THE SUMMER BEFORE I started sixth grade, Mom and Pop moved us into a two-bedroom townhouse close to downtown Asheville.
It was closer to the hospital for Mom than our cabin in Mills River, and since Pop was gone so often with the band, he agreed to anything that made life easier for her. They didn’t ask me my opinion about the move. I had to change schools—which was completely traumatic at the time. After a failed runaway attempt—that time when I rode my bike across the highway—I decided I’d confine myself to the back porch and stay mad at them until I could move out. Seemed like a completely reasonable plan at the time.
One day, a Frisbee sailed over the fence into our small yard. Two girls showed up at the gate moments later to retrieve it. Instead of thanking me for handing it for them, the one with darkest hair openly studied me.
“Are you the new neighbor?”
I nodded.
“Come over and play.” It wasn’t a question. She just opened the gate for me, and I went.
Lexie and Maddie and me were like that from then on. There was never a question.
As I scroll social media, looking at all the pictures Lexie uploaded to Instagram, emptiness crawls into all my corners.
There are hiking selfies from the parkway of Maddie and Lexie and Patrick and Mama. Then there’s another of all of them, plus Dylan, minus Mama, in front of the French Broad River Rafting Center. Still more with Lexie and Maddie and Patrick at the ice cream shop, wet-haired and all smiles after their rafting trip. Patrick fits in like he belongs. Maybe it’s just like that with Lexie and Maddie, no matter who you are. It’s impossible not to love them both.
I can’t shake the feeling that I’m letting them both down now. By being so far away, by keeping their respective secrets, by not yelling at them both to focus on something besides whatever guy they’re fighting over this time.
A quick knock on the door rouses me from my pity party. I sit up and smooth my hair behind my ear, and Henry steps through the cracked doorway. My nerves ricochet.
“Hey, I’m heading out,” he says, eyes darting around, “but in case I don’t see you before you leave for Liverpool, I thought maybe you’d like to borrow this.” He drops a spiral-bound book on Patrick’s desk. I pick it up to get a better look. The front cover is a glossy map of England. It’s like one of the fancy travel guides you get in visitor centers.
“An atlas?” I turn it over in my hands. It’s a little heavier than I expected.
“Sort of,” he says, running a hand through his hair and leaving it sticking up in ten different directions, which definitely doesn’t do things to me. “It’s an atlas, yes, but of ley lines. Throughout Britain.”
I flip it open. There are large scale maps, and behind those, smaller breakdowns of each area covered. There are additional annotated notes on every page in compact, precise handwriting, and marker-drawn lines plotted between points like a graph.
“Wow,” I say, gently turning the worn pages. “Thank you.”
“No problem.”
We stand there for a moment, not talking. At least not out loud. There are indecipherable conversations going on between our eyes.
Henry grabs the doorknob and takes a few steps backwards.
“All right, then. See you later.”
“See ya,” I mumble, and look back down at the atlas. Henry is the only person in the world who knows the real reason I’m going to Liverpool.
And instead of trying to talk me out of it, he’s trying to help me.
: : : : :
Seagulls squawk overhead, and I take a deep breath and inhale the salty breeze.
The rain is inevitable, certain, looming at any moment, but I move forward—away from any possible shelter. My footfalls thud gently over sodden boards. Between the cracks, thirty feet below, the sea is a dark, choppy mirror of the sky. Other people pass me on the pier, but I don’t see their faces. I only see one man, to my left, near the iron railing. He’s old and hunched over, gray hair sparse in the front and long in the back, and his brown trench coat is tattered at the edges. He stoops down and unbuckles a music case, then pulls out a violin. I stop to watch him, glancing up at the sky, anticipating the drops I know are coming.
He pulls a bow over the strings. The melody is familiar. Cheerful.
Here Comes the Sun.
It’s such an antithesis of the sky that I laugh. I hear my own laughter, the way it stirs the air far away. It doesn’t feel real. I’m light as helium, floating, a balloon on a string. Somewhere behind me, a muffled voice says, “Ta-da!”
I laugh again, and the string that tethers me snips. It sounds like a text message coming through—a familiar click.
That’s what wakes me up.
