Be Not Far from Me

by Mindy McGinnis

I am Ashley Hawkins and I am not dead yet, dammit, and my blanket streaks behind me, my fireboard and broken whiskey top whipping against my legs, Davey Beet’s canteen snug against my hip and his hat slipping down to my eyebrows as the rain keeps falling and it runs into my mouth, tinting my screams with the taste of a storm. They hear me. They see me.

We meet under the shadow of a spire, the sun breaking out for a moment to show me these people, a woman with a blond ponytail and a man with a red beard. I collapse in front of them, trying to find words to say everything that needs to be said, to explain the woods and the possum, the bag at my side that holds what’s left of my foot, Davey Beet’s bloody sock and how deeply my eyes are sunk into my head. What I say is: “My name is Ashley Hawkins, and I need help.”

“Hey,” I interrupt the woman, who is digging in the truck for something. She turns around, a brown bag in her hand. “Am I in Georgia or are you in Tennessee?” Her eyebrows come together, and I know I need to try again, find better words for what I’m asking. It made sense to me in my head, and since I’m the only person I’ve been talking to for a while, I thought it would do the trick. “Where am I?” “Georgia,” she answers, handing me a water bottle. “We both are.”

The water hits my stomach, and I flinch. I don’t want to puke in front of this woman, don’t want her to know that it doesn’t taste like real water because there’s no dirt trailing on my tongue, or an aftertaste of fish. Everything about it, from the clarity of the plastic to the ridged cap in my hand is off, and I feel an edge of panic when I realize I’m going to have to get into the truck eventually.

“What’s this?” Tammy asks, reaching out to touch Davey Beet’s hat. I shy away, dumping some of the water in my lap. I can stand to have someone touch me, but Davey’s stuff is another story and not one I’ll tell to just anybody. “It’s a hat,” I say. Tammy nods and slowly sits down next to me, propping her elbows on her legs like I do. I pull my blanket closer around me, covering my fireboard and whiskey bottle, like I’m afraid she might try to take them away.

“She’s from where?” the guy’s voice cuts across the space between us, the phone conversation clearly going places he hadn’t expected. Just like I did.

“Hungry?” Tammy asks, reaching into her lunch to pull out a bologna-and-cheese sandwich. The truth is I’m not. I’m too far gone to consider being hungry. But the sight of the sandwich carefully tucked into a bag with a fold-over top makes me think of Meredith, and all the supposedly extra bologna-and-cheese sandwiches she’d broug...

rests. I’ve been trying to find words, and I thought I was failing because it’d been so long since I used them, but instead it’s because there aren’t any that’ll work. There’s just crying. Crying ’cause I’m happy to be safe, and terrified to see people again. Crying because even though I said my name when I came out of the woods, I don’t know if that’s who I am anymore. Crying because of Duke and Meredith and Kavita and my dad and how I’ll get to see them again, and crying for my momma and Davey Beet because the same isn’t true for them. There’s lots of reasons to cry, but I’ve got a mouth and it was made for more than just gasping for air in between sobs. I stop crying. And I eat.

she says sheepishly, turning her phone over. There’s a muted video playing of my dad standing at a podium, the only tie he owns tied all wrong and his dress shirt from Grandpa’s funeral too tight across his belly. But I don’t think anyone is looking at him, only listening. Faces crumple along with his as he breaks down, and I don’t need to hear the words to know that he’s asking for someone, please, to bring his little girl back to him. “I brought myself back,” I tell him quietly, my thumb resting against the screen.

Michael eases my sock off. “Holy fucking shit!” he says, which is pretty much the same words I would use to describe it. I lift my head to look. “That’s nothing,” I tell him. “You should’ve seen it before I took the bad parts off.” “The bad parts?” “Yeah,” I say, reaching for the bag with what’s left of my foot inside. “These bits.” I lift it for him to see, and he covers his mouth and looks away real quick, taking a minute to compose himself. Then he lifts my heel gently, turning my foot to see the damage from all angles. “You took this off?” Michael asks. “Yeah,” I say, lying my head down as the spots threaten again. “With what?” “A big chunk of flint.” I consider reaching into my pocket to share the sliver I kept with me but decide against it because I don’t want it taken away from me. He whistles low between his teeth and sets my leg back down. “Nice work.” “Thank you,” I say, weirdly pleased by the compliment.

“Can you tell us what happened?” Barbara tries, like she’s tossing me an easy one, something I should be able to explain. “I was lost,” I say, the first time I’ve spoken the word. My voice cracks around it, either because I’m too proud to admit it or because it’s so damn terrifying, even now that I’m safe. Because I knew, every time I left my house for the woods, that it could kill me. I just never believed it would try. “The world is not tame,” I tell Barbara, and she nods like maybe she gets it as she wraps a blood-pressure cuff around my arm, then swaps it out for a different one. Judging by the Dora the Explorer sticker on the band I’m guessing it’s the one they use on kids, my arm too small for the one made for adults.

tetanus

Everything is bright here, and overwhelmingly clean. Everyone has smiles on their faces that get bigger when they see me, like I’m the sun peeking out from behind a cloud they never thought would pass. I know I’m like some miracle baby, the girl who was lost and now is found.

