Damon’s smile disappeared. “Don’t go there, Julie.”
“It’s just a joke.”
He reached for my hand again. “Figure out what you know is true, and hold on to that.”
“The truth is, my parents are splitting up, I’m losing my home, my school, and all my friends.”
“No,” he said and shook his head. “That’s just circumstances. Not truth.”
When we walked out the door, he grabbed my hand and laced his fingers with mine. That’s when it hit me. In all the times he’d touched me that day, not once did I get a fizzy feeling.
Not once.
* * * * *
I closed my eyes and laid my helmet against Damon’s shoulder, not because I ached to be close to him, but because my head ached. And because the snowmobile ride reminded me a lot of my last motorcycle ride.
“If much more snow melts we’re going to have to put this thing back in the garage,” Damon called back to me.
The trip to the hospital probably only took ten minutes, but it felt like forty-five. When we finally got there Damon chained the snowmobile to a post and we got in out of the cold as fast as my banged-up body would move.
Damon’s dad slept, slumped in the upholstered visitor’s chair in the corner of Adam’s room. Adam didn’t have a roommate, so Damon pulled the chair from the other side of the room for me, then he sat down on the empty bed.
“Want to play cards?” Damon asked, and pointed to a deck on the rolling tray in the corner.
I shook my head.
We didn’t talk any more, and I didn’t care. I didn’t need to fill up the silence, and it didn’t matter if Damon thought I was boring or stupid or not very nice. He spent the whole day taking care of me, and deserved better. But I felt too small, too drawn in and crumpled up, to have anything to give. He stretched out on the bed, put his forearm over his eyes, and before long his chest rose and fell in the long, deep breaths of sleep.
Flashes of colored light from various monitors scattered around the dim room, and the heart line blipped like the rhythm of a slow, four-count song. Adam’s chest rose and fell, too, and his hand or cheek or foot occasionally twitched. They said he’d been awake several times, but I hadn’t talked to him since the accident. I didn’t even know why I wanted to.
I looked around at the three guys in the room with me. A family, or part of one. I didn’t belong.
Well maybe I did, sort of. We had death in common. I still had a father and a mother and a brother, but not an actual family. Just a dying family.
A family already dead.
Outside the snow continued to fall, light and soft, backlit by a sliver of moon. I pulled myself up and went to the window. Streetlights made fuzzy, floating snowballs in the dark and cars wandered in and out of the parking lot.
“Spooky.”
I turned around to face Adam, but couldn’t even force a smile. I just went and stood beside his bed. “You’re alive.”
He nodded, one eye swollen closed below a dressing that made mine look like a postage stamp.
“You look okay.” His voice sounded stronger than he looked.
“So do you.”
“Right.” He tried to shift positions and winced, then blinked hard several times, like he couldn’t quite shake sleep. “How’d you get here? They said you went home.”
I motioned over to the other bed, but I wasn’t sure if Adam could turn his head enough to see it. “Damon brought me. Your dad’s asleep in the chair.”
“What time is it?”
“Around seven, I guess. At night.”
“Friday?”
I smiled then, and shook my head. “Sunday.”
He moved his free arm up and out, and kind of flailed it toward the plastic cup of water on the table next to his bed. He cursed, and I knew every little movement felt like getting beaten up all over again. I got the fat, pink hospital cup for him and brought the straw to his mouth. He drank and drank, then pushed the straw out with his tongue.
“I owe you,” he rasped.
“Not a big deal.”
“I mean, I really owe you. They told me what you did.”
“Not a big deal.”
I turned away and put the cup back on the side table. For a moment the metallic tinge of hot blood filled my mouth and the strain of compressing his wound burned across my shoulders again. I almost took a drink of his water myself, to try to wash it all down.
“What was I going to do?” I asked him.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Still. You didn’t owe me that.”
“I should’ve let you die?”
He either snorted, chuckled or coughed. “That might’ve been okay.”
He lay there in the bed, so big and solid, so Adam. Yet so broken.
