3

So, the obvious: I did not grow up in a mansion on Forsyth Park in Savannah, Georgia. My childhood was more of an Allman Brothers song than a Southern princess storybook. I was born in Mendocino, California, in the back of a VW bus, and my mom was a pretty Deadhead named Louisa Lee. She looked a lot like my grandmother, actually. Same high cheekbones, green eyes, shiny brown hair, and tawny skin. But she was healthier-looking than Miss Lee is. More exotic. The kind of beautiful woman you see on a trail with a backpack on, hiking with her dog.

Me, I’m shorter and rounder than both of them. I have the same eyes, but my hair, when it’s not dreaded, is a complete frizz fest, and my skin is nowhere near the creamy alabaster color of theirs. Plus, I put on ten pounds if I even look at a grilled cheese sandwich. My mom used to say that I’m “voluptuous.” I’m just hoping it’s prolonged baby fat.

Most likely I take after my dad, whom I’ve never met but who is someone—or something—called “Wolf Man.” The only thing Mom ever said about him was that he was good with the herb and a real hit with the ladies—probably in the parking lots of Phish shows. Whatever.

I’ve never missed having a father. That’s because I grew up on Rain Catcher Farms, a communal organic farm north of Mendocino, and that place is always crawling with people. Some of them come in for the harvest, but others, like my mom and me, stay for years. And I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t want to stay forever. It’s awesome. I’m a big reader, and I don’t use words lightly, so when I say awesome, I mean that the place, when seen, elicits true awe because of its beauty. The farm is in a small, lush valley, with gold-and-green mountains on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. Everyone eats and hangs out in the Main, a pretty, old carriage barn filled with books and plants and hammocks; beyond the gate, a mile-long white-gravel road leads to a stretch of pristine, wild beach.

Mom and I lived in a cabin in a grove of redwoods near the Sanctuary, the root garden she created. She was the RC’s root doctor. People came from all around for Rain Catcher tinctures, and our products contributed a nice amount of money for the commune. Her garden, a lush, quiet, magical spot, was hidden from the world by a high wooden fence. It was the sweetest place anyone could imagine. The walls were covered with vines and flowers so thick they were woven together, like pretty knots of unkempt hair. Inside you were only allowed to talk in a whisper, as it was her theory that plants grow better in the quiet. She was always saying that the ground is alive—that one must work with Mother Earth and not just use what she has to offer. Sometimes Mom would simply sit under the trees, listening to the leaves rustle. “They’re whispering to me,” she’d say. To her, the life cycle of plants stood for the connection between the living and the dead.

As soon as I was old enough to crawl, I started working in the RC fields. Instead of Sesame Street songs, I learned the ins and outs of how to grow organic broccoli, kale, potatoes, beets, even bananas—basically anything that comes out of the ground. As I got older, Mom let me participate in what she called her “rituals.” Mostly, these were homeopathic medicines and treatments. For instance, did you know that red-onion root is a sure cure for early colds? Or that gingerroot tea will make your period come if it’s, as my mother would say, “stuck”? We’d make soaps and tinctures and tonics to heal anything from fevers to warts to depression. My mother’s fingertips were always stained green. She smelled of grass and cloves.

She had other remedies, too, that seemed to require more than just herbs and berries. For instance, when I was seven I developed a terrible wheeze. We went all the way to a doctor in San Francisco, who said I had asthma and gave us a bag full of inhalers and pills. I remember that when we came back, my mother put the bag on the kitchen table in our cabin and looked at it a long time. Then she picked up a knife and led me outside by the hand and had me stand next to a young eucalyptus tree. She took the knife, put it over my head, and cut a hole in the tree that was even with my hairline. After that, she cut a lock of my hair and put it in the hole. She closed her eyes and began mumbling and singing, rubbing the rough stone she always wore around her neck. As soon as I grew taller than that hole, my asthma disappeared.

She kept many of the recipes secret. She wouldn’t say why exactly, but I guess that some of the effects were too powerful for just any old person to be able to access. Nor would she ever tell anyone where she had learned these skills. All sorts of theories floated around the RC—that she’d studied in China and had a PhD in botany, for example. But whenever anyone asked how she knew so much, she would answer only with a dazzling, mysterious smile.

