Green Mountain Academy, page 2
She did come out to the caves now and then to give us tips. Like how to hang from your arms, keeping them straight, instead of trying to cling to the rock using the strength of your biceps. And to keep most of your weight on your legs, not your arms. It takes technique and flexibility, not just arm strength. That’s why girls could be such good climbers, she said. Even small girls like me.
“Ms. Benito made spaghetti,” Ming said now. “Hurry up! It’s freezing out here.”
In the vestibule, we brushed the snow from our clothes and hair and put our shoes on the rack to dry. It was good to be inside with the heat blowing from the vents. A heavenly rich smell of garlic and onions and spices wafted from the kitchen.
Ms. Benito had her back to us as she wiped the stove. She turned when we came in.
“Oh, thank goodness. I was really starting to worry. And look, you brought the sheets in. Aren’t you good girls?”
Danny smiled at me.
“Supper’s on the table. I made my famous spaghetti sauce. You must be starving.”
“I am,” I said, passing my armload of sheets to Ms. Benito’s outstretched arms.
“Me too,” said Danny.
“Well, I’m glad you’re back,” Ms. Benito said again. “The sisters would never forgive me if I lost two of you the first night they’re away.”
chapter two
“The sisters” were Lucy and Lill, the school founders and teachers. Everyone called them the sisters when they weren’t around, because it was easier. But we were allowed to call them by their first names when we were with them, since calling them both Ms. Larsen would have been too confusing.
The day Aunt Sissy and Ms. Fineday drove me out to meet them, Aunt Sissy had borrowed Grandpa’s SUV because she’d been told the road was rough for the last thirty kilometers or so. It was rough, but it was also beautiful. Rolling hills dotted with sage became soft, grassy meadows—yellow at that time of year—then big fluttering cottonwoods around a small lake, then a creek, almost dry, then more trees crowding the road. The landscape became a little wilder, the woods a little thicker. The farther we went, the more Aunt Sissy talked.
“Now, you can change your mind about this, Francie. For any reason.”
“Okay.”
A few minutes later: “If there’s the slightest thing that gives you doubts, you tell me. Okay?”
“Uh-huh.” I nodded.
“And I mean anything.”
“Yup.”
“If one of them even looks at you funny, that’s all I need to pull the plug.”
“I know.”
Ms. Fineday turned around in the front seat and smiled at me. I wasn’t worried, and I think she knew that. She knew that the wilder the landscape, the more I liked it. Lonely places didn’t scare me—not anymore. They seemed like old friends. I got a shiver when the swaying trees reminded me of the cave on the creek bank in Oregon where I had spent a night protected from a wild windstorm, but it wasn’t a shiver of fear now.
Ms. Fineday had been my teacher at my school in Penticton. I didn’t know anyone who knew as much about the outdoors as she did. The sisters were her friends, and it was Ms. Fineday who’d first told me about the school. That was in the summer. After everything had happened. After I was home safely to a place that didn’t feel like home at all anymore.
“Staying with Grandpa is out of the question,” Aunt Sissy continued, as if thinking out loud. “But moving to the city with me is still an option. I just thought you might like this better.”
“I know. It’s okay, Aunt Sissy. I want to go to the school,” I said.
“Now what did I say about not deciding until you actually saw it? You can’t just go with a gut feeling. Let’s wait for the evidence.”
Aunt Sissy is a lawyer, and she liked to remind me to look for evidence before I made my decisions. But I’d seen pictures. Also, Ms. Fineday had taught some special outdoors classes at the school, so I was pretty sure already.
It’s amazing the things you learn when adults suddenly think you’re old enough. After everything happened—which was the way Aunt Sissy and I both referred to that time—and I had to stay with Grandpa, Aunt Sissy told me that he had a “drinking problem.” That explained why he disappeared into his room every night after supper. Come to think of it, it explained a few things: why I heard him stumbling around the house after I went to bed; why, before everything happened, we used to get calls at odd hours of the night from Grandpa’s neighbors and Dad would get dressed and go out. When I asked where he’d gone, he’d always say the same thing: Grandpa was upset.
“What is he always upset about?” I once asked Aunt Sissy.
“That was a euphemism,” she told me.
“What’s a euphemism?”
“Not calling a spade a spade. If there’s one thing I have no patience with, it’s that.”
I didn’t like to hear her say that, because I thought it meant she had no patience with Dad.
As if reading my mind, she said, “I’m not criticizing your dad. What else could he say to a little girl?”
“But what was Grandpa upset about?”
“Well, sweetheart, I’ve asked myself that my whole life. And I discovered it’s no use asking.”
After a minute or two of silence, I realized she had no more to say about that.
“Well, since Grandpa is Mom’s and your father,” I said, “why did Dad go to him when he was upset?”
“Because he’s your mom’s dad. Your mom just can’t stand to be around him when he’s into the sauce. He’d never hurt anyone—I wouldn’t let you stay with him a minute if there was any chance of that.”
“I know.”
“Grandma couldn’t stand it either. That’s why she went to live at the cabin at Gem Lake. She said she wanted to live out her last days in peace and quiet and he could stay in the city and weather his storms the way he’d always done. She’d given up hoping he’d turn over a new leaf.”
