Read an Excerpt
1
There are times when roads become rivers. Rivers with strong
currents that pull you away and, whether you like it or not,
take you far from home.
As her grandfather drove through the night, Ava couldn’t help but feel that something horrible was going to happen to her mother. The thought never left her mind, even after the morning sun rose over the trees along the roadside.
The doctor said that her mother’s pregnancy had become complicated, that from now on Ava would be more of a burden at home than a help. Ava still couldn’t let go of the word. Burden. That’s what the doctor had called her while she was sitting in the tiny office holding her mother’s hand.
Her parents said otherwise. She could be as helpful as any eleven-year-old, but all the same, her grandfather arrived that weekend to take her to the lake. The far-off lake where her grandparents had a cabin on a remote island and where her father used to spend his summers. Burden. The word rang in her ears. From then on, Ava knew that all words were not equal. Some words had power. They had the power to change the entire direction of your life, if someone decided to say them aloud.
The road turned to gravel, and the lake appeared. “Here we are,” Nonno said, pulling up to the empty marina. “You see? If we leave early enough, we still have the full day ahead of us.” Her grandfather gathered all the groceries from town in his arms and carried them down to the docks. Morning mist still hung in the bay. Ava followed, the wheels of her suitcase leaving dew tracks behind her, until they came upon the familiar tin boat.
She sat at the bow, hugging her suitcase. “Did you miss coming to the lake?” Nonno asked as he started the outboard motor.
Ava nodded, but she wasn’t thinking about that. She was only thinking about what she had just left behind. She’d been to her grandparents’ place plenty of times, but this was the first time she’d ever been sent anywhere alone.
Nonno smiled as the marina shrank away. Ava couldn’t tell if he was worried. She imagined that when you became an adult, you got better at hiding things. You learned how to get on with the day and climb in boats and no longer needed to bury your face behind your suitcase so that people didn’t see you cry.
The engine whined as Nonno aimed the nose of the boat at the island cabin. “Look,” Nonno called over the engine. He was squinting into the glittering sun, gesturing with his head toward the other side of the bay, with one hand on his hat to keep it from blowing away. “There’s Nonna.”
Ava’s grandmother was standing at the edge of the dock with a blanket around her shoulders. Ava couldn’t imagine how long her grandmother had been waiting for them to appear, but as the boat drifted closer, the one thing she could be sure of was that Nonna would know what to do about everything—everything unwanted that had come suddenly and without warning into Ava’s life.
“Nonna!” Ava said, leaping from the boat to the dock. She hugged her grandmother tightly, not wanting to let go.
“Well, it’s nice to see you too, bella,” Nonna said, squeezing her back until the blanket wrapped them both. It was a hug worthy of Ava’s faith in Nonna’s ability to make everything better, and it told Ava that the terrible feeling inside of her, the one that warned her something horrible was about to happen, would soon pass. It was just a feeling, the hug told her. A feeling couldn’t sweep her away.
2
“This is new,” Nonna said, taking Ava’s suitcase.
“My dad said I needed my own suitcase,” Ava answered, staring at the dozens of dock spiders that had come out from the planks to escape the waves.
“Well, he’s right,” Nonna said, leading Ava up the dock. “It’s your first trip alone. It’s a big deal.”
Ava followed Nonna up the steep incline of rock, through the dense garden that lined the shore. After three flights of stairs, they came to a sunlit porch full of hanging flowers and low baskets of herbs. Her grandparents’ log cabin was perched at the highest point of the island and overlooked the entire bay. Ava could even see the marina far off in the distance.
“Come on, let’s get you settled,” Nonna said, opening the front door. “No need for this blanket anymore! The sun’s already getting warm.”
“Mom packed some fresh tteok from the Korean market,” Ava mumbled, hesitating to go inside. “I’m supposed to give it to you.”
“Thank you,” Nonna called from the hallway. “What we don’t eat today, I’ll put in the freezer.”
At the doorway, there was a bucket filled with water. Ava tapped her foot against it, and the ripples of water vanished inside the bucket as quickly as they appeared.
“Nonna?” Ava said, still standing on the threshold.
“Yes, bella?” her grandmother answered.
“Is something bad going to happen to my mother?”
“Of course not,” Nonna said, returning to the doorway. “Your mom is just having a baby. Two babies, in fact. Sometimes when you have twins, you need to take extra care is all. Didn’t anyone explain this to you?”
“Maybe. But I wanted to ask you.”
“Does your nonna look worried?” Nonna leaned into the sunlight. Ava looked anxiously into her grandmother’s eyes, as green and gray as the island, and saw nothing in her expression that suggested she was lying.
“No,” Ava finally replied.
Nonna put her hand to Ava’s cheek, and Ava felt the roughness of her skin. “Remember, you’re with your nonna. Now go change into your bathing suit. We’ll have an early lunch outside while there aren’t too many bugs out. I have to help Nonno bring up the groceries.” She hurried down the steps. “Oh, and if you need to go number two, let Nonna know. You’ll have to use that bucket. The power’s out.”
Ava looked down at the dirt-stained bucket of lake water and her stomach turned.
“I have to go to the bathroom in a bucket?”
“No, you silly goose,” Nonna said from the steps below. “But we can’t pump water from the lake without power. You’ll have to pour that bucket in the toilet if it needs a flush.”
“How are we going to do anything without power?”
“We can manage. Nonna knows lots of tricks. And maybe the power will be back in time for dinner.”
Inside her father’s old room, Ava found her suitcase standing next to the nightstand. It was where her family always stayed when they visited. The room was filled with familiar objects, reminding her how she was now alone. She grabbed the picture of her and her parents off the dresser and lay back on the bed, the family photo pressing against her chest. She closed her eyes, wishing she could go to sleep right then and wake up back in her own room, where the only thing she had to think about was when she was going to meet up with her best friend, Ruby Young, over summer break.
When Ava opened her eyes, the dark knots within the thick cabin logs were staring back at her in the shadows. How was it possible for her mother to stay in bed for over a month? Did the word bedridden really mean what she thought it meant? For instance, Ava couldn’t figure out how her mother was supposed to go to the bathroom or put on her clothes if she wasn’t allowed to get up. But these were only the first of Ava’s questions.
The old-fashioned cream-colored phone sat on the far nightstand. Her mother had said she wasn’t allowed to have a cell phone until high school, so Ava would have to rely on the old landline. She picked it up to call her mother, but there was a trick to dialing out that she couldn’t remember. More than once, Nonna had explained to her that the phone was on a party line, but Ava couldn’t remember if that meant she had to dial the operator or the cabin number first. She only knew that sometimes other people would already be talking on the line when she picked up. She could just listen, and they wouldn’t ever know. And sometimes when Nonna was talking to someone, a stranger would pick up and start dialing, and Nonna would have to explain that she was already on the line.
Ava put down the phone. She would have texted her mother from her computer, but the internet was another thing her grandparents didn’t have. They’d have to drive to the library in town if Ava wanted to use it. Ava let out a moan. Nothing was easy at the cabin. Nothing was like home.
She changed into her favorite bathing suit, which she had rolled into a plastic bag and shoved into her suitcase when it was still damp. Putting on a wet bathing suit always made her need to go to the bathroom. She wondered if that made her strange, or if everyone had the same shivering urge. She only knew it was the truth—not that she’d ever dare tell anyone.
When Ava flicked on the bathroom light, the darkness remained, and she remembered about the power being out.
“No way,” she said out loud, grabbing a swim towel. She ran outside with her shoes only half on, jumping past the bucket of water as she fled. “Not in a million years!”
