Selma liked that Bulahdeen thought she had been included in the lake group’s little getaway. “Here and there.”

“Hasn’t this been an exciting day? I got rid of the sign. But I wish that man hadn’t made a speech. No one seems to like him. Eby doesn’t even seem to like him. That might work in our favor. I’m glad he left. Look, they’re bringing out the cake!” Jack and Wes were now exiting the house, carrying a chocolate monstrosity.

Sometimes Bulahdeen was simply exhausting. And Selma was in no mood for her right now. “Why are you trying so hard? Why is everyone trying so hard to save this place?”

“Because we love it here,” Bulahdeen said.

“Speak for yourself.”

Bulahdeen tsked. “Selma, if you keep acting like you don’t care, pretty soon everyone is going to believe you.”

“You’ve known me for thirty years and that is just now occurring to you? I’m not acting. Bulahdeen, why don’t you just give up? She’s selling. And, contrary to what you may believe, you can’t stop it from happening. Everyone is here to say good-bye. It’s what people do when they go their separate ways. They say good-bye. I’ve done it a lot. It goes like this.”

Selma turned and walked away.

13

Bulahdeen Ramsey was born in a shanty area in upstate South Carolina that locals called the End of the World, which was just that for everyone who lived there. They knew how they were going to turn out. They knew the ending to their stories in this place, with its muddy streets, its smell of unwashed men, and grease from the kitchens that turned all the window coverings yellow. Those lucky enough to have a pig or chickens guarded them fiercely. There had been more than one lifeless body hauled away to town, shot trying to steal animals. Protein was a commodity greater than gold.

Women from the Baptist Church came once a month with charity boxes of flour and sugar and old clothes. Shoes in the winter. The men had seasonal jobs on the nearby farms. They were carted away in trucks and would stay gone for weeks at a time, coming back for sex and drink, before going back again. The women were calmer when the men were away. There was more food, less drink, no babies conceived to be born in the dead of winter, like Bulahdeen.

Doctors rarely traveled to the End of the World, because payment was never a given, not even in the form of vanilla pie or a burlap bag of walnuts. So when Bulahdeen’s mother went into hard labor, no doctor was there to help her. She died giving birth. Bulahdeen’s father cast her away from him and ran as far as he could. He died of drink in the river.

Bulahdeen grew up in her aunt Clara’s tar-paper home. Her aunt weaned her with a cousin close to Bulahdeen in age, then set her aside, leaving Bulahdeen to figure out things on her own. Sometimes it seemed they forgot about her entirely. When the people from the county came to check on the kids, to document their health and ages, Bulahdeen was always away, staving off hunger by picking wild blackberries and chicory and fireweed in her own personal glen out near the polluted river that ran from the cannery. The school system didn’t know Bulahdeen existed, so she was never made to go.

Her aunt had too many children to care for, so Bulahdeen became like a stray cat that only came close enough to be fed table scraps at night. She spent the rest of her time walking the roads and fields. In the summer she slept in the shelter made by two felled trees and a canopy of ivy. In the winter she slept on the porch, curled near the crack under the door, covered with a blanket.

When Bulahdeen was six, she was run out of her glen by some boys who had discovered it and claimed it for their own, so she was forced farther out to forage, closer to where no one at the End of the World was ever supposed to go near. The Waycross Estate. The owner of hundreds of acres of farmland lived there, the man responsible for what little wages were earned in the End of the World.

That’s where she met Maudie Waycross, the boss’s daughter. She was known to be pretty and generous and absolutely off limits to anyone, much like the estate itself.

She was sitting under a tree, on a quilt, picnic food in waxed paper pouches around her. She didn’t seem to care about the food. She was completely engrossed in a book. She didn’t even notice Bulahdeen standing there until Bulahdeen took a small step forward, thinking she could just reach over and take one of the pouches and run. When Bulahdeen stepped on a twig, the girl looked up, startled.

Bulahdeen turned to run away, but the girl called to her. “Stop!” She put the book away and smiled. “What a surprise to see you. You look like a wood nymph. You have beautiful hair.”

