Tell the Wolves I'm Home

by Carol Rifka Brunt

  “Get your hands off my stuff,” I yelled, in a voice that came from someplace I didn’t know I had. Greta slowly put the mug down on the table and stared at me, stunned, but only for a second. She ran a hand over her hair, then reached back to tighten her ponytail.

  “Big, big trouble,” she said, shaking her head.

  “I hate you,” I shouted. Then I lunged at her. I didn’t care about anything anymore. I grabbed her hair and she kicked hard at my knees. I jumped back, still holding her hair with one fist. She squealed, then grabbed hold of her own hair and yanked it from my grip.

  “Stop,” Greta said, putting a hand in the air. “Shh. Mom.” We both froze.

  I heard the car door slam, and I realized that Greta had won again. She would love every minute of my mother walking in on all this stuff. She’d enjoy every second of watching me try to explain. I didn’t know what to do. I turned, expecting to see Greta perfecting her innocent face for my mother, but instead I saw that she was as panicked as I was.

  “Quick,” she said.

  She ran to the cabinet under the sink and pulled out a black garbage bag. She shook it open, and in one sweep of her arm she had most of the stuff off the table. I grabbed the teapot, splashing tea out of the spout as I went. I ducked into the downstairs bathroom and closed the door behind me. I slammed down the toilet lid and sat there, hunched over the teapot.

  I could hear the muffled words of my mom and Greta in the kitchen. Then I put my ear against the door, and I could hear everything clearly. This was the spying bathroom, and for once I was going to be the spy.

  “. . . really feeling much better . . . giving my room a big cleanup,” I heard Greta say. I pictured her holding up the garbage bag.

  “Ooh,” my mother said. “Wonderful. I need to have a look at that.”

  “When it’s done,” Greta said without even a second’s hesitation.

  Then I heard the door open and close.

  I dumped the tea down the sink and looked around that tiny bathroom for someplace to hide the teapot. There was nowhere. I opened the door just a crack and peeked. Clear.

  I bolted up the stairs to my bedroom with the pot under my arm, closed the door behind me, careful not to slam it, and slid the teapot under my bed. I took a few long slow breaths, calming myself.

  At least the Book of Days was in my backpack, but as soon as I had that thought I realized that I’d left my backpack right in the middle of the kitchen floor. I ran down the stairs three at a time.

  My mother had piled her briefcase and coat on the table and was staring at the trail of tea that went out the kitchen and into the hallway. My backpack was where I’d left it, and I quickly scooped it up.

  “Oh, Junie, I didn’t know you were home already. I managed to get away early to check in on Greta. She was a real mess this morning. Do you know anything . . .” She pointed at the mess of tea.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “That’s mine.” I ripped a handful of paper towels off the roll and started to wipe it up, following the trail all the way to the bathroom.

  At the bathroom door I turned around. My mother was watching me. She shook her head and walked back into the kitchen.

  Greta made me clean her whole room so she wouldn’t be caught lying. I sorted through all the clothes piled on her floor and draped over the desk chair while she shifted papers around on her desk. I would have loved to ask her why she saved me, why she’d gone through all the trouble of showing me what she knew, just to get me off the hook in the end, but I didn’t bother. I knew she wouldn’t tell me a thing. Plus, she had her Walkman on. I could hear the tinny echo of Bon Jovi shrieking out “Livin’ on a Prayer” at the top of their stupid lungs.

  Later, while my parents were watching the news, Greta tapped on my door, then pushed it open before I answered. She slipped in and stood with her back pressed against the door. She stared at me, then let her eyes flit from thing to thing in my room.

  “What?” I said.

  “I just wanted to let you know that you’re hanging out with a jailbird.”

  I was lying in bed and I reached behind my pillow for Celia, my old stuffed seal. She was the one stuffed animal I still kept in my bed. I put my fingers on the place in her neck where all the stuffing had worn thin, making her head loll to one side.

  “What are you talking about?”

  I caught the tiniest glimmer of a smile on Greta’s lips. She’d gambled and she’d won. She took her time, gazing around my room, letting her eyes catch for a moment on my closet door.

  “Toby. Your special friend. He’s been to prison. He’s an ex-con.” Her face looked almost like the way it did in Finn’s portrait. Full of the pleasure of letting a secret out.

  “I . . .” My face was hot. I rubbed my thumb back and forth against the seal’s fur. My dad said Toby had been in trouble, but I didn’t think it was that kind of trouble.

  “There’s nothing to say, June. It’s the truth. He met Finn in prison.”

  “Finn has not been in jail. There’s no way—”

  “No duh. Finn was giving an art workshop. Toby was in it. That’s how they met.” Greta pulled a book from my shelf and leafed through it, like she was planning on standing there all night, like she’d just popped in to do a little light reading.

  “How do you know?”

  She didn’t answer. She lowered the book, laid it on my desk, and raised her eyebrows. She stood there shaking her head and tut-tutting at me. “I know friends are hard to come by, June, but an ex-con riddled with AIDS is sinking pretty low. Especially one that murdered your own uncle.”