I wrapped my hands around the bed rail and shifted my weight off my knees. “Did they tell you what happened?”
He nodded a little. “Can’t remember it.”
“What do you remember?”
After a deep breath, he looked at me through his one good eye. “Coming out to find you. I don’t remember actually finding you, but I guess I did.”
I chewed on the inside of my lip while I worked up the nerve to ask what I wanted to know.
Adam closed his eye. “Did I crash us? Was I being stupid?”
“No,” I told him. “It was the cows. Not you.”
“Do you remember it?”
“Yeah, pretty much. Parts.”
“Sometime you’ll have to tell me about it.” He blew out another deep breath. “Think I’m going out again.”
“Hey,” I asked. “Before you do.” I looked behind me. Mr. Sheppard slept hard against the wall. “Adam. Why did you come looking for me?”
He blinked really fast. Sleep would have him soon.
“For Damon.”
“You said Damon didn’t know you went.”
Adam yawned. “He didn’t. I tried to get him to go back to you, but he wouldn’t. So I had to.”
“Why?”
He made a sound that could’ve been a laugh, or sort of a choke, like he had something stuck in his throat. His eye fluttered and I noticed that he had really long lashes, for a guy.
“You make him happy. When he talks to you, you get him.” His eye fell closed and sighed. “He needs you, and I wanted you to know that. Damon needs to be happy again.”
As he drifted off, my head drooped. My legs couldn’t take the weight of my body anymore, so I leaned on the bed and hobbled my way around to the chair. I needed to leave, to walk out, to get away from everything and everyone. But I didn’t have the strength.
When I got to the chair I looked over at Damon before I turned around to sit. He lay in the same position, arm bent over his forehead. But his eyes followed me. How long had he been awake?
It didn’t matter.
I sat down and rubbed my neck and arms. Then the bed creaked and Damon walked up behind me. He touched me, and his hands went to the muscles in my neck and shoulders. He did it just right, the right pressure, the right places. I should’ve been grateful, should’ve relaxed and let myself melt. A week ago I’d have been tied up in breathless knots with crazy wanting.
But the weight of everything, of what Adam said, crushed me. I couldn’t stand up under it; I had nothing to give Damon, and the future held nothing for the two of us but more hurt.
“Stop. Just stop.” I pushed his hands away and dropped my head into mine.
CHAPTER 37
I didn’t go to school again on Monday, and I slept till almost eleven. Mom canceled her appointments and stayed home, too. And she finally got some groceries. She brought a sandwich, a cut-up apple, and cheese chunks to my room at lunch time. It looked good, but the few bites I could even chew with my stitched-up tongue hurt like heck and tasted like sand.
I gave up on food and got to work. My room held way more junk than I could possibly pack into the few suitcases, bags and boxes I had. I’d only keep what I absolutely needed. I got a bunch of
white plastic trash bags from the bathroom and shoved papers, books, awards, paintings, and junk into them to throw away. In another I stuffed the animals, one after another, and avoided their melancholy eyes.
At the bottom of the pile, last in the corner, slumped the fuzzy white teddy bear Dad won at the midway, like ten years ago. I sat on Dad’s shoulders, hands wrapped around his forehead, as he threw a baseball at a stack of empty buckets. He knocked down every single one of them with one ball. He handed me the bear and I hugged it on top of his head. My heart and my grin got so big, it felt like both would explode. My father was the biggest, strongest, best daddy in the whole world.
I tossed the bear on top of the others, then knotted the bag and kicked it into the corner next to the door with the rest of the trash.
I opened the top drawer of my desk. Lula’s book cover. I pulled the dragon out and held it up to the light. The metallic scales shimmered, and I could’ve sworn the pupil slits even contracted.
The dragon I rode didn’t kill me, but it didn’t take me anywhere I wanted to go, either.
The princess held her scepter against the monster’s head. Did she really tame it, or did it just trick her? Did it fly off by her will, or did it carry her off to its den to kill her there?
