If Birds Fly Back Read online

  “Sorry, just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  Adult diapers. Dentures. Mortality. “Swings. You want to go on the swings?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  We pick sides—her on the left, me on the right. It’s a tight squeeze considering neither one of us is eight years old. Up, up, up we go. My legs are too long, so I hook them at the bottom to keep them from dragging against the ground.

  We’re on opposite pendulums. I fly up; Linny comes down.

  She speaks between leg-pumps. “So are you going to”—pump—“talk to me”—pump—“about what’s going on?”—pump—“Because I have to tell you”—pump—“this is”—pump—“so weird.”

  An (admittedly childish) idea comes. “Yeah”—pump—“but not before we”—pump—“see who can”—pump—“jump the farthest.”

  In elementary school, there were rumors that a kid flew so high on the swings that he spun all the way around. According to Newton’s second law of motion, that’s impossible. But as I climb higher and higher, I wonder if I could be that kid. If for just one crazy moment, I can defy physics.

  THE PLAYGROUND PRINCIPLE:

  Testing the bounds of possibility directly correlates to the amount of effort put forth by the tester.

  “Ready?” Linny shouts. “Jump on three!”

  “One!” I say.

  “Two!” she says.

  “Three!” we say.

  We are weightless.

  We are free.

  We are so goddamn stupid for not factoring in the possibility of injury.

  As I land, my already-weak ankle twists in a pocket of sand. Linny smashes into me on the ground, elbow jabbing into my ribs. Uggggg—I grunt like a Cro-Magnon. The mom stops pushing her kid down the slide. Picks him up. Carries him away from the two delinquent teens.

  Linny hovers over me. So close. Count-her-freckles close. “Crap. Did I hurt you?”

  Everything feels cartoonish. I should have stars or little birdies circling my head. The impact of the fall has rattled my words loose. “You’re the first person I’ve told,” I blurt out, struggling to sit up.

  She presses her eyebrows together. “Me? Why?”

  “I just knew you’d . . . get it?”

  Massaging her temples—“Do you think we could just rewind for a second? I’m still trying to wrap my head around how he’s your father.”

  I go for the condensed version, the story I’ve been replaying since Mom told me. About the film festival in Miami. About Álvaro buying a ring. About him leaving. I conclude with “My mom made it seem like the only thing he was ever really good at was disappearing.”

  “But does he know that you’re his—”

  “Son? No. He left before my mom could tell him she was pregnant. And then afterward, she didn’t feel like he had the right to know. She didn’t even tell me until my aunt called and told her Álvaro was alive and in Miami.”

  “How could your mom keep something like that from you?”

  “I think she was afraid he’d be just as horrible to me as he was to her.”

  “Still.”

  “Yeah. Maybe she was embarrassed? I mean, she was in her thirties, and Álvaro was sixty-five. Sixty-five. It’s actually kind of a miracle that he was still, I don’t know, not shooting blanks.”

  We both shudder. I suppress a Viagra joke.

  “So are you going to let him know?” Linny says.

  “Eventually. It’s not exactly easy to bring up.”

  She nods, peering down and tracing a circle by her knee. “Thank you, by the way.”

  “For what?”

  “For telling me.” She pauses, closes her eyes. I think the conversation’s over, but then she leans back and lies flat. Spreads her fingertips through the grains of sand. She’s covered in pops of light, curls haloing her head. “I’m starting to think there are two types of people in this world. People who leave and people who stay.”

  I clear my throat. “And which type are you?”

  Her shoulders go up and down, indenting the sand. “I haven’t figured that out yet.” Pause. “Sebastian?”

  “Linny?”

  “I do get it. I know what it’s like to be the one left behind.” A deep breath. “My sister completely bailed after last Christmas, and I have no idea where she is, and I got it into my head that maybe if I—I don’t know—figured out why all these missing people come back—why Álvaro came back—that I’d catch on to some way to bring her home. Because I miss her. I miss her all the time. It’s like—”

  “Like you’re a balloon floating around without a tether?”

  “Exactly.”

  “It sucks.”

  “Completely sucks,” she says in a choking voice. A few tears pool in the corners of her eyes. She bats them away as they slip down.

