A Summer to Die

by Lois Lowry

  She and I looked for a long time at all the tiny prints on the paper. There he was, lighting his pipe, and then smoking it, looking at me, half laughing. Then he leaned back in his chair—I had blown the focus on that one a little, when he leaned back, out of the range of focus. I should have realized that. But then there he was, sitting up straight, back in sharp focus again, looking at me with his eyes bright with interest; I remembered that he had been asking me questions about the camera, how I determined what settings to use. Toward the end of the roll, his eyes were looking past me and far off, as if he were thinking about something in the distance. He had been telling me about a camera that he had once, that he still had, if he could find it in the attic of the little house. He had bought it in Germany, he said, after the Second World War, when he was stationed there with the army. That surprised me.

  "You were in the army?" I had asked him. The only people I knew who were in the army were boys who had flunked out of the university and didn't know what to do with themselves. Sometimes they would come back to see Dad in the house in town, with funny haircuts.

  Will had laughed. "I was an officer," he said. "Would you believe it? People saluted me!" He put a stern look on his face and made a rigid salute. It was there, in the pictures.

  Then he had laughed again, and puffed on his pipe. "In those days we all joined the army. It seemed important, then. For me, the best part was coming home. It was in summer, when I came home, and Margaret had made ten blueberry pies, to celebrate. We ate blueberry pie for three days and then we were sick of blueberry pie and there were still six left over. I think she gave them away."

  He had closed his eyes, remembering, still smiling. It was the last picture on the sheet. His eyes were closed, and the smoke from his pipe was a thin white line beside his head and circling across the top of the photograph.

  I marked six of the tiny prints with a marking pen: my six favorites, each one a little different. Then I went back into the darkroom and spent the rest of the day enlarging those. I made two sets of them, so that I could give one of each to Will. I wondered if he'd be pleased. They were good pictures; I knew that, and both my parents had said so, too, and they never he to me. But it must be a funny feeling, I think, to see your own face like that, caught by someone else, with all your feelings showing in it.

  I took my own set of Will's pictures up to my room and taped them to the wall very neatly, with three above and three below. I've been trying to keep my half of the room neater ever since Molly drew the chalk line; every time my things start piling up and getting messy, Molly draws it over again, just to let me know it's still there.

  She was on her bed, drawing pictures in her school notebook, when I went in and put the pictures on the wall.

  "Mom'll kill you if you tear the wallpaper," she said, glancing over at me.

  "I know it." We both knew it wasn't true. My mother hardly ever gets mad. She scolds us sometimes, but the thought of Mom killing somebody is ridiculous. She doesn't even step on ants.

  "Hey," said Molly suddenly, sitting up and looking over at the wall. "Those ate really good."

  I looked over to see if she was joking, and she wasn't. She was looking at Will's pictures with interest, and I could tell that she meant it, that she thought they were good.

  "I like that one there, where he's looking off in the distance and smiling," she decided, pointing to one in the bottom row.

  "He was talking about his wife," I remembered, looking at the photograph with her.

  Molly sat there for a minute, thinking. She looked pretty again, now that she was feeling better. Her hair had gotten its curl back. "Wouldn't it be great," she said slowly, "to be married to someone who felt that way about you, so that he smiled like that whenever he thought of you?"

  I hadn't ever really thought about it in such personal terms. To be honest, I find the whole idea of marriage intensely boring. But right at that moment I knew what Molly meant, and I could feel how important it was to her. "Tierney looks that way at you all the time," I told her.

  "Really?"

  "Sure. Sometimes when you don't even know he's looking at you. I saw him in assembly last Friday, looking over at you. Remember, you were sitting with the cheerleaders? He was watching you, and that's the way he looked, almost like Will is looking in the picture."

  "Really?" Molly curled up on her bed and grinned. "I'm glad you told me that, Meg. Sometimes I don't know what's going on in Tierney's head at all. Sometimes it seems as if basketball is all he cares about."