I only partly understood what all of that meant, and I thought that for someone who had no patience with euphemisms, Aunt Sissy used a lot of them.
* * *
In those first days after Aunt Sissy brought me home from Oregon without Mom and Dad, Grandpa and Aunt Sissy sat at the kitchen table in Grandpa’s house, the house where Aunt Sissy and Mom grew up. The shadows of leaves in sunlight danced on the window and they drank cups and cups of tea and tried to decide what to do with me. The only thing I heard Grandpa say about it was, “She’ll decide when she’s ready.” Aunt Sissy nodded, more quiet than I’d ever seen her. Sometimes I saw one or the other of them with tears running down their faces.
Maybe it’s selfish of me, but I was glad.
Living with Grandpa that summer, after everything had happened, was about the most depressing thing I could have done. His routines became like a dull ringing in my ears. I couldn’t escape the sad sameness of it. Every morning he took a packet of instant oatmeal from a box, ran some water over it and stuck it in the microwave. He made a mug of tea from the same teabag he’d used for his supper tea the night before, then he sat out on the step and smoked a cigarette.
When he came back inside, I braced myself for his inevitable comment about me reading too much.
“You’ll spoil your eyes, Francie.”
“Don’t you think it’s time you got some fresh air?”
“How many books can one person read?”
And, “Aren’t those books for babies?”
It was true I was reading books that Mom used to read to me when my twin sister Phoebe and I were little. I’d brought a box of them from our house. My favorite was Can’t You Sleep, Little Bear?
Because I couldn’t sleep. Or not much. Or not at night when I was supposed to. After supper, when we’d finished washing our two plates, two glasses, two knives and two forks, Grandpa would say good night and take his chipped Tim Hortons mug with him into his room. I would pull some books from the box I’d brought from our house and read on my bed. Every hour or so I heard him come out of his room and go into the kitchen, and with each trip he got noisier. First a few cupboards slamming, water running for a long time; then later, chairs falling over, his grumbling as he bumped into things; and in the middle of the night things falling to the floor, sometimes the crash of breaking glass.
I stayed put in my room, the little guest room under the stairs with the slanted ceiling, which, when the moonlight lit up the walls, I imagined was a mountainside. In the morning, it was as if nothing had happened, and when I saw Grandpa at the table drinking his watered-down tea from his chipped mug, I wondered if I’d dreamt it. Then I’d sleep mid-morning, about two hours after I got up, or in the afternoon while Grandpa dozed with his mouth open in the worn recliner in front of the TV droning on the nature channel.
I didn’t eat much either. I suppose it didn’t help that everything Grandpa ate came from a can or a box: Spam, fish sticks, frozen Salisbury steaks, canned beans or corn.
“I’m not much of a cook,” he said one night when he put a plate of canned peas and a slice of Spam down in front of me. “You’re welcome to try yourself if you think you can do better.”
I wasn’t much of a cook either, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t take much to do better. But I wasn’t going to hurt his feelings by trying. And anyway, I had no appetite.
He took me on drives to sit and watch the birds at Vaseux Lake. We stopped at Okanagan Falls and had ice cream. I didn’t want to tell Grandpa that I’d never really liked ice cream; it was my twin sister, Phoebe, who’d liked ice cream. She was the one he used to take to Tickleberry’s, the famous ice cream stand, not me, and it was Phoebe who liked Tiger Tiger ice cream, not me. But he was trying so hard.
He tried to get me to invite my friends over.
I called Carly and we walked over to the school playground and hung off the monkey bars the way we used to after school. It felt like such a long time ago. She talked about things and I nodded but when I went to speak, there was nothing there. I worried that I might never speak again. I couldn’t see the point in it.
Grandpa went to our house again, Mom’s and Dad’s and my house, and brought back my bike from the shed. He leaned it by the back step and hosed the cobwebs off it. Then he oiled the chain and tightened up my brakes. Now, mornings, he had a new thing to nag me about.
“Good day for a ride,” he’d say, coming in after his cigarette.
Or, “We need milk. You can pop down to the store on your bike.”
People phoned or came to the door and Grandpa nodded, saying, “Uh-huh, uh-huh” and “Well, that’s something to think about.”
If your parents ever disappear into the wilderness while you’re on a family vacation, you’ll find that an awful lot of people will have strong opinions about what should be done with you. Many of those people won’t even know you, but they’ll take your aunt and your grandpa aside and they’ll lower their voices a little and they’ll say things like, “I’m sure she’ll want things to stay as normal as possible.” And by that they’ll mean you should stay in your old neighborhood and go to your old school and take up all your old activities. They’ll recommend routine, to try to make things “normal.”