  The obsession with Álvaro’s mystery makes sense now. Well, partial sense. It’s still kind of out there.

  I want to say “I’m sorry,” but that feels inadequate somehow. So I say, “What’s her name?”

  “I—um—God, I haven’t said it out loud in so long.”

  “Who is she, Lord Voldemort or something?”

  Linny lets out a solitary laugh and slaps my knee. “Sebastian!”

  “Sorry. That was insensitive. So . . . you weren’t always this neurotic?”

  Another slap. Another laugh. “No, I guess not.” She swallows. “Grace. Her name is Grace.”

  Neither of us says anything else. No words needed.

  We stay like that. Her: lying in the sand. Me: kind of curved around her.

  AN ADDITION TO THE PLAYGROUND PRINCIPLE:

  For a tenth of a second, it is possible to defy memory. It is possible to forget that anything is wrong in the world.

  17.

  Linny

  WHO: Jessie Love, daughter of guitarist Richard Love

  WHEN: One week in April 2008

  WHY: Okay, she didn’t really disappear. Every night after the police left, Jessie would switch places with her twin sister, Jolene. The twins wanted to see if anyone could truly tell them apart; Jessie returned for good after Jolene’s boyfriend discovered that she didn’t kiss the same.

  NOTES: There’s so much a kiss can do. . . .

  As soon as I say “Grace,” I feel the name floating above me, like I can reach out and poke it with my finger. I silently roll it around on my tongue—a muscle memory. Grace, Grace, Grace. And it’s gutting, but not as much as I thought it would be. Having Sebastian here makes it easier, because he’s a left-behind, too. The way I see it, Álvaro and Grace were cut from the same flighty cloth.

  Just look at us—marooned on our little island of grief and sand, like we’ve survived the same shipwreck. I gaze up at him, hovering to my left, gray eyes half closed and kind of sad, and my first thought is Good God, Linny, you cannot be serious. Kissing someone at a playground? I argue with myself for a few seconds, and I’m not sure if I win or lose—but suddenly I’m sitting up and thinking, Maybe people fall together when they’re falling apart.

  “What?” Sebastian says.

  “Nothing.”

  And then I kiss him, my hand mussing through his messed-up hair, his mouth warm and parting in surprise. He reaches quickly for the side of my face and kind of clips my ear in a semipainful way, but to be honest, I couldn’t care less—for approximately six seconds, the black and white at the edges of my vision blurs. As strange as it sounds, it feels like he’s pouring color back into me.

  Then I break away, slightly panicked, snapping to my senses. “Oh jeez, I didn’t mean to do that.”

  His hand is still on the side of my face. “Er—me neither, I guess.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Confused, dropping his hand, he says, “You don’t need to be sorry.”

  That’s when a toddler ten feet behind us says, “Mommy, what they doing?” A playgroup has invaded the jungle gym, and I didn’t even notice. Three mothers are throwing us nasty looks.

&nb
sp; Hurriedly swiping sand off my arms, I say, “We should probably go soon or Marla’s going to have a cow.”

  “Yeah,” Sebastian says, face a mask of disappointment, “sure.”

  I can still feel the sensation of Sebastian’s lips on mine as we head back. And he’s clearly ignoring me. Of course he is—I just kissed him and then apologized. He must think I’m totally cuckoo bananas, and I’m not entirely convinced he’s wrong. He just looked so . . . sad, like me, and for a moment I thought we could put each other back together, or something overly metaphorical like that.

  Truth is, sometimes I roll my eyes at movie romances, at girls who bat their eyelashes and boys who lift them off their feet, but now that I have the possibility of—well, of whatever this is—the idea doesn’t seem half bad.

  Wait a minute—what am I saying? He’s going to leave, Linny. I might as well add him to a list of people who flee, because he’s definitely going to Cal Tech in the fall, and I’m definitely unready for this brand of happiness. Does falling for someone—possibly falling out of black and white—mean accepting that Grace is gone? I haven’t even thrown away her empty shampoo bottles in our shower; this is ten thousand steps beyond that.

