“Oh, no. No, I’m crap. Complete and utter rubbish.” Toby laughed. “Once Finn tried to show me some sculpture stuff, but . . .” He looked over at me. I must have been frowning, because he changed his tone. “I don’t know. It just didn’t work out, really.”
“Me neither.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I’m not a good artist. I’m not even one of the best in my class.” I didn’t mean to say anything about myself, but it came out before I could stop it.
“Well, Finn thought you were good. Really good.” Toby uncrossed his legs and leaned in. “Finn said art isn’t about drawing or painting a perfect bowl of fruit. It’s about ideas. And you, he said, have enough good ideas to last a lifetime.”
“He said that?”
“Uh-huh.”
Again I blushed and turned away from Toby, looking out the window. For a second it felt like Finn was on that train with us. Like Toby had a little ghost Finn on his shoulder telling him exactly what to say.
I didn’t want to let myself get suckered in by all this nice talk, but it was hard not to. It was hard not to want to listen forever to every beautiful thing Finn ever said about me. I glanced over at Toby. He was probably making it all up. He was the special one, after all. I was just the dumb niece, and suddenly it felt all wrong that this guy, this stranger, had talked about me with Finn. That he knew all kinds of things about me and I knew nothing.
“So you’ve taken over Finn’s apartment?” I said. I heard the mean edge in my voice, I heard myself sounding more like Greta than myself, but I didn’t care.
Toby bowed his head. “I . . .”
“Whatever. I don’t want to know.”
Quiet again.
“You know, you can come down whenever you want,” he said. “Whenever. I mean it. Night or day.”
I shrugged. Then, before I knew it, I felt my eyes start to sting. I felt tears pressing up, and the more I tried to stop them, the more they wanted out. I turned, but I felt Toby lay a hand on my back. I leaned away. I breathed in and out as slow as I could until I felt myself coming back to normal.
“Hey, it’ll be all right,” he said. Then he moved his sweater off the seat next to him and laid it on his lap. Just that. Just saying I could sit there if I wanted to. I looked at the empty seat so he could see that I knew what he’d done, what he was saying, but that I wasn’t going to move. I didn’t need his help.
But he didn’t put the sweater back down. He clutched it to his lap and left that empty seat between us. The train stopped at four more stations, and I sat there, letting it drag me farther and farther away from home. Out of the woods. Out of the suburbs and into the cold stone air of the city.
When the train pulled into Grand Central, we both got off.
He thanked me for coming about twenty more times and told me that he hoped it wouldn’t be the last time we saw each other. He opened his backpack and handed me a brown paper bag. “From Finn,” he said, leaning in close, then quickly pulling back.
“And there’s more.”
I took the bag without looking at it, as if it wasn’t important.
“Well, why didn’t you just bring it, then? If there’s more.”
Toby looked embarrassed. He twisted his hands behind his back and looked down at the dirty train station floor.
“Because I didn’t think you’d come again once you had it all. And I need—I want you to come again. Very much.”
Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a whole bunch of money and handed it to me. It wasn’t stacked neatly or anything; it was like he’d just shoved the notes into his pocket from some big pile somewhere.
“Here. You know, in case you need anything.”
I didn’t look at it closely, but I could tell it was a lot. Our neighbor Mrs. Kepfler used to try to give Greta and me a dollar each sometimes. Just because we looked like nice girls, she would say. But my mother would never let us take it. “You don’t take money unless it’s family.” That’s what she always said before making us return it.
“I can’t,” I said to Toby, handing it back.
“No, no, no. You can. It’s Finn’s. It’s not like you’re taking it from me or anything. There’s still loads left. Don’t worry.”
“The kinds of things I want don’t cost money,” I said, pushing the notes back into his hands. I didn’t know if he understood what I meant. That what I wanted was for time to roll back and for Finn never to have met Toby and never to have been given AIDS and to still be here, just me and him. Like I always thought it was.
