And Darby. Darby’s not laughing. She’s just watching.
The bell rings, and everyone leaves as Max helps me to a seat. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, Becca,” Mrs. Jonah says, walking up the aisle, “that was quite a fall.”
“I’m fine.”
Mrs. Jonah looks from me to Max. “Well, then, Mr. Herrera, I’ll let you handle this.” She nods, a quick bob of the head.
Darby is lingering in the doorway. “Please, Mrs. Jonah,” Darby says, “couldn’t I work with Meggie?” Mrs. Jonah shoos her into the hallway.
Max shifts his weight as he stands in front of me. I can’t look at his face, but if I look straight ahead, I’m staring at his crotch, which only reminds me that my face was just smashed into said crotch.
I look up and focus on his T-shirt instead. It’s faded gray with a picture of the first edition cover of A Wrinkle in Time. The cover is blue with three green circles and many black circles all interconnected. Each green circle has a silhouette inside. It’s one of my favorite books—has a great first line.
It was a dark and stormy night.
“She’s amazing,” I say.
Max crosses his arms, covering the middle of the three green circles and the man standing inside it. “Darby’s a drama qu—”
“Madeline L’Engle is amazing.” I point at his chest.
Max’s skin is the color of a well-worn penny, but his cheeks brighten to a coppery glow as he drops his arms to pull on the hem of his shirt and studies it. “Oh. Yes. She is.”
“It’s a cool shirt,” I say.
He licks his lips and smiles, sliding into the seat across the narrow aisle from me. “Thanks.”
I finally take a moment to study his face. It’s a nice face, deep brown eyes, longish nose, wide, sharp cheekbones and, although his lips are chapped, they are full and a delicious shade of—what the heck is wrong with me?
I jump up, knocking our knees together. “Sorry,” I say, only it comes out wobbly sounding. “I’m sorry for”—using your manly bits as a landing pad? Um, no—“for, you know, the thing.” I grimace at him instead of smiling, probably looking a bit like a skittish dog baring its teeth. Then I rush for the door.
“Becca, wait,” Max calls as I’m two steps shy of the hallway. I drop my chin to my chest and turn around. There’s no way I’m looking at his face ever again.
“Your books,” he says, scooping up my bag. When I reach for the strap, he doesn’t let go. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Without my brain allowing it, I look up at him. Yep. He’s still adorable. “No, I’m not okay. But thanks for asking.” He calls my name again as I’m running away, but I don’t turn around.
…
Without Charlotte, I’ve been forced to ride the bus home from school each day. It’s not as bad as it seems. No one on the bus cares if I read. If you sit near the front and keep your head down, even the bus driver ignores you. It’s kind of the best part of my school day.
I’ve just left my locker for the bus lot. I’ve already got my copy of Jane Eyre open to my page and can’t help but read as I walk, because the faster I can leave school and get back to Thornfield the better. Of course, I’m not looking where I’m going (book nerd problem number seventy-two) so it doesn’t take long for me to run into someone in the crowded hallway.
The someone turns around and I’m facing A Wrinkle in Time again.
“Hey, Becca.”
I look up at his face. “Max.” My glance skitters away, bouncing from the red lockers across the hall, to the shiny tile floor, to the way Max’s hand—his fingernails short and square—grasps the strap of his backpack.
Max shifts his weight, leaning back to get a glimpse of the book cover in my hand. “Walking and reading, eh?” He nods at my open book. “Always knew you liked to live on the edge.”
I frown at the joke, because it’s been months since I’ve been expected to interact with real live humans, and I’m a little rusty.
Max licks his bottom lip and presses on. “So, are you—?”
“Thank you for your condolences.” I instantly want to punch my brain. What is wrong with you? Why can’t you just say normal things?
Max’s whole face is flickering with a thousand expressions as he stutters, “Wha—oh, um, you’re welcome.” Then he smiles.
“Okay, well, I have to go.” I refocus on my book and head toward the bus lot.
“Do you want a ride home?”
“No.”
