“What did it feel like?”
“Kind of waxy and cold. But I could tell he was dead for real, because that was his face and his hands all right, but you could see he wasn’t in there anymore. And that’s when my mother told me everybody has to die. Maybe not till you’re really old like granddad, but still, that’s a rule and that goes for everybody. And I don’t see why God would make a special exception just for you.”
“I’m not saying God made an exception for me.” I’d never even thought about it that way. Did I sound that stuck-up? “I’m saying something happened to me, where I fell down this weird black hole and it changed my body somehow, and plunged me into some other world where cars hit me and I don’t get hurt. Kind of like Spider-Man.”
“You fell down a black hole? Into another world? Now you’re just out-and-out lying to me.”
“I know it sounds funny—”
“So do I live in this other world you fell into? And if I do, how come I’m not immortal?”
“Maybe you are. I don’t know.”
“Nobody is immortal. Somebody shoots you—you bleed. Maybe you die, maybe you don’t, but you still hurt. My big brother got cut once, and he has a scar from here to here.” She drew a line with her finger from her collarbone to below her ribs. “And the police shot his friend Kevin and he died. He didn’t bounce up and say everything’s cool. He died. What’s wrong with you?”
I felt embarrassed. My immortality theory suddenly sounded so stupid. “You’re right. I’m not immortal. How could that be? I just feel like nothing bad can happen to me. Like my bones are made of rubber and can’t break, you know?”
She was shaking her head at me. “To get something like that, being unkillable, you’ve got to pay a price, right?” she said.
“Probably,” I said. “Something like giving up your soul.”
“Yeah, or maybe just causing a lot of bad stuff to happen all around you. Like, nothing ever touches you personally, but everybody around you suffers. You spread destruction wherever you go.”
“Are you talking about me now, or just about some theoretical immortal person?”
“I’m talking about people who can’t be killed. If they exist.”
“Do you think they exist?”
She looked down at her math workbook. “You got a math problem that proves it?”
“No,” I said. “Maybe we should get to work.” I sighed. “I hate fractions.”
“I hate them too.”
“If we force ourselves to concentrate really hard, maybe we can figure this out,” I said.
“Okay. It will be a relief after all this crazy talk.”
I knew it sounded crazy. But it didn’t feel crazy. It felt true.
EIGHT
THEN CAME THAT DAY. NO ONE WAS INVITED TO TEA BUT ME. IF the others had come with me, would things have turned out differently? I guess we’ll never know.
I remember we talked about Norrie and Brooks. You said Norrie wasn’t treating him well. “Teasing him, running hot and cold,” you said. “Acting as if she doesn’t know if she likes him or not—”
“Maybe she doesn’t know,” I said.
“Irrelevant! That’s no way to behave. One should always act decisively, even if one hasn’t made any actual decisions. To waffle and waver is unladylike and rude.” You poured yourself some tea and splashed a drop of milk in the cup. “Have you met that young man she likes—Robertson, is it? I’m sure he’s a lovely person but he’s far too old for her. And Norrie says he’s from New York. Well. You know I love to visit Manhattan but New York is not like Baltimore. Anybody can be from New York.”
I sipped my tea and wished my sisters were with me. It was hard to keep up the conversation by myself. I was distracted.
I glanced out to the terrace. Across the lawn, Wallace emptied a bag of seed into a bird feeder.
“But Jane is even worse. Disgracing the family in public! In the newspaper! Why would she want to do that? I simply don’t understand. What really troubles me is she’s putting the family history in the worst possible light. There are different ways of looking at the past, you know.”
I know. According to Jane, there’s the way that makes you look good, and there’s the truth.
Then you said something that still hurts when I remember it.
“But you, dear.” You patted my hand. “You, at least, are a model grandchild.”
Now you know the truth. You had me all wrong. I’m the worst grandchild of all.
Wallace pottered through the house in his socks, having left his muddy work boots at the back door. “Just wanted to say hello to you ladies before I go off to the garden center. Can I get you anything, Lou?”
“No, nothing, just get whatever you need. But check with Bernice before you go and see if she needs anything from Eddie’s.”
“Roger.” He tossed me a little salute on his way out of the library. Wallace’s last salute.
A few minutes later I left through the kitchen door. And here is exactly what happened next.
Wallace’s old Cadillac rumbled in the garage, so I headed that way to say good-bye to him. I stepped onto the driveway. The car suddenly backed out.
The strange black magic in my blood drew the car toward my body, pulled it like a magnet.
The Cadillac hit me.
The car slammed to a stop. I bounced off as usual. My hands pushed me off the trunk and broke my fall to the ground. My left knuckles scraped the driveway, not deep enough to bleed.
“Don’t worry, Wallace!” I called. “I’m fine!”
I rose to my feet and brushed myself off. I slapped the trunk of the car twice so Wallace would know I was okay. Then I walked around to the driver’s window.
“Sorry about that, Wallace. I hope I didn’t scare you.”
I looked through the car window. Wallace’s hands gripped the steering wheel at ten and two o’clock. His head was tilted back against the headrest. His eyes were open but blank, unblinking.
“Wallace?”