  "Well, he's only sixteen, Molly." All of a sudden I realized that I sounded like Mom, and I giggled. So did Molly.

  "Hey, look, Meg," she said, handing her notebook to me. "You're such a good artist, and I can't draw at all. Can you help me make these look better?"

  She'd been drawing brides. Good old Molly. She's been drawing brides since she was five. Her drawing ability hadn't improved much in ten years, either, to tell the truth. But suddenly the idea of her drawing brides was kind of scary.

  I took the ball-point pen. "Look," I told her. "Your proportions are all off. The arms are too short, even though you've tried to hide it with all those big bouquets of flowers. Just keep in mind that a woman's arms reach down to the middle of her thighs when she's standing up. Her elbows should reach her waist—look, your drawings all have elbows up by the bosom; that's why they look wrong. The necks are too long, too, but that's probably all right, because it makes them look glamorous. Fashion designers usually draw necks too long. If you look at the ads in Sunday's New York Times, you'll see—Molly?"

  "What?"

  "You're not thinking about getting married?"

  Molly got huffy and took back her drawings. "Of course I'm thinking about getting married. Not now, stupid. But someday. Don't you think about it?"

  I shook my head. "No, I guess I don't. I think about being a writer, or an artist, or a photographer. But I always think about myself alone, not with someone else. Do you think there's something wrong with me?" I meant the question seriously, but it was a hard question to ask, so I crossed my eyes and made a face when I asked it, and laughed.

  "No," she said thoughtfully, ignoring my facemaking, which was nice of her. "We're just different, I guess." She tucked the drawings into her notebook and put them on her desk very neatly, in line with her schoolbooks.

  "Like you're pretty, and I'm not," I pointed out. What a dumb thing to say.

  But I'll give Molly credit. She didn't try to pretend that it wasn't true. "You'll be pretty, Meg, when you get a little older," she said. "And I'm not sure it makes that much difference anyway, especially for you. Look at all the talent you have. And brains. I'm so stupid. What do I have, really, except curls and long eyelashes?"

  I ruin everything. I should have known that she meant it sincerely. Molly is never intentionally snide. But she doesn't realize how it feels, for someone with stringy hair and astigmatism to hear something like that. How could she? I can't imagine how it would feel to be beautiful; how could Molly know how it feels not to be?

  And I blew up, as usual. I struck a phony model's pose in front of the mirror and said sarcastically, "Oh, poor me, what do I have except curls and long eyelashes?"

  She looked surprised, and hurt. Then embarrassed, and angry. Finally, because she didn't know what else to do, she picked up a pile of her school papers and threw them at me: a typical Molly gesture; even in anger, she does things that can't possibly hurt. The papers flew all over, and landed on my bed and the floor. She stood there a moment looking at the mess, and then said, "There, now you 52 should feel right at home, with stuff all over so it looks like a pigpen." And she stormed out of the room, slamming the door, which was useless, because it fell open again.

  I left the papers where they were, and Molly and I didn't talk to each other when we went to bed that night. Neither of us is very good at apologizing. Molly just waits a while after a fight, and then she smiles. Me, I wait until the other person smiles first. I always seem t
o be the first one in and the last one out of an argument. But that night neither of us was ready to call it quits, and Molly didn't even smile when 1 climbed into bed very carefully so that all her exercises in past participles stayed where she'd thrown them, and 1 went to sleep underneath the pile.

  I don't know what time it was when something woke me up. I wasn't sure what it was, but something was happening that made me afraid; I had that feeling along the edge of my back, that cold feeling you get when things aren't right. And it wasn't a dream. I sat up in bed and looked around in the dark, shaking off whatever was left of sleep, and the feeling was still there, that something was very wrong. The French papers slid to the floor; I could hear the sound of them fluttering off the bed.

