Some Kind of Happiness (21 page)

Grandma is sick.

I hate Grandpa.

There are no pictures of me on the wall outside their bedroom.

To them, I do not really exist.

•  •  •

No one makes me come down for dinner.

Perhaps they do not want me there.

Fine. That is just fine with me.

I will lie here in my bed with the window open and listen to the trees talking to me, and they will tell me everyone's secrets, and when I finally go downstairs, I will know everything there is to know, and no one will be able to frighten me.

Not even Grandpa. Not even Grandma.

No one.

I cuddle my pillow, the one I brought from home. It smells like our apartment.

Someone knocks on my door. I do not answer.

“Finley?”

It is Grandpa. My heart pounds itself back to life, but I do not move. He cracks open the door and steps inside.

“I owe you an apology,” he says quietly. “I'm sorry I frightened you. I frightened
me
.”

I do not answer.

“But you can't see those boys anymore. All right, Finley? I won't budge on that, and neither will your grandmother.”

The clock on my nightstand ticks, ticks, ticks. “If I do—”

“You won't,” Grandpa interrupts.

“If I do—”

“Finley.”

“Will you make everyone stop talking to me, like Grandma did to Dad?”

Tick, tick.

Tick, tick.

“Good night, Finley,” says Grandpa. His voice is a closed door.

When he's gone, I close my eyes and listen to the trees talking.

What do I do?
I ask them.

What do I do?

What do I do now?

Then I lie very still and wait for an answer.

NE MORNING THE QUEEN OF
the Everwood awoke to a dark sky.

The trees around her were completely bare. She lay on a nest of brittle, gray leaves. Everything she touched crumbled to ash.

She drew her cloak about her and shivered.

Someone, somewhere was watching her.

“Hello?” she called out into the gloom.

“Your friends are not here,” came a low voice. There was a fluttering of wings, a soft, cold breeze against the queen's skin.

A crow landed on a nearby branch, its feathers as sharp as its black beak.

The queen reached for the pocket where she kept the dagger.

It was empty.

The crow watched coldly.

“What do you want?” asked the queen.

“I want you to leave here,” replied the crow, “and never come back.”

“Leave? Leave the Everwood?”

The crow inclined its shining head.

“But why? I am the queen.”

“Queen?” The crow let out a small, rough laugh. “A crown does not make a queen.”

“But they chose me.”

“Who did? Your friends? Of course they did. They don't know what you carry inside you.”

The queen bristled. “And you do?”

“Only you can truly know.”

“Then what are you doing here? If you're not going to help me, leave.”

Howls, hungry and fierce, made the queen whirl. She expected to see bared teeth and glowing eyes, but she saw only trees bending in the wind. Gray leaves fell; the air smelled of smoke.

The crow perched on the queen's knee. “Child,” it said, “they are coming.”

“Who? How can I stop them?”

With its beak the crow pulled aside the queen's collar.

There, over her heart, beneath her skin, roiled a shifting darkness.

The queen recoiled. “What is that?”

“You know better than I do,” said the crow. Then it pecked her chest, and with each strike it drew out strings of darkness like tar from a pool.

The queen shuddered to look at this thing inside herself. She hated the sight of it.

When the crow began to gasp and heave, she shoved it away. Its feathers cut her fingers.

“It's hurting you,” said the queen. “Please, stop.”

“It hurts me only because you are fighting me,” explained the crow. “Do not be afraid of yourself. We are all both light and dark. We are both joy and—”

“This darkness is not me,” snapped the queen. “You know not of what you speak.”

The crow regarded her calmly, and the pity on its face was too much for the queen to bear. She turned away. “Leave me, I said. You know nothing.”

“I know we might already be too late,” said the crow, and it glided away into the night.

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A HART

• You look pretty even after sprinting across a forest.

• You look completely unaffected even when you are up to your eyeballs in garbage that smells like feet and rotten eggs.

• If something is wrong with you, it must be fixed.

O
N THE
F
OURTH OF
J
ULY,
Dex cracks under pressure.

Upon questioning him, Aunt Bridget discovers that, on top of befriending the Baileys, we have also been visiting the Bone House.

When she tells Grandma and Grandpa, I am standing right there in front of them.

Aunt Bridget shoots me concerned looks I can see out of the corner of my eye, but I do not look back at her.

Traitor. I thought she loved me, and here she is, ruining everything.

Walking in on Grandma's shot was bad, but this is worse. Grandma does not get angry or make threats. She smooths down her shirt and says, “I'm so disappointed in you that I can hardly think, Finley.”

“Candace, hold on,” Grandpa begins. “She doesn't know—”

“Go upstairs to your room, right now.” Grandma turns away, as though she cannot stand looking at me. “We'll speak about this later.”

But we don't speak about it. Not that night, watching the fireworks in town.

(Everyone laughing, everyone gasping and pointing—except for me. Except for Grandma and Grandpa.)

Not the next night either.

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A HART

• If something is wrong with you, it must be fixed. Quietly.

•  •  •

It has been decided that, considering recent events, something really ought to be done about me.

It's not that I am a bad kid.

But I am problematic.

I hear Grandma say so. Over the next couple of days, Hart House is full of whispers:

Before Finley came, our grandchildren never—
never
—associated with white trash like the Bailey boys. They would never have even thought of it.

Before Finley came, our grandchildren would
never
have wandered off into those dangerous woods. All the way back to That House, can you believe it?

“That House” is obviously the Bone House. For some reason Grandma and Grandpa speak about it in code words, but it's obvious what they mean.

(But why wouldn't they just say the Travers house?)

(Why do they not speak about my heroic aunts? The Hart girls: Wonder Woman times three!)

Did you know? I found Finley in the bathroom the other night, crouching in front of the toilet. She said it was a stomachache, but I don't believe her.

How can you believe someone who has been sneaking her cousins off into the woods like a bunch of delinquents?

Do you think she got into the liquor? Those Bailey boys might have put her up to it. I wouldn't put it past them.

That notebook of hers . . . if she's not dragging her cousins through the woods, she's making lists in her notebook. She has pages and pages of them.

Isn't that a bit obsessive?

Doesn't she strike you as somewhat . . . troubled? Gretchen says Finley writes in her notebook to keep from being sad.

What does that mean? Sad about what? Has she said anything to you? Why doesn't she say anything?

She's so different from us.

Lewis was always quiet too, and look what happened with him. He left us. He was never like the rest of us.

I think it would be best if—

Plus, it would get her out of her head—

And we should keep the other kids away from her, for a while—

Don't you think?

It's for the best.

•  •  •

“It” is meeting with a children's psychologist once a week.

All I know about psychologists is that they treat people who have something wrong with their brains.

(Twelve-letter word for “Freud, for example.”)

On Thursday, Grandma sits in Grandpa's office and tells Dad about the situation over the phone.

I sit in the hallway outside the closed glass doors and watch her, trying to read her lips.

I hope this makes her uncomfortable.

After ten minutes Grandma opens the door. “Your father wants to speak with you.”

I take the phone. “Dad?”

“Fin. Finley, sweetheart, what were you thinking?”

My eyes fill up with tears. “What do you mean?”

“The Baileys, Fin. I told you not to be friends with them. I told you your grandparents wouldn't like it.”

I can practically hear him running his hand through his hair, over and over.

“Dad, I'm sorry, but we didn't do anything wrong. We were playing.”

“And taking your cousins to some strange house late at night?”

“The Bone House isn't strange. It's just lonely.”

There is a pause so long and heavy that I feel it against my skin.

“I know, Fin,” Dad says at last. “I know.”

“Grandma and Grandpa think I should go see a psychologist.”

Another sigh. “Yeah. She told me. Do you think that would help?”

“Help what?”

“Your mom and I will drive down and come with you.”

No.

(I am not broken.)

No.

(I am not one of their problems.)

I start pacing. I want to kick Grandpa's books off the shelves. “There's nothing wrong with me.”

“Nobody's saying that. But maybe talking to someone will help you figure out some things. We've been thinking for some time now that it might be a good idea for all of us to go, together. Maybe this is some kind of sign.”

“Like what? Help me figure out what things?”

“Like your notebook.”

“What's wrong with my notebook?”

“Your grandma says you write it in constantly.”

“Not that much. And it's not like she watches me 24/7.”

(I bet she will now.)

“You can also talk to the counselor about me and your mom. Anything you might be feeling in that regard. We can all talk together.”

“Stop using your professor voice, Dad.”

“We can drive down next week—”

No.
All of a sudden my heart goes wild with panic.

I won't listen to what they have to say. They won't come here. They
can't
. Because that might mean they are done talking. That they have worked out everything they could work out.

Because that will mean . . .

“If you come down here,” I tell him, “I won't go. I swear I won't.”

Dad switches off like a radio. I stare out the office window at the Everwood trees. They pull at me. I tap the glass.
Hello, trees.

“Your mom and I think it might help,” Dad says quietly. “We'll let you go alone, if that's what you want, but when you come home, maybe we can go with you. What do you say? I know this is a hard summer, for all of us—”