The Someday Suitcase

by Corey Ann Haydu

  I have so much inside me and nowhere to put it. I am a crowded dresser with clothes hanging out and the drawers won’t close and it’s messy and ugly and overflowing.

  I’m also an empty room.

  I am nothing and everything and I am not myself because I can’t be Clover without Danny.

  Everyone tries to talk to me on my way out, but I don’t want to talk to anyone. And when we get to the porch, I see there’s no snow.

  “I thought you said he watched the snow,” I say to Glen and Isabelle, who hold hands and frown and watch me leave.

  “He did,” Glen says. “He loved it. He said you’d love it too. He was happy it would be here waiting for you in the morning, he said.” Glen gives me a mug of hot chocolate and an apple cider doughnut, something I’ve only heard of here in Vermont, and I think of how much Danny liked hot chocolate and apple cider doughnuts these last few days.

  “Where is it?” I ask. “Where’s the snow?” My voice is all broken and soft and not mine.

  “It melted,” Isabelle says.

  I’d forgotten, I guess, that snow melts.

  In my snow globes, it’s always there, ready to be shaken up and swirled again.

  List of Things I Don’t Want to Do by Myself, Without Danny

  – Go to the pool

  – Eat ice cream

  – Eat sandwiches

  – Eat

  – Go to the mall

  – Sing

  – Work on science projects

  – Ask questions

  – Answer questions

  – Run away

  – Stay home

  – Dream

  – Sleep

  – Wake

  – Listen to “Ramblin’ Man”

  – Laugh at my problems

  – Play tag

  – Stand still

  – I can’t think of a single thing I want to do without Danny.

  32

  There is a funeral when I’m back in Florida. There are flowers and songs and memories of Danny.

  Some of them make me smile.

  Some of them make me cry.

  There is a letter from Dr. Belinda Denn. She uses the word magic and tells me she’s never seen anything like it. I don’t know if it helps, exactly, but I keep the letter.

  There is a card from Rachel, who says magic doesn’t last forever, but love does. I think about telling her Danny and I already figured that out together, but I get too sad when I write down Danny’s name.

  There’s a teddy bear from Jake that I love more than I ever thought I could love a stuffed animal, and a Vermont snow globe from Dad.

  “I didn’t know if this would make you sad or happy,” he says. It’s a snow globe exactly like the one I had in my head the day we played checkers with Glen and Isabelle. A wood cabin with an orange fire inside, making the outside glow a little. There are pine trees and a pair of skis leaning against the outside of the cabin.

  I wish Danny and I could have learned how to ski.

  I shake it. Snow gusts around, circling in on itself until it settles. I imagine Danny watching the snow fall. I wonder what he thought of it. I wonder if he touched it. I wonder if it had a sound when it touched the ground. I wonder if it was everything we thought it would be.

  Or more. I hope it was even more.

  I think it’s going to make me sad, but it makes me a little happy.

  “I love it,” I say.

  Other people bring me snow globes too. Brandy brings one with cats in the snow and Marco brings one with New York City in the snow and Ms. Mendez sends one of a forest with fairies in the snow. I think it’s her way of telling me she believes in magic, too.

  Ms. Fitch sends me something extra special with her snow globe. It’s the outline of me, filled in by everyone in class. Inside the me-outline are hearts and stars and glitter and snowflakes and words that I guess people associate with me. Kind, fun, smart, sweet, good friend. In the center of the glittery heart that Elsa drew on my outline, Ms. Fitch has drawn a picture of Danny with his spiky hair and squinty eyes and easy smile.

  I was worried I’d stay empty forever.

  I hang the outline on my wall right away and watch it, looking for hope.

  Elsa brings me a snow globe a week after the funeral.

  “Maybe I could sleep over,” she says. She tried telling me how the science fair went, but I didn’t want to hear about it. She tried to tell me what she remembered about Danny, but I didn’t want to hear that either. All I want to do is look at snow. We watch as the ice-skating rink in the globe she brought me gets doused in snow. A little blond girl with pigtails and a pink hat has one leg in the air and the other on the ice. I wish Danny and I had learned how to skate.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I say, which is what my mother says when she’s saying no to a sleepover, and it usually makes me stop asking.

