1. There are song titles featuring hearts in various locations: “The Heart of Dixie,” “Heart of Asia,” “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”
2. There are songs about “Hearts on Fire,” and “Foolish Hearts,” and “Cheating Hearts,” and “Wild Hearts,” and “Whole Hearts.” There’s a song about a “Precious Heart” and a “Rebel Heart” and a “Second Hand Heart” and a “Heart of Gold.”
3. Hearts do a lot of stuff in songs: “Heart Skips a Beat,” “The Heart Wants What It Wants.” “Two Hearts Beat As One” while “Two Hearts [are] Breaking.”
4. There are the songs that speak of the darker truth: “Hearts of Stone,” “Wooden Heart,” “Ugly Heart,” “Cold, Cold Heart,” “Jet Black Heart.” There are at least fifty-eight versions of songs titled “Heartless.” This does not seem like nearly enough.
• • •
Loretta is taking Annabelle through the narrow piece of north Idaho, which sticks up like an index finger. “The panhandle”—yes, she gets it now. It’s an awesome place, even if the trail climbs in elevation and she feels the wrenching through her whole body. After each of her Idaho runs, she is sore in unexpected places from the strain of the upward climb—through her chest muscles and abdomen, the back of her neck. She’s had totally wrong perceptions about Idaho, which just goes to show, you should never judge unless you’ve been there.
What did she imagine? The easy images she’d been handed—potatoes, corn, boring stuff. But Idaho itself is awesome, at least from what she’s seen. There’s lots of cool, beautiful water (Lake Coeur d’Alene, Anderson Lake, Swan Lake, the Coeur d’Alene River, which she runs alongside through most of Idaho). There are brewpubs with lots of meat on the menu (she skips the elk steak). There are perfect temperatures (she’s not there in the winter).
“This panhandle feels like a shortcut through an entire state,” she says to Grandpa Ed.
“It’s the nice little almond in a big biscotti,” he says.
• • •
Maybe it’s because her trek through Idaho is only seventy-four miles, about five days of her trip, but she’s feeling great. She’s in a routine. She gets up early, writes in the Moleskine, and then takes off. She enjoys the beauty that is the water-filled, sparkly spring-ness of Idaho. There are cheery kayakers and bicyclists and crews of friends carrying rafts. On a day of straight-up forest trail, she definitely sees a white-tailed deer. She thinks she sees a wild turkey. She keeps a count of bald eagles, and then loses track because there are so many.
She knows that there are also cougars in those woods. Grizzlies, too. Every trailhead has a sign explaining what to do if you see one. If an animal wants to get you, it will get you, though, won’t it? Isn’t her life proof of that? This is something she struggles with as she runs. This is the question she must answer. How do you feel safe when there are grizzlies in your midst? Perhaps, your only real hope is not crossing paths with one in the first place. She carries a soda can filled with pebbles so the sound will ward off any dangerous creatures. She willfully ignores the fact that a soda can is nothing against a grizzly.
She spots flashes of The Taker in the dim grottos and murky hollows where the bears and the cougars might be. There are his bitten-down cuticles, and the way she once accidentally embarrassed him.
You nervous? she asked, laughing, holding up one of his hands.
The expression that crossed his face—it was shame, but deeper than shame. Fury, maybe.
So what? You get freaked out at a four-way stop. She knew he liked her, but it seemed like he hated her a little right then, too. And then there was the time he stormed out of class after he pronounced “awry” awe-ree when he read aloud, and everyone laughed. The walls shuddered when he slammed the door. The next day, Mrs. Lyons and Annabelle and the whole class, really, pretended it hadn’t happened, though you could feel the energy of pretending in the air.
Kat is also in the damp shadows of the forest. Annabelle sees her, jumping up and down and screaming alongside Annabelle’s family at the finish line of Annabelle’s second marathon that November.
Go, Belle Bottom! You’re almost there! You can do it!
She sees Kat sitting at that back table of Essential Baking Company, reading and eating an almond croissant, drinking green tea as Annabelle makes complicated coffee drinks for the other customers. She hears Kat at lunch one day, saying, I like his smile, though. His—The Taker’s. The though tells more than the like. Kat is trying to be generous. Then she changes the subject to something safer. I got the new Alice Wu at the library, but the cover sucks.
