Preview of Our Little World by Karen Winn
Preview of Our Little World by Karen Winn
Prologue
I see whispers of my dead sister. I see her when I am driving, through the fogged‑up window, her brown hair entangled in my windshield wipers. I am tempted to pull over and carefully remove each hair strand, as if untangling a knotted necklace—one, I suppose, that knotted due to my carelessness. I see my sister’s small hands clasped around the same passenger pole I am clinging to in the crowded subway. We are all packed in, our fingers curling around the pole one on top of another in a tree-ring formation, but I instantly recognize the creases in her knuckles and the way her right pinky sits at an odd crooked angle—the result of a bike accident when we were young. I see my sister in the pile of still dead leaves from the red oak tree in our parents’ backyard.
Audrina is a lurker, which surprises me. She is always there, on the periphery. Sitting, thin ankles crossed, in the waiting room of my being. When she was alive, in her short life, she was vibrant.
I can’t figure out if death has subdued her, or if it has given her some sort of calming, new age wisdom. There is also the very real possibility that she is just confused, trying to figure out what happened to her.
What happened to us.
Chapter One
My sister isn’t the only dead girl I’ve known, and not the first, either. Before Audrina, there was Sally. Little Sally Baker. My sister knew her, too. She knew her just as long as I did, which wasn’t very long—not even the length of a summer.
It was June 1985 when the Baker family moved into the green-shuttered house across the street. I was twelve years old, the same age as Max, Sally’s older brother. Audrina, my sister, was a year younger than we were, though you wouldn’t have thought it. She was always acting older than she was, even back then: sneaking into our parents’ bathroom to use our mother’s makeup and perfume, pilfering her earrings and rings to stash away and try on later. My sister loved to get dolled up and gaze at herself in the mirror. “Pipiske,” Father called her, an old Hungarian term of endearment meaning “girly” or “sweet.”
I was not a tomboy but felt I needed to act like one. Audrina had stolen the looks in our family—a belief I knew didn’t make sense but was convinced of nonetheless. She had Father’s green eyes, and her hair was a shiny light brown that turned gold in the summer. My hair and eyes were so brown I thought of them as brown-brown, and my hair didn’t change in the sun.
So to balance the equation, I acted tough, boy-like—the exact opposite of Audrina. I couldn’t compete with someone who had managed to hoard all of the desirable genetics from our parents, so I cut my hair short even though I secretly wanted it long, and when I turned ten, I replaced my once-favorite faded pink unicorn shirt with a navy blue Cosmos one. The Cosmos were the New York professional soccer team that Father had taken us to see play at Giants Stadium, and I liked the way he smiled every time he saw me wear the it.
The summer that the Baker family moved in across the street was the same summer that the Cosmos last played, after the North American Soccer League folded and Father’s hopes for an American soccer craze were dashed. It was the summer Audrina and I befriended Max and Sally Baker, and it was the summer that Sally disappeared.
Sally was four years old, and I used to think about how I was three times her age when it happened. For years afterward, come each birthday, I would divide my age by three, even though I was aware it didn’t actually work that way: I am thirteen, and Sally would be four years and three months. I am fifteen, and Sally would be—should be—five.
When we heard that the Bakers had moved to our sleepy New Jersey town from Boston, I instantly felt like they were special. In our sixth-grade class we’d read about the famous historic events that had taken place in Boston, like the Boston Tea Party and Paul Revere’s midnight ride, and I envisioned that it was a bustling, exciting city, much like New York City, which we’d last visited the previous winter. The Baker family must have stories to tell, I decided, and I wanted to impress Max with my historical knowledge of his hometown.
“ ‘One if by land, two if by sea,’ ” I’d uttered from atop my bike, the first evening we met. Our street dead-ended into a cul‑de‑sac, and we neighborhood kids would congregate there in the early evenings. Summer was in us and around us; we played kickball, tic-tac-toe, hopscotch, and sometimes even made a makeshift shuffleboard with chalk and a marble. Other times we just twirled around on our bikes until the sky began to darken and fireflies started to appear.
I remember how Max and Sally had stood along the hickory-tree-lined edge of the cul‑de‑sac, waiting to be invited in. Max held Sally’s hand as she buried her blond hair into his side.
He was cute, just about the cutest boy I’d ever seen. Long brown bangs that swept sideways across his blue-eyed face and a right-sided dimple when he smiled. Which he did, suddenly, at me. I remember how my hands grew wet on the clasp of my handlebar and how I wished I hadn’t chopped off my hair a few months earlier.
“Paul Revere,” he’d replied, his dimple growing even more pronounced. Sally put her hands over her face and then parted her fingers slightly so she could see. “Borka, right?” Max asked.
