What I Carry: Chapters 10–15

“How you can be so completely unaware of your place in the social strata of this school is baffling.”

Her face in the firelight was wistful. “I miss it so much.”

We watched her walk to the fire, Elliot beside and towering over her, and over most of the rest of the kids at the fire. Gangly. Artsy. Pretty cute.

But I’d promised her—and what was I even thinking, muddying the waters of my imminent life of freedom by caring so much already?

A little way from the firelight, at the water’s edge, we sat on a precarious pile of driftwood logs.

There it was, the obligation Sean was tending. Kira was right; he wasn’t friendly with her of his own volition.

“So,” he said, “here’s the thing: Jason, whose job you have, was kind of a Natan apologist, but I feel like with you, I’ve got a partner in suffering, so thank you.”

“Right,” he said, instantly reticent.

His was the best, truest laugh I’d heard in forever. I think maybe in my life I’ve had a laugh deficit.

Sean turned to me, his face earnest, so beautiful, so close to mine.

“Okay, then wait for me here. If you go downstairs, Mom will shove food down your gullet till you beg for mercy.”

Yes, I silently derided Natan nonstop, but my instinct was not “judgment”—it was, in reality, more of an objective evaluation of abundant evidence.

“Muiriel, you are a natural beauty,” he said. “There’s no need to conform to society’s patriarchal norms for the world to see you. Because we already do. We see you—the true you.”

What could he possibly see in me? And what was I doing worrying about it? Disregarding a lifetime of careful avoidance of just this sort of distraction from my goal of aging out independent and unencumbered?

Oh, we definitely started with feces. Rolling it in cat litter, bagging it, tucking it into the backpack. His was a unique talent for making each detail as sordid as possible.

In thirty seconds Sean had Natan’s arm in a firm hold, leading him to Jane’s office, and I had vehemently debunked the bears-and-blood bull...

“Don’t get me wrong, I love a good thrift shop find, but if we’re revamping your whole wardrobe, I gotta tell you: this island has a big retired people population and they do a lot of the donating....It’s going to be mostly ‘active adult senior’ style.”

Plenty of photographs show the guy in swanky vests and sweaters, even sandals in later life.

I loved how it kept her fingers safe from needle pricks, how shiny the brass started and how warm the patina after she used it for a while.

Normally that word makes me preemptively furious. Promise.

I had stared for hours at library book pictures of Rainier’s grassy snow-dappled fields, evergreens and alpine wildflowers, hillside creek beds of crystal water splashing over rocks and tumbling down sheer cliffs in roaring falls and the gorgeous snow-capped peak, rising above a veil of mist I could see as I walked Seattle's streets.

The main thing Joellen worries about is my being “allergic to sentimentality,” which I see more as an allergy to cornball fake sincerity.

Everything we’d heard through the window, all we knew about Natan’s life and Jane’s, the nepotism that kept him ruining every otherwise-perfect day spent in the trees, made me even less inclined to make eye contact with him.

The minister and his wife had adopted poor Ida at birth, and then spent the next sixteen years making sure she knew she wasn’t really an actual person, “only an adopted child” and not worthy of respect or dinner at a reasonable hour, not until the manual labor was all done. Ida was, it seemed, less of a daughter and more of a beaten-down indentured servant.

The bells rang and Elliot materialized as if summoned.

Tiana’s saccharine upspeak gave me the creeps. Everything was a question.

And Kira, who was happy to see me every day, who was herself the reason I never felt nervous or had to eat alone at school, who was nice to everyone—she put her head down and filled boxes with the pastries Tiana pointed to, impatient and entitled and wallowing in Kira’s humility.

“Young love,” came a voice from the crowd, and then Natan emerged, leering in a vape cloud, the stupid pipe jammed in the corner of his mouth like he wished he were a nineteenth-century British detective.

Bun stringy and high on his head, his usual Teva sandal situation on his feet but wearing a wool sweater and a batik wrap skirt, which, good for him smashing patriarchal clothing norms but then negating that with his vape-free arm wrapped tight around a pasty, waifish girl, lank blond hair to her waist.

Hey there, my wee protégé.

“Hello,” I said, extending my hand to the waif.

“We can’t resort to violence,” I said. “Sadly. Jane would side with him, and we’d get fired. But I appreciate the sentiment, and I would happily join you in the endeavor.”

She gives them the powers of flight and time travel, encourages them to surrender to the magic and enjoy themselves, then acts all affronted and accuses them of lying when they mention how fun the adventure was.

The children are confused and manipulated, desperate for Mary’s love, which she doles out sparingly, just enough to keep them wanting more—and then she leaves them.

Kira was instantly beside me, peering through the shelves at Sean chatting with the other half of our euphoniously conjoined nemesis.

I could hear Elliot and Kira chatting it up in the supply room, laughing about who knows what—private jokes about tempera paint and stippling.

“Orlando and I want you to know,” the woman said in a cloying, floaty voice, “that we’ve read your file, and we understand with open hearts that you are wounded, and we will honor and respect that.”

“Well, blessed afternoon to you, too, Happy!” Natan said when I walked at last, still confused and frustrated, through the lodge and into the field to my respite, my Salishwood.

If there’s one thing living in a city had instilled in me, it was iron-clad personal-space boundaries and an acute and trusting ear for my own inner voice.

Fallen branch. I stared at it, gnarled and big, partly buried in dead leaves and moss, I could get it with both hands—