These small details spring out from the thickest brush and shadows, but the larger pieces stay crouched in hiding, and the largest piece of all lurks in the deepest, darkest cave, pacing and putrid. While she’s here in Idaho, at least, the worst memories are in the distance, and Seth Greggory is in the distance, because there may be grizzlies, but the can shakes, and it sounds like stop, stop, stop!
After every sixteen-mile stint in Idaho, Grandpa Ed is there just as he’s promised, in the location her “team” has scoped out.
“Look who’s back. My little Jesse Owens.”
“Mi fa cagare! Read your history!” Mi fa cagare: statement of disgust. Translation: It makes me poop.
After her run, Annabelle takes a long nap, and then they find a brewpub, or she eats an enormous pasta dish that he’s fixed. She checks in with Malcolm and Zach and Olivia about the plans for the next day. She calls her mother. Gina, seeing that she hasn’t died yet, has cut down her daily calls from ten or twelve a day to two or three. This may also be due to the anxiety medication she’s now on, according to Malcolm. For a few weeks after Annabelle left, he said, Gina kept waking him up to see if he was breathing. Their house was filled with those protective saint candles you get at the grocery store for a few bucks. Gina made the two of them say lengthy safety-prayers before dinner. Malcolm finally told her that if she didn’t get help, he would go and live with That Bastard Father Anthony at the rectory of Saint Therese’s. Have a good run tomorrow, and enjoy the scenery, Gina says. If Annabelle didn’t also hear Gina trying very hard to breathe deeply, she’d have thought her real mother had been abducted.
Grandpa Ed has been in a fabulous mood, too, since they’ve crossed the border. After the raccoon turd, there’s been no more whittling; instead, he’s been spending lots of time on a laptop he bought at Best Buy on a trip into Coeur d’Alene. Man, he loves that thing. He’s on it all the time. He loves it so much, he always seems in good spirits lately. It’s the magic of technology, Annabelle thinks.
“All right. Look what we got to look forward to. Roundup, Montana,” he reads to her after dinner. “Site of the Great Centennial Cattle Drive of 1989.”
“1989? Wow. Historic.”
“Celebrating Montana turning a hundred, okay? Don’t be a smarty-pants. Almost three thousand cattle ran through the town. Two hundred covered wagons. Che figata! Thirty-three hundred horses over six days.”
“Sounds like Panama City Beach during spring break.”
“Twenty-four hundred cowboys and cowgirls.”
“Yee-haw. Imagine them in bikinis after a few Jell-O shots.”
The only serious downer through Idaho: her team. The Facebook page has hit a plateau of 540 followers, and the GoFundMe donations have stalled. There’s an emergency Skype meeting that night, after Grandpa Ed leaves to “get a little fresh air.” He does this every evening now, and he comes back rosy-cheeked and pleased with himself, whistling some old-guy tune. At first, Annabelle thought he was hitting the tavern, but tonight, they’re in Black Bear, Idaho, on Yellow Dog Road and there’s not a brewpub in sight. In fact, there is nothing in sight except for the forested darkness of Shoshone County.
“Nice hair,” she says to Zach Oh, when she sees him on her phone. “Desert dune during a windstorm.”
“Hey, I didn’t say anything about yours.”
“I gave him some gel,” Olivia says. “It gives him some lift.”
“Next, she’s going say you chew too loud and tell you not to go out with certain friends,” Malcolm says.
“He doesn’t have any friends,” Annabelle says, and she and Olivia crack up.
“I’m glad some people are in a good mood,” Zach says. “Because I am not in a good mood, okay? The last commenter on the Facebook page was selling weight-loss powder, and the one before that was a middle-aged predator dude with chest hair.”
“We need new content,” Malcolm says.
“It’s true. We need new content,” Olivia says.
“Minus expenses, the GoFundMe’s at eleven hundred bucks, give or take. Eleven hundred bucks will barely get you to North Dakota, with gas, food, and the new shoes you’re going to need at the rate you’re going through them. This is a crisis, gang.” Zach looks like the young CEO of the startup. His new, hip hair says I got this, but his fretful face gives away the fact that the whole deal is crashing and burning.
“You’ve got to start posting stuff, Annabelle,” Malcolm says. He’s holding his phone so they can see up his nose.
“Malcolm, gross.”
