Unknown Soldier
There was a glade so deep in the Ramble, she could believe that even in a city of eight million people, no one but her had ever been there.
One day, that illusion was shattered.
She always tried to save her tears until she reached her secret sanctuary, but her face was already wet as she pushed through the last of the trees to the tiny clearing. And there, beside the ancient boulder that had been shelter and throne and confidant more and more often over the past months, there was a rectangle of freshly-turned earth.
She didn't know what it meant, other than someone was here, and she decided she didn't care.
She climbed onto the rock, still cool and damp from the morning's rain, and opened her notebook.
Dear Diary,
I am so sad again today. I got a bad grade on my math test. I tried so hard to study but I can't learn. I lied to Macy and told her I got a B+. I don't know what I'm going to tell Dad. He gets mad at me when I don't do well in school.
He was already mad this morning. Things are bad for him at work like they are bad for me at school, even though he is a grown-up and doesn't have to take tests anymore. So not bad the same way I guess. But anyway he works very hard like I do.
As long as I am home by six he doesn't know I was out like I'm not supposed to be. I don't want to go home sooner because it's lonely there. I mean, I'm alone here in the secret place too, but it's not lonely. I have my rock and my diary and today I have a mystery to solve.
I will write again tomorrow.
Love,
Erika
Closing the diary, she tucked it carefully into her bookbag before sliding down from the rock. The ground was soft and squishy under her sneakers as she tiptoed around the strange rectangle. After a couple of circuits, she picked up a stick from under the trees and used it to poke at the loose dirt. A few insects scurried away from the intrusion, but other than that nothing happened.
She wanted to lay down in the dark soil, but if she came home with her clothes dirty, her father would know she had been somewhere she wasn't supposed to be. She had to be careful, always keep her secret, like a spy.
She retreated to her rock, and for the next several hours she slowly read a Judy Blume novel, stumbling over the difficult words. When the sun began to sink low in the sky, she went home.
But just before she ducked into the trees, she turned back to the glade and whispered a magic spell, so that nobody else would find her secret place.
Dear Diary,
My magic spell worked! I am a spy and a witch. Just like Hermione. If only I were smart like her too. I had to tell Dad about my math test. He yelled at me and told me no TV for a week. He thinks I watch TV after school while he's at work. I don't! So I don't care about that anyway. But I acted mad because I am a good spy.
I don't know what's with this dirt-rectangle but I am going to figure it out! It could be
- a tiny garden
- or an animal made it
- or buried treasure!
but anyway I think no one else has been here. So I will keep trying to figure it out.
Love,
Erika
She thought hard about the mystery, and then she became so engrossed in her book she forgot to pay attention to the time. As she rushed to leave, she didn't notice her journal fall softly into the shadow of the rock.
She realized her mistake as soon as she got home. She didn't say anything at dinner, or at school the next day, because nobody knew about her secret diary. And anyway, there was nothing to worry about, because no one knew about her secret place either, right? She was pretty sure she had lost her diary in the glade. She hoped she had...
She ran there straight after school. Dropping her bookbag between the last trees, she scrambled around in the fallen leaves, looking for the precious notebook. She was beginning to panic when she spotted the rainbow-patterned cover under an overhang of the rock.
... Under an overhang? How could she possibly have dropped it like that? And why did it look so carefully placed?
She snatched it up, hugging it to her chest before grabbing her bag and climbing on top of the rock. When she opened the spiral-bound notebook, she was shocked to find that the last words in it weren't hers.
STOP COMING HERE.
P.S. Sorry about your math test.
Fury welled up in her, buoyed by shame and embarrassment. Someone had read her diary! And written in it. And told her to stop coming to her secret place.
She tore the cap off her pen and scratched big letters on the first blank page.
You stop coming here! I found this place first!
She yanked the page from the metal rings, tears springing to her eyes. Spending the afternoon here no longer seemed like fun. Neither did writing about another lousy day. She folded up the note, jammed it into a crevice in the rock, and ran all the way home.
The next time she came with defiance. It had actually been a good day, and she normally only went to her secret place on bad days, but today she went just to prove that no one was going to stop her.
The page from her notebook was still wedged into the crack in the rock, but now it was folded into the shape of a bird.
She held it in her hands for a long time, as she leaned against the boulder. It was almost too beautiful and delicate to unfold.
And anything could be inside. A threat. A nasty joke like Jonathan and Carlos kept leaving in her locker. A coded message, or a map, or -
She almost tore the paper in her haste to open it.
We're not trying to be mean. This just isn't a good place for you anymore.
Her heart thudded in her chest. More than one person had read her diary.
And they still didn't want to be mean to her.
She reached for her pen, and wrote another line on the same page.
Do you know what happened here?
Clumsily refolding the note, she set the paper bird on the still-bare, settling earth.
She couldn't go to the park on the weekend. On Monday, she didn't even know whether school was good or bad. She could only think of the glade.
When she got there, she found the tightly-folded paper had been put back in the crack in the boulder. A single cryptic line had been added to it.
Not all that is buried is treasure.
And then she understood.
Meteorologically speaking, it had been a perfect day. Nothing else about it was good at all.
There was a sharply rectangular hole, as though the earth had been cut away with a knife. There was a box, and there was an empty place at her hand where her mom should have been.
There was a service, and somber singing, and relatives she didn't know and didn't want to know came up to her to murmur condolences.