I knocked on the window. He didn’t move. I opened the car door. His body slumped against me.
He was dead.
Wallace was dead. And I had killed him.
But you already knew that. You’ve known all along.
You were standing at the kitchen window, watching.
NINE
WHEN I GOT HOME, I THREW MYSELF ON GINGER’S BED AND cried. I couldn’t tell her the real reason I was so upset. She thought I was sad that Wallace had died, and I was. I was sad and shocked. But I felt guilty too. I was afraid to say anything to anyone about what had really happened. I was afraid no one would understand, or believe me, or take it seriously. And then I was afraid they would take it seriously.
You could have said something. But you didn’t. I started to wonder if you had seen anything at all. I don’t wonder anymore.
Ginger rubbed my back and tried to soothe me. “Poor darling. Don’t take it so hard. Wallace was old. Everybody has to die sometime.”
“The doctor said it was a stroke,” Daddy-o told us. “Blood clot straight to the heart, very sudden. Nothing anybody could have done about it.”
That was what everyone said: It was nobody’s fault. But I knew the truth. It was my fault. The shock of hitting me with his car caused the stroke and killed him.
It was just like Cassandra had said. Immortality kept me safe from harm, but it was causing destruction all around me. Real destruction. Death.
That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay in my bed, listening to the sounds of the traffic in the distance. A garbage truck rumbled down our street. No police choppers that night.
I replayed Wallace’s death in my mind, over and over. In slow motion I saw the car back out of the garage. I saw myself walk across the driveway. I tried to stop myself from stepping onto the asphalt, but I couldn’t control my legs. They kept walking. I tried to stop the car from backing up, but it kept going. I tried to make my body jump out of the way before being hit, but it stayed rooted to th
e ground.
I watched myself run to the car window. I tried to make Wallace laugh and give me one of his salutes, but he wouldn’t cooperate. Every time I ran to the window, he was just the way I’d found him: frozen, hollow-eyed, dead.
At the funeral, you could hardly stand to look at me. It wasn’t easy to see your eyes through the veil you wore, but I could tell—they pierced straight into my soul. You blamed me for shocking Wallace to death. You didn’t say a word about it, which only made me feel worse. And then Takey kept shooting at people with his thumb and forefinger—k-pew, k-pew—and I couldn’t get him to stop, and I was afraid you’d blame me for that too.
From my seat I could see Wallace’s sharp, beaky nose poking out of his casket among the sprays of lilies. Father Burgess said, “Let us pray,” and everyone knelt to pray for Wallace.
I tried to focus on the Father’s eulogy, but my heart pumped heavily, flooding blood into my ears and eyes, blocking my senses. A few of the Father’s words got through to me—eternal life, heaven, forgiveness, sin. I have a kind of superpower, I thought. Eternal life. I am the one person on Earth who will never die.
But then, why should I die? Why shouldn’t I live forever? My life could be wild and fearless and exciting…like yours.
I thought far into the future of all the funerals to come. Yours and Ginger’s and Daddy-o’s someday. St. John and Sully and Norrie and Jane, even Takey…each of them, one by one, lying in Wallace’s place like dolls in their caskets. They’ll be old when they die, I hope, but it hardly matters. I’ll be left all alone, to live out eternity with no one to love.
I started to cry. I wept as we filed past the casket to say our good-byes. Father Burgess patted my shoulder in consolation, and then I realized what I had to do. It was so obvious. I had to confess my sin.
After the funeral, we stepped out into the gray light to ride to the cemetery. As limo after limo pulled up and drove off I wondered, What would happen if I threw myself in front of that car? What if I ran over to Charles Street and threw myself right into the traffic? What would happen this time? Would I come away without a scratch?
The next day, I went to confession after school. I wondered what you had told Father Burgess about how Wallace had died. Maybe he already knew what I’d done.
I started with the easy stuff, confessing to taking the Lord’s name in vain about a zillion times, to talking back to my mother only about a million times, to having impure thoughts once in a while, and to coveting some of my sisters’ clothes. Finally I got to the real reason I was there.
“Father, I have one more sin to confess,” I said. “The sin of murder.”
There was silence behind the screen. I thought I heard a stifled chuckle, but that might have been him clearing his throat.
“Murder? That is serious. Please tell me what happened.”
So I told him. I told him that I had somehow become invincible, that cars were always crashing into me but never really hurting me. “On the day Wallace died, he accidently hit me with his car…and I think he thought he hurt me. He didn’t know I have this superpower where cars can’t hurt me. And I think he felt so bad, or maybe so shocked, that it killed him. Which means I killed him.”
“Hmmm.” I could see the shadow of Father Burgess’s finger tapping his chin as if he were thinking hard about this. “That is a strange set of circumstances. I’m glad you came to talk to me about this. You are carrying a number of misconceptions around in that head of yours.”
And then he let me have it. Nicely, but he still tried to set me straight. First of all, he said, I’m not invincible—far from it—and I shouldn’t go around thinking that way. I should be careful and try to avoid accidents at all times, because no matter what I think, I could be seriously hurt.
