But. His texts had been so kind. He’d sounded so concerned. And he was on my list, the mental one I’d made in the hospital. He was owed an apology too. That’s why I’d asked him to meet me at Morningdale Cemetery. I got there early, but he was already waiting for me at the entrance, his head hidden by a foldout map. But I didn’t need to see Luke’s face to go all wobbly in my legs.
“Hey,” I called, sounding braver than I felt.
He lowered the map. “Julie!” he said. His smile seemed genuine.
“Uh, thanks for coming,” I said lamely, like I was having a party.
“Morningdale Cemetery on a Friday afternoon? Always a pleasure,” he replied. Then, to my astonishment, he cupped his hand around my elbow. “I got here a little early so I looked up the graves. I think they’re this way.”
We fell into step along a gravel-lined path that twisted through the rolling hills of the cemetery. Every step I took felt like a free fall. Every time his shirt brushed against my arm, it almost brought me to my knees, but he didn’t seem to notice any of this. I stared straight ahead, not trusting myself to look at him.
There’s a pull in graveyards that my body instinctively tries to resist. Maybe it’s from all the times I held my breath driving past one when I was a kid or all the spooky stories at sleepovers, but I think it comes from somewhere deeper, more elemental. Some part of you knows what’s coming, if not when, and a cemetery is the ultimate, inescapable reminder.
But I owed it to her to pay my respects. I owed it to them both.
“Okay,” Luke said at last. “They ought to be in this row.”
“Both of them?”
“Yeah. They were, uh, buried next to each other.”
We didn’t speak as we stepped off the path. This part of the cemetery was older than the area where we’d buried my grandpa; the stones here were weathered and hunched from decades of exposure. You had to look pretty closely to read some of the names.
Archibald Cooper
Elodie Evans
Myrtle Kowalski
Then I stopped short.
Liza Hazel Grayson
Lydia Rose Grayson
Side by side, identical headstones, identical graves.
“It’s them,” I whispered, sinking to my knees.
Luke reached into his backpack and pulled out the Geiger counter. “Sorry,” he said quickly, seeing my dirty look. “I wanted to be sure.”
But to me, there was never any doubt.
It only took a moment for the machine to start flashing and spitting static again. Luke nodded, satisfied, as he put the Geiger counter away.
“So even after all this time,” I said, “their…remains…are still radioactive?”
“Well, the half-life of radium is roughly sixteen hundred years,” Luke said. “So even after that much time passes, only half of the radium has decayed.”
“Thanks, I know what a half-life is.” My smile softened the snark.
Luke grinned back. “Apologies. Of course you do.”
There was a pause before he spoke again.
“Radium is a bone seeker,” he continued quietly. “It mimics calcium in the body, accumulating in the bones and in the—”
“Teeth.”
“Yeah.”
I thought about the darkness underground, the blackness of being sealed in a box six feet under the dirt. But maybe that was not the case for Lydia and Liza. Maybe their bones were still glowing, a night-light for their eternal sleep. In that airless place, where there was no life, the hum of radioactive decay would keep them company long after my own life was over. For centuries. For millennia.
I closed my eyes and let my thoughts whisper an apology to the sisters underground. For how sorry I was. For how wrong it was. For how they should’ve had more, more of everything—more time for painting and more time for laughing, more time for kissing and dreaming and wishing. More time for misunderstandings and mistakes, for adventures, for learning, for reaching and trying and hoping and never giving up. More time for falling in love and out of love and in love again. More time for forgiveness. More time. More time.
I didn’t know how much time waited for me, but I was sure of one thing. You could give me a hundred years, and it wouldn’t be enough. I didn’t want to waste a moment.
My fingers trailed through the soft grass, finding their way to Luke’s hand. The lightest touch, my skin brushing against his, an unspoken question emitted from my cells. His answer was loud and clear, in the pressure of his grip, in the way his fingers twined through mine. The warmth of his hand had me plunging in a free fall again.
“It’s too bad we’ll never know.” Luke finally broke the silence. “Which one painted them, I mean.”
“Yeah.”
A cloud shuddered across the sun, casting us in shadow. I pulled my hand from Luke’s and rummaged in my backpack for the butcher paper and charcoal I’d brought.
“I just want to do a quick rubbing,” I explained as I taped some paper to Liza’s tombstone.
Though the charcoal was smooth in my hand, it left sooty residue everywhere, fingerprinting me as I rubbed it across the paper. Then came my favorite part: as the smudges darkened the paper like gathering rain clouds, the words carved into the tombstones appeared like magic.
Liza Hazel Grayson
Beloved daughter, dearest sister, loyal friend
May 3, 1899 – September 9, 1918
She dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn
To swift decay, and burn
Her fire away.
And then:
Lydia Rose Grayson
Beloved daughter, dearest sister, loyal friend
February 18, 1901 – August 22, 1919
The stars rise, the moon bends her arc,
Each glow-worm winks her spark,
Let us get home before the night grows dark.
When the rubbings were finished, I carefully rolled them up and tied them closed with a snippet of black satin ribbon. Then I reached into my backpack again. I wasn’t going to take from these graves without leaving something in return.
