Finding Casey: A Novel Page 5

  Every young man in the kingdom dreamed of asking the king for his daughter’s hand in marriage once she became of age. Her blonde hair hung down nearly to her waist, curling on its own. Her eyes were hazel, which is the name of the Tree of Wisdom. Some days they were green and some days they were brown. Her smile caused even the saddest person to forget his troubles.

  The townspeople called her the Princess of Leaves, because she liked to collect leaves from the many trees at the edge of the forest. This was especially true in late autumn, when every leaf reveals its true color. Often they would look up from their chores and see her pass by with the palace guard, keeping her safe.

  Autumn was her favorite time of year because that’s when the earth begins to prepare for winter. The leaves turn gold, orange, scarlet, and rarest of all, a deep burgundy. That means red, but with purple in it. Like a plum, or a bruise at its sorest.

  Toward the forest Princess Leafy would go, always with the castle guard at her side to keep her safe. There are some people in the world so angry and unhappy that they stamp on flowers, mistreat animals, and want to make everyone as sad as they are. But you don’t have to worry, I’ll always protect you.

  Her mother the queen often warned the princess, stay clear of the darkest part of the forest. Not a single person who has ventured into the darkness has come back to tell the story. Promise me. The princess promised her mother she would do as she said, but sometimes even the wisest of princesses forgets, accidentally, or on purpose.

  The princess picked up only fallen leaves, because she never wanted to harm any living thing. In her heart, she believed every living thing deserved a lifetime, even spiders that weave webs to catch insects that might otherwise bite or pester you. Their webs are made of silk, and when it rains, drops catch on the web and they shine like diamonds. Beautiful things should be admired and then left alone.

  The princess would lay each leaf on her palm and examine it carefully. Every leaf told a story: the season it didn’t rain, the time a pair of secret lovers laid down on the leaves to say goodbye, the way a rabbit blended in with the leaves, hiding, to avoid hunters. The palace guard’s job was to keep a lookout for danger, to fight if necessary, but he loved the princess as if she were his own daughter and it made his heart as soft as butter.

  He’d fought in wars, kept soldiers from untimely ends, and though they usually traveled on foot, he was an accomplished horseman. All that was in the past, however, and his job was to accompany the princess and keep her safe. The leaves she loved best came from maple trees.

  Leaves come in all shapes, but these maple leaves were shaped like hands, with five fingers, just like you have. Each finger had a vein that led to its stem so it could receive sap, which is like blood to trees. People say no two snowflakes are the same, and when it comes to leaves that’s true, too.

  Now a leaf collection is a delicate business. Each must be handled with care and preserved, or they’ll turn brown and crumble. That’s why the guard carried in his rucksack a heavy book. It had leather covers and was embroidered with silk. This book contained all the words ever spoken in the language of the kingdom. It was actually the keeper of language, so that no matter how much time went by, the book would always be there, to keep the language safe.

  One word in the book was Acer japonicum. It means “full moon maple.” Inside those three words there were secret words, like mull, lamp, and moon, and ape, pear, and plea. That is how trees talk to you. Secretly.

  It was the guard’s job to press the leaves between the pages of the heavy book as they went along. That way, whenever she wanted to, the princess could open the book and see each leaf, and using the words right there in the pages, she could make up a story.

  Some storytellers write down their stories and an artist draws pictures to go with it. The princess had pencils, paint, and paper in her room at the castle. Once she collected all the colors, she intended to write down the story, using the words she kept locked inside her head. I’ll bet you’re wondering how did they get inside her head. The same way as a dream. When you sleep, the story arrives, a dream with talking dogs or a moon with the face of an owl, all mixed up to make something so beautiful you can’t forget it. There were the five leaves she wanted and these are their names:

  Green leaf with golden spots.

  Golden leaf becoming orange.

  Orange leaf turning scarlet.

  Scarlet leaf turning to burgundy.

