by Joyce Magnin
The gate.
It is swinging open.
I swallow a lump the size of Bubba in my throat.
I look at Elaine and the pig. Jelly Bean is still alive but barely. I can see her little body rise and fall with each tiny, painful breath.
Elaine sobs. And sobs. “No. Nooooooo. Please don’t die.”
My mother and Polly burst out of the house. “What happened? I heard a dog and…”
“It was Bubba,” I say.
Elaine drops to her knees. Jelly Bean is still making noises, but they keep getting fainter. “Please don’t die,” Elaine cries. “Please don’t die.”
Polly nuzzles Jelly Bean. She lets out a low whimper and looks Elaine straight in the eyes.
Tears run down my cheeks. “Please,” I whisper. “Don’t die.”
I listen for the pig noises. I listen until the noises stop.
I swipe the tears from my face. I don’t deserve to cry. It’s my fault.
“I don’t understand,” Mom says, looking straight at me. “How’d Bubba get in the yard?”
“It was me,” I say. “I didn’t check the gate. I thought it was closed tight but…but—”
“You?” Elaine says through an ocean of tears and sobs. “You left the gate open?”
I throw myself into my mother’s arms. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
My mother squeezes me around the waist and tells me to sit on the stoop. “I need to help Elaine right now.”
I sit on the step. My entire body trembles. “It’s my fault. I was a hurry.”
My mother kneels near my sister. She tries to take Jelly Bean from her, but Elaine won’t let go. “Maybe she’s not dead. Take her to the vet, Mom. Doc Evans will fix her.”
Polly sits on her haunches and lowers her head. She whimpers and whines.
Mom reaches for Jelly Bean. This time, Elaine lets her go.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry.” But no one hears.
“Come on, honey,” Mom says, taking Elaine’s hand. “Let’s go inside.” She looks at me with hurt eyes. “You too, Joyce Anne.”
But I run. I run hard and fast. I run toward the playground. I run through the baseball field, not even caring that there is a game. I run straight through the infield, even though people holler. I don’t care. I slip through the hole in the chain-link fence and slide down the hill into the woods. My palms scrape against jagged rock. I run and dodge the trees and vines snaking along the ground. I trip over rocks and branches and keep running until I can’t run anymore. My sides ache as I suck air into my burning lungs.
I lean against a large rock and cry. I killed Jelly Bean.
Thirteen
Salty tears run into my mouth. But I can’t even wipe them away. My arms are folded so tight around my stomach. I can’t move because I will crumble into a million pieces if I budge one inch from this rock. I feel the jagged edges in my back, but that’s all I can feel. Jagged edges and…and what? I can’t name it. It’s a feeling so big, I cannot contain it in a single word. I killed Jelly Bean. The words bounce and echo in my brain.
If only I had checked the latch. It was the rule. The one rule. And I ignored it because I was in such a hurry. Such a stupid, dumb hurry to get to Brian’s house.
My sobs come harder, and for a moment, I think someone might hear. But there’s no one around. Not now. The woods are empty. Except as I catch my breath and ease my cries, I can hear the rustle of the tiny animals under the dried leaves on the ground. I set off walking, heading to the creek where the water tumbles and falls over rocks and branches and the hideous sofa some idiot tossed into the water. I probably know every inch of the creek. I follow it for as long as I can, clear down to the old factory.
It’s an eerie place. The buildings are full of cracked windows from kids chucking rocks at them. It’s abandoned now.
Maybe I should move into the factory and live with the raccoons. I don’t know if I can ever go home. Not now. My head is pounding so hard that I stop walking, and my legs fold like a wooden chair beneath me.
I hear Polly barking to beat the band.
“Polly girl, you found me.” I clap my hands, and she runs toward me, tail wagging. She licks my face. I wrap my arms around her and…I cry. I sob into her warm fur. She lets me. She just lets me.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” I say. “I-I know I should have checked the gate. It’s the rule. I know it.”
Polly barks and pushes against me. I know she wants me to go home. I know she is trying to tell me it’s OK. But it isn’t OK.
I pat Polly’s head.
I have to face Elaine now. I have to tell her how sorry I am. How can I ever be sorry enough?
There isn’t enough sorry in the world to make a dent in the huge mountain of forgiveness I need.
Polly barks. She uses her high, almost shrill bark, which is her way of telling me it is time to go home and that’s final.
“Come on, girl.” My stomach goes wobbly when I stand. “I messed everything up.”
The trudge home is slow. I take the long way around Palmer Mill and up Briarwood before turning onto my street.
