Waiting

  Where are Mom and Dad?

  I lead Jesse into the family room, where I used to watch The Office reruns with Zach and Rachel and Taylor. We sit next to each other and I don’t know why but while we’re kissing I start crying. I mean.

  I don’t make a sound or anything, but the tears run down my face.

  Jesse moves away a bit, looks at me. Runs his thumbs across my cheeks. “Oh, London,” he says. “Your heart is broken, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  And even though I want him to kiss me more and more and more, he just wraps his arms around me and pulls me close.

  No sex.

  If my mother knew how he saved me, she’d fold up on herself. Maybe tear her eyes away from my brother’s memory long enough to shout her disgust.

  No sex.

  But I could go there, would go there, if he asked me if he said it would save me would keep me here make my mother notice me again.

  I don’t tell him any of that. I just weep, his arms around me until Lili and Lauren and Taylor arrive, walking into the house without even waiting for me to say, “Come in.”

  I talk to them about the end with my brother.

  The hanging

  Him kicking the wall as he struggled before we got in

  there

  how I heard him and didn’t know at first

  just thought he was mad because of the fight

  had no idea

  and then somehow, somehow KNEW I should hurry

  hurry hurry

  get in there

  screaming for Mom

  the kicking getting less

  trying to get the door open

  hitting it

  hitting

  it splintering.

  Mom arguing with me

  how we tried so hard to save him

  Daddy taking over

  the EMTs

  My poor brother, never regaining consciousness.

  And then the blaming,

  the slap,

  the screaming,

  the silence.

  My own death here

  in this house too,

  and I’m not even sure

  why.

  “I tried to make him live,” I say to them all. Lauren is crying and so is Lili. Taylor looks out the window the whole time I talk. Jesse still holds me but his arms are loose and I think of Jesus’s arms and how I need Him, that’s who I need and I know I know Him through these friends but that I’m going to have to keep following Him to keep whole.

  They stay for hours.

  And I want them to live with me, all of them, petting me and touching my hair and letting me cry and talk and hugging me and all that. Something I haven’t gotten in so long.

  Daddy comes home and when he walks in the family room we all look at him and he looks at us and then he says, “Have you been remembering my son?” Lauren rushes to him and hugs him. She’s not crying anymore but I can tell she’s close to tears. Daddy stands there, still, then puts his arms around her. “He was great,” Lauren says. “No. He is great.”

  Lili says, “And so is London. She’s the best friend I’ve ever had.” Her words are a surprise.

  She looks at her brother. “She needs you.” And I can’t tell if she’s talking to Daddy or Jesse. Jesse runs his hand over my shoulder. Then Lili says, “We have to go home.”

  She almost smiles. “Or Mom’s going to have a miocardial infarction.”

  Everyone stands to go and right at that moment I hear Mom come into the house. Daddy looks over his shoulder and his eyebrows knit together. Is he scared of her too? Or of what might come?

  Mom is in the room, and it’s like we all take a breath.

  She steps forward when we inhale, it seems, staggers a moment, looks at Daddy and then at the boys in the room. She sees Lauren, raises her eyebrows. Her face grows hard. I can see she’s had her nails done. She never once looks at me.

  “Allen, you know I don’t like company when I’m not warned.”

  Her voice is a sheet of ice. Her words slide down toward us, land in a pile in the front of the group.

  Lauren straightens her back. I bet she gets three inches taller. Does she remember when she was caught with Zach? Of course she does. She opens her mouth to speak, and my words seem to come from her mouth.

  “These are my friends,” I say. “They’re here for me.” “Get out,” Mom says, and she doesn’t look in my direction. Nine months’ practice, she doesn’t even glance at me. “No!” My voice comes out louder than I intend. “They’re here for me.” I see Lili move a little. Start. She’s uncomfortable, I can tell. Even though she stood to go, Lili sits back down and then pats the sofa. “Jesse,” she says. Her voice is weak.

  “I think,” Daddy says.

  “No!” I say again, and my voice is louder this time. “No! I have friends. I’m here still. I’m not dead. Zach is dead. I’m here.”

