Read All You Never Wanted Online
Authors: Adele Griffin
All You Never Wanted (24 page)
Outside, she sees that most of the cars are gone. The house looks bright but abandoned. What time is it? Three? Four? So late that it’s almost morning.
“Give me a few minutes,” she murmurs as they cut up the lawn. “Don’t leave without me.”
“Never. I’ll be the unsure, hopeful guy standing by my car.” He means it, too. He means everything he says.
She might love him already. Now is not the time to think about this.
The party has cleared. Nobody’s here. She doesn’t see Joshua’s truck—a relief. She refuses to reassess the destruction. She looks neither right nor left as she ghosts up the stairs. It’s as if she’d lived here a hundred years ago. She knows all the rooms, but doesn’t belong in any of them.
In her bedroom, she selects a small travel bag from her closet and piles in some jeans, T-shirts, underwear. Sunglasses and hiking boots. Enough for a week or two.
The scrap of paper is still mashed like a gum wrapper in her pocketbook. She smooths it out as she perches at her laptop. Her email to Penelope is simple, but enough—it won’t take much to get the full warmth and intelligence of Penelope’s focus.
I’m going away for a couple of weeks. Will you keep an eye on Len H. and Marisol F. for me? They both need the extra attention
.
When I come back, I’d love to meet up. If you still want to
.
Send. That’s it. She’ll call her mother later in the morning, as they cross each other in transit from opposite sides of the country. She shuts down the computer and leaves her room.
Thea is standing in the hall. Shadowy, silent, catlike. Waiting. She must have heard her. She looks altered. Her eyes are
unblinking, hazy as they focus on a middle distance, lost. As she takes in Alex’s bag, she snaps to life. “Where are you going?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Where are you going?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“But you can’t go!”
“Thea, what’s wrong?” Her sister’s hair is tangled and her eyes are red-raw and her bottom lip is swollen. Was that all Gabby? “You said you only got a couple of scratches. What did that girl
do
to you?”
“It wasn’t Gabby. Something else … something else. Alex, don’t leave me, please!” Thea’s voice is so shrill. It’s the voice of her childhood. A voice raised against the monsters and thunderstorms.
“What?” Alex feels her big-sister self at once. Her old job, to comfort and protect. “Thealonious. Tell me what happened.” She drops her bag. Gripping her sister’s upper arms, facing her, mirroring her. Looking into their deepest, shared self.
Thea whispers it. Alex stares. What has she heard? No.
Thea nods.
“What. You can’t. Don’t. No.” Alex is shaking her head. Her own words aren’t right. She has no answer for what Thea has spoken. Her hand reaches to clap the thin stem of her sister’s neck. Drawing her in. “Thea, look at me. You can’t. You can’t … where is he?”
But Thea’s in a fog again, a zombie. Alex pushes her aside, sprinting the endless nightmare of gold carpet to her sister’s bedroom, but of course there’s no Joshua, there’s nothing, nothing but a messed-up bed and the acrid singe of silk.
It’s the scarf, burned black against the tip of the bald lamp bulb. Alex snaps off the light and her mind is chilled from it. A dread of the possibility of truth in what Thea has said.
Butit’snotrue liarliar sheliesabouteverything
.
Thea hovers in the doorway. Alex can’t read her expression.
“Where is he? Where has he gone?”
“He left. He got scared. Maybe he’s scared of what I’ll say.”
Alex feels her brain spinning like a kaleidoscope. Red and green and blue. Splinters re-forming again and again into abstraction. No picture makes any sense. “Thea. Listen to me. I love you. Promise me you are telling the truth.”
“Yeah,” her sister answers. “I am. It’s true.” Her face could be stone.
“Please. This is not just about you. This is a whole different thing.”
“You turned against me,” Thea says. “You turned against me when you should have been protecting me.”
“Say it again. Out loud, Thea.”
“I’ve said it once.”
“Say it again.”
“You heard me the first time.”
“Say it twice and I’ll know it’s true.”
Her sister won’t do it. She doesn’t follow rules. Never has. Can’t now.
Nottrue. Nottrue
.
She should stay. She can’t stay. Thea has become something other. Alex has nothing to do with this. She won’t accept this twisted invitation on Thea’s terms. She needs her own oxygen first. “Listen to me. Mom and Arthur are on the red-eye. They’ll
be home any minute. I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ve ever been so sorry. But I’m going.”
Her eyes stinging, stumbling with her bag, dizzy. It’s not until she’s halfway down the hall that Thea breaks. “Alex! Stop! Don’t you dare! Don’t abandon me like this! If you go, Alex, I don’t have anybody! Listen to me!”
