WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A HART
• You know instinctively when you are supposed to do something, especially when it involves other Harts.
Approximately fifteen seconds after Stick parks her car, Gretchen barrels into my room, jumps onto my bed, and yanks me into a hug.
“So. These past couple of weeks?
“Yeah?”
“They’ve sucked.”
“Agreed.”
Gretchen releases me and sits up. “So what’s been going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what have you been doing without us around? Almost two whole weeks without the Everwood? Ugh. I miss the darn trees. And, wow, never thought I’d say that sentence. Anyway, I’ve been dying of boredom, in case you’re interested. But I complained about it so much that Mom decided we needed a project, and now the kitchen is painted. So, yippee.”
I say nothing about my appointment with Dr. Bristow. “I don’t know. I didn’t do much, really. Helped at the clinic a couple of times. Went shopping with Grandma. Got some new dresses.”
“Uh-oh. Where are they?”
I nod at the closet. “Like, six of them.”
Gretchen takes one look at the dresses and scowls. “Barf. What are you, some chick from the fifties?”
“Grandma said I looked like her. I actually kind of like dresses, you know.”
“Yeah, but you can’t wear dresses in the Everwood. She should have gotten you hiking boots. Or a safari hat!”
“I don’t think we can go to the Everwood anymore.”
“Well, this whole grounded thing, blah blah blah, it’s not, like, forever. They’re just being stupid about the Baileys. But after tonight, I bet—”
“Seriously, Gretchen. They don’t want us back there anymore. Grandpa told me this is for real.”
Gretchen stares at me. “Not even in the Tower?”
“Maybe. But I mean, they’ll be watching us from now on. We can’t go wandering off anymore.”
“They’ll think we’ve abandoned them.”
“Who?” (I know who.)
“Frank and Joy and Cynthia? The Travers family, come on.”
I try to care about what Gretchen is saying, but I am so tired. Maybe now she and my cousins can care about the Everwood for me. They never seem to get tired like I do. “Maybe we should abandon them. We could leave them to rest in peace.”
Gretchen’s face hardens. “Finley Hart, you don’t mean that. We’re not finished cleaning the house yet!”
The queen did not want to abandon the lonely wizard ghost and his family.
But with the Everwood so changed, with the unending howls coming at night, the queen knew that whatever came next, it could not involve her friends. They were safer without her.
She could not risk the ancient guardians’ wrath.
So the queen held her head high and endured her dark prison.
“Queens,” she told herself, “are not afraid of sacrifice.”
“Finley? Hello? Finley.”
I jump when Gretchen flicks my knee. “Huh?”
“Space cadet. I said we can’t let the Baileys clean everything on their own.”
I wonder what Jack has been doing since Grandpa yelled at him, what he has been thinking. Does he understand that none of this is our fault?
I hear movement on the stairs and jam my notebook under my pillows.
Grandma can dress me and watch my every move, but she will never get her hands on my notebook.
Dex and Ruth race into my room and start jumping up and down.
“Free Willy! Free Willy!” they scream.
“Oh God. Have mercy, ye tyrants.” Gretchen collapses into a heap on the floor. “They’ve started this whole whale obsession thing. To torture me. Obviously.” She lifts her head up and growls at the twins. “What about Peter Pan? Or The Great Mouse Detective? Or, I don’t know, any other movie in the world?”
Ruth crouches down and shouts in Gretchen’s face: “WHALES.”
“Hey-ooo, kiddos!” Uncle Nelson yells up the stairs. “Rug rats! Little rascals! Snot faces!”
“Ewwwww!” Dex and Ruth squeal.
“Come on, we’re starting the movie!”
“This is cruel and unusual punishment,” Gretchen complains. “I’m starting to see this movie in my dreams!”
“And what do you think you’d see in your dreams if Grandpa made you clean the toilets with a toothbrush?” Uncle Nelson calls back.
“Poop dreams!” Ruth shrieks.
Dex tugs us toward the door. “Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry.”
As Gretchen stomps down the stairs, she whispers to me, “We are not finished talking about this, Finley. Meet me in the kitchen at nine thirty. Say you need a glass of water or something. We’ll discuss.”
I nod. “Okay, sure.”
But I already know I will not.
At nine o’clock I claim to have a headache and am allowed to escape to my bedroom.
All the way to the stairs I can feel Gretchen watching me. She probably feels betrayed; I cannot blame her.
But she will see soon enough that it is safer for me to stay away from her, from all of them.
I am a bad influence.
I am a stubborn stain on a white rug.
Besides, I really do have a headache. I have had one all week.
(Instead of sleeping, I listen to it pound and I count the booms.)
(Tick, tick.)
(Tick, tick.)
HE QUEEN SAT, LOCKED AWAY.
The poison inside her was spreading, and she worried it would never stop.
A crow-shaped shadow darkened her window, but when she went to look, all she could see was fog, thick and deadly like smoke.
It seeped through the walls of the Great Castle and settled in the queen’s blood. It sat heavily on the branches of the Everwood trees, and coated the abandoned watchtower with gray slime.
The air in the Everwood turned rancid and sour. With every breath she took, the queen’s lungs burned.
