“I’m worried about you, Lucy,” Mr. Michaelson said.
Surprise made her look at him. She caught herself and looked away again. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not ‘fine.’ Nobody would be ‘fine’ in the situation you’re in.”
Lucy made herself shrug. What she wanted was to bury her face against him. Maybe he knew how to take care of kids, since her parents didn’t. In as smart-alecky a tone as she could muster, she said, “Oh, well.”
“It’s been a terrible year for you and your family, hasn’t it?”
If she said anything, she’d start to cry, and then she’d never stop, she’d go crazy. She was going crazy anyway. Her whole family was crazy, or dead. Mom didn’t have tears running down her face all the time, but Lucy knew she never stopped crying, and Dad wasn’t the same anymore.
Three big beautiful trees had stood in front of Stacey’s house for as long as either of them could remember, for years and years before either of them had been born. It used to make Lucy feel safe to think about how old those trees were, to lean against them and imagine how deep the roots went if it was true that there was as much of a tree underground as you could see above ground.
Then last spring two guys from Public Service came with a saw that sounded like a giant dentist’s drill and cut down all those trees. They said the trees were diseased. They said they were dead inside.
Lucy and Stacey didn’t believe that. The trees had leaves and branches. Every year they turned green. Every year they seemed a little bigger. They couldn’t be dead. But then they’d looked inside the stumps, which had been full of some disgusting brown pulp that must have been dead tree. So all those years, when she’d leaned against those trees and walked under them and felt safe because they were so old and tall and deep, all that time they’d been rotting inside, and dead, and they could have fallen on her at any time and crushed her. It was dumb to feel safe.
“My sister isn’t dead,” she heard herself saying.
Mr. Michaelson nodded. “Sometimes it’s harder not to know.”
“I kept saying my brother was dead even when I didn’t know whether he was or not, and then he was. Dead.”
Mr. Michaelson walked over to the board and started erasing it really hard, around and around in the same spot, even though he’d already erased everything he’d written on it about Mexico. Mites probably loved chalk dust.
She saw little bones twitch in the back of his hand as he rubbed and rubbed. She saw little crisscross threads in his blue shirt where sunshine fell across his shoulder. He stayed at the chalkboard for such a long time that she thought he was done talking to her and she was late for gym for no good reason.
He said, “When I was just about your age, my little brother was struck by lightning. He was watching me play soccer. It was a clear blue sky. Not a cloud.”
Lucy held her breath. It was awesome that a teacher would be telling her something like this, that Mr. Michaelson had been her age once, that he’d lived through something awful, that his little brother had been struck by lightning longer ago than she’d been born. “Did he die?”
“Instantly.”
“What was his name?”
Mr. Michaelson put the eraser back in the tray and slapped his hands together. Dust flew. “Brian.”
“He was struck by lightning? And it wasn’t even raining?”
“And for a long time I felt terribly guilty.”
“Why? You didn’t do anything.”
He shrugged. “Oh, let’s see. If I hadn’t been playing soccer, he wouldn’t have been where the lightning was going to hit at that moment. Or if I’d been nicer to him, he wouldn’t have died. Or if I hadn’t cheated on the spelling test that morning. I tried every way I could think of to believe it was my fault.”
Lucy stared. “You cheated?”
“Looked at somebody else’s paper.”
“But that didn’t have anything to do with lightning,” she protested. “Did it?”
“Guilt is a natural part of grieving. If we don’t really have any reason to feel guilty, we’ll make one up.”
“Did you get an A?”
His face got a little red. “The point is, Lucy, most people would rather believe they’re bad people who caused something bad to happen than believe they’re totally helpless, even when they are. The truth is, I was helpless to keep my brother from dying and you’re helpless to stop what’s happened to your brother and sister. Sometimes shit just happens.”