Alex has turned the handle. She is out the door.
Outside, the sky is the most beautiful color she’s ever seen. Not black, not indigo. It is the violet between night and dawn.
And Xander is standing by his car. Just like he said he would.
The future is clean. She doesn’t know what happens next, and she’s okay with that. She can work on being okay.
The new day will open and they will live visibly and together inside it.
“I was thinking we could go explore Muir Woods,” says Xander. “And the lava beds on Medicine Lake. The old Point Loma Lighthouse. Every road trip deserves one lighthouse. Tell me what you want to see and we’ll go see that, too.”
“I want to see the weather,” she says. “For Len.”
“Yes.” Xander nods. “We’ll find him all the best weather. We’ll snap pictures. We’ll check wind and precipitation.”
“And we’ll file reports.” She smiles, leans back. So much to take in, so much to give back. The balance is out there. And now, so is she.
Ms. Grange / Freshman English Comp.
Joined
by Theodora Eve Parrott
Late. I lie in bed and wait for thunder. I am seven years old. I am awake and too cold. I count three
Mississippis
to the next boom. It shakes my bed. If I finish one whole week of sleeping through the night—no leaving my room, no hiding in my parents’ bed—then I will get a Miss Biscuit Backpack. All my friends have Miss Biscuit Backpacks. I am one sleep away from getting mine.
But. This thunderstorm might be more than I can bear.
Nothing scares Alexandra. She doesn’t even use a night-light. She understands about the backpack because she knows how hard I want what the other girls have.
What she doesn’t understand is why anyone would be scared of thunder.
Lightning electrocutes the room. My fingers my bureau my lamp my desk my brain explode into light and cut black again. I can’t be alone for the next boom. No. No way. I jump out of bed. I run.
When she hears me, Alex bounces up like she’s on a spring. My words skitter. “Scared I’m scared Alex please please please let me please get in with you?”
She flips down the sheet like an envelope. I slip inside and she folds me up.
Under the covers, my head on her pillow, I’m brave Thea.
Scaredy-cat Thea is still in my bedroom. All alone, where she should be.
I breathe in my love of Alex’s room. She picks up her things. Her sheets aren’t wadded and scratchy. In the orderly darkness, I tell her my problems and she makes them right because she is old.
“Go to sleep,” she says when I’m done.
“I can’t. I have more in me.”
“Tell them.”
“The other day, I spilled fruit punch and it stained the dining room carpet.”
“That carpet’s got lots of stains already.”
“Pablo’s water was empty today when I came home from school.”
“Did you fill it?”
“Yes. But. He must have been thirsty for hours.”
“He’ll be okay. Pablo’s a tough hamster.”
“What if I forget again and I don’t remember till I’m at school?”
“Why don’t you put a sticky note on your door to remind you?”
That’s a good idea.
The patter of the rain has softened.
Alex falls asleep facing me. Her hand is warm on my hip. It will stay like we’re joined there till I move it. I won’t move it.
More light, a thunderclap. But this time I’m ready.
This time, my sister’s breath on my cheek reminds me that she’s here, she’s here, she’s here … and I close my eyes without fear, knowing she’s all I’ll ever need.
I remember finishing the first draft of
All You Never Wanted—
originally on my desktop as greenwich-sisters-story.doc—and feeling pretty vulnerable about it. While I knew that the story was deeply felt, I’d now hit a place where I could see it only for its flaws. It’s hard to ask for help, and yet nearly every writer experiences the frustration of the first draft, when the story in our head is a distant horizon from the story on the page. And so I asked, leaning particularly hard on the counsel of Meredith Kaffel, Courtney Sheinmel, and Sara Zarr. Their phone calls, emails, notes, and incisive suggestions mark every moment of this story. I am also grateful for the steadfast affirmation of my editor, Erin Clarke, and her meticulous care of the material as we shaped it. Thank you all so much.
I’m also very lucky to get to be part of the incredible positive energy of Sarah Mlynowski and her writers’ lounge. To land there—with my laptop and a couple of dollars for the lunch pool—is also to find a haven, a generous source of shared ideas and strong opinions on everything from jacket images to pizza toppings. While so much of writing is a solitary process, a writing community, at its best, makes this profession not just worthwhile, but exuberant.
ADELE GRIFFIN
, a two-time National Book Award finalist (
Where I Want to Be
and
Sons of Liberty
), is the acclaimed author of
Tighter, The Julian Game, Picture the Dead
, the Vampire Island series, and many other books for young readers.
Adele lives with her husband and young daughter in Brooklyn, New York. Please visit her on the Web at
adelegriffin.com
.
