Waiting (4 page)

He pushed the door open. I could see our parents in
bed. He pulled me to the closet. Their big walk-in closet. Opened that door. Led me in. Closed the door. I could smell the leather of Daddy’s shoes and Mom’s perfume.

He flicked on the flashlight.

“Look.” The beam of light circled the tippy-top of the closet. Christmas presents. Wrapped already. Way up there. “Santa’s been here.” He lighted the presents again.

“How do you know it was Santa?” My voice was a growl.

“Right there. See?”

I saw.
FROM SANTA
in black marker.

Zach flipped off the light. We stood in the dark closet.

The space smelling of our parents. I felt disappointed. I had thought, well, that Santa
did
work at the North Pole.

That he brought things from there on Christmas Eve.

Not that he stored presents in my parents’ closet.

I felt Zachy’s hand. He tugged me out into the bedroom, out the door, back down the hall. He tucked me into bed.

“We won’t tell them we know,” he said.

And we never did.

Mom is in
her room. I knew she would be when I stood on the front porch and watched Daddy leave. I open her door, which is closed almost all the way, remembering that Santa night even though we lived in a different house then.

“Mom?”

She moves in bed. I can see she’s lying on top of the covers. She’s fully dressed, so that means she’s been out.

But she doesn’t answer.

“Daddy wanted me to look in on you. Is there anything I can get for you?”

Nothing.

She hasn’t spoken to me in months. Not when it’s just the two of us. Not when Daddy is home. Not at all, not at all, not at all.

“He’s put dinner on,” I say.

Has she plugged her ears?

Does she hear me?

Do my words make their way to her?

I see her roll over, turn her back to me.

A part of me wants to run in there. Run in and shake Mom. Scream in her face. Make her SEE me. I touch my throat, squeeze my eyes shut. Turn around and pull the door to, leaving it cracked open just a bit.

I finish making
dinner—glass pitcher of iced tea cooling in the fridge, brown-and-serve rolls ready to bake as soon as Daddy gets home, a Sara Lee pie pulled out of the freezer to thaw.

It’s quiet here. Like I live all alone. The house breathes opposite me, breathing in when I breathe out. Presses its memories on me. If walls could talk, what would these walls say? Would they close their eyes to memories, like I want to?

When I can’t stand it, I turn on some music, classical, so soft it can’t be heard down the hall.

Sometimes, when it’s late, really late, I’ll pull out some of Zach’s music. I hid his iPod when Daddy searched my brother’s room for answers. I don’t listen often. But on a night like this, maybe someone else’s wailing will help me

out.

I dream he’s
alive.

He wakes me with a low, “London.” I cover my face, hide my nose from his breath that is cold as frost. “I’m okay,” he says. “I promise. Come with me.”

“You’re taller,” I say.

He nods. “Maybe,” he says. “Anything is possible here.”

“Where?” I say. And I’m up, following him. “Where?”

I open my eyes when my feet touch the floor.

He’s gone.

Zachy was so
good-looking, even grown women did a double take when they saw him.

His hair was blond (mine is sandy-colored with a highlight of auburn)

his eyes so blue they made you think
fake
and he was way taller than me, more than six three. He might have kept growing forever if he’d stayed alive.

But the best part of my brother was when he was happy, and he was, mostly—though there were times— how he would throw back his head and laugh.

No one had a laugh like that.

Daddy misses dinner.
Again.

(This never happened Before.)

Mom eats in her room with a bottle of wine I didn’t even know we had.

It’s me

alone

looking at three empty chairs and wondering.

“Why do I even bother to eat?” I ask Zach’s chair. “I can hardly do it.”

And that’s true.

It takes real effort to lift the fork open my mouth chew swallow breathe lift the fork open my mouth chew swallow breathe lift the fork . . . you get the picture.

And if there isn’t anyone to help by just being there, well, what’s the use?

So in the end I just eat a huge slice of Sara Lee pie.

“Before you get it, Zach,” I say. My voice is a whisper, but I can imagine him reaching for that pie, eating it from the tin, and Mom laughing. “Before you hog it all.”

I’m doing my
homework at Zach’s desk when the phone rings.

(Right after, there were a lot of people who called.

And then they found out more and the calls stopped coming. People didn’t know what to say. At church they wouldn’t look any of us in the eye.)

It’s weird hearing the phone ring.

I stand, step into the hall, and I hear Mom answer,

“Hello?”

Her voice is soft as warm air. I can almost see her in my head, in her room in the dark, sitting on the edge of her bed, hair a bit messy from lying down.

“Yes, she lives here.”

She?

Me?

“Yes, I’ll get her.”

I stop walking.

She’ll get me? She’ll get me? That means, that means, she’ll have to call for me. I don’t move. Can’t move.

I can hear sounds coming from her room, but I don’t volunteer anything. Just wait. Wait. Wait.

She says nothing.

I’m still.

I hear her settle on her bed.

My stomach is thin as paper.

After a while the phone starts that loud beeping sound, and I turn and go back to Zach’s room, where I crawl under the desk and sit where his feet used to be.

“Jesus,” our pastor
says, “is the answer.”

He says it to a room full of people. We sit in the front, just me and Daddy, almost alone . . . except for the Smiths at the far end of our pew. (People are afraid. Don’t look and it won’t happen to you.)

Taylor Curtis sits in the choir seats opposite me here in the congregation. Mom’s not here. She quit church months ago. Anyway, he’s seventeen and has blond hair and this big smile and eyes such a pale green that in black-and-white pictures he looks crazy.

No one knows this except Zach—I mean he
knew
it— but I think I loved Taylor before he decided he wanted to be with Heather Nelson.

“I’ll beat the crap out of him if you want me to,” Zach said. “Look at this.” He showed me his muscles. Flexed. Tried to make me laugh. “Long skinny muscles can pack a punch. Want me to bust his butt?” They were friends, my brother and Taylor. Good friends. On the football team together.

“WWJD?” I had said.

“Probably send Taylor’s soul into a herd of pigs that would leap off a cliff and drown in the sea below.” I had laughed then, though I’d been crying before.

Now Taylor looks at me and he lifts his eyebrows, something he did when we made out, like he’s asking if I want to meet him again.

No.

No. Way.

Even though kissing right now might make me feel better. For sure would make me feel less lonely.

“He’s right,” Daddy says in a whisper, his hands folded in his lap like he might be praying when he isn’t talking, and for a minute I think he means Taylor was right to like Heather (it didn’t last long). “Jesus
is
the answer.”

Oh.

“He
is
the answer.” And to hear him say it, why, I know, I know, he believes, even if he carries the whole Castle family belief on his own back.

Every day.

Every
day is the same

is like the other

they run into one another

look alike.

I can’t tell a Monday from a Thursday

only the sadness links me to them.

In school, in
English, that beautiful guy is back.

I get there early to watch for him. Hurry so I can see him walk into class. And when he strides into the room, his jeans hitched a little low, that shirt open so anyone can see his throat, I know why vampires want to bite necks. My face colors at this stupid thought.

He’s opposite of what I’m used to—of light-haired Taylor.

He’s dark-eyed, with nut-colored hair that’s trimmed short. He’s lean, not football hardened.

I can’t stop looking at him.

“Hey, Jesse.”

It’s Lauren Hopkins. She’s run in after him, linked her arm with his, and now she slides down the aisle with him. He glances right at me, just for a moment. Shows a bit of his teeth in an almost-smile. Then looks down at her.