Whatever wickedness lay at the heart of the Everwood, whatever had been turning the trees gray and drying out their leaves, was getting worse.
The queen peered out her window. She sifted through the fog with her fingers, as if she could push it out of the way.
“I must find the source of this cloud,” said the queen. “I can clear the Everwood. I can heal it. I can.”
But the more desperately the queen clawed through the air, the more a sharpness in her chest tugged, sending spikes of pain through her body.
She looked down, gasping, and saw thin spools of darkness seeping out of the place over her heart.
The darkness unfurled into the fog, twisting, growing.
And the imprisoned queen understood: This fog was not natural, nor was it evil magic.
It was her.
The darkness inside her had escaped. It was no longer a secret, and it would never be again.
She looked out at the dying trees and remembered the snake’s words, so long ago: The Everwood is not as strong as it once was; your darkness will bring out its own.
As the crow had warned her, she was too late.
28
WHILE GRANDMA IS NAPPING ON Sunday, I hear the call of Jack’s mourning dove and casually make my way to the living room windows, even though my heart is now a wild drum.
Jack is across the river, mostly hidden by the trees. He waits a minute, then makes the mourning dove call again, then runs back to his house.
Avery agrees to cover for me, and while she’s talking to Grandpa about her latest painting, I sneak outside to check the Post Office.
Inside, just like I hoped, I find a note from Jack:
My queen—
Don’t worry. I was careful by the Post Office. No one saw me.
How are you? Not to be weird, but I’ve been watching your house from over here. Seems like no one’s coming over as much as they did before.
Cole and Bennett and me, we’ve been wo
rking on the Bone House when we can, but it’s not the same without y’all. We used to go over there by ourselves all the time, but everything’s different now.
Meet me at the Bridge tonight. Midnight. You need to get out of the house.
Don’t be scared. But I know you won’t be.
ARRRRRR,
Jack
At eleven forty-five Hart House is quiet and still. I sneak outside, pull on my sneakers, and listen to the leaves whispering, the train horn in the distance—and the call of a mourning dove.
I squint into the darkness. A figure stands at the other end of the Bridge, waving at me.
Once I cross, Jack throws his arms around me.
ABOUT JACK BAILEY
• Jack gives wonderful hugs, real hugs, like Mom’s and Dad’s hugs, like he never wants to let me go.
My heartbeat is officially out of control. Somehow I speak.
“Uh . . . what are you doing?”
(Of course, I do not manage to say anything intelligent.)
Jack gives me a look. “Hugging you? It’s a thing friends do?”
“But . . . why are you hugging me?”
“Because I missed you.”
He does not seem embarrassed to say this. He says it like it is a plain and simple fact.
“You did?”
“Yeah. Without you, trees are kind of boring now.”
The Everwood, boring? “How dare you.”
“No offense. So, you escaped.”
We begin walking through the Everwood toward the Wasteland. “Barely. I kept thinking I would knock something over and wake everyone up.”
“Nah. You’re better at stealth than you think. Hey, let’s take the long way.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to talk to you, that’s why.”
“Where’s the long way?”
He points toward the part of the Everwood between his house and the Wasteland. “By the train tracks.”
“I keep hearing a train at night.”
“Yeah. It used to scare me when I was little.”
We crawl between a gap in an old fence at the eastern end of the Wasteland. The grass is taller here, and it tickles my legs.
“Why did it scare you?”
“I thought it was a monster,” Jack says, rolling his eyes, “and that it was coming to get me. I thought it roared because I’d done something to make it angry.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Dad always tells me I’m doing something wrong.”
I want more than anything to ask him about his dad, and why he never talks about him. I want to know about Mrs. Bailey. I want to know about the loud noises that come from the Bailey house on quiet nights.
But I do not want to ruin this moment with Jack.
We walk in silence through another stretch of woods until we reach the train tracks. Jack helps me up onto the wooden fence running alongside them, and we gaze down the dark stretch of railroad.
A train horn whistles, down the tracks to our right, and Jack says, “When I figured out it wasn’t a monster, that it was just a train, I started coming out to these tracks all the time.”
“Why?”
“To get out of the house. I sit and watch the tracks and imagine following them until I get somewhere else.”
“Where?”
Jack shrugs. “Anywhere but here, I guess.”
“Would you take Cole and Bennett with you?”
“Maybe. I don’t think they’d make it, on the road. Bennett’s too little, and Cole’s too nice. He acts like he’s tough, but he’s not. What if we had to do bad things to survive? I don’t think he’d be able to.”
Bad things.
The Baileys—their dad, I mean—he wasn’t a good kid. He did . . . bad things.
I wouldn’t trust them for anything.
The train horn sounds again. I feel cold, even though it is warm out.
Jack looks at me. “Do you ever think about running away?”
“Not really. I don’t want to leave my parents.”
“They’re nice?”
“Yeah. They’re always busy, and they’re kind of weird, but I love them.”
Down the tracks a tiny white light grows larger.
“That’s cool, to have nice parents,” Jack says. “You’re lucky. I wish I could meet them.”
I am lucky. I know that.
