Willow

by Julia Hoban

  “This must be a new experience for you,” Guy says as he takes in the red F.

  “You’re not kidding.”

  “It will look like a girl’s handwriting unless you trace it.” Guy holds the paper up to the light. “And the paper’s too thick for that.” He hands her back the quiz. “I know what you told me in the park, but I think you may be wrong about the whole situation. I mean, are you sure that you just can’t give it to him? Okay, it’s a really bad grade, but he’ll be able to handle it. Signing this isn’t that big a deal, is it?”

  “It’s what signing it means,it’s what it represents. He could barely handle that parent-teacher conference. How am I going to . . . It’s just . . . It’s too much. And it’s not the grade either, it’s more that . . .” Willow shakes her head, at a loss for what to say. Nobody understands, nobody getsit. “I bet you think it’s sweet, don’t you?” Willow says after a moment, a distinct edge to her voice.

  “Sweet?” Guy is baffled.

  “I mean that he would do stuff like this for me, you know, sign off on a quiz, be the parent.”

  “Sweet?” he repeats incredulously. “Are you kidding? It sounds really, really hard, but I still think that you—”

  “I bought you something,” Willow blurts out.

  “You bought . . . What?”

  Willow closes her eyes for a second. She’s a little surprised that she’s going to give it to him after all, but there’s no going back. Now she has to.

  “At the bookstore.” She reaches into her bag again and pushes the package across the table toward him.

  Guy takes the book out of the bag slowly. Willow waits for him to look disappointed, to look confused that she would buy him such a battered, old—

  “I love it when used books have notes in the margins, it’s the best,” Guy says as he flips through the pages. “I always imagine who read it before me.” He pauses and looks at one of Prospero’s speeches. “I have way too much homework to read this now, but you know what? Screw it, I want to know why it’s your favorite Shakespeare. Thank you, that was really nice of you. I mean, you really didn’t have to do that.”

  “But I did anyway,” Willow says, so quietly that she’s not sure he even hears her.

  “Hey.” Guy frowns for a second. “You didn’t write anything in it.”

  “Oh, I didn’t even think . . . I, well, I wouldn’t even know what to write,” Willow says shyly.

  “Well, maybe you’ll think of something later,” he says.

  Willow watches Guy read the opening. There’s no mistaking it, his smile is genuine, and she can’t help thinking that if she can’t make David look like this, at least she can do it for someone.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “You can only take this out overnight,” Willow says as she checks the girl’s ID to make sure that she has borrowing privileges.

  “That’s all I need, because this paper’s due tomorrow,” the girl responds somewhat breathlessly. She grabs the book. “Thanks.”

  “Good luck with the paper,” Willow says as she watches her dash down the stairs.

  She settles back on her stool, careful not to check the clock again. Her shift isn’t over for another hour, but she’s so bored that she doesn’t think that she’ll be able to make it.

  “So how’d it go?” Carlos comes up behind her.

  “Hmm, no big deal,” Willow says innocently. “Just a simple checkout, she didn’t need an interlibrary loan or anything.”

  “You idiot!” Carlos swats her arm. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” He sits down and pulls his chair close to Willow’s. “Liven up my day, honey. C’mon. Tell me stuff.”

  “Don’t you have anyone else you can bother?” Willow says.

  “No.”

  “All right,” she sighs. “Umm . . . it was good. Great strawberry tarts at that place a few blocks from here.”

  “I want a restaurant review, I’ll read the paper.”

  “Why are you so interested in what happened?” Willow turns to look at him.

  “’Cause I’ve never seen you smile like this before.” Carlos tips his chair back and regards her solemnly.

  Oh.

  “Never mind.” He laughs at her. “You’re just fun to tease. Why don’t you get out of here now?”

  “I have almost an hour left!” Willow objects.

  “Like I told you before, this place is dead today. Really, I can handle it by myself,” Carlos assures her. “Besides, you work too hard.”