  Quietly I got up and went to the window. The first day of spring wasn't very far away, but dates like that don't mean much in New England; it was still very cold, and there was snow, still, in the fields. I could see the whiteness of it as I looked out the window. Beyond the corner of the barn, far across, beyond the pine trees, there was a light in the window of the empty house. I looked up to find the moon, to see if it could be reflecting in one window, but there was no moon. The sky was cloudy and dark. But the light was there, a bright rectangle in one corner of the old house, and it was reflected in another rectangle on the snow.

  "Molly," I whispered. Stupid to whisper, if you want to wake someone up.

  But she answered, as if she were already awake. Her voice was strange. Frightened, and puzzled. "Meg," she said, in an odd voice, as if she were captured by something, as if she couldn't move. "Call Mom and Dad quick."

  Ordinarily I argue with Molly if she tells me to do something, just on general principles. But everything felt wrong. She wasn't just telling me; she was ordering me, and she was very scared. I ran from the room, through the darkness, through the shadows in the hall, and woke my parents.

  "Something's wrong," I told them. "Something's wrong with Molly."

  Usually, when you turn a light on in the night, everything that you're afraid of goes away. At least that's what I thought once, when I was younger. Now I know it isn't true. When my father turned on the light in my bedroom, everything was there, it was so much there, and so bright, so horrible, that I turned and hid my face against the wall. And in the corner of the wall, with my face buried, my eyes closed tight and tears starting, I could still see it.

  Molly was covered with blood. Her pillow, her hair, her face were all wet with it. Her eyes were open, frightened, and her hands were at her face, trying to stop it, trying to hold it back, but it was still coming, pouring from her nose onto the sheet and blanket in moving streams, and spattering on the wall behind her bed.

  I could hear my parents moving very fast. I heard my mother go to the hall linen closet, and I knew she was getting towels. I could hear my father's low voice, talking to Molly very, calmly, telling her everything was all right. My mother went to the phone in their bedroom, and I could hear her dial and talk. Then she moved down the stairs, and outside I heard the car start. "It's okay, it's okay," I heard my father say again and again, reassuring Molly in his steady voice. I could hear Molly choke and whimper.

  Mom came back in the house and up the stairs, and came to where I was still standing with my back to the room. "Meg," she said, and I turned around. My father was in the doorway of the bedroom, with Molly in his arms like a small child. There were towels, already drenched with blood, around her face and head; they had wrapped her in the blanket from her bed, and the blood was moving on it slowly. My father was still talking to her, telling her it was all right, it was all right, it was all right.

  "Meg," said my mother again. I nodded. "We have to take Molly to the hospital. Don't be scared. It's just another of those nosebleeds, but it's a bad one, as you can see. We have to hurry. Do you want to come with us?"

  My father was moving down the stairs, carrying Molly. I shook my head. "I'll stay here," I said. My voice was shaking, and I felt as if I were going to be sick.

  "Are you sure?" asked my mother. "We may be gone for quite a while. Do you want me to call Will and ask him to come up and stay with you?"

  I shook my head again and my voice got a little better. "I'll be okay," I told her.

  I could tell she wasn't sure, but my father was already in the car waiting for her. "Really, Mom, I'll be fine. Go on; I'll stay here."

  She hugged me. "Meg, try not to worry. She'll be okay."

  I nodded and walked with her to the stairs, and then she went down, and they were gone. I could hear the car driving very fast away from the house.

  The only light on in the house was in my room, mine and Molly's, and I couldn't go back there. I walked to the doorway without looking inside, reached in and turned off the switch so that the whole house was dark. But the beginning of morning was coming; outside there was a very faint light in the sky. I took a blanket from my parents' bed, wrapped it around me, and went into my father's study, the little room that I had wanted to be mine. I curled up in his big comfortable chair, tucked the blue blanket around my bare feet, looked out the window, and began to cry.

  If I hadn't fought with Molly this afternoon, none of this would have happened, I thought miserably, and knew that it wasn't true. If I had just said "I'm sorry" before we went to bed, it wouldn't have happened, I thought, and knew that that wasn't true, either. If we hadn't come here to live. If I'd kept my side of the room neater.

  None of that makes any sense, I told myself.

