Something Like Gravity Read online

  MAIA

  I MADE IT TO MY house just before the rain. I left my bike on the lawn and ran up the steps, Mallory’s camera slung over my shoulder. My heart was racing, but not because I was scared. It was because I was so alive. Right then. So there, so in it.

  I wondered if that was how Mallory had felt all the time. I looked around, wanting to tell someone what had just happened. I could call Hayden. She’d think it was weird. Funny, maybe. But then I’d have to explain what I was doing standing in the middle of the road in my pajamas. And I couldn’t explain that to her—I could barely even explain that to myself.

  I pulled the camera off me quickly; I didn’t want my parents to see. They wouldn’t like me touching her things, especially something as important as her camera. As I held it in my hands, I realized what I had done. I had taken a picture—I mean, not a real picture, because there wasn’t any film, but still—it wasn’t a Mallory picture.

  I don’t know why. Or how. It was an accident, or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I had wanted to see what the scene would’ve looked like to Mallory. Or maybe Mallory was the one who’d done it. Maybe she’d showed up then, stepped into my skin, and pressed down on the shutter button. I never used to believe in stuff like that, but losing someone the way we lost Mallory—that will make you believe in things you never thought you would.

  I don’t know why I didn’t hear the car coming, or why he didn’t see me until it was almost too late. But if I hadn’t stopped, if I hadn’t waited, if I had moved even an inch in the other direction, he would’ve hit me.

  I stood there, the rain pinging against the tin roof awning, breathing in huge lungfuls of air, and watched that same station wagon pull into my neighbor’s driveway, extra slowly, overly cautious. As he got out of the car and jogged up to the house, I wondered who he was—I knew for sure I’d never seen him around before.

  His slim, soccer-player-like frame wasn’t a Carson look. In a meat-and-potatoes town where ketchup was still a vegetable and where boys were beefy and bred for football, I would’ve remembered seeing him.

  I heard stirring inside the house and fumbled to stuff the camera into my bag. I kicked my shoes off in the doorway and tried to make my way through the kitchen and up the stairs to my room as quietly as possible.

  “Morning, cupcake,” my dad said. He was sitting at the table with the paper open. He didn’t ask where I’d been, and I didn’t tell him. In some ways it was nice to have so much freedom—but in other ways it felt like they’d simply given up on parenting.

  As I sat down across from him, the straight line of his mouth softened.

  “Any good news today?” I asked.

  “Nope.” He sighed and folded the paper in half, looking up at me for the first time. “The world’s still going to hell.”

  I nodded; he laughed. This used to be our morning bit. Back when laughter and easy conversation were still permitted in our house, before everything was ruined. For just a second, things almost felt the way they used to. But then Mom waltzed into the kitchen. She was on a mission, headed straight for the coffeepot. She jumped when she saw us sitting there together.

  “Oh,” she said. Then, to me, pointedly, “Good morning, Maia.”

  I said “Hi” and immediately felt guilty. I was now the only rope in their tug of war. It wasn’t fair. Loving one automatically made me a traitor to the other. There was no way to be fair anymore.

  “Well,” Dad said, standing up and clutching his paper like it was all he had in the world. I waited to see if he’d say anything else, but that was it. He was careful not to make eye contact with Mom as he drifted out of the room like a ghost, his footsteps on the stairs to the basement echoing through the silence he left behind.

  Mom cleared her throat, and proceeded to add her two spoonfuls of stevia, pouring her fat-free half-and-half into her coffee. “So,” she began, with a plastered-on smile, like she was playing the part of a mother rather than really being one. “What’s on the docket for you today?”

  “I don’t know,” I began. And now I felt like I was playing the role of a daughter rather than actually being one. “I’ll probably go over to Hayden’s for a while,” I lied. Hayden was at the beach, where I should’ve been.

  She nodded as she took a sip from her mug.

  I started biting the edge of my fingernail absently.