  That’s only four leaves, because I haven’t got to the last one. The rarest leaf was called Nearly Black Leaf with misshapen lobe. The same shape as your little ear. Even misshapen and torn leaves have stories. Turning colors was the second-best part of the leaves’ lives. First best was being collected by the princess. A lucky few were singled out for ironing. The guard knew how to heat up an iron and place the leaf between sheets of wax paper. Once pressed, they never lost their color, and they never dried out. This was the best fate of all, as far as the leaves were concerned. Ordinary people didn’t realize the leaves had feelings. They raked them up, stuffed them into bags, and even made bonfires with them. A bonfire is a great big fire out in the open. A good place for one is on a beach by the ocean.

  The more leaves the princess collected, the more pieces of wax paper the guard used. Soon they were stacked up under her bed, spilling out of the dresser drawers, filling every closet. When you have too much, you go to the thrift store, but the princess was selfish. She loved every leaf, so she had a hard time giving any of them away. It’s hard for some people to give up pretty things, because sometimes pretty things are the only reason to keep going.

  The man nurse arrived with his gurney. “We’re ready for Aspen now,” he said.

  “Okay.” I stood up.

  Mrs. Clemmons stood up, too. “You have quite an imagination, Laurel. I would love to hear more of that story.”

  But would she really? People from the Outside play tricks. “I don’t feel like telling any more of it today,” I said.

  “Does talking hurt your throat?”

  I looked at her, wondering if this was a trick. “I have to go to CT with Aspen.”

  “May I visit you later?”

  “We’ll probably be gone as soon as the medicine works.”

  “I hope it works quickly,” she said. “If you’re still here tomorrow, I’ll stop by and say hello.”

  She waved, turned, and walked down a hallway, holding up her nametag to a box on the wall that caused a door to open. In a story, it would be magic, but in real life, it was a computer chip. I had to walk fast to keep up with the man pushing the gurney.

  In the room for CT, the man nurse moved Aspen from the gurney bed to a white table that connected to a tall white plastic wall machine with an arm shaped like a big circle. In the middle it had a perfectly round opening. “Aspen,” I said. “It looks like a great big doughnut.” But she didn’t wake up. The person who ran the scanner came out of a small office and arranged Aspen the way she wanted her. “Are you staying?” she asked, and I said, “Yes.” She got me an apron that felt like it was filled with sand and told me to put it on over my overalls.

  She went into the small office where I guessed the switches were. The thing made a clicking, pounding noise that hurt my ears. I was sure it would wake Aspen up. After a few minutes, she started to move her legs and arms, and at first I thought, Hurray, she’s waking up, but then they began to jitter and writhe and I realized what it was. “Please, stop,” I told the woman in the booth. “She’s having a seizure.”

  She came rushing into the room and so did the man nurse waiting outside, and they hollered, “Aspen! Wake up!” and one rubbed her knuckles on her chest, while the other one felt for her pulse. Then he said, “Holy shit, she’s crashing. Call a code!”

  Sh, hit, it. Tis, his. More people came. Doctors, nurses, I don’t know, but there was yelling and pushing and carts on wheels and machines. I was shoved to the wall right next to the CT doughnut. Maybe the machine caused the seizure and t
he crashing. They put wires on her chest. They yelled out “Charging!” and “Clear!” and I could have left and no one would have noticed, but my feet would not go. I put my hands against the wall to make sure I was standing up, because it didn’t feel like that.

  Then I prayed, the way Seth always complained I didn’t. With my whole heart.

  Chapter 5

  Santa Fe, Thanksgiving Day, 2008

  The Vigil family’s Thanksgiving began like any other morning in the City Different. Juniper awoke to the smell of bacon frying, which meant her dad had been out walking the dogs and was now in the kitchen making breakfast. She heard the dogs barking outside, probably at a rabbit. In the summer, the rabbits’ tan bodies blended into the high-desert landscape, but come winter they stood out against the snow like targets. The rabbits’ whole reason for existence seemed to be tormenting the dogs by staying just out of reach. Juniper looked at her watch and scowled. It was early enough that she was going to have to go outdoors and haul them inside. She sat up, pulled on her Ugg boots, and wrapped her old Pendleton blanket around her shoulders.

  “Caddy!” she called as she hurried through the great room and flung open the French doors. A blast of cold air smacked her in the face. “Dodge, Caddy, indoors now!”