  “Maybe you don’t want to be alone,” Elsa says. Her nose is tilted up in a way I’d never noticed before.

  I think she might be right, but I also think I mostly just want Danny here.

  Something inside me is wrong. I feel like my heart has a fever. Like it’s sweating and shivering and dreaming crazy dreams. Like it has that awful, sensitive, untouchable feeling that my skin got last time I was sick. Danny used to call the feeling the Terrible Tingles. My heart has the Terrible Tingles and is in a panic.

  “Are you okay?” Elsa says. She puts her hand on my knee, and it reminds me of the million times I did that to Danny. It doesn’t magically make me feel better because not everything can be magic. But I let her keep it there and it’s okay. It’s nice, knowing she’s there.

  Not magical. But nice.

  We stay quiet. Elsa picks up the snow globes everyone’s given me one by one and makes them all snow. There are more than twenty of them to add to my collection, which already has thirty. I watch them swirl and I miss Danny.

  But I also think for one second that other people, not just Danny, know a little bit about what I need and what I like. Seeing the snow globes as Elsa furiously shakes them up, trying to keep them all snowing before they settle, is pretty amazing, actually. I loved Danny most of all, but there are a lot of other people who love me too, I guess.

  I think I even smile. Not for long, but for a moment.

  “Can I draw?” Elsa says, and I give her paper and a pencil. I’m glad she’s not making me do anything. Not even making me talk. I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling and miss my best friend.

  We stay like that for a while and I listen to Elsa’s pencil on paper. It’s a nice sound. I breathe in time with it. It calms me down a little. It must be the sound Ms. Fitch’s pencil made when she drew Danny into my outline.

  I think about the self-portraits we drew in art class, too, and how Danny is in mine and looks like a ghost, in the background. The thought collapses me, and I don’t cry, but I hang my head and tell Elsa to go.

  She does, but not before leaving behind her drawing.

  “You told me about when you and Danny were little,” she says. I’m immediately mad I told her any of me and Danny’s history. It’s ours. I have to protect it with my life. It’s all I have left. “You and your dads going down to the water in the mornings when you were babies, to watch the sunrise. Your dads eating bacon while you guys gurgled and napped and nuzzled. That’s a nice memory.”

  I wince at the word memory. I don’t think I want to hear that word ever again.

  I don’t reply. The drawing is in my lap anyway, and long after Elsa leaves I finally look at it. It’s me and Danny, all grown up, watching the sun come up. There aren’t any details. It’s just me and Danny and the sun and nothing else, not even grass or water or bacon.

  It’s good, of course. Elsa’s always good at art.

  I feel a little less alone, looking at it, especially next to all the snow globes and the outline from Ms. Fitch. There’s magic in the picture, in all the gifts I’ve been given, and I feel a tiny hint of the connec
tion to Danny. The warmth. The love with a twist.

  I feel some warmth for Elsa too. I don’t think Danny would mind.

  I’m not saving him; it’s too late for that. But it was never about the saving. It was about who we could be together. And hope. And friendship. And love, love, love.

  The picture doesn’t get all of that, but there’s something there to hold on to.

  A few hours after Elsa leaves, I join Mom and Dad and Jake for dinner. They look extra excited to see me at the table, because I haven’t been wanting to eat dinner with the family since I got back from Vermont.

  There’s a place set for me anyway, even though they weren’t sure I’d come, and I love that it’s all set, waiting for me, like I’m there even when I’m not there.

  Dad made tacos, and everyone watches while I scoop meat and cheese and avocados onto my tortilla. “Where are the best tacos in the world?” I ask, just to fill up the silence of them watching me and waiting for me to cry some more.

  “Mexico, I’d guess,” Dad says.

  “Mexico’s close,” I say.

  “Are you going on another adventure?” Jake asks, like now that I’ve been to Vermont I might become a cool traveling jet-setter.

