I tried to come up with a way to go without getting caught, without anyone ever finding out, but I realized it was impossible. So my plan was to do the next best thing—I’d leave a note and call when I got there. Everyone would know I was fine, that I was coming back. Of course I’d be in the biggest trouble of my life at the end of it all, but I didn’t care about things like that anymore.
We’d probably go for only a few days, but in my mind it would be just like A Room with a View and Lady Jane. I’d be taking care of Toby. It would be romantic. Not lovey-dovey romantic, the other kind. It would be the best I could possibly do. I am average at English and I am average at math, but I was not going to be average at looking after Toby. This time I was going to get it exactly right.
Forty-Nine
I was on the floor in the living room, doing a 750-piece jigsaw puzzle of one of the stained-glass windows in Chartres Cathedral, which Finn brought back for me when he went to France one time. It was only five o’clock, way too early on a weekday for anyone to be home, but then in walked my dad, looking like he was halfway to being dead.
“Stomach bug,” he said, sinking into the couch. He closed his eyes and laid a hand across his belly. He sniffed the air and seemed to turn a shade greener. “Ugh, that darned crockpot.”
“I could get you some ginger ale and . . . I don’t know . . . a hot water bottle or something. If you want.”
His eyes were still closed and a little smile spread across his face.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Oh, nothing.”
“What?” I said. “Come on.”
“Nothing. It’s just nice, that’s all. You offering to take care of your old, sick dad.”
The timer bell on the crockpot dinged as I walked into the kitchen. I took the lid off and gave it a stir. I poured us both glasses of ginger ale and brought them into the living room. When I got in there, my dad was stretched out on his side on the floor, sifting through puzzle pieces.
“All right if I help?” he said.
“Sure.”
It was a hard puzzle. The colors were mostly deep primaries, rich reds and blues, and even after separating them out into piles, it took a lot of time. I took the red pile and started trying to piece some sections together. My dad worked on the blues.
“It’ll all be over soon, eh, Junie?”
“What will?” I flipped a piece right side up.
“Tax season. Done for another year. Thank God.”
“It’s not so bad, is it?”
My dad gave me an “are you kidding?” look.
“Well, why do you do it, then?”
I meant it seriously. I really wondered why people were always doing what they didn’t like doing. It seemed like life was a sort of narrowing tunnel. Right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. You could be anything. Then, like, the absolute second after you were born, the tunnel narrowed down to about half that size. You were a boy, and already it was certain you wouldn’t be a mother and it was likely you wouldn’t become a manicurist or a kindergarten teacher. Then you started to grow up and everything you did closed the tunnel in some more. You broke your arm climbing a tree and you ruled out being a baseball pitcher. You failed every math test you ever took and you canceled any hope of being a scientist. Like that. On and on through the years until you were stuck. You’d become a baker or a librarian or a bartender. Or an accountant. And there you were. I figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you’d have squeezed yourself in with so many choices, that you just got squashed.
“Why do I do it?” my dad said. “That’s a no-brainer. For you. For you and Greta and your mother.”
“Oh,” I said, suddenly feeling immensely sad that somebody would throw their whole life away just to make sure other people were happy. “Well, thanks.”
My dad smiled really big so I could see the little gap between his front teeth. “Anytime.” Then all of a sudden he threw his hand over his mouth. “Oh, no . . .” he said, lurching up and running for the bathroom.
I sat there looking at my pieces. At all the different shades of red. I thought about Finn. How he did whatever he wanted. Just like my mother said. He never let the tunnel squash him. But still, there he was. In the end he was still crushed to death by his own choices. Maybe what Toby said was right. Maybe you had to be dying to finally get to do what you wanted.
I fidgeted around with the puzzle pieces for a while longer, but I wasn’t lucky. Nothing seemed to fit without a whole lot of work.
Then I had this thought: What if it was enough to realize that you would die someday, that none of this would go on forever? Would that be enough?
Then I thought of something else. Something my dad had said. It’ll all be over soon. I walked over to the calendar in the kitchen. It was the one my parents got made up to give to all their clients. Elbus and Elbus Accountants, it said, and it had only one picture, a cheesy scene of a bright blue lake in front of some snowcapped mountains. April 13. Two more days until the end of tax season. If I added in the week it took my parents to file extensions and get things back in order, that gave me almost a week and a half of orphanhood. This was the first year ever that I wished tax season would go on longer. The first year that I needed to be an orphan.
Fifty
I hadn’t seen Greta look at me once since the day she raided my closet. If I was in the kitchen, she skipped her coffee and went straight outside to wait for the bus. If I was doing homework at the table, she went up to her room. At school she turned the other way if she saw me coming down the hall. It was like she wanted me not to exist.
And I didn’t care anymore. That’s what I told myself. I didn’t care that her eyes were always tired and red. I didn’t care that I never saw her with friends anymore. That she didn’t even sit with her groupies at lunch. That she always seemed to be alone. I didn’t care that at the end of this school year, Greta might be moving out. They had a supervised dorm where the kids in Annie stayed, and if she got the part, that’s where she’d go. Then after that she’d be off to Dartmouth. And that would be the end. No more sister. Some days that sounded like a dream come true. That’s what I told myself.