  “Stop that,” she said, laughing in that hollow, forced way she did when she was nervous. Sometimes I think it made her nervous to be my mother, to be a mother, like she didn’t want to let me get too close. Maybe losing one daughter had put her off parenting altogether.

  I set my hands in my lap. Thankfully, right on cue, Roxie shuffled into the kitchen. She was like one of those dogs who can sense when a person’s blood sugar is getting too low, except she always knew when the tension in the house was getting too high and one of us needed her to be a buffer.

  In her failing eyesight, she held her nose to the air for a moment, then started toward my mother and stopped short when she bumped up against her legs. “Good girl,” Mom whispered, bending over to run her hands through Roxie’s shaggy mane, kissing the top of her head as she moved the long fur away from her eyes. Something tugged like a knot being tightened in my stomach as I watched them. My mom was closer to a half-blind, sometimes-incontinent, smelly old dog than she was to me. I’d had this realization many times over this past year, but it always affected me the same as if it was the first time.

  “Oh, did I tell you I ran into Isobel at the grocery store the other day?” Mom began, straightening up quickly, as if she had exciting news. “She said her nephew’s coming to stay with her for the summer. I never even heard they had another child. Chris, I think.” She paused and looked at me as if I was supposed to say something. “Not sure what the story is there. I didn’t ask, but I got the distinct feeling maybe he got into some kind of trouble back home.”

  “Mom . . . ,” I said slowly, grinning, “are you gossiping?” She had always warned me and Mallory about busybodies and rumormongers, said they weren’t to be trusted, said gossip was the lowest form of social interaction.

  “No.” She laughed at herself, though, because she knew I was right. “I’m just passing along news that could potentially be relevant.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I am!” she said, swatting her hand at me from across the room. “All I’m saying is, be friendly when you see him, of course, but maybe not too friendly.”

  For a second it felt like old times, but then we heard Dad’s footsteps on the stairs, coming back up again, and that fleeting, wispy moment just slipped away.

  Mom rushed out of the house, then Dad behind her, both of them careful not to cross paths again. Roxie walked over to me and lay down at my feet with a huff. I scratched her behind the ears before I stood up and made my way to the kitchen window. Across the field, through the sheets of rain, I could see the station wagon parked in my neighbor’s driveway.

  “Chris,” I whispered, feeling myself smile as I rolled his name around in my head a few times. Chris. Chris. Chris.

  CHRIS

  MOM AND DAD LEFT THE next morning, earlier than they needed to. I helped put their bags back into the car, and then we all congregated on the porch.

  Dad hugged me tight, activating those seat belt bruises that had indeed appeared hours after my near accident in Isobel’s station wagon. He kissed me on the cheek, and then gave me one of those swift, firm guy pats on the back for good measure. “Only a phone call away, Chris,” he reminded me yet again.

  When it was Mom’s turn to say good-bye, I honestly didn’t know what would happen. She opened her arms, uncertainly. I moved in to give her a hug, but her body went rigid, as if she was trying to keep space between us. When we parted, she opened her mouth, but it was like she couldn’t force herself to say anything remotely kind or comforting or reassuring, so she didn’t. As Isobel and I stood there watching them drive away, I felt a lump in my throat, bubbling up slowly from somewhere in my c
hest. I coughed out a quick laugh, only to keep it from choking me.

  Isobel turned to me. “What’s so funny?”

  I shook my head, because of course nothing was funny at all.

  “What?” Isobel repeated, smiling, waiting to be in on the joke.

  “She hates me, doesn’t she?” I asked, although it really wasn’t a question so much as an observation.

  Isobel’s smile faded. She wrapped her arm around my shoulder and gave a little shake. “Come on, don’t say that.”

  “Why not? It’s true. She fucking hates me.”

  “Your mother does not hate you, I promise. She just—she needs more time, that’s all.”

  I nodded, tried to believe she was right.

