Becoming Anne Again

Chapter Eighty-Six

It was surreal, driving away from the Green Gabled house. Home.

There was that same tight feeling in her stomach that she had when she was with Mr. Spencer, driving down the road for the first time. But this time, Diana was pressed into her side—Matthew was driving, and Samantha was trying to punch the address in the GPS.

It was the last day before Anne was to leave for the residential facility. It was a nice enough day, as far as days go---the sky was a bit grey, but perhaps it just appeared so because of the brilliant blue of the ocean. There were some clouds in the sky, but not the kind that Anne could make shapes out of. They were wispy things, something akin to an angel's breath. The road was rough with potholes and loose gravel that jolted Anne every once in a while. The car was mostly silent, or it would have been if not for Samantha's incessant chatter, but she didn't say anything of note—she only spoke to fill the silence. Perhaps she thought it would help calm Anne's nerves, or perhaps she was calming her own. Anne couldn't know for certain; all she knew was that her breath fogged up the glass much as it had so many months ago when Alexander Spencer had driven her to Green Gables for the first time.

They were off the road from the ocean though. All Anne could see was houses as they drove further inland. Where once she saw the beach there was nothing more than cookie-cutter all-American dreams, white capes and red farmhouses and the occasional Victorian-style house that seemed to be the perfect place for ghosts to hide. Nothing looked particularly haunted, but like a place where old friends stayed after death because the house's embrace was kind and the earth was still warm for them. (Anne wondered if she would stay after she died. Where would she stay? In a Victorian house like the one two backroads ago?)

It was too much for her decidedly overactive imagination. Everything was too much—the fog on the glass and the wispiness of the clouds and Samantha talking about what they should paint Anne's room when she comes back. ("We need to make sure it's really yours, you know. What color do you think you would want it to be?" Anne didn't know. It was such a permanent choice, and she wasn't sure she could make it. It was all too much for a little girl who barely got used to the feeling of the word "home" on her tongue.)

Diana was leaning into her side. She was sitting in the middle seat, the seat on the far right side occupied by a suitcase, a duffel bag, and a backpack. Somewhere in that suitcase were her beat-up knock Converse shoes that she wore before everything—before Green Gables. But so too was the clothing that she and Samantha had picked out together. There was the blue lace dress that she had worn to church, and there was the necklace that Samantha had given her. A reconciliation gift. It seemed so long ago that Samantha had asked—demanded, really—why Anne wasn't a boy. (Anne had wondered that too. At the O'Keafe house, she thought being a boy would be easier. Until she realized it wasn't.)

Diana's weight was grounding, and Anne rested her cheek on the top of Diana's head. "I'm going to miss you" she whispered.

"I'll write you every day," Diana said. "And I'll visit you all the time. Whenever they let me." Anne nodded her head, a small smile spreading across her lips.

(When she had first driven to Green Gables, she hadn't smiled at all.)

All too soon, or all too soon according to Anne, they were on the highway. And then they got off at the exit, and down the road, with more cookie-cutter houses and picket fences. They were nothing like Green Gables. And suddenly she realized that she didn't think she could ever consider anywhere home that didn't have Green Gables and the ocean as the backyard, with a jetty and a boy who had called her carrots but who spent nights with her on the beach. She didn't think she would be at home unless there was a raven-haired beauty beside her, or a freckled boy who maybe talked too much about mundane things, but Anne liked that, despite her propensity for big words. (After all, when you didn't want to say so much, you had to make the words count.)