I turned the painting over and read the judge’s note again. I expect great things from this artist.
Great things. Whatever.
I tossed it in a garbage bag with my pencils, pens, rubber bands, notebook and typewriter paper, old homework and sketches, rulers, a protractor, a Spirograph set, a broken bracelet. Then I opened the bottom drawer.
Kitty’s letters. I took them out and counted. Over fifty. I opened the first one, from the first time she wrote to me, in fourth grade. I took it out to read.
Dear Juliet,
My name is Kitty Brandon. I live next door to your great aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Tufte. I’m supposed to write to someone who lives in another state, and interview them about their town. I hope you will answer my questions.
Funny. Her handwriting still looked the same. I pulled out a few rubber bands, strapped them together by year and tucked them into the side of the box.
The last envelope I did, the one with the hawk in the trees, still lay on top of the desk. “That’s all old news,” I said. “No point mailing this one.” I tossed it into my bag.
Finished with the desk, I started on the vanity.
The wrapper from the gum Kitty sent me tucked into the loop on the lampshade where I used to hang Nonnie’s barrette. I unfolded it and held it up to the light. The words shimmered where the sun burned through them.
I will pour out my spirit to you; I will make my words known to you.
I slipped the gum wrapper into the makeup bag I got at Dillon’s, then squeezed my comb and brush in with the makeup. I put those things on top of my empty desk, then swept my arm across the rest of the trinkets, boxes, odds and ends, and scraped everything into another trash bag. I pulled open the drawer.
If I’d ever cleaned it out before, I couldn’t remember when. Hair ribbons and bows, bobby pins, movie ticket stubs, stray jewelry, and bottles of fingernail polish lay on top of and intertwined with school event programs, balls and bits of yarn from my failed attempts to knit, and plastic toys from fast-food kiddie meals.
With neither the interest nor the energy to sort through it all, I pulled the drawer all the way out and balanced it in one hand while I stretched open the mouth of the trash bag with the other. I tipped the drawer toward one corner and tried to funnel everything into the plastic bag, but I went too fast and everything began to slide at once. An avalanche poured out, collapsed the trash bag, and spilled all over the floor.
I cursed, tossed the drawer aside and grabbed piles of junk, stuffing it into the bag with a different swear word for each handful. After I got most of the big stuff cleaned up, little bits and pieces of things littered the floor, so I scooped them up with both hands. The last thing left on the carpet caught a glint of sun and twinkled at me.
The broken piece out of Nonnie’s barrette.
A cold twinge flashed from my throat, through my heart and stomach, and out my knees. Mia still had the barrette. She stole it and thought she got away with it. But I knew. The gum showed me.
I picked up the little gold cylinder and rolled it under one finger against my palm. Divided in half by a thin line across the center of the barrel, it resembled a hinge, but had no screws or plates with which to attach it to anything else. About three inches long, and no more than a half inch thick, it looked a bit like a long, narrow medicine capsule.
Would it open?
I held it between my thumbs and first fingers, and twisted the two halves in opposite directions. They swiveled easily. After several rotations, one end slipped off.
Something stuck out of it so I turned it upside down. A tightly rolled twist of paper slid into my hand. Tied with a single piece of red thread, it looked like a fairy’s miniature scroll.
“Cool,” I whispered.
I pulled on one of the loose threads and the bow fell away. The paper, however, didn’t relax at all, and I wondered how long it had been hiding inside the barrette. Would it break if I tried to unroll it?
Very gently, with one fingernail, I found the edge of the paper and pulled it open. With my other thumb I carefully eased the rest of the scroll away from the rolled edge.
The paper felt like onion skin, or crepe paper.
Footsteps came up the stairs and I held my breath. They passed by my room and went into Mom’s.
When I got the roll opened I discovered it was two pieces of paper, about the size of two three-by-five index cards, curled together. I smoothed them open, separated them, and picked up the one on top.
