Sorry for Your Loss

by Jessie Ann Foley

  “Sup?”

  Pup almost didn’t recognize Qurt, his partner from the state competition, because he had shaved off his mustache and his eyes looked different.

  “Oh, hey, Qurt,” Pup said. “How’s your summer?”

  “Insufferably boring, as all summers of my life have always been and will always be until next year when I finally break out of my shitbox town and move to Paris.” He lifted Pup’s tie with a thumb and forefinger, turning it back and forth to inspect it. “I see you’re still dressing like a middle-aged dad.”

  “Hey!” Abrihet appeared by Pup’s side, carrying a tray of mini desserts. “I bought him that tie.” She put her free hand around Pup’s waist and he felt the blush blooming up his neck. Even though they’d been official for three weeks, he wasn’t used to it yet, this whole girlfriend thing. Every time Abrihet touched him, it still felt like a miracle. She was wearing her red floral dress, her dangly earrings, and a pair of leather sandals with a bunch of straps going up the ankle. She had an easy style that allowed her to fit in with this crew of artists. Pup had a rumpled poly-blend dress shirt and a belt that didn’t match his shoes. Qurt’s eyes flicked to the place where her hand rested on Pup’s hip, then flicked back to Pup. For a moment, he actually looked impressed. “Well,” he conceded, “I guess it’s a good strategy. Dressing like you’re taking your kids to a daddy-daughter dance at the local mall will force the judges to focus on your work, not your look. I should have thought of that myself.”

  “But that would mean taking off your fabulous purple cape,” Abrihet pointed out. “And the cape matches your eyes perfectly.”

  “No,” Qurt corrected her. “My eyes match my cape perfectly.” He lifted two fingers to his face and pulled his contact lenses to the side, showing her the brown pupils beneath.

  “Amazing.”

  “I know.” Qurt smiled at her as the lavender lenses slid back into place. “Well, I better go score a chicken Caesar wrap before they run out. Good luck out there, you two.” He turned then, shaking out the cascade of satin that hung down his back, and disappeared into the crowd.

  “I think I’m gonna barf,” Pup said, running a hand over his gel-encrusted hair. “Something’s wrong with my stomach.”

  “Nothing’s wrong with your stomach.” Abrihet chose a mini fudge brownie from her paper plate and popped it into her mouth. “You’re just a little nervous.”

  “Why did I eat that Canadian bacon breakfast sandwich?”

  “I seem to recall Mr. Hughes warning you not to eat gas-station meat on the drive up here.”

  “I know, but I just figured that was his anti-corporation, anti–Big Oil, anti–Big Agriculture prejudice coming through.”

  “No, it was his anti-diarrhea prejudice coming through.”

  Pup winced.

  “James.” She handed him the dessert plate and rested her two hands on his shoulders. “Your photographs are beautiful and you deserve to be here. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Pup sighed. “What about you? Are you doing okay?”

  She shrugged. “I talked to her this morning. I wish she was here. I wish she’d change her mind.” She plucked another brownie off the dessert plate. “But I’ll be all right. The chocolate is helping a little bit.”

  “And the rest of your family is coming, right?”

  “Oh yeah. And I just know they’re going to sit right up in the front row, too. That’s how they are.” She looked at him. “Is your family coming?”

  “Nah.” Pup looked down at the big shiny dress shoes that were already starting to pinch his toes. “They’re proud of me and everything, but they’re not really, like, comfortable with me sharing our private family stuff in public.”

  “Well, I can respect that.” She thought for a moment, chewing her brownie. “You did show them your portfolio, at least, though. Right? So at least they know how talented you are?”

  Pup nodded. The night before, he’d sat with his parents in the kitchen with the windows open to the late summer wind and watched quietly as they put on their reading glasses and leafed through the images one by one. His mom had brushed tears away before closing the folder.

  “Oh, Pup,” she’d said. “We’re so proud of you.”

  “Good or bad,” his dad added, his voice gruff, “you got us right, kid.”