Luke watched me as I placed one of the antique paintbrushes on each grave. So much more than what it seems, I thought to the sisters underground, but you already know that. It doesn’t matter which one of you painted them. What matters is that you did.
I stood for another moment in silence. Then it was time to go.
“Classes start a week from Monday,” Luke said as we walked back to our cars. “So parking’s going to suck whenever you stop by, but I hope you’ll—”
“Actually, I’ll be part of the problem,” I interrupted him. “I’m…matriculating. I’ll be a first-year student. I’m moving into the Grantley dorm next Thursday.”
Luke stopped. “What?” he asked in surprise. “How did that happen?”
“It was the paintings,” I explained. “You know they were on the news, right? Because the EPA had to check out all the places they’d been…for radioactive contamination…”
“Sure. Of course.”
“And then I got a phone call. The same day I got out of the hospital. It was this woman, Gloria Mendoza—she’s the director of the Museum of American Women’s Art. She wanted to buy the paintings for an exhibit they’re doing on women’s activism in the workplace. It wasn’t a ton of money, but it was enough to pay for my first year of college. Lucky for me, Newark University has rolling admissions. And next year I’ll apply for financial aid and scholarships and loans. Whatever it takes.”
“I’m amazed,” Luke said bluntly. “You were so set on your original plan.”
I shrugged. “I guess I changed my mind.” Or had it changed for me, I thought, remembering the quiet graves, the ticking clocks, and all the great unknowns of the future.
“Congratulations, then,” Luke said, grinning broadly. “Tell me about the exhibit.”
“So the dial painters realized that they were all being poisoned by their jobs, and they got organized. They demanded t
hat people pay attention to how they were dying so young. They found this reporter—his name was Charles Graham, I think; Gloria was telling me about it—who wrote a series of articles about the Radium Girls for the New Jersey Sentinel. And that blew everything up—people were horrified and outraged to learn the truth about what was happening to those poor girls. Eventually, in the 1920s, there were lawsuits against the companies that made radium watches…for not protecting the workers, even after the bosses knew that radium was deadly. And it set one of the first precedents for workplace health and safety protections.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. It was too late for Liza, though. And Lydia. And a bunch of other women who died in terrible ways. But generations of people have worked in safer factories and jobs because of them. Now the paintings are going to hang in a museum, behind this thick glass wall so that no one can get sick from them. And more people will know about the Radium Girls. Those paintings—they’re a chronicle of what happened, proof that art can tell a story long after the artist is gone.” Then I had an idea. “We could go see them sometime. The paintings. If you want to.”
The pause before he spoke was long enough that I wanted to sink under the unnaturally green grass of Morningdale Cemetery’s manicured lawns.
“Listen,” Luke began. “About…that night…”
“No. Don’t. I’m so sorry about that. I was so—”
“No, listen,” he insisted.
“Really, it’s okay—”
“Julie. Let me finish, please.”
I looked down. Luke lifted my chin with two fingers and tried to look into my eyes, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to, you know, with you,” he continued.
Oh God.
“Because I did. I absolutely did. It’s just…I didn’t want to be one of your regrets.”
I found a single strand of courage somewhere deep within and climbed it, fist over fist, until I could meet his eyes.
“Anyway, I feel like I should give you some advice about registering for classes,” Luke continued.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I’d like to, uh, strongly encourage you to not take Section 2 of Chem 101. Because I’m going to TA that one. Which would make things…awkward.”
I was pretty sure I knew what he meant by that. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I placed out of Chem 101. AP credit.”
“Oh good,” Luke replied. “And completely unsurprising.”
This time, he reached for me.
* * *
Mom helped me carry four boxes, my suitcase, and my backpack to the car. After the trunk was full, we crammed the rest into the backseat.
“I guess that’s it,” I said, squinting in the sunlight.
“I guess so,” she said. “Wait. I forgot something inside.”
I followed her back into the house. In the kitchen, Mom was filling a brown paper grocery bag with stuff—a box of pasta, a carton of cereal, two cans of Diet Coke. Half a bag of rice cakes and an open box of granola bars. “You should have some food in your room, Julie,” she said, her voice muffled from inside the pantry. “In case you don’t like what they serve in the dining hall. Of course, if that happens, just call me, I can bring you something to eat—”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “They’ll have pizza, right? And cereal?”
“You should take this,” she said, pulling the colander out of the cupboard. “For when you want to make pasta. And one of the pots—”
“But what about when you want to make pasta?” I asked, pushing the colander back to her.
Mom shook her head and shoved it into the bag. “What else?” she said, almost to herself. “What else?”
“I don’t need anything else. I’ll be fine. Promise.”
“Just one more thing,” she said, opening her purse. She held out two twenty-dollar bills, so new and crisp that they must’ve just come from the bank. “Take this, okay?”
I held up my hand. “No, no, you keep it.”
“I want you to have it. In case you need it.”
“But what if you need it?”
Mom gave me one of those crinkly smiles then, like whatever she was feeling was so big and so heavy that it dragged down the corners of her mouth, no matter how much she fought it. Then I understood what she was doing with all this random stuff—what she was really trying to give me. There was never any way to be ready for this moment, though we’d been hurtling toward it for our entire lives.