I flushed, surprised he knew my name, but then realized Mother had likely dropped off a welcome basket to their house on our behalf. “Yeah, but everyone calls me Bee,” I quickly replied, wanting to erase the word Borka from his vocabulary. How I hated my name.
Audrina appeared next to me, and I wondered whether Max had actually been smiling at her instead of me. She wasn’t on a bike; she hadn’t been on one in a long time. Those days all she wanted to do was wear dresses and skirts and watch with a bored look while we horsed around. Nobody seemed to mind; in fact, I’d noticed how the Wiley brothers from up the street would glance over to see if Audrina noticed when they did wheelies and scored runs in kickball. I wanted to tell them they were wasting their time. Audrina noticed, but it didn’t mean anything. She was used to people vying for her attention, perhaps too used to it.
“Hi there,” Audrina said, moving toward Max and Sally. She crouched down to Sally’s level, and Sally now removed her hands completely away from her face to look at my sister. Sally’s arms and hands were thick enough to make her wrist creases a little pronounced, and the curve of her belly protruded from her pale, flowered strappy dress. A set of tiny red heart studs rested on her pierced earlobes. I’d only gotten my ears pierced two years earlier.
“Oooh,” Sally said, thrusting one of her arms forward to rub the charm bracelet Audrina was wearing on her left wrist. Then she suddenly stopped, as if realizing she should have asked before handling it. She glanced at her brother, who slowly nodded, and she then turned back to Audrina. “Tho pretty,” she said, with a lisp.
Audrina laughed. “You like it? Which charm is your favorite?”
Sally lifted her other arm up so both hands now encircled the bracelet. She leaned her face into the jewelry piece, as if she were smelling it. After a moment’s hesitation, she declared, “This one.”
From my angle I couldn’t see which charm Sally meant, and I wondered if it was the jeweled box—the charm I had always coveted. Even in my self-appointed tomboy phase, I was enamored with it—with the entire bracelet, really. That particular charm was a shiny gold color and adorned with red, blue, and green stones. The box opened up to reveal a space so small it could barely hold the top of the pencil eraser that Audrina often put in it. Mother once called the bracelet “costume jewelry,” a phrase I wouldn’t know the true meaning of until later. At the time, costume jewelry conjured images of Halloween and other dress‑up occasions, so I thought it sounded marvelous.
While I couldn’t tell which charm Sally had identified as her favorite, I did clearly see how Audrina whispered something in Sally’s ear, and how Sally then wrapped her arms around my sister’s neck. The sun was starting to set, casting the sky with a warm dusky hue, and I remember being aware that Audrina had somehow just gained both Sally’s trust and Max’s admiration—as he looked on, smiling. It was supposed to be a feel-good moment, a happy one—like the ending of a Disney movie.
But not for me. Instead, I felt as if I were a puzzle piece that had accidentally gotten tossed into the wrong box. Audrina had a way of doing that—making me feel like I didn’t belong.
Borka, right? I would always be a Borka. I would always be the hideous namesake of Father’s Hungarian aunt who had died at age twenty-two from a brain aneurysm. I had never even seen a picture of her—Father had left everything behind in Hungary. I couldn’t care any less that she died young. In my mind she was just an ugly, faceless five-lettered-name.
And Audrina would always be an Audrina, always knowing what to do, how to act. Always belonging in beautiful moments. Creating them, really. Even now, it astounds me. We were so young, but everything came naturally to her. Mother had chosen Audrina’s name simply because she thought it was pretty, which is the way one rightfully ought to acquire a name.
That day was the start of it all. Later I would decide it was somehow Audrina’s fault, that if she hadn’t captivated Sally, hadn’t shown her the charm bracelet, then things wouldn’t have happened the way they did.
Audrina and I slipped into our usual pattern that summer. Summer days in the Kocsis household of our youth often meant spending lazy, unstructured mornings in pajamas, eating cereal and French toast with powdered sugar, and watching episodes of Silver Spoons. At some point we’d change into our bathing suits while we waited to see whether our mother or another neighborhood mother would be taking us kids to the lake or “the club”—Hammend’s Tennis & Swim Club.
Soon after the Bakers’ arrival, Mrs. Baker entered into the carpool mix, and because of their proximity to us—right across the street—he or Mother would often cart us around for the day. My sister and I quickly became close with the Baker kids, our friendships accelerated in the way that young summers and unstructured time allow.
