Blue Ridge Calling, page 2
“Come on,” said Kora, pulling Sage’s arm around her to prop her up as she moved them toward the car. “You’re sleeping on the couch tonight. With a bucket.” Sage laughed and stumbled over a tree branch.
“Need help with that?” Hunter asked, already taking Sage’s other arm over her shoulder.
“Thanks,” said Kora.
Together, they managed to walk back to the car and pour Sage into the backseat. Kora rolled the window down and turned around to see Hunter already walking back toward the party. Her stride was confident and sturdy, no hesitation. Kora watched her walk up to a small, beat-up motorcycle and climb onto it.
The drive home was a familiar route on the parkway through the mountains. Tall, black pine trees towered on either side, but occasionally the trees would break, and Kora could catch a glimpse of the edge of distant peaks carved out by moonlight.
Her senior year was officially over. With finals, graduation, and the bonfire done, Kora’s summer stretched before her. Soon she would be leaving for a college that was far away in a big city, abandoning the sweeping valleys and high-altitude air that had raised her. Her beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains and all their sweet, earthy memories flooded her. She saw lightning bugs and blackberries and Sage’s ash blonde hair knotted by the wind.
There was nothing particularly interesting about Pinebrook. No one could place it on a map who didn’t grow up there. She’d always assumed she would leave someday. When she got into a big arts school in New York, she had slept with the acceptance letter under her pillow for a week, convinced it was a dream. But now that she was faced with actually leaving, she was certain nothing would feel quite like the languid haze of Southern summers.
But she couldn’t think about that yet. As she pulled into the driveway of Sage’s creaky old house and half-carried her drunk best friend toward the door, she remembered she had all summer to make her last memories in their little mountain town.
Behind her, cicadas hummed and the crickets chirped. An owl called out from the trees. Kora closed her eyes for a moment and listened. She didn’t want to forget what home sounded like.
Chapter 2
Sage had made studying into an art, a science. Those were the same thing to her.
It was the final week of exams, and the pages of her textbook seemed to get heavier each time she flipped them. Kora had managed to drag her out to the bonfire the other night, which was inconveniently planned for the weekend after graduation. Since the finals for their classes were over, most students had nothing left to study for, but Sage still had AP exams to worry about.
She reorganized her desk before she started working, as she did every time she was stressed about a test. Then she lay out her textbook in the middle of her desk with her pencil case to her left and a stack of notecards to her right. She kept her coffee in a thermos between her legs where she could easily reach it and went downstairs to top it off every time she finished a chapter.
The medication she took for her ADHD had long worn off, and she kept finding herself re-reading the same paragraphs without comprehending them. Coffee helped a little, but it made her head hurt and left a bitter taste in her mouth. She pinched the sections she had left to cover with two fingers, trying to calculate if she had time to brush her teeth before bed.
While she played with the corner of the page, there was a knock on her door. She said, “Come in,” without looking up. The door opened and closed again with no sound. Knowing her father usually just stuck his head in, she turned around.
Her brother Sam was standing by her dresser, looking at all of the knick-knacks she had arranged on top of it. He was supposed to be out of town for a few more days, but here he was.
This was something he did often: coming home unannounced. He would pick up the things in her room one by one and look at them, flip through her magazines and textbooks, and play with her stuffed animals. It was like he was cataloging everything in her room.
“I thought you weren’t coming home until Friday,” she said.
“I ran out of supplies,” he said. He was examining her Bill Nye bobblehead. “I’m leaving again tomorrow.”
He paused to put down the toy and pick something else up. Sage couldn’t see what it was.
“Test tomorrow?” he asked, nodding his head toward the desk.
“Physics,” said Sage.
“With Mr. O’Connell?” Sam had graduated from Oakcrest just a couple years before, when Sage was a freshman.
“No, he teaches Honors. I’m in AP with Ms. Bickman.”
Sam smirked, playing with a Jacob’s ladder toy. “Right,” he said. “Nerd.”
She wanted to retort, but his tone was half-hearted and distracted. She watched as his eyes wandered to the pillow and blanket carefully folded and placed on the end of her little couch. This was her ritual to prepare for a sleepover.
“Kora?” he asked.
She nodded and then realized he wasn’t looking at her, still staring absentmindedly at the blanket. “Tomorrow night, once the AP exams are over.”
Sam didn’t respond. Sage examined his profile while he was still turned away from her. Right after their mother died, Sam had spent all the money he saved up from graduation on trips into the depths of the mountains, tracking some of North Carolina’s most famous ghost stories. Sage figured his obsession with death was wrapped up in understanding what had happened to their mother, but she never asked. She didn’t believe in ghosts, but she thought he would eventually find an answer that satisfied him. It had been two years.
“You’re taking physics as a junior?” he asked.
Sage took a moment before she answered. It was the kind of question that, coming from anyone else, she would take as a compliment. But it was also the kind of question a brother shouldn’t have to ask.
“If you were around more, you would know that,” she said. She turned back to her desk and picked up a pencil as if to illustrate her point. It hovered over her notecard at the ready, but she couldn’t think of anything to write. Behind her, she couldn’t detect a change in Sam’s silence.
