Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
BENDING BIRCHES
Marlowe and Nora trekked through the Flats, toward the stone wall they’d completed last summer.
It was Marlowe’s sixteenth birthday, and Enzo was making steak au poivre and crispy potatoes, per her request. He vowed it would be better than anything she could order in a New York restaurant and then shooed them out for a walk to work up their appetites in the brisk winter air.
They perched for a moment on the stone wall, catching their breath. The wall already looked like it had been there forever, already seemed to have weathered many winters.
“So, I know you asked your parents for that travel easel this year. But now that we’re alone, you can tell me your real birthday wish,” Nora said, nudging Marlowe’s shoulder with her own.
The two of them always shared their birthday wishes. Contrary to the rule about wishes not coming true when said out loud, Marlowe believed sharing with each other only made the wishes stronger.
“I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to laugh,” Marlowe said. She could already feel herself starting to blush.
Nora feigned shock at the request. “Laugh? Me? Never.”
“I want to be kissed.” Marlowe buried her face in her hands. “It’s pathetic, I know. But it would be even worse to turn sixteen and be unkissed! So that’s what I want.”
Nora sat cross-legged on top of the wall, and she leaned forward and touched Marlowe’s knee.
“It’s not pathetic or embarrassing at all,” Nora said. “It means you have high standards and you’re waiting for someone worthy.”
Marlowe squeezed her friend’s hand. No one else in the world could have made her feel so much better with so few words.
While they sat on the wall, Nora confessed to Marlowe about how much she hated school these days. Ever since she and Sean broke up, she didn’t have any friends to hang out with.
“Everyone is stupid,” Nora said as she wiggled atop the wall, the rock beneath her wobbling. “I hate the boring teachers, and I hate how everyone only cares about the next basketball or baseball game. I hate this whole town.”
Marlowe hummed in sympathy. “I don’t have many friends at my school either. No one like you.”
“But you’re in the city—you have so much to do outside of school.” Nora slouched, her entire body deflating. “I’m only happy when you guys are up here.”
“It will be summer in a few months.” Marlowe linked her arm through Nora’s. “And I’ll be at the Gray House the whole time. We just have to wait until summer.”
“Let’s not wait!” Nora hoisted herself down off the wall. “Let’s jump in now.”
“Jump in the river?” Marlowe glanced at the ice clinging to the edge of the nearby bank.
“I heard it’s good for your metabolism! I think they call it cold plunging.” Nora was practically bouncing on her toes. “Come on, let’s go to the Bend! A birthday plunge!”
“You’re crazy, but okay, let’s do it.” Marlowe laughed and grabbed Nora’s hand as they jogged the half mile through a thin layer of snow to the Bend.
Silvery ice lined the edges of the swimming hole, but the center was churning. The Bean rarely froze over.
Marlowe and Nora spent several minutes deciding how many items of clothing to take off. “Obviously, we have to take off our boots and coats, but is it better or worse to jump in with shirts and jeans on?” Nora wondered.
“Our jeans might be too heavy,” Marlowe pointed out. “Once they’re wet, they’ll weigh us down.”
She remembered a summer long ago when Nate pushed her into the Bean fully clothed as a joke. She wasn’t scared until she tried to pull herself to the surface, and her sneakers held her back, like weights around her feet. She made it up, but for a brief moment, she was terrified.
“I think underwear is best,” Nora said. “We’ll just have to get dressed with our dry things quickly and run.”
Marlowe nodded. “Agreed.”
Their squeals and whimpers of excitement echoed off the water’s surface as they rapidly stripped down, tossing their sweaters, shirts, and jeans in a pile, until they were standing together in bras and panties.
Marlowe felt a burst of self-consciousness about the shadow of hair peeking out from her underwear, but Nora didn’t care. She had her own hair. She’d once confided that she hated shaving down there unless she absolutely had to. For swimsuits and whatnot.
Marlowe ventured to dip a toe in the water.
“Big mistake,” Nora said. “It’s best to just jump and do it quick.”
Marlowe looked back. Nora’s skin was already purple with cold.
“All right.” Marlowe took a breath. “No more thinking, we jump together.”
“I’ll jump when you jump.”
Marlowe counted them down. “One, two, three, go!”
They dove headfirst into the current. The rush of water was nothing like swimming in the summer. It wasn’t painful at first—it felt amazing. As Marlowe pushed her head through the surface, she felt energy spread over her skin, as if her body had come alive.
Only after another second did Marlowe feel the cold. Her chest suddenly felt as if it had caved in, and she let out a scream of mingled joy and pain.
“Holy shit!” Nora yelped. “Oh my God.”
Her hair was plastered to her head, the blond streaks turned dark by the water. They paddled back to shore as quickly as possible, their teeth chattering.
“That was amazing,” Marlowe cried.
“My lungs.” Nora pressed a hand to her chest.
“Yeah, mine too.”
They yanked on their jeans, the thick fabric catching on their wet skin. Then they threw on their shirts and shoved their feet into their boots without bothering with socks. They scooped up their coats and ran.
“I feel like I’m gonna die!” Nora screamed as they sprinted across the Flats, the cold air biting at their skin.
“Why do I have the urge to jump back in?” Marlowe gasped.
“Because you’re a lunatic!”
They scrambled into the gully and then climbed out, half stumbling to the top of the Rise, and then the Gallagher barn was in sight.
“Almost there!” Nora yelled.
A second burst of adrenaline kicked in, and Marlowe felt as if sparks were flying from her fingertips as they ran down to the cow fence and launched themselves over.
She landed in a crouch and set off running again.
Her feet were going numb, but surely hypothermia took more than ten minutes to set in.
They banged through the front door of the Gray House and kicked off their boots.
Henry poked his head out from the kitchen. “What the heck?”
“We jumped in the Bean!” Marlowe yelled. “It was freezing.”
“But amazing!”
Glory looked like she might scold them, but she laughed instead. “You girls are crazy! Now hurry, go get some dry clothes on before you turn into icicles.”
Within minutes, they had dashed to the girls’ room, torn off their wet clothes, and yanked on dry shirts and sweatpants, too cold and used to each other to be precious about nudity. They ran back down to the fire and pressed themselves up against the screen, lips purple but stretched into smiles.
“It felt so good,” Marlowe said. “Like my skin was buzzing.”
“I almost want to do it again,” Nora said.
“Brave girls.” Enzo winked. “French ladies douse their faces in ice water every day to make their skin glow.”
Henry did not hide his jealousy as he stomped about swinging his long limbs.
He had finally hit his growth spurt and had shot up by several inches, but he still acted boyish at times.
He hadn’t joined them on the walk. With Nate away at college, Henry was hesitant to believe the girls were capable of cooking up exciting activities on their own.
“You should have gotten me before you did it!” Henry said.
Marlowe laughed. “We couldn’t stall, we had to act!”
She pulled her long hair over her shoulder and leaned over the fire so that the flames could dry her freezing, wet strands. Nora did the same thing, bending over and throwing her locks upside down so they dangled above the screen.
“Don’t burn yourselves,” Glory said. “I don’t want to have to put out a fire on your heads.”
Frank wandered in from the study. He smiled at them drying their hair by the heat of the fire and recited a line from one of his favorite poems: “You may see their trunks arching in the woods, years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground. Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair before them over their heads to dry in the sun.”