“It’s no problem. My friend Victor lives around the corner from you, and I take him home every day. We pass your house.”
“You know where I live?” My hands are clammy from all the adrenaline, and I try to wipe them on my jeans without him noticing.
“Um, yeah.”
“How?”
“I’m not a stalker or a creeper or whatever.” He presses his lips together. “Saying that kind of makes me sound like one, huh?”
I nod.
“It’s just—Victor and I, we’ve seen you get off the bus. It sucks to ride the bus—I know—and it’s no trouble.”
I take a deep breath, trying to slow everything down, and in that breath I pause. Max smells like honey and boy soap, sharper and spicier than girlie soaps. It reminds me of the cedar wood behind Gram’s house. The smell of him makes me want to close my eyes and rest my head on his chest and just breathe.
“Uh, no, thank you. I like the bus.” I take a step away.
“You do?” One of Max’s dark brows arches upward.
I take another step, this time in the direction of the buses. “Yes.”
“No one likes the bus, Becca.” Max falls in step with me.
I grab a piece of hair and begin tangling it around my index finger. “I do.”
“You didn’t ride it last year.”
I yank at the tangle of hair. “What?”
“Victor and I were on that bus last year. I’d have noticed you.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“I had a friend—”
“Who offered you a ride? How’s this different?”
She smelled like vanilla, and you smell like clean, spicy bees. “No. Thank you, but no.”
“Okay, well, remember not to read and walk,” he says, tucking a red flyer in the crease of my book as a bookmark. I close the book around the flyer and hug it to my chest, trying to think of a funny remark, but I end up with—
“So yeah, thanks for the bookmark.”
Before I can take in another breath of him, I scoot past. I make it all the way to the end of the empty corridor before I peek back over my shoulder.
He holds up one hand in a wave, and I wish I could fold time over itself like a blanket, trapping us in that moment when he first said, “Sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you for your condolences, Max.”
“You’re welcome, Becca.”
And then I’d smile, not a splintered half smile, but a real one. Maybe we could have been friends.
Scene Two
[Becca’s home]
The bus pulls away from my house in a whir of strained gears and hot wind. I stare at the housefront, dappled in shade from the pecan tree. I blink to adjust to the light, my gaze settling on the curb. There are faint black scuff marks in the spot Charlotte always parked her car. When are they going to fade away entirely? And why couldn’t that girl park her stupid car without hitting the curb?
But now the curb is empty. The driveway is empty. The house, waiting for me, is empty.
Dad teaches science at the middle school. Mom’s an elementary school principal. Their schools dismiss later than mine, plus they’re both super dedicated, which means I’m always home before them.
I wish I were back on the bus.
I take a deep breath and look around my room, dropping my bag at my feet. Everything I see reminds me of Charlotte and the life I lived when she was around. My bulletin board is covered in sketches she drew, movie ticket stu
bs she saved, and even a flag she secured from a valiant knight at the cheesy Renaissance restaurant we went to once.
I’ve got clothes she left in my closet—a pair of jeans with Starry, Starry Night drawn on the left pant leg in Sharpie marker, a stretched-out hoodie sweatshirt she slept in, and a pair of shoes covered in doodles of black, feathery wings. Her earrings are in my jewelry box. A few of her books are on my overflowing bookshelf.
She’s everywhere.
And nowhere.
I curl up in a nest of blankets on my floor and pull Jane Eyre from my backpack. I want the world around me to slip away, the shapes of my room to melt into the dark textures of Thornfield Hall. But as Mr. Rochester rides up on his horse, his dog Pilot—good Pilot—trailing behind him, something is different.
He’s ruined me. Stupid boy.
Mr. Rochester has never had lips quite as full as the ones I keep picturing in my mind’s eye, and his cheeks have never shone like pennies in a fountain. It’s distracting.
I close the book and toss it aside. The house is too quiet without the company of Jane and Mr. Rochester. Quiet never bothered me before.
My life is divided into two halves now—the before and the after. And I wonder, not for the first time, if this is normal, one of those stages of grief you read about. Will I ever stitch the two halves back together?