If we woke up early enough and cajoled Max and Sally to join us, Father would drop us off at the club on his way to work. He owned his own roofing and siding business, and its storefront was located about thirty miles away from Hammend, in the city of East Orange. I always looked forward to breakfast at the club—they had a Taylor ham, egg, and cheese sandwich that came with a side of crispy fries, no matter the hour. Audrina equally enjoyed their toasted bagel drenched in butter and grape jelly. Max and Sally, who seemed to eat whatever kind of food they desired at their house, were less than enthusiastic about the early hour but usually acquiesced.
Father would get annoyed if we pulled up to the Bakers’ house and they weren’t ready—which happened often. One morning we waited for a good ten minutes on their circular driveway, and Father began muttering under his breath, his shoulders drawn sharply together. When the front door finally swung open, Mrs. Baker emerged in a pink satin robe, holding a robin’s‑egg-blue coffee mug, Max and Sally trailing behind her. As they climbed into the back seat alongside Audrina, Mrs. Baker leisurely strolled up to Father’s rolled-down window like she had all the time in the world. She was a large woman with light brown wavy hair that she wore loose around her shoulders. As she leaned down to peer inside Father’s window, her breasts pushed together and forward, creating a bumpy shelf. I was sitting in the front passenger seat, in full view, and averted my eyes in embarrassment. The other kids didn’t seem to notice; I heard Sally giggling from the back seat while Max relayed a story to Audrina about some cereal mishap.
“Sorry,” Mrs. Baker simply said to Father, who at first didn’t respond; I think he was waiting for the explanation to follow, but none did. She just took a sip from her mug as she pushed herself up from the window, and Father stiffened, as if he’d just become aware of something unpleasant.
Mrs. Baker secretly fascinated me; she was so different from the other Hammend mothers, especially my own. I couldn’t imagine Mother wearing her bathrobe anywhere other than inside our house, and she certainly didn’t own a satin one. Mother’s choice of dress was classic and tailored, her bathrobe safely muted, her skirts and high-waisted pants always paired with monochromatic shirts and blouses. At first it wasn’t clear why the Bakers had decided to move to Hammend. There seemed to be an air of mystery surrounding their appearance in our town, even among the adults. One morning I’d overheard Mother whispering something on the phone to our neighbor Mrs. Wiley about “Fran”—Mrs. Baker—but before I could hear more, Mother had spotted me lurking outside the kitchen.
Dr. Baker was a big-time trauma surgeon, we learned, yet his new place of employment, our hospital, twenty miles away, was just a small community one.
“We lived in the city, right in the city, so my parents, er, dad could walk to work,” Max once told us. “He was in charge of the trauma department, and his hospital was where all the really hurt people would go, like if you were in a car crash or something.”
Max didn’t share that his mother was a nurse—we would find that out later through the neighborhood gossip.
I’d assumed, because of Dr. Baker’s career and since they came from Boston (which seemed fancy in itself), that Max and Sally—once she was old enough—would be going the private school route, like many of the kids on our street did: Mrs. Wiley’s two sons, Andrew and Patrick, and the two older girls, Diane and Courtney, who lived at the very top of Hickory Place, around the bend. So I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Max would be joining me at Hammend’s own junior high, Hillside, come fall.
Perhaps Mother was right about our good public school system. She often touted its qualities, like the number of high school graduates who went on to attend four-year colleges. Mother had grown up in Paterson, a nearby New Jersey city, and the only way to leave home in her neighborhood, she’d once told Audrina and me, was to get married.
I knew this was the reason why we lived in Hammend: Mother hoped for more for us. I also knew that even if we could have afforded private school, our parents still wouldn’t have sent us. We didn’t function in quite the same way as some of the other families in the neighborhood. There was a paucity of things in our house that didn’t exist in other homes. It was evident in our cupboards that held just enough pasta boxes and cans, in the backpacks that Audrina and I were expected to use year after year, until the zippers broke or the material wore thin. Father was always repurposing furniture he picked up at yard sales; the now-forgotten playhouse in our backyard had come from such scavenging. Mother, meanwhile, nurtured our house like another child—cleaning it regularly, excessively even. “A place for everything, and everything in its place,” she often said. She believed in orderliness, Father believed in practicality, and the combination ensured a stringent childhood upbringing.
Father had once told us he owned just two pairs of pants after immigrating to America that were donated by the local church; each evening he’d wash the pair he’d worn that day to school and then to the sausage factory, where he was an underage worker. Any money he received he gave to his struggling parents to supplement the small wages they earned from their day jobs at the chemical factory and their office-building janitorial duties at night.
Audrina and I certainly never lacked for anything—for clothes, or food, or toys; each year we received a sufficient but reasonable number of gifts under the Christmas tree. It’s just that the things we had we were expected to take care of.
