Almost, Maine Read online

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  For northern Maine and the people who live there

  Prologue

  There is a place in northern Maine that is so far north, it’s almost not in the United States.

  It’s almost in Canada.

  But not quite.

  Not many people live there.

  Not much seems to happen there.

  And the things that do happen there seem pretty ordinary. Especially to the people who live there.

  * * *

  But some extraordinary things did happen there once—on a Friday night in the middle of winter, not too long ago.

  Or maybe it was a long time ago.

  No one quite remembers.

  Actually, no one is even sure that the extraordinary things even happened.

  And no one is even sure that the place actually exists.

  * * *

  But it’s somewhere we’ve all been.

  * * *

  It’s a place called Almost.

  Welcome.

  1

  Ginette and Pete had always been close.

  As friends, first.

  They had grown up together. And learned to do just about everything together, like swim and fish and shoot and play chess and skate and cross-country ski and ride snowmobiles and ATVs across northern Maine’s wide-open spaces and impenetrable forests.

  But the summer before the winter when all the extraordinary things did or didn’t happen, they became more than friends.

  Pete’s mom and dad took them to the Northern Maine Fair in Presque Isle, the largest city in Aroostook County, which is the largest county—and one of the least densely populated counties—east of the Rocky Mountains.

  Going to Presque Isle was always exciting. It was an hour east of—and a world apart from—Almost. (It had a four-story building and once had over ten thousand people.).

  Going to the Northern Maine Fair was doubly exciting, because of all the rides and all the food and all the games. And all the people.

  Ginette and Pete rode a carnival ride that zipped and flipped and spun them almost sick. And Pete grabbed Ginette’s hand the first time the ride zipped and flipped and spun her and Pete—and held on to it the whole ride.

  And Ginette felt a strange lightness fill up her insides while Pete held on to her hand. It made her feel like the lights from the carnival rides were glowing inside her. And like she was somehow weightless as the ride zipped and flipped and spun them.

  And Pete felt the same strange lightness while he held on to Ginette’s hand.

  * * *

  After the ride, they recovered from being almost sick.

  And then they recovered from the strange lightness they had felt when Pete was holding on to Ginette’s hand.

  And then they felt well enough to get some fried dough smothered in confectioner’s sugar. And they walked around the midway while they ate it.

  And then they played some carnival games.

  Ginette won herself a giant stuffed frog at the milk-jug toss.

  And Pete won nothing. And may have felt bad about winning nothing. So Ginette slid her hand inside his and held it to make him feel better.

  And they walked around the midway holding hands. And felt that strange lightness fill up their insides again.

  But they stopped holding hands when it was time to go home. Because they had met up with Pete’s parents again, and they weren’t quite ready to hold hands in front of them.

  And then they didn’t hold hands the rest of the summer.

  And they didn’t hold hands when they started school at the unified high school up in Fort Kent.

  Maybe because they weren’t quite ready to let everyone know—including themselves—that they were ready to be more than friends.

  But one fall day when Ginette got home from school, she found out that her black Lab, Dill, had died—for no reason other than that he had finished up living his long life.

  And Ginette called Pete and told him what happened.

  And he stopped by. And they went for a walk in the woods. And Ginette took Pete’s hand and held on to it while they walked. And when they were deep enough in the woods, she started crying and told Pete that she didn’t know what she was going to do without Dill. And Pete hugged her to comfort her. And when he did, Ginette felt that strange lightness fill up her insides again. And it made her feel like everything was going to be okay. Even though she was so sad about Dill.

  * * *

  After that hug in the woods, Ginette felt like she was ready to be more than friends with Pete. And in school the next day, she slid her hand into his on their way to science class.

  And on their way to geometry, Pete slid his hand inside Ginette’s hand.

  And they walked around holding hands a lot after that, happy that they had tacitly decided that they were more than friends.

  And that was enough for them for a while.

  That is—until the Friday when all the extraordinary things did or didn’t happen. That day had started out in an unusual way. School had been canceled. Because of snow. And snow days were rare in Almost. Because people from Almost, Maine, are snow-removal experts. But so much snow had fallen during the early-morning hours on that Friday that the experts couldn’t clear the roads fast enough with their plows to make them passable for school buses. So school had been canceled.

  Ginette’s mom heard the news on the country radio station out of Presque Isle and sneaked into her daughter’s room to shut off her alarm so she could sleep in.

  It was almost eleven when Ginette woke up. And she panicked a little when she saw the time and hopped out of bed and stumbled into the hall trying to figure out why she had slept so late.

  “Mom?” she called.

  “Oh! I was just about to wake you, sweetie!”

  “What’s—”

  “Snow day!” Ginette’s mom raised her arms in the air, fists clenched, as if she had won something.