  Sometimes I think Jake’s not paying much attention to everything going on in my life, but people are wrong about Jake all the time, so maybe I’m wrong about that, too.

  I don’t answer, because the answer—I can’t go without Danny—will make me cry, and I don’t want to cry. But Mom answers for me.

  “Clover is going to go on so many more adventures,” she says.

  I don’t agree or disagree, I just polish off a couple of tacos and listen to Jake ask about where different countries are. But when I’m back in my room and trying to get to sleep, I can’t stop thinking about what Mom said and how close Mexico is and that it would be cool to go there and eat the world’s greatest tacos, if only I could take Danny with me.

  I wander out of bed and go to the Someday Suitcase. Mom unpacked it for me, because I thought it would be too sad to take my winter clothes out and put them in the back of the closet, never to be worn again.

  I couldn’t go anywhere without Danny right now. I don’t even want to go to school without Danny, let alone on an adventure. But the Someday Suitcase isn’t for what you’re ready for right now. It’s for what you may want to do later. It’s for Someday.

  I let myself make a list. I haven’t made a list since Vermont, and I don’t write it down, but I keep it in my head. It’s a list of places I may want to go. Mexico and the Grand Canyon and Paris and New York City.

  The list makes me smile, but it makes me sad, too, because Danny won’t get to go to those places with me.

  I get up to go back to bed, but before I do, I find the picture Elsa drew. I fold it very, very carefully and pack it into the top pocket of the suitcase.

  If I’m going to go on adventures someday, I’ll need to have a little bit of Danny with me.

  He was the adventurous one, after all. Danny was good at crazy ideas, and I was good at finding ways to make them come true. Now I’m going to have to do both.

  I zip the Someday Suitcase back up, with Elsa’s picture of Danny inside, waiting for me, whenever I’m ready.

  33

  Birds get hurt more often than you’d think.

  Unless you’re looking for them, you don’t always see them. But once your eyes are open, they’re there. Here. Everywhere. Limping and struggling and sometimes dead. They fly into our huge picture windows and something about that is ridiculously sad to me.

  I watch them for weeks.

  I watch them before school and after school and when I’m supposed to be doing homework or trying to have other friends. It’s hard to have other friends.

  I find a hurt bird on the lawn two weeks after Danny’s funeral, and it’s painful to see it trying to fly, I’m not sure I can stand it. It does these little jumps, effortful and melancholy, but its wing won’t flap. Its body won’t lift. Its little bird self refuses to soar.

  I haven’t been able to fix anyone or anything since Danny died. Mom got a cold and I tried to fix it. Jake sprained his ankle and I tried to fix that too. It didn’t work.

  But I feel a pulse of something, upon seeing the broken bird.

  “Heyyyy,” I say, waving at it like it’s a new kid at school and I’m trying to be friendly. The bird doesn’t wave back, because it’s a bird.

  I’ve got a huge peanut butter and banana sandwich and a picnic blanket, and I’m missing the way it felt to have magic. I drop some banana on the ground and wonder if the bird will join me. If we could have lunch together, the bird and I. It’s hard being around my human friends right now, but a bird sounds about right.

  The bird doesn’t even notice. I inch closer.

  I don’t know if it’s the missing Danny that does it or the being near the bird, but I feel a rush of the thing I used to feel when I was near my sick best friend. Connection, or something like it. Warmth. Generosity. Hope. Claustrophobia.

  Magic.

  My magic.

  I can fix the bird. I’m sure of it.

  I get as close to the bird as I can without touching it. I’m afraid to touch it. Its wings look dirty and have a sheen of oil on them. And I’ve heard years of stories about baby birds who are forever infected by human smell when a human touches them. Birds whose mothers won’t ever return to them. Birds who have been given up on.

  I’m not sure if this is a baby bird or an adult bird, but I don’t want it to become one of those birds. The ones who won’t ever have families again. Who will die anyway, from loneliness or heartbreak or not knowing how to take care of themselves.