  “You’re such a liar,” I said, but I knew she wasn’t lying. Greta was tiny, but she seemed huge when she had information. She seemed huge then. One and a half times life size, at least. Even the way she was standing—straight, back pressed against the door again, arms crossed over her chest—was filled with truth.

  “Whatever,” she said.

  I thought she would leave then, but she didn’t. She stared down at my carpet like she was thinking something over. Then, in a voice that sounded less sure, she said, “You know . . . you know, June, why don’t you just promise not to see him anymore and then I’ll leave you alone.”

  I pulled Celia under the covers. I heard the TV go off downstairs, then the sound of my parents talking and dishes clattering in the sink.

  Greta stood there, and for a second I thought she might cry. Her eyes were bulging, but she didn’t look away. She kept staring right at me, like she wanted me to see that she was on the edge of tears. Like she was waiting for my answer. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t make her any promises about not seeing Toby, because I knew they would be promises I couldn’t keep. After a while Greta’s whole body seemed to sink a little, like all of it, this whole mean plan, had somehow backfired. Like she had no cards left to play. Then she pulled herself back up. She lifted her head and stared at me.

  “You know . . . I thought once Finn was gone . . . I thought you and me . . .”

  “You thought what? That you could torment me full-time?”

  “No, I . . .” Then she did start crying, and in a voice filled up with shaky wet disappointment she said, “Jail, June. Prison,” and she made her way to the door.

  “I don’t care,” I said to Greta’s back as she slipped out of my room.

  Late that night I snuck out to the garbage cans. I was hoping Greta had laid the bag of my stuff on top, but she hadn’t. She’d opened it up and pulled each thing out. It looked like she must have reached way down and stuck it all under the slop of a week’s worth of dinners. She must have gotten filthy doing it. She’d done a good job too. The only thing I could rescue was the Playland picture. And even that was ruined. Spaghetti sauce was smeared all over Toby’s side of the picture. There I was, sitting all prim and old-fashioned next to a gruesome smudge of red. Even though I said I would never do something like that, in the end I did have to cut Toby right out of the picture.

  I went upstairs and checked th
e back of my closet. Everything was gone. Every single special thing. I moved some stuff around to see if she’d accidentally left anything behind. But, no, nothing.

  Except the black bracelets. The ones she’d brought back from the city that Sunday. The ones she said she got for me. Those she’d hung neatly on one of the metal hooks on the back wall.

  All that was left was the Book of Days in my backpack and the teapot. And the money Toby gave me, which was in my underwear drawer wrapped in a babyish white vest I never wore. I pulled the teapot out from under my bed and cupped my palms around it. At least I still had that. I still had the best teapot in the world. I traced the dancing bears with my finger. Each one teetering on only two legs, paws flailing out, clutching at the air. I stared at them and suddenly I could see that they weren’t really dancing at all, just stumbling around. Like great clumsy creatures about to lose their balance.

  Forty-Seven

  “I can’t come today.”

  “Why?”

  “Journal. A term and a half’s worth of journal entries due in English.”

  “You turn in your journal to be read by the teacher?”

  “Yeah, and I haven’t written a single entry yet.”

  “That’s ridiculous. The whole point of a journal is—”

  “Yeah. I know. It’s just how it is. It’s not like anyone writes down their deepest secrets. It’s not like I’d write anything about you.”

  I sat on the floor in the pantry, leaning up against the wall, but I angled myself so I could see if anyone came into the kitchen.

  “So do it after,” Toby said. I thought his voice sounded hoarser than usual, ragged.

  “There’s four months of entries. That’s, like . . . I don’t know, fifty. Maybe more. I guess I’ll see you next week or something.”

  I didn’t want to say the rest. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about everything that had happened with Greta. And it was true. I did have to write the journal. It was 25 percent of our grade in English, and I couldn’t afford to mess it up.

  Toby was quiet. After a while he said, “I could help you. If you think that would work. Keep you company.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, go on. I promise it’ll be better than sitting home on your own.”

  I hadn’t expected Toby to offer to help.

  “You don’t have to do that. It’s okay.”

  He sighed. “I want you to come.”

  I paused. Why was I letting Greta get into my head? I could hear the way I was talking to Toby, and I didn’t mean to be that way. It felt like I was testing him. Seeing how easy it would be to get him to give up.

  “Well . . . help as in making cups of tea and finding some good tapes to play, or help as in luring me out to drink Volcano Bowls?”

  “The former, of course, June. What do you take me for?”

  I paused. I thought about telling him that I knew he’d been in prison, but I couldn’t do it.

  “Okay. But you have to absolutely promise you won’t be a distraction, okay?”

  “Okeydokey,” he said, in some kind of a bizarre attempt at an American accent.

  When I got to the apartment, Toby had on some mellow jazz and he was sitting in a chair, pretending to read a book. It was easy to tell when someone was pretending to read, because their eyes moved too much. Up and down and all over the page. Somehow the fact that he was pretending to read did not seem like a good sign. I was glad that I’d gotten a head start on the train.

  “I brought something for you,” I said.

  “Really?”

