Tell the Wolves I'm Home: A Novel

by Carol Rifka Brunt

  “Greta, you have to tell me what’s going on. You are seriously scaring me now. I’ll tell. I’ll tell Mom and Dad if I have to.”

  She looked at me and smiled. “No, you won’t. You’re here, aren’t you? And other places, right? Should I tell them about all the sneaking around? Should I tell them you’re smoking now?”

  “God, Greta. I’m not saying it to be mean. I’ll help you with whatever it is. Really.”

  Greta sat on the curb between the Aults’ house and the DeRonzis’. I sat next to her. A streetlight shone down from right above us, so it was like we were in a little bright circle separate from everything else. She looked at me with her tired drunk eyes.

  “Are you really scared, June? For real?”

  “Yeah. Of course I am.”

  Greta looked like she was about to cry. “That’s nice,” she said. Then she hugged me—a real hug, hard and fierce. She smelled of liquor and the mustiness of the forest floor, but under it all was the baby-sweet scent of Jean Naté. Then she leaned in closer and whispered, “I am too, Junie. I’m scared too.”

  “Of what?”

  She stroked my cheek with the back of her fingers and pressed her lips to my ear. “Of everything.”

  Forty-Two

  The next morning we both slept late. As late as my mother let us, anyway, which was ten-thirty. We were going to the Ingrams’ for a barbecue that afternoon. They threw one for my parents every year, right near the end of tax season. To help them get through the final stretch, they said.

  I didn’t mind going to the Ingrams’ too much, but Greta tried everything she could to get out of it. What’s funny is that in the end she was forced to go because it would be impolite to Mikey if she didn’t, but when we got there it turned out that Mikey himself had gone out with his friends. We were also told he didn’t want to be called Mikey anymore, just Mike. So there we were in the Ingrams’ backyard, hungover Greta and me, hanging around their rusty old swing set. Greta sat on a swing, digging the tip of her boot into the bare patch of dirt. I swung as high as I could, forcing one leg of the swing set to pull up and out of the ground again and again, making it feel like the whole thing was about to fly us both away.

  “Could you stop that?” Greta said.

  “Nope,” I said, and kept swinging.

  She stood up and looked toward the picnic table, where all the adults were sitting with glasses of beer and wine. My dad had brought Trivial Pursuit over, and even though the Ingrams had owned a copy for a couple of years, he got them to play. I heard my mother laugh, and I wanted to cover my ears because I couldn’t stop thinking about what I knew about her. How could someone act so strong and normal and under it all be so desperate and sad? And mean. That was the hardest part. It was only in the past few years that I’d even thought of Finn and my mother as brother and sister. That I really believed that who they were to me—mother, uncle—wasn’t all that they were. Maybe Finn and my mother sat on a swing set at a backyard barbecue, bored out of their minds, just like me and Greta. They must have held each other’s secrets. Just like us.

  Greta put her hand up over her mouth, made a nauseated sound, and let out a sigh before sitting back down on the swing. I was trying to think of a way to bring up everything that had happened the night before. Something that made it so Greta wouldn’t turn on me right away. I had my arms linked around the chains of the swing and my hands in my coat pockets because it was cold. Too cold for a barbecue, even though everyone was pretending it wasn’t. My fingers had been playing with something in my left pocket, and I realized it was that weird die that Ben gave me. I took my hands out of my pockets and waited until the swing was at its highest point, then I leapt off onto the grass.

  “Hey,” I said. “Look at this.” I held my palm out to Greta. It was the first time I’d seen the die in daylight, and I saw that it was kind of pretty. Translucent blue with ten sides, so that it was like two five-sided pyramids stuck together at their bases. It looked like a big jewel with numbers carved into it.

  She glanced at it. “Yeah, so, what is it?”

  “A Dungeons & Dragons die. From Ben.”

  Greta perked right up. “Oooooh,” she said. “Nerd courtship rituals.”