Before Charlotte, I don’t know that I even noticed quiet. There were so many voices in my head—characters rehashing dialogue from whatever book I was reading. I never felt alone.
I hear a car drive by outside. I think I can even hear the refrigerator humming below me in the kitchen. Too quiet.
I stand and run my fingers along the spines of the books on my shelf, listening to the ruh-tut-tut sound they make as they bounce along the bindings and remembering the day I first brought Charlotte home with me.
“I think you’ve got almost as many books as my sister,” Charlotte had said then. I’m still not sure how she ended up coming home with me. I know I didn’t invite her. I must have blacked out.
She’d pulled the slender copy of Romeo and Juliet off my shelf, and then ran her fingers over the gold inlaid letters on the red cover. “Have you read them all?”
I wanted to pull one of my blankets over my head and pretend there wasn’t a strange girl in my room.
When she asked which book was my favorite, I blurted, “They’re like friends. I can’t choose.” And then I wanted to strangle myself with the blanket, because who says that stuff out loud? And why couldn’t I just pretend to be human for one afternoon?
But when she laughed—because how could you not laugh at something so ridiculous—it sounded like she was laughing not because I was embarrassing, but because I was right. Her laugh filled my normally quiet room to overflowing. And, I don’t know, I guess I got used to the loudness of life when Charlotte was around.
Because it was loud—so very loud. Charlotte couldn’t abide silence. She said it made her feel empty. She played music and sang and told stories to fill the emptiness. I glance at the spot on the rug where she was usually sprawled with her pencils and paints. There’s a black stain on the carpet from her charcoal pencils.
I get what she meant about the silence now. The emptiness is seeping through my skin—its cold and clammy fingers probing my insides—so I scramble out of my blankets and dig through my bag for my phone. Pulling up Charlotte’s favorite playlist, I let the music battle the silence.
The speakers on my phone just aren’t loud enough. The emptiness is winning. Downstairs, Dad has a set of Bose speakers that ought to do. I plug the phone in and crank up the volume. I can feel the bass in my chest.
Still not loud enough.
She’s gone. I can’t get her back. This hole cannot be filled.
I turn the volume up as high as it will go. Now the sound is everywhere. It rattles the windows and presses on my shoulders, pushing me to the ground. I curl up and will the music to crush me. With my head pounding to the beat of the music, it’s easy to forget the sound of Charlotte’s voice, the laughter in her eyes, the unforgiving pain in my chest.
“Becca?” Mom’s lips move, but I can’t hear her. She’s leaning over me, one hand on my shoulder, the other reaching for my phone. The music stops.
Mom sits me up, pushing my thick brown hair out of my face. There are worried wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. “What’s going on? Sweetie, are you okay?”
I hate that question. Since Charlotte died, it’s everyone’s favorite thing to ask me. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be okay with. The silence? The loss? The abject loneliness? Who would be okay with any of that?
I’m no dummy, though. I know they just want me to nod. To say I’m okay so they can feel some sense of ease. And I’ve been playing by the rules for months now. But for the second time today, I just can’t find the will to lie.
“No.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Everything.” Which is an unfair exaggeration, but at the moment, it feels right.
Mom pulls me into a hug. I want to melt into it, but it’s like my skin is raw, and the pressure of her arms around me makes me want to scream. She feels it, too, and releases me from the embrace, trying to hide the worry blooming on her face. “I’m calling Dr. McCaulley. I’ll set up an appointment.”
Dr. McCaulley is the psychiatrist mom of Charlie’s best friend, Greta. In the spring, right after Charlotte’s death, the whole family went for a few sessions. Charlie went to a GriefShare group all summer. He’s found one up at school in Cambridge, too.
I hated GriefShare. I didn’t want to share anything, and watching other people cry just made me feel worse. Dr. McCaulley had reassured Mom that perhaps it just wasn’t my time. She said I’d know when I was ready.
“I don’t want an appointment,” I say, untangling myself. “I want—”
I cut myself off. It doesn’t matter what I want. I can’t have it.