“I know,” he said after a while, his voice sounding a little less distant. “I’m sorry.”
Sage wanted to turn around and see his face, but she rarely let her anger with him rise up above her sternum, and she didn’t want to let it go just yet.
“I’m in physics because I’m really smart,” she said, still looking down at her notecard. “In case you haven’t noticed.”
She’d stopped in the middle of a chapter, and she couldn’t pick back up where she’d left off. As she looked at the page, her eyes glazed over, and the anger roiled in her stomach.
He sat down on her bed and didn’t say anything. She wouldn’t turn around to look at him again, but she heard his head hit her pillow. Her ceiling fan made a calming noise as it spun around; it was all the background music she needed when she studied. She tried to focus on it.
“Did you find anything?” she asked.
She didn’t usually ask this. She knew the answer; there was nothing to be found. But she liked that he still hoped that something was out there. As much as it bothered her that he was never around, she wished one day he would come through the door with the childish grin she could only remember on a rounder version of his face. He would tell her about the magic he had found, something impossible and big. A picture of a ghost, maybe. Or possibly their mother following behind him, flesh and bone again. Sage assumed that was the point: to accomplish the impossible. To bring back the dead.
“Not yet,” he said. “I still have some leads to follow.”
“What leads?” Sage asked, unable to keep the skepticism out of her voice.
“You know,” he said. “Just picking up where I left off.”
That wasn’t really an answer to her question. She put down her pencil and finally turned around to face him. He was lying on his back on her bed, looking at the ceiling fan.
“Do you really think you’ll find anything?” she asked. She didn’t let him answer before asking her next question. “Do you really believe in ghosts?”
“It’s not about belief,” he said, closing his eyes. “I just have to do it.” He took a deep breath through his nose and covered his eyes with his arm. He used to do that when he was little and he was about to cry, but when he put his arm back behind his head, his eyes were dry. “Do you think about her a lot?”
“Yeah,” she said. Her voice didn’t sound like it belonged to her, like it was dull and lifeless. She felt a little guilty. They didn’t talk like this very often. Sage preferred not to. She didn’t go into her parents’ room—unoccupied since their father had moved into the guest room. She did care, she just couldn’t care out loud too much. “When will you be back?”
He sat up on the bed. “Few days,” he said. “Friday at the latest.” He mussed her hair on his way out of her room, and she shoved his hand away.
Once she heard the door close, she took another sip of coffee and went back to studying.
Sage spent the next several days in a blur of studying and taking exams. She almost regretted the decision to take three A.P. classes as a junior, but she felt confident she’d done well.
When she got home after her last exam, she hung her backpack on its hook on the back of the door and flopped onto her bed with a sigh. That feeling was exactly why she made her bed every morning—because it felt good to sink into when she was finally done with school.
She spent the next hour flipping through magazines and blasting her music so loud that she didn’t hear the front door open. She didn’t have to worry about it; Kora never knocked, and the garage door was always unlocked. Kora opened the door to Sage’s room and dropped an overnight bag on the floor.
“Um, you may have forgotten the rules around here,” said Sage in a mocking voice, “but your stuff remains in a neat pile on the couch, not thrown around the room.
“Such a neat freak,” said Kora with a laugh. “I got it. No mess.”
Sage was pretty sure that Sam had also inherited the ADHD gene from their eccentric, academic father, but he had never been formally diagnosed. His room was constantly in a state of unrepentant chaos, and Sage avoided it at all costs. It manifested differently for Sage. She found that she couldn’t focus at all if her space was cluttered. The meds helped her maintain her careful routine of tidying. She refused to let Kora, who seemed to be messy simply because she was an artist with an absentee parent and an undisciplined childhood, disrupt that delicate balance.
Kora sat down on the bed next to Sage, who handed her an old issue of Seventeen. They each flipped through one, pointing out looks they liked and outfits they thought were hideous.
It had been a while since they had done this. When Kora and Connor had been together, they were inseparable, and her regular Friday night sleepovers with Sage disappeared, instead turning into dinner dates and making out in his car, Sage assumed. But as they fell back into the rhythm of turning glossy pages and insulting celebrity haircuts, it felt like no time had passed.
They had been this way since they were kids, their friendship predestined—the second generation of Rivera-Mason best friends. Their moms had met in their mid-20s when they had both recently become mothers. Sage’s mom Liz was in graduate school for English, while Kora’s mom Ronnie was working for a landscaping business. Both of them were terrified of failing at motherhood and they soothed and exacerbated each other’s fears in equal parts. As a result of their friendship, Kora had been a permanent installation in the Rivera family since babyhood. She was more like a sister than a friend.
As Kora pointed to something in the magazine, Sage studied the splotches of acrylic paint that coated her fingers. It was common to see Kora with colorful hands in between art classes at Oakcrest, but outside the context of school, it seemed like a strange adornment, like a peacock’s feathers. She used her paint-covered hands to pull her thick chestnut curls over one shoulder, half-heartedly braiding them with swift fingers. It was a habit of hers, and it amazed Sage how fast she could do it. Sage rarely did anything with her hair besides brush it, and the little practice she had with braiding it had proved fruitless.