  We pause at the back entrance of Silver Springs, the kiss looming over us.

  Should we just be friends? Can we be friends after this?

  I blurt out: “Do you think we should play dominoes this afternoon?” My mind’s ping-ponging, trying to settle on anything but that kiss.

  He appears hurt. “If you want.”

  “I know we should probably talk about what just happened but—”

  “It’s cool. Don’t worry about it,” Sebastian says, in a tone that suggests I probably should.

  What have I done?

  We find Álvaro in the game room with five other residents, all watching television. One of the women—a redheaded lady with fantastically long nails—is in the middle of shouting at the TV, “Wheel! Of! Fortune! Wheel of Fortune!” And Álvaro’s in the middle of telling her to can it and switch coverage to the Miami Marlins game.

  It’s hard to look at Álvaro the same. Instead of a cult writer, instead of a person who disappeared and returned, all I see is a father. All I see is how complicated things really are, how I’ve just made them a million times worse with that stinking kiss.

  On the way out of Silver Springs, Sebastian and I stop in the parking lot. Only the hard-core reporters remain (like the National Enquirer guy who broke into the lobby), plus the evidence of the others: a few McDonald’s bags, some cigarette butts, a Pepsi can that Sebastian kicks with the side of his sneaker. Framing him is a fading orange sky, so he’s half human, half silhouette. As he swings his foot, I realize this is the perfect series of images: sky, swing, summer; and it seems like a great way to break the tension. Plus, my shoulders are tingling, so I say, “Pause right there.”

  His foot hovers two inches above the ground. “Is there a bee or something?”

  “No, I’m going to shoot you.”

  He startles, dropping his foot. “You’re going to what?”

  “With my camera.”

  “Oh, right.”

  Maybe this makes me a Camera Girl freak—telling a boy I’ve just awkwardly kissed to pause right there as I pan around him, capturing how the streaking sunset reflects in his hair. But I don’t care—a good shot is a good shot. And both of us are visibly more at ease.

  I switch off the camera. “Perfect, thanks.”

  “Are you making a movie or something?”

  “I just like filming beautiful things.” And when I realize what I’ve said—that I’ve just called him a beautiful thing—I backtrack. “You know, the sunset and stuff.”

  The conversation stalls, but Sebastian gets it moving again. “It’s Friday night,” he reminds me. In the summer it’s easy to forget. “Any big weekend plans?”

  Reading Midnight in Miami again probably doesn’t rank high on the Cool-o-meter, so I tell a half fib. “Ray invited me to a party.” I was invited; I just wasn’t planning on attending. Somehow at parties I always end up being the one camping out on the lawn, filming the party instead of, you know, partying. Or I’m holding back some girl’s hair (Cass’s, namely). And ever since Grace vamoosed, a neon sign has been hanging over my head, flashing SISTERLESS GIRL in bright-yellow light. Grace became the legend, and I became the other sister who everyone pities at parties.

  “That’s cool,” Sebastian says. Then he puffs out his cheeks Godfather-like, as if he’s about to make me an offer I can’t refuse. “I thought that—er—maybe if you’re free tomorrow during the day, we could visit that second address? Because you’re right—it’s worth a shot, and I looked it up on my phone and there’s a bus that stops nearby. I mean, it’s okay if you don’t want to—”

  “I want to,” I say, a bit too eagerly.

  The relief on Sebastian’s face makes my heart sing. So much singing! Choir auditions, over here. (Stop, Linny. You can’t like him, remember?)

  “In that case,” he says, “as friends, maybe we could also—um—watch a movie afterward? Eat something?”

  My voice does a decent job pretending this isn’t one of the greatest things I’ve heard all summer. “Yeah,” I say, perfectly smooth.

  “Yeah to which bit?”

  “All of it.”

  Sebastian grins, and it’s contagious. By the time I get home, my smile muscles are sore. I throw cold water all over my face.

  That night, while Ray’s getting ready for the party, he eyes my white T-shirt up and down. “Please tell me that tomorrow you’ll wear something less . . . tentlike. It’s big enough to shoplift a turkey from Publix. With peas. And carrots. Why don’t you borrow something of—” He bites his lip, because he’s said too much.