But the thing that none of those people will understand is that nothing is normal anymore. Your old house will look strange and sad and empty, with windows like lonely eyes watching for its people to return; the path up the creek where you rode your bike will feel like another country; and even your bike will feel awkward and unsteady and you’ll barely remember how you used to ride it so fast and smooth, like it was another part of your body. They won’t understand that trying to be normal in your old life that’s exploded is the worst feeling in the world.
chapter three
I met Danny on the first of September, my first official day at the school. It was a perfect day, everything crisp and bright in the golden sunlight, a clear turquoise-blue sky and no wind. Some of the trees up Green Mountain had begun to turn, just here and there, a super yellow-green. Insects and birds sang from the woods as Lill helped me carry my bags to my room.
“This is Danielle, your roommate,” Lill said as we entered the room. A girl with short dark hair wearing faded jeans and a soft red T-shirt had her back to us as she reached to put a suitcase on the top shelf of the closet.
She turned. Her bright eyes studied me. “Don’t call me Danielle. I’m Danny.” She thrust her hand at me; it took me a few seconds to realize I was supposed to shake it. I don’t know if I’d ever shaken someone’s hand before, and definitely never someone’s my own age.
“Sorry, Danny,” said Lill. “How could I forget that? I was named Lillian after my grandmother, but I’ve been Lill since I was a baby. Everyone could see I wasn’t a Lillian.”
“What’s your name?” said Danny, her voice more a command than a question.
“Francie,” I said. “Short for Frances.” My voice to me sounded as scared as I suddenly felt.
This would be my life now, I realized, stuck in this small, bare room with two beds covered in matching plaid quilts, a desk, two reading lamps, a small closet, and a stranger. There was a window over the desk and I wanted to look out it to see what our view was, but at that moment, as Danny nodded curtly and turned her back to us again, I was afraid to move.
“Get your things unpacked,” said Lill. “Then come to the great room and I’ll show the two of you around the grounds.”
I stood there, looking stupid and stunned. Lill said, “Anything else you need?”
When I didn’t answer, she said, “Okay then,” rubbed her hands together—a restless habit I would discover that she had—and left. Lill was the no-nonsense sister. She was most comfortable with a hammer, a drill or an ax in her hands. She carried a multi-tool in a leather holster on her belt and she was always fixing something.
I hadn’t answered her because I’d lost my voice, an annoying thing that happened to me sometimes at the worst possible moments, a thing that used to frustrate Mom so much. As if I was doing it on purpose.
At the thought of Mom, I felt something slip inside me, like a car that stalls when it’s stopped at a red light. I was okay as long as I was moving, but when something caused me to stop, it felt like getting going again might be impossible.
I pressed my legs against the bed just in time as they gave under me and I sat down heavily. The mattress squeaked underneath me.
“I left room for your suitcases up here,” Danny said. She looked around the room. “It’s small, but we won’t be spending much time in here.” Then she strode to the window and pulled back the curtain. “I can see the old fire tower from here. That’s the first thing I want to check out.”
I stared at her, trying to pull myself back from my thoughts of Mom.
“The new-wing rooms are a bit bigger, but I picked the old wing when I saw it this morning,” she said. “More character. I’m glad they gave us a choice.” She ran her foot over the polished wood floor. “I already know something about you.”
My voice was still gone. I braced myself. Somehow she’d found out about Mom. She was going to ask me about it and I’d have to try to explain it without using the word psychiatric, which, believe me, is a word that in most people’s minds means crazy, and if I say it, they take a step back, as if it’s catching. I could just say she’s in the hospital, which is true—she’d been there for months now—but then people ask what’s wrong with her and I’m back to the same problem.
Danny continued moving around the room, opening the desk drawers (there were two), adjusting the gooseneck of the reading lamp on her side of the desk, checking under the bed (for what, I wasn’t sure). Now she sat on her bed to lace up a pair of hiking boots.
Sweat seeped from my armpits and tingled on my upper lip and forehead, but a cold chill was making it hard to stop myself from shaking. I tried to steady my feet on the floor so Danny wouldn’t notice.
I’d made a huge mistake. Without a phone, how would I contact Aunt Sissy? I couldn’t even get internet to send an email until Sunday, a week away, because the school rules were that we could only go online on Sundays for an hour. It would probably take another week to hear back from Aunt Sissy and then more time for her to find a day when she wasn’t in court to drive back out here from Vancouver to get me. It was unbearable. I’d die before then, of, I don’t know, not being able to talk, or embarrassment, or loneliness, or maybe I wouldn’t quite die for real but I’d die inside and I was already pretty close to that edge. I tried to breathe, but could only barely remember that I could breathe. What have I done, I thought.
I’d left my friends, the school where Mom used to be a counselor, what was left of my life. If I’d been old enough to live alone in a cabin in the woods, Grandma’s cabin at Gem Lake, for instance, that’s what I would have done. I’d thought maybe this would be close to that, surrounded by forest and mountains, and a fresh, cold creek that wound through the grounds and led deep into wilderness where I felt at home. I’d been told the school was small, only nine girls that year, and three of us were new that fall. But I hadn’t thought about the questions I’d have to answer, and how I would explain myself.
Danny noticed my silence and turned to look at me with her steady brown eyes.
“I know you like the old wing better too,” she said.
Relief washed over me like waves coming into shore, each one calming me a little. I managed to wipe my palms, which had been sweating, on my jeans.