  The fields were slowly beginning to turn pink as the first streaks of sun came from behind the hills and colored the snow. It startled me that morning was coming; it seemed too soon. For the first time since I had heard Molly's frightened voice in our dark bedroom, I remembered the light in the old house. Had I really seen it? Now everything seemed unreal, as if it had all been a nightmare. On the far side of the pink fields the gray house was very dark against the gradually lightening sky, and its windows were silent and black, like the eyes of guardians.

  But I knew that back in the blue-flowered bedroom the blood was still there, that it had not been a dream. I was alone in the house; my parents were gone, with Molly, with Molly's hair sticky from blood, and the stain spreading on the blanket around her. Those moments when I had stood shaking and terrified, with my eyes tightly closed against the corner of the wall, moments which may have been hours—I couldn't tell anymore—had really happened. I had seen the light in the window across the fields, as well. I remembered standing and watching its reflection on the snow, and I knew it was real, too, though it didn't seem important anymore. I closed my eyes and fell asleep in my father's chair.

  5.

  I made two Easter eggs, one for Will and one for Molly. Not just plain old hard-boiled eggs that you dye with those vinegar-smelling colors that never come out looking the way you hoped they would. Molly and I used to do that when we were little—dozens of them, and then we wouldn't eat them, and they turned rotten.

  No, these were special, and there were only two of them. I blew the insides out of two white eggs, so that only the shells were left, very fragile and light. Then I spent hours in my room, painting them.

  Molly's was yellow, partly I guess because it reminded me of her blond hair, and partly because my parents told me that her hospital room was depressingly gray-colored, and I thought that yellow would cheer it up a bit. Then, over the pale yellow egg, I used my tiniest brush and painted narrow, curving lines in gold, and between the lines, miniature blue flowers with gold and white centers. It took a long time, because the eggshell was so delicate and the painting so small and intricate; but it was worth it: when it was finished, the egg was truly beautiful. I varnished it to make it shiny and permanent, and when it was dry, I packed it in cotton in a box to protect it, and Mom took it with her when she drove to Portland to visit Molly. It worked, too; I mean it did make the room more cheerful, Mom said.

  Molly was lots better, and coming home the next week. In the beginning she had been very
sick. They had, first thing, given her blood transfusions; then, when she was feeling better, they decided to do a lot of tests to find out what was wrong, so that her nose wouldn't bleed anymore. They even had specialists see her.

  You'd think that with medical science as advanced as it's supposed to be, that they could figure out what the trouble was and fix her up pretty quickly. I mean, nosebleeds! What's the big deal about that? It's not as if she had a mysterious tropical disease, or something.

  But first, Mom said, after they put all that new blood into her, they started taking blood out, to test it. Then they did tests on the inside of her bones. Then they x-rayed her. Then, when they thought they knew what was causing the nosebleeds, they started fooling around with all different kinds of medicines, to see what would work best. One day Mom and Dad went in, and when they came home, they told me that special medicine had been injected into Molly's spine. That gave me the creeps. It made me mad, too, because it seemed to me that they were just experimenting on her, for pete's sake. By that time they knew what the trouble was—her blood didn't clot right—so they just should have given her whatever medicine would fix that and sent her home. But no, instead they started fooling around, trying different things, keeping her there longer.

  And my parents were very strange about the whole thing. They were just like the doctors; they didn't even think of Molly as a person anymore. They talked about her as if she were a clinical specimen. They came home from the hospital and talked very coldly about different drugs with long names: whether this one was better than that one. They talked about reactions, side effects, contraindications; it was hard to believe they were talking about Molly.

  I kept my mouth shut as long as I could. But then one night at dinner, the only thing they talked about was something called cyclophosphamide. There I was, sitting there with them, and I wanted to talk about other things: my darkroom, my Easter eggs that I was working so hard on, what I was going to do during spring vacation from school. Anything. Anything, that is, except cyclophosphamide, which I didn't know anything about and couldn't pronounce.