When Polly and I reach our house, I stand on the front sidewalk. My heart pounds, and my hands pour sweat. I can hear Jelly Bean squealing in my brain, and for a second, I hope she is still alive. Miracles happen, don’t they? Maybe Mom saved her. She once saved a baby robin by having Doc Evans amputate its leg on account of it was busted. Another time, she got a piece of stuck, pink gravel out of my red-eared slider’s throat before the turtle choked to death. And she was good with people too. All the neighbors called on my mom when someone got sick or if a mom wasn’t sure if her kid needed stitches or not. Mom knew. She always knew. She always makes thing better when no one thought they could. Maybe even…this.
I start to get a little excited, thinking that maybe, just maybe…until I see Dad at the door. His face is stern. Sterner than ever. He pushes open the screen and stands on the top step. I can’t move. He’s been watching for me.
“Elaine’s very upset,” he says.
I swallow as tears well in my eyes.
“Wh-where’s Jelly…Jelly…” My bottom lip quivers.
“Mom put her in the basement. I think that dog broke every bone in her body.”
I fall into my father’s arms.
“It was a mistake,” he says. “A big mistake—but a mistake just the same.”
I pull away from him. “I’m sorry. I-I—”
“There’s nothing to say, Joyce. Just come inside and we’ll get through this.”
• • •
The house is quiet. Real quiet. The TV is turned on, but the sound is so low, I can hardly hear it. Dad sits in his chair while Polly curls up on the couch. She will miss Jelly Bean.
And Elaine? So much will be different now. Instead of getting up every morning, opening Jelly Bean’s cage, and giving the pig a quick scratch behind the ears, she’ll need to find something new to do. Instead of sitting with Jelly Bean in the yard while she sketches, Elaine will be alone. Instead of squeals at night, there will be silence. So much of Elaine’s life was wrapped around the pig—I never knew until now.
I find Mom in the kitchen. She’s making supper. Looks like some sort of tuna casserole. Smells like some sort of tuna casserole.
“Are you thirsty?” she asks.
I nod because I can’t speak. Every time I open my mouth to say words, the tears start.
“Go on, sit at the table. I’ll get you some iced tea.”
I sit in my usual chair. Mom sets the glass in front of me. “You can have one cookie if you’d like. You missed lunch.”
I shake my head. I’m not the least bit hungry.
Mom goes back to the stove while I sit there with my iced tea. It’s good. I am thirsty.
“So what happened?”
Mom asks. “You know the rules—especially the gate.”
It is like a punch in the stomach. “I’m sorry. I didn’t double-check. I heard the latch, but I didn’t check.” I sit at the kitchen table and wipe beads of condensation from the iced tea glass.
Mom opens the oven and shoves the casserole dish inside. She sets the little yellow egg timer. It looks like an egg, a bright plastic egg. “Twenty minutes or so.” Then she sits at the table and squeezes my hand. “What was so important that you didn’t check the gate?”
I hear my father in the living room snap his newspaper in agreement.
I swallow another lump. “Here’s the thing,” I say. And then I tell her everything. About Brian. About the truck and the carburetor and how he is going to Arizona and about the flying saucer. I finish telling her, and then I look her square in the eyes and say, “I was in such a hurry get to Brian’s that I didn’t check the gate.”
My father’s paper snaps again.
Mom pats my knee. “Guess you learned a lesson.”
I nod about a dozen times.
“You know what you need to do,” Mom says.
“Elaine?”
“Yeah, you need to talk to her when she wakes up.”
Tears pour down my cheeks again. “What do I say?”
“Mostly that you are sorry—but after that? Well, it will take time.”
I take a breath. “What about Jelly Bean?”
“Oh, we’ll have a funeral, you know, like we did when Humbert the hamster died. That will help.”
I drain my glass of iced tea and set it near the sink.
“Thanks, Mom,” I say.
Then I hear an even louder snap, and a big blustery sound comes from my father.
“He’s really mad at me,” I say.
“Disappointed, Joyce. There’s a difference.”
I don’t feel the difference.
“We have rules for a reason,” Mom adds.
“May I go to the roof now?” I look past my mother and out the dining room window.
“Supper will be ready soon.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’ll still come down and sit at the table. That’s an order. And, Joyce, let’s forget about the UFO caper, OK?”
“But what about…” My eyes close like they do when you know something deep inside but don’t want to let it out. I look away from Mom. “OK. Fine.”
I head toward the front door.
I don’t look at Dad because I know I’ll cry if I even glance in his direction. And because I know there are no words I can say that will make him not be disappointed. He can’t tell me what to do to make it right. I hear the blustery snap of his newspaper. I have to figure out how to make it right on my own.