“Your followers want to be part of your trip,” Olivia says.
“Everyone else on USA Crossers has a blog. They show where they are on their route. They take photos,” Malcolm’s nose holes say.
USA Crossers is the site dedicated to everyone who has run across the USA. Only about three hundred people have done it so far, ever since the first lunatic tried it in 1909. This was Edward Payson Weston, who walked from New York to San Francisco in a hundred days. More and more people are making the trip, though. Ten to twenty are doing it right now with her, including another teen, Elena Callas, who’s raising money for ALS, an illness her father has. Also crossing right now: a Desert Storm vet running for immigrant rights and a college student raising funds for National Parks preservation.
“I don’t get why you won’t just let us send out a press release,” Olivia says. “Did you even read the one I wrote?”
“I’ve been busy.”
Olivia exhales in frustration. Olivia always paces when she’s on the phone, so in Olivia’s Skype corner, Annabelle gets a whizzing tour of Olivia’s room. A paper lamp shoots by, and then a poster of Amelia Earhart standing by her plane. “The media would pick this up in two seconds!”
“No.”
“Why? Come on, Annabelle,” Zach says.
“No! That’s like me asking for something. That’s me drawing attention to myself.”
“Exactly!” Olivia says.
“If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.”
“She’s okay if it happens accidentally, but not if she goes out and looks for it directly,” Malcolm’s nose holes say.
“Elena Callas has twelve thousand followers, and she got a parade in Denver,” Zach Oh says. “Because people know.”
“I’m not in a competition with Elena Callas. I just want to make it all the way.”
“You’re not going to make it to South Dakota if we don’t get the word out and get more money,” Zach says.
“College fund, I keep telling you.”
“College fund is for college.” Malcolm has disappeared. His voice is firm, but it sounds far away, and all she can see is an image of his bed.
“I don’t even know if I’m going.”
“You’re going,” Zach says. “End of story. And you need to speak. You can’t waste this opportunity. You’re going to fucking say things that need to be said.” Zach never says fucking. His mom would have a stroke if she heard him. Annabelle almost laughs, but he’s clearly upset. He’s upset because the tragedy has also affected him, of course. Olivia, too.
“At least contribute to the Facebook page,” Olivia says. “Elena puts up photos of all the people she meets along the route. Buddy shots, arms around each other. Feel-good stuff. Like when a store plays lively music or a restaurant shoots out smells of garlic.”
“You’re going to be great when you get your MBA,” she tells Olivia.
“We need to release the video,” Malcolm says, as if he and Zach and Olivia are kidnappers with a hostage. “It’s our secret weapon.”
“What video?” Now Annabelle’s worried. “This isn’t some terrible montage of baby movies and news footage, is it? Come on, guys. I’m not exactly Elena with a sick father.”
“Annabelle. This is no time to be silent. I mean, we need this. The world is a fucking disaster right now, and this is one thing we can do something about. I know you understand this! I get why it’s hard, but come on.” Two fuckings in one day. Zach is losing it. Zach Oh has a 4.0 grade point average, and you can see how he got it. He’s a surprisingly passionate guy. Then again, after the tragedy, he had nightmares so bad, his mom slept in a chair in his room.
“My mission is personal.”
“Annabelle?” Olivia says gently. “This is about you. But also . . . me. All of us. And . . . my little sisters. Every woman. Every person, but especially—every female person.”
“It can be personal and global,” Bit the dog now says. At least, it’s Bit’s big face and crazy teeth that she sees on-screen now. Malcolm is holding him up and trying to make his mouth move like he’s talking.
“Bit!” she cries. “I miss you, baby!”
“Stealing Kleenex and eating underwear is not as much fun without you,” Malcolm says in a Bit voice. Bit is squirming like a caught trout.
“I’ll put it up tomorrow,” Zach says, but no one is paying attention anymore.
“And the eating of your own poop, Bit, how is that going?” Annabelle is acting like her old self for a minute. This is how she used to be. Having made-up conversations with her brother and her dog.
“It is going deliciously. And I am scooting my butt along the rug like a champ.”
“Way to go, bud,” Annabelle says.
This is also how she used to be. Taking the sun and fun wherever she could get it. Ignoring warnings. Letting stuff pass. Completely overlooking the critical words.
Like video. Like secret weapon.