  Ginette looked out the window and saw all the snow and smiled. Snow days are unexpected gifts of free time and fun. A snow day on a Friday is even better, because it makes for a three-day weekend.

  “I’m gonna go check in on Mémé,” continued Ginette’s mom. Mémé was Ginette’s grandmother. “And then I’ll probably head in to work, if the roads are good.” Ginette’s mom was a server up at the Snowmobile Club, which would have plenty of business on a snow day. And she went on to tell Ginette not to eat crap and lay around all day, and Ginette rolled her eyes a little and said she wouldn’t. And then her mom said she wanted her to shovel the roof and the driveway and a path to the propane tank—and to ask Pete if maybe he could help her. And Ginette said she would even though she didn’t want to shovel, because that would eat into the free time the snow day had given her. And it wouldn’t exactly be fun.

  “And then you and Pete can go over to Mémé’s and help her shovel out,” suggested Ginette’s mom. And she grabbed her coat and her bag and headed out.

>   And Ginette made herself some Life cereal for breakfast. With chocolate milk. Which her mom would definitely think was crap. And then she watched a little bit of a game show and some of a soap opera, because that’s what she did when she was home sick or when it was a snow day.

  And then she called Pete and asked him if he’d come over and help with all the shoveling she had to do.

  About an hour later, Ginette and Pete were shoveling off the flat roof of Ginette’s mobile home.

  And then they shoveled her driveway and a path to the propane tank so Mr. Pelletier could deliver more gas so Ginette and her mom could stay warm.

  And then they went over to Mémé’s and shoveled her driveway and cleared a path to her garage. And they brought in five bags of wood pellets from the garage so Mémé would have enough fuel for the week to keep her house warm.

  And then Mémé fed Ginette and Pete a late lunch of grilled cheese and tomato soup. And they all wondered if a late lunch should be called dunch or linner. And decided that linner was more accurate, since a late breakfast was called brunch—but also decided that dunch was much funnier.

  After dunch—or linner—they went over to Pete’s and shoveled out the mailbox at the end of his driveway. And shoveled a path to the oil fill so Mr. Pelletier could deliver his heating oil, too.

  And then they went tubing on the hill behind Pete’s house.

  And then they made pizza with Pete’s mom and dad. And ate it for dinner.

  And then they played chess.

  And Ginette won. And Pete sulked a little.

  And then Pete’s mom asked them what they were going to do their science projects on, which were due on Monday.

  Pete had chosen to do his on map projections. And no one quite knew what map projections were, so he explained, “The Earth is a globe, right?”

  And everyone said, “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, and when you try to represent its three-dimensional surface in two dimensions, it creates distortions. Like, if you draw a map on an orange, say, with a marker, and then peel it and flatten it out, the images at the ‘poles’ get distorted—they get bigger. Which is why Canada and Russia and Greenland look so giant on maps. So I’m gonna talk about that.”

  Pete’s dad fake-yawned and groaned, “Snoozefest,” and he grabbed his son and gave him a noogie to let him know he was kidding and everyone laughed and Pete’s mom said, “Guess somebody’s gotta think about … maps.” And then she asked Ginette what she was going to do her presentation on, and Ginette said, “The northern lights.” And Ginette’s mom said, “Ooh!” And Ginette explained that the northern lights appear when massive storms on the sun shoot streams of tiny charged particles into space. Those particles hurtle toward the Earth and collide with atoms in the atmosphere, exciting them and disrupting their natural state. The excited atoms want to return to their normal states, and when they do, the energy they give off is manifested in colorful little bursts of light, called photons. When enough photons are present, the northern lights appear.

  Pete’s dad was impressed with Ginette’s presentation, because he had seen the northern lights his whole life and had never known what caused them. “Now that,” he proclaimed, “is a whole lot more interesting than maps!” And everybody laughed, and as they did, Pete took Ginette’s hand, because he was proud that she had impressed his dad.

  And Ginette felt that strange lightness again. This time it felt like the northern lights were inside her. And she felt like Pete was one of those charged particles from the sun and he was disrupting her natural state and creating bursts of light inside her.

  And she wondered what it meant.

  And then she wondered what it meant that she and Pete were holding hands in front of his parents. Did it mean that they were more than more than just friends? Did it mean that they were boyfriend and girlfriend? And that they were dating?

  She wanted to know. She wanted to name whatever it was that they were.

  But naming what they were would mean assigning words to whatever it was that was happening between them. Which might minimize whatever it was that was happening between them. Because words can make things that seem huge in your heart seem small and insignificant.

  But Ginette was willing to take the risk. Because the lightness inside her made her feel like something really wonderful was about to happen to her and Pete.