Our family “vacations” consisted of day trips down the Jersey shore to Point Pleasant. Father usually worked six days a week, except during the winter, when business slowed. The one time I’d been on a plane was two years earlier, before the Bakers moved in, when we went to visit my grandmother—Mother’s mother—in Florida after her hip surgery. My sister and I also didn’t attend camps—the exception being the one week of acting camp each summer Audrina had gotten our parents to agree to, probably only because it was a day camp, not sleepaway. Our parents simply didn’t see the utility of spending money on camps since they’d already purchased a club membership, and since there was a perfectly good public lake nearby.
And it was, indeed, a perfectly good lake.
So when late July brought a week of heavy rain that closed the lake and forced us to spend day after day at the club, inside—Sally standing on a stack of books we’d dragged from the game room so she could peer through the glass at the racquetball courts below—we were all ready for a change.
***
As soon as Audrina and I awoke in our shared bedroom to find the sun’s arms reaching through the shades, we snapped on bathing suits and raced to the kitchen. We half spooned, half slurped our bowls of Cheerios, milk dribbling down our chins, while gesturing to Mother to finish her call with Mrs. Wiley so she could figure out who would be taking us to the lake that day. “Mrs. Baker,” Mother mouthed to us, and we quickly finished up eating.
I remember how the morning had that fresh smell that occurs after a summer rain as Audrina and I crossed the wet asphalt street. We always held hands, even though our house sat right next to the cul‑de‑sac and the only cars likely to pass belonged to us or to the Bakers, and even though we were too old to hold hands. We held hands because Mother told us to, and because I was the older sister, Mother had impressed upon me early on that it was my duty to make sure my fingers were firmly grasped around Audrina’s anytime there was a street to cross. I often held on more tightly than I needed to, and Audrina often wrested her hand away a couple of steps before we reached the other side. This was the way we were, the way we always were: a push and a pull, a rib and a provocation. The distinction was often unclear.
At the foot of the Bakers’ circular driveway, we saw a blue chalk drawing that cascaded the length of its pavement, past the parked station wagon squatting in the middle. We followed swirls of blue toward the garage, where they turned into an outline of a person and what appeared to be a house with a very tall, pointed roof. Only then did I realize what the drawing was supposed to depict: Rapunzel and her castle. The blue swirls, I supposed, were Rapunzel’s hair.
“Audrina!” Sally yelled as she came bouncing out from the garage, Max following close behind. They were both already wearing their swimsuits—Max in blue trunks and Sally in a violet bathing suit with a heart on the front. Sally’s hair was pulled into uneven pigtails and her fingers and cheeks smudged blue. Her earlobes were bare—no heart stud earrings today. But what really caught my eye was the gold charm bracelet that slid up and down Sally’s left wrist as she moved. It was Audrina’s. Why on earth is Sally wearing Audrina’s bracelet?
“Look at my drawing!” Sally squealed, pointing to the ground.
“Sally,” Audrina said, tugging one of Sally’s pigtails, while I remained quiet. Processing. Did Audrina give the bracelet to her? Audrina continued: “Did you do your hair yourself?”
Sally smiled and nodded. “I helped Mommy!”
“And why are your fingers blue?” Audrina asked. “Were you eating blueberries this morning?”
Sally and Max laughed while I tried to think of something clever to add. Our uncle Arpad, Father’s brother, often teased us like this. “Noooooo,” Sally said.
“Were you eating blueberry pancakes?” Audrina added.
“Nooooo.”
“Blueberry muffins?”
“No! I had Apple Jacks!” She flapped her arms as she spoke. “My fingers are blue from chalk!”
“Really!” Audrina feigned surprise like one of those actresses from the old-time black-and-white movies our parents watched on the VCR late at night, spreading her hand widely against her forehead and tossing her head back, nearly knocking Mother’s wide-brimmed straw hat from her head. I wondered whether she had asked to borrow the hat or just helped herself.
Sally bent down and jabbed at the driveway with both hands. “Did you see the Rapunzel I drawed?” she asked. Blueberry pie, I thought. I should have asked her if she ate blueberry pie that morning. But the moment was gone; we gathered to inspect the drawing and muttered some oohs and aahs.
“Drina,” I said in a quiet voice. “Did you give Sally your bracelet?”
“Yep.”
“B‑but I liked it,” I sputtered. I couldn’t believe it. Audrina had to have known how much I liked—no, loved—the jeweled box charm. I would often ask her if I could try her bracelet on, or at least if I could open the jeweled box. To give it to someone else, someone she barely knew, someone—anyone—other than her own sister, was insensitive. Wrong. “Why—why would you do that?” I said, in a more accusatory tone than I had intended, and I saw Audrina flinch.