  The door to the green room opened, and most of the kids in the room turned around expectantly. But it was only Mr. Hughes, dressed in his finest Hawaiian shirt.

  “I’m not supposed to be back here,” he said, dribbling his coffee all over the floor as he hurried over to them. “But I just had to see how you two were holding up.”

  “I think I’m gonna barf.” Pup yanked at his tie while his stomach blooped and gurgled.

  “I told you not to eat that gas-station meat.”

  “I told him it’s just nerves,” Abrihet said.

  “Nerves? What the hell you got to be nervous about? It’s all these other kids who should be nervous. They’ve got nothing on you two!” He was making no effort to lower his voice, and a couple of the other contestants were now glaring over at them. “Anyway, I wanted to give you a heads-up.” He fished a booklet out of his back pocket. “I snagged a program when I came in. Thought you might want to know your order. Abby, you’re going eighth. Pup, you’re first.”

  “First?” Pup said faintly. He felt the inside of his mouth get sweaty. He really was going to barf.

  “That’s great!” Abrihet gave him an encouraging smile. “It means you can get it over with and just enjoy the rest of the program! I’ve got to sweat through seven people before it’s my turn.”

  “If you get nervous, just look for my big goofy head in the crowd. I’m easy to find. Front row.” He winked at Abrihet. “Your dad saved me a seat.”

  “I told you they’d be in the front row.” Abrihet rolled her eyes at Pup.

  “They brought signs, too,” Mr. Hughes added. “And possibly an air horn.”

  “Oh, god.” Abrihet covered her face, but Pup could tell that she was just as pleased as she was embarrassed. He knew how painful it was for her not to have her mom there, and that her family was going over the top to make her feel loved, to protect her, to make the absence a little easier.

  Suddenly Pup’s heart filled with dread. How could he share his own family’s story of loss, and all the pain that had rippled afterward, with a room full of strangers? The acid surged in his throat, and as he turned around to bolt for a bathroom in which he could evacuate his Canadian bacon biscuit, a woman in a black blazer with a short sweep of pink hair and a clipboard appeared, blocking the doorway.

  “Okay, everyone,” she said. “We’re ready to begin. Feel free to hang out back here until your name is called. Best of luck to all of you!” She looked down and consulted her clipboard. “Now,” she said, “if I could just have James come with me. Is there a James here?”

  Pup swallowed the vile burp that was bubbling up his throat and raised a trembling hand. It was too late to quit, no matter how much he wanted to.

  His hand was on the velvet corner of the curtain and then he was stepping out onto the stage. There was a small lectern where he’d been instructed to stand, and he hurried to it, the soles of his too-tight dress shoes plunking hollowly on the hardwood. He’d been expecting one of those big wooden podiums like the ones his teachers used at school, the kind that would at least conceal half of his body from the hundreds of eyes in the packed auditorium, but no such luck. It was one of those modern things, more like a music stand, and all that stood between Pup and the room full of onlookers was a thin metal pole and five empty feet of stage. Behind him, hanging from the ceiling rafters, was a screen where his photographs would be projected, eight by ten feet high. The stage lights were hot and glaring in his face, but he could make out Mr. Hughes and his parrot-covered Hawaiian shirt in the front row. Abrihet’s dad was there, and her amoui and brother and a gaggle of cousins, too. Mr. Hughes had not been joking: they were all carrying signs decorate
d with her name, rolled up and wedged beneath their seats or placed across their laps, and that made him relax just the tiniest bit, because he knew that even if she pretended otherwise, she was going to love those waving signs. He took out his notes from the breast pocket of his dress shirt. The crinkling sound they made as he unfolded the paper was picked up by the mic, and carried out all the way to the back of the room.