I am aware of the children across the world—even in my own city—who are poor, or sick, or hurt, or orphans.
Pretending to be a poor orphan girl is one thing; I would not actually want to be one.
But Jack does not understand.
I have nice parents. Yes, that is true. But I am full of sadness, and I wish I weren’t, and I feel bad that I am.
And my parents are getting a—
They might be getting a—
(But I wouldn’t have to say the word. Jack would understand.)
I wonder if Jack is mad at me for having nice parents, since I assume he does not.
It does not seem particularly fair for him to be mad at me for that.
It also is not fair that the Travers family is dead, that my world is filled with blue days, and that Jack seems to be hiding an unhappy secret too.
The train is coming. I feel its approach in the fence; the wood vibrates against the bottoms of my sneakers.
I get an idea—something to make Jack smile. Something to shake off the heaviness I can feel settling onto my shoulders and weaving into my chest.
(Go away, go away, go away!)
I jump off the fence. “Come on. Let’s run for it.”
“What?”
“The train. It’ll be here soon. Let’s outrun it.”
“You’re crazy.”
(Possibly.)
The horn sounds again, louder this time. Jack sits on the fence, watching the train approach.
I shrug. “Fine. I’m faster than you, and you’re too chicken to admit it. I get it.”
Jack jumps down. “No way is a queen faster than a pirate. You’ll trip over your gown.”
“You’ll trip over your wooden leg.”
The train is almost on top of us; the horn is so loud that I want to cover my ears, but I don’t. The chugging wheels make my bones shake.
“In about five seconds you’re going to be so embarrassed,” Jack shouts over the noise.
“We’ll see about that,” I shout back, and as the train rushes past, I take off running.
All I can see is the open dark path in front of me—train on one side, forest on the other. I imagine following the tracks for days, finding what lies at the end of them.
By the time I got there, maybe I would have outrun my sadness, forever.
No more blue days.
No more fear.
The thought makes me dizzy—or maybe I am out of breath already.
Jack shoots past me.
I assumed he would beat me; his legs are longer than mine, and I am not an athlete like Kennedy. But I did not realize just how fast he would be.
My lungs are on fire. I am pumping my arms through the air and pushing my legs faster than they have ever gone before. Still, I am not fast enough to catch Jack.
He races on, and I think I see him reaching for the train.
He will grab hold, jump on board, and leave this place behind forever, like he has always dreamed.
But then the train pulls ahead, and Jack falls behind. He throws up his arms to the sky and shouts.
Gasping for breath, I stop beside him. “I thought you were going to do it. I thought you’d leave, like you said.”
Jack looks after the train. It has disappeared into the darkness, but the sound of its horn floats back to us, reminding us it is there.
Then he looks at me. “Not without you,” he says, and grins the Jack grin I know.
29
AFTER THAT, THINGS ARE QUIET between me and Jack, like we traded all our words for running power and now have nothing left.
Strang
ely, I do not feel the need to try to fill the silence with talking. Not this time.
We walk back through the woods toward his house. Cicadas sing from the trees, and the sky is dusted with a million stars. My fingers brush against the tall grass, and once I think I feel Jack’s fingers touch mine, but I am too nervous to look down and check.
When we get back into the woods, everything is velvet: the sky, the still air, the soft earth. The trees blot out the moon. Jack holds back branches for me, and I do the same for him. He touches my hand again—I know it is real this time—and I hold on. I cannot look at him, but I don’t let go, not even while we climb up the hill to his house.
“Well,” Jack says when we get to the top.
“Yeah,” I answer, and I’m probably supposed to go home now, but that seems unthinkable.
(Eleven-letter word for “no way I am doing that.”)
“Jack? Is that you?”
Jack lets go of my hand. “Dad?”
I turn and squint, see a man sitting in a lawn chair a little ways from the Bailey house. The flickering porch light buzzes.
So this is Mr. Bailey. He does not look like a troll.
Jack steps toward him cautiously. “What’s up?”
“Enjoying the night,” says Mr. Bailey. He takes a sip from a bottle of root beer. I recognize the orange label. “Who’s your friend?”
Jack relaxes, stuffs his hands in his pockets. “This is Finley. We were just talking.”
“Hey, Finley. Hart, isn’t it?”
I nod.
“Nice night, don’t you think?”
I glance at Jack. How are we not in trouble right now? Why is Mr. Bailey not marching Jack to bed this instant? “Yes, sir.”
“So polite. But then you Harts always were.”
Jack sits on the ground by his dad and waves me over. “Can Finley stay for a while?”
Mr. Bailey laughs a little, raises his bottle in the direction of Hart House. “Sure. Why not? No one’s awake to see.”
I sit beside Jack and bring my knees to my chin. Dad’s words keep coming back to me—I wouldn’t trust them for anything, he did bad things, he did bad things—but Jack is leaning against his dad’s leg, and Mr. Bailey puts his hand on Jack’s shoulder, and I do not see how this could be a bad man.
Or why Jack would call him a troll.
“I love the woods best at night,” Mr. Bailey says, after a while. “It’s like you can hear the trees thinking.”
Some Kind of Happiness Page 16