  I could tell I was blushing, but as painful as it was to pretend to have some kind of dishy news about me and Ben, I could see it was a way to open Greta up. I could see her loosening. And I guess there was the kiss.

  “Did you see him last night? In that cloak?”

  She shook her head. “Apparently you did, though.” She raised her eyebrows and gave a crooked smile.

  I nodded so the whole thing would stay kind of murky and keep Greta thinking. She eyed me up, then gave me a look that said she understood every single thing in the world.

  “You know, June, I’m just playing along here. You can drop the act.”

  “What act?”

  “The Ben thing. There’s no Ben thing.”

  What’s funny is that for once there was something. Ben had kissed me. It was clumsy and quick and maybe it meant nothing at all, but it was real.

  “You know what, Greta? You don’t know everything. You think you do, but you are so far from knowing everything—”

  “I know that I saw Ben go off with Tina Yarwood last night.”

  I looked away quick. What she said stung more than I would have expected. “Oh,” I said after a while.

  It wasn’t like I’d been sitting around fantasizing about Ben Dellahunt. It wasn’t that I even liked him particularly. He was smug and nerdy and he had nothing on Finn or Toby. But still, when Greta said that, about Tina Yarwood. When I thought of that kiss. How I’d blushed after, like it meant something. When I thought of all that, it hit me right in the throat. Nothing had changed. I was the stupid one again. I was the girl who never understood who she was to people.

  Greta held my gaze for a second, smirking. She could see that she’d hurt me. I could tell. And even though I knew it was the worst thing I could do, that Greta was the worst person in the world to say anything to, I looked back at her hungover face and said, “Ben’s nothing, Greta. I have a boyfriend in the city. He’s older than me. Older than you, even. I go to the city by myself all the time, and we smoke and drink and do whatever we want.” I almost kept going. I almost mentioned my plan about England, but I didn’t.

  “Liar,” she said. She said it with so much viciousness that I knew she thought it might be true.

  I shrugged. “Believe what you want.”

  “Don’t worry. I will.”

  It had taken every last bit of concentration to sound so confident, and I sat on the swing, shaking for a few minutes, thinking about the stupidity of what I’d just done. About all the trouble it might lead to. Not only for me but for Toby. I got up and started to walk away, but then I thought of something.

  “How do you know about that place in the woods, anyway?”

  She smiled. “I’ve seen you, June. The hills have eyes. . . .”

  “What do you mean?”

  She looked so full of power right then that I started to worry about what she would say. But I had to know.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “I followed you. I saw you heading down to the woods after school one day, at the beginning of the school year, and I followed you. I stayed there all afternoon, watching you play your weird stuff. Talking to yourself. Wearing that dumb old dress. Those special boots of yours.”

  “You spied on me?”

  “Lots of times.”

  I stood there staring at Greta. I should have been embarrassed, but all I felt was rage. I turned and walked away without saying another word. I was still shaking, and I clenched my fists to stop it. I squeezed the blue die tight in my hand and thought about Ben again. Then I hurled the die across the Ingrams’ lawn. In a few months it would end up shredded by their lawn mower. Good. I walked over to the picnic table and sat down with the adults. I pretended I wanted to play Trivial Pursuit until it was time to go home.

>   Forty-Three

  The next Wednesday was April Fools’ Day. President Reagan was on TV, giving a big speech about AIDS for the very first time. Apparently he’d known all about it for a while but he’d decided to keep quiet on the subject. What he said was that everyone—especially teenagers—should stop having sex. He didn’t say it exactly in those words, but that was his main point. It didn’t seem like too bad an idea to me. I mean, why did sex have to be so important? Why couldn’t people live together, spend their whole lives together, just because they liked each other’s company? Just because they liked each other more than they liked anyone else in the whole world?

  If you found a person like that you wouldn’t have to have sex. You could just hold them, couldn’t you? You could sit close to them, nestle into them so you could hear the machine of them churning away. You could press your ear against that person’s back, listening to the rhythm of them, knowing that you were both made of the same exact stuff. You could do things like that.