  “A lot you know.” Willow thinks of the giant red Fsplashed across her quiz, which is nestled in among all the overdue homework assignments languishing in her bag. “But thanks, Carlos, you’re really kind.” If he’s willing to let her go, then she’s not about to argue. Willow slides off of the stool and grabs her things from underneath the circulation desk.

  “Don’t worry, I intend to collect on this one,” Carlos says dryly. “You can cover one of my shifts later on, maybe next week.”

  “Absolutely,” Willow calls over her shoulder as she runs down the stairs two at a time. It must be all the caffeine she had earlier, there’s no other reason for her to feel so buoyant.

  It can hardly be that she’s that thrilled to get off forty minutes early. And it certainly can’t be that she has a hundred and fifty pages of the Bulfinchto read before tomorrow, as well as finally getting started on that stupid paper.

  And it definitely isn’t the fact that she has to figure out some way of faking David’s signature on that quiz.

  Willow slows down, her good mood plummeting as she thinks about the task ahead of her. Tracing seems like the best way to go, in spite of the thickness of the paper. If she rifles through his desk she should be able to find some cancelled checks fairly easily. She’ll just have to hold the paper up to a really strong light. . . .

  She hates what her life has become.

  Willow stops dead in her tracks. There up ahead is David. He sees her too, and gives a brief wave as he heads over toward her. There’s nothing strange about bumping into him on campus, after all, it is where he works. . . .

  But his sudden appearance affects Willow in uncomfortable ways, and not only because she’s planning to forge his signature. It’s more that seeing him like this reminds her of all the other times she’s met up with him on campus.

  She thinks back to the beginning of March, just a few days before the accident. It had been very cold and gray, flurries too, if she remembers correctly. She and Cathy had been shivering because they had expected it to be warmer. Wasn’t spring supposed to be around the corner? David had been mad at Cathy for not dressing more warmly. Not really mad, more protective —she was, after all, seven and a half months pregnant.

  They’d all gone out to dinner, where David and Cathy had bored her to tears by spending the evening picking out names for the baby. Well, she really hadn’t been that bored, she was actually pretty excited about becoming an aunt. At sixteen, none of Willow’s friends had any nieces or nephews. Still, acting bored and demanding to talk about other topics had seemed like the thing to do.

  Helen. That had been the name they had finally decided upon. Not so surprising; her brother’s always been an Iliad fan too. David was sure that their parents would approve.

  They may have liked the name. Willow never asked them. But they never lived to see their first grandchild.

  Isabelle was her mother’s middle name. Born six weeks premature, nothing to worry about these days, but nothing that would have happened either, Willow is sure, if Cathy hadn’t been under so much stress.

  Sometimes she’s amazed that Cathy can even look her in the face.

  “Hey,” David says, walking up to her. “I’m on my way home, but I wasn’t expecting to see you. You’re out early, aren’t you?” He shifts the pile of books under his arm. “Is something wrong? Do you feel sick, or did you get into trouble?”

  “Nothing like that,” Willow hastens to assure him. “It was just really quiet today, so they le
t me out early.”

  “Good.” David nods. “We can walk home together. I wanted to—Stephen, what are you doing here?” He greets the tall, slightly disheveled man who’s wandered over their way.

  “David, how are you?” Stephen shakes his hand. “You know, I had no idea I was going to be here. If I had, I would have e-mailed you ahead of time and let you know.”

  Willow has no clue who this Stephen is. She’s never seen him before, and she waits patiently for David to introduce her.

  “So what’s going on with you?” David asks.

  “I’m interviewing at some local colleges, and I thought I’d stop by here and take a look around the department.” Stephen makes a rueful face. “I heard they might be needing someone next fall.”

  “Yeah, you know, I think there is something opening up.” David looks thoughtful. “But it’s a little junior for you.”

  “Get out of here, I’ll take anything. Hey! I heard that you were married. Is that possibly true?”

  “Married with a kid.” David nods. “Can you believe it? Remember Cathy? We got married. We have a daughter. Isabelle.”