The handwriting—old, slanted and jerky—soaked into the yellow paper a long time ago and left fuzzy outlines around each letter.
Carolyn,
I love you, and I’m coming back. I swear it. Whenever you miss me, you blow kisses at the moon, and when it rises on France I’ll blow them right back to you. I’ll see you and that little boy of ours—see, I know it’s a boy—before you can say, “Crackerjack”.
Yours always,
Bernard
I’d never even seen Grandpa’s handwriting before.
My fingers traced the letters, and the four decades since his pen touched this paper collapsed like an origami fold.
He didn’t know he’d lose his son before he ever met him. He didn’t know he’d barely know his daughter before he died. He didn’t know Nonnie would carry his words with her nearly to her death.
I put Grandpa’s letter aside and picked up the other paper. This one had a date. My birthday. I held it up to the light and squinted to make out the fine, cursive letters.
October 12, 1968
Juliet Alexis Brynn,
Behold, He sends you forth as a sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore shrewd as a serpent, and innocent as a dove.
Father in heaven, hear my prayer for my beautiful granddaughter. Give your angels charge over her, to keep her in all her ways.
Even if your mother and father forsake you, the Lord will receive you.
You are dearly loved, my sweet baby Juliet.
Your grandmother, Carolyn Lydia Fath
Dearly loved.
Right. By Nonnie maybe. Certainly not by God. Or anyone else.
I sat down on the bed and read the letters again. Mom knocked and I tucked them under my makeup bag.
“What?”
“Can I come in?”
“It’s your house.”
The door creaked on its hinges. She looked at me, then around the room. “What are you doing?”
“Packing.”
This weird expression came over her face, like the sight of boxes and bags didn’t make sense. “We haven’t even shown the house yet. Why are you packing now?”
“Why not?”
“Because you still have to live here.”
?
??Pack now, pack later. It doesn’t matter.”
She leaned against the wall beside the door and sighed. “Well, be sure to leave enough clothes out to wear.”
Golly, I didn’t think of that. “Maybe I’ll just wear the same thing every day. Make it easier.”
“Juliet.”
“What?”
She started to say something, then shook her head. “You hardly ate anything.”
“Not hungry.”
“You need to eat.”
“I’ll eat when I’m hungry.”
She crossed her arms. “Are we always going to be this adversarial?”
“Who’s being adversarial? I’m getting ready to move. I’m totally cooperating with you.” I stood up, opened the closet, and started to take clothes off hangers and toss them on the bed. When I got to something I didn’t like I balled it up and stuffed it into a trash bag.
“You’re not throwing those away?”
“Unless you want them.”
She reached into the bag and pulled out an ugly orange camp T-shirt from fifth grade. “What is wrong with you?”
I swear, if I hear that one more time.
Mom tossed the shirt back in the bag. “Fine. Throw all your clothes away, if it makes you happy.” She snatched the tray and a piece of apple rolled off onto the desk. “And you’re welcome for lunch.”
When she closed the door behind her I sat back down and rested. The closet had so much stuff in it. Too much.
The two letters wouldn’t roll up tightly enough to squeeze into the cylinder again, so I stuck them and the capsule in the makeup case as well. Then I lay back between a stack of sweaters and a pile of pants. My head spun as I looked up at the ceiling, but at least the headache had gone. A little cold, I opened up a couple of sweaters and spread one over my thighs, the other over my chest. I folded my arms under it and fell asleep.
In my dreams legions of dragons circled the skies, breathing fire over Mt. Everest-sized mountains of cow poop.
* * * * *
Tuesday I went to school, but by the time I got off the bus in the afternoon I realized I couldn’t remember anything I did that day. I think I stared into space a lot, and not one teacher got on my case about it. Not even Sweeney.
Cool.
I finished packing up my stuff that afternoon, all but the cork board wall. I told Mom to tell Damon I was sleeping when he called, and went for a burger with Mark. I let him pay, since I didn’t know when I might get any more money of my own.