“Oh,” Toby said, seeming like he felt foolish suddenly. I wondered what the two of us looked like, standing in the middle of the crowded Grand Central concourse, Toby holding out this fistful of money, just waiting for someone to come up and grab it out of his hand. He tried to shove the money back into his pockets, but it wouldn’t fit, and right then, just for a second, I kind of felt sorry for him.
“Okay, okay,” I said. I held my backpack out. “But hurry up.”
He smiled and shoved the money in. “It’s what Finn would have wanted, all right?”
I was about to say that nobody knew what Finn would have wanted, but I had the awful thought that maybe Toby did know. Maybe it was only me who had no idea.
“We could . . . I don’t know, maybe get some coffee? Ice cream? A drink?” Toby nudged his head toward the bar in the station.
I looked at the big clock: four-fifty. Even if I’d wanted to go somewhere with Toby, it would have been too late. I had to get back for the party.
I shook my head. “I’ve got somewhere to be.”
“Of course. Some other time, right? I’ll see you again?”
I looked Toby up and down. He stood there, shoulders stooped. His fingers playing with a loose thread on the edge of his sweater, his big brown eyes staring right into me like he really cared about my answer.
“I . . . I guess I might call you. Sometime. If I don’t have anything better to do.”
Toby’s face lit up. He nodded and thrust his hand out to me, like he wanted to shake on it, but I didn’t take it.
“Brilliant. Whenever you want, all right? Whenever. I’m always around. And if you ever need anything . . . anything at all. I mean it.”
That’s how we left it. Toby asked me five or six times if I would be all right getting home, and when he finally believed that I would, we said goodbye. He headed through the archway toward the exit, then he stopped and turned and looked back again. He smiled and waved and made like he was dialing an invisible telephone. Then he pointed at me. I nodded so he would go, then I bought a ticket home. I used the money I’d brought with me. My own, not what Toby had just given me. I didn’t look in Toby’s direction again. I stood there on the platform, staring down at the grimy tracks, waiting for my train, thinking that I would probably never see him again.
Twenty-Two
Almost the whole cast of South Pacific was out in the woods behind the school. Ryan Cooke, Julie Contolli, Megan Donegan. And some of the crew. Lighting and set builders. The people who wore all black and snuck around between scenes. If I was in the play, I’d be crew. I felt like stage crew right then, hiding behind a tree, watching everyone hunched around a fire. I heard Greta before I saw her. Her voice warbled through the trees. Snatches of “Bali Ha’i,” Bloody Mary’s big song. Island . . . sea . . . me . . . Then it went quiet and I spotted her. I saw Greta tipping a bottle to her mouth. A brown drink, whiskey or brandy. I didn’t even know Greta drank alcohol. I didn’t want to know.
I’d run from the train station right across town, and it had felt like maybe I was running for my last chance at being normal. Charging through the cold air, over the crusty little patches of snow, away from the weirdness of the whole afternoon with Toby. I didn’t feel like me. It was like I was in a show about someone almost exactly like myself but not quite.
I waited for the moment when it might be right to step out from behind the tree and become part of t
he party, but it didn’t seem to come. I stood there getting colder and colder, until finally I got my coat out of my backpack and put it on. I didn’t care how I looked anymore. I took a step backward and stumbled, and a few kids saw me. One of them was Greta, who smiled for a second, then turned to say something to the boy next to her. Another was Ben Dellahunt. He glanced down at my feet and then walked over.
“So, we meet again. You’re the younger Elbus.”
I blushed. “Yeah. June.”
“I’ve noticed those boots of yours.”
I put one foot behind the other, trying to make the boots smaller than they were. I didn’t want Ben Dellahunt looking at my boots. It had been a long day, and I didn’t think I had the strength to defend my best present from Finn.
“You said that last time. What about them?” It came out harsher than I meant it to.
“Whoa there.” Ben put his hands up like he was trying to protect himself. “Nothing. Just . . . they’re cool. That’s all. I wouldn’t mind some like that.”
“Well, they’re not for sale.”
“I know,” he said, laughing. “Don’t worry.”
I wondered if Greta had asked Ben to look out for me. If this was why she’d asked me to go to the party. If maybe she’d seen us talking in the auditorium that night.
Ben walked over to a cooler and grabbed a bottle. He handed it to me. “Beer?”
He’d already opened it, so there wasn’t much else I could do except take it from him. I thought I’d have a sip and then pour the rest out somewhere.
“Thanks,” I said.
Ben eyed me up. “You’re, like, way taller than your sister.”
“Yeah. I know.”
We stood there awkwardly for a while.
“You want to go for a walk or something?” Ben asked.
I thought about it for a few seconds. Maybe a few seconds too long, because Ben said “It’s just a walk, you know. Nothing life or death about it.”
So I said yes. Not because I wanted to go for a walk with Ben Dellahunt, but because at least it meant leaving the party. I didn’t want to stay around that fire. Near Greta drinking, with all those people I didn’t know. If we went into the woods, it would barely be like a party at all. And if anything went really wrong, I still had the corkscrew in my pocket. I’d folded it down halfway through the train ride with Toby, but I still had it, ready and waiting. And I had a flashlight, which I was pretty sure I wouldn’t need but Greta had insisted I bring along.
As we walked farther into the woods, I heard one of the boys yell, “Go, Benno!”
“Ignore him,” Ben said, and edged closer to me.
We were heading toward the brook when he stopped.
“Do you hear that?” he said. “That sounds like, I don’t know . . . dogs or something.”
“They might be wolves,” I said, and then regretted it right away.
He laughed. “Yeah, right. All the wolves were killed off here, like, a hundred years ago. You have to go way the hell up north to find wolves.”
“We don’t know everything. Maybe wolves from the north could just walk right down here to Westchester. How would we ever know?” I took another sip of the beer, suddenly feeling bold.
“Shhh,” he said. “Let’s listen.” He put two fingers up. “Anyway,” he whispered, “not all wolves are bad.”
I looked down. “No. Not all. Not bad. Just . . . just selfish. That’s what they are. Hungry and selfish.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. “Yeah, well, anyway, it’s probably just coyotes or dogs. Probably mongrel dogs.” He looked around, then back at me, and picked up my hand. “If you want, we could try to find them.”
Behind us, the fire was still burning strong. People were huddled close to it, tipping beer bottles to their lips. Farther out in the woods were little specks of light, candles and flashlights of other people who’d left the fire.
“I don’t think I want to know.” I didn’t want to tell him that I liked believing in the wolves.
“Why wouldn’t you want to know?” He reached into his coat pocket, then held out his palm to me. “You ever play D&D?”
I shook my head.
“Ah, well . . .” Ben kind of puffed himself up and started to explain about percentages and character alignment and experience points. Then he handed me a weird-shaped die and told me to roll it.
“Go on,” he said. “Right here.” He laid out both his flattened palms. He had hands the size of my father’s and a voice that was low and even. He had a small patch of stubble on his chin. We were alone together, and somehow the two years between Ben Dellahunt and me seemed wider and darker than the fifteen or twenty between me and Toby only a few hours before. I didn’t really understand what I was trying to do, but I let the die fall from my fingers into his hands.
“Awesome,” he said.
“What?”
“I convinced you to go find the wolves.”
“You did?”
“Of course I did. You have, like, no experience points.”
I stood there for a few seconds, wondering whether I should turn back. What I really wanted to do was leave. But I couldn’t see Greta near the fire anymore, and if I left, if I went home alone, Greta would be in for it. I wouldn’t do that to her.
“Okay, then,” I said. “Let’s go.” I pointed in the wrong direction, away from where I knew the wolves were, and we walked. Ben talked on and on about D&D and quests and his favorite parts of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Once in a while we’d stop and Ben would pull out another can of beer from his coat pocket and we’d sit. I wouldn’t say that I was exactly enjoying myself, but it was nice. Easy. It made the party seem okay.