“Welllll,” she said, drawing out the word. “I guess I didn’t know boys liked bracelets,” she finally snapped back loudly enough for Max and Sally to hear, as she stared pointedly at my Cosmos soccer shirt.
“Are you a boy?” Sally asked in a curious tone, her eyes darting from the top of my head down to my feet.
I grew hot inside as I took a few steps away, onto the edge of the damp grass, which immediately engulfed my ankles. The Bakers didn’t keep their lawn trimmed like the rest of us. Max had once explained that they didn’t have a yard in Boston.
“No, no, of course not,” I said, with an awkward laugh. “Audrina was just joking.”
Just then, the front door opened, and Mrs. Baker materialized, wearing a silky floral purple-and-teal beach cover‑up and carrying some towels. She tossed the towels into the back of the station wagon and instructed, “Max, go get the beach chairs.”
Max walked over to the garage to carefully extract the folded chairs that were leaning against the inside wall, next to the Porsche I’d heard Father talk about with envy. I’d never seen Dr. Baker driving it—he left for work before I woke up and returned late. He must’ve still been home that morning. I was curious if Max ever rode in it; Mother had pointed out a Porsche was “useless” for a family, since it had only two seats.
We hopped into the station wagon—Max in the front passenger seat, and Sally in the middle back seat sandwiched between Audrina and me. The whole ride to the lake I studied the bracelet hanging from Sally’s wrist. Sally twisted and tugged it, running her pink chipped nails over the cabled links and charms—a key, a heart, a bell, a flower, a star, a moon, and of course, the jeweled box. I knew every single one of those charms.
Mother had also bought me something “special” for Christmas the year Audrina received her bracelet, but it hadn’t been a bracelet, or even a piece of jewelry. It was a New York Yankees jersey: Don Mattingly, number 23. “He’s a lefty, like you,” she’d said, as if that had explained everything. I was surprised; Mother had always created such thoughtful, personalized gift baskets for friends when they had momentous life occasions, like birthdays and anniversaries and showers. Indeed, Mrs. Wiley sometimes paid Mother to put one together so she could pass it along to someone else as a gift. But Mother’s assessment of my interest in baseball was skewed. I couldn’t remember ever saying I liked baseball, and I certainly had never played it—or softball—at least not on an organized team. So it seemed to me that the only reason my mother had chosen the jersey was because I was a freakish lefty, like Don, and because, since I was less pipiske than Audrina, I should like things like sports and sport paraphernalia more than—or even instead of—jewelry. But I liked both. To spare Mother’s feelings, I’d pretended to be happy about the jersey and had even worn it occasionally—just around the house—so Mother would see. But then I stuffed it in the back of our closet, behind the suitcases we never used.
***
It took about fifteen minutes to get to Deer Chase Lake from our houses. Main Street eventually turned into Route 108, from which spit the turnoff for the lake’s small dirt parking lot. The lake was located upon a hill, and it had a sandy beach, a fact I found ironic since the lake was as still as pool water, not at all like the ocean.
But surrounding the lake were dense woods, the trees so tall and busy that I’d once had the thought, as I stood on the lake’s perimeter, that the lake itself was a sort of beach for the vast woods that crowned it. It was the kind of forest that seemed to hold secrets, that made you a bit dizzy if looked at too closely, or too long.
As soon as Mrs. Baker’s station wagon chugged up to Deer Chase Lake, we could tell it was crowded, because there were no more open spots in the parking lot. Cars had now begun to line the road. Mrs. Baker pulled behind the last parked car, and we tumbled out to race up the stairs that led to the lake.
As we neared the top, summer sounds circled us like a swarm of bees. Children screaming and laughing, water being splashed, dogs barking, a cautionary two-whistle beep from the lifeguard’s stand. I looked out to the lake, which appeared like a giant, nearly too-full bowl of water. People bobbed up and down, their bodies in constant motion. Kids raced in and out of the lake, chasing one another. In the far distance I saw two people swimming back toward the beach; they were much farther out than everyone else. That must have been the reason for the whistle blow, I realized.
The beach was shortened because of the recent storm, but we still managed to find a good spot not too far from the water. Mrs. Baker flung open her chair and angled it toward the sun, which meant facing a section of woods. She plopped down without stripping to her bathing suit and began fanning herself with her book. “Go ahead and play, kiddos. Keep an eye on your sister, Max.”
