Some Kind of Happiness (19 page)

I am tired of adults with secrets in their voices.

“Yeah,” I say. “It's great.”

It is like someone has inserted a glass wall between us so we cannot touch each other, and I don't know where it came from, and I hate it.

“So,” Mom says, after a minute, “Finley. There's something I wanted to talk to you about, before we say good night.”

I twist the swing's ropes; the rough fibers bite into my palms.

I bet I know what she wants to talk about.

Her. Dad. Her and Dad, and me, and our house, and our things, and our family, and what will happen next. The fake smiles. The future. I'm not an idiot.

I will not listen to one word of it.

Behind me a door slams. I turn and see someone running down the hill from the Bailey house to the cluster of trees hiding the Post Office.

Jack.

I wave at him. Mom is talking, but I am not listening. I hear words—
your father
,
trying really hard
,
not working
—but I am not listening. I will not, I
cannot
.

I wave and wave at Jack. Jack, Jack, please see me.

He whistles like a mourning dove, which is the signal we use when we can't shout, to keep Grandma and Grandpa
from hearing. He waves at me to come down, and I can see his smile even in the dark.

This late, the Everwood crawls with shapes and shadows, but I am not afraid of them. Those shadows belong to me. I know just how they feel on my skin and in my hair and under my bare feet.

My Everwood may have secrets, but it never lies. Not to me.

“Mom, I have to go,” I say, and hang up without waiting for an answer.

ATE ONE NIGHT THE ORPHAN
girl awoke to find herself being blindfolded.

“Who's there?” she demanded. “What are your intentions?”

“You'll see,” came the voice of the lady knight.

As she was led through the Everwood, the orphan girl heard others—the champion, the young squires, the three Rotters.

“Are you scared?” asked the pirate captain, laughter in his voice.

“It will take much more than a blindfold to frighten me,” said the orphan girl boldly, and she felt pleased when the captain replied, “I know.”

When the blindfold was removed, the orphan girl found herself in the Wasteland, the Bone House a crooked shadow looming overhead.

The captain helped the orphan girl onto a large stump. The others gathered around her in a circle.

“Orphan girl,” the pirate said, “we have brought you here tonight to thank you for your bravery, your kindness, and your leadership. Without you, we would not have begun our adventures, and the Rotters would no doubt still be an object of scorn.”

“We have a crown!” cried the youngest pirate, who was immediately silenced by the young lady squire, who tackled him to the ground for talking out of turn. The champion, acting quickly, separated them, and then scolded the lady squire
for acting so undignified on such an important occasion.

“We do indeed have a crown,” continued the captain, once the moment of chaos had passed. “For you, orphan girl, deserve a grander title. You are not simply an orphan girl. You are our queen.”

Overcome, the orphan girl knelt on her throne. The young squires and the youngest pirate adorned her in necklaces made of paper flowers.

The pirate captain gave her a crown. A circle of twigs tied together with vines, it was a perfect fit for the orphan girl's head.

But she was an orphan girl no longer. She was a queen.

“I accept this crown,” the queen of the Everwood declared, “and pledge to you, my loyal subjects, that I will do everything in my power to protect you, and our Everwood, from whatever evil may lurk in the world.”

The knight blessed the queen's shoulders with her sword. The Rotters crowed their jubilation to the skies. The champion led a dance around the queen's throne.

Afterward the queen told them stories of the Everwood, from the lonely days when she still traveled on her own.

The dagger in her pocket shifted, sharpened. The queen felt the prick of its blade.

But she ignored it and what it might mean.

For the queen, as you can imagine, had never been happier than she was at this moment.

She even began to think her great sadness would now, at long last, disappear.

N
O
.

No.

No.

It is happening again.

I wake up, unable to move, pinned to my bed by something I cannot name.

My sheets are wet with sweat, and so am I.

My heart is racing, and so is my mind.

I imagine a spool of thread falling from Mom's hands as she sews a button back onto a tufted sofa cushion. The spool rolls away and away, down the stairs, its thread spinning loose faster and faster . . .

That is me right now.

I am so close to losing myself.

I cannot breathe very well; there is a giant clamp on my chest.

I lie still and try to think of what happened on Friday night:

My coronation.

My cousins surrounding me, dancing in my honor, and Jack, placing the crown on my head.

Think of that, Finley. Think of that.

Focus on those memories.

You were happy then, weren't you? You were, you were.

So why not now? Why do you feel so heavy
now
?

You are not the Travers family, dead and buried. You are not the Bone House, broken and alone.

You live in a mansion, with rooms full of people who have declared you to be their queen.

BUT.

(My brain screams this.)

BUT . . .

You will never be as pretty as Avery, or as brave as Gretchen, or as kind as Kennedy, or as funny and wild as Jack.

You are small and strange.

You are far from home.

You can't stop feeling sad. You are
wrong
. You are
weak
.

Your parents are getting a—

They are getting a—

A train horn howls in the distance. There are tracks near Hart House, somewhere through the woods. I keep hearing the horn, but I have not yet found the tracks. I imagine that I can hear the train's wheels turning, churning, chugging, and then the train's wheels are my heartbeat, and then . . .

I hurry toward the bathroom at the end of the hallway, the one I share with Avery.

I throw open the toilet-seat lid and kneel in front of it. Maybe I need to throw up.

But that's not it.

I do not know what
it
is.

I know I should be happy, and sleeping, but instead I feel like I do not fit in my own body.

A door opens.

Avery.

“Finley?”

Oh, Avery, why did you have to wake up? I do not want you to see me right now.

You cannot know. You cannot understand.

I
do not understand.

“Finley.” She sits beside me on the floor. “Are you sick?”

I shake my head.

“What's wrong?”

I whisper, “I don't know. I feel . . .”

How to finish that sentence?

I feel sad.

I feel heavy.

I feel itchy, and afraid, and out of breath, and like my brain is on fire, and nervous, and guilty for being nervous, and like I am about to cry.

Will I be like this forever?

I will, I will, I won't, I
can't
. Please.

Are you listening, whoever is in charge of such things? Please, do not do this to me.

I shake my head.

“What's going on here? Avery?”

A new voice. Grandma's voice.

Oh no. Grandma, in her peach silk robe, her hair clean and neat and white.

(So perfect, even at night?
How?
)

If Avery wouldn't understand, then Grandma . . . she might hate me.

She might be afraid of me, if she knew.

If she knew
what
? What
is
this? What is wrong with me?

She might make me leave, separate me from my cousins. From Aunt Bridget, with a heartbeat like mine.

“Finley's got a tummy ache,” says Avery. “Probably from all those cookies after dinner.”

Thank you, Avery. Thank you, thank you.

“Yeah.” I put a hand on my stomach. “I think I had, like, ten? At
least
.”

Grandma does not look convinced. She stares at me like I am a spot on her spotless white floor.

She is trying to hide it, but I can see. I am not a Hart, not to her, not ever.

Harts do not freak out for no reason in the middle of the night.

“Would you like some medicine?” asks Grandma. “Something to calm your stomach?”

“No, that's okay. I'm fine. I'll be fine.”

She fills a cup with water, gives it to me, feels my forehead, frowns, wipes her fingers on a hand towel, tries to hide the wiping, fails. I see, and I know what that means.

I do not blame her.

I would not want to be contaminated by me either.

“Drink up,” she says. “I'm sure you'll feel better in the morning.”

No, I won't.

“Okay.”

I never feel better.

(Not even now that I am queen.)

“Thanks, Grandma. Sorry to wake you up.”

“It isn't any trouble. Wake me if you have trouble getting back to sleep, all right?”

(As if I would ever bother her like that.)

Once Grandma has gone back to bed, everything is quiet. I can feel Avery looking at me, but I ignore her because I am so humiliated, I want to melt into the floor.

And I still cannot breathe quite right. I am still sweating, and still shaking, and I know what I look like right now because I have often examined myself in the mirror during such moments.

I look pale. Sick. Hollowed out.

Avery does not seem to care that I am ignoring her.

She scoots closer and pulls me into her arms, and even though I am sweaty, even when I start to cry, she holds on tight.

W
HAT DO YOU DO WHEN
you wake up in the middle of the night, in a house that is not yours, and lose yourself to the strange sadness and fear inside you worse than you ever have before, and humiliate yourself in front of your most terrifying family members?

If you are me, you sleep.

A lot.

•  •  •

On Sunday, I think maybe around lunchtime, Gretchen tiptoes into my dark room.

“Finley?” She sits on the bed, where I lie under a mountain of blankets. “Are you okay? Grandma said you got sick last night.”

If only it
were
some kind of sickness. Maybe I could take medicine or undergo a radical, experimental surgery.

Something to cut the sickness out.

But it isn't that.

It is sadness.

No reason to be sad. So many rational, listable reasons to not be sad.