Thank God she’d never told McFadden about Montana. She’d only told Asa, and there was no way his spongy brain had managed to hold on to the information this long. That day when Ivy had shown him the newspaper clipping, he’d just finished smoking a huge bowl, so he’d found it alternately hilarious and confounding.
“Is that a deer?” he’d asked, gripping the scrap of newspaper between his enormous fingers. “On a telephone wire?”
“It’s a baby deer.”
“Hanging by its armpits from a telephone wire. Well, I’ll be goddamned.” He’d let his hand drop to his lap, tilted his head back, and shuddered with silent laughter. Ivy hated talking to Asa when he was like that, but lately he hadn’t given her much choice.
“It’s a real picture,” Ivy said, snatching the clipping from him. There was a utility worker in a cherry picker rising up to meet the deer, which was slung over the wire like a pair of old sneakers. The headline read “Fawn Causes Power Outage.”
“Guess how it got up there.”
Asa stopped chuckling and squinted his eyes. “Wings. Baby deer wings.”
“Yes. Baby deer wings.” Ivy rolled her eyes. “My point is, this is what Montana is like. Fucking baby deer dropping out of the sky. Okay? Glaciers. Geysers. They have a road called the Going-to-the-Sun Road.”
“Whoa.”
“Can you think of a single road around here anyone would want to call Going-to-the-Sun Road?”
“Umm…that road with the tanning salon? Route 17?” More silent laughter.
“There’s this job people have out there. Smoke jumpers. They jump out of planes and fight forest fires. Okay? They jump out of airplanes into forest fires.”
“Is that what the deer was doing?”
“Can you think of a single person around here who’s ever done something like that in their entire life?”
“C’mon, Ivy, how’d the deer get on the telephone wire?”
Ivy pulled a Dorito out of the bag sitting on the floor between them, snapped off a corner between her teeth. “An eagle dropped it. Duh.”
There was a time when Ivy would’ve asked Asa to come with her to Montana, but over the past year, he’d gone like the rest of Good Hope—into a trance. In Asa’s case, it was a pot and video game trance. For her sister, Agnes, it was a hair and makeup trance. Her brother, Colin, was in a basement weight-lifting trance. Those people who opened that antique store downtown were in an antique trance, sitting there all day among the rhinestone brooches and jelly glasses, not even noticing that nobody ever came through the door, just paying rent so they’d have a place to sit between meals.
Ivy wanted to snap her fingers in their faces, shake them by the shoulders, scream at the top of her lungs. Just go, she wanted to yell at Agnes; go find a town that has the job you studied so hard for. Move out, she wanted to scream at Colin; our basement has no windows. Most of all, she wanted to burst into that antique store and swing a chair around the place, just pulverizing all the cake stands and mason jars and Hummel shit. Snap out of it! she would scream, throwing the chair into a case full of pocket watches and Fiestaware. You’re just selling the same cracked, ugly old crap again and again, year after year, just waiting till people die and wiping off the dust and selling it again. What the hell is the point in that?
But instead, she stole McFadden’s car. Ivy had to admit, she enjoyed imagining McFadden out in the high school parking lot, standing slack-jawed in front of her empty spot. How could anyone do this to me, she’d be thinking. After everything I’ve done for this town. And of course she’d find a way to get a new car for free. Ivy was sure of that. The town would band together and raise the money, everybody handing over a chunk of their tips, their welfare checks, their prison work pay, so Saint McFadden could get a sweet ride.
Ivy batted at the graduation tassel hanging from the rearview mirror. She’d tried telling McFadden she had a plan, that she didn’t need to take the SATs. But McFadden wouldn’t listen. As the guidance counselor with the highest college acceptance rate in the entire Southern Tier, McFadden had a reputation to maintain, and she wasn’t about to let some slacker kid ruin it for her. How many times had Ivy already ridden in this very car, against her will? Going to SAT prep. Going to the actual SATs. Going to more SAT prep.
That’s how it was with McFadden. If you didn’t show up for test prep, she’d come to your house and pick you up in her car. If you weren’t in any clubs, she’d get you magically added to the yearbook committee. If you couldn’t figure out what to write for your application essay, she’d pull one out of this giant file she kept and say, “Use this for inspiration.” She’d already done it to Colin and Agnes, and the way Ma acted when they got those acceptance letters, it was like they’d been awarded the goddamn Nobel Prize by the pope himself. Both times, Ma bought them ice-cream cakes and balloons, and both times her raggedy lungs failed to blow up a single balloon and she had to get Ivy to do it.
Colin went to Alfred for social work, Agnes went to Tech for hospitality, and now they were both living at home and