  “Good God! It’s only been about a year and a half since I last saw you! It’s incredible how things can change in such a short time! What else has happened since then?”

  Willow looks at her brother anxiously. She knows how uncomfortable this question must make him, how much pain it will give him to answer.

  “Yes, it’s amazing what can change in such a short time,” David says after an appreciable pause.

  “Like what else could possibly happen besides getting married and becoming a father?” Stephen laughs. “Please don’t tell me that you’ve got tenure already—even you’re not that much of a prodigy.”

  “God no, I wish.” David laughs along with him.

  Willow is the one who is amazed. It’s true that she was not looking forward to David reciting the litany of woe that has been heaped upon him since he last saw this guy, that she was worried about how it would affect him . . . but for him to say nothing?

  “And who’s this?” Stephen looks at her. “A student?”

  “Oh sorry, I’m not thinking clearly today. Stephen, this is my sister, Willow.”

  “Your sister!” Stephen extends his hand. “Do you go to school here?”

  “No, I—”

  “Willow’s living with me and Cathy now,” David interrupts. But that’s all he says. He offers no explanation as to why this is so.

  “That must be fun for you.” Stephen smiles at her. “God, when I was a teenager I would have given anything to get out from under my parents. Speaking of which, I didn’t even think to ask, how are your parents? You know it’s been ages since I spoke with them, but I’ll never forget that recommendation your father wrote for me. It was years ago, but I still think about it, and him too.”

  Willow closes her eyes for a second. Stephen’s careless good cheer is just awful under the circumstances. She steps closer to her brother. She wants to take his hand, reassure him by some gesture if possible, do somethingto support him through this ordeal. Unlike a few moments ago, there is no way he can avoid answering this with anything less than the full and brutal truth. The silence stretches out, Stephen looks at David expectantly.

  “He . . . He thought very highly of you,” David says finally. That is allthat he says.

  Willow is stunned. She can’t believe it. She honestly can’t believe it! Why didn’t David tell him what happened? Why didn’t he let Stephen know that the man he admired so much is gone? Gone! His wife with him. That Willow was there at the end. That she was driving. That the reason she lives with David and Cathy is not to get out from under their parents,but because their parents are dead?

  What is wrong with him? Why is he in such God-awful denial?

  For once, Willow is angry with her brother. Furious, in fact. What is he hiding from? Why is he always, always acting as if nothing ever happened?

  Something inside her snaps. Gone is the girl who’s desperate to make his life better. She is not the same person who left the house that morning. She no longer has the desire to flatter him on the off chance of seeing him smile, she couldn’t care less about finding him a book in the vain hopes of making him feel better. She has no wish to comfort him—or worse, collude with him in his rejection of the facts. At that moment she almost hates him. Almost as much as he must hate her.

  She’s desperate to set the record straight. To say . . . No, to yellthe truth in her loudest voice. She’ll do it too.

  Sorry, Stephen, David’s not letting you in on all the details! Our parents are dead. I killed them. That’s why I’m living with him and his wife, because I killed our parents! Okay? That’s what’s happened in the past year!

  Unfortunately it’s not so simple to break the training of seventeen years. Willow can’t, she simply can’t just stand in the middle of campus and start shouting at the top of her lungs.

  If only there was someone she knew walking around. Laurie, say. Or Andy, even better. Someone she could grab and introduce to David. Someone to whom she could tell her version of events while David and his friend stood there and listened.

  Willow looks around wildly, but of course, nobody she knows is around. She’s simmering with rage, completely powerless to do what she wants. She just stands there and listens to David’s stupid friend carry on about his stupid job search.

  “So, I’m hoping that I can get something around here, I mean I’m from this area originally and . . .”