The Ashley from before would have been irritated at being wheeled everywhere, insisted on standing and walking because being carted around looks like weakness. But I know exactly how strong I am, and there is beauty in moving smoothly without doing a thing. I slide past doorways and signs with arrows at the end of every hall, kiosks with maps and a star that reads, YOU ARE HERE, popping up every now and then. I find it reassuring to know exactly where I am.

Dad says there’s reporters outside. Apparently, I’m a big deal, and most of the country is celebrating that I’ve been found. Since 99.9 percent of them didn’t know I existed until I was gone, I know better than to be flattered. Dad shows me on his phone where someone started a fund for my medical bills, and while the donation amount is big and the number keeps growing every time he refreshes it, I somehow doubt it’s going to be enough.

They move me closer to home, to a hospital in the right state and the right county. A squad takes me, the staff hustling me out a side door so that the reporters don’t spot me. I’m something of an odd celebrity, the Girl Who Lived, a hillbilly Harry Potter. Reporters keep wanting to talk to me, and news vans hovered outside the hospital for a few days before they realized that when Ashley Hawkins says no, it means no.

“Hey,” they say at the same time, Kavita giving Meredith a soft punch on the arm. “Guys, it’s fine,” I say. “No, I mean—” Kavita says in a rush while Meredith just starts crying. “Stop,” I tell them both, and they do. “You didn’t know,” I say, before either can interrupt me. “It wasn’t your fault.” Meredith nods like she wants to believe it, but Kavita’s frown tells me she’s not going to let herself off the hook quite so easily.

“Thanks,” I say. I’ve got thirty-five texts, but I slide it under my pillow for later. “So . . .” I trail off, unsure of how much they want to hear about the woods, about thinking I would die and deciding that I would and then changing my mind about it. I don’t know if Meredith can handle the idea of eating worms and raw fish, and she for sure can’t hear the part about the one that swam back up my throat, or about me clubbing a possum to death. Kavita might, and maybe I’ll tell her one day, but right now I’m so far from that, here in this clean room, with my friends.

“Omigod.” Meredith perks up suddenly. “You don’t know because you’ve been gone, but Kate Fullerton ran over Jake Smalls with her truck at a field party because he said she smelled like week-old period. But it was just his foot, and it was, like, real muddy so he didn’t get hurt too bad.” “That’s a shame,” I say, to which Kavita adds, “Preach.” Meredith keeps going, telling me all the things that went on in my absence, what people said and did, the world that kept going without me in it, stuff that normally I might tell her doesn’t matter, that I don’t care. But this is my life, and these are the people in it. And yes, I do care.

It’s true in more ways than one, but I know he’s got to get it out, so I let Duke tell me about how he found my shoes and socks, the rock where I crushed my foot and the blood there. He tells me about search parties and sniffing dogs and news crews and reporters and people lining up in straight rows and combing the woods for me, Jason yelling himself hoarse. He needs to do it, needs to show me how hard he tried to make up for what went wrong.

I told Dad about Davey Beet once we were home. Dad just put his head down while I talked about finding Davey’s hat, his name on the beech, and finally, Davey himself. Dad never interrupted except to shake his head and say, “Jesus,” every now and then.

I tell them about how Davey was in my head the whole time I was out there, how I kept finding little hints of him along the way. I don’t tell them about the web of thoughts I’d constructed for myself in the woods, his and mine, pulling us together so that I’d find him. I don’t tell them about the picture of that girl, because I don’t know if his heart was broken or mine was just bigger, so I could come back home. I keep those things to myself as I listen to Dad crack open a beer in the kitchen after they’ve gone. Small noises in a small house. I’m so goddamn thankful I get to hear them again.

At Camp Little Fish they liked to tell us that when God closes a door, a window is opened. That never meant much to me in a house where the door always fell off the hinges anyway and most of the windows were stuck shut, but I see things differently now. So I wait, ready to hear the sound of that window screeching open.

I get through my senior year, graduate, and do all the things the old Ashley needed to do, but all my goals have changed. I say everything that needs to be said to Meredith and Kavita, and to Duke, even Laney Uncapher. It doesn’t fix everything, and I’m not dumb enough to think it would. Meredith still irritates the shit out of me sometimes, and I can’t help the swell of jealousy in my gut when I go to Kavita’s races. It matches the one I feel when I hear that Duke is living with Natalie after we graduate, and I can’t tell myself that I don’t care. I do, but the world is not tame and neither are people, or how I feel about them.

There’s a pack of pens and an empty notebook in there too, to take notes for a writer who wants to tell my story. When she contacted me, I told her my story wasn’t over yet.

So here I am, listening to the sound of Dad’s truck fading away as he leaves. I’ve got Davey Beet’s hat on my head and my old blanket too, though his mom remade the top of his hat and gave it back to me and insisted on washing the mold out of my meth blanket. They’re my same old things, just better versions for this part of the trip, and I guess that only makes sense, since it’s true of me too.

I’m going to find Davey Beet. I’m going to bring home the boy who showed me how to survive. Then I’m going to live every day remembering that’s what we’re all doing, each i...

I hike up my pack and square my shoulders. And I go ba...

Lastly, a big thanks to my people—librarians, educators, and readers. This is my fan base. It’s because of you continuing to pick up my books and recommend them to friends that I have the opportunity to be a writer. Without readers, writers don’t exist. And—honestly, go ahead and recommend my books to your enemies, too.