My mom died almost one year ago. When I found out about the accident, we were playing Hacky Sack—me, my friend Billy, and some college girl. The RC always has college kids who come for the summer, and they all kind of blend together, but this one I remember perfectly. She was a hippie, and she was trying to play the game with her shirt off.

“She’s like her own personal volleyball court,” Billy said. Billy could be really obnoxious. He loved to pinch my fat, and he made fun of anyone he could. Still, I’ll always be grateful to him for making us all laugh just then, because that’s about the best thing I can think of to be doing when you get news like I got that day.

I didn’t know right away, of course. But I knew to stop laughing. Something was really, really wrong. Wendy, Big Jon’s daughter, came up to us looking scared and interrupted our game.

“Alex,” she said, “Big Jon needs you at the Main. The cops are here.”

I thought someone had narced on us. See, the RC is known for its holistically grown organic produce and herbal tinctures. But to be straight, it’s also a pot farm—just a few plants, but enough to make Big Jon, the owner, some money, and definitely enough to make everyone nervous when helicopters fly overhead.

My mom and I didn’t have anything to do with that. Still, along with everyone else, I knew about the shady agriculture at the RC, and I was thoroughly trained in just-in-case-the-feds-come scenarios.

“Plants?” I was going to say. “What plants?” I’m pretty good at keeping a straight face, so as I walked into the Main behind Wendy, I was silently practicing what to tell the police. But it turned out that wasn’t what they were there for at all.

Big Jon was crying. He’s a big, jolly Santa Claus kind of guy, so this behavior was pretty alarming. When he saw me, he pointed to his favorite easy chair, which no one gets to sit in, ever.

“Alex,” he said, “I’m afraid I got a bad trip for you. I’m so sorry. Go ahead, sweetheart. Sit on down.”

Even thinking as hard as I can about that afternoon, I can’t remember exactly what those policemen said. Instead, I have only little details and phrases. For instance, I remember that one officer had a birthmark on his forehead in the shape of a crescent moon and that the other had cheeks as shiny as waxed apples. I remember trying to make sense of the words themselves, because the whole story wasn’t working for me. “Orr Springs Road.” (Ore? I thought. Like gold?) “Hairpin turn.” (Mom uses barrettes, not hairpins.) “Instant death.” (Instant coffee?) “Wouldn’t have felt a thing.” (Huh, that’s what I hear happens on a good LSD trip.) It took a couple of days for me to fully comprehend that my mother’s old VW bus went off Orr Springs Road while she was driving back from the hardware store in Ukiah. She had driven away and wasn’t coming back.

My mom’s dead. It’s a pretty horrifying thing to have to tell people. And yet I have to say it all the time. When I do, reactions vary. Some people want to give me a hug, which I usually refuse. Other people simply change the subject.

I wish there were better words so that I could explain everything about her in a sentence. Because if I just say, “Yeah, she’s dead,” you won’t get to hear about how cool her shiny brown braids were, or how all the guys stared at her even though she was a mom, or how she smelled like coconuts, or how she loved to sing but had the voice of a wounded badger. You’ll never know how she planned secret meetings for us in the Sanctuary, with the eucalyptus trees bending in the wind and sighing overhead. How she would tell me ghost stories about the mysterious, unnamed town she came from, or how we’d sit for hours chatting at our daily teatime, or how she taught me to make a sleep potion from valerian root and chamomile. I say “accident” and you picture a bus flying off a cliff, and probably blood and broken bones, but what you don’t know is that the accident wasn’t the worst part. The most terrible thing about her death was the weeks after. The mornings when, instead of waking up to my mom’s horrendous, out-of-tune singing and the smell of cinnamon-spiced coffee, all I heard and felt was silence.

Reggie walked into the RC on the two hundred fifty-seventh day of my fifteenth year, exactly four months after my mother died. I know that because I’ve been counting the days without her. It was a Thursday, and it was raining. I was in the kitchen, listening to the rap Cook likes to put on. My job on kitchen shift that day was to chop enough carrots for forty-five people. It gets old, prepping food for the RC. I like to do it in a rhythm. Wash, peel, chop. Wash, peel, chop. I go pretty fast, so when a hand looped in and grabbed a carrot coin, I almost took off my own finger.

“Watch it!” I said. I didn’t look up. I was mad at having to chop, mad at freeloaders who came in and put their fingers in the food when we were clearly working to get the meal done.