  I put a finger so close to the bird that it almost touches.

  And I wait for it to matter. I wait for my magic.

  The bird hops and jumps and its little bird wings flutter but don’t spread out, don’t catch the wind and lift it up. I bring my face close to the bird’s face, not sure what I’ll find there. I’ve never been a huge animal lover. I like them and all, but I don’t feel drawn to them the way Jake does. Jake can have a whole conversation with a dog. We take him to the zoo when he’s having a particularly bad day, and he stares at the giraffes and pandas like he’s seeing them brand-new every time. He bows his head. He grins at the monkeys and tries to climb in with the lions.

  “They’ll hurt you!” Mom said the last time he tried that.

  “No,” Jake said, calm for the first time in weeks. “I know how they’re feeling. They won’t mind as long as I don’t hurt them.” I believed him, too.

  That’s not how I am around animals. I feel awkward, like I’m doing it wrong and they know I’m not an animal person. But I lean in to the bird anyway, and its beak is so sharp it astonishes me.

  I feed the bird a little bread from my sandwich. It pecks at the ground, wanting more and more. I close my eyes and wait for the feeling to come, the connection between us to be made. I wait to cure the little bird like I always cured Danny.

  It doesn’t come, exactly, but after a long time on the lawn, the bird and I sharing space but not much else, it lifts off.

  It floats in the air a little, and I’m terrified it won’t stay up, but it flaps its wings harder and harder and soon it’s in the treetops, looking down at me.

  I don’t think it’s cured, but it’s found a new way to fly.

  “I did that, right?” I whisper into the air, and pretend Danny’s beside me.

  And for a moment, for the best moment, I feel almost like he is.

  A PERFECT DAY WITHOUT DANNY

  I ask it not to, but time moves forward anyway.

  Elsa comes over once a week during December and January.

  “You should come to Levi’s after school,” she says in February, the day before winter break. I’m not sure it’s a good idea. I’ve been having a sad day. They hit sometimes, out of nowhere, and hold me down, make it hard for me to do things.

  I shrug. I know a good
day will come again, but not today.

  The best days are the ones where I think about all the happy memories with Danny and the happiness is still there. The happiness isn’t gone, the magic’s not gone, so Danny’s not all the way gone either.

  Love remains.

  “Will you please come to Levi’s?” Elsa asks again. She doesn’t give up on anything, and I know she’ll keep asking me until I say yes. Even though I’m having a sad day, I remember all the good things about hanging out with Levi and Elsa. Levi tells funny jokes that you never expect to come out of his mouth, and Elsa lets me be sad if I want to be sad, and Levi’s mom is always happy to talk to me about magic.

  She’s another person who makes me feel not alone.

  “Okay,” I say. Some days I can have fun with Levi and Elsa and be happy. Not the same. But happy.

  Happiness remains too, even if it’s different.

  “Wanna play tag?” Levi says when we get to his house. Rachel is on the porch. I wave and she waves back.

  “Magical Clover,” she says when she sees me. “It’s a little cold today, kids. Maybe we should all head inside?”

  It is colder than it usually is in Florida. It has been cold for a few days, colder than I’ve ever known it to be here. Vermont cold. I think of Danny and scarves and the fireplace and hot chocolate. I think of Glen and Isabelle and hope and apple cider doughnuts.

  Even though it hurts, I love the cold and I love those memories.

  I have on the coat Dad bought me on our way up north. My nose stings a little and my toes too.

  Yep, this is what it was like in Vermont. I hug myself.

  “Just a little tag first,” Levi says, and Rachel laughs and says yes, of course, a little tag first.

  The temperature keeps dropping. Tag’s hard to play when everyone’s limbs are frozen and don’t want to move.

  We play tag with our hands in our pockets, tagging each other with elbows and running to the porch when Rachel brings out extra layers and hats and even mittens that she has from when she was at the clinic herself so many years ago. I think I’m going to have to call this kind of tag Winter Tag, and I’ll introduce it to Jake. He’ll love it.