“Thanks,” I said, shoving the money into my pocket. “I guess I better go.”
Mom nodded. “Call me when you get there. I mean, when you have a minute. I mean, when you want to.”
“I will,” I said. I stepped forward and gave her a long hug. She surprised me with the urgency of her embrace, as if she wanted to crush a lifetime of hugs into it. At last, I pulled away. I had to get out of there before one of us started crying. Otherwise I didn’t know how I’d ever leave.
“Love you,” I called over my shoulder as I walked down the hall for the last time.
“Love you too,” she called back.
Things I didn’t let myself do: look in the rearview mirror as I pulled away, wonder what she was doing at that moment, give in to the tears prickling at my eyes. It was time to focus on a deeper thrill, a singing kind of freedom, a dizzying anticipation. Something big was about to happen.
Newark University was completely unrecognizable, no longer the quiet concrete haven it had been over the summer. The swarmingantness of the students and their parents had me crawling through the parking lot, jostling over every speed bump. The lot closest to my room in Grantley was nearly full. Suddenly the idea of moving in all by myself seemed pretty dumb when I realized how far I’d have to lug my stuff.
During the five trips it took to empty my car, the sun started to dip below the trees where I had first kissed Luke. Every day, darkness came a little earlier. You could feel the shifting of the seasons in the chill that whispered hurry, hurry, hurry at the extremes of daylight. Back-to-school cool, in every sense, and all that promise, all that potential waiting to unfold.
There was a gang of guys—frat boys, probably—clustered near the door, somehow keeping a dingy hacky sack orbiting their circle even though their eyes never left the girls arriving with suitcases and backpacks and bulging nylon laundry bags. Every so often, one of the guys would say something in a low voice, and they’d all laugh together.
Room 212 was on the second floor, in the corner. It was maybe the blandest place I’d seen in my life, with wiry rust-colored carpeting and empty white walls. Think blank canvas, I told myself, not mental institution. There was a small living room with a couch and a table; a tiny kitchenette; and a bedroom with two narrow twin beds that reminded me, for one sharp moment, of Lydia and Liza, and the painted beds that were also graves.
“Hey.”
I spun around to see a stranger standing in the doorway. She was taller than me, with a rainbow of multicolored braids spilling around her shoulders, some woven with metallic thread that glinted when she moved. I made a mental note to tell Lauren about that the next time she went on a Manic Panic kick. It would be an awesome look on her.
“I’m Kira,” the girl continued. “I guess we’re roommates?”
“Hey. I’m Jubilee.”
“Jubilee? That’s cool,” she said. “So…which bed do you want?”
“Oh. Um. Doesn’t matter. Whatever.”
“You want the one closer to the window? I like it really dark when I sleep, so…”
“Yeah, sounds good,” I said, dropping my backpack on the bed to claim it as my own.
Then another girl poked her head into the room. “Hey, ladies! I’m Rachel, but you can call me Rach. I’m the RA for this floor…That’s short for resident advisor. It’s soooo great to meet you! Listen, just dump your stuff, and we’re gonna meet up in the common room down the hall for a floor meeting, okay? I bet you have a ton of questions. See you in ten!�
�
Kira rolled her eyes. “Ugh, I thought I was coming here to get away from chicks like that.”
I laughed a little. “You can’t escape. They’re everywhere.”
“Like zombies after the apocalypse.”
“Worse. Zombies aren’t that perky.”
This time, Kira laughed. “Listen, I heard there’s gonna be a bonfire tonight. You want to check it out after our floor meeting?”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “I might have this other thing going on. I have to check.”
“Sure, whatever.”
While Kira stretched teal-colored sheets over her extra-long mattress, I unrolled the two grave rubbings I’d made and taped them to the wall next to my bed.
“Hey,” I said over my shoulder. “Does this creep you out? If I hang these grave rubbings here?”
Kira glanced up as she shook a pillow into its case. “Nope,” she said. “Who are they? Relatives of yours?”
I shook my head. “No. It’s, um, kind of a long story—”
“Oh! Goblin Market! I love that one.”
“The what?”
Kira pointed at the rubbings. “The verses? On the graves? They’re from a poem. Goblin Market. I did my senior project on it for English last year.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, it’s about these sisters, and also these evil goblins that sell poisonous fruit, and one of the sisters eats it, and the other has to save her life and almost gets killed. It’s really creepy and beautiful.”
“It must be old, huh?” I asked. “The poem? Because these sisters died a long time ago—almost a hundred years.”
“Yeah, it’s from the eighteen hundreds,” Kira replied, and went back to making her bed.
The mattress creaked as I sat down under the grave rubbings, wishing—just for a moment—that I still had the paintings. I missed them more than I wanted to admit. They’d become such a big part of my summer…such a big part of me, keeping me company, coaxing my future to unfurl in such unexpected ways.
My phone pinged, notifying me of an email. Mom, I thought, smiling and shaking my head as I dug around in my bag. I wondered why she hadn’t just texted.
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