But still, now and then I popped into rehearsals. I thought if Greta saw me there she might think I wasn’t seeing Toby anymore. It was a lame effort, and I didn’t really think she cared, but I did it anyway.
I’d stand near the front of the auditorium against the wall, right next to the door, so I could leave when it got too tedious. One afternoon I was standing there, bored as could be, watching Mr. Nebowitz organize the chorus and the walk-on people, when I saw Ben Dellahunt leaning over the edge of the balcony, waving at me. He kept waving until I understood that he was trying to get me to go up to the lighting booth. I cocked my head and looked around. He nodded and beckoned me again. I didn’t want to go up. Looking at Ben reminded me that I was an idiot.
“Come on, Elbus,” he called down. And then I had no way not to go up.
Ben smiled, holding the door of the little booth open as I walked across the balcony. Pete Loring and John Untemeyer were in there too, and I sat down on a folding chair behind the three of them.
“Can’t stay away, huh?” Ben said.
“Something like that.”
“No, I mean it, you look totally bored. Why do you keep coming to rehearsals?”
For a second I thought about telling him. For a weird second I thought about spilling every single secret I had to Ben Dellahunt right there in that dark booth. Then he’d know who I really was. Then he’d know that Tina Yarwood had nothing on me. But of course I didn’t.
“I told Greta I’d help,” I said instead.
“Why would she care if you helped? Anyway, it’s not like you’re actually helping.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Look, you’re the one who asked me to come up here. I wasn’t bugging you. I can go.”
“No. Sorry. I’ll shut up.”
The other two boys did
n’t say anything. They concentrated on sliding switches and turning knobs on the board. John Untemeyer glanced over at me, but Pete kept his head down like he was embarrassed to have a girl, even a girl like me, in the booth. Antonia came on to sing the reprise of “Dites-Moi.”
“Hey, you take French, right?” I said to Ben.
“Yeah.”
“So what does dites-moi mean anyway?”
Ben thought for a few seconds. He tapped his index finger in the air like he was tracing out the lyrics of the song for himself.
“Tell me why. That’s what it means. Tell me why. Then something like life is so beautiful. Tell me why life is so beautiful. Tell me why life is so . . . gay.” He looked sheepish, then quickly added, “You know, like the happy gay.”
“Yeah. The happy gay. I know.”
Greta came on to do the scene where Lieutentant Cable says he can’t marry Bloody Mary’s daughter because she’s not white. Bloody Mary is supposed to be furious in that scene and Greta played it almost psychotic. She poked Craig Horvell, who was playing Lieutenant Cable, over and over again in his chest. She was poking him so hard that it looked like she’d poked him right out of character. He looked scared, and a couple of times I saw him glance down at Mr. Nebowitz like he was hoping for a rescue. It was the angriest I’d ever seen Greta, stomping around onstage like she had a score to settle. Like Craig Horvell had ruined her life and she was about to make him pay. But the longer I watched, the more it looked not so much like anger but sadness. Desperation. She was flapping around up there, and what it looked like was that she was desperate for someone to notice she’d gone right around the bend. But nobody did seem to notice. Only me. Me, sitting in the balcony, watching my sister self-destruct.
When she left the stage, Ben turned to me and said, “She’s really good, you know.”
I nodded. “Of course I know.”
We sat there quiet for a while.
“You know, the other night, in the woods, I—”
“Don’t worry. I don’t even remember anything.”
“Well, I kissed you, remember?”
I couldn’t help laughing. Most people would have just gone along with the memory loss thing, but not Ben.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t tell Tina.” Then I got up and left.
After the rehearsal, I waited for Greta outside the school. I didn’t know what I wanted to say to her, but seeing her on that stage, so small and wrecked, made me want to do something. Maybe I’d tell her that I forgave her for putting all my best stuff in the garbage (even though I didn’t). Or maybe I’d ask for her help with makeup so she’d tell me what was happening to her. The whole undrunk truth. The sun had turned the sky a pretty orangey pink. Like the inside of a seashell. I stared out across the school track, where a few boys were running laps. I watched them go around three times, and when Greta still hadn’t come out, I turned to leave. I didn’t bother with the woods. I walked on the sidewalk, right up through town, because it was longer. Sometimes it feels good to take the long way home.
Fifty-One
I stood in Finn’s kitchen, leaning up against the counter. The whole place smelled charred, because Toby was making toast, which he kept burning even though he was standing right there. This was almost a week after the journal thing. He called and said he felt bad about how things had gone last time. He said he wanted to make amends. I caught the train straight after school and then I took the subway up to the apartment. It didn’t bother me to take the subway by myself anymore, and it was a whole lot cheaper than taking a taxi.
“Well . . . what do you think?” I was sure Toby was going to love the England plan. He would love it because it was perfect.
“What do I think about what?”
“You know—the passport. The trip?”
So there I was, beaming like a moron, and right away I could see that Toby didn’t actually look pleased at all.
“Ah. That.”