Secondly, he said, I am not guilty of murder. What had happened was an accident and not my fault. You and I both know that he’s wrong.
I tried to get him to see the truth. “If it’s not murder, how about manslaughter? Negligent homicide?”
“This isn’t Law and Order, my dear,” he said. “God doesn’t plea-bargain.”
“I’m not trying to plea-bargain,” I said. “I’m trying to convince you of my guilt.”
He said again that it was an accident, it wasn’t my fault, Wallace would have had a stroke anyway, blah blah blah. Because he didn’t believe I was invincible. He didn’t take my confession seriously. And the proof was in the penance: only one Hail Mary. For the sin of pride, not for murder.
He let me off way too easy, I thought as I knelt at the altar of St. Joan and said my one required prayer. I knew what I had done was serious, and I couldn’t rest until I had paid the price. I vowed to go out into the world and find a penance of my own, one that would fit my crime.
I didn’t know then that you would offer me another chance to confess—or that you would punish everyone else along with me.
TEN
A FEW DAYS LATER, AT HOCKEY PRACTICE, AISHA SMACKED THE ball toward the goal and it flew off course and hit me in the eye. I fell down. My eye really hurt. When the coach lifted my hand away from it, she said, “Ouch.”
I was sent to the nurse, who put an ice pack on my face. My eye was black and blue, and it ached. It hurt way more than any of the bruises I got when I was hit by those cars. Which made me start to wonder: What if it was over? What if I’d lost my invincibility?
Perhaps that was my punishment for killing Wallace. But I couldn’t be sure yet.
I eyed the passing cars on my way home from school. Would one of them jump the curb and go after me? Would this be the time I was finally killed?
I made it home safely enough. At the sight of my eye, Miss Maura handed me a package of frozen peas and made me hold it there until it defrosted, after which she would serve the peas for dinner.
I went upstairs, peas plastered to my face, to visit Takey and Bubbles. I knew Takey had been practicing a new trick with Bubbles and I wanted to see how it was going. I found him sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at the fish tank.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Takey said. “Bubbles won’t do his trick.”
I looked at the tank. Bubbles lay on his side, floating on the surface of the water.
“Oh no.” I sat down next to Takey. “This looks bad.”
The last thing we needed was another funeral, but when a goldfish dies you can’t just flush him down the toilet.
Takey aimed his gun finger at Bubbles. “Get up, Bubbles, or I’ll shoot. Ka-pow.”
“Too late, Takey,” I said. “He’s already dead.”
“Why?” Takey asked. “Did he have a stroke like Wallace?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”
All those fish tricks down the drain. It would take forever to train a new goldfish to put on a show like Bubbles. Not only that, it was sad to see the little guy floating there, lifeless.
Takey aimed his finger gun at me. I obediently put my hands up. “Hey, I didn’t kill him.” I only confess to murders I actually committed.
“Why is your eye all black?” Takey asked.
“I lost my lucky force field.”
“What?”
“I got hit by a hockey ball.” And between that and the death of Bubbles, I knew something had changed. My luck had turned. Wallace’s death had done it. Just like falling down a black hole into another dimension made me invincible, murdering my stepgrandfather made me vincible again.
That’s what happens when you commit the worst sin in the world. You lose your chance at immortality.
It made sense to me at the time.
I was very careful on my way downtown to the Learning Center. Now that I knew I could get hurt if a hard object hit me, I felt skittish around cars. I stood shakily at every crosswalk in my bruise-hiding sunglasses, waiting for the light to change and then making sure all the cars were completely stopped before I stepped into the street. Once, a car turning left onto Charles whizzed by a l
ittle too close for comfort. I scooted out of the way and let out a scream. The other crosswalkers looked warily at me as if I were a crazy person.
I made it to the Learning Center without getting run over, but my neurotic carefulness had made me late. Cassandra was waiting for me in the study room. I sat down across the desk from her and took off my sunglasses.
“Whoa,” she said. “What happened to you?”
“I killed my grandfather,” I said. “Stepgrandfather.”
“You killed him?” She looked surprised. I guess kids don’t expect to hear that their math tutors are murderesses.
I nodded.
“I got your back,” she said. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Everybody already knows.”
She squinted at me. “Then why aren’t you in jail?”
“It was an accident. That’s what everybody says.”
“Sure it was.” The squint hardened into a look that said, White people are always getting away with murder. Or maybe that was just my guilty conscience talking. “There’s a cop on the beat where I live, whenever anything bad happens and the kid says, ‘It was an accident,’ he always says, ‘No such thing as an accident,’ Then he slaps on the cuffs.”
“I know.” I started to tear up a little. I really didn’t want to cry in front of Cassandra. It seemed so unprofessional. “It’s all about luck. Everything is about luck. I always felt very lucky. Then I fell down that black hole—”
Cassandra shook her head. “Don’t start with that again.”
“But then I killed a man. And ever since I became a murderess, my luck has changed. I am no longer immortal. Flying hockey balls can hurt me. Pet goldfish can die.”
“I don’t know why you’re telling me all this,” Cassandra said. “But I will say that if you kill somebody, you’ll start to have bad luck. That makes sense to me.”