I was secretly hoping that Mrs. Baker would remove her cover‑up so I could see the way she looked in her bathing suit. Sometimes when it got really, really hot, she cooled off with a brief swim, though most of the time she was content to lounge in one of her colorful cover-ups, some of which looked more like fancy bathrobes than swimwear. She loved sunning herself, and I’d recently noticed that the inside of her arm—where the fat rolled over—was whiter than the rest of it. It was like the skin underneath my bathing suit, where the sun didn’t hit. It always amazed me how skinny both Dr. Baker and Max were in comparison—like two tall asparagus. Even Sally, though sturdy, was not overweight. Once, when I’d asked Mother about Mrs. Baker’s weight, she told me it wasn’t nice to talk about such things and that everyone was created differently. Whether or not I brought it up again, I still thought about it. It was hard not to. It shames me now, how I thought about Mrs. Baker’s size, how I viewed her as a curious aberration, though I tell myself my fascination was because of what eventually came to be.
Whenever our own mother took us to swim, I would marvel at how beautiful she looked. She favored a navy one-piece suit underneath an oversized Ralph Lauren white men’s button-down bought at the outlet stores. Mother was glamorous like an actress, her eyebrows arched like perfect rainbows over circular, wide-set eyes. She often wore big glasses that someone said were like “Jackie O.” At the time I didn’t know who that was, but what I did know was that Mother’s sunglasses seemed to protrude more than they should because they rested on two pronounced mounds of cheekbones. I wanted to be like her when I grew up, beautiful and elegant, but it wasn’t looking so good. I’d inherited Father’s large ears, which stuck out on either side of my head, and my recent short haircut did little to hide them.
Audrina had Mother’s enviable cheekbones, though my sister would have been beautiful even without them. People liked looking at her, and they also liked being around her (I’d come to realize these things were connected), seemingly more so than being around me. The exception was my friend Leah. We were nearly the same exact age—April babies, born just a day apart—and had shared the same homeroom class for as long as we both could remember. I often felt like Leah looked up to me the way others looked up to Audrina: She’d bought the same pink jelly shoes as me; she began fastening a beaded safety pin onto the laces of her Keds once I started to. What I liked the most, though, was that she never seemed fazed when my sister was around. During the school year, Leah and I were inseparable, but Leah spent her summers in California with her father, where he now lived; her parents had gotten divorced when we were in fourth grade.
Sally began building a sandcastle “for Rapunzel,” and Audrina took off toward the lake without me, while Max—after a brief hesitation and look in my direction—followed her. I frowned. Was Audrina still annoyed that I’d questioned her about giving Sally the bracelet? I felt I had more of a right to be upset, given the boy comment. Or maybe she was just being Audrina, doing whatever she wanted to do without considering me at all. I entered the water alone, letting my body bob in the gentle waves created by the other swimmers, while tears pooled in my eyes. No matter how many times I told myself I wouldn’t let my sister get to me, she did. I still didn’t understand why she would’ve given Sally the bracelet; had she done it because she knew I’d wanted it?
Then I heard Max yell out, “Hey, Bee! We’re over here!” as he waved his hands in the air. I dunked underneath, so I could clear my tears, and swam over to him and Audrina. My sister grinned and splashed me with water, and I forcefully splashed her back. Audrina just laughed, and the edges around us softened, as they always did, even when I was sure they couldn’t. We continued to play, eventually coming into the shallow water so Sally could join us, too.
For lunch the four of us had a picnic next to Rapunzel’s sandcastle, munching on hot dogs and chips from the concession stand.
“Is this the country?” Sally suddenly asked, while surveying the lake and its surroundings.
“You mean the lake?” I replied.
“Everything,” she responded, waving her half-eaten hot dog in the air, and Audrina and I giggled. To us, “country” might have meant Stilkes Farm, about an hour’s drive away, where our family went each fall to pick apples and pumpkins and visit the barn animals. Or it might have meant Meg’s Farm, where the third-grade class traveled on a field trip to see demonstrations of sheep shearing and butter making. But it certainly didn’t mean Deer Chase Lake, or Route 108, or most of our town. Later, when I started dating my husband, who lived in New York City, I would realize that all of Hammend was indeed quite rural and possibly “country.”
“No, Sally,” Max gently replied over our laughter, as Sally’s eyes widened with embarrassment. “It’s not the country. Just a small town.”
Small town or not, the beach continued to fill up throughout the afternoon, the sounds and amount of people becoming almost overwhelming. Back in the lake, I began diving underwater and lingering there, enjoying the sudden hush that the sound barrier of the water provided. The only noises were a thin humming that seemed to come from the water itself and the occasional bubble that would escape from my mouth. Every time I plunged underneath, it felt like the outside world was erased. All that was left was me. The lake was murky, so I had to swim fairly blindly. Sometimes I bumped into another kid, at which point I would pop up and yelp a small “Sorry!” before disappearing again.