  And it wasn’t going to happen while they were hanging out with Pete’s parents.

  So Ginette got up and told Pete, “Come on,” and headed toward the door to put her coat and boots on.

  Pete followed Ginette and asked, “Where are we going?”

  And Ginette said that talking about the northern lights made her want to go outside and see if they could see them. Because it was the perfect night for them. It was clear, and there was no moon. And she had read that solar storms were currently raging on the sun. So chances were better than they usually were that the northern lights would appear.

  And if they didn’t see them, Ginette added, they could just do some stargazing.

  Pete didn’t really care if they saw the northern lights or not. He wasn’t interested in outer space like Ginette was. He was more interested in the Earth.

  But he was more interested in Ginette than he was in the Earth.

  So he was going to go with her to see if they could see the northern lights. Or just stargaze.

  So Pete put his coat and boots on and they grabbed their backpacks and their flashlights and headed out to a place that was specifically designated for looking at the night sky—a tiny parcel of land called Skyview Park on the eastern edge of Almost.

  The little park had been created by some folks who Pete’s dad called a buncha hippies. They wanted to make Almost, Maine, a dark-sky destination—a place for astro-tourists to visit and look at the stars. Because northern Maine was the largest light-pollution–free swath of land in the eastern United States.

  And so the buncha hippies built an observatory—a small wooden platform on a little hill on the edge of Norsworthy’s Potato Farm. And they put a red wooden bench on the platform so people would have a place to sit when they wanted to stargaze.

  Once the observatory was built, the hippies got in touch with experts from the International Dark-Sky Association and invited them to come check out the observatory and determine whether Almost qualified as a dark-sky destination.

  The experts hadn’t shown up yet, but the hippies were hopeful.

  * * *

  The only way to get to Skyview Park from Pete’s house was on Almost’s main road—which had two names depending on which way you were going. If you were going east toward the big towns in eastern Aroostook County, you were on the Road to Somewhere.

  If you were going west toward the wooded wilderness of northwestern Maine, you were on the Road to Nowhere.

  Skyview Park was west of where Pete lived, so he and Ginette headed west on the Road to Nowhere.

  As they walked, Pete slid his hand into Ginette’s. It was a warm night for midwinter in Almost, Maine—nineteen degrees. And there was no wind. So they didn’t need gloves. Ginette felt that strange lightness fill up her insides again while they held hands. And she wondered what she and Pete were. And couldn’t wait to find out.

  In about ten minutes they reached the path that led up the little hill to Skyview Park. The path had been plowed already—probably by the buncha hippies so they’d be ready if any experts showed up to deem Almost a dark-sky destination.

  It was a little before 7:30 when they reached the observatory platform and its red wooden bench, both of which the hippies had also cleared of the snow that had fallen earlier in the day.

  Ginette and Pete clicked off their flashlights and slid them into their backpacks and sat down on the bench—Ginette on the west side of it; Pete on the east side. They tucked their backpacks underneath them and then sat up and looked out across the snow-covered potato fields that stretched endlessly to the north in front of them.

  And then the
y looked up.

  “Wow,” said Pete.

  “Yeah.”

  An uncountable number of stars twinkled above and in front of and behind and all around them. They felt like they were close enough to touch and far, far away—all at once.

  The Milky Way’s thick band of stars arced overhead. It made the universe feel infinite. And it made the stargazers feel infinitesimal.

  And humble.

  The northern night sky will do that—make you feel humble. Because when you can see as many stars as Ginette and Pete could see, you can’t help but realize that there has to be more—much, much more—than just … you.

  As Pete gazed skyward and took in the spectacular northern night sky, he wondered why he hadn’t ever gone to the observatory before.

  It was probably because he felt like there was so much he needed to learn about the Earth that he didn’t have time to pay attention to the heavens.

  But still—he should have been aware of the majesty above him. And he turned to Ginette and confessed, “You know … I don’t think I’ve ever done this.”

  “Done what?”

  “Just … sat outside. Looked at the stars.”

  “I think a lotta people here don’t.”

  Ginette’s dad used to tell her that people from northern Maine didn’t realize how lucky they were to be able to see the stars. He was from a place where people couldn’t see very many of them but everyone was reaching for them. But in northern Maine, people could see just about all of them, it seemed. But not many people reached for them. He told Ginette before he left to make sure she’d never stop reaching for them. And Ginette promised she wouldn’t.

  “You’ve been missin’ out,” chided Ginette.

  “Yeah,” said Pete, marveling at the stars. “So … what am I lookin’ at?”

  “Well—”

  “I know the North Star, ’cause of scouts,” said Pete, looking directly above them.