I started to pretend like I was in a bad dream and that I was watching myself walk around and do stuff in the dream, because this was not how I wanted real life to be like. I didn’t want Mommy to always lie in bed and cry. I didn’t want to keep walking in Andy’s room in the mornings to check the top bunk, just in case. Every morning I did that, I couldn’t help it. Right before I looked up I thought, “What if he’s in his bed and it all wasn’t real? What if he was playing a stupid joke on us and he will sit in his bed and laugh at me because I thought he actually died?” Because it was like POW!—like someone put his fist in my stomach every time I saw his top bunk was empty.
I didn’t want to keep peeing on the mattress. Last night was the second time it happened, and that’s two nights in a row of peeing in my sleep. Mommy found out and had to get the wet PJs from the bathtub and the wet sheets off the mattress and wash them. She didn’t say anything about it, but I got embarrassed anyway.
We didn’t go outside. It was like the inside and the outside were different worlds and we had to keep them separate. Even Daddy didn’t go to work, but instead he kept going inside his office and closing the glass door behind him. I didn’t know why he went in there, because it didn’t look like he was doing work. He just sat there and stared at the computer. Or he put his elbows on the desk and his face in his hands.
After breakfast today I looked at the outside world through my window and I wished I could be on that side, where real life was still there. At first I just saw the rain and I watched the circles the raindrops were making in the puddles on the sidewalk. But then I noticed someone was standing on the other side of the road, across from our house.
It was Ricky’s mom. She was wearing only a T-shirt again, and she didn’t even have an umbrella. She stood there in the rain like she didn’t even feel it, but she looked wet all over, and she was staring right at our house. It was weird, she was staring and not moving and not walking across the road to come inside. Then all of a sudden I saw Daddy walking across the street, also no umbrella and getting wet from the rain. He grabbed Ricky’s mom’s arm and turned her and they walked away down the road.
After a little while Daddy came back, but without Ricky’s mom. I went downstairs and asked him where he went, and he looked at me funny and said he had to go for a walk to clear his head.
In all the days after the gunman came—and that was one week ago, I checked on the calendar in the kitchen—more people came to visit and brought more and more food even though the fridge in the kitchen and the one in the basement were full with food already. Today, in the afternoon, Mr. Stanley from my school came. Mr. Stanley’s really nice. He’s only been at McKinley since when I started first grade. I like him better than Mr. Ceccarelli, who was the old assistant principal. He was mean sometimes, and he didn’t give us a lot of stars, even when we were acting good and respectful, so we never got to have PJ day in kindergarten because of him. Mr. Stanley always makes jokes and pretends like he got lost in the hallway and doesn’t know which way to go, because he’s still new, and he gives us stars all the time.
First grade probably has enough stars for PJ day by now, because we need two thousand stars, and the week before the gunman came we had one thousand eight hundred, so by now maybe they have two thousand. Maybe they would have PJ day without me because I was still not going to school, and that wouldn’t be fair, because I earned a ton of the stars for behaving and being respectful.
Mr. Stanley didn’t make any jokes when he came today. But he smiled at me and he bent all the way down to me—Mr. Stanley is very tall, that’s why a lot of kids at school call him Tall Stanley, instead of Flat Stanley—and gave me a hug. I liked it when he hugged me, and normally I don’t like people hugging me. I wanted to ask Mr. Stanley about PJ day, but he went in the living room with Mommy and Daddy, and I wasn’t allowed to go in with them.
Mimi said I should stay in the kitchen with her, but I really wanted to know what Mr. Stanley was talking about to Mommy and Daddy. So I asked Mimi if I could go upstairs, and she said yes, but then I didn’t really go upstairs. I sat down on the stairs instead and I tried to spy on Mr. Stanley and Mommy and Daddy. It was hard to hear because they were talking so quiet and I wished I could go closer, but then I was going to get busted spying, so I tried to turn on my sonic hearing super sense.
