Maggie
On the bus ride to the Poconos, she has a memory.
Once when Chip was eight and she was seven, she was on the tree swing and heard mewling.
She knelt and found a kitten inside the hollow at the bottom of the trunk.
“Chip!” she yelled. The kitten was gray and striped and runty, and it wiggled around, its eyes shut.
Her brother came running from fixing the chain on his bike in the driveway. “Don’t touch it!” he said. They stared down at this small unexpected creature.
“How did it get here?” she asked. She wanted to scoop it up and kiss its tiny damp head.
“I’m getting Mom.” Chip went to find their mother, who had just come home from her job at the Daisy Cup factory. Birdy Girl, a puppy then, came running out with them; Chip gripped her collar before she got too close.
“I think the mama will be back,” their mom said. She clicked her tongue. “Unless she abandoned it because it’s too weak.”
“Then we have to help it,” Maggie said, and she reached right in and picked up the kitten. She was always impulsive like that.
“Maggie!” Chip and their mom said in unison.
She stares out the bus window now, her head against the cool glass, the June sun brightening the fields and small towns they pass.
She remembers how hard they tried to save the kitten: droppers of milk, warm towels from the dryer, Maggie and Chip hovering over its small box every day talking to it, encouraging it, but its eyes barely opening.
“I think we know why the mom took it away from the others,” their dad said, gripping their shoulders.
One morning, Maggie walked up to its box, Birdy Girl looking at her like she knew the truth already, and the kitten was still and cold.
She bent down and tried to warm it with her breath, but it didn’t move. She cried so hard it woke her parents.
The bus rumbles to a stoplight now. Maggie’s stomach lurches as she figures they must be getting closer to Bradley Falls. She cracks her knuckles and takes deep breaths.
That day they lost the kitten they never named, they buried it by the big oak tree.
Maggie sat on the tree swing, the ropes in her hands.
She could hear the birds, and the humidity had broken.
The evening was still and beautiful. “Want me to push you?” Chip said.
He often acted like this—as though he was twenty and she was five.
She nodded. He stood behind her and pushed her toward the sky. The swing didn’t go far, but she held on tight and it felt good. The air smelled like sweet grass, and for a second, she forgot about the tiny cat.
She remembers the feeling of sailing, of being pushed out and brought back by gravity. She swallowed the lump in her throat. He had pulled out his harmonica, which he always kept in his pocket, and played “You Are My Sunshine,” the notes echoing in the backyard.
Her heart clenches now, like someone is stapling it.
Her duffel bag rests between her ankles, and she realizes how silly it will be to show up at Red Maple.
What will she do, walk in and apply for a job during their busiest season when they must be fully staffed already?
Will she ask the first person she sees if they knew Chip, or will she feel things out for a while?
Will she tell them how much her heart hurts, how big her questions are—that she needs to know he was happy, that she wants to hear everything he said and did? That she can’t decide what she wants from her future until she knows what his last days were like?
She also wonders what happened to Chip’s best friend, Vicky.
After the funeral, Vicky left town and hadn’t returned.
“She’ll come back when she’s ready,” Vicky’s dad said to her parents.
A guilty look passed over his face as though he realized his kid might return and theirs never would.
Maggie felt sad about Vicky leaving and worse about leaving herself.
In this way, Chip had been a bad influence, teaching them all to run.
She thinks of her parents, how she wanted to tell them she was setting off, and for where, and why.
But she was afraid they’d try to stop her, and she just needed to leave.
She stood in the kitchen before they were awake, Birdy Girl wagging her tail.
Maggie bent down and kissed the dog’s head.
“I’ll figure this out, Bird.” She stroked the dog’s ear a few times, and Birdy looked up at her unblinking.
Maggie took out the family notebook where they left messages for one another, flipped back a handful of pages, and found some of Chip’s old notes:
Mama Bear, Jackie called AGAIN.
Dad, your dentist needs to reschedule. Call them if you want to keep that movie-star smile.
Tiger, let me know if you need a ride to Millman’s. It’s not on my way, but I’m a nice guy.
She could feel the muscles in her face ache—this always happened when she thought of him.
Some days he still seemed alive and real, writing these letters with a pen she could find in the drawer and hold.
She turned to a clean page. Off to the Poconos for a while.
Looking for a summer job and some answers.
I’ll call soon—please don’t be mad. Love you.
It was wrong to leave them with a note, the same way he did.
She felt terrible for abandoning them. But they were each out on their own in this storm, and until one of them figured something out, there was no end in sight.
She closed her eyes and promised to make sense of this.
She promised to go to Red Maple and get better so she could show her mom and dad the way.
Maybe she’d figure out something about Vicky and help her, too, which is what Chip would want.
She looks ahead now as the bus sighs and the brakes squeak. Everything is green: golf greens in the distance, green mountains, and so many trees. The driver says, “Next stop, ladies and gentlemen, Bradley Falls.”