0kay. This will be hard to describe, but here goes. It was hot and I was glad to be home. It was a busy day at the marina. The job is good and most of the time it’s pretty laid back, but not on holidays. It’s helping me to understand Brad because people who own yachts have to have at least some money. Like everyone else, some of them are nice and some are complete jerks. Anyway, even though the banks and the post office were open, it was the Fourth of July weekend, although the actual holiday is Tuesday. At work I collected moorage fees from the boats on the transient floats, made my usual Monday run to the bank and picked up the mail at the post office. The town was plugged with tourists, so it was hard to park. Oh yeah, I forgot to say that I got my driver’s license because I need it to drive the little pickup on errands for the port.
As usual around the Fourth of July, even though there are only a few stands in the village, the rez sounds like a war zone, with fireworks going off everywhere. Most of the stands are at Boom City out on the highway, and nearly every Native family has some connection to a stand. Everyone has fireworks and none of it is safe and sane. I had skipped lunch and was eating soda crackers with this tuna mix on them (lemon juice, mayo and chopped olives) that Trish had left in the fridge, and was planning to take a shower. Everything felt normal. I mean, I didn’t have any unsettled feeling or weird premonition like you might expect just before your reality gets flipped on its head.
There was a knock at the door. This house had a doorbell once, but it hasn’t worked for years. I thought it was a neighbor kid or something. I really wasn’t thinking much. Trish wasn’t home, and I was a little annoyed at the interruption. I wanted to take my shower and call Brad. He had to work that day too, but had the Fourth off. I didn’t because it’s so busy at the marina, but I would get double time for working the holiday. My mouth was still full of cracker and tuna when I opened the door.
It all happened in an instant. The shock was far worse than the night she left. There was no time to speculate and adjust, to imagine and let it settle. I mean there she was, looking at me. M-80’s and rockets exploded in the background, adding noise to our confusion because I don’t look like myself and she looked more like me than I do. It took me a moment, and I could easily have choked on the cracker. Instead, I reached up and touched her face with the back of my hand and felt that it was real and warm. I don’t remember chewing and swallowing what was in my mouth, but I must have done it because I didn’t spit it out, and I was able to say, “You’re not dead?”
I really wasn’t sure that what I was seeing was real.
“Natalie?”
“Oh Jesus. Kristen. It really is you.”
And it was. That’s when I learned what people mean when they say they were so surprised they nearly peed their pants. I didn’t do it, but now I understand how you can get thrown so off balance, you can lose control. What I did was hug her. And while I was doing it, I cried, really hard, and so did she. We were in the doorway with the door open, crying away. I pulled her into the living room and pushed the door closed.
Finally I blubbered out, “We thought you were dead, but you’re really here.”
“The letter. Didn’t you get the letter?” she said
“What letter?”
“Oh shit. Oh Jesus. Everyone thinks I’m dead? This is really bad.”
“They think Corey killed you.”
“You were supposed to think I was in Hawaii. I gave this lady a letter to send from there, so that’s where they’d look. Oh Jesus, Natalie, I’m sorry. What happened to Corey?”
So I told her everything, about Corey being held in Juvie and how he was out now. Kristen was really upset and wanted to call him right away. I thought she was going to fall apart, like clinically, where we would need to call for real help, but there is definitely something different about her now. She surprised me by pulling herself together so fast. She was strong. I was able to talk her into waiting. As much as I hate Corey, what happened to him is really bad and can’t be fixed in an instant with a phone call.
So she settled down, and I was able to tell her about meeting Brad the night she left, and how they searched the drainage ditch beside the lane down by Arlington where he told me about his day. And I told her about me and Brad’s mom. Then she told me about changing her look and dressing up like me and getting from the mall to the ferry and working as a waitress, and about meeting that creep and him stalking her and her being brave.
When Brad called, I had to tell him that Kristen was back, but I said her parents didn’t even know yet so he couldn’t tell a soul, and he was cool about it. Then Trish came home, and when she got over being stunned, we told her a short version of Kristen’s story, and she said it was like we were trying to trade lives, which made us laugh. We needed a reason to laugh, because getting Kristen (or Amy. She showed me the birth certificate) through the next part of coming back to life in the Valley was going to be stressful at best.
Trish told her she should think each step through and not do anything that would cause more damage. She knew how much of a shock Kristen’s not being dead was to me, and how much adjustment it took even with her sitting in the same room with us where we could actually touch her. We thought it might be better to wait and go see Corey when she could talk to him face to face, or maybe she should just write him. Sometimes emotions can be worked out better on paper. Writing it out can give both people a chance to think more clearly.
I didn’t envy Kristen a bit when it came to facing her mom and Sterling. She met it head on. I saw it in her eyes. I watched her find that calm you get when you know you’re against the wall and there’s nowhere to go. I’ve been there a few times, and I had to feel some pride for her, going from having all that stuff, the car, the nice house, a free ride to college, to knowing enough about running on empty to keep her head.
“I can’t undo it,” she said. “So now I have to try and make the best of it. Fix as much as I can. I’ll tell Bonnie tonight, and then I’ll have to tell the cops. This isn’t going to be fun, but all I can do is tell the truth and find a way to make the best of it.”
She was right. She was sounding like me, and I didn’t envy her situation. I was used to being the strong one. Maybe I was a little hurt, too, to learn that there was a part of her buried so deep inside her that even her best friend, me, didn’t know it was there, and that she could do something so huge without trusting me enough to say a word.
When someone you thought was dead comes back to life, at first you’re glad they’re alive, and then you have to forgive them. But the forgiveness might not last when you find out that all of that pain and grief you suffered, thinking they were dead, was because they simply decided to run away. I believed Kristen about the letter from Hawaii. She believed she had let us know she wasn’t dead, and she sent the letter to me and not to her parents, but since it never came, the pain for all of us was as real as it would have been if she had actually been murdered or killed, even if she hadn’t intended to make us suffer.
Believing she was dead had really hurt me, and it must have hurt her mom even more. When I remember the pain of imagining her being raped and murdered, helpless and suffering, and acknowledge how ashamed I feel now for blaming Corey, I won’t pretend I’m not angry. But the combination of that pain and the happiness I feel that she is alive will sort itself out. I will forgive her, even though I don’t completely understand why she did it. I know she learned something important, and when she came back, she came here first. I know it will eventually make sense.
I told her that I have my license now and I offered her a ride home in Trish’s Granada. She thanked me, but asked if she could have a little time alone in my room to collect herself first. I watched a Seinfeld rerun on TV with Trish until she was ready. It’s weird how life can seem totally normal, and in an instant everything is different. Then, before you know it, you’re back watching TV and it seems like nothing has changed, even though it has.
When she’s ready, we go out to the Granada. I drop her off up the street from her house. She thinks it will be easier if they don’t know right away that she went to my house first.