Paper Valentine (16 page)

I nod. Then I get up and go down the hall into the bathroom. I take the little jelly glass from next to the toothpaste caddy, then bring it back to my room and tip it upside down on the floor.

Lillian settles herself across from me with her legs folded under her, reaching out to rest her fingers on the glass. When she tries to pull it closer to the center of the collage, though, her hand won’t make contact. It keeps slipping right through.

She shakes her head. “I can’t. You’ll have to do it yourself.”

I stare down at the glass, sitting in the middle of the floor. It suddenly looks very small and very stupid. “Will that work? Me by myself?”

I have a sinking fear that without Lillian to help me, the glass will sit motionless on the board and I will sit with it, staring as hard as I can, seeing nothing.

But it’s a groundless fear because the whispers are filling up the room, and even though the yard is dark and the moon is down, there are shadows moving on my wall now, stretching and squirming, reaching spidery fingers up toward the ceiling.

When the glass starts to move under my hands, it’s slow at first. Barely a jitter. Then it gathers speed, skimming fast and silent over the pasted-down letters. It takes all my concentration just to keep up with it. It keeps lurching like it wants to twitch out from under my hands.

“Who is this?” I whisper, barely breathing, not taking my eyes from the scraps of paper littering the floor. “Who’s here?”

The glass moves in a confident swoop, scraping across the floorboards to rest over the grainy newspaper photo of Cecily. Her picture smiles up at me with uncomplicated joy. There’s no suggestion of the bloody girl I saw reflected in Finny’s kitchen.

“Cecily,” I whisper. “Is there something you need to tell me? Something I’m not hearing? Please, do you know who killed you?”

The glass jerks in my hands, moving to circle no.

“Can you tell me anything about that day? What happened to you? Tell me about the person who killed you. What were they like?”

“Don’t confuse her,” whispers Lillian. “Try to keep it simple.”

The glass moves over the floor, slow and deliberate, pointing out the word nice. Then it glides back down to the jumbled alphabet. With slow, deliberate strokes it spells out not so nice.

“He changed once you were alone?”

The glass swerves hard, signaling no again and again, spiraling around it like a lost butterfly.

Lillian leans forward, mouth open, eyes fixed on the floor. “You mean, he didn’t change? How can he be nice and not nice at the same time?”

All at once, I’m surrounded by whispers so loud that they threaten to fill the whole sleeping house—a high rushing in my ears like static.

At the sound of Lillian’s voice, the glass turns ice-cold and I yank my hands away, tucking them under my chin. The pads of my fingers are burning.

The glass is still scraping over the morbid collage, moving on its own now. It sweeps wildly across the floor, and I sit with my back pressed hard against the sideboard of my bed and my knees pulled up, lacing my fingers together so tightly that the joints feel like they might come undone.

your friend, the invisible hand spells with terrible certainty and then starts over again. your friend, your friend. The glass moves in loops and spirals, picking out the letters and the jaggedly cut words. Pointing out the undeniable. your friend is dead.

Then, just as fast as it started, it stops. I’m suddenly aware of a dry, raspy noise and a moment later I realize it’s coming from me. My breath sounds like heavy sandpaper, scraping in and out. Lillian is sitting perfectly still, staring down at the board with her hands resting limply in her lap.

The glass sits motionless in the middle of my floor, shining wistfully in the light from the lamp. your friend. your friend is dead.

I clasp my hands tight against my chest, struggling with the realization that whoever was guiding the glass couldn’t see Lillian—didn’t know she was there until Lillian spoke directly to her—that maybe ghosts don’t ever see each other. That even in spirit form, a person can still encounter the horror of brushing up against something dead.

Across from me, Lillian’s expression is anguished. She’s got her arms wrapped tightly around herself, rocking back and forth in the dim light.

It’s there every single day, in every conversation and interaction. I think about it all the time. But even with all the awkward, roundabout ways that we allude to it, we never really acknowledge it. I think she’s always been able to just push it away and shut it out. We never talk about the fact that she’s dead.

Her rocking intensifies, panicked, frantic. Then all at once she closes her eyes and goes perfectly still, and it’s like I’m watching her swallow it, force it down until it disappears again.

