People used to say that Ginny Gallagher was the best climber in Scoeville. The way she could shimmy up a tree put squirrels to shame. I saw her climb up a rope in the gym, once. Lickety-split.
They say that Ginny was part chimpanzee, but even with people talking like that, she graduated valedictorian. To be fair, I’ve never met a chimp, but I can’t imagine they’re very smart. And Ginny was whip-crack smart. We were in chemistry together, and she figured out how all those formulas and equations and little shapes fit together like she was a bird taking to the wing.
We have a good college in town. Scoville Community College gets students from two counties over, and one girl came from Kentucky, even. No one was too surprised, though, when Ginny accepted a scholarship and senatorial nomination to West Point academy. I was sad she was leaving, but I was proud down to my toes.
I like to listen, and I’d hear people talk about Ginny in high school all the time. They talked about how good she was at chemistry. And they talked about how she used to climb, and how she could make a free-throw nine times out of ten. They almost never talked about how she looked though. I looked better than her, and my teeth were all sorts of messed up. My parents could afford braces, I just didn’t want them.
That first time Ginny came home from West Point, she’d bloomed. I don’t know how else to say it. She was hiding something before, that’s for sure, but it wasn’t hidden anymore. She told me she just wanted to wear pretty clothes because she was so sick of uniforms.
A lot of the time, when someone starts wearing fancy clothes those clothes wear them instead, and they end up looking real out of sorts, but the military had already kicked in, and that girl could command. She stood tall, and those clothes listened, and they treated her in the best light every time.
She let me try on some of her clothes. She looked confident and regal in those clothes. I looked like a bumpkin. That’s alright. I like big sweaters. They’re good to me.
Folks started saying that Ginny Gallagher was head over heels for some boy. That made me sad. Not because she had a beau. I was just sad because she didn’t tell me first. Those feelings went away right quick when she called me a month later crying. That’s when I started to figure out how a boy can mess with your head so you forget about everything else, even your best friends. She talked to me when it counted, though. I still hope that boy gets blown up.
Even though people didn’t think Ginny was pretty until college, I used to think she was pretty all the way back in the fifth grade. I liked her lips, they looked soft. She kissed me once, backstage during play practice. She was playing Juliet, and said she didn’t want it to look awkward when she had to kiss Romeo on stage. The second time, she didn’t have that excuse.
I was really excited. I told my mom. She told Ginny’s mom, who didn’t care. Then she told Pastor Salus, and Pastor Salus told me some things.
I hadn’t realized I was sinning, but I guess it made sense after he explained it. I don’t want to go to hell. I’m married now, and his lips aren’t soft, but he’s got forearms as big as my calves. I’d take forearms and heaven over soft lips and hell any day. I miss soft lips, though. Sometimes.
Anyway, It wasn’t four months later that Ginny had another beau. She called me straight away that time and told me about him, and I told her about me and Marcus. She said she liked Marcus. Said he always seemed bright. That made me proud. He did seem bright.
Her beau wasn’t actually going to West Point. She said he wrote articles for the newspaper, and he’d come to interview her after her team won a basketball tournament. He was six-one, skinny, with freckles. She said he reminded her of home, but smarter, just a bit more, which I guess is what we’re all looking for. She also said he was twelve years older than her, which seemed a little creepy to me, but I guess once you’re in the adult club, you’re in, and it’s all sort of the same at that point, so it’s ok.
He turned out alright. People talked when he came to town with her after junior year. They didn’t have anything else to talk about. Patrick Morgan had fallen out of a tree the month prior and broken both his arms, so people were already primed to talk about her and the way she used to climb so fast. When she showed up with this older, media man, people bit hard.
Her dad didn’t like it. He was ten years older than her mom, so he couldn’t stand much against that. Media Man was a yank, though. Cardinal sin.
Ginny invited me over for dinner the second night she was home. I was sitting on the porch swing with Media Man, grilling him about his intentions, but I shut up when the yelling started.
It’s warm in Scoville, and all the walls are thin, and that’s why gossip spreads so quick. When Ginny came out on the porch, she wasn’t crying. She wouldn’t, but her eyes were red, just a bit around the edges where I’d notice and the other people who really looked at her would notice. Where her dad never did.
Media Man noticed. He stood up from the swing and wrapped the whole of his wingspan about her, and I liked that. I called him Scott after that.
Senior year came on strong. Ginny didn’t tell me much about school. She only talked about Scott. How Scott was being annoying, or how Scott was being sweet, or how Scott had a piece published in an anthology, whatever that is. And I tried asking her about school once, and her words got all short, and I felt bad, and I asked her about marriage instead, and she thought he might propose, but she wasn’t sure. So we talked about dresses, just in case.
People in town said Ginny was going off to war. They said it wasn’t a big deal because all the hard work was done, and now the army was just babysitting. Mrs. Gallagher put an ARMY sticker on her car.
I saw her sitting in the driver’s seat of that car in the grocery store parking lot once. She was crying, and I thought about going and talking to her, but she would have been embarrassed. I let her cry instead and didn’t talk about it. That dropped rocks in my stomach. Big ones.
