Strange Creatures

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Strange Creatures Page 16

by Phoebe North


  When the bell rings for the bus, I slide my sheet music into my folder and tuck it into my backpack. I’m watching Annie do the same thing, and I’m mulling it over. Mulling her over.

  “Well?” Harper says.

  I nod a little, shaky. “I’m going to go say hi.”

  Beside me, Harper rolls her eyes. But she follows me anyway. “What?” she says when I glance over at her. “I can’t let you go talk to her alone.”

  Annie’s zipping up her backpack, and when she looks up she kind of startles. Like a frightened animal in a trap.

  “Vidya,” she says. It’s not a question. Her voice is a little deeper than the last time we spoke. What was it, two years ago now?

  “Hey,” I say. “So, you’re doing Madrigals?”

  Annie stands up a little taller, hiking her backpack over one shoulder. She glances at Harper, then quickly away, like she doesn’t quite know what to do with her.

  “Um,” she says. “Yeah, well, you told me to join. So here I am—”

  “Annie,” I tell her, “that was years ago.”

  She’s looking at me, all owlish and round-eyed again. Under those freckles, she’s blushing furiously. And, Christ. It’s kind of cute, and cute in a way that I have to admit has nothing to do with James. She has a dimple in her left cheek. Just the left one. I remember in that moment that I always kind of liked Annie, or the idea of her, anyway. The stories that James used to tell about her made her sound like magic—like Peter Pan or something. But, you know, a girl. A magical fairy who was always on the verge of sweeping you up into an adventure.

  “Well, uh,” she says. She glances at Harper again, who makes a soft scoffing noise behind me. “I figured it sounded cool. And that, uh, it’d also be a good way to talk to you.”

  I arch an eyebrow. “Talk?”

  “Um,” Annie says. She looks at Harper one last time, and finally, I sigh.

  “Go catch the bus, Harp,” I tell her. “I’ll find you in a few.”

  “You sure?” Harper asks. I give her a nod, and she angles her chin back. Not toward me, really, but more toward Annie. There’s a glare in her eyes, like some kind of tough girl warning, which is hilarious if you know Harper, who is a total wimp and has never been in a fight in her life. But, after a moment, she leaves.

  “Go ahead,” I tell Annie.

  She sighs. Her face is still pink and mottled, like the blood is taking a long time to return to where it’s supposed to be. “Well,” she begins, “my parents have decided that we’re having a funeral. For Jamie. And, like . . . okay, they didn’t want to invite you? But I thought it was the right thing to do.”

  I blink. “A . . . funeral?”

  “Yeah. My therapist told them to do it. They said it would give me closure. It’s ridiculous. I have closure. I know he’s not coming back,” she says quickly. “But I guess this is as good a time as any. And I was thinking you should be there. You guys were important to each other, right?”

  There’s a spiky ball in my stomach. A hedgehog curled up tight, maybe. I let myself think, for just a narrow flash of a moment, about James. About the weight of his hands on my belly. About his eyes under his shaggy mop of hair. And how they look like Annie’s eyes, right now, burning with the same kind of intensity. But how that intensity was all directed at me.

  “Yeah.” I hate how my voice cracks just a little when I say it. “Yeah, we were.”

  “I thought so,” she said. “Sorry. I know it’s stupid, to drag this whole thing out again. You probably don’t want to. I mean, I wouldn’t, if I were in your position. “

  Do I want to? I can’t even be sure. Harper would tell me it was a terrible idea, and she wouldn’t be wrong. But somehow, no matter what Harper thinks, it feels like the right thing to do. Even if his parents don’t want me there, James and I did care about each other. Once.

  “I’ll go,” I say finally. “When is it?”

  “Sunday,” she says. “Ten in the morning at Oakwood Cemetery. This is all so stupid. It’s not like we have a body to bury. But. You know. ‘Closure.’”

  Part of me wants to reach over and squeeze her hand. Part of me worries that she’ll go supernova if I touch her. So I just smile, gently, kindly.

  “I’ll see you then,” I say.

  And then, before I can think better of it, I give her a little wave and head off toward the bus.

  Four

  SEPTEMBER 13. TWO YEARS TO the day since I last saw James. A Sunday, and I usually sleep in on Sundays, but I’ve hardly slept at all in the nights leading up to this and today I’m up with the dawn. The light through my bedroom curtains is bright and wild, right away. It’s the perfect day for a funeral, clear skies and birds singing and the world overflowing with joy. James would like a day like this, I tell myself. But what do I know about what James really liked? It was ages ago. And now he’s dead.

  And what do you even wear to your dead boyfriend’s funeral, anyway? I go through my closet and find a dress that I used to wear a lot back then. It’s stretchy crushed velvet, black, but kind of gray where the light hits it. I’m not sure it’s going to fit until I pull it on over my head and give myself a glance in the mirror. Maybe a little tighter around my curves than it used to be, but not so bad that it’s off-limits for a funeral. Anyway, James would have liked it, I tell myself, and then I laugh a little, because sometimes it seemed like James didn’t like anything. His feelings were always so dark and stormy, which is what I liked about him then, the drama of it all.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Mom says to me over breakfast as I reach for another pancake. “I don’t trust his parents after how they treated you. Acting like it was your fault.”