  Sometimes, if you’re standing close enough to another person, you can’t even tell whose stomach is growling. You look at each other and then you both apologize and say, “That was me,” and then you laugh. You don’t need sex for that kind of thing to happen. For your body to forget how to tell if it’s hungry or not. For you to mistake someone else’s hunger for your own.

  Once, right after I’d turned thirteen, that happened at Finn’s apartment. Finn and I were leaning out one of his big windows, watching for my mother to come back. She was out shopping at Bloomingdale’s that day, some kind of wedding present for someone my parents knew through work, and we expected to see her all bundled up, scuttling across the street in her long puffy coat, with a big Bloomingdale’s shopping bag. We both liked that. Seeing someone from up above without them knowing you could see them. We both understood that you could sometimes get a glimpse of who a person really was when you saw them like that. So even though it was cold, we leaned out the window, our shoulders almost touching, Finn giving my back a warm-up rub every once in a while. He had on a blue wool cap almost the exact same color as his eyes, and he’d wrapped his knitted red scarf around my neck.

  “Hey, Crocodile,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Your mom, she said she talked to you. About me. About what’s happening with me.”

  A couple of months had passed since that day at the Mount Kisco Diner, but I never said a word about it to Finn. I never acted like I knew anything at all. I couldn’t. I was sure it would ruin all the time we had left. I took the scarf and looped it around my neck one more time.

  “Can we not talk about that?”

  I felt Finn’s hand land on my back. He nodded. “Just, you know, if you want to ask me anything—”

  “Okay,” I said quickly, cutting him off. I could tell he was about to go on too long. That if I let him he’d start stumbling around, telling me everything about being sick, and I didn’t want to hear it. I pointed out the window. “Isn’t that Barbara Walters?”

  Finn leaned out even farther and angled his head. Then he smiled and bumped his shoulder against mine.

  “Dolly Parton’s grandmother, more like.”

  I laughed. Mostly because I was glad I’d found a way to change the subject. That’s when it happened—one of our stomachs gave out a great bubbling grumble. I looked at Finn, all embarrassed because I was sure it was me. But then he said he was sure it was him, because all he’d had for lunch was a cup of coffee. After going back and forth about it, Finn pulled me into the kitchen and said it didn’t matter.

  “My stomach’s your stomach, Crocodile,” he said. He opened a cabinet and pulled out a box of Wheat Thins, then got this fancy cheese with a thick layer of maroon wax around it from the fridge, and we leaned up against the counter eating until my mother buzzed up from the lobby.

  I had to be careful on April Fools’ Day because Greta usually had some kind of trick waiting for me. It wasn’t always like that. Up until a few years ago it was Greta and me doing tricks on our parents. They weren’t usually the best tricks—salt in the sugar container, ketchup as fake blood on a finger, that kind of thing—but we were in it together. Then, a few years ago, it changed to Greta against me. Sometimes it would be the kind of trick where she’d say something really good was going to happen, like we were getting the day off school to go to Great Adventure or something, and then as soon as I started to get excited about it she’d laugh and say April Fools. Other years she’d do the opposite. She’d pretend something really bad had happened—like that the hamster I used to have had run away—and she’d let me get all the way to crying about it before she’d show me that she had the hamster hidden in a shoe box under her bed.

  Last year she came into my room first thing in the morning with the saddest look on her face and told me that Finn was dead. She waited for me to wake up completely. She waited until her news sank right into the marrow of my bones. She seemed to be waiting for my reaction, waiting for me to break down or run over to her for support. But I was numb. I sat on my bed, frozen. She stood there awhile longer and then finally gave up. “April Fools,” she said, sounding disappointed.

  Usually I had no idea it was April 1, but this year I remembered, so I was waiting for Greta to pounce.

