Fly Away (Firefly Lane 2)

I think, Go, and as I think it, I am moving. I float into a world that is so sharp and clear it stings my eyes. Blue, blue sky, green, green grass, a snow-white flower falling from the cottony clouds. And light. Beautiful, incandescent light that is like nothing I’ve ever seen. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I feel at peace. As I move through the grass, a tree appears in front of me, a sapling at first, bending and knobby; it grows as I stand there, punching outward, widening until it takes up my entire field of vision. I wonder if I should go back, if this tree will grow over me, swallow me in its tangle of roots. As it grows, night falls around me.

When I look up, I see an array of stars. The Big Dipper. Orion’s Belt. The same constellations I once studied from my yard as a girl, back when the world didn’t seem big enough to hold all my dreams.

From somewhere far away, I hear the first tentative strains of music. Billy, don’t be a hero …

The song opens me up in a way that makes it hard to breathe. It made me cry at thirteen, this song. Then, I’d thought it was a tragic love story, I think. Now I know it is a tragic life story.

Don’t be a fool with your life.

A bicycle appears in front of me, an old-fashioned banana-seated girl’s bike with a white basket. It is leaning against a hedge of roses. I go to it and climb on, pedaling … where? I don’t know. A road appears beneath me, stretches as far as I can see. It is the middle of a starry night, and suddenly I am speeding downhill like a kid again, my hair is alive, whipping all around my face.

I know this place. Summer Hill. It is woven into my soul. Obviously I’m not really here. The real me is lying on a hospital bed, broken and bleeding. So I am imagining this, but I don’t care.

I throw my arms open and let my speed pick up, remembering the first time I did this. We were in the eighth grade, Kate and me, and we were on these bikes, on this hill, riding into the start of a friendship that is the only true love story of my life. I forced her, of course. Threw rocks at her bedroom window and woke her up in the middle of the night and begged her to sneak out with me.

Did I know how our whole lives would be changed with that one choice? No. But I knew my life needed changing. How could I not? My mother had perfected the art of leaving me and I had spent my entire childhood pretending truth was fiction. Only with Kate had I ever really been honest. My BFF. The only person who had ever loved me for me.

The day we became friends is one I will never forget. It makes sense to me that I remember it now. We were fourteen-year-old girls, both friendless and as different as salt and pepper. On that first night, I’d told my stoned mom—who’d started calling herself Cloud in the seventies—that I was going to a high school party and she’d told me to have fun.

In a dark stand of trees, a boy I barely knew raped me and left me to walk home alone. On the way, I saw Katie sitting on the top rail of her fence. She spoke to me as I walked past.

“I love it out here at night. The stars are so bright. Sometimes, if you stare up at the sky long enough, you’ll swear tiny white dots are falling all around you, like fireflies. ” A retainer drew the s’s into a long lisp. “Maybe that’s how this street got its name. You probably think I’m a nerd for even saying that. … Hey, you don’t look good. And you reek like puke. ”

“I’m fine. ”

“Are you okay? Really?”

To my horror, I started to cry.

That was the beginning. Our beginning. I told her my secret shame and she held out her hand and I clung to her. From that day on, we were inseparable. Through high school and college, and forever after that, no experience was real until I told Katie about it, no day was quite right if we didn’t talk. By the time we were eighteen, we were TullyandKate, the pair, impossible to separate. I was there at her wedding and at the birth of her babies, and when she tried to write a book, and I was there in 2006 when she took her last breath.

With my hands outstretched and the wind streaming through my hair and memories riding alongside me, I think: This is how I should die.

Die? Who says you get to die?

I would know that voice anywhere. I have missed it every single day for the last four years.

Kate.

I turn my head and see an impossible sight: Kate is on a bike beside me. The sight of her overwhelms me, and I think: Of course. This is my version of going into the light, and she has always been my light. For a brief, beautiful last second, we’re TullyandKate again.

“Katie,” I say in awe.

She gives me a smile that seems to sear through the years.

The next thing I know, we are sitting on the grassy, muddy bank of the Pilchuck River, just like we used to, back in the seventies. The air smells of rain and mud and deep green trees. A decaying, moss-furred log gives us something to rest against. The river’s gurgling song swirls around us.

Hey, Tul, she says.

At the sound of her voice, happiness unfolds within me, a beautiful white bird opening its wings. Light is everywhere, bathing us. In it, I feel that beautiful peace again, and it soothes me. I have been in pain for so long, and lonely for even longer.

I turn to Kate, drink in the sight of her. She is translucent almost, shimmery. When she moves, even just a little, I can see a hint of the grass beneath her. When she looks at me, I see both sadness and joy in her eyes and I wonder how those two emotions can exist in such perfect balance within her. She sighs and I get a scent of lavender.

The river bubbles and slaps around us, sends up its rich, fecund scent of both new growth and decay. It turns into music, our music; the wave tops form notes and rise up and I can hear that old Terry Jacks song, We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun. How many nights had we hauled my little transistor radio down here and set it up and listened to our music while we talked? “Dancing Queen” … “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing” … “Hotel California” … “Da Do Run Run. ”

What happened? Kate asks quietly.

I know what she is asking. Why am I here—and in the hospital.