He’d said “shit” to her. That was another present, like the story about his little brother Brian who’d been struck by lightning out of a clear blue sky. She didn’t understand why he was giving her these presents. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do with them. She wanted to take them away with her, think about them for a while, put them in her diary.
He didn’t stop her as she ran out the door, and she was halfway to gym class before she realized she didn’t have a late slip. He’d promised. Another adult you couldn’t count on. By the time she got her tennis shoes on, she was rigid with indignation and ready for anything Ms. Holcomb might say. Ms. Holcomb didn’t say anything, which was weird, and she didn’t make her suit up.
But she did stop her after class, with a jerk of her head and a shout of her name over whistles and bouncing balls. Lucy was getting madder and madder. Now she’d be late for English. She used to like Ms. Holcomb. Now she didn’t like anybody. She just wanted them all to leave her alone.
“How are you, Lucy?”
“Fine.”
“You seem upset.” Ms. Holcomb wasn’t much taller than Lucy and wasn’t much older than Ethan would be if Ethan hadn’t died. She put a hand on Lucy’s shoulder. Lucy had to force herself not to run out of the gym, out of the school, out of the world. The teacher didn’t take her hand away. “Which is what I would expect you to feel right now.”
Lucy didn’t say anything, because she couldn’t think of anything mean enough to make Ms. Holcomb leave her alone, and because she was afraid of what she might think of to say. All grown-ups could think about was death and being sad. All her friends could think about was boys and movie stars and who was whose best friend. Lucy didn’t want to think about anything. Last night she’d filled a whole page of her diary with Os, big and little looped Os that got blacker and blacker till near the end of the page she’d torn the paper.
“They’re going to start a group after school for kids who—who have things they need to talk about.” Lucy hated it when grown-ups were so careful about how they said things. As if they thought she’d break, or explode. She might. “I recommended you.”
“What do you mean? What kind of group? I don’t have anything to talk about! I don’t want to stay after school! That’s not fair! I didn’t do anything wrong! Just because I was late one time and I didn’t suit up—”
Ms. Holcomb put her other hand on Lucy’s other shoulder. “Calm down, Lucy. It’s not a punishment. A social worker will be coming in once a week to help kids with problems, that’s all. Mr. Li is going to ask your parents for permission. We all think it would be good for you. Give you somebody to talk to who understands.”
“What social worker?”
“Nobody you know. He did an inservice for the teachers a couple of weeks ago about the transition from childhood to adolescence. He seemed real knowledgeable, and he seemed to really like kids. So when he approached Mr. Li about starting this group, we all thought it was a good idea.”
Lucy looked frantically out the window for Rae. Instead, she saw her little brother Dominic climbing too high on the jungle gym.
“What social worker?” she demanded again. “What’s his name?”
Ms. Holcomb looked at her funny and said, “Jerry. Jerry Johnston.”
16
“Halloween,” Jerry told them, “is the celebration of angry spirits.”
He looked around the circle lingeringly, as if he loved them all, and Lucy followed his gaze with her own. That was why she liked s
itting next to Jerry: you looked where he looked, saw things the way he saw them, and sometimes you could feel his words in your mouth, his thoughts in your head.
Lucy hadn’t been in the group long enough to recognize people under their masks. She didn’t think Jerry could, either, so it must not matter. In group they hardly ever used each other’s names. She remembered Stephanie, Mike, Billy, and she wondered if they remembered Lucy.
There was a witch with long silver nails and eyes that glowed in the dark. There was a ghost, but you couldn’t see through it. Stretching out through the circle was a slimy green snake. On the other side of Jerry was some kind of animal with big teeth. On the other side of Lucy was a spider.
“How angry are you?” Jerry was asking.
Nobody said anything. The snake wriggled and the witch clicked her nails against the floor.
“How angry is your spirit?” Somebody in the circle moaned a little, and the animal with the big teeth growled.
