She kneels down and slides the old,
wooden crate out from under her bed, her short blond hair slipping from behind
her ear. The door creaks, and Ava gasps, shoving the crate out of sight. It was
just the wind. Sighing, she scratches her forefinger’s knuckle. Her parents don’t
get home until hours after the bus drops her off. Ava pulls her hair back in a
messy ponytail. She pulls the crate back out and carefully pulls off the scratched
lid. Dropping it carelessly on the floor behind her, Ava rummages through the
odds and ends she’s stolen over the past year, since Emma left. Ava examines the
crate’s contents, searching for the porcelain turtle. He needs some air- he
hasn’t been out in days.
He
reminds me of Emma, and sometimes even tells me about her. You know she had a
tuna fish sandwich yesterday?
Removing her father’s old
baseball from the crate, she rubs her thumb across its rough seams. On the back
is a name, scrolled in faded blue ink. Cal Ripken…probably some famous baseball
player. Ava had grabbed it from one of the boxes lying around the house a few
days before Dad left. It had been wrapped up and carefully labeled ‘valuable.’
She figured it was worth taking. Tossing the ball from palm to palm, she can
just make out Dad’s voice, calling to her above her teammates cries of
encouragement, “Focus, Ava. Stick with it!”
Why
didn’t he stick with me?
Ava drops the ball back in the
old crate and picks up a velvet box holding a heart-shaped medal, tracing George
Washington’s profile. When Pops was moving from his home to his new, bigger,
better home with other old people, Ava had snagged the Purple Heart medal off
the table. Pops had held it proudly before when he told his war stories (which
always involved near escapes from the enemy and ended with him secretly meeting
up with Gran, who was then a nurse). Ava isn’t allowed to visit him at Golden
Gables; she is too young, so she hasn’t seen Pops in more than a year. Ava
weighs the medal in her hand, the weight somehow reassuring.
Why
didn’t he wait to say goodbye?
Ava carefully places the medal
back in its box, snaps it shut, and places it in the crate. She puts on a pair
of gloves, Nathan’s gloves. The lively, beautiful boy had left them in his
cubby back in second grade, and Ava stuffed them in her pockets. It was the
first snow of the season, and the shrieking kids were let out for recess. The
heavy-falling snow and biting winds, however, quickly dampened their spirits.
Nathan, rosy-cheeked with snow-tipped lashes, began to cry. His hands were
bright red and his coat had no pockets and he wanted his gloves. Ava watched
from behind the playground’s slide. She hesitated. She shoved them deeper in
her pockets.
I
needed them more than he did.
The turtle is nowhere to be
found, not under Mr. Rulter’s watch or her mom’s old key ring. Ava rubs her
knuckle. Not next to her sister’s first necklace or the picture of Nana she
took from Pop’s dresser or the stuffed lizard Joe brought for the science fair
last week or the pearls Aunt Josie forgot on the kitchen table or the cards or
the notebook or the fork or the ballpoint pen or the paperweight. Ava scratches
her knuckle. She digs her fingers into her weak skin. She screams.
How
can I remember without anything? What if I forget?
The covers are off her bed, her
bottom drawer lying empty in the doorway of her once-organized closet. She sits
in the mountain of clothes, looks down at her raw knuckle, and cries.
v v v v
Ava and
Emma lived across from each other and took the bus to school together everyday.
At lunch, the girls always sat at the same table in the back corner of the
cafeteria, and spread out their lunches. Emma always took Ava’s peanut butter
and jelly sandwich, and Ava always had Emma’s ham and cheese. On Fridays when
they got to buy food from the cafeteria, they bought the same chocolate milk,
unripe pear, and fake mac and cheese. The girls took ballet classes together- Emma was always better than me- and
learned French together. On n’a pas trop
appris… Ava and Emma spent their summers at Songadeewin, hiking and canoeing
(Ava was always in the stern, Emma in the bow). Summer before fourth grade, the
girls went shopping together for their first day of school outfits. They
matched. A week into fourth grade, they took the bus back home together, as
always. They hugged each other goodbye, and Ava walked up the driveway to her
house. The bus driver didn’t see the other young girl cross the street.
Mom asked me if I wanted to come say goodbye
to Emma. I said no, of course. I never wanted to say goodbye to my best friend.
With her
mom at the funeral, Ava let herself into Emma’s house through the back door. She
went up to Emma’s room and opened her backpack. Searching through the papers,
Ava came across the porcelain turtle Emma was planning on bringing into science
class the next day. Ava pocketed the turtle and ran back across the street, up
the driveway and into her house, down to the basement to grab a crate, then up
the stairs and into her room. She set the crate down, and placed the turtle
inside. Now she would remember Emma.
v v v v
Ava gets
her pajamas out from behind the door and pulls them on. She walks down the
hall, pulling her door shut behind her. She’ll clean it up at some point. Not
now. She, her sister Fiona, and her mother have already had dinner. Ava pulls
up a step stool to reach the toothpaste in the cabinet above the sink, its worn
down feet scraping against the lavender tile floor. She puts her toothpaste (why is it blue-isn’t mint green?) on the
Disney toothbrush and stares at her reflection in the splattered mirror. Her
shirt is on backwards, the tags scratching her neck. Oh well. Ava smoothes down her ever-messy hair. Through the dirty
mirror, Ava watches Fiona splash in the tub, playing penguin with a figurine.
She plays dolphin with it, flying it through the air and then plunging the
figurine into the water. Probably a rubber ducky. A small, green rubber ducky? A turtle. Fiona’s big hazel eyes
stare back, as do a turtle’s eyes. A green tear slides down the turtle’s cheek.
And then with a splash he disappears back into the tub. Ava spins round. Her
sister has the turtle in the bathtub! She
stole him! The water swirls green.
Ava yells, her toothbrush
falling in the sink, toothpaste spraying the mirror and splattering the sink.
She jumps in the tub, grabs the turtle, and runs down the stairs. Right into
her mom.
“What are you doing Ava? What’s wrong?”
“Fiona took something from me. She stole it. It was mine,”
Ava splutters, ducking around her mom.
Out the back door. Across the
road. A car honks. Up Emma’s empty driveway, onto her back porch. Ava sits in
the faded plastic lawn chair, cradling the turtle. A crack extends from the top
of his shell to his tail. The green paint runs, dying her hands a deep green. Her
pajama pants soaked to her knees, Ava huddles on the dark porch. The turtle’s head
is chipped; the light blue paint around its eyes reveals an older, mud brown.
Ava shivers. She sighs. She rubs her raw knuckle. The turtle is back. So is
Emma.
I
had felt like I couldn’t find a part of me that had been there before. Was that
how Dad felt? And Pop? And Nathan? And all the others?
v v v v
Ava walks
up to the house and places the gloves on top of a note written to Nathan. “I’m
sorry I took these from you last year. It was wrong. I hope they still fit,” is
scrawled on the back of the Long and Foster flyer. She rings the doorbell and
strides away without looking back. The boy opens the front door and looks down.
He picks up the gloves and reads the note. He smiles. His hands slide into the
gloves. He closes the door. The lock clicks shut.
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