  That gets my mother. I can tell. There’s penetration. My words have struck a mark. Still she says nothing, doesn’t look at me. She lowers her voice like a bull getting ready to charge. “Leave. My. Home.”

  “Kids,” Daddy says. “I think it’s best. . . .”

  I’m not sure how it happens, but I move from where I am near Jesse to Mom. I almost fall, tripping over someone’s feet. Lauren grabs me. I thought she hated me. No, I hated her. No, I hate my mom.

  “I begged for you to help me,” I say.

  The Death is there. In the room with us. On my lips.

  We’ve been talking about it so it’s uncovered from where I’ve kept it hidden.

  “I called you. Called you.”

  Mom looks at me.

  “He was alive. And I begged you to help me. We could hear him.”

  “Shut up.” Mom’s voice is a whisper.

  “I called for you and you said he’s just throwing a tantrum, and I said, ‘Help me, something’s wrong in there.’ And by the time you came with that key, it was too late. He wasn’t alive anymore.”

  “Shut up!”

  “If you would have listened! If you would have helped.”

  “Shut up!”

  “You needed someone to blame and you chose me.”

  “Shut up!”

  “It wasn’t me, Mom! I didn’t kill Zacheus. He killed himself.”

  Mom slaps me, hard.

  Lili lets out a cry.

  Daddy moves and Taylor leaps near me.

  I put my hand out, touch my face where it burns, lean at my mother. When I speak, I’m screaming. “I did the best I could. And I’m here, alive.” My voice soars toward the ceiling. I want to grab her, shake her, make her understand. “I still love you! Please love me back.” I almost can’t get the words out, I’m crying that hard.

  Mom leans so close I can smell her lipstick. Between clenched teeth she says, “I quit loving everyone the day my son died. And that includes you.”

  Her words are a fist to my gut.

  “Eva,” Daddy says. “Oh, Eva.”

  “I’m done,” Mom says. “I’m done with all this.” She leaves then. Goes to the room she shares with Daddy.

  And I’m left alone.

  No!

  Not alone.

  Not this time.

  Alone.

  Mom packs. Daddy goes in to her. I can hear him talking, his voice soothing and then rising in desperation.

  “We’d better go,” Lauren says, and Lili nods.

  Lauren comes close, puts her arms around me tight.

  “Your brother was my first real heartbreak,” she says.

  She presses her lips to my cheek where my mother slapped me. “I’m so glad he was my first true love.”

  Lili hugs me next. Her eyes are shiny with tears. “London, you’re a great friend,” she says, and she hugs me so tight she squeezes the breath out of my lungs.

  Jesse says nothing. Just puts an arm back around me, and when we look each other in the eye we know we were close to being caught and I think, I’m done with that. A
nd maybe he thinks, Yes, me too.

  I walk everyone to the door. My feet feel like they have grown way too big, and I trip over nothing. Lili catches my arm. Holds my hand.

  “It’ll be okay,” Taylor says. “I have this feeling.”

  Taylor puts his hand on my shoulder and this warmth moves right out of his fingertips and I realize, with that touch, I am going to heal. It’s a fragile feeling and it makes my throat close up.

  Behind me my parents have raised their voices. Taylor doesn’t even blink at the sound. Just lets me know he’s there.

  “She won’t be back,” Daddy tells me lots later. “I couldn’t stop her.”

  It’s weird.

  The house is less empty with my mother gone than it was when she lived here.

  I turn my music on.

  I help Daddy pack up some of Zachy’s things.

  We move a desk into the living room for Daddy to write at.

  Go to lunch.

  Talk.

  Laugh.

  Late that night, though, I hear him crying.

  He misses my mother.

  I know.

  But I can’t say (is this evil?) that I do.

  I’ve learned to live without her.

  Three days after my mother leaves, the phone rings.

  I know it’s not her. She hasn’t called at all—not that I’ve seen.

  As I walk to the phone, I wonder—has Daddy called her?

  Has she thought of us once?

  Does she miss Zach more or less now that she’s gone?

  I pick up the phone, glance at caller ID. I don’t recognize who it is.

  “Hello?”

  “London?”

  I know her. “Rachel,” I whisper.

  “Anyone there?” she says.