  “My project,” he began, after a shriek of microphone feedback, “is called The Emergency Inside.” There was an expectant silence from the audience. Mr. Hughes and Abrihet’s family watched him, their posters on their laps. Here he was, Pup Flanagan, a boy who couldn’t command attention at his own family’s Sunday dinner, and now every person in a very large, very crowded room, was waiting for him to speak. It was too much. I can’t do this, he thought. He was a fraud, a joke. Just a few months ago, if you’d asked him what a silver halide was, he’d have guessed it was one of the cool new drugs the popular kids at school were doing. He’d heard some of the contestants talking in the green room. Some of them had been taking photography classes since elementary school. He had no right to be here. He folded his notes back up—again, their crinkling was amplified by the stupid super-sensitive mic—and turned back toward the safety of the curtain. But before he’d taken his first step, a loud squeaking far at the back of the auditorium broke the silence.

  One of the double doors was opening, but the lights were glaring in Pup’s face and all he could see was the silhouette of a person hurrying down the aisle in search of an open seat. The metal door closed with a bang, and was immediately thrown open again with another loud squeak, this time by two people, hunched arm in arm and hurrying down the aisle behind the first latecomer. Now, a family with young children was squeezing through the door. The woman was holding a shrieking baby in her arms and by now the rest of the auditorium had turned away from Pup to check out this rude mob of people who were interrupting the competition. But Pup was standing stock-still, one hand clutching the lectern, because he’d know that baby shriek anywhere. It belonged to his niece Chloe. He put a hand over his eyes and squinted out past the stage lights. One by one, stepping over people, hushing apologies, shushing their children, waving proudly at Pup as they took their seats, was the entire population of Flanland. Twenty-six people, twenty-seven if you counted Carrie, which Pup did, because as she gave him a small smile before hurrying into her seat, he knew exactly why she was there: because Luke, in his last week of inpatient rehab, couldn’t be.

  So there they were, scattered throughout the auditorium, all those pale-blue watching eyes. Had they rented a bus? Had they caravanned? Were his parents planning on staying overnight in Ann Arbor, paying money for an actual hotel? And what would they say when he aired their deepest sorrow to a room full of strangers? After all, he’d shared his pictures with his parents, but he hadn’t shared a word of his speech. If there was ever a time to abandon ship, it was now. But when Pup ranged over the rows and rows of people and found Annemarie’s steady eyes, then his mother’s, his father’s, and even his oldest sisters’, he understood that the fact that they were there meant that they believed it was okay. And so he took a deep breath and began.

  He started at the bottom of the sea. The abyssopelagic zone, the most unknown and feared and foreign place on the planet, less habitable, less explored than even the moon. The place that Patrick had dreamed of seeing for himself one day.

  When you are in this zone, Pup told them, surrounded by creatures made mostly of slime and water, and the pressure is crushing and everywhere is utter darkness, you grope your way around, terrified and desperate for the sight of something familiar.

  But nothing is familiar and so you do things to beat back the fear.

  Pup clicked the little button the pink-haired woman had given him. You might distract yourself with quiet routines, he said, as the first photograph appeared on the projection screen: his mother, aged far beyond her years, shading carefully in her adult coloring book.

  Or you cheapen a tragedy into a stupid little ghost story.

  He clicked again, to the forlorn room at the Sig Sig house, dust on the empty desk and broken glass scattered on the floor.

  Or you drink.

  On the screen, huge enough for even those in the back to see, came Luke, passed out on the roof in the early morning light.

  But all of these things, Pup explained, are shortcuts; they won’t work. You’re trying to swim up too fast, and you’re going to get compression sickness. You’re going to bleed from your nose and ears, and maybe even from your deeper organs if you’re not careful. Don’t be reckless. You have to come up slowly, expecting no miracles. You have to outfit yourself with the proper gear.

  The first thing you need, if you want a shot at getting out of this alive, is strength. Find somebody who already has it, and let them teach you. Pup clicked to a photo of Annemarie in a short-sleeved work blouse, tattoos twining up her arms, staring down the camera behind her big desk on the twenty-third floor of the Aon building.

  The next thing you need is hope. You can’t keep swimming if you’ve stopped seeing the point.