Her dad was strangely silent, and after that he was never really the same.
She looked at the note a long time, and she whispered an apology to the dirt for having poked it with a stick.
I'm sorry, she wrote slowly, taking care with her penmanship. Who was she?
The response was four lines, each in a different handwriting.
He was the best.
He was unstoppable.
He was a soldier.
He was my son.
She sat on the ground, the much-wrinkled page in her hand, and looked at the dark rectangle. She felt suddenly older, grown-up. This was the most amazing, magical thing that had ever happened to her, and yet it was no longer a game.
She wanted to know everything. How old was he, and how did he die, and why was he buried deep in the wilds of Central Park? What was his mother like, and who were the other three people?
I want to meet you, she wrote.
No, was the answer, in stark, blocky letters.
She wrote many replies, and crossed them all out.
A spy would have come up with a clever ruse to get the answers to her questions. But she wasn't a spy. She was eleven years old and she was in over her head.
She folded up the paper - soft now, and torn - and this time she put it in her pocket.
The glade was not for her. She began to think it never had been. She was too old for fairy tales and not old enough to be in the park alone.
She went to school and went home and tried to stay out of trouble.
The next time she visited the glade, it was months later. She was crying, which was typical, and she went before school, which she had never done before. She jammed a fresh sheet of notebook paper into the crack in the rock, and ran back out into the noise of the city.
She said as little as possible to her teachers and classmates, and went straight back to the park after school. It was early spring and the days were short; the glade was already full of strange shadows as she approached the rock. The folded note didn't look as though it had been touched, and she didn't know what she was expecting as she reached for it.
Her own words were still scrawled inside, as always happens in a world without magic.
Please help me my dad hit me last night I don't know what to do I'm afraid to go home
But below it was the handwriting of a mother she had never met.
Wait here until dark. Then go home. Sneak in like a spy and go straight to your room. Do not let your father see you.
Before you leave, say this magic spell loudly: "Watashi wa apāto ni sunde iru" followed by your apartment number.
Be brave, and no harm will come to you.
She shivered. Her jacket had been thin when it was new, and now it no longer covered her wrists. She told herself that was the only reason why a chill ran through her.
Be brave.
She waited until the sun was almost gone from behind the trees. In the dying light, in a clear voice, she read the spell for protection of her apartment.
She settled her backpack on her shoulders and started towards home.
She'd barely gotten out of the Ramble when she had the sense that someone was following her. She whipped around, scanning the dark branches of the trees, with their still-tightly-furled new leaves.
No one was there.
She checked again at the edge of the park, at each intersection, and at the door of her building. Each time, only the deepening shadows.
She took a breath and went inside.
It was barely six o'clock. She approached her own door on silent feet, listening at the crack before reaching for the key on the ribbon around her neck.
She could hear the television. Her dad was home, and almost certainly he was in the kitchen at the back of the apartment, making dinner and listening to the news over the rattle of pots and pans.
Quickly, she unlocked the door, slipped inside, and shut it behind her. As quietly as possible, she crossed to the bedroom and hid there in the dark.
And then what? She had followed all the instructions; she had been as brave as she could be. Surely her dad would find her before long...
There was a crash from the kitchen.
"Jesus!"
Her dad's voice. Had he dropped something and hurt himself? She moved to the door on reflex, but stopped when she heard someone else speaking in an accent she couldn't identify.
"I am here for your daughter."
Her heart stopped.
"Like hell you are. I knew she had an overactive imagination, but this is ridiculous."
"Ridiculous or not, she has brought me here."
A beat of silence. "For what?"
"To protect her," replied the mysterious soft voice. "Children are a precious gift. Do not strike your daughter again."
"How do you know about that?" her dad demanded, but there was no answer. "I - I didn't mean to," he said, more quietly. "Everything's been so hard..." He trailed off again. "That's no excuse. What kind of father am I?"
"It is never easy. This I know." A heavy pause. "She is being bullied at school and has trouble with her homework. I can help with these things."
"You can -" Her dad barked a laugh. "You can't even be real."
"The unreal can be very powerful," the voice said, and she noticed as if for the first time that it definitely did not belong to a woman. "One might say that love and hope and courage are not real, and yet it is these that our children need, as much as a nourishing meal."
"Damnit -" her dad swore, and there was a clatter as he took something off the stove. Not that burned meals were anything new.
"A little water will save it," the voice said. "Go to your daughter now. She is waiting in her room."
"How -"
"If you believe," the voice continued, "all will be well." The briefest pause, and her dad didn't interrupt again. "Good evening, and good luck."
She burst out of her room, unable to stay hidden for another moment. It took her only seconds to get to the kitchen, but the visitor was already gone. There was only her dad, a steaming pan, and the battered blinds, gently swaying in the still air.
"I heard everything," she said. "Who was it?"
"The mother of all rats," her dad said faintly.
She didn't understand, and at the same time she did. "No. It was the father of a soldier."
Her dad stared at her, and a curl of fear crept back into her heart. Then he shook his head.
"Never mind." He opened his arms. "I love you. I'm sorry."
She ran to him, hugging his waist, resting her head against his chest. She was a spy and a witch after all, and she had a great dad, and everything was going to be okay.
Someday, she might even find out about the unknown soldier, in a secret grave in the park, whose family had helped her be brave enough to make it so.