A Sense of the Infinite

Ava and I drove back to campus and she left me in the student union building to wait for my tour guide. I sat on a purple couch and took out How to Survive in the Woods. A few minutes later, a boy in a bright blue shirt with NORTHERN UNIVERSITY on the front asked if I was A

“I love that book,” he said, tapping the cover. “They sell it in the bookstore here. Did you know Wilda McClure’s from Maple Bay?”

The boy’s name was Loren, and he was in his first year, studying forestry.

“We can swing by her old house after the tour, if you want. It’s a museum now. It’s kind of cool.”

First, we went to the Arts building and the Science building and the Engineering building and the Music building, and through the freshman dorms. Some people had their doors open. I peeked into the rooms as we walked down the hall, making a mental note to tell Noe that they already came with mini-fridges before I remembered that she wasn’t applying. Loren told me about the dragon boat race that happened every April, and the community farm where students could grow their own vegetables and learn to milk a cow.

The Wilda McClure house had an exhibit on the ground floor with all her old camping stuff. Wilda McClure’s tent. Wilda McClure’s backpack. The binoculars and notebook with which Wilda McClure tracked the comings and goings of wolves. Loren caught me staring at the glass display case with the canoe and smooth wooden paddles in which Wilda McClure had explored over two hundred lakes.

“My mom would love this,” I said. “It’s actually her book.”

“Want me to take a picture of you with the canoe?”

“Nah.”

“Come on. You’ve got to have something to show the parents.”

Loren gri

I stood beside the canoe with my arms at my sides.

“Smile,” Loren said.

While he was taking the picture, the museum attendant came out from behind her booth. “Now one of you together,” she said.

It was weird to explain that we were complete strangers, so Loren gave her the phone and I moved over so he could stand beside me.

“Say cheese,” said the museum attendant.

“Cheese,” Loren and I said.

I texted the first picture to Mom while we were walking back to the student union building.

oh my god, is that the wilda mcclure house? she texted back.

It made my heart break a little to know that Mom was so excited for me.

campus tour was awesome, I typed. going to lunch with ava, then theater lecture.

amazing! Mom wrote. have fun.

58

THAT NIGHT WAS AVA’S ROOMMATE’S birthday. We all ate cake and drank something called Moscow Mules in the warm, messy kitchen, then bundled up in our hats and coats and mittens and dragged some big pieces of cardboard to a place called Half Moon Mountain, which was really more of a steep, snowy hill at the far edge of campus that looked down over the forest and town. You could slide down on the cardboard like a toboggan, with the twinkly lights of town rushing at you and the dark, jagged trees whispering past on either side, then tromp back up the hill on stairs someone had cut into the snow.

I slid again and again, sometimes sitting on the cardboard, sometimes Superman-style with my stomach bumping over the snow, sometimes in a long chain with Ava and Ava’s roommates. The sound was all muffled out there. Like if you brushed away the tiny sprinkling of voices and laughter, you could hear the sound of the earth itself. The more I climbed and slid and screamed, the louder the earth seemed to speak, until I could feel its voice all around me.

Loren had said there was an outdoor program at Northern that was founded in honor of Wilda. You spent half the year “in the field,” tracking wolves and taking tests of river water and learning about forest fires. Maybe I could do that. Maybe I could be another Wilda. As I hurtled down the hill on my sled, it didn’t seem unthinkable anymore.

On the way back to the dorm, Ava borrowed my phone to tell another one of her friends where we were. “Who’s the cutie?” she said, clicking the camera app shut to make the call.

“He’s just the campus tour guy. The museum lady wanted to take a picture.”

“Did you get his number?”

I blushed. “Ava. I’m not exactly looking.”

She put an arm around my shoulder. “Oh, don’t pull the fallen woman thing on me. That’s such horseshit. You think guys feel the need to punish themselves for the heinous crime of having a body?”

“I need some time for myself.”

“That’s different. Need some time, okay. Nobody can ever love me after this, not okay. I can’t love myself after this, not okay. Would you feel bad for meeting a cute boy if Oliver was the one having the appointment?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

She bopped me on the shoulder. “Think about it.”

Ava was big on think about it these days.

We came to the dorm and went inside. While Ava was taking a shower, I took her laptop to the common room and curled up with it on a couch. Noe had uploaded a million pictures of the River Rats game and the tiki party, with Noe, Lindsay, Rhia

Ava appeared in the common room doorway wearing one of Nan’s old bathrobes, her damp hair giving off a scent of cedar. “Ready for bed?” she said.

“I’ll be up in a minute,” I said.

But while I was looking at the last of Noe’s photos, my mind kept darting to the procedure I was going to have the next morning. What if it hurt? What if something went wrong? I started loading the websites I’d looked at on the day I took the pregnancy test, the ones that explained what was going to happen during the abortion. From there, I started reading stories that other girls had posted, sca

I shut the laptop. My ears were ringing and my eyes were dry. Climbing the stairs, I could feel the quiet of the house, unbroken by so much as a birdcall. Four more hours, I thought, and my heart began to beat so hard I had to pause and lean against the wall.

In Ava’s room, I set the laptop on the desk and crept over to her bed. After a moment’s hesitation, I shook her shoulder gently.

“Ava?” I said. “I’m scared.”

She let out a sleepy murmur and lifted her blanket. I slipped in beside her and she pulled me close. Within a few minutes, pale dawn light was creeping into the room. I had just started to drift off when the first birds of morning began to sing.