When he didn’t answer, I finally glanced at the culprit. There he was. Tall, lanky. About nineteen or twenty. Arms swinging like loose ropes.

“Sorry,” he said, grinning. But obviously he wasn’t sorry, because the next thing he did was reach in and grab another carrot. And my heart? It flipped out.

It would be a huge understatement to say that my mother’s absence had left a cavernous hole in my life. In fact, even on that day of the carrots, I’d awoken to a wet pillow. I cried so much I didn’t even know when I was crying anymore. So Reggie, with his loose limbs and crooked eyes, came into my life at just exactly the right time to take me somewhere else.

“You want to get high?” he said, still munching.

I didn’t, really. I’ve never been into pot, actually. Mom used to say it breeds perpetual laziness, and I’ve never liked the way it makes my mouth and my mind feel as though they’ve been stuffed with old cotton balls. But anything seemed better than crying into the carrots, so I said, “Okay, yeah. Sure.”

Every couple days he’d come find me to get high. We’d talk about music, or I’d listen to his stories about the stuff he’d done. I mean, the kid had been everywhere. He’d run a hotel on some island off Thailand, fought fires in Switzerland, studied with Buddhists in Nepal. I never got tired of listening. He was just so… cool. Then one day about a week after he arrived, he put his arm around me. I remember that his body smelled strange and distinctly unfeminine—like onions, dirt, and beer.

“Listen, Pudge,” he said. That was Billy’s nickname for me. Much to my annoyance, Reggie had picked it up. “I heard about your mom. I’m really sorry.”

“Thanks.” I stared at the ground so he wouldn’t see the tears starting to form.

“I totally know what you’re going through,” he said.

“What do you mean?” He had mentioned that his parents lived in San Diego. Were they dead?

Reggie looked away. “My girlfriend died last year. In a plane crash. So I know what it’s like to lose someone.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” God, here I was feeling sorry for myself all the time. But it wasn’t like other people didn’t have problems. “How? A big crash? Was it in the news?”

“Oh no. It was a small plane. No one heard about it. In fact, I never tell people because it makes me too bummed. But you’re special, so…” He flipped his hair out of his eyes. “Anyway, I feel your pain. It’s tough.”

I nodded. The tears that before had been just a threat were now a mortifying reality.

“Oh, man. Sorry, Pudge,” he said. “Here. Sit on my lap.”

Pretty soon, a weird thing happened. I began thinking about Reggie so much that it was almost impossible to let anything else into my crowded brain—including how sad I was. I had never really cared about guys before. Some of the older ones were cool, but mostly what mattered to me was what kind of jokes they made or whether they were mean to me or not. But Reggie! He’d bring his guitar to the lawn and play us the most awesome songs about all of the places he had traveled. He’d left home at twelve to circumnavigate the world on his friend’s boat. He was an ordained minister, a trained chef—not to mention a thoroughly skilled pot farmer, which is most likely why Big Jon kept him around.

“You’re the only person I can talk to, you know, Pudge,” he’d say, making me feel as if I were a key member of some secret club. “You’re really great, you know that?”

Of course, I hated it when he called me Pudge, but I knew he was just kidding. It was like our own private joke. He didn’t really think I was pudgy. He couldn’t, right? Because if he did, what was he doing hanging out with me all the time, taking me behind the Main for joints or down to the beach for long talks over Big Jon’s horrible apple wine? And then there was the time, about a month after he showed up, that he took the tangy glass pipe from my lips and pushed me down roughly in the sand. I was confused, thinking it was a mud ball move, but then Reggie looked at me really strangely and leaned over and put his tongue in my mouth.

It was sort of weird, honestly. Almost a little gross. I’d had no idea a tongue would taste like that—an alien invading my mouth. But it was Reggie, so after a minute of being wigged out, I figured this was cool. I was kissing someone! Yesss! Truly, it was a great day. Which meant a lot after so many crappy ones.

Of course, I wanted to tell everyone right away. Gossip at the RC moves pretty fast. I knew everything would instantly change. “Pudge?” Wendy would say when Big Jon told her. “With String Bean Reggie? No way!” But Reggie said I couldn’t tell anyone. At least, not at first.

“I’m still getting over the plane crash, Pudge,” he’d say. “I’ll get there. I promise. Just… not yet.”