  But she didn’t. Breakfast was normal. It was just the two of us because our parents had left for work early. I stared at Greta’s back as she leaned over the counter spreading grape jelly on her toast. When she turned around, she saw me staring at her and gave me a “what’s your problem?” look before picking up her cup of coffee. I looked away and ate a spoonful of Cookie Crisp. The little disks that were supposed to taste like chocolate chip cookies had turned slimy in the milk, but I didn’t mind.

  “You want this other piece?” Greta said, holding out her second piece of toast and jelly.

  “Okay.”

  She threw it on the table next to my bowl, then left to get ready for school. I had a good close look at it, then sniffed it, thinking this must be her trick this year. There must be white pepper or chili flakes or something on there. I felt relieved to get it over with. To have spotted her trick so easily. I lifted the toast to my mouth and let my tongue touch the surface, waiting for the heat to start. But there was nothing. I took a whole bite and waited again. But, no. No trick.

  I decided to walk to school that morning, because I didn’t want Greta to get a second chance while we waited for the bus. It was early, and it was a bright warm morning, so I walked through the woods.

  The thawed leaves made the whole place smell sweet and syrupy. We had only a handful of spring days in Westchester. Usually things went from winter right to hot humid summer like a flipped switch. It could still snow in April, but then May hit and everything went hot. And that was the end of my season in the woods. You can’t pretend to be in the Middle Ages when it’s ninety degrees outside. In my version of the Middle Ages, it’s always fall or winter. Things are always cold and damp. Coats need to be worn. And boots. Always boots.

  But for now it was okay. I took my time walking to school that morning. I knew I had the woods to myself. I hummed the Requiem and pretended to be a girl branded across the chest for begging.

  At school, I opened my locker slowly, thinking maybe the trick would be in there, but nothing. I looked out for Greta all day. Every corner I turned in the hallways. On the line in the cafeteria. In the bathroom stalls. But, again, no sign of anything.

  April Fools’ Day 1987 passed with not a single mean trick from Greta. When I got home there was a small padded envelope in the mailbox, addressed to me from the Consortium for the Preservation of Unsleeved Records. For just a second I thought maybe that was a Greta trick, but of course it was from Toby. He’d sent the tape of his guitar music. I’ll teach you this was scribbled on the insert.

  At dinnertime Greta and I ate the beef and vegetable stew my mother had left for us, and then I watched Room with a View before going up to bed.

  I lay in my bed t
hat night, trying to understand why Greta would take a whole year off. I thought maybe it wasn’t too late, maybe she would try something a few minutes before midnight, but I peeked into her room at a little bit after eleven and she was fast asleep. Not me. I lay in bed, awake, thinking, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that maybe Greta hadn’t taken a year off after all. Maybe she understood that the work had been done all those other April Fools’ Days. She didn’t have to do a single thing anymore. I’d ruin my own day looking for the trick. All Greta had to do was sit back and watch.

  Or maybe she just didn’t care anymore. Maybe I wasn’t worth the trouble. I went to sleep with that sad thought in my head, and when I woke up in the morning it was still there, like a cool black hole right in the middle of everything.

  Forty-Four

  I like the word clandestine. It feels medieval. Sometimes I think of words as being alive. If clandestine were alive, it would be a pale little girl with hair the color of fall leaves and a dress as white as the moon. Clandestine is the kind of relationship me and Toby had.

  The next time I saw Toby, which was two days later after school, I brought him a bonsai. Only it wasn’t a real bonsai, just a twig from the Japanese maple tree in our backyard that I’d stuck in some dirt.

  “For you, Toby-san,” I said, bowing. I was afraid he wouldn’t remember the joke. I always remember jokes, but some people forget right away and then I end up looking like a weirdo for still remembering something so small.

  “It is a wise student who learns from her master,” Toby said, with a bow and without any hesitation at all. Then he launched into a goofy impression of the crane technique, which, with his long gangly shape, made him look not like a crane exactly but like some strange species of bird that had yet to be discovered.