  Her border collie came to her right away, but Dodge was being his usual asshole self, barking as if a rabbit in his yard meant Armageddon. Juniper sighed and crunched her way across the snowdrifts to fetch him. She slept in an old T-shirt, boxers, and socks, and her bare thighs were freezing. She grabbed hold of Dodge’s collar and hauled the sixty-pound heeler–golden retriever toward the portal. “What the hell is wrong with you, Dodge? You know better than to bark like a maniac and wake Mom up.”

  Dodge wagged his tail as if she was congratulating him. Juniper watched as he trotted behind Caddy into the house and headed straight for the kitchen. It never ceased to amaze her what you could make a dog do if bacon was involved. The cafeteria at the University of New Mexico Albuquerque served “fakon,” a mysterious meat product that tasted like firewood. Their other specialty was unrecognizable casseroles that tasted so weird that Juniper had basically been living on vending-machine burritos since September. Her suitemates—Lily and Bernadette—had both put on twenty pounds since school began. No way that was going to happen to Juniper. She monitored her carbs, ate very little sugar, and ran thirty miles a week rain or shine.

  “Morning, Daddy Joe,” she said and hugged her adoptive father as he flipped eggs in the frying pan and slipped the dogs a slice of bacon each.

  “Chiquita, what are you doing up so early? I expected you’d sleep in.”

  She smiled. “I wanted to, but the dogs had other ideas. Didn’t you hear them barking?”

  “They’re dogs. Their job is to bark, and they do it very well.”

  “I didn’t want them to wake Mom up. Besides, now that I’m up, I think I’ll go for a run. Where’s Eddie?”

  “Snuggled under the covers, I expect. Take a break from running today. Sit. I’ll fix you a special breakfast.”

  She filled and drank a glass of water. “Save me a plate. I want to run while the traffic is light. See you later, Señor Alligator.”

  “In a while, Professor Crocodile.” He reached out and touched her shoulder. “Hey, happy ‘Gotcha’ day.”

  Her heart soared. Four years earlier, as a surly fourteen-year-old, she’d been dropped off on Glory Solomon’s doorstep and everything changed. Glory adopted her, Joe married Glory, and then he adopted her as well. Today was the anniversary, and it just killed her that Daddy Joe never forgot, that he treated this day as if it were a national holiday aside from Thanksgiving. “Best day of my life,” she said, and kissed his cheek.

  She pulled on her running tights and laced up her winter running shoes. After a brief stretch, she harnessed up Dodge, waved bye to her dad, and headed out the front door into the brisk winter day ahead. Daddy Joe had convinced her to take up running shortly after they met in California and he’d become her tutor. He promised that pushing her body physically would help her deal with the grief over losing her sister, Casey, a sorrow that never seemed to abate. By the time she got to thinking about Casey, gone nearly eight years now, she’d run five miles and soon everything fell back into place. She ran longer on the weekends, sometimes ten or twelve miles, which was how she’d met Topher.

  Christopher Adams VI. Junior class, incredible musician, and so good-looking it was kind of criminal. He was her first real boyfriend, the kind who asked you out on dates instead of just showing up at your dorm room with a toothbrush in his pocket. Earlier this fall, at quarter to six one morning, before the heat index made running impossible, she was heading out for a few miles. Laguna de Vargas, the residence hall she lived in, was filled with girls sleeping off the previous night’s party. Juniper didn’t fit in with that crowd, and in fact hated dorm life, but Daddy Joe insisted she stick out the term since he’d already paid for it.

  Topher was just returning from a gig. He had a guitar slung over his back and was smoking a cigarette. He smiled and waved, then turned to watch her run off. She hated cigarettes, but with his turquoise eyes and spiky dark hair he looked so much like Jakob Dylan that people whispered maybe he was attending school under a fake name so the paparazzi would leave him alone. The next time she ran, there he was, in the same spot, sans guitar, waiting. “I’ll meet you for coffee at the Standard,” he’d said, as if he was sure she wouldn’t say no. The Standard was an Albuquerque diner in a yellow building with a red neon sign, and it had really great coffee. Lots of students hung out there, but Juniper rarely did, since she was usually studying. When she showed up, showered, her honey-colored hair brushed, blow-dried, and curled, there he was in a booth by the window, writing in his notebook. He was the same height as she was, and rock-star skinny. He wrote his own music, and he thought Juniper—and even her tattoo—was beautiful. Thanksgiving was always special to her, but this year would be insanely great because he was coming to her house for dinner, and staying the weekend.