  “And by the way,” she added, an afterthought, “you really shouldn’t say ‘fucking’ in front of your aunt. I mean, who the fuck raised you, anyway?”

  I laughed. Hard. Isobel always seemed to know what to say to make me feel better.

  She sat down on the top step, patting the spot next to her. “On the bright side,” she continued as I sat down, “your dad seems to be handling it all really well.”

  It’s true, he was. Or at least, he thought he was.

  Yesterday he’d offered to help me set up my telescope, which he’d never shown any interest in before. And last night before it got dark, he took me to the garage and said I was going to help him fix the gutter falling off the side of Isobel’s house. He handed me tools from my grandfather’s workbench, one by one, telling me what each one was called—brackets and hangers and screws and drill bits. When he placed the power drill in my hands, it felt heavier than it looked. I wondered if he would have asked me for help last summer, back when my voice was still high and light.

  We carried the tall, rickety ladder and set it up next to the side of the house. Dad climbed up one side of the ladder, and I climbed up the other. He seemed so confident in me when he told me to keep a firm hand underneath the gutter while he drilled the screws in place. He smiled like he was proud. I’m not sure if he was proud of me, per se. Maybe he was proud of himself for trying to get on board, in whatever way he knew how.

  Then to top it off, he took me outside and popped the hood of the station wagon, started showing me where to check the oil and coolant, and demonstrated how to go about changing a tire. It was like he was trying to have some kind of odd medley of makeup, rite-of-passage, TV-father-son moments with me, all over the course of two days. When I casually told him how I would’ve gladly done stuff like this with him even before, he just said, “I know that,” but I think he missed the point I was trying, gently, to make: My ability to use tools and fix things had nothing to do with whether I was a man or not.

  “Yeah, I know,” I finally told Isobel. “It’s weird, though. I thought for sure it would end up being the other way around—just when I thought I had them figured out, they go and change things up on me.”

  “You know, that’s probably what they’re thinking about you too, kid.”

  She had me there. I tried to look at everything from their point of view. I really did. But I was still so confused about their reactions. Mom had always been the one who was cool about everything, so understanding, so supportive of anything I ever wanted to do or be.

  In second grade when I wanted to quit Girl Scouts after the first meeting.

  In third grade when I flipped out backstage at the school concert because of the dress, the tights, and the fucking bow in my hair that matched the rest of the girls in the chorus.

  In fourth grade when I told them that I despised the name Christina and would only answer to Chris from then on, which is what most everyone called me anyway.

  In fifth grade when I refused to try on anything but boy’s clothes during our annual back-to-school shopping trip.

  In sixth grade when she finally let me get the haircut I really wanted. I remember it so clearly, the way the hairdresser was beaming as she spun me around in the chair to face the mirror, how it felt to run my hands along the shaved sides of my head. That was the first time I’d ever looked at myself and thought, This is me.

  In seventh grade when I told them I liked girls.

  In eighth grade when things got really bad and I was getting bullied every day about my hair and clothes and liking girls.

  And then in ninth grade, I really started to feel like a stranger in my body, the body that had served me so well up until then. The body that used to feel so light and free and unencumbered, the body that could run faster than any other kid in the neighborhood, the body that had always felt strong and lean, was suddenly weighed down with new softness and curves that more than embarrassed me; they made me want to hide away from the world, from myself. It wasn’t that I felt ashamed, exactly, just wrong. And the worst part was that this new body seemed to come with a whole new set of rules, expectations of ways I was supposed to think and act and be. Maybe those rules had always been there, but they were now being ruthlessly enforced at every turn.

  When I talked to Mom about it, she tried to tell me every girl feels what I felt. But I wondered if that could be true. Could it be possible that every girl could feel, in such excruciating exactness, the world rearranging itself around her, setting up all new borders and limits? Was every girl walking around in such pain, feeling the price of her body like I did? Maybe. But for me, that price was too high. I wasn’t just losing myself; I was becoming someone I was not. And that scared me.