Lucy was supposed to be a zombie, but she didn’t think anybody could tell. She’d made up her costume herself, and she didn’t really know what zombies were supposed to look like. Black pants, a black shirt of Rae’s, white makeup on her face and hands, fake blood on her teeth. She’d told Mom she was too old to dress up for Halloween.
“Halloween is also,” Jerry said quietly, “a celebration of sorrow, and fear, and loneliness, and guilt. A celebration of troubled spirits.”
The room behind the school cafeteria, where the group met, was decorated for Halloween. A black cutout skeleton danced from strings overhead. Spider webs hit you in the face when you came in the door. Black cats with yellow eyes perched in all the windows, ready to jump on you at any minute; even though it was dark outside, you could see their silhouettes. Patches was a black cat, but he had white on him, too; at Halloween, Lucy didn’t know what that meant.
“Who’s sad in this room? Is anybody sad?”
Nobody said anything, but the witch was crying.
“Who’s afraid?”
“I am,” said the fuzzy voice of the spider, right at Lucy’s ear, and she jumped. One of its hairy spiderlike legs brushed against her cheek.
“I am, too,” said the ghost, and then, Lucy guessed, couldn’t stop saying it. “I am, too. I am, too. I am, too.”
“Who’s lonely?” Jerry asked softly, lovingly. “Who feels guilty?”
“I do,” said the snake, writhing and coiling on the floor.
“I do, too,” Lucy heard herself say.
Jerry was nodding and smiling just a little; she’d pleased him. He had a nice smile, beautiful eyes, pretty rings. He wasn’t wearing a costume, Lucy noticed for the first time, even though he’d said this was a costume party. But he did look different.
He looked sick, she thought with sudden panic. Or hurt inside. Or about to be hurt if somebody didn’t do something.
He was as big as ever—huge arms, huge thighs, enormous shoulders and neck and belly. But he didn’t feel solid. She leaned against him. There were flat places all over him, thin places, holes covered just by skin and cloth. She thought about caves, and mites, and hungry water under ice.
On the side of his head closest to her, just behind his ear, was a depression the size of her fist. She could touch it, put her fist there and fill it up. She started to lift her arm.
But she was afraid. It was like the soft spot on the top of a baby’s head. She’d been afraid of the soft spots on the heads of all her little brothers and sisters, afraid she’d accidentally or on purpose stick her fingers through and touch their brains, handle their thoughts. She’d had a spot like that, her brain open to the world. So had Ethan and Rae. So had Mom and Dad.
She thought about Ethan, not moving when he seemed to be moving, alive when he seemed to be dead. At first she didn’t want to think about him, but she couldn’t help it. Then she kept thinking about him because, for some reason, it made her feel a little better, a little stronger, not quite so confused. Halloween was a time to remind yourself that things were never only what they seemed.
All over Jerry’s head and shoulders and neck were sunken places, as if something had collapsed, as if something inside him had broken or shrunk. His stomach, which usually stuck way out in front of him and made him sit and walk leaning a little backward, now actually curved inward, and he hunched over it as if it hurt.
He took her hand.
Lucy’s blood pounded in her ears and throat, but it didn’t seem to be her blood. Maybe, she thought confusedly, she really was a zombie.
Then she saw that Jerry was also holding hands with the kid on the other side of him, the one dressed up like an animal with big teeth. Jealousy made Lucy try again to see who that was, but the animal suit covered the whole head and neck, and the hand Jerry held was a paw.
“Celebrate what you feel,” Jerry said.
His voice cracked, and he seemed to be having trouble breathing. Lucy squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back.
“Feel it as much as you can. As deeply as you can. Don’t run away from it. Run into it.”
He moved her hand to the inside of his knee. He arranged her hand palm downward and covered it with his. She felt the indentation in the massive flesh that he wanted her hand to fill, but the hole was bigger than her hand.
“Feel as furious as you can. Feel sadness everywhere. Feel loneliness in every part of your body, every part of your being. Feel guilty about everything. The world is full of things to make you feel that way. You’re right to feel that way. Feel the unfairness of it. Celebrate it.”