“You said we could do anything, and so I was thinking England. You could show me everything there. Castles and . . . I don’t know—everything. Your town—I looked it up. You could show me the moors. You know, Wuthering Heights? We could go in the summer. I’m still working on the details, but maybe I’d get my mother to send me to sleepaway camp and then—”
The toaster popped. Toby took out the toast, examined it, then scraped at it until it barely held itself together anymore. Then he tossed it on a plate.
“June, I’m sorry. I really am, but that’s impossible.” He opened a drawer in the kitchen, pulled out my passport, and handed it to me. I took it, and we walked through to the living room. Toby pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and slid one out without even offering one to me.
I threw my passport on the coffee table between us. I was starting to feel a little bit sick, because I’d spent a lot of time thinking about this plan. I’d searched all over the house to find the place where our passports were kept, and it had taken me forever to find the key.
“Nothing’s impossible. You said—”
“Castles, June? Wuthering Heights? Christ. I’m from the outskirts of Leeds.”
“Well, okay, I don’t know, whatever. Whatever you want to show me. Your England.”
“That’d be a laugh a minute.”
“I don’t care.”
“June, I can’t just take you out of the country. Finn would never . . . You’re only, what? Fourteen? Fifteen?” Toby thought I might be fifteen. I almost smiled, but I held it back. “Plus . . .”
“Plus what?”
“Plus they wouldn’t let me back here if I left. All right? I can’t go.” He looked down, like he was disappointed in himself, then he said, “I’m sorry, June. I know I promised anything, but . . .”
“So? Would it be so bad to stay there?”
Toby shook his head slowly, thinking. “For me? Yes. It would. It would be awful. And the summer . . . Well, it’s a long way off.”
It was already halfway through April. Summer was only a couple of months away, and I was about to argue with Toby, but then I looked at him. His eyes ringed with gray circles. His cheeks collapsing as he inhaled his cigarette. I suddenly understood what he was trying to say.
“But Finn wanted—”
“You don’t know what Finn wanted,” he said. And for a moment it was like Greta was right there, talking out of Toby’s mouth. I hoisted my backpack onto my shoulders and started to walk out. Then I turned back.
“I do. I know. He wanted me to take care of you.”
Toby stubbed out his cigarette and, for the first time that day, he smiled. First a little bit, then more, until he was laughing. At me. He was laughing at me. Then he collapsed into Finn’s blue chair, because something was so funny that he couldn’t even manage to stand up anymore. I blushed and turned to go. Before I got to the door, I zipped open my backpack and reached down for the Book of Days. I opened the book, flipping through to find the page.
“You can laugh all you want, but he wrote it. In here. Plain as anything. He said, Look after Toby . Is that enough proof for you?”
“June, I’m not laughing at you.”
And suddenly I got a burst of meanness that shot straight from my heart to my lips. “He said you have nobody. Nobody at all.”
Toby didn’t look away. His laugh turned into a soft, knowing smile.
“That’s right,” he said. Then he stood and walked over to the windowsill. He reached his hand into a big electric-blue vase and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He slowly unfolded it and passed it over to me.
It was all wrinkled and thin, like it had been read a hundred times.
My Dearest Love,
I’ve said everything I need to say except this. This one last thing. Please look after June for me. Please promise to take the very best care of my only girl.
With so much love my heart might split in two . . .
Finn
I read it twice, staring at each and every word, imagining Finn?
??s shaky hand forming each sloppy letter. I looked around the apartment. There were those two pictures I used to think were my grandfather’s hands, until I found out they were the hands of Toby’s grandfather. There was the old carved trunk that Finn kept blankets in. There was the door to Finn’s bedroom, which was closed again. Private. I reread the note, feeling stupid and confused.
“Come here,” Toby said.
I shook my head hard. There it was. All along I’d been looking for Finn shining through Toby, and there he was the whole time. Every little thing Toby had done for me had come from Finn. I felt a warmth spread through my body from my toes all the way up to my scalp. I thought back to that very first day I’d seen him at the funeral. Toby trying to catch my eye, trying in his clumsy way to do right by Finn. Just like I was trying to do.
“It’s all right. Everything will be all right.”
I knew it wouldn’t. That was obvious. But Toby stretched his arms out and I stepped into them. I walked right in, like Toby was a huge wardrobe that could take me anywhere I wanted to go.
“Shhhh,” he said. “Shhhhh. It’s okay,” and we rocked. I cried right into Toby’s chest. Right into Toby’s heart. “Shhhh,” he said over and over, until it felt like we weren’t even two separate people anymore.
“See?” he said. “See how much he loved you?”
I clung to Toby, his ribs pressing against me like train tracks heading far, far away. I clung to him like I had the power to keep him here. I held him the way I thought Finn might have held him. With everything I had. With all the love I’ve got.
Then my crying turned into laughing, and I pulled back and looked at Toby.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Look at us. We must be the worst caretakers in the whole world.”
Then Toby laughed too. “I don’t know,” he said. “I thought I was doing all right.”
I raised my eyebrows. “We got drunk on Volcano Bowls last week. I’m not sure that’s what Finn had in mind.”