  “Mom—” I begin, because I know what’s coming next and I’m not sure I want to hear it.

  “You were a good girl until that boy came along. And they treated you like you were some criminal.”

  It’s true, that I was good until James, but only technically. I wanted to kiss him. Wanted to hang out in Neal’s basement, watching stupid old movies and playing drinking games. I wanted to be like the other kids. Hard and strange and wild like they were. And for a minute, it felt like I was, but—

  “They’re racist, Vidya. You need to watch out for them.”

  I press my lips together. Suddenly I’m trying not to cry. Years ago, I’d defended them. James hadn’t been racist, and I cared about him, and that’s what mattered. But I don’t know if I have it in me right now.

  “Mom, I—”

  “My mother tried to warn me,” she’s saying, stabbing her pancake hard enough that the plate rings out under the fork tines, “when I got involved with your father. ‘You’ll never be one of them.’ I hated to hear it. She was wrong, then. I was lucky with his parents, but you—”

  “Mommy, stop,” I say, loud enough that my words surprise me. For once, she does. She looks at me, at the tears trembling in my eyes.

  “I lost James,” I tell her, “and they did, too. Going there is the right thing to do.”

  She doesn’t say anything to that. She can’t. Deep down, my mom has this big, generous heart. She’s a caretaker—of me, of Dad, of the old folks who live down the road, everybody. She shovels their walk and brings them groceries when it snows. She cooks for everyone, for every occasion. I always thought I wasn’t much like her, but maybe I am. Because when I say it, I mean it. It is the right thing to do, no matter how I feel about his parents or the way they treated me. She says softly, “You know, Vidya, I’m so proud of the woman you’ve become.”

  I feel guilt tug at my stomach, because I’m not sure I’m much to be proud of, even now. But I hide it. Instead, I just wrinkle my nose. She laughs at me a little, so I force a laugh, too. Thankfully, we don’t talk about James anymore, or his parents, which is good. I don’t know if I have it in me.

  I don’t have my license yet. After everything I went through with James—all that hiding, so many secrets—my parents thought it would be better if we waited until s
enior year for the test, when I could finally prove I was mature enough. Luckily, Dad offers to drive me to the funeral. We don’t talk about James. Instead he rambles to me about the day John Lennon died when my dad was eight and thought that rock stars lived forever. That’s my father for you. He sees everything as a metaphor for his own life, which has mostly been lived out between vinyl record grooves. I look at him, nodding. I wonder if he’s ever lost anybody. As far as I know, he didn’t have any girlfriends at all before Mom. He’s such an enormous geek, even for a dad. When he talks about Mark David Chapman, his voice cracks, and he wipes away a tear. It makes me want to give him a giant hug. I guess it’s that kind of day—when everything is tender and painful and right on the surface. “Anyway,” he finally concludes, in a wheezy voice, “I hope you’ll call me if you need me. If his family says anything to you—”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I say quickly, and, not wanting him to finish his sentence, I press a kiss to his scratchy cheek to show him that I appreciate the sentiment and hop out of the car before he can say another word.

  God, this day is so freaking gorgeous. It feels like fall will never come, like summer will stretch on and on and on. I walk through the cemetery alone, numb, at first. I don’t expect the wall of feeling that slams into me the moment I reach the small crowd gathered around the [Redacted] family plot.

  Fuck. This is happening. Fuck. James is really, truly dead.

  I think about all those nights the last couple of years when I’d hoped he’d call me, out of the blue. That he’d show up on my doorstep and start talking to me like no time had passed at all. Somehow, I guess, I had never given up hope.

  Suddenly I’m thirteen again and I realize that I’ve only met his parents once, at James’s bar mitzvah. They didn’t know who I was back then. Didn’t know that I would matter. And I’d only just met James in those first couple days of middle school, and even though I’d thought he was cute and hoped he would find me cute, too, I had no idea that he—or they—would matter. Now I know how important they are. Part of his story, too.

  They’re standing far apart, but I recognize them immediately. His mom, in a black cotton dress, gauzy and thin, down to her ankles, and a pair of big sunglasses. She’s pretty, but tired. Kind of like a washed-up celebrity. His dad is in a black suit. Freshly shaved. Thinning hair slicked back. James hated his dad, hated him. And I did, too. Every time the cops dragged me down to the police station and I’d have to recount the whole damned story about my and James’s entire romance, I felt my hatred harden a little bit more. Harper used to offer to egg their house, and it helped, in the moment, but not much. Because what they’d really been saying about me, all along, was that it was somehow my fault. When I was just as much a victim of James as the rest of them.

  But now, looking at them, they almost don’t look that bad. Middle-aged, like my parents, but more exhausted. Lines showing on their faces in this bright sunlight as they give grim smiles to their older relatives. It’s hard not to feel bad for someone, I guess, at their kid’s funeral.

  At James’s funeral.