“…I wanted to let you know that is a resource readily available to all affected families.” That was Mr. Stanley talking. “And not just affected families—I mean, everyone was affected obviously, all the children who were at the school and had to live through that…terrifying experience. But for Zach—he lived through it himself AND lost his brother…I can’t imagine…he must be struggling.”
Then Mommy said something, but I couldn’t hear, and Mr. Stanley said, “Yes. Well, every child responds differently, of course. And the signs of any post-traumatic complications don’t necessarily have to manifest themselves right away, I believe.”
Mommy said something again, and it was too quiet again, so I moved down one step to hear if Mommy was saying something about me. “He is having nightmares, but that’s probably normal….” I felt the red juice spill starting to happen, because I didn’t want Mommy to tell Mr. Stanley about how I wasn’t sleeping in my own bed.
“Well, thank you for letting us know. We do also have a very good family therapist, Andy’s…so that’s always an option, too,” Daddy said.
“That’s great, very good,” Mr. Stanley said, and then it sounded like they were going to be done talking soon and come out of the living room, so I went upstairs fast before they could see me.
After Mr. Stanley left, Mommy got really tired and lay down on her bed again. I lay down with her, Mommy wanted me to, and she held me really tight and said, “Zach, my little, sweet Zachie,” and “What are we going to do?” And she cried and cried until the whole pillow was wet, and her hair and my hair, and more and more tears were coming. Lying that close to Mommy and her sadness put a big lump in my throat that hurt bad when I tried to swallow. It hurt my whole neck and all the way up to my ears. It didn’t make me feel good to be so close to Mommy’s sadness, but I still stayed because Mommy didn’t want me to leave.
Daddy came and lay down on the other side of the bed, so I was in the middle, and he watched Mommy cry. He put his arm around us for a little while, and I wondered if that made him have a lump in his throat, too, to be so close to Mommy’s sadness. After a while Daddy patted Mommy’s head and mine and got back up and left.
[ 19 ]
Waking Up
I DIDN’T KNOW WHY IT’S CALLED a wake if it’s for someone who isn’t going to be awake ever again. I was five at Uncle Chip’s wake and it was the first time I saw a real-life dead person, because at the wake Uncle Chip’s casket was in the front of the wake room and the lid was open. Uncle Chip was lying inside there, and he looked like regular. He had his eyes closed and it was like he was sleeping. I didn’t want to go close to the casket, but the whole time we were in the wake room, which was a long time because there were two wakes, on two days in a row, I kept looking at Uncle Chip.
I thought maybe he wasn’t really dead, or maybe he was making a joke, because Uncle Chip always used to make jokes and I thought maybe he was waiting for the perfect moment to sit up in the casket and scare us. A lot of people went to his casket and sat in front of it on their knees and touched his hands, which were folded on his chest and I wondered if he died with his hands like that, and I wondered what his hands felt like and if they were cold or what. That would have been the perfect time to sit up, and it would have scared the poop out of the people sitting in front of the casket. But Uncle Chip never sat up and he never moved, and at the funeral at the church, the lid of the casket was closed.
After breakfast Daddy helped me put on my black suit. Well, it wasn’t my suit, it was Andy’s, the one he had on at Uncle Chip’s wake and funeral. I thought it was kind of
funny I was going to wear Andy’s wake suit at Andy’s wake. Not funny like you want to laugh, but strange funny. When Uncle Chip died, Mommy took me and Andy to the mall to buy us suits because we didn’t have any, and you have to wear a suit when somebody dies, and it has to be black, because when you wear something black it shows you’re sad. So black also is a color for sad, but I picked gray for sad on my feelings pages and black for scared. The black suit matched my scared feeling about going to the wake. Andy made a fuss when we went shopping for a suit because he didn’t want to wear one, but I liked it. I looked like Daddy when he goes to work.
First I tried on my suit from when Uncle Chip died, but it was too small and I couldn’t even button my pants. So Daddy got Andy’s suit from his closet, and I got worried that he would see my hideout, but then it didn’t look like he did because he didn’t say anything about it when he came back with Andy’s suit. He held up the jacket and I put it on. You couldn’t see my hands because the sleeves were too long.