She was always so good at knowing how to make things small. It was in the way she would never eat anything with her hands. Even sandwiches and muffins had to be cut apart into tiny pieces and eaten with a fork. Like if a bagel could be broken into small enough pieces, it would get so small that it just stopped existing. She did it with everything. Even me.

UNGROUNDED

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

O
n Friday, Pinky comes over with a box of plastic butterfly barrettes and a change of clothes to spend the night. When she shows up, I’m sitting on the couch with a damp dish towel draped over my shoulders like a cape, staring into space while Ariel sprawls on the floor, cutting up magazines to make a paper chain.

Since the night of the séance, the voices have gotten quieter. They haven’t disappeared, but at least the noise has settled down to a low hum, buzzing quietly from somewhere in the neighborhood of my jaw.

Pinky crosses the room and flops down next to me. “Can I brush your hair?” she says, reaching up and running her fingers through the end of my ponytail, which is definitely in need of brushing.

“I don’t know, maybe later. It’s too hot for anything right now.”

She shrugs and gives my ponytail one last pat, humming a vaguely bouncy tune under her breath. It sounds like “Camptown Races.”

For the next hour, Pinky and Ariel play Slaps and Lillian sits perched on top of the entertainment center, watching them.

“Another riveting night at the Wagner house,” she says, which is pretty hilarious considering it’s been months since she felt like doing anything fun, even before she died.

Still, I can’t help thinking that she kind of has a point.

“We want to go for ice cream,” Pinky says after they go through the cards a few times, slumping against my knees. “Will you take us to Dairy Queen?”

“I can’t,” I tell her, giving her a mock sad look that is also a real apology. “I’m grounded, remember?”

“Please,” Ariel says from the floor, lying prostrate at my feet. “Please just ask? Maybe she’ll let you go since it’s not really as good as being ungrounded. You’ll just be with us.”

Her voice isn’t shrill or overly dramatic. Not like normal Ariel, but more like she’s just asking for a favor, hoping for me to say yes. It’s weird, but the way she sounds reminds me of a conversation last winter, when everything seemed like it was never going to melt or thaw out. Like I would never feel warm or okay again.

* * *

We were all in the kitchen. Decker and my mom were making herbed roast beef with popovers, and Ariel was at the table doing her homework. I was sitting across from her with my notes spread out but not studying. I was flipping through my German book, pretending to memorize the unit vocabulary but at the same time, I wasn’t really doing anything. It was six weeks after Lillian died, and I still spent every day feeling like I was floating in midair and this was all just a long, ugly dream.

My mom was mixing the popover batter and talking quickly, in time to the rhythm of the stirring. The wire whisk clinked against the bowl. She was talking about me.

“I just don’t know—she keeps saying she’s fine, and what kind of things should we even be looking for? Her grades are okay. I mean, what am I supposed to do?”

“Mom,” Ariel said from the kitchen table, but my mom didn’t answer.

She just kept right on worrying to Decker, talking about me like she was alone in the room. Like I was some other species.

“Mom!”

“And she keeps up with school and chores and never gives anyone any trouble. She’s so good at coping with things, at adjusting.”

Ariel stood up from the table and slammed her geography book shut. “Mom. If Hannah was on fire, she would still say she’s okay.”

I think of this and how my mom spent all those months hovering over me, like she was so determined to do whatever she thought I needed, but Ariel was the one who actually just let me be sad, because she was the only one who understood that sometimes that’s the only thing you can be. My mom wanted me to go back to the girl I’d been before—the one who was never any trouble. Ariel was the one who wanted me to get better.

And there are so many things about her that drive me crazy sometimes. How she always plays the music too loud and doesn’t remember to wash her hands after eating Popsicles, and how she sometimes has a disturbing way of sounding exactly like our mom. But even when I was really sad, she never once tried to fix me, never treated me like a problem that needed to be solved.

* * *

She’s still lying on the floor, looking up at me and waiting for an answer.

Suddenly, I want more than anything for her to understand that I like being with her, and Pinky, too.

“Yeah,” I say. “That sounds fun.”

When I ask our mom, though, she frowns and shakes her head. “Honey, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

At first I think that this is still part of the conditions of my grounding. Since the night it happened, my mom and I have been almost unnaturally polite to each other, always smiling, but careful not to get in each other’s way.