I called Ginny a few nights later. I told her how Marcus had proposed. I told her I said yes. She said she was happy for me. I told her I loved her and would forever. She said she loved me too. We both knew what we meant, but we pretended we didn’t. I didn’t tell her about her mom.
Ginny went to war. They put her picture up in the post office with her address underneath so people from town could send her letters. She got a lot of mail. By the end of her first month abroad in the desert, she knew about every affair, embezzlement, mishap, and closeted homosexual in Scoeville.
She took to passing those letters out to the other soldiers, so they’d have something to read. But she always responded to my letters even though we still talked on the phone. She’d put a little bit of sand in each one she sent me. I’d put a little dirt or a leaf in the ones I sent her.
People in town said Ginny wouldn’t have to do anything except sit around, and that’s what all of her letters made it sound like she was doing. I’d been worried about her, so those boring letters of hers made me feel a bit better. We wrote back and forth, and I set the date of my wedding far off, so she could come. And we wrote about flowers and table arrangements. All the things that had to be just so. There was a lot of planning to do, and we were going to do it right.
It was a great wedding, everyone said so. I had to ask, because I wasn’t sure. There was so much going on. I’m convinced now though, it was definitely good. Ginny was there, and she didn’t wear fancy clothes, she just dressed normal. Scott was there too, they were still together, but he hadn’t proposed. That was ok. She gave me a hug, and we had a minute together during the reception, and I asked about being abroad. She said she had missed the trees back home, and I got that. I told her that me and Marcus were flying to Italy for our honeymoon. She smiled and hugged me. She said she was happy for me, and I think she was.
I watched her some. She didn’t seem to eat much, and Scott kept his hand on her back. Just held it there. She drank a lot of wine so her lips got purple. But you might have thought it was just lipstick if you didn’t know her lips like I know them. Me and Marcus left and got on a plane and went to Italy, and it was a long flight, and I got sick at one point. I didn’t see Ginny again for a long time.
We spent a whole month in Italy. It was too long. I was ready to be home, and I wasn’t even scared of flying on the return trip, even though I knew I was going to get sick. Marcus rubbed my back through the whole flight. He’s good that way.
At home, people were saying Ginny was going back to war. Some sort of reshuffling of troops. That seemed unfair to me. She’d only been back for three months, but I guess that’s the price you pay for getting that big scholarship. Nothing’s really free.
Then people started talking about me. They treated me nice, now that I was married, and they asked my opinions about different things, like if I thought Chelsea Wilder’s husband was cheating on her. He definitely was. I saw him buying a whole heap of roses at the florist, and you only do that if it’s valentine’s day, or you’ve really screwed the pooch.
Then they would ask how I was feeling. I seemed to be sick a lot lately. I seemed to be a little up and down lately. Was I drinking enough orange juice? I wasn’t, I couldn’t stand the taste once I got to the second trimester.
Ginny was already at war when I had the baby. He was fat and ugly, and I hated him. And I hated myself for hating him. I yelled at Marcus a lot, which was unfair, and I knew it.
I pretended like I liked the baby in public though, because I was supposed to. My right arm was tired from holding him all the time. The only person I could talk to was Ginny. She hadn’t had a baby, but she was there for me, and she didn’t act like I was crazy, even though I felt crazy, and Marcus even said I was crazy once, and I think he might have been right. I knew Ginny had her own issues, being at war and all, but she listened to mine, and I still loved her, and I knew she still loved me.
After a couple of months it started to get better, and I decided that maybe I didn’t hate him after all. His name was Hunter. His dad liked the name. I thought it was a dumb name, but I didn’t care much at first. I like it now, a lot.
Ginny told me she was going on a mission, which sounded very official. I sat at home with Hunter and felt jealous. She said we wouldn’t be able to call for awhile, so I told her I would send letters, and she said she would write letters too and send them when she got back. She couldn’t tell me much of what the mission was, she just said it was routine stuff, and she’d be back soon.
Everyone in town knew. She had lots of missions, and during each one it gave people something to talk about. Hunter was yesterday’s news at this point and Ginny’s face was back up in the post office. People wrote her lots of letters.
When Ginny got home, Scott proposed. She was happy about that, but I think he just did it to save their relationship. The gesture was even a little sad. He did it while she was still in the hospital bed, and he had a ring, but her left arm was gone below the shoulder, and her right just below the elbow, so she didn’t have any fingers to put it on. She cried, and he wrapped his lanky wings around her again. She cried happy at first, and sad after that.
We found the dress we’d always talked about. Her prosthetics were done in white and gold, and I was a little jealous because they looked fancy, like long gloves. She went to British Columbia with Scott for the honeymoon. She wanted to see the trees, and she wanted it to be cool, and she wanted it to be wet after all her time in the desert.
She moved back to Scoeville with Scott, who said he could work from anywhere. She’s pregnant now, too. We take girls nights away from our husbands and talk about the old days, sometimes. I’m not cruel though, so I never talk about how she used to be such a good climber.
Mitchell Davidson is a writer. A lifelong Alaskan American, Mitchell lives on the island of Kodiak where he and his wife hike, kayak, and watch the storms. His writing journey began like many others in the far north, as a way to make the most of those long, dark winters.