and specks of multicolored sprinkles mixed in. That used to be my favorite, although now I can barely remember what it tasted like.
She laughed.
My parents laughed.
And finally I laughed too.
Looking back, I wished we had a picture, because the memory was so blurry around the edges that I wasn’t sure it could be trusted. I wished Mallory’s older self had been there in that moment, like she had managed to be present at all the right moments, ready to capture it. But she wasn’t her yet. I wasn’t me yet. Me. Am I even me right now, or am I like Mallory was back then, still trying to find her camera—the way she would see the world through ground glass and technology, the medium by which she would record it all? I hadn’t found my version of that yet, and I sometimes wondered if I ever would.
Chris continued driving down the street, but I wished I could put the world on pause. Because it all happened in that ice cream parlor, right there—we were passing it.
Then on the other side of the street, I could see her on the sidewalk, hear her footsteps skipping ahead of me. That sidewalk, right there. She was running, so excited, her shadow bouncing beneath her.
I closed my eyes; her laughter echoed in my head.
I was running too, but I was way behind, in the background, like I always was.
A camera shutter snapped. At least, that’s what my mind told me it was. In reality, it was probably a test firework being set off in the distance.
I twisted around in my seat, already unclicking the seat belt and flinging it off my body.
“Hey, can you pull over up here?”
“Yeah. What is it?” he said, slowing to a stop at the side of the road as I opened the car door. I heard him say something else through the open window, but I was speed walking, practically jogging, my sandals tripping me. I ran back along the wrought iron fence, the black parallel lines moving the scenery in the background like an animation—a cartoon graveyard. It made me feel like I was running in place and the cemetery was moving rather than the other way around.
Somehow, in spite of all of this, I made it back to the gate.
I knew this gate. I knew this spot.
I couldn’t remember the feel of cold metal on my fingertips.
It was her hands I remembered, trailing along the wrought iron. I was following her like a shadow, mimicking her every move, because that’s what little sisters do. All except her hands on the gates. I was afraid to touch it, afraid of getting too close to death. She walked right up to it, though, stood face-to-face with it.
But that wasn’t my only memory of these gates.
There was another.
This one was static, not a lived memory. This was one of Mallory’s pictures. I closed my eyes. I could see its exact location on the wall in the barn where Mallory had pinned it up.
Which meant she had come back here. To the place where we stopped once and behaved like a functional, loving family. And now I was here again too.
I sensed Chris standing behind me. “Soooo . . . ,” he said, drawing out the word. “What are we doing?”
“I have to come back here,” I said, still looking out at the cemetery, my hands wrapped around the bars, the weight of the cold, rough metal finally under my own fingers.
Chris made a sound like a hum—a questioning, uncertain syllable.
“With the camera, I mean.” I turned around quickly, and added, in as normal a tone as I could, “I have to come back with the camera. To take pictures.”
We stood opposite each other on the sidewalk where Mallory had once been, where even a different version of me had once been, and he exhaled like he’d been holding his breath. His eyes went from narrowed and focused to soft and open, his mouth curving into a smile.
As he let out that breath of air, it was almost like he was making the phew sound. “I am so glad you just said that.”
“Why?” I asked, and as he had me wondering what about this situation was so amusing, I felt my face inadvertently mirroring his smile.
“ ’Cause this whole thing just had a very beginning-of-a-horror-movie kind of vibe going on for a minute there.” He stepped up to the gate and stood next to me, looking into the distance at the massive cemetery that stood beyond the wrought iron bars.
I looked into the distance too, and said, “Oh.”
“I mean, I think you’re cool and all,” he continued, a lightheartedness in his voice. “But I’m not ready to die some kind of bloody zombie death for you.” He laughed, and added, “Not quite yet, anyway.”
He took a few steps, letting his hand trail along the fence the way Mallory’s had. He was following along behind my memories of her skipping, light on her toes, and for some reason I felt light too, like my feet were barely touching the ground.
It had taken several minutes for his words to fully sink in, but as they did I laughed.
He turned around and asked, “What?”
“So, bloody zombie death. That’s one of your tests of a relationship?” I asked, realizing too late I’d used the word “relationship.” I held my breath as I watched for signs of freak-out, wondering if I should quickly swap out “friendship” instead, or clarify that I didn’t think this was a relationship.
His eyes widened, and his voice was laced with faux shock as he gasped and said, “You mean it’s not one of yours?”
I exhaled a laugh, relieved that maybe he hadn’t noticed.
“Isn’t a willingness to die a bloody zombie death a little more reliable a test than”—he paused, looking in the distance like he was searching for the rest of his sentence—“a dozen roses?” he finished.
The sound of his laugh was like a tiny volt of electricity zapping my confidence. Something nudged me in the side, like a poke under the ribs. I turned to look, again half expecting to see Mallory right there next to me.
Nudge. Nudge. Nudge.
She nudged at me until I said the words she had carefully lined up on my tongue: “Fine,” I sighed in that playful way she used to do when she wanted to be extra melodramatic. “I’ll take it under consideration.”
“Hey, that’s all I’m saying,” he replied, not missing a beat.
And just like that, this whole thing—the witty banter, the back-and-forth—became so easy, so navigable.
He pointed up ahead. “There it is.”
I could see the sign: PED-X CYCLE SHOP
The scent of incense and candles and lavender wafted out onto the street from a new-age-type store we passed. It snapped me back into the present like a rubber band against my wrist. I recognized those smells from Mallory’s room. They hovered around the building like an invisible fog, the way it used to cling to her clothes and hair, following her wherever she went. We walked by a little storefront gallery that seemed to specialize in seascape paintings and pottery, and then there was the soda shop where Mallory’s ice cream cone had melted, the place where my mom and dad had laughed together.
I slowed down as we passed the window, trying to find the booth where we’d sat as a family. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window, but then as my eyes adjusted to the interior, I saw something in the corner that was familiar, but again, not familiar from my memories.
It was a shiny jukebox, all lit up in neon.
I didn’t remember seeing it there when I was a kid. No, I remembered it from another picture on the wall. I’d had no idea where it was even taken until this moment. I pulled up short and peered through the window with my hands cupped around my eyes. My reflection stood in front of me, and for a split second I swear I thought it was Mallory. I flinched like it was one of those jump-scare movie moments.
Chris stepped up beside me and looked through the glass too, craning his neck to see. “What?” he asked.
“I thought I . . . ,” I began, but by the time I got the words out, my eyes had settled back on my own reflection again. “Nothing. Never mind,” I said, and as I turned back to look at him, I had this overwhelming sense that I was exactly where I was supposed to be—because Mallory was everywhere I turned. She had spent time here, and now I was discovering all of these pieces of her that she had left behind like a trail of bread crumbs.
When we got to the bike shop, I pulled on the door handle, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Oh shit,” Chris said, pointing to the window.
CLOSED, the handwritten sign said. Then underneath: HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY.