Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry

by Susan Vaught

  Grandma didn’t seem to mind. To her, everything I created turned to solid gold.

  I put my face back on the pillow, pressing my cheek into her hair, and I cried. More than anything, I wanted her to wake up and just be okay. I wanted everything to calm down and get easy again. Why did nothing feel easy? Would life ever be easy again?

  There, with my eyes closed tight, my thoughts kept going back to one word. Ghostology. The study of ghost lore. I let the ghosts keep it for you. That’s what Grandma told me about the lockbox. And when she took it away from Dr. Harper, she headed to the Lyceum. Except for the steam tunnel scream story, which was probably about Grandma the night of the Meredith riot when she got hurt, the Lyceum’s ghostology was mostly about the Civil War, about people seeing the spirits of Confederate soldiers who passed away there after the Battle of Shiloh. My mind flashed on the creepy window at Ventress Hall, and the bizarre stained glass eyes of dead soldiers in gray uniforms. I shivered. The whole Civil War thing on campus, all the statues, and that stained glass, and the turret where soldiers and students scribbled on the walls, and—

  And then my eyes popped open. I lifted my head. My hand dropped to my jeans pocket, where I traced the familiar outline of the key.

  Of course.

  How could I—wow. All that digging. The metal detector. All the searching. Every bit of that had been completely stupid.

  Ruth Beans was here.

  “I gave it to history,” I said out loud, feeling lightheaded. “I let the ghosts keep it for you. I think I got it. I think I understand.”

  I gave Grandma another kiss, and I walked back to her open bedroom window. The pieces of what I needed to do clicked into place in my head, almost like a map, as neat and perfect as any picture Indri might draw. Part of me wondered if I should feel excited, or worried, or all pulled in half by how furious my parents would be and how much trouble I’d get in this time, but I didn’t feel any of that.

  Mostly, I felt relief. And a little peace. And some easy. Finally, a little bit of easy.

  For a long time, I watched Dad digging in the dirt below. Sunset turned everything in the garden bright shades of yellow and red and green, and Dad seemed like an unstoppable nature spirit from one of my fantasy books. He finally sensed me watching and stood, propping himself on his hoe. He pulled his blue bandana off his head and mopped his face and neck. After a few seconds he lifted it and waved it at me.

  “I love you, baby girl,” he said loud enough for me to hear over faraway traffic and the cranking up of crickets and frogs and a few cicadas.

  I waved back at him. “I love you too, Dad.”

  * * *

  A little after ten o’clock, when I was sure both my parents would be asleep, I got up and stripped off my pajamas, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, stuffed Grandma’s key into my pocket, and put on my sneakers. I eased into my parents’ room without worrying about waking them up, because they both slept like big, snoring rocks. Saying a silent apology for being such a rotten kid, I went back to the hallway and pulled out my phone I had swiped back from Mom’s bedside table and charged while Dad was still outside. I flicked the sound switch to mute, then turned it on. As fast as I could, I texted Indri and Mac.

  I know where the lockbox is.

  I gave them the location, and told them I was headed over to get it, and I’d let them know what I found inside. Then I went downstairs, took a flashlight out of the kitchen junk drawer, and as quietly as I could, let myself out into the hot night. When I got to the sidewalk that ran beside the long strip of University Avenue between my house and campus, guilt finally tickled the back of my mind, but I tried to ignore it. In the white glow of streetlights, I watched my feet move, and saw my shadow drifting along. I felt like a wraith, passing between one life and the next. The sensation almost made me wobbly.

  Traffic whizzed back and forth, even this late, and at crosswalks, I had to wait for the light before I could walk. When the light turned, and I crossed the last street and got to campus, excitement made me move a little faster, even though I was huffing from walking fast.

  Off in the distance, I saw taillights moving around the Circle, near the front of the brightly lit Lyceum columns. I crossed to the right-hand sidewalk when traffic permitted, and focused on the old, looming, castle-like building.

  Ventress Hall rose into the darkness against a backdrop of spooky-looking trees, surreal with its yellow ground lighting casting shadows across the rounded tops of its windows. Most of the panes were dark, but as I had hoped, the upstairs window where Dr. Harper worked still glowed white. Since he was in his office, the street-level door would be unlocked.

  I moved quickly up the few steps in front of the building, and opened the door. The top hinge creaked, making me wince. I stood for a second, holding the door and listening to see if Dr. Harper would come out of his office. When he didn’t, I slipped inside and gently closed the door.

  The downstairs offices were locked up tight, but a single light showed me the carpeted stairs that led to the stained glass window with the beautifully created but bloodied University Grays looking down from above. Outside lights blazed, making the soldiers’ eyes seem glow-y and demonic. Silence pressed in on me, and the sound of my own heartbeat seemed way too loud. I didn’t want to switch on the flashlight for comfort, because I knew it might look odd if it bounced off windows, and would bring campus security in to check on the building. I told my feet to move, but most of me did not want to go up those stairs.

  I took a step. Breathed. Counted to ten, then twenty. I did not look at the soldiers again, or their demon eyes. Another step. Another. My blood rushed so hard I could feel it pulsing in my throat. If ghosts were real, they were here in this building, right now, watching me. I felt that deep in my skin, in my bones and fingers and toes. One step at a time, I climbed, forcing myself to think about Grandma, and how straight she would have stood, how she would have marched past this window without so much as a glance.

  When I finally had the window at my back, I climbed even faster, on to the second floor near Dr. Harper’s door—but that wasn’t where I was going. Instead, I turned in to a big office and faced a desk, empty at this hour, but standing guard nonetheless. Behind that desk was a different kind of door, closed and polished on the outside, but I knew on the other side it was dusty and spider-webbed. I couldn’t quite believe I was here at night, and I was about to open it, much less cross into the otherworld it seemed to hold back. Nobody got to go up there anymore. Most people only ever got to peek behind the door, with the dean’s permission, and the person at the desk guarding the space during business hours.

  I gave it to history. I let the ghosts keep it for you. I should have realized what Grandma meant when she first said that, even if it was in Alzheimer’s code. Where was the most haunted place on campus? Where were the real ghosts, if ghosts existed?

  Here. Right here in Ventress Hall, up in the turret, where the ghosts had been signing their names for years.

  My stomach clenched, and my chest tightened. I didn’t know whether to think about ghosts, or Grandma the night she took her lockbox away from Dr. Harper. He thought he saw her leaving Ventress with the box—but he also said he stayed locked in his office for a while, until he saw her out his window. She had time.

  I made myself cross the empty office. My sneakers squeaked against the wood floors, and I held my breath, not wanting to make a single noise to alert Dr. Harper I was in the building—or wake up the ghosts, because for sure, I was digging up some serious bones now.

  I put my hand on the door handle.

  The metal seemed cool. Too cold, really, for the heat. My teeth chattered. Ventress Hall had been renovated, restored, then renovated and fixed up again when it flooded because of those broken pipes a few years back. Only one part of the building got left untouched. The turret.

  I pulled open the door and shut my eyes for a count of three.

  When no ghost blasted out to possess me, I peeked at the narrow,
dark entryway. Then I switched on the flashlight and stepped into the turret. When I put my foot on the first step, the wood gave an ominous snap and groan, making me hold my breath all over again as I started up.

  The narrow stairs seemed to be covered in dust and plaster, and I didn’t have a rail to steady myself as they turned and twisted. I grabbed the smooth wooden pole in the center, and let my flashlight play on the damaged plaster. Names and dates and doodles passed by, so many it was like looking at one of Dr. Harper’s “context” lessons. Here, 1949. A little farther up, 1972, 1983, 1969. Sketches of hearts with initials, squares, geometrical designs, an eyeball or two, tons of squiggles I couldn’t identify—Indri had been right when she told me I had no artistic sensibilities. It had seemed like so much scribble when I had seen it before, but now, I wondered about every single name and date and drawing. Who were these people? Where had they come from? What happened to them?

  And most of all, had my grandma scrawled her name somewhere in this mess, in big letters or tiny ones? A sinking sensation almost made me stop climbing and sit down. It could take me longer to search these walls than to dig up the entire Circle, tulip beds and all. I climbed a few more steps, running the flashlight left and right to be sure the box wasn’t just sitting out, or tucked somewhere obvious. No sign of it, or of Grandma’s handwriting. Each step took me around and higher. My fingers pressed into the wooden pole, and I didn’t look behind me or down through the opening, afraid the view would freak me out completely. The space seemed to get more narrow inch by inch, and the graffiti swept along, never stopping, layer upon layer of people and time and messages, none of them what I wanted to see.

  About three steps from the very top, another step gave a loud creak, making me wince—and stop. The wood had actually shifted under my foot, like it might be loose. I gripped the center pole and turned the flashlight down to my sneaker, gently rocking the stair board back and forth. It definitely moved.

  I eased back down a few steps, until I could lean over and give the almost triangular board a tug. It slid to the side, showing me a dark space underneath, like a hidden drawer.

  Lying in that dark space was a box, exactly like the one Dr. Harper described. Surprise made me move the flashlight to the wall, and that’s when I saw it, in shaky but distinctive pen-scratched letters.

  Ruth Beans was here.

  22

  THE RIOT WAS REAL

  * * *

  Excerpt from Night on Fire (1969), by Avadelle Richardson, Epilogue

  In 1962, Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy walked this earth like gods. Medgar Evers and Malcolm X cast mighty, mighty shadows as the world’s eyes stared unblinking into America’s second Civil War. Images of lunch counter battlefields flushed the face of a shamed nation only just beginning to realize the full might of television news.

  Children fell in front of their wide, disbelieving gaze, skin stripped by firehoses. Enraged police dogs chewed on little arms and little legs. Tiny hands covered tiny faces and grown men in uniforms beat them with fists and clubs. Horses rode down unarmed men and women in the street. Politicians in suits spewed hatred and called for armed insurrection rather than peaceful change and equality. Bullets and tear gas formed their own language.

  Mother country raged, and father world frowned.

  The time had come.

  The bloody bastard South was in for our own righteous beating, and we knew it. Somewhere in our hearts, we all knew it, just as surely as any guilty child sent to cut his own switch.

  But that didn’t stop us from fighting.

  Nothing could stop the Movement—not even the bullets that would leave our gods dead at our feet.

  FOR A LONG TIME, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think or move. When I did finally reach down to gather the box, it felt like swimming in a dream. The dusty, cool turret air shimmered in the flashlight beam as I picked up the metal container. Something rattled inside.

  The entire world seemed to move completely away from me, leaving me totally alone in the turret with nothing at all but the flashlight, the key, and the box. I set the lockbox on the step below the open space, pulled Grandma’s key out of my pocket, and sat beside the box. Using the flashlight like a guiding beam, I slid the key into the lock. Perfect fit. It opened with a single turn, and the rusty hinges ground as I lifted the box’s lid and shined my light inside it.

  A stack of books lay against the back wall of the box, thin with yellowed covers. I carefully thumbed through them. They looked like accounting ledgers. I picked one up. It said Boots in curly writing, then in bold print Scribbling Diary, 65th Year of Publication, British Manufacture Throughout, Three days on a page. Below that, it was stamped with a great big 1961.

  Right above that date, my grandmother had written her name on the book. When I opened it, I found pages with squares on them, and lots of tiny writing in the squares. Each page had dates, and tons and tons of entries. Grandma had recorded her life, almost step by step. Tweeting before Twitter existed? Too awesome.

  My finger traced down the page I had open, and I found, “Tougaloo. Nine students at the library, arrested. Ava can’t shut up, raging about arresting people for trying to read.” Unbelievable. Just like in Night on Fire, and all the stuff Ms. Manchester told us. Grandma had written about it as it happened.

  Outside the turret, the building grunted and groaned a few times, but I didn’t even jump. My brain tried to tell me somebody was walking around downstairs, maybe even near the turret door, but I ignored that, along with a few spooky thumps. Too late now, ghosts. I’ve got the books.

  I put down 1961 and grabbed 1962. Immediately, I paged over to September, to the end of the month.

  Sunday, Sept 30, 5:17 pm

  Books! Fred has three boxes. Science and literature. Ava driving. Meredith due to arrive tomorrow. Life looks up! Maybe we’ll catch a glimpse of history.

  Sunday, Sept 30, 6:30 pm

  Campus so congested. Police everywhere. Ava thinks there will be trouble tonight, even sooner than we thought. She’s probably right.

  Sunday, Sept 30, 7:00 pm

  Never seen anything like this. Took half an hour to make half a mile. Police cars everywhere. Going behind the Lyceum and taking the quick path to Fred’s office when we can find a place to park.

  Sunday, Sept 30, 7:30 pm

  Something very wrong. Police pulling out, moving away from campus. Crowd looks out of control. We’re trying to leave but can’t move an inch.

  I looked up. So, they didn’t get out of the car? Hmm. Really different from Night on Fire, then. I frowned and turned the page. The next day’s dates were blotted out by a blackish-brown stain.

  Blood?

  I almost dropped the book. The word RIOT glared up at me from beneath the stain. From outside the turret, seemingly closer, I heard shuffles and thumps. My eyes narrowed. That didn’t sound like ghosts. It sounded like a person moving around.

  A person coming closer.

  Dr. Harper?

  My heart danced against my ribs, and I had a sudden memory of that look on his face when I thought he was going to take the key from me.

  Footsteps—definite footsteps—echoed in the office below the turret, near the door. The door I had left standing open. I gripped the book and flashlight tight but switched off the light as I stood.

  The door bumped the wall as someone opened it.

  I started to climb, put my foot in the open step, and fell backward on my butt, hard. If I hadn’t bumped against the center pole, I would have fallen head first, all the way down to the bottom. Breath rushed out of me, half from the fall, half from terror. The flashlight went flying out of my hand. It banged down the stairs and smashed on the wood floor below. I heard it clatter into pieces, and I clutched the book tight to my chest.

  “I know you’re up there,” came a scratchy voice. Thumping and bumping made me want to scream, but before I could even move, a flashlight beam, twice as big and strong as mine had been, blazed up the circle of
steps and nailed me right in the face. “I saw the message on Mackinnon’s phone. It’s in the study where it got taken up from him over that metal detector fiasco. Idiot thing kept buzzing on the desk where I was writing, and I couldn’t make it stop. I came here to make sure you didn’t break your fool neck, running around this building in the dark. I owe Ruth Beans that much.”

  I didn’t say a word. I just sat there and held Grandma’s 1962 book, blinded by that flashlight, with my butt hurting like I’d taken a good, swift kick in the pants.

  “I owe her a lot more than that.” Avadelle Richardson sighed. Then she asked, “You okay from that fall?”

  Her grumbly tone made me think she was kind of hoping I wasn’t okay at all.

  I wanted to hide the books back in the step, but my stupid foot was still stuffed into the space, and anyway, Avadelle would see any move I made. I blinked and blinked, trying to get used to the harsh light, and as I saw a bit more, I realized that her lumpy, fedora-crowned shadow filled up my only escape route behind that flashlight beam, unless I did want to plunge to my death down the middle of the twisty staircase.

  The beam moved from my face to my hands, to the volume I was holding.

  “So,” she said, “you found her old journals. I thought you might be getting close to hunting down her hiding place. I never could.”

  My lips stayed pressed together and my heart kept right on hammering as Avadelle diverted her flashlight beam to the wall and leaned on her cane, her shoulder pressed against some of the stairwell’s cracking plaster. “Time was, Ruth wrote every word of her life, right up until we got pulled out of that car in the Circle.”