Chapter Thirty-Five
Autumn’s Fall
‘Easter Arrival’
August felt the phone vibrate in his pocket as he walked in the parking lot with his parents after exiting St. John’s Church, a place where none of his prayers had ever been answered.
He didn’t recognize the phone number—seven-one-six area code.
His father, who refused to get a cell phone, rolled his eyes. His mom said nothing. They weren’t taking to each other. August wondered why they bothered to talk with him, but maybe their silence was God’s punishment for not telling them about Autumn’s Valentine’s Day visit.
The voice on the phone said, “August, it’s Autumn. Can we talk?”
August froze like ice in the spring sun. “I need to take this,” he told his parents.
“And I need to get home before the first pitch.” His father pulled out his keys and shook them loudly like some dungeon master. “Your geeky friends shouldn’t be calling on Easter.”
Since Autumn left, August seemed to have no friends anymore. “I’ll walk home.”
August’s dad laughed, while his mom shook her worried face then said, “It’s too far.”
Gritting his teeth, August repeated his intention. “Get in the car,” his father said.
August paused, his world as upside down as his phone. He couldn’t say no to his father, so instead he turned his back and started walking away from the car. His father yelled at him to return, but August kept walking. His mom yelled as well, with no results. August thought, How do they know I won’t just keep walking, like Autumn? “One second,” he said into the phone.
“It’s been two months. I can wait two seconds,” Autumn said, sounding cheerful.
August picked up the pace, and once out of the parking lot and behind the church activity center building, August sat down and pulled the phone close to his mouth. His hands shook.
“Okay, Autumn, where are you?” August asked, praying for Fenton as the answer.
“Buffalo, New York.” Like a boxer after getting punched, August tried to clear the cobwebs, even if the thought of his skin-showing-off sister in America’s icebox amused him.
“What are you doing there?”
August waited ten seconds before repeating the question. He checked to make sure the call hadn’t been dropped. “Autumn, I asked what are you doing in Buffalo?”
“Do you want to know what a high-school dropout girl with no skills does for work?” Cheerful Autumn gave way to the angry version. “Do you really want that image in your head?”
August remembered what she’d said on Christmas, but he needed to know.
“Yes, Autumn, you can tell me. I won’t judge you and I won’t tell anyone else.”
“I’m working at a strip club.” August heard no emotion in her voice, not excitement or embarrassment, speaking the words as casually as if she’ said she was working at a strip mall dollar store. “I got a fake ID. That’s all I want to say about it.”
“What happened with Troy?”
“He lied. He didn’t know anybody. I was his way to get out of Fenton. I thought I was using him, but it turned out the other way. I’d laugh except it would make me cry, so—”
“Autumn, why don’t you come home? You don’t want to do this.”
Another long pause. August listened for sounds in the background. Loud music. On Easter Sunday. Who went to a strip club on Easter Sunday? “Autumn, you don’t want—”
“No, I don’t want to do this,” Autumn said. “I need to do this. I need to make money.”
“For what?” He heard her light up a smoke—that answered part of his question.
Autumn laughed. “Wow, you are an immature kid. I guess four months didn’t change that.” August thought it may have only been four months since Autumn left, but it felt like forever. Every day he stared into her empty room like the walls expected her home soon.
“Come home, then you don’t need to do that.”
“Look, August, I don’t like the tone in your voice about this. This is what I do. Is it what I’ll do forever? No. Is it what I want to be doing now? Not really, but my choices are limited.”
“You could—” August started, but realized he didn’t have any alternatives.
“I could do lots of things, but you know what? Shit happens,” Autumn said. Inhaled. No doubt savored. Exhaled. “I used to read about famous people all the time in magazines like Us and People, about the crazy detours they had to make on the road to stardom.” Another pause. August imagined her blowing smoke rings like so many hoops she’d have to get through in order to reach her dreams. His parents doubted them, as did he, but he wouldn’t say a word.
August didn’t read magazines. He’d rather have his nose in an eight hundred-page fantasy saga, never more so than now, for in that world there was a good and evil, right and wrong, nothing in the middle like Autumn described. “If that’s what you need to do, little sister, I guess that’s okay.”
“Well, it’s not the Pope’s blessing, but it will do.” Autumn laughed. August tried to soak in every second of the laugh so he could burn it in his memory. Maybe this laugh could take the place of the clicking sound of the empty gun pointed at someone and the trigger being pulled.
“Autumn, families can forgive everything.”
“I hated the person I’d become in Fenton,” Autumn said. Paused. Inhaled. Paused. Exhaled. “I’m not in love with this person I am now in Buffalo, but like I said, it’s a stop on a road to someplace. All of this will make the movie about my life so interesting!”
August tried to laugh, but he couldn’t fake it or force it. “So why did you call?”
“This morning, taking the bus to work, we passed a church as it was letting out. I just remembered one Easter us and church, you and me, Mom and Dad. I think I was nine. Amber was away at some camp, so it was just the four of us. It felt right. So I wanted to call.”
“Thank you, Autumn. That means a lot.”
“I wonder what happened to that little girl, and the answer is she grew up,” Autumn said. “And I guess you have too now, knowing what you know about me.”
“I wish I didn’t.”
“I’m not ashamed of what I do, and I don’t want you to feel that way either.”
August paused, unsure what to think, feel or know. He just knew he wanted his sister home, but if she couldn’t be home then at least safe. “I could come out there and we could come back together. Walk hand in hand out of church again.”
Autumn laughed. August felt embarrassed. “That’s the spirit, August. Believe in happy endings. I know I do. And I know deep down I’ll get mine. It’s like that crappy karaoke song—Don’t Stop Believing.”
August felt the hot sun on his face, but it was tears, not sweat, trickling from his face. “Okay. For you, big sister, I’ll believe in happy endings, although you coming home—”
“So let’s end on that. I’m sorry I missed your birthday. Don’t tell our parents we spoke, okay? It will be a brother and sister secret.”
“You see, Autumn, that is halfway to a happy ending.”
Another laugh from Autumn filled August’s heart with the warmth of a thousand suns. “But I’ll try to do better about staying in touch.”
“That’s all you need to do, just try to do better.”
“Thanks, big brother.”
“Thanks, little sister.”
As soon as the call ended, August was online looking for the price of train tickets to Buffalo. He’d be like those heroes in those books. He’d rescue his sister and restore the kingdom of his family. Autumn was on her metaphorical journey while August researched for his real one. It seemed Autumn’s descent began in earnest on homecoming, so August knew the only answer was for him to bring her home. Once he did that, then the two of them could walk in the door of their house in Fenton. There, together, August and Autumn would hear their father speak those three magic words, not “I love you” and certainly not “I hate you”, but, “Welcome home, Autumn.”
THE END