  Suddenly Willow has an idea. She knows just what to do to shock David out of his complacency, to force him to tell Stephen the truth about their situation. Forget about not wanting to remind him that he is the parent now, forget about trying to spare him! She rummages frantically in her bag. “Here,” she says loudly, as loudly as she dares, interrupting Stephen mid-sentence. “Here!” she repeats, thrusting the quiz under David’s nose. “You need to sign this!”

  Both men look startled.

  Good!!

  “Go on, David,” Willow insists, shoving a pen into David’s hand. “You have to sign this for me. I need a parent or legal guardianto sign it.” She looks triumphantly back and forth between her brother and his friend, expecting Stephen to ask what she means by legal guardian, expecting David to look stricken with horror.

  But the moment has fallen flat. Stephen does not seem to have picked up on the key words, and David is too busy studying the quiz to pay her much attention. It’s true that as the meaning of the paper sinks in, he looks concerned, but it’s also clear that unlike Willow, he has no intention of making a scene in front of his friend. She realizes that the only thing she has accomplished is looking crazy, or at the very least, extremely rude.

  “I should get going,” Stephen says after an uncomfortable pause.

  “Best of luck with the job search,” David says as he scribbles his signature on the quiz and hands it back to Willow.

  Willow watches Stephen walk off with a twisted little smile on her face. Maybe her actions didn’t have quite the effect that she wanted, but still, she’s sure that there will have to be some reckoning now. She has to believe that David will finally give her hell. Not just for failing a quiz, but also for being so incredibly ill-mannered. And once he does, she’ll have her opportunity. At last they’ll be able to get things out in the open.

  “Let’s go home,” David says after a moment. It’s abundantly clear from the expression on his face and the tone of his voice that he’s livid. But it’s also clear that he has no intention of calling Willow on either her behavior, or her grades. He doesn’t even look her way as he heads out of the campus gates and toward the park.

  And Willow really has no other choice but to follow silently after him.

  “Well, you two are home early,” Cathy calls out from the kitchen as they walk into the apartment. “Good, I’m starving—in fact, I already ordered.”

  “Hi, Cath,” David says, coming into the kitchen. He puts his books do
wn on the table, then goes to Isabelle’s high chair to gives her a kiss before turning to his wife and wrapping his arms around her.

  “I hope you’re up for Japanese.” Cathy smiles over David’s shoulder at Willow, who has followed him into the kitchen. “It should be here any minute.”

  “Great,” Willow says as unenthusiastically as possible. She wishes she could get away from them, go up to her room and be alone for a while. But clearly that’s not on. There simply isn’t time before they all sit down to eat. She’ll just have to try to act like everything’s fine, just like she always does, except she doesn’t think that she’ll be able to tonight, not after what just happened.

  “Oh, you know what else?” Cathy continues, handing Willow place mats and cutlery. “Markie called again. I got the feeling that she’d really like to hear from you.”

  “Huh.” Willow could hardly give less of a response. She starts laying the place mats and silverware around the table, dumping David’s books unceremoniously on the floor as she does so.

  “There’s the food,” Cathy says as the doorbell rings. She hurries to answer it.

  “It would probably be good for you to see Markie,” David remarks as he gets some plates from the cupboard and joins Willow in setting the table. “Why haven’t you been returning her calls?” He almost trips over the pile of books, but manages to grab the table just in time. David picks them up with a frown and puts them on one of the empty chairs, then sits down and puts his napkin on his lap.

  Is that all he’s going to say to her? He’s still not going to mention what just happened? She finds it incredible that he’s not even bringing up the quiz. After all, her schoolwork is the one thing he has been able to talk to her about. Maybe the scene rattled him more than she thought.

  Good.

  “Because she doesn’t get what it’s like to be an orphan,” Willow replies after a moment. She bites each word off succinctly. She sits down on the opposite side of the table from David, crosses her arms over her chest, and looks at him evenly.

  Now, this isn’t the whole reason that Willow has lost touch with her old friends, but she wants to state their situation as baldly as possible. She wants to rub David’s face in it, get a reaction out of him. Somehow, some way, she’s going to force him to respond.