  Onto the screen flashed a photo of Mr. Hughes. His body was hunched forward with intensity, his glasses slipping down his nose as he lectured a group of Abrihet’s cousins about Guernica over steaming plates of dorho and rice. Mr. Hughes, who had believed in him. Who, after a year’s worth of terrible art projects, had taken a chance on Pup because of a single photograph.

  The next thing you need—and this is a big one—the next thing you need is love.

  He clicked to the photo of Abrihet in her red dress, the center point of light in the lobby of the university hotel. He glanced quickly to stage left, where she was standing in the small space between the curtain and the wall. He saw her freeze, saw her hand squeeze the velvet fabric of the curtain tighter. Maybe it was too soon to tell her that he loved her, but he didn’t care. Patrick would have supported a romantic gesture like that. And Patrick was a philosopher, so he would know.

  The last thing you must search for is forgiveness.

  Pup clicked to the fight, that terrible portrait of his parents squared up against Luke like boxers in a late round. They had forgiven him for everything, but that only meant something if he could find a way to forgive himself. If he could make it through rehab and stand clear-eyed on the other side, Pup hoped, then the love of his family, which had never wavered, could see him the rest of the way.

  In the end, Pup explained, if you work hard, and fight, and are lucky, you might start seeing it. Just a glimmer at the end of a long, watery tunnel. Don’t expect miracles. You will still be you, and there’s no way of undoing the things that have happened. These things are the raw materials of your life now, and you have to find a way to work with them. You have to find a way to keep being you.

  As Pup clicked to the final photograph, his self-portrait in the alley, he found that it was easy now. The photographs were stories without words, but they had given words to his story. He cleared his throat. He was almost finished. He looked down at his notes and realized he’d barely looked at them. He hadn’t even needed them.

  And then you’ll feel it.

  It’s not anything concrete, of course. There is nothing—not time, not family, not even love, that can give you that, and you know better than to hope. No, it is just a sudden and acute sense you have that all the energy in the world is converging in this one place, in these waves and this sky, in this darkness and light. It is converging in you, he is converging in you, he is buried and ticking in your heart, and you can feel him as you swim, pushing you onward, burning in your lungs, pumping your blood. Pushed on by the converging energies around you and in you, you propel yourself up and up, and soon the water turns from black to green to blue, and the blue is the place where the light finally begins to pierce. But you are still so far underwater and there is still so much work to do. Despite all your progress you are a long way from breathing on your own; you are not a fish an
d you were not made for this environment. But the one thing you know for sure is that the blue is the light and the light is where you are headed. Can you see it? you feel him asking as he urges you on. Can you see it? You tell him that you do, and this time you’re not just lying to yourself. You really do see it. With a final tremendous kick, your arms reach up and out and grab at the sky. You want to tell him how dazzling it is. You want to tell him, but you don’t have the words. But then you understand that you don’t need the words because he already knows. After all this time, these years of searching and yearning and waiting for a sign, you’ve finally found him: a beautiful latent image curled up inside of you this whole time, just waiting to be developed.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to the following people for guiding me through the creation of this book:

  My editor, Alexandra Cooper, who has pushed me, in her gentle way, to be the best writer I can be. I’m forever grateful for our partnership.

  My agent, Barry Goldblatt, who never gave up on this project, even through the cringeworthy early drafts. I’m so grateful to have you in my corner.

  Thank you to the entire team at HarperTeen for their tireless work on this story. Special thanks in particular to Alyssa Miele and Rosemary Brosnan. Thank you also to David Curtis and Catherine San Juan for the gorgeous book design, and Brenna Franzitta, Alexandra Rakaczki, and Christine Corcoran Cox for their excellent copyediting and proofreading.

  Deep gratitude to Samrawit Areki for our many conversations throughout the writing of this book—I’m so excited to see all the amazing things you do in your college career and beyond. Thanks also to Amilia Tsegai, Bsrat Negassi, Sarah Kennedy Bennett, and Kristin Keglovitz Baker.