It was hard for me, of course. But everyone deals with grief in different ways. I definitely knew that. Besides, it wasn’t like I wasn’t seeing enough of him. Once we started hooking up, I could count on meeting him at least a couple of nights a week.

“Dunes, Pudge?” he’d say when no one else was around. I knew it wasn’t straight up, but there was something exciting about it. And it wasn’t like we were doing everything. I never let him go all the way. I could have, but somehow I knew my mom wouldn’t have liked that. She’d always told me to wait for someone who loved me, and Reggie hadn’t said that yet. I was still waiting.

But wherever Reggie was going, that was where everyone wanted to be. He was definitely the coolest guy at the RC, and everyone knew it. And now he was my boyfriend. Me, Alex Lee, the bookwormy, doughy hippie kid with the knockout mom. Only I didn’t have my mom anymore. I had Reggie, and even though everything had fallen apart before, now it was okay. Great, even. When he’d give me a secret wink at the Main during meals, or slip me a note that said dunes at nine, my heart would slam so hard that I’d seriously think my chest was about to explode. Nothing—not even having no parents, not even the new, crampy, incredible grossness of getting my period—could get me down. I missed my mom, but now everything was finally okay.

Which is, of course, exactly when something had to come along and ruin it all.

My grandmother’s lawyer, Mr. Karr, came to Rain Catcher Farms on my sixteenth birthday. It was my first birthday with a boyfriend, and even though I missed my mom more than anything, Reggie made it pretty great. At breakfast, he gave me a big smile and even hugged me in front of everyone.

“Happy birthday, Pudge!” he yelled. “Kids, sing to her!”

Immediately, the whole place filled with a deafening serenade worthy of a drunken, tone-challenged glee club. Cook made my favorite tofu-sesame scramble, and Wendy gave me a dress she’d tie-dyed especially for me. I tried not to let them see that I was crying again, but I didn’t fool anyone.

I cheered up a couple of seconds later, though. I was thinking about Reggie, who’d said he planned a surprise for my birthday. I was stoked. Would we finally be public now? I wondered. Was he ready? Or was he going to say what Wendy called the “L-bomb”? Anyway, what I’m trying to say is I was pretty preoccupied. So when Big Jon came into the schoolroom wearing an expression I couldn’t read and said, “Alex, a lawyer’s here to see you,” I seriously thought it was a joke.

But it wasn’t. No, there was nothing funny about it. Because Mr. Karr, in his perfectly pressed tan suit, wanted me to move somewhere in… Georgia.

We tried to fight him. Big Jon railed on for an hour about how we were common-law family. And as for me, I totally refused to go.

“No way am I going anywhere!” I cried. “I live here!”

But the lawyer just kept pointing to his papers. Next of kin. Custody.

“Listen here,” Big Jon said. “We don’t care about your laws. We love Alex, and we need her here.”

The lawyer cleared his throat. His tan pants had mud on the cuffs from his walk around the farm. He was a little, round bald man with tiny, smart eyes.

“I helicoptered in, you know,” he said carefully. “Alexandria’s grandmother has many, many resources. And I know a lot of people. I can keep them away, or I can bring them in. One call to the DEA. That’s all it’ll take.”

Big Jon put his hands in his pockets and was quiet for a moment. Then in a flash he pushed the books and cups off his desk onto the floor.

“You suits!” he yelled. “You don’t care about anyone. Don’t you see that’s all we want? A place where people take care of each other?”

But Mr. Karr wasn’t budging. “I can assure you,” he said, “that Alexandria will be well looked after. Miss Lee is a very well connected woman. And Alexandria comes from a long line of debutantes. It’s hard to understand outside of the South, but it’s a very tight sisterhood. They look after one another.”

“Debutantes?” Jon chortled. “Are you kidding me? What a crock of elitist crap.”

“One call and the farm is passed over for ten years,” said Karr. “Otherwise I’d put Alex on field-torching duty.”

Jon gave a final roar. He hugged me so hard that he didn’t even have to say he was sorry. Then he left the room.

“All right, then,” Mr. Karr said. “I’m going to get a little spa time in Napa. I’ll come back for you in three days.”

And that’s how my fate was sealed. No choices. No bargaining. Well, I guess there was bargaining. Because Big Jon managed to make himself a deal for ten more police-free years. And guess what? I was the price.