I led Ben in a big circle, so eventually we ended up back on the hill above the fire.
“So, no wolves,” he said. He put his hand on my back.
He was the second person in one day who was not from my family to touch me on purpose, and it felt strange. Like he was made of different stuff than I was.
“Guess not.” I took a step forward so his hand fell away. Then I smiled and said, “Doesn’t mean they don’t exist, right?”
He started to argue, but I was already jogging down the hill to the fire. It was still glowing when I got back down, smoking from the leaves people were piling on it. There was a kind of yeasty smell from the half-full beer cans, and even though it seemed pretty early, kids were starting to leave. Nobody wanted to push their luck at home. I scanned the faces. I didn’t know how much time had gone by, but it was long enough that I expected to see Greta back there. But she wasn’t. I saw her friends, but she was nowhere.
I stood there with no idea what to do. The weight of my backpack strained against my shoulders, and all I could think of was how much I just wanted to go home. I wanted to count out the money from Toby. I wanted to spread out everything from that crumpled brown paper bag on my bedroom floor. I wanted to sleep. All I needed was Greta.
I asked around if anyone had seen her, but nobody had. One girl said she thought she’d gone off with Rob Jordan, but she wasn’t sure.
I didn’t think Greta would leave me. Not this time. This time she’d be in big trouble if she came home without me.
A bunch of kids made their way toward the school. Ben was with them, and he shouted over, “You okay?”
I nodded and waved. “Fine.”
He waved back, then disappeared into the trees.
Only a few kids still sat around the fire. My eyes were burning from the smoke, and I was thirsty and hungry. I took a few steps back into the dark and, without even trying, I felt like a poor peasant girl from the Middle Ages. A girl out in the woods, desperate to find her only sister.
“Greta,” I whispered under the dark branches. “Come on, Greta, just tell me where you are.”
I walked down the hill, away from the school and the fire, until I was next to the brook. I kept calling Greta’s name. Soft and then louder, listening for any kind of response, but the onl
y sounds I heard were above me. An owl in the branches or twigs falling. I followed the brook deeper into the woods, the same way I did when I came by myself. There was only the thinnest scrap of moon that night, but I wasn’t scared. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t scared at all.
I remembered the flashlight and flicked it on, shouting out Greta’s name.
“Come out. It’s not funny.”
At first I worried about finding her with some boy. Doing things I supposedly couldn’t even imagine. I thought how embarrassing that would be for both of us—all three of us even—but I didn’t care anymore. My toes were going numb from cold and I needed to go home.
I kept following the brook, because I didn’t know what else to do. I almost turned back, but I kept telling myself, Just another few steps, thinking maybe that was all it would take. I scanned the ground with my light as I walked. I picked up the shine of a beer can and once a set of keys, which I put in my pocket. And I kept calling out Greta’s name, louder each time. Maybe she was gone. Maybe she’d forgotten about me altogether.
That’s when the flashlight glinted off something at the base of a big tree. I looked around. This was my tree. The maple. And there was the old stone wall. I was in my place. For a second it was a comfort to be there, but then it quickly faded, because at night there was nothing special about it. Nothing medieval. It was nothing but cold and dark.
I angled the light at the glinting spot on the ground and walked toward it, thinking it was probably a broken beer bottle, but when I got up close I could see that the light was reflecting off a pair of glasses. The glasses were on a face. Greta’s muddy face. Just her face on the forest floor, her shiny black hair pulled back tight and those round silver-framed glasses. Her eyes were closed, and for that first second my body went rigid, because I really thought it was only her head laid down on the bed of leaves.
“Greta.”
I reached out for her, and right away I could feel her body, buried under a thick pile of cold damp leaves. It looked like the earth was her bed and she’d pulled up the forest floor all around her like a comforter. She looked peaceful, like she belonged in that place. If I wasn’t her sister and if it wasn’t so cold, I might have left her there, thinking she knew exactly what she was doing. I gave her a shake and she curled into herself.