  Anyway, Mom was the one who dealt with all of that.

  Dad, he was good when it came to the fun stuff. It was easy to cheer me on at the track meets, and it was easy to say “good job” when I brought home straight As. But with everything else, he just sort of kept his distance, nodding along. He didn’t have much of an opinion on anything, and was content to let Mom do the heavy lifting. I try not to think about a lot of the things that happened before.

  • • •

  Running helps. It always has. I took the gravel driveway down to the main road, and my feet immediately fell into an easy rhythm with my breathing. I was getting stronger every day. The sun was going down at my back, my shadow stretching out before me, measuring the pace, pulling me forward, keeping me company as I sped past the field and the blue house and the barn and the trees.

  When I was driving this road the other day, I hadn’t noticed the incline, but I felt it now, burning into my muscles, hurting in the best way. It was like my body could gauge when I’d reached one mile, two miles, three. It was then that my lungs started to ache, the pressure in my ribs becoming almost too much. But I ran harder, ran through it. I told myself to push just a little farther. Keep breathing. Keep moving.

  Up ahead, I saw another gravel driveway spilling out onto the road, and I let myself slow down to a jog—I’d make it to the driveway and then circle back around and return the way I’d come. But as I reached it, I saw that the driveway quickly got lost beneath a thick cover of overgrown weeds and brush. There was a chain strung between two of the big trees alongside the driveway with a sign attached that read: PRIVATE PROPERTY. I tried to peer in, but it was just woods as far as I could see. Yet something caught my eye, a spark of metal glinting in the sunlight.

  I looked both ways to make sure there was no one in sight before I stepped over the chain. A few feet in, I could see that it was a handlebar: a bike. I was sure it was her bike, the girl who I almost ran over. An image of her flashed through my mind like a photograph: the pajama pants and her neck and her hair flying through the wind.

  I could make out the beginnings of a foot-trodden dirt path. I took one step, and a wave of panic sliced through me. The familiar pinpricks in my chest, the uneven breaths I couldn’t control, shallow then deep, my whole body flashing hot then cold, the sensation in my fingertips going tingly. It was that old fear working its way, slow and mean, through my body, because the last time I’d followed a dirt path leading into the woods, I’d almost died.

  • • •

  Usually I practiced af
ter school on the track, but when the weather was nice like it was that day—the perfect end-of-September chill in the air—our coach would let us run on the trails that wove through the woods behind the school. Coleton had joined track that year. I think partially just to hang out with me, but mostly to appease his parents. They didn’t like the fact that he sat around playing video games and reading comic books and watching sci-fi movies and getting into heated debates online about all of the above. His parents never really got him, and they hated that other kids thought he was a weirdo, but that’s probably why we became friends in the first place.

  When we started high school, his parents told him he needed to join something, expand his social circle. Which was code for: I made them very nervous. They thought it was my fault that he was constantly getting bullied, and I knew they blamed me for that time someone had written HOMO on his locker in giant red letters. I knew they called him names like that for hanging out with me, even though it didn’t even make any sense because I was a girl. Well, sort of.

  Anyway, he wasn’t very fast and didn’t have much stamina. I tried to hold back that day, since it was just the two of us on the trail, but I left him behind pretty quickly.

  Underneath the music from my headphones, I thought I heard someone call out my name. I thought maybe it was Cole, but when I turned, I saw it was another kid from school: Ben. He was off the path a ways, deeper in the woods, along with two other boys from my class, Tobey and Jake. That part wasn’t too unusual; sometimes kids cut through the woods on their way home.

  “Hey, wait up!” Ben shouted.

  That was the part that was unusual. I glanced behind me again, not thinking much of it because he couldn’t possibly be talking to me. We’d gone to the same school our entire lives, and I don’t think Ben and I had ever exchanged even one word. But there he was, jogging up behind me. I slowed down and came to a stop too abruptly, messing up my rhythm.