2

For the story to make sense, you will need to know about Blair. Telling my own story without telling Blair’s would be like looking at the stars without a telescope. Sure, you can catch a glimpse, but you’re not getting the full story.

Everyone knows about Blair, it feels like. She’s been the main character of every chapter of my life. But I don’t remember how we got from then to now, to be honest. I wish I could pinpoint a day where everything went wrong and circle it in red and drape it with yellow Caution tape. But it wasn’t a day; it was a long, drawn-out fall that crashed when it hit the bottom. I don’t even know when we slipped, I just know when we landed.

For our end-of-the-year oral biography report, Mr. Linn had told us we needed to know our subjects backward and forward. I liked that. If you really understood something, you could tell your audience what happened chronologically, and then turn around and tell it in reverse. I’d done mine on Katherine Johnson, the woman who helped calculate the trajectory of space launches for NASA. We wouldn’t have been able to send John Glenn up to the stars without her and her brain. Four other girls in class had done Amelia Earhart, and Marissa Mulligan had even worn a real leather pilot’s jacket. But nobody in our class had even known who Katherine Johnson was, except for a few kids who had seen some big movie about her, and I could tell you everything you needed to know about her, from the day she was born to where she lived today and vice versa. I got an A.

So maybe to fully understand the story of Blair, I should tell it backward.

Maybe then, you can see what we all missed.

THIS PAST MAY

Twelve years old

Exactly ten weeks before I spotted Dr. Leo Lacamoire in the window that night, our town held the Moose Junction Memorial Day Bash. As Leo poured over Google images of Moose Junction, finding the best resort to stay at, looking at pictures of the Moose Junction Public Library from every angle he could find, I pulled on a red-and-white tank top and loaded up on the bug spray. It was the beginning of summer, and you could feel it in the air, the way the sun found our pale shoulders and the turtles had returned to their log on Fishtrap Lake. The eclipse seemed ages away, an end-of-summer treat, a reward for making it through tourist season.

By Memorial Day, the tourists had arrived in full force and Main Street was packed. The Bash was our annual kickoff to summer, the biggest block party we had all year. The Cranberry Patch Gift Shop had a line out the door of people looking for real maple syrup and Lou’s cranberry coffee blend. Northern Lights had just bought an espresso machine so you could get more than a lukewarm cup of blah, and Hank’s Hardware and More had a sale on buoys and coolers. Music was blaring; I saw Caleb Evers playing drums and waved. He gave me a nod.