“Working on anything good lately?” she asked, pointing at the colorful marks. Kora looked down and smiled, just noticing the mess.
“Not really,” she said. “Ever since I finished my portfolio, I haven’t had much inspiration.” With obviously fake nonchalance, Kora said, “I’m actually thinking about getting into tattoo designs.”
“Oh yeah?” said Sage. It was a departure from her typical work but not too much of a stretch. Kora was looking at her weird.
“How much do you remember from the bonfire?”
Sage recalled blurry, warm bits and pieces: the smell of wood smoke, loud shouts during flip cup, threatening to beat Melanie Hammond with a stick. Her memories were embarrassing and vaguely nauseating, but unfortunately, nothing out of the ordinary. Before her mom died, Sage had never had more than a glass of champagne at New Year’s. After, things were different.
“Not much,” Sage shrugged. “Why?”
“I kind of met a girl,” Kora said in a dramatic voice. Sage raised an eyebrow.
“Spill,” she said.
“Her name is Hunter. She’s a tattoo apprentice at Cabin Fever.”
“Ooh,” said Sage. “Could she get you a discount?”
“Not the point,” said Kora, shoving Sage lightly.
“Right, continue.”
“There was definite flirting.”
“And then?”
Kora made a face. “And then she helped me carry you to the car.”
Sage looked down at her hands and pretended to focus on her collage. That wasn’t ideal. Her whole life was constructed around being in control, but lately she was losing some of her drive. She didn’t like the idea of Kora cleaning up after her messes.
“Well, did you get her number?” asked Sage, filing her guilt away to think about later.
“No,” Kora frowned. “But I can always stop by Cabin Fever.”
Sage smiled. “Go get her, tiger.” Kora groaned and covered her face with a magazine.
Sage picked up a pair of scissors and began cutting out a picture of a pair of Adidas sneakers. Sometimes they took all their cut-outs and glued them onto paper for outfit inspiration. Kora smiled and joined in, grabbing the scissors. She eyed a picture of a girl with cheeks coated in bright purple glitter before cutting along her jawline. Sage glanced up at Kora’s own face to confirm that she was already wearing a more subtle, but still excessive, dusting of white glitter. Kora’s cheeks were almost always sparkly in some way.
As they worked, something occurred to Sage.
“Wasn’t Connor at the party?” she asked. She vaguely recalled seeing him choke back some hard cider before failing spectacularly to land a cup flip.
Kora’s bashfulness turned to guilt. “Yeah,” she said. “I think he noticed me talking to her.”
Sage wanted to be on Kora’s side. She was on Kora’s side, and she always had been. But Connor had been a part of her life via Kora for two years. She considered herself his friend, too. She didn’t like the idea of hurting him.
“I didn’t mean to be so obvious about it,” said Kora. Sage’s thoughts must have been obvious on her face. She turned back to the magazine. “It just sort of happened.”
“Well, school’s over,” said Sage. “Now there’s no reason to see him again.”
“Yeah,” said Kora, focusing her attention on a picture of a pink skateboard. Sage couldn’t be sure, but she thought Kora looked disappointed. She decided not to push.
After ordering takeout from the Chinese place down the street, they settled on the couch for a movie.
“It’s my turn,” said Kora. They alternated who got to pick the movie.
“No, it’s my turn,” said Sage. “Remember? You picked that gladiator movie.”
“Oh yeah,” said Kora, deflating. “What a waste of a turn, that movie sucked.”
“Lucky for you, I have excellent taste.”
Sage picked Pride and Prejudice, which they’d already seen many times. One of them picked it at least three times a year.
Halfway through the movie, Kora got up to get another Coke from the fridge. “Where are your dad and Sam?” she asked on her way back to the couch. Sage sighed. She had been expecting this question, but it wasn’t one she particularly wanted to answer.
“Dad is already asleep,” she said. Sometimes, he didn’t get out of bed much except to move to the couch, but Kora didn’t need to know that. “Sam’s on one of his ghost hunts.”
Kora’s expression turned to surprise. “He’s still doing those? I thought he would snap out of it by now.”
Sage shrugged. “Me too,” she said. “He’s full of surprises.”
“Doesn’t he have class?” Kora asked, cracking open her drink.
“He dropped out,” said Sage. The Coke was almost to Kora’s lips, but she held it there in surprise.
“Sam dropped out,” she repeated, incredulous. “Of college? To look for ghosts?”
Sage nodded. Talking about it made her think about it, and she didn’t really like thinking about it too hard. She didn’t want to be angry at her brother; she didn’t want to care what he did at all.
“I’m gonna kick his ass,” said Kora. Her face looked so determined Sage had to laugh. She couldn’t picture Kora kicking anyone’s ass.
“Good luck,” she said. “He’s a lot bigger now than he was when we were kids.”
Kora rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but I think I could take him,” she said.