  Right now, Mr. [Redacted] is talking in a low voice to a boy who’s standing in front of him. He claps the kid on the shoulder, gives his arm a squeeze. I recognize Elijah. James’s youngest sibling. The baby of the family, everybody’s favorite. You can see it now, in the way that Mr. [Redacted]’s eyes shine when he looks at him. It’s that love—open and generous—that James probably always wanted, but never got.

  Meanwhile, Annie’s standing alone beside the headstone. She’s wearing a black shift dress, which would be shapeless if it weren’t for the shape of her body. Her pale brown hair is brushed neatly back and tied at the nape of her neck. She looks pretty standing there, like the world’s saddest song. She’s got a handful of rocks in her hand and she’s stacking them up on the headstone in a little tower, until her mom goes over to her, puts a hand on her shoulder, and whispers something.

  Annie’s eyes go wide. Her nostrils flare, like she’s super offended. But she tosses the rocks away and goes to stand by her mom.

  A priest gets up there. A rabbi, too. I can hear my dad, cracking jokes in my head. They talk about James, and the priest says a prayer, and the rabbi sings something in Hebrew. Then the mom comes forward and starts talking about what James was like as a baby. She starts crying, so we all do. I didn’t expect to cry, not on a day as pretty as today. I’m dabbing at my eyes, wishing I hadn’t put on so much eyeliner. Thinking about James as a little baby, pink and new and clean, and all that hope that his mother must have felt about him. How he’d go to college someday, get married someday, have kids of his own. Not with me, probably. I never thought he was my one true love, like my dad was for my mom. But, like, someday I figured he’d have babies. With someone. My stomach feels like an open wound at the thought. I swallow, hard, tearing my eyes away from his mom.

  That’s when I look at Annie and realize that she’s not crying at all.

  She looks so, so pissed, like she might go charging off at any moment. Like she might break something. Someone. Her fist is curled beside her body, and I can see the muscles sticking out of her lean arm. But instead of punching or stomping or kicking, when her mom is finished, she gets up there and unrolls a wrinkled notebook page. She reads a poem in this soft little voice, like a bird’s voice. I can only pick out a few words.

  “. . . cairn . . . and then he said . . . for the king.”

  Everyone’s nodding along, like they understand it, but I don’t. Still, I lean forward, straining to listen. It sounds like something out of Tolkien. Like, a beautiful fantasy. I think about the stories James told me they used to write together, and I wonder if it’s something like that. Part of their shared mythology. I only ever got scraps and pieces from him. I’d always wanted to know more, but he barely told me anything. Holding it close to his heart.

  It seems like Annie holds it close, too. She barely speaks loud enough for anyone to hear her. Someone coughs, and it’s enough to swallow up the sound.

  And that’s it. Like Annie said, there’s no body to bury. Other people go to the headstone and stack up rocks on it, too. Then they start to wander off toward their cars. But Annie’s still standing there, her head hanging down, holding her wrinkled notebook page in one hand. I do the only thing I can think of. I go to her.

  I think about putting my hand on her shoulder, but I don’t think she wants me to touch her, so I don’t. Still, I can’t help but be curious about what she read to us. The fantasy, and the mystery of it.

  “What’s a cairn?” I ask gently.

  She whips her head up. Her eyes—James’s eyes—have a wild quality to them, like she’s a feral creature. Maybe that’s why, when she speaks, she doesn’t answer my question.

  “We’re supposed to go back to my house to, like, eat sandwiches or bagels or something. But I can’t yet. Will you go for a walk with me?”

  God, what am I getting myself into? I can practically see James inside her. The soft part of him. The part that was fucked-up and hurting. A complicated, beautiful boy who had magic inside him, even if I barely got to see it for myself.

  “Sure,” I say.

  Five

  WE WIND OUR WAY DOWN through the headstones and footstones and monuments toward the old part of the cemetery where you can’t even read the names. Sparrows are calling to each other and worms are turning over fresh dirt. It feels more like spring than almost-fall. But Annie’s expression is hard. She just tucked the memory of her brother into the ground, even if there was no body to bury beside it.

  I’m not sure what to say. My mother is good at moments like these, but I have a feeling that any comfort I can offer will sound hollow or fake.

  So instead, I offer the only true comfort I can. I sing.

  It’s an old song, one we sang in Madrigals last year, “The Water Is Wide.” My dad played the Pete Seeger version for me once, but I liked the one we sang in school better. It seemed more, I don’t know, ancient. My voice is low
and velvety and seems to echo even in the soft branches and green grass.

  The water is wide, I cannot get o’er

  Neither have I wings to fly

  Give me a boat that can carry two

  And both shall row, my love and I

  A ship there is and she sails the sea

  She’s loaded deep as deep can be

  But not so deep as the love I’m in

  I know not if I sink or swim

  I leaned my back against an oak

  Thinking it was a trusty tree

  But first it bent and then it broke

  So did my love prove false to me

  I reached my finger into some soft bush

  Thinking the fairest flower to find

  I pricked my finger to the bone

  And left the fairest flower behind

  Oh love be handsome and love be kind

  Gay as a jewel when first it is new

  But love grows old and waxes cold

  And fades away like the morning dew

  Must I go bound while you go free

  Must I love a man who doesn’t love me

  Must I be born with so little art

 

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