“Daddy, the sleeves are annoying me,” I said, because my hands kept getting stuck in the sleeves, and I had to put my arms all the way in the air to get them out. Andy’s a lot taller than me because he’s three and a half years older, and also he’s really tall for his age. I’m not. I’m regular tall.
“Sorry, bud, it’s going to have to do,” Daddy said, and that was a surprise, because Daddy always wants us to be dressed nice. “We’re not going out looking like hoboes,” that’s what he says to us, and he makes us go change and put on more handsome clothes.
I didn’t know why we couldn’t go to the mall and buy a new suit for me. The long sleeves were really bothering me, and my stomach was starting to bother me, too.
“Can you roll up the sleeves?” My voice sounded whiney. I moved side to side a lot, because of my stomach.
“You don’t roll up the sleeves of a suit. Just leave it, it’s really not important, OK? Can you hold still for one second so I can put the tie on?” Daddy said in a mean voice, and then I could tell he felt bad about talking like that because he said, “You look handsome, buddy,” and he put his hand through my hair.
“Listen. Today is going to be hard for all of us, understand?”
I shook my head yes.
“I need you to do me a favor and be a big boy today and help me with Mommy, all right? I need your help today.”
I shook my head yes again, even though I wasn’t sure I was going to be a good helper today, because of how I was feeling.
We drove to the wake in Mommy’s car. It didn’t get towed at the hospital. Grandma and Aunt Mary went to pick it up the day after Mommy parked it on the sidewalk. Mommy didn’t drive, though. She sat in the passenger seat and stared out the window, although it wasn’t even possible to see anything with all the rain splashing against the windows, and also the windows were getting fog on them from our breathing. Mimi sat next to me in the back and also stared out of the window. Daddy was driving really slow, and the more we got away from the house, the slower he was driving, even though there was no traffic.
It was really quiet in the car with no radio on. All I could hear was the rain on the sunroof and the squeaky wish-wish from the windshield wipers going at dizzy speed. I liked that it was quiet. At the wake there would be a lot of people and a lot of talking, and I wished we could keep driving, just us.
“Mommy?” I said into the quiet car, and it sounded too loud.
Mommy’s shoulders went up a little, but she didn’t turn around and she didn’t give me an answer.
“Mommy?”
“What, bud?” Daddy said.
“Do we have to go to the wake?” I asked, and I knew it was a stupid question. Miss Russell always says there are no stupid questions, but that’s not really true, because when you already know what the answer is going to be, it’s kind of stupid to ask the question anyway. Mimi grabbed my hand and gave me a sad smile.
“Yes, Zach, we have to go to the wake,” Daddy said. “We are Andy’s family, and people are coming to say good-bye to him and express their condolences to us.”
I started to think about Uncle Chip’s wake again, and it made my stomach go into overdrive. I tried to open the window to get some fresh air, but my window was locked. Daddy always locks the windows from the front so we can’t open them in the back, even though I get carsick a lot and it helps when the windows are open, but Daddy says it hurts his ears, so it’s a no to opening the windows. I mostly only get carsick when Daddy drives and never when Mommy drives.
I didn’t want to see Andy dead in a casket. When we got to the place of the wake and Daddy parked the car, my heart was beating really fast. I felt like I had to throw up, and tears were coming in my eyes. I squeezed my nose so hard it hurt.
“Get out of the car, Zach, come on,” Daddy said.
I wanted to stay in the car, but Daddy went around and opened my door. I saw Mommy standing next to the car, getting wet from the rain, and she looked really small and scared, too. She held out her hand, and her face gave me a look like she wanted me to go to her, and so I got out of the car and took her hand and we started walking together.
Inside were some men in suits, and they talked with quiet voices to Mommy and Daddy and Mimi, and no one else was there except us. I looked around, and it looked like the place where Uncle Chip’s wake was, in New Jersey. It looked like a lobby in a fancy hotel, the one we go to sometimes when we stay overnight in the city. It had big comfy chairs with little tables in between and a big sparkly lamp hanging from the ceiling and a red carpet that was very soft under my shoes. Quiet piano music was playing from somewhere in the room.