Bulahdeen didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what a wood nymph was. And no one had ever told her that her hair was beautiful. It was wild and strawberry red and never fully contained with a dirty scarf and an old clip she’d found in a nearby dump site.

“I’m Maudie. What’s your name?”

Several seconds passed. “Bulahdeen.”

“You’re from the End of the World, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not supposed to be here. But I’m not supposed to be here, either. So let’s not be here together. Come, sit with me. I’ll share my food with you.”

Bulahdeen sat on the very edge of the quilt, and Maudie handed her a sandwich. Bulahdeen ate, timidly at first, then voraciously when she realized how good it was. Maudie rested back, the book on her stomach, and looked up at the sky through the trees. She told Bulahdeen about the book she was reading, a story set in a place called England, involving a man who had a madwoman in his attic but who was in love with a young woman who taught a little girl who lived in his house. It was all very confusing to Bulahdeen.

Maudie suddenly sat up. “What’s your favorite book?”

“I don’t have one,” Bulahdeen said, eyeing the rest of the food on the quilt.

“Don’t you like to read?” Maudie asked, handing Bulahdeen an apple.

“I don’t know how.”

“Where do you go to school?”

“I don’t go to school.” Maudie just stared at her. So Bulahdeen told her about her family and her life—all of it. She hadn’t meant to talk so much, but no one had ever listened the way Maudie listened. By the time she finished talking, the food was all gone—she’d eaten it all without realizing—and the sun was setting.

Maudie reached over and brushed some of Bulahdeen’s hair behind her ear. “You can’t change where you came from, but you can change where you go from here. Just like a book. If you don’t like the ending, you make up a new one.” There was yelling coming from the direction of the main house on the estate, and Maudie quickly stood. Someone was calling her name. As she gathered the quilt and the empty waxed-paper packets, she said hurriedly, “In two years, I turn eighteen. My dad thinks I’m going to marry Hamilton Beatty, because he wants me to. But I’m not. I’m leaving when I turn eighteen. I’m going to see the world! Meet me back here tomorrow, Bulahdeen.”

“Why?” Bulahdeen called after her.

Maudie turned and smiled. Bulahdeen would always remember that smile, how beautiful it was, how it made Bulahdeen’s stomach feel jumpy and wonderful. She’d never felt anything like it before.

Hope.

It was the first time she’d ever felt hope.

“Because we can change your ending, too,” Maudie said, then ran away.

That was the day everything changed.

Maudie taught Bulahdeen to read. She got Bulahdeen enrolled in school. And nearly every day, Maudie and Bulahdeen met in the woods and ate and read to each other, and Maudie told Bulahdeen of all her plans when she would turn eighteen.

On the day of her birthday, Bulahdeen picked blackberries and made Maudie a crown of clover, and met her at their spot, only to find a wooden box sitting on the folded quilt instead. Inside the box there was a large stack of paper, envelopes, pencils, and postage stamps. There was also a small package and a note, which read:

I had to leave in the middle of the night. Daddy found out my plans and locked me in my room. I’m going to my aunt’s house in Boston. Here is her address. Write to me there, Bulahdeen. Write to me about how you’re making your own ending, and I’ll tell you all about mine.

Bulahdeen opened the package to find it was the copy of Jane Eyre Maudie had been reading when they’d first met.

Of course Maudie made it out. She had the means to make her own ending.

But no one got out of the End of the World.

Still, Bulahdeen wrote to Maudie. Every day at first, then every few months, when she’d collected enough events to fill a sheet of paper. Bulahdeen excelled at school, which didn’t mean anything, really. She still went home to the same place and slept on the porch and waited for her life to play out.

The summer she turned fourteen, her aunt Clara made a bed for her in the corner of the kitchen because she needed the help. Several of Bulahdeen’s cousins, cousins not much older than Bulahdeen, now had lap babies and hip babies and babies on the way, and all they seemed to do was eat and poop.

Bulahdeen didn’t pay much attention to the men in town. If it was one thing she’d learned, it was to avoid them. But one day, when she was alone in a nearby field collecting dandelion greens to boil, out of nowhere came Big Michael, young and mean. His eyes were light blue and close set, and Bulahdeen had caught him staring at her sometimes when she would hang out a line of diapers.