  I speak louder. “Rachel,” I say. “Hello!”

  My hearts thumps.

  “Hey!” She sounds so . . . happy. Like she hasn’t been fighting to get out of fog for that last almost-year. Or maybe she has and she’s succeeded.

  Whatever, she sounds good.

  “I’m back in town,” she says. “I want to see you.”

  I nod, then find my voice though my fingertips have gone numb. Before the words come out I think, Why should I?

  You left my brother.

  He died because of you.

  Murderer!

  Why are you back?

  Do you have any idea what we went through here?

  Why now?

  Why should I?

  I swallow. “Okay, Rachel,” I say. “Where?”

  Time has this way of slowing down and speeding up, depending on how it feels.

  When I’m kissing Taylor, time moves so fast I think I must age a million years in a few hot moments.

  When Mom was home, in the same room with me, time didn’t even pass. Seconds went on forever and I felt I might stop breathing for the pain of it all, and how long it seemed to take.

  And when we found my brother, Zacheus, hanging in his room, time both sped up and slowed down. The way I ran and couldn’t get to him fast enough and how Mom seemed to take her time trying to help and how long it was for the ambulance to get to us.

  Time does this to me now. Slows down and speeds up.

  Rachel and I plan to meet late that afternoon, at the library.

  I spend more energy changing clothes and thinking what’s best to wear than I ever have when I wanted to impress any guy. The clock doesn’t seem to move. The next thing I know, it’s almost five p.m. and I have to run out the door to get to the library on time.

  I sit in the parking lot for several minutes.

  It’s warm outside and sweat trickles down my forehead, making my skin itch.

  Will she recognize me?

  Will I recognize her?

  Will I slap her?

  Cry?

  Not show up?

  Run?

  Hide?

  Drive away right now?

  Maybe she won’t come. Maybe this is all a trick.

  I close my eyes and wish Zach were here with me. How many times have I wished that very thing—a million? A gajillion?

  Oh, Zach, Zach.

  Somehow, I get out of the car and walk around to the front of the library. Up the steps. Through the double doors, and there she is. Looking right at me. A baby in her arms.

  I blink.

  Am I imagining this? Is it her? Really?

  I look behind me, I’m that confused, because maybe I have come to the wrong library here in New Smyrna Beach. Maybe that’s not a baby. Maybe that’s not Rachel but some unknown twin.

  She steps forward, fast, and then Rachel’s there, one arm going around my neck, and without meaning to, as soon as I see that baby’s face and my brother’s eyes, I burst into tears.

  “There was no way,” Rachel says as we settle down at a table in the children’s section of the library, “that I was going to have an abortion.”

  “But that’s what you told Zach.”

  She shakes her head. “I told him my mom and dad wanted that. Not that I would do it.”

  I swallow. “He thought. . . .” And I can’t keep going.

  She looks at me. Rachel’s eyes are so clear I can tell she’s telling the truth. Does she have any idea, ANY idea, that her words were the end for my brother?

  “I kept telling him that I would work things out.” She swallows and those clear eyes fill with tears. When she tries to speak, the words won’t come out. She takes my hand. Pulls in air. “I loved him. I love him still. If I had known . . .”

  And then, without my even asking, Rachel hands her daughter to me. My brother’s daughter. My niece.

  “London,” she says.

  “Yes?” My voice is a whisper. I can’t get over this baby’s dark-lashed eyes. She looks so much like Zacheus I can’t believe it. Even her little bald head is like Zach’s when he

  was a baby.

  “That’s her name,” Rachel says. “When I thought what to call her, I just knew Zach would want her named after you. Her middle name is Faith, for her father.”

  Faith, like my brother.

  Now I can’t speak. There’s so much I want to say. But all I do is bring that baby to my lips and kiss her cheek, soft as air.

  Maybe nothing could have saved Zach.

  Maybe things were too messed up before he ever met Rachel. Maybe he was too sad since we were little.

  Maybe he had faith in everyone but himself.

  Or . . .

  Or maybe he just made a mistake and realized moments too late.

  After the library, the feel of London Faith still in my arms, I climb in my brother’s car—it will always be his—and drive.

  I drive straight to Taylor’s house.