It was during one of these accidental bumps and quick resurfacings that I realized people were exiting the lake. Everybody, in fact. It reminded me of when the lifeguards at the pool called for “adult swim” and the kids had to exit. I was momentarily disoriented. This wasn’t the pool. And no lifeguard had blown a whistle. Or maybe they had, I realized as I sloshed toward the beach. I must not have heard it because I was underwater.
There was a frantic energy in the air. Some parents were reaching for children and picking them up, like they were toys. Others were whipping their heads left and right, frazzled. The older kids were running around or bundled in towels, hopping from foot to foot. Everyone was moving; it was as if we were all still swimming but without any water. In the chaos, I struggled to locate Mrs. Baker.
And then I saw her. I was surprised to find that even she was in motion. Up from her chair—standing, looking, twisting. One of the lifeguards stood in front of her and was grabbing every little girl who ran by.
“Mrs. Baker?” I asked as I approached. Her eyes just seemed to glaze over me.
“Is this her?” the lifeguard asked, another confused girl momentarily captured in his arms.
I suddenly felt sick, knots rolling in my stomach. A cool hand touched my back. “Bee,” Audrina said in a hoarse voice. “Have you seen Sally?”
I shook my head. “No.” Mrs. Baker looked as white as I’d ever seen her, as if the inside of her arm where the sun didn’t hit had spread like a rash. “I was swimming. Did she go swimming?”
“I dunno,” Audrina said. “I was swimming, too, with Max. I saw her playing in the sand. After we ate lunch.”
We both stared at the lake, now quiet, and it felt like time had momentarily paused. Then a lifeguard punctured the surface, breaking the stillness, to take a deep breath before disappearing again under the water. Max paced back and forth at the water’s edge, his gaze scanning the lake. The water barrier was pierced again by an older teenage boy, and another, and then by a man, and I realized there were a lot of people blindly swimming underneath, looking for Sally.
The sound of a siren boomed in the distance, and Audrina grabbed my hand.
***
The beach soon became saturated with cops and firemen and paramedics. It confused me why the firemen were there. There wasn’t a fire. I understood why the paramedics were there; when they found Sally, she would need help. She might need CPR, as Mr. Beatty had last summer at the pool. I still remembered the way the lifeguard pounded his chest like he was mad at him, over and over again, and then opened his mouth and kissed his lips. “Eww,” the boy standing next to me said, but before we could dwell on it, Mr. Beatty coughed awake, water sputtering from his mouth.
It had been a while now since anyone had last seen Sally, and I was getting more worried. How long could people hold their breath underwater?
Two minutes. The answer appeared to me, unwedging itself from a weighted bedrock of knowledge. Two minutes had long passed. I remembered, suddenly, how Audrina and I had a contest the summer before to see who could hold her breath longer. I’d easily won; I had always been a better swimmer than she was. I recalled how my lungs had felt warm, and then hot, like they were on fire. So hot it was dizzying.
Another two minutes ticked by, and then another, and at some point everyone was ushered into sections, with Max, Audrina, and I making up our own grouping. Mrs. Baker, who apparently had fainted and fallen flat on her back (part of me was sorry to have missed it in the chaos), was now being administered to by a paramedic in one of the ambulances. Max sat down, his head in his hands. His hair was dusty with sand, as if someone had sprinkled flour over him. His shoulders shook, and I realized he was crying. Police Chief Riley talked to him before moving on to Audrina and me. The chief was very tall, with dark hair and a stomach that protruded well past his trousers. He wrote down everything Audrina, who did most of the talking for us, said; I felt too numb to respond.
Where’s our mother? I wondered once Chief Riley had turned his attention elsewhere. I wanted Mother. “Is our mother coming?” I finally asked a couple of cops standing nearby, my voice cracking. I tried to figure out where the nearest pay phone might be. I visualized the numbers I would punch on the metal phone faceplate when I reached it: 543 to start—those were the same three beginning telephone numbers that every household in Hammend used, and back then you didn’t need an area code—but then, instead of the four unique digits that would follow, all I could see in my mind was the square number 2. Two minutes.
“Don’t worry, honey,” a kind-faced cop said, crouching down to my level. He had short, light-brown hair and S‑shaped eyebrows that slanted up on the inside corners. Sweat beads dribbled down either side of his forehead. I recognized him as the cop who often directed traffic at the entrance to Foodtown supermarket, where, I realized, the closest pay phone probably was. “We’re going to take you home to your mom soon. We just need to talk to a few more people. You and your sister thirsty?” He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, and it occurred to me that he was the one who looked a little thirsty.
I nodded.
“Hey!” he yelled over his shoulder, to a couple more cops who had just arrived. “Can we get these kids somethin’ to drink?”