“I’m fine, Mom, really. I just had a rough day at school, and I’m overreacting. But, seriously, I’m okay. I don’t need to talk to Dr. McCaulley—not again—not yet.”
The wrinkles around Mom’s eyes deepen. “What happened?”
I force a half smile. “Oh, typical high school stuff. Some girl in English thinks I’m a freak, and then I fell and face-planted in a guy’s lap. You know, just to prove her right.”
Mom’s eyebrows shoot up as her jaw falls open. “You did what?”
“Face-planted in a guy’s lap.”
“Oh, dear.” The wrinkles on her forehead recede. “Oh, my poor girl.” She’s trying to swallow a laugh.
“He was cute, too.”
“Of course he was. Isn’t that always the way?”
I squeeze Mom’s hand. “I’m okay. Tomorrow is a new day.”
Mom smiles. “I know this is hard, Becca.” She squeezes my shoulder as she stands. “If you won’t let me call Greta’s mom, then please, promise me you’ll stop by and see your school counselor. Charlotte always liked Dr. Wallace.”
“Mom, I—”
“Please,” she says, her voice vibrating with worry.
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
I nod. “I promise.”
She kisses the top of my head before crossing the room to the kitchen. She pauses, looking over her shoulder at me. “And maybe tomorrow you could keep the volume a little lower?”
I fake a smile. “Sure.”
Tomorrow?
My gut burns. I have to do this all over again tomorrow.
Scene Three
[Becca’s room]
Back in my room I pick up Jane Eyre and pull out the red flyer Max gave me. I close the book without reading a line. Instead I read over the flyer for the first time. I don’t get farther than the first line.
Romeo and Juliet.
He gave me Romeo and Juliet. What does it mean?
Nothing. It means nothing. But my fingers tingle as they trace the letters in the play title. I try to stay gr
ounded here in the present and not slip back into memories of pillows and blankets and popcorn, of the dim light from the screen as Charlotte and I watched version after version of Romeo and Juliet.
Charlotte had a strange fascination with this play. She’d laugh at how quickly they fell in love, shouting things at the screen like, “Wait till you see her in the morning,” and “You only love him because Daddy says you can’t have him.” But then she’d sigh in a sort of contented way when Friar Lawrence would marry them. She’d watch in horror as they took their own lives—desperate not to have to live without each other—fisting her hands and the blankets into knots and muttering, “That’s not fate. That’s—” But she never finished the thought.
“God help me,” she whispered into the darkness of my room later that night after we’d watched every version we could find. “But I think I love being alive more than I love any person here on Earth. I must be a terrible sort of person if I’d choose living over loving.”
It was still warm outside then, and I remember wishing that I had an extra blanket, extra weight to keep me grounded as I tried to think of something to say.
“Am I terrible?” Her voice was a ghost in the moonlight that snuck through the blinds.
“No.” I rolled onto my side to look at her, small and pale on the inflatable mattress Mom had been so excited to buy so my new and only real friend could sleep over.
She wiped at her cheek and smiled at me. “Looks like I’ve got you fooled.”
But she hadn’t fooled me. I knew she was afraid of being alive—just like the rest of us. And I knew she was terrified of being in love.
Max gave me a flyer for the Sandstone production of Romeo and Juliet. Is that fate?
I dig in my bag to find my phone. I want so badly to talk to Charlotte, to tell her about Max and the flyer, Romeo and Juliet, and the strange tug I have in my heart to feel alive again.
With shaking fingers, I pull up my contacts. There are four: Mom, Dad, Charlie, and Charlotte. I scroll to my saved messages and hit play.
“Becca, when you come over this afternoon will you please, please, please bring me some coffee.” Charlotte’s voice washes over me with a warmth that makes me smile. “Jo is being a caffeine Nazi, and I might have to maim her if I don’t get something soon.” Her magical laughter rings through the speaker of my phone, like a counter-curse for my lifetime of self-imposed loneliness. “You’re the best. Thanks and hurry.” The last word she draws out, long and loud.
Life After Juliet Page 2