But then she turns toward the street and looks out the window at the setting sun. Her mouth is thin, worried, and I know she’s thinking of other reasons for us not to go walking out in the neighborhood unsupervised.

Ariel has followed me into the kitchen and is standing with her shoulders slumped and her elbows splayed out, leaning on the back of a chair. “We won’t stay out late, I promise. We’ll go to Dairy Queen and come right back and not stop at the plaza or the park or talk to strangers.”

Which is the biggest lie ever, because Ariel is incapable of not talking to every single person she sees.

My mom sighs and clasps her hands, looking more nervous than usual. “I don’t want you walking over there alone,” she says. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“But we wouldn’t be alone,” says Ariel. “We’d be together.”

My mom shakes her head and her mouth goes pinched and small.

Ariel gets a fierce, stubborn look, and Pinky has begun her long process of sulking, which she uses like a superpower. They look cranky and restless, and the night is going to be miserable if we don’t get out of the house.

“I could call Finny,” I say. “I bet he’d come with us.”

Everyone stops and turns to look at me.

My mom is leaning over the kitchen island, chopping a handful of carrots, watching me with her eyebrows raised. “And who, pray tell, is Finny?”

I’m still debating the best way to answer that question when Ariel beats me to it. “He’s a boy from school.”

I expect her to say more, maybe even tell about the shoplifting or, God forbid, the hammock, but she just shrugs, trying her best to look casual. “I think he wants to be Hannah’s boyfriend.”

My mom freezes with her hand poised on the handle of the knife and her little pile of chopped carrot. Then she takes a deep breath and puts down the knife. “Oh, really? And how can you tell?”

She’s not directing any of her questions at me, and I can’t figure out if it’s because she doesn’t trust me to tell her the truth, or just because she knows that Ariel has a huge mouth.

The way Ariel stands with her hip cocked to one side and her eyebrows raised is nerve-racking. I’m so sure that we’re nearing the story of the hammock and I brace myself for an interrogation or possibly a sex-talk.

But again, Ariel surprises me. “He just likes her, and he talks to us at school sometimes. He’s nice,” she says, which makes my eyebrows sail up in spite of myself. Ariel is becoming a competent little liar. Either she’s not as put off by him as she pretends to be, or she really wants ice cream.

Pinky doesn’t say anything. She gives me a worried look, then stares down at her hands and stays out of it.

Ariel is expounding on Finny’s various finer qualities now, chattering on and on about my scraped knee, which is a story that’s designed to convince my mom that he is exactly the type of person she can trust to take us down to the Dairy Queen alone. “He’s really big and strong, almost as big as a senior. No one would hurt us, I promise.”

My mom isn’t listening to her anymore, though. She’s looking at me. “If you’re going to be spending a lot of time with this boy,” she says, “I want to meet him.”

I nod, and take out my phone. It had to happen eventually.

* * *

It takes Finny less than twenty minutes to show up at our house. When I open the door, he doesn’t say anything about my calling him out of the blue, or how long it’s been since we’ve seen each other, or why my hair looks like I styled it with a porcupine.

I invite him in, feeling unbearably awkward. “We can go in a second, but first I’m supposed to bring you in to say hi to my parents. Sorry.”

He shakes his head. “No big deal, I don’t mind.”

The way he looks at me is easy and warm, like everything is just that simple.

Then there’s a dry little throat-clearing noise behind me, and when I turn around, my mom is there, looking surprisingly tiny in the doorway.

“Finny,” she says in her painfully polite voice. “How nice to finally meet you.”

Like there is a level of importance to their meeting. Or a finally.

Decker is cooler about the whole thing. At least he’s trying to act normal. He watches us with his arms folded over his chest, and I can’t tell if he has any particular idea about Finny or if he just hates him.

Finny doesn’t seem intimidated, though. He crosses the living room. He offers his hand to Decker, and Decker takes it, giving him a sharp, searching look. I can tell that they’re gripping each other more tightly than is really necessary. The look they give each other is thoughtful, though, like maybe they’ve reached an understanding.

Before we leave, my mom makes us stand in a row in the driveway while she spritzes us all over with mosquito repellant. I close my eyes against the spray. Pinky just stands with her arms out and waits patiently until it’s over, but Ariel keeps making theatrical spitting noises, wincing at the taste.

“Ariel,” my mom says, lowering the can. “Keep your mouth closed.”

Finny raises his eyebrows, then starts to laugh, throwing his head back. My mom gives him a curious look, like she can’t quite fathom someone this rough and this big is standing in her driveway, laughing like no one’s even going to think it’s strange.

He shrugs another one of his big shrugs and I think he’ll leave it at that, but then he says, “It’s just funny, you telling her to shut her mouth. Because she doesn’t.”

I wait for my mom to say something about how this is serious and Ariel is being immature or irresponsible, but instead she just looks up at Finny and smiles back in a bemused way.

By the time we leave the house, the streetlights are on, making Sherwood Street look like nothing but a long row of tiny yellow moons stretching out into the distance. The sky is a clear, perfect shade of cobalt blue.

We’re only halfway down the block when Finny moves closer and reaches for my hand. The feeling of him next to me is so right, like something I never even knew I wanted. It’s funny, I used to hold hands with Lillian, because it was this thing we did. This way of showing that it was her and me. That we’d known each other forever and that she was always going to pick me first for everything. It was a way of being untouchable and also how she let everyone know who was her favorite, even before high school or middle school or boys.

Holding hands with Finny is different, and not just in the obvious ways. It’s easy, without all these symbols and meanings, like we are just holding hands because we want to.

Ariel glances at us and I think she’s going to make a scene, but then she links arms with Pinky and starts chattering to her about the orchestra assignment for next week.

At the Dairy Queen, we wait for our turn at the little window and I buy them hot-fudge sundaes and get myself a grape slush. Finny just gets a Coke and then we wander through the crowd, looking for a place to sit.

The evening is warm, and everyone in the neighborhood is hanging around the cluster of wooden picnic tables. By now, it’s been two weeks since anything’s happened, and I guess that a lot of Ludlow parents must be getting sick of constantly having their kids underfoot. Still, there are way more grown-ups around than you’d usually see in the summer.

I weave a path through crowds of laughing kids. The parking lot is full of cars, and the gutters are lined with crumpled napkins and ice-cream wrappers. Under it all, though, I can see scatterings of dark feathers.

Angelie and Carmen are sitting on one of the picnic tables, while a few feet away, Connor and Mike Lolordo wrestle on a little square of dying grass, struggling to see who can make the other one spill their shake. They’re clearly all here together, and I can’t help feeling a little disappointed that even though I’ve been grounded, no one called to see if I wanted to come with them.

Jessica is leaning against the side of the little brick building, frantically kissing Austin Dean, but as soon as she sees me, she pries herself away from him.

“Hannah,” she says with her lipgloss smeared halfway down the side of her mouth and a big fake Norma Desmond scream. “My God, it’s been so long I almost didn’t recognize you! Where have you been?”

She and Carmen both come clopping across the sidewalk in their wooden-heeled platforms to gather me up in frantic hugs, exclaiming over how long it’s been.

Angelie doesn’t stand up to meet me, though. She doesn’t even smile. “What did you do to your hair?”

My face feels very warm suddenly, and I can feel Finny and the girls and everyone just looking at me, waiting to see what I’ll do. “Nothing. I didn’t really think about it before I left the house is all.”

Connor laughs, taking his paper shake cup back from Mike and giving me a smile that might even be apologetic, but Angelie rolls her eyes and makes a breathy well, duh noise that prickles on my neck. “But seriously. You look like a crazy person.”

Then her gaze lands on Finny, who is standing back almost to the edge of the parking lot, with his hands in his pockets, like he’s trying not to take up so much space. “Oh my God, what’s he doing here?”

“He came with me,” I say, and even just saying it makes something soar in my chest. The fact that it’s true, that Finny is with me, makes my whole inside feel full of sunlight, and I smile without even meaning to.

Angelie turns back to face me, but her expression doesn’t change. “Really.”

“Hey, come on,” says Mike, whose dad owns a Toyota dealership and who once got a three-day suspension for hitting our art teacher with a huge gob of rubber cement in eighth grade. “You know girls are all about the bad boy. Hey, do you think maybe if I bleached my hair and started vandalizing street signs or something, Carmen would let me near those exquisite titties?”