After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away Read Online Free PDF Page B

guess I am listening because I hear my aunt say that girls’ sports at the school are supposed to be good. “But thank God, Yarrow isn’t obsessed about sports like some high schools in New Hampshire. Here the focus is…” Aunt Caroline turns into the school’s crescent driveway and cruises through, smiling like a real estate agent hoping to sell a property to a prospective buyer who’s just staring, blank and noncommittal. A bronze-gold banner with black letters is stretched across the portico above the front doors:
     
    WELCOME BACK ! CLASSES BEGIN SEPT . 8
    My heart has begun to pound with dread and resentment. I am so angry, I can’t speak.

    I miss Tarrytown, I miss my old school. I miss my friends, and my house, and my room…. Can’t think how I will miss Mom so my mind shuts off in that direction.
    In fact I haven’t been returning my friends’ e-mails. Haven’t been returning their calls. Preparing for the move, finishing up my therapy, it’s too much effort. Now I’m staring at the facade of Yarrow High. Where I won’t know anyone and won’t want to know anyone. And no one will want to know me.
    “Aunt Caroline, I can’t…can’t do this.”
    Maybe my voice is muffled, Aunt Caroline doesn’t seem to hear.
    Like a willful child I’m gripping the car door handle. Wish I could escape by just opening the door, jumping out, and running away.
    Except I can’t run just yet. I am “mending.”

    Five hours in the car with my aunt east from Tarrytown and into Connecticut, north into Massachusetts on Route 7, then north and east into Vermont, then New Hampshire across the Connecticut River (where the bridge at Lebanon just about freaked me, I had to shut my eyes tight and bite my lower lip to keep from whimpering), how many times in secret my fingers groped for the door handle. I could open this door. Unbuckle my seat belt, open the door, and throw myself out before Aunt Caroline had a clue what was happening and could stop me.
    Just a fantasy. Silly, stupid. I’d never do it.
    Wild ideas that flash in and out of my mind like winking lights.
    Like my idea of living alone in our house in Tarrytown. My idea that a fifteen-year-old could live alone. Could attend classes at her old school like normal. Like nothing has changed. (Except Mom has gone. Except Dad lives three thousand miles away.) Stupid Demerol dream.
    Aunt Katie had informed me in her sharp surprised voice, Why, Jenna! The house has been sold. We thought you knew.
    Out of nowhere I hear my angry voice: “Maybe I’ll buy it back someday. Nobody can stop me.”
    This time Aunt Caroline hears me say something. Hasn’t a clue what I am talking about, so I have to explain about the house, and that’s embarrassing. Like I’m asleep with my eyes open. Under the spell of powerful dreams.
    “What a good idea!” Aunt Caroline says carefully. “Yes, someday, maybe…”
    And I’m thinking it isn’t just Mom I miss, it’s in the blue .
     
    “Well. Here we are.”

    Pulling into the driveway at 339 Plymouth Street. Where my aunt has lived for as long as I can remember with my uncle, Dwight McCarty, who Mom used to say was a good, kind, decent man. (Maybe Mom spoke of her sister’s husband with a wistful air.) Plymouth Street is one of the better residential streets in small-town Yarrow Lake, but the McCartys’ house is an old white colonial with rust-colored shutters and a weatherworn brick chimney, one of the smaller houses on the block. For years, in summer, Mom and I have visited my aunt and her family so I’m familiar with the house inside and out, and yet there is something strange about it now, I can’t think what. My young cousins Becky (ten) and Mikey (seven or eight) have come running out to greet us, their smiling nanny behind them. Uncle Dwight is still at work, he’s an architect with a local firm. The way the children look at me, the way Becky says, sort of shyly, “Hi, Jenna,” and Mikey holds back a little, blinking,