front of me. “Are you sick?” she asked. “Why are you all the way over here?”
I got in the car feeling stiff. “I’m sad,” I told her, hoping if I said it out loud I might be able to cry and feel human again, but I was dry on the inside.
“About San Diego?” she asked, and her words made no sense. “It’s just for a while until I figure out how to deal with your father legally,” said my mother. “I want you to tell me everything he says and does—anything that could help us.”
I stared out the window, and her words buzzed and hit the glass like flies. All my mind would do was one simple equation—if Billy didn’t want me and the boy I thought I’d met and forgotten was something I made up in a dream, then true love wasn’t real.
My mother was talking, the car was rolling, I was still breathing. But I was one of those people who’s pulled out of the snow and only feels the pain when they’re heated back up. If I didn’t want a broken heart, I just needed to stay numb. People caught in blizzards felt happy while they froze to death. Drowning people, too, say they feel peaceful when they give in.
I held my breath for a few seconds, to see if there was any pleasure in it. When I started to see flecks of mirror in my vision, I let out the breath in a sigh.
“Are you listening to me?” my mother asked.
“You and Daddy were right,” I said.
“What?” My mother may not have liked being teamed with him in that sentence, but she didn’t argue the point.
“I’ll do whatever you say,” I told her. “What should I do?”
My mother seemed so sure of the answer. “Pack, go with him, and don’t rock the boat.”
That was the opposite of going overboard, I thought. Not rocking the boat. Not making waves.
My mother had already set out things for me to take to San Diego, piles on the foot of my bed and on my desktop. Two large empty suitcases waited. I heard her in the office on the phone. I stared at the stacks of clothes, the white Bible I’d had since I was eight wrapped in a slip to keep it safe, toiletries in zippered plastic bags. Even desk supplies in a gallon bag. She’d left the bedding and the picture of the praying hands on the wall, but everything else was stacked up and waiting.
I took the larger of the two suitcases out into the hall, empty. I went and got a big black trash bag from the kitchen and shook it open. Back in my room I started with the clothes. I didn’t need much. I put two pairs of pants and two shirts, a white sweater, and two plain Sunday school dresses into the bottom of the other suitcase. One nightgown, underwear, and the bag of toiletries.
The rest went into the trash bag. Scarves knitted by my aunt, a snow hat I’d worn in fifth grade, my flannel pajamas with kittens on them, my jewelry box with its worthless treasure, my ballet box, toe shoes and all. My childhood was swallowed whole. Even the contents of my bottom dresser drawer, where a false bottom had kept my pictures and Polaroid camera safe. The black-and-white photographs blurred as they fell away. And all my colors bled together as I tossed the rest of my old life out—red sweater, yellow dress, blue skirt—into the black bag.
CHAPTER 26
Jenny
THE CAINE HOUSE USED TO FASCINATE ME when I was little. Mrs. Caine collected figurines of angels, some of them salt and pepper shakers, some fragile blown glass; some of them were bells or made from sand dollars or walnut shells. They were shelved in deep racks with glass fronts so they were always in the dark. Now as I walked past the cabinet the angels seems like prisoners. I wanted to open the glass fronts and let them fly away.
My mother said the women’s group was going to hold a special prayer meeting for me. I guess because my father was picking me up that afternoon to take me to California. I agreed. My plan was to be completely cooperative. I was floating on a river of calm, a leaf on the current. It would be easy to go to church and be homeschooled and use a camera only to take pictures at birthday parties and Christmas. I might learn