When the good people of the Silver Springs Golf Club in Ossian, Iowa, hear that Annabelle Agnelli, the girl who’s crossing the USA after that awful tragedy in Seattle, is running right through their town, they have a big dinner for her at Bambino’s restaurant. Bambino’s is where many of the town’s big events, both somber and celebratory, are marked. Tonight, parking the RV won’t be a problem. They can park anywhere in town they please. The golf club, the post office, Bambino’s lot, the Ossian City Park, wherever.
As soon as Grandpa Ed hears the word Bambino’s, he starts rubbing his hands together, expecting cannelloni and handmade pasta, ravioli; cannoli for dessert. He has his dress shirt on, the black one with blue stripes, and his fancy trousers. Little curvy lines of Acqua di Parma are coming off of him like heat waves in a desert.
Annabelle is nervous, but she is trying to do what Dr. Mann suggested after their now-weekly phone session—to listen to what people are saying and not what she fears they are saying. To be aware of other feelings inside besides guilt. And look, there is a sign out front, which someone made with poster board and fat markers: WELCOME, ANNABELLE! OSSIAN LOVES YOU! There is a group of blue balloons, huddled together like nervous middle schoolers. What the people of Ossian are saying is that they care, they care about her, not what she is guilty of, and she exhales. She exhales, and what she feels is . . . a little pleased.
Bambino’s is in a brick building right next to the fire department. The parking spaces in front of the place are all taken, but there’s a spot saved with orange construction cones and blue crepe paper. Lit Budweiser signs are in the window, and inside, there’s a pool table with a huge stained-glass Budweiser lamp hanging above. The far wall is decorated with enormous cutouts of football players. Grandpa Ed grunts his disappointment—there are no red-and-white checkered tablecloths, no smells of garlic and butter, no juice glasses of Chianti. But the owner, a warm blond woman with a big smile, comes to greet them, and the room is full of people—firefighters from next door, a thin boy from the Ossian Bee, the president of Luana Savings Bank, and the staff of Casey’s General Store, Becker Hardware, and Creative Corner Salon. Everyone is so nice. They pat Annabelle on the back, and ask her questions that she doesn’t mind answering, and they tell her that God is good. Grandpa Ed repeats his favorite joke, that he’ll be the one running across the country next year.
The food arrives, and it is not pasta and veal pounded thin, but creamed chicken over biscuits, and hamburger steak and gravy with peas and rolls and mashed potatoes. This isn’t Seattle food, and she realizes again how food and so many other things are different all around the country. One of the men from the Silver Springs Golf Club makes a toast, and there’s the sound of clinking beer bottles. Annabelle drinks a Pepsi in a plastic cup. Her cheeks are warm from food and good feeling.
After the meal, there’s the hush of a surprise, and then someone turns out the lights, and the owner of Bambino’s, Sue, appears in the doorway with a cake. On it, there are lit candles, like it’s Annabelle’s birthday. The good people of Ossian start to sing. Happy graduation to you!
“We heard you’re missing yours at home today,” Sue says. The cake has a mortarboard on it in blue icing. Now she understands why there’s blue everywhere. Annabelle chokes up. On the phone this morning, she told her mom and Malcolm that she didn’t want to think about her graduation, that she wanted this to be like any other day, but now she’s overcome.
“This is so nice. I don’t know what to say.”
Sue saves her. “Blow out the candles, sweetie, make a wish, before we eat wax cake.”
Annabelle does. Her wish—well, it’s private, but it involves peace and love for everyone in those graduation seats at home, and for everyone not in those seats.
She can’t believe all these people and what they’ve done for her. Annabelle’s heart actually aches. And then one of the women from the Silver Springs Golf Club approaches. She has closely cropped brown hair, with little tendril curls framing her face. She’s wearing jeans and a serious brown cardigan with a white shirt underneath, the tips of the collar fanned out like crisp paper airplanes heading opposite directions.
She grips Annabelle’s hands, and stares hard into Annabelle’s eyes. “I just wanted to say . . . I’ve thought about you every day since I heard about you. My daughter dated a boy like that in college, and if she didn’t end up changing schools, who knows what might have happened. Pardon my French, but . . . that fucker.”
• • •
It happens again when she arrives in the village of Warren, Illinois. This is two and a half days after they watched the Casino Joe’s fireworks show on the bank of the Mississipi River in Dubuque, Iowa. Warren, Illinois, was a stagecoach stop in 1851, according to Grandpa Ed’s tireless Google research. The library—where Annabelle eats sandwiches from Hixter’s Bar and Grill with six members of the Warren Township High School track and field team and the Warren Township librarians—sits across from the railroad track. It’s right near the water tower, which is emblazoned with the word WARREN.
The students ask her questions about her mileage per day, and if she’s gotten any injuries, and if she misses her parents and friends, being gone that long. A young girl gives her a gift, her own lucky coin, which the girl has carried in her shoe every time she’s won a race. But afterward, one of the Warren Township librarians, Angie Canfield (descendant of Angela Rose Canfield, first female mayor of Illinois, she told Annabelle), approaches. She’s a small, serious woman with carefully bobbed hair and pressed slacks and a pendant necklace you see on church ladies, but she grips Annabelle’s hands and looks her dead straight in the eyes.
“I know what’s coming,” she says. “The trial. That boy. I don’t normally use words like this, but . . . that fucker. Don’t you let him get to you.”
• • •
What are the people saying? They care about her. And—they’re angry. What is Annabelle feeling, besides guilt? Something new. Because their anger lifts a rock inside of her. Underneath, it is dark and gross and slimy. But she sees it. She feels it—that worm of fury. It’s large and it’s creepy, and it almost looks capable of devouring her, so no wonder she didn’t want to lock eyes with it before. But there it is, wriggling for its freedom.
Only they should be allowed to be angry, she’d previously thought. They, the ones who weren’t to blame and who suffered the most. They got to be angry at The Taker and at her. But now she can’t help it. The golf lady and the librarian and the commenters in the USA Today article—the rock lifts, and the worm wriggles out, and the fury stirs.
People plus people plus anger is how things can change.