Ninety-Eight:

NINETY-EIGHT:

Diana and Julia

Not so long ago, nothing more than a worn patch of grass by the road signaled the stop. Two people sat on the new bus bench now, quiet and unmoving, handbags clutched in their laps.

Diana Savage appeared younger than her twenty-six years. Hair pulled back in a bun, face covered in a film of sunscreen lotion. She despised putting it on—it felt like chicken grease. Nevertheless, burning was worse. She would happily trade this moment, her job, her future in Australia, for one more look at Astoria, Oregon. Home. She wanted to fish the Colombia River and laugh at the tourists walking up the private driveway, cameras clicking, to where The Goonies had been filmed. She missed sitting near the E. Morning Basin at the end of Thirty-Sixth Street, smoking cigarettes and skipping class.

Home wasn’t dead trees and inescapable heat. Hell, Summer was still nigh.

In her world, yellow fire hydrants crouched on every corner. Pastel chalet houses. Pontiacs and GMC trucks. Watching the Fighting Fishermen at the LCB Bowling Alley. An American accent.

Her mother’s grave.

Susanne Savage wrapped her car around a Douglas fir, ripping herself apart in the process. Diana was thirteen at the time and had been at summer camp when the news got to her. No more advice or discipline from that great woman. No more Christmas presents signed, Luv Mom. Diana faced womanhood alone. Memories bobbed like scattered debris in the ocean, some sinking one by one.

Her mother taking her to the Haystack rocks on Cannon Beach, making sandcastles and waving to the joggers.

Diana’s first taste of olives. Holding the little green marble in her fingertips, a bead of oil slipping into her palm. She put it in her mouth and spat it out just as quick.

That girl with a mother bore little relation to the one tossing roses on the casket, or the young woman who stood by and watched as her father met a new woman—the Australian tourist with a child of her own.

Her stepsister sat next to her on the bench.

Julia Belfry, sixteen, her narrow face hidden under a black bob. Her shoulders were slight and cheeks freckled.

My God, she’s like porcelain, Diana thought. And so stupid.

Their secret hung heavy between them.

Diana suggested the movie. Clueless was playing at Reading Cinemas in Maitland. Afterwards, they could prowl the shelves at K-Mart, seeking distractions in the budget bins near the wraith-like woman at the front who checked your bags with the ferocity of an airport customs officer. If Diana’s car hadn’t chosen to sputter and die that morning, they very well may be at the theater by now, chewing on their stripy Coke straws and still trying to avoid what needed to be said.

Instead, they sat there with their heels crossed and clutching their belongings on that brand-new bus bench. Waiting. Wooden palings hard against their backs, yet neither voiced discomfort. Even speaking was a kind of defeat.

Diana burned. And remained no closer to home.