  I handed him a small box, clumsily wrapped in pink “new baby” wrapping paper, which was the only kind I could find in the house. He put his book down, which I saw was an old battered copy of The Canterbury Tales, and took the box.

  “It’s dumb,” I said.

  “That’s all right. I love dumb things.” Toby shook the box lightly near his ear.

  “Open it later, okay?”

  He nodded and put the box on the mantel.

  I pushed the coffee table to the side, threw my journal down on the floor, and sprawled across the carpet on my belly.

  “Go on, then,” Toby said.

  “What?”

  “Give us a read. Let’s hear what you have so far.”

  “No. No way.”

  “I thought you wanted my help. I can’t help if I don’t know what you’ve got so far.”

  I thought about the notes Toby had written to me. Writing did not seem to be one of his big skills.

  “I don’t need that kind of help. Just, I don’t know, maybe some snacks or something.”

  “Please?”

  “No. It’s private.”

  He gave me an “as if” look.

  After a while I couldn’t bear to listen to Toby’s pleading anymore, and I gave in. I read him one of my entries, which he accused of being painfully boring, and then he came up with something ridiculous that I should substitute. We kept going like that, haggling back and forth until finally we got into a good rhythm and settled into taking turns coming up with ideas. I made up entries about belly dancing, choosing my own falcon, and being selected as young harpsichordist of the year. Toby’s ideas were darker. He had something about temporary blindness and something else about a ghost that haunted the washing machine, but only when it was run on the “delicate” cycle. We always made sure that the crazy stuff was tucked in a normal-sounding entry. We sat there smoking cigarettes and laughing and drinking tea with brandy, and I was glad I’d decided to come. I was slightly worried about what would happen if Mrs. Link actually did read the journal, but I didn’t really care. That’s what Toby made you feel like. I decided Greta was all wrong about everything.

  Then we got to February 5. The day Finn died.

  Neither of us said anything at first. Then Toby slid the notebook over toward me. It sat there on the rug, halfway between us. So far we’d found ways of avoiding putting Finn in the journal. Not exactly on purpose. It was more like we both knew not to bring him up. But it was impossible not to think of him now. That pale, empty page begging for some words.

  I could have skipped over February 5. Either I could have left the page blank, or I could have written something boring in there. But it seemed wrong. Maybe it was dumb, but it felt disrespectful to Finn to do that.

  I slid the notebook over to Toby.

  “You first,” I said.

  “June, look, I can’t. I really, really can’t. You weren’t there. You don’t know . . .”

  It wasn’t the first time he’d said something like that, and the words hung there.

  You weren’t there.

  You don’t know.

  I didn’t say anything at first. I let those words worm their way through my head. I let them slither right down into my heart. I nodded slowly, then flipped the notebook closed with one finger. I stood up and pretended to look at my watch.

  “Oh, June. Don’t go. I . . . You don’t know what it was like. You don’t—”

  “God,” I shouted. “Just shut up. Shut. Up. Stop saying that.” I felt filled with a kind of rage I didn’t know I had. Like I wanted to charge at Toby and pummel his skinny arms with my fists. I’m not a violent person. I didn’t think I was a violent person, but right then something dangerous seemed to be waking up. Some hard dark sleeping thing from deep in my belly had opened one eye.

  And then it went. Just like that. It felt like a balloon had popped inside my chest, letting all the anger seep away. I stood there, drained. I looked at the notebook clenched in my hand, my fingernails digging into the sky-blue cardboard.

  Toby’s mouth was open, like he was searching for something to say.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “It’s all right. It’s my fault.” He slid over on the couch and I sat down next to him. I leaned my head on the same skinny arm that only a minute before I’d wanted to punch, and Toby twisted his long fingers into my hair. I felt him undoing one of my braids and then braiding
it again. Again and again he did that, all the while saying, “It’s all right. It’s my fault,” until it felt like he wasn’t even talking to me anymore.

  That night I slept in fitful little naps. I dreamed of origami wolves unfolding themselves from the pages of the Book of Days. I saw them shaking off the creases until they were whole and muscly. Furred and running. Leaping right off my desk, in midair, hovering over my bed. Teeth sloppy with drool. I dreamed of trying again and again to fold them back down, but I couldn’t do it. They knew where I lived.

  “It’s just a fiddly-hand thing,” a green-eyed wolf said.

  “Just the kind of thing a person could love,” another answered, and when I woke it was like I hadn’t slept at all.

  Forty-Eight

  There were two things in the box I gave Toby. One was the lid to Finn’s Russian teapot. I thought it would be kind of like one of those broken heart necklaces that people have sometimes. When Greta was twelve she had one with Katie Tucker that said BEST FRIENDS. Each one of them wore half the jagged broken heart on a fake gold chain, until the time when Katie lied to Greta about a sleepover she was having and they weren’t best friends anymore. Greta had the second half, which said ST and under it ENDS, like the abbreviation for Saint Ends.

  I didn’t know if Toby would see the lid the way I meant it. I wanted him to understand that I thought he was one of the best people. That I thought that. Finn or no Finn.

  The other thing in that box was my passport, with a tiny note that said, We could go to England, taped over the top of my dorky picture.