  Her heart pounded at the thought of seeing him in just a few hours.

  At her side, Dodge woofed at nothing she could see. He was being so bad lately, chewing up shoes, barking at the chickens, and not minding, that she’d decided to get him good and tired by making him run with her so that maybe they could enjoy dinner in peace. He liked to run and he had no trouble matching her pace. They ran past houses already decorated for Christmas. On the adobe walls, farolitos—little candles wedged in sand inside paper bags—waited for dusk. Tiny electric fairy lights were hung across painted gates. Down the road a kid was half-heartedly working on making a snowman out of the snow dump they’d gotten in late October. Juniper pulled Dodge’s leash close so he wouldn’t bark at the child. He didn’t mean anything threatening, he was just an oaf who forgot his manners the minute you stopped working with him. He gravitated toward young kids. Juniper always imagined Dodge’s dream life would be as the neighborhood dog in a pack of kids that hung around the cul-de-sac. He was always up for fetch or Frisbee.

  There was a hefty evergreen garland splayed across the faded purple gate of the artist-compound studios. On Christmas Eve, people who lived on Canyon Road and Acequia Madre lit little bonfires in their driveways—luminarias—and everyone strolled the streets as neighbors handed out bizcochitos, hot cider, and stronger drinks to total strangers. Juniper tried never to miss it. Every holiday with her new family she forced herself to do holiday rituals, like tree decorating, present wrapping, and making homemade farolitos to line the driveway. She did all this in an effort to be happy, and to counteract the tiny arrow that lodged in her heart. The arrow was a leftover sherd from the time when all holidays had screeched to a stop—the year her sister Casey disappeared. The search for her sister was considered a “cold case”; in other words, everyone knew she was dead even though her body had never been found. The courts said ten years had to pass before they could legally declare it. Juniper agreed it was the most lo
gical outcome—who stays away from their family for eight years? But there was a part of her heart that held out this crazy glimmer of hope. On days like today, when the blues threatened to take over and ruin things, she fought it by running. You’re a big girl, she told herself. So what if your childhood basically ended at age eleven? Topher arrives today! Daddy Joe’s making turkey dinner. Auntie Halle and Uncle Bart will be here, and Gran! Juniper loved Glory’s mother with all her heart. She was a salty old lady who spoke her mind whether she was asked to or not. Focus on the family you have right here, she told herself.

  She and Dodge crossed Paseo de Peralta to East Alameda, passing the Santa Fe River, icy this time of year. Bare cottonwood tree branches alongside it were stark against the blue sky. The smell of mesquite and piñon fires filtered through the chilly air as she headed toward Guadalupe, where she would turn right and run through the railyard. Some dork wolf-whistled at her and she felt a small flare of anger, but didn’t bother to see who it was. Santa Fe had its share of freaks just as California had, and the best thing to do was ignore them. Here she was, running with a dopey dog that would probably lick a stranger’s hand. Shit. Now she was thinking of Casey again, and whoever had taken her, and now that the door was open, images flooded her mind.

  The first Thanksgiving after Casey disappeared, Juniper’s father had already moved out. I can’t take any more of this, he said, and left with only one suitcase, as if his whole life fit inside it. Her mother would only sleep on the living room couch that faced the front door, because what if Casey came to the door? The TV was always on, tuned to a news channel, because what if someone found Casey, but she had amnesia and didn’t know her name? Holidays didn’t mean anything. Juniper tried not to bother her mom, but that last Thanksgiving she’d thought, Maybe I could cook the turkey if she told me how. If you’re hungry, make yourself a baloney sandwich, her mother had said when she worked up the courage to ask. Then she changed the channel from CNN to local news.