“It hurts,” somebody moaned.
“It only hurts until you work it through,” Jerry told them. Lucy didn’t know what “work it through” meant.
“You make it worse!” somebody accused him.
“I only ask you to get in touch with what’s already there. If you don’t acknowledge it and face it, it will eat you alive, and you’ll be no use to anybody.” Jerry chuckled. Lucy didn’t see what was so funny.
“I can’t stand it! It hurts too much!”
“Use it,” Jerry urged. “Give it away.”
Lucy saw that everybody else around the circle was holding hands, and the spider took hers. It was a human hand—a girl’s, long sharp nails and soft skin—coming out of a spider’s leg. Lucy shuddered but held on tight enough that her fingers started to tingle.
“Pass it around the circle,” Jerry murmured. “Take the black energy from your neighbor and add yours to it and pass it on.”
Lucy’s nose itched. The floor was hard. She had to go to the bathroom. She was feeling a little silly. This was stupid, a bunch of people in dumb Halloween costumes sitting in a circle holding hands and trying to feel as bad as they could.
Across the circle somebody sneezed. The snake took off its mask, and Lucy recognized it as a girl named Debra. Somebody else laughed and said, “This is dumb,” and got up and left the room. Lucy let out her breath.
The tension in the room erupted into noise and chatter. The ghost went over and turned the stereo on; you could see jeans under the sheet. The spider started to dance a funny dance, all eight legs keeping time.
Lucy looked at Jerry. He had fallen back against the wall, as if he couldn’t support his own enormous weight anymore. He was sweating and his face was pale; his cheeks were so sunken that they looked like broken bone.
She wanted to ask him if he was all right. She wanted to make him feel better. Instead, she scrambled to her feet and went to get a jack-o’-lantern cookie from the table in the corner.
17
It was the second week of November, and it hadn’t snowed yet. Another two days and the record would be broken; TV weather forecasters spoke as though that would be their own personal triumph, and tension gathered like unshed snowflakes in the bright blue sky.
On Wednesday Lucy came home late from school because of the group; it was already getting dark, and lights were on in the house. Mom had all the other kids’ pictures spread out on the dining room t
able. Hers, Ethan’s, and Rae’s were missing. Lucy thought about saying she’d forgotten hers at school or lost them somewhere, but she pulled them out of her bag and handed them to her mother.
“Oh, Lucy, you look beautiful.”
“I look terrible. Look at my teeth! I’m smiling too much.”
Mom smoothed Lucy’s big picture with her hand, kissed it, laid it down with the others in the space she’d been holding for it. Then she picked up one of the others—Dom’s, Lucy saw —and did the same. Lucy watched her closely, to see how this was done. Mom wasn’t crying.
Lucy could hardly stand to look at any of the pictures, especially her own. There was something weird about people being caught forever in one position, one shirt, one smile. As if they really were like that. As if they’d never die or disappear or grow up.
It wasn’t the teeth that bothered her so much. It was the breasts. She’d tried to hunch over so they wouldn’t show, but the photographer had kept hassling her to sit up straight, she was such a pretty girl she should sit up straight and show it off, and finally just to shut him up she had, and now forever everybody would be looking at her breasts, even under the baggy sweatshirt she’d been sure to wear for picture day.
“You look so beautiful,” Mom said again. “So grown up.”
For the first time, it occurred to Lucy that with Rae and Ethan gone, she was the oldest child. “Where is everybody?” she demanded.
“Pris is upstairs working on her homework. Dominic is at a friend’s house until six. Molly and Cory are outside. I just checked on them.”
Mom still knew where everybody was. Lucy was surprised by that, both comforted and offended. Where are Rae and Ethan, if you know so much? Where am I? It wouldn’t do any good or even make any sense to ask those things, so instead she asked, “How’s Dad?”
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