The lobby room felt cozy. I wanted to go sit in one of the comfy chairs, but then Daddy told me it was time to go into the wake room and BAM! my stomach went right back to roller-coaster mode. Mommy was holding my hand. She squeezed it tighter and tighter, and it got too tight, but I didn’t try to pull my hand away. Mommy needed to squeeze it, I thought.
Daddy had his hands on Mommy’s back and on the top of my head, and he started to push us toward a door across the lobby room, and that was probably going to be the wake room behind it. Mimi walked behind us, and we all took tiny steps.
We got closer to the door, and I held my breath in and looked at my feet. Every time I took a step, my shoe sank into the soft red carpet. I looked behind me to see if I was leaving footprints. I was, but then the carpet went right back to normal after I picked my feet up. I kept my eyes on my feet the whole time, and it felt like behind the door something scary was waiting. Something really big and scary, and the doors should definitely stay closed.
[ 20 ]
Jumbo Twin Roll Tissue Dispenser
SOMEBODY OPENED THE DOOR. The carpet changed from red to blue. The room was quiet and it smelled good, like a garden. Mommy made a sound like a lot of fast breaths. She let go of my hand and walked away from me, but I didn’t know where because I still didn’t look up, my eyes were stuck on my feet on the blue carpet.
Without Mommy holding my hand tight, I felt like I was in a strange place all by myself and I got lost or something. I stayed by the door, and because I didn’t want to use my eyes, I tried to use my other senses to figure out what it was like around me. I used my touch sense and my fingers touched the wall, and it had patterns on it that were smooth. And I felt my feet touch the blue carpet that was soft like the red carpet in the lobby room. I couldn’t use my taste sense because there was nothing in my mouth, but I had a bad feeling in my mouth from when I started to feel sick in the car. I used my smell sense, and it really did smell like a garden, like flowers, and it smelled really sweet. I liked that at first, but then it smelled too sweet or something. For my hearing sense, I thought maybe there would be bird or bee sounds, because you can hear those in a garden, but it was completely quiet. Even with the hearing super sense all I could hear was quietness.
But then came a crying
sound that was quiet at first and it sounded far away from me, but then it got louder, and it came from Mommy somewhere in the room. Mommy’s crying got louder and it went on for a long time and I thought that maybe I should go find her, but I didn’t move from my spot by the door, because I started to get to know this spot and I didn’t want to get to know anything else in the room. All of a sudden I heard a loud crash, and it made me look up from my feet. Right away I saw everything I didn’t want to see.
The casket, right in the front of the room, in the middle. It was a different color than Uncle Chip’s—this one was light brown and Uncle Chip’s was black—and this one was smaller. The lid was closed, not open like Uncle Chip’s, and lots of flowers were on top of the lid. I started to feel all hot under the suit. Andy was inside of there, his body.
Daddy and Mimi were in front of the casket, and they were pulling Mommy up—she was on the floor, next to a big vase with purple flowers that was fallen over. Between my spot by the door and Andy’s casket in the front were a lot of chairs all in a row with a walkway in between them, almost like how the benches were in the church after the gunman came. There were flowers along the walls and next to the casket. They were pretty and in lots of colors and now I knew why it smelled like a garden in here. I saw pictures everywhere, too, mostly of Andy and some of all our family, and the pictures were on boards and some in picture frames on skinny tables.
I heard sounds behind me, and people started to come in the wake room. Grandma and Aunt Mary, my cousin Jonas who pees in the bed, and his mom and dad, and some other people from our family. Mommy and Daddy and Mimi stood in the front. Mommy was holding on to Daddy’s arm, and she looked like she was going to fall down again. She stared straight in front of her and didn’t make any crying sounds anymore. Tears were running down her face and dripping on her black dress, but she didn’t wipe them off, just let them drip, drip, drip.
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