Talking to a few more people apparently meant interviewing every single other person at the lake. And the people were multiplying by the minute. I couldn’t tell who had been at the lake to begin with and who was a new arrival. More men were swimming in the lake now. Soon a boat arrived and then another, which, after being hoisted into the water, dropped what looked like ropes into the lake’s depths. The cops were also now coming in and out of the woods that lined the far side of the lake. The woods were thick, and I didn’t even know where they ended. I’d never been in them. I tried to visualize what was on the other side—was it the road that led to the post office? No, it couldn’t be, I realized, now gazing in the opposite direction, toward the main drag, where Mrs. Baker had parked her car.
The post office was near Main Street; we’d passed it on the way. My sense of direction was off. I stared into the woods as far back as I could, noticing how the brush and trees grew thicker with distance until they melded together to form one giant, dark blob.
“Pink bathing suit with a heart, blond hair,” we overheard one cop say to a mother who was standing nearby with her girls, her arms protectively wrapped around them. The one talking was Jimmy, another young cop, who had brought us a couple of Dr Peppers. I suppose we should have thought of him as Officer Fort, but he was from the neighborhood and we’d known him for years, even before he became a cop. He and his mother, who had dementia, lived a block over from us, on Oak Street, in a Tudor-style house. There were only two Tudors in our whole neighborhood, including ours. A few days earlier his barefoot mother had approached our cul‑de‑sac kickball game, agitated and looking for her husband, who’d passed away years ago. Mother had gently guided her back home, over her loud cussing. It was the second time she’d been found wandering in our neighborhood that summer. She wore notes pinned to her clothes that stated her address and Jimmy’s number at the police station, but they weren’t necessary: We all knew who she was. We knew everyone in our neighborhood.
“No, no, no, that’s not right, Jimmy!” Audrina shouted at him. “She wasn’t wearing a pink bathing suit! It was purple.” She pumped her fist. “Like we told the other policeman.”
Worry sprang inside me. The police had to get it right; if they didn’t know what Sally was wearing, how could people answer correctly about whether or not they had seen her?
Jimmy glanced down at the small notepad in his hands and frowned. “Yes, yes, that’s right. That’s what I meant. Purple.” But the mother and two daughters were already shaking their heads. The girls were older, perhaps even high schoolers; they were not likely to have noticed a little girl playing in the sand. The kids I paid attention to were always older than I was.
Max, who hadn’t moved from his spot in the sand, as if his bottom were glued to it, was now shaking more violently, and soon we could hear his sobs. “Don’t worry, Max,” Audrina said, slinging her arm around his back, and yet again I wished I knew how to act in situations like my sister did. I was the older one; I should have been the one comforting Max. “We’ll find her,” Audrina said. “She’ll be okay.”
Max lifted his head, and I saw that his face was splotchy, with red patches like a rash. “We should’ve—” He tried to finish, but his cries engulfed him. “We should’ve,” he tried again, “been with her. I should’ve been watching her. It’s my fault.”
Audrina and I exchanged glances. We didn’t say anything; we didn’t know what to say. In a way he was right, although we all should have been watching her. But something didn’t seem to add up. Sally never went into the water without us, and when she did, she only went just a little bit, so the water barely covered her knees. And why would she wander into the woods? There was nothing there.
The afternoon sun was now shining down with unabashed force, and I was beginning to feel dizzy. Some of the people whom the cops had talked to were now leaving, so I took the opportunity to wander away from where we had originally set up camp on the beach. Every few feet, I paused and looked around, as if I were expecting Sally to suddenly materialize. But all I saw were groups of people herding together, and a dozen cops moving about, their mouths firing into walkie-talkies. There was a remnant of a sandcastle I almost knocked over, and I wondered whether it was the one Sally had been working on earlier—it was hard to tell where exactly we’d been sitting now that everyone had moved around. I searched for Mrs. Baker’s chair. Maybe it had been packed up. The ground beneath my feet was turning rougher, rockier, as I edged away from the lake, in the direction of the porta potties stationed next to the woods.
Suddenly I stepped on something sharp. Bending down, I picked it up. It was the charm bracelet, or part of it. A few links, from which were hanging three charms: the star, the key, and finally, the jeweled box.
I couldn’t believe it; I’d wished so hard for that jeweled box, and now there it was. I glanced up; I didn’t see anyone, so I slipped the bracelet piece under the elastic side of my bathing suit, against the skin of my hip. My heart was thumping against my chest as I swiftly walked to the area where my swim bag lay. I pulled up my shorts to cover the jewelry’s bulge in the lower part of my suit, while telling myself: I’m taking this for Sally, to return to her when she is found. That’s all.
From OUR LITTLE WORLD by KAREN WINN, published by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright (c) 2022 by Karen Winn.
Preview of Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner
