“I . . . I can’t . . . ,” I began. “I don’t even know what to say.”
Jasper shrugged. “I’m not sure there’s really anything to say.”
“Have you talked to your sister since you left?”
“Yeah, I FaceTimed her the day after I left. The first night alone was really hard. I just wanted to talk to someone, you know?”
I nodded. “I can imagine, kind of.”
“I could tell she felt bad. She said I could come by for cash, if I need it. And I guess I will. But it doesn’t fix anything, not really.”
“I just . . . I don’t know how you ever feel better with all that hanging over you. Like, here you are eating pickles and enjoying them, even though you have this in your head, the whole time.”
Jasper chewed for a moment. “I guess sometimes you just do feel better. Like, you make a new friend or get a free piece of cake or enjoy a pickle, and that’s enough to make things feel okay for a while. Just because things are hard doesn’t mean life isn’t still full of good things. Right? The same way your brother died, but the pickles are still good to you too.”
“I guess,” I said.
“Like, this place”—she threw her hands around her—“is still beautiful, no matter what else is going on. Mostly I remember that.”
“And when you can’t remember that? When it’s too hard?”
“When it’s too hard, well . . . you play the sad game.”
“What’s that?”
Jasper shifted herself, got up on her knees. “It’s something my mom taught me to do. This one night at bedtime, I was sad about something, just in the normal little-kid way. Because someone wouldn’t play with me at school or whatever. You know, like that?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I went downstairs, and my mom was sitting there, listening to music in the living room, and I told her I was sad, and she said that, sometimes, fighting the sadness is worse than the sadness itself, because you just can’t win. And at those times, you play the sad game. Which is just trying to let yourself be sad. To be okay with being sad.”
“That doesn’t sound like much of a game,” I said.
“I know,” said Jasper. “But it actually kind of works, if you do it right. Like, that night, my mom put on this super slow song by a guy named Leonard Cohen, about a dove who keeps getting caught and sold. And she turned out the lights, and we lay there in the darkness on the couch together, listening to the sad moany song, and telling each other the saddest things we could think of. I fell asleep right there. And when I woke up in the morning, my mom was still holding me, and I couldn’t remember why I’d been so sad.”
“Huh,” I said. “That story is sweet. I’m not sure my mom would spend all night on the couch with me.”
Jasper nodded. “Well, to be fair, she was probably drunk. But it’s a nice memory. I think about it whenever I play the sad game alone, here at night. I go out on the porch and look at the trees blowing in the sky, or I listen to the cicadas, and I remember my mom, and just sort of sit with it all. I think it’s kind of funny, that one of my favorite memories started out so sad.”
“In that story, your mom doesn’t sound like I imagined her, just now, when you told me about her.”
“I get that,” said Jasper. “But the thing is that just because someone is in bad shape doesn’t mean they can’t also be smart or nice, or that you can’t also love them.”
I thought about that for a little while.
“Well,” I finally said, “I’m glad you love her, and I’m glad you have the sad game, but if you’re really stuck here, and this is your best option, what will you do in September, when it’s time to go back to school? Or in winter, when it gets super cold?”
Jasper shook her head. “I haven’t gotten that far yet. This all happened a few days before I met you. I guess I’ve been trying not to think too much. It makes my head hurt.”
“It makes my heart hurt,” I said.
“That too,” said Jasper.
“Maybe something will just happen? Maybe something will change.”
“What could change?”
“I don’t know, exactly. Like maybe your mom will quit drinking.”
Jasper snorted. “Not likely. I spent years wishing for that, back when I was little enough to believe in wishes and magic.”
“Well then, maybe your sister’s terrible husband will get hit by a car or something. Maybe he’ll just . . . die. That happens—”
My words caught in my throat, and Jasper winced at them. “You know, I have wished for that too. Of course I have. But it doesn’t work. And it’s like a kind of poison, to wish for something like that. It makes me feel bad, like I’m bad. Maybe I am, for thinking it. But even if that’s not true, waiting around, hoping something will just change suddenly and fix all your problems . . . that’s dumb. That’s like being five years old and believing in fairies. Or miracles. It’s better to be realistic. It’s better to accept the facts and the rules, and just keep going. That’s what grown-ups do.”
“I guess so,” I said. “Sometimes I wish for Sam to not be gone anymore. But I know some things just aren’t possible.”
“Right,” said Jasper. “Exactly.”
“But then, don’t you think you should tell someone? A safe person, who might be able to find you somewhere better to stay? I mean . . . you could talk to my parents. Really. They’re not the greatest, but my mom might—”
“No!” said Jasper. “No telling your parents.”
“O-okay,” I said, nodding. Jasper spit out that word, parents, like it tasted bad. But, lame as they were, my parents were still the people I’d call if I was sick or in trouble, I thought. Parents were safe.
“Then how about someone else?” I offered. “Maybe someone like Dawn, a cool nice grown-up? Maybe you could work at Joe’s—”
“No!” shouted Jasper so forcefully I blinked. “You tell Dawn and Dawn tells the police, and that is how my sister and my mom both end up arrested. No parents and nobody else either. No way. You have to swear you won’t say a word. I’m not kidding, Leah.”
“Okay, okay!” I said. “It’s just that now I’m . . . worried. You can’t do this alone. Not forever.”
Jasper shrugged. “I don’t seem to have any options. Do I?”
I couldn’t think of any, and we both sat there for a little while, silent. “Well maybe you will do it alone, and it will all work out. And someday, maybe this will be an amazing story to tell to your kids. Like the kind of story you read about in books or see in movies.”
“Yeah, maybe,” said Jasper, though she didn’t sound convinced.
“And if that’s true,” I said, “maybe this is actually all a weird kind of fate. You know? You struck out on your own and began an incredible journey.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jasper.
“I don’t know. Like, all that stuff happened to you, and it’s terrible for sure. But if it hadn’t happened, and you hadn’t left your sister’s house, then you wouldn’t have come here, and discovered the Vine Realm, and we wouldn’t have met. And who knows where this will all end? So in a way . . . it’s good that those things happened. You know what I mean?”
Jasper didn’t answer at first. She just stared at me.
“No, Leah,” Jasper finally said. “No, I don’t know what you mean, not even a little bit.” The look on her face was one I hadn’t seen before, and her voice was cold. “Are you serious? You think maybe it’s a good thing that my mom is a raging alcoholic and my sister will be smacked around for the rest of her life? Just so we can hang out in this old house and paint a wall?”
“No!” I said. “No, I just . . . I didn’t mean it like that. I wasn’t saying it’s a good thing exactly. I meant . . .” I didn’t know how to explain it. “I just meant I’m glad we’re friends. That’s all. I’m glad I met you.”
“Well, sure!” said Jasper. “But by your logic, it’s also a good thing that you ignored your brother when he needed you at the lake, so he co
uld drown, and you’d be alone this summer, and we’d meet and eat pickles together. Is that what you meant?”
I felt myself go numb. My body shuddered. Briefly, I thought I might hit Jasper. Not on purpose. But it was as though my hands would suddenly just leap up on their own.
“I . . . I . . . I . . .” I couldn’t find the words.
Jasper sat back. “I shouldn’t have said that,” she said in a whisper. “It was too much. I’m sorry. I lost my temper. I shouldn’t have . . .”
I stood up from the mattress. “I think I need to go home now.”
“Leah, don’t—”
“No,” I said. “I see what you mean. You’re right. It’s not a good thing. It’s not a good thing at all.”
I slid my shoes on.
“Leah, wait,” said Jasper. “Please?”
But I didn’t look back. I left the house, walked out the door, and didn’t bother to close it behind me. I ran blindly, and slid down the hill, scraping my knee on a stump. Then through the creek until I hit Berne Street. After that I stumbled in the direction of home.
I wasn’t sure what exactly had just happened. I only knew it hurt.
The Sad Game
The next morning was unbearable. I opened my eyes and immediately thought I might vomit. I stared around me at the bare walls, at the bare shelves. It felt like my life was disappearing.
As I lay there, my face in a pillow, I couldn’t decide whether I felt more angry or more guilty. I waffled back and forth between those two feelings, and it didn’t really seem to matter which I landed on. They both felt terrible. It didn’t matter which one of us was to blame. We had broken the Vine Realm. We had broken everything, and I was back to being a lonely girl in a silent house.
The only way I could think of to escape myself was to slip into someone else’s story and away from my own. To travel someplace where friends didn’t hurt each other and brothers didn’t drown and sisters didn’t ever get hit and parents didn’t leave or drink or go silent. Or where, when things like that happened, there was a way to solve them. I wanted to go to Hogwarts or Narnia, to someplace where broken things could magically be unbroken. Where there were wishes and potions and answers to all the mysteries. I wanted TV.
So at last I crawled out of bed and into the living room. Then for hours, I sprawled on the couch under the red blanket, covered in cookie crumbs and popcorn kernels. I couldn’t seem to think of anything I really wanted to see, so instead I just flipped channels, mostly catching glimpses of boring house renovation shows and cartoons for babies. But after a while, I landed on a weird old movie I didn’t recognize. On the screen, two guys were walking across a baseball diamond next to a cornfield. I sat up.
It wasn’t the kind of thing I would ever watch on purpose, but I found myself frozen with the clicker in my hand. Staring at the cornfield, which looked so much like Dad’s mural. The two men walked around for a while, talking about how beautiful it was there, almost like they were in love. Meanwhile the light was all glowy and hazy, which made me think I was probably right about them being in love.
Then they stopped walking, and one of them turned to the other and said, “Is this heaven?” in a real serious intense way. When he did, for some reason, my gut knotted. I gasped.
“It’s Iowa,” said the other guy. And then the music started swelling like movie music does when you know you’re supposed to care a lot about what’s happening, and that made me feel like crying, so I turned the TV off.
Once the room was silent, I thought about how unfair it was that I’d spent so many hours distracted. Jasper was probably wishing she could do the very same thing, fall into movies all day, only she didn’t have any way to escape herself. I could hide from my memories, maybe. I could bury myself in blankets, disappear. Jasper couldn’t.
Because what she had said was true—she was still in the middle of her disaster, and as far as I could tell, she was stuck. There was no end in sight for her. I couldn’t—no matter how I tried—imagine a way for her story to right itself. It was more than I could handle even to think about it, and Jasper had to live it—had to wake up in it each morning and go to sleep in it each night. How did she do it, and keep smiling like she did?
So I decided I’d try to play Jasper’s sad game, and turned the TV back on. I found the song she’d been talking about on YouTube, and then I turned out the lights and closed the blinds and lay on the couch, listening to it.
It was a sad song for sure, about widows and wars and stuff. But also it wasn’t a sad song at all. “There is a crack,” the song said, “. . . a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” I thought about that—about the light that shines through broken things. I found myself listening to the song over and over. And for some reason the thought of light getting in made me think about that Iowa movie with the two guys in love, and heaven, and cornfields. And that made me think about the garage, of course, and Dad. Which got me wondering what it felt like for him, to paint something like that, to look up and see his thoughts on the ceiling. I wondered if maybe that was Dad’s version of the sad game. And even though my thoughts were all muddled and didn’t make much sense, I found myself feeling a little better. Because at least I wasn’t thinking about fighting with Jasper.
Late in the afternoon, I dragged myself off the couch and got dressed. Because eventually, my parents were going to come home, and I’d need to act like a normal person for an hour or two. But when a car pulled into the drive, it was Dad, alone, and he said that Mom had a late meeting, and we were on our own for dinner.
Then we both just sort of stood there, waiting for each other to do something. Dad and I didn’t spend much time alone together, and while Mom wasn’t a ton of fun to be around lately, she did manage to get dinner together most nights and force us all to sit down at the table. Left alone, Dad and I didn’t really know how to handle dinner or each other.
“Well,” said Dad. “How about I see if I can rustle up something from the freezer?” He turned around and opened the freezer drawer, began rooting around in it. “Want a burrito?”
Standing there, hunched over the freezer, holding up a frozen burrito, Dad had never looked so tired to me. I wasn’t sure how a back could look tired, but somehow it did. Dad’s blue striped button-down looked tired. The faded impression of his wallet in his pants pocket looked tired. All of it, tired. In the glare of the bright kitchen light, I noticed that his hair was getting thin in the back. I could see his pale scalp through it.
“I’m not very hungry.”
He turned around and stood up. “Oh, really?”
“No. In fact, I think I might just go to my room.”
“If you want, we could get pizza or something. Or call for Indian? Does any of that sound good?”
“You can,” I said, “I’m not hungry.”
He was trying. I could tell he was trying. But I just didn’t think I could sit at the table with him tonight, not talking, all by ourselves. I’d not ask him about the mural, and he’d not answer me. I’d not tell him about Jasper, and we’d not talk about Sam. It was really exhausting, I’d found, not talking.
For a minute, staring at his stubbly face, his broad square shoulders, I remembered how big he used to seem to me. Like the strongest man in the world. He used to let me climb him—he’d grab my hands and I’d plant my little feet on his shinbones and walk straight up his body, all the way into his arms. That seemed like an impossible memory now, something I’d dreamed up.
“Well,” he said suddenly, “if you don’t want anything special, I guess I’ll just have myself a sandwich.”
I nodded and waved and left the room, feeling a mixture of relief and guilt. I put my pajamas back on, climbed into bed, and turned the lights out, wishing I could fall right to sleep, escape this horrible day. Maybe, somehow, I’d feel better tomorrow. Maybe things would magically change.
But a little while later, still awake, I was thirsty, and so I padded down the hall, back to the kitchen. When I d
id, I found my father sitting alone at the table. Most of the lights in the room were off. Just the lamp above the stove was burning, a yellow glow, casting shadows. He looked up when I stepped into the room. “Oh, hello again,” he said. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“Ha,” I said. It was a pretty sorry excuse for a joke.
In front of my dad sat a glass of water and a small plate, holding a mostly eaten sandwich. I thought it was probably the saddest dinner of all sad dinners.
“What kind of sandwich?” I asked.
“Peanut butter on wheat,” he said with a sigh.
“No jelly?”
“No jelly. We were out.”
I took a glass from the cabinet and filled it at the tap. It felt like I was moving in slow motion. It felt like my brain was empty. There was nothing to say.
But then I turned. “Dad?” My voice came out shaky. I didn’t have any words for what I wanted to say to him. What I really needed was help. What I really needed was for someone to tell me what to do. What I really needed was for him to drive me over to the farm. And then to solve everything, the way parents are supposed to solve everything.
I needed for him to be my dad. Right now. This minute! But when he looked up, his eyes were lost. Everything in the world was lost.
“Yes, Leah?” he said quietly.
I opened my mouth to speak, but then I shut it, and we both stared at each other, as if there was a conversation waiting for us, floating in the air around us, and one of us only needed to reach up and catch it.
At last I said, “Never mind.”
He reached for his phone. “Okay.”
About an hour later, Mom still wasn’t home, and I was still wide-awake. That’s when, in the dark stillness of the house, I heard the back door open. Carefully, I slipped out of bed and down the hall. From where I stood, I could see that the kitchen light was still on. Then I heard the screen door settle quietly, as if someone had gently closed it, not just let it bang shut like usual. I sneaked forward into the kitchen, drew aside the curtain at the back window, and watched as the garage door opened and a rectangle of dingy yellow light beamed out into the night. The door closed. The light disappeared. And swallowed up my dad.
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