A Sense of the Infinite

I must have looked like I was crying or something. An old woman bundled up in a bright pink snowsuit moved herself across the aisle to sit beside me.

“Where are you headed, honey?”

I grappled with the earbuds, collected myself, and smiled at her. “Maple Bay.”

“Is that home?”

I shook my head. “I’m supposed to go on a tour of Northern University.”

“You look too young to be going to university.”

“I’m seventeen.”

“Where’s home for you?”

I named my town.

“Oh, I love it there. The Botanical Gardens.”

The old lady had violet eye shadow and violet nail polish to match. I imagined her house. It would have an upright piano and a basket full of magazines and a mischievous poodle that barked at the mailman.

“You’ve been to the Gardens?” I said. “I work at the ice-cream shop in the summer.”

“You do?” she said. “How lovely.”

The bus rolled over a pothole. I felt my throat rise, and made a grab for the paper barf bag in the seat pocket. The old lady patted my shoulder sympathetically.

“Was that you throwing up in the bathroom?” she said.

I cringed. “Sorry,” I said. “I know it’s gross.”

“Would you like a ginger pill? I get sick on buses too.”

She dug a small bottle out of her purse and held it out to me. I shook my head. “It won’t help.”

“It’s good for all kinds of motion sickness.”

“It’s not that kind of sickness,” I said. “It’ll be over soon.”

I don’t know why I said it like that, so obvious. I guess I was hoping the old lady would turn out to be a magic spirit friend who would give me wise advice and send me off with a talisman, an eagle feather or a mantra to repeat in my darkest hour. Everyone deserves a second chance, honey cakes. Be strong.

Rumble rumble rumble, went the bus. The old lady dug in her purse again and pulled out a religious tract. In a high, quavering voice she began to read out loud.

“Lord, drive out the forces of Satan—”

I popped up from my seat, grabbed my backpack, and fled to the back of the bus.

“Was that old lady reading Scripture at you?” said the heavily mascaraed twentysomething girl I wedged myself next to. She was wearing a ripped black T-shirt and had a backpack shaped like a teddy bear.

I nodded.

She popped her gum. “Crazy bitch.”

52

THERE WERE TREES OUTSIDE THE WINDOW now. I wondered when that had happened. They were standing thick and dense on either side of the road. The bus began to climb a hill, and suddenly the trees dropped away to reveal a view of low mountains with forests stretching as far as I could see. My breath stopped, and I craned my neck to see better, as if I could get closer to that view, climb into it and have it belong to me.

So this is what Mom was talking about, I thought. This is what she wanted me to feel. A tug of belonging. A sense of the infinite.

I put my head against the window and sobbed.

53

WHEN THE BUS GOT INTO MAPLE Bay, Ava was waiting for me at the station. She was wearing a green velvet coat and an orange knitted cap. Her hair was dyed blue and her eyes were their regular color. When I walked up to her with my bag, she pulled me into a hug whose ferocity surprised me.

“Your mom is going to kill me,” she said.

54

AVA’S DORM WAS ACTUALLY AN OLD brick house on the west side of campus. It had six bedrooms, a kitchen, and a wood-paneled study room like the library in Clue. The kitchen had a bookshelf built into the wall. I looked at the books while Ava made tea. The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Waiting for Godot, 50 Short Plays, The Actor Prepares. I watched the self-assured way Ava moved around the kitchen, pawing through the cupboard for clean mugs and retrieving a crusty jar of honey from some hiding place under the counter.

“Besides certain dickheads in Alaska,” said Ava, “how’s life?”

“Fine,” I said. “Mom’s good. Nan’s good. I’m on the gymnastics team.”

Even though Ava had reformed, I still felt shy around her. The fact that she was a Good Witch now instead of a Bad Witch hardly mattered; any way you sliced it, change was still uncomfortable.

“Where’s your friend?” said Ava. “When I saw you in the summer, your mom said you guys were pla

“She’s touring Gailer College.”

Ava made an I knew it face. “She seemed like the Gailer type.”

I’d forgotten that Ava had met Noe briefly, at my house. “I’m applying there too,” I said stoutly, as if to defend Noe from whatever the Gailer type implied. “Everybody is. The only reason I even came up here was because Mom made me.”

It was weird to see Ava so bright and capable. Uncle Dylan was right. She’d really come into her own at Northern. The darkness that had been suffocating her before had dissipated, like a plant that only seemed to be dying until you shook out its roots and planted it in a deeper hole. Ava didn’t come back to our town much anymore, even for Christmases and Thanksgivings. The avoidance was definitely intentional. Some people fought tooth and nail to keep their old life alive when they went away, but as far as I knew Ava never talked to her high school friends, never came home on college breaks to work her old summer job and go to parties with people she’d known since she was a kid.

I couldn’t tell if it was better to be a person who held on or a person who let go. Maybe it was less about better and worse, and more about which thing you needed to do in order for your plant to grow.

Ava handed me a chipped mug that was shaped like a mushroom. It had some green flecks inside it that must be the tea. Before that, I’d only ever had Lipton tea in bags with a string and a tag. When I sipped the mushroom mug, the green flecks stuck to my teeth.

“I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t gotten out of there,” Ava said. “Probably killed myself.”

“Why?”

“Sit by the railroad tracks one day and think about it,” Ava said.

I had spent plenty of days by the railroad tracks.

I didn’t know what she was talking about.

The grass there is bleached to pale white straw, and crickets jump past your legs like popcorn kernels zinging off a hot pan. When the trains come by they huff and chug and clang your brain to noisy oblivion. Afterward you can follow the tracks to a dusty grove where kids make jumps for their dirt bikes and hobos leave behind nests of broken glass.

“Mom and Nan and Uncle Dylan seem to like it okay,” I said.

“They all left and went back. That’s different. Your mom really wants you to come here,” said Ava. “And you’re Nature Girl. Come on. There’re a million acres of national park fifteen minutes away.”

Are you a Noe? she seemed to be saying, or an Ava? Are you going to hold on to what you already have, or start from scratch?

I gazed into my mug. The green flecks were swirling around in the tea like the snow inside a snow globe.

“I just don’t know yet,” I said, and set it down.

55

I WAS HOPING AVA AND I would go to bed right away so we wouldn’t have to talk anymore, but Ava’s roommates started bubbling in and soon it was impossible to escape.

Ava’s roommates were different from anyone I knew from back home. I couldn’t keep their names straight. Girls in thick glasses and tight sweaters and dresses rescued from the costume department thrift sale, they made tea and sat on the counter and picked at the runs in their stockings.