  Borrow something of Grace’s, he means. The sister with the style. Even though he doesn’t know Grace, he glimpsed her fashion in the halls.

  It’s not like I haven’t thought about them—all those Goth-fairy-punk dresses hanging unworn in her closet, along with one yellow sundress that rarely sees the sun. She wore that sundress to school once, and I think half of the twelfth grade fell in love with her that day.

  Spaghetti straps are generally a no-go for me. That’s the mentality you develop when your mother pretends she doesn’t have female body parts. The most exposed I’ve ever seen her was in a tastefully ruffled swimsuit, which she kept strap-snapping to ensure its durability and full coverage. As if one nipple slip would ruin her life.

  Cass looks like she has something to add; she keeps opening her mouth and then shutting it. I didn’t know she was going to be here. When I entered Ray’s room, Cass was flipping through a Victoria’s Secret catalog on his bed, and he kicked the door shut with: “We settle this one of two ways. You can race it out, or you can talk it out, but none of us is leaving until you two stop looking like you want to kill each other.” Before becoming friends with Ray, I sort of knew him from the road races that circled around my neighborhood. He always had the most intense faces. I’ve never really seen that outside of running, until now.

  “You should wear the yellow dress,” Cass suddenly says, and then clamps a hand over her mouth.

  “Good!” Ray exclaims, clapping. “Bravo! Communication! Nice! Keep going!”

  I’m slumped in a beanbag chair, eyes flicking between the two of them. They’re dressed for the party—Ray in a crisp blue shirt, Cass in a very-Miami hip-hugging dress, boobage fully elevated with that lime-green bra.

  She says to him, “Can you just give us some privacy?”

  “No,” he says. “I need to see you two smooth things out.”

  Cass grabs him by the collar of his shirt, like a mother cat with a kitten. Opening the door and chucking him into the hall, she says, “We’ll send you a picture.” She shuts the door, grumbling, and turns back to me. “I need to say something before you go all ape shit on me.”

  “I never went ape—”

  “Please. Just let me get this out.
”

  Dragging my fingers across my lips, I pretend to zip them.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry I didn’t say sorry that day at your house. And I’m sorry that I tried to convince myself that it was okay. I’m just really, totally, completely sorry.”

  I raise my eyebrows. Wow. Apologies are not Cass’s style. Softening, I try to say “Sorry” back, but she cuts me off with “Wait, I’m not done. You’ll be happy to hear that the Humane Society of Greater Miami, North, is now a thousand bucks richer with findalvaro.com money. . . . Okay. Nine hundred and ninety-five bucks richer. I may’ve bought some lip gloss before I came to my senses, but you have to know that I didn’t want everything to end up like this, especially when things have been so shitty the past year. And I wasn’t going to say that I wish you’d left instead of her. I was going to say that she left all this”—fluttering her hands around like birds—“carnage, you know?”

  In a small voice, I say, “Yeah, I know.”

  She plays with the ends of her hair. “I’m going to start volunteering at Silver Springs, one day a week, to make up for everything.”

  My heart skips three beats. “Seriously? They let you do that?”

  “I guess not everyone knows I’m the one who filmed Álvaro. Anyhoo . . . are you okay with it?”

  Let’s see. I am, because it’s obvious: Cass is trying to reapply the glue to our friendship. But Sebastian? He’ll probably throw her looks like he’s about to huff and puff and bite her face off. “One condition,” I say.

  “Anything.”

  “No cell phones or cameras allowed.”

  She bobs her head back and forth as if deliberating. “Deal.”

  On the other side of the door, Ray’s voice: “Is that reconciliation I hear?”

  Almost. Not completely. But Cass and I both murmur, “Yes,” and Ray bursts in, beaming.

  I film them getting ready for the party as we pretend that everything is 100 percent normal. Cass takes two shots of rum from Ray’s secret stash, and afterward I zoom in on the fog their noses make when pressed to the mirror. The whole makeup thing is something I should try sometime, Ray notes as I film his fingers, slick with hair gel. “You’re really pretty, Linny. We just have to get you out of the nunnery.”