• • •
I get my binoculars and look straight toward Brian’s. Yep, there he is. He waves. I wave back, only with not as much gusto as usual.
He holds a sign: What happened?
Aw, man, he doesn’t know about Jelly Bean or that I told Mom about our plan. We were supposed to be at his garage earlier to get started. Before…before the pig died.
I quickly write in big, red letters: I need to talk to you.
I watch him through the lenses. He shrugs and then holds up the OK sign.
We make plans to meet at the playground after supper. Now I have two disasters on my hands.
• • •
“Joyce Anne, time for supper.” My mother is calling me from the side yard.
I climb onto the ladder and start down to the spot where Bubba attacked Jelly Bean.
“Where’s Elaine?” I ask when I get to the kitchen.
“I’ll get her,” Dad says. “You sit.”
The thing about my father is that sometimes it’s hard to tell how much of what he is saying sounds the way it does because he’s angry or because he’s sad. Whenever we talk about Bud, I hear that mixture in his voice. But he can’t be angry with Bud. It isn’t his fault he went missing. So Dad must be angry at the United States Army. But at the same time, I hear sadness around the edges of each of his words, almost like his words are tiny dams holding back a whole torrent of tears.
Today is like that, where Jelly Bean is concerned. Dad loved the pig too. I’d catch him petting her and feeding her dandelions and black licorice from time to time.
Mom sets the tuna casserole on the table. She always calls it Tuna Terrifico. But not today. It’s so quiet in the house that I can almost hear the steam rising from the hot dish. “It will need to cool,” she whispers.
Next, she pours iced tea. I think we drink iced tea with every single meal during the summer. And my mom makes really good iced tea. She has a special way of making it. She steeps the tea in a pot on a stove. That’s what she calls it when she puts twelve tea bags—always twelve tea bags—into the boiling water. She lets their little tags hang over the side of the pot like tiny white shirts hanging out to dry.
After the tea steeps for a while, she adds sugar and stirs until all the crystals are melted, and then she squeezes the lemon into the mixture. Always a real lemon. (She tried that fake stuff once that comes in the container shaped like a lemon and is called ReaLemon. I thought Dad was gonna throw a conniption fit.) Then the last step is to pour the tea into a pitcher and add cold water and ice. I figure I could make it if I had to.
• • •
After a few minutes, Elaine and Dad come to the table. Elaine looks awful—like she has been crying her eyes out for hours. She doesn’t look at me—not really—not more than a glance. And inside that glance are about a million sharp daggers.
“You should eat, honey,” Mom says to Elaine.
“Not hungry,” she says as she slides into her seat directly across from me.
Dad picks up plates and starts doling out the tuna and noodles and stuff. He uses his fingers to push a few noodles back onto the spoon before they drop on the table.
I am thinking three things:
1. I should say something to Elaine.
2. How do you apologize over tuna casserole?
3. What good was sorry anyway?
I try.
“I’m sorry, Elaine,” I say with my fork stuck in a chunk of tuna that might as well be Elaine’s heart because that’s how I feel—like I stabbed her in the heart. I shudder and pull the fork out of the fish and look at her even though she isn’t looking at me. “It was a mistake, OK? I-I should have checked the latch.”
Not a word. She only stares into her plate of gooey noodles.
“I really am sorry.” Unwanted tears stream down my cheeks. I look at my father. He doesn’t say a word and neither does Mom. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”
I move noodles around my plate. Yeah right, how on earth could I make it up to her?
Mom looks at Elaine. “Go on, sweetie. You need to eat.”
Elaine still stares into her noodles and doesn’t say a word.
My mother starts to talk about how Mrs. Lynch asked if Mom could reupholster an old chair.
Dad shakes his head and says, “She paying you?”
“She’ll buy the fabric and stuff.” Mom says this with her eyes still on Elaine as though she’s expecting Elaine to explode into a bajillion tiny pieces and she wants to catch her just before the explosion.
Dad swallows and sips his tea. Then he says in a forced cheerful voice, I guess because he is trying to lighten things up, “That reminds me. Lloyd Bertino called. He asked me to serve on a special deacons’ committee. See about getting a new steeple finally.”
I shake my head. More projects for Mom. More projects for Dad. And Elaine? Well, everyone is sorry for Elaine. But for me, there is no more project. And my parents don’t have any pity left over for me either. They’ve spent it all on Bud and Elaine.
Somewhere inside, an angry fe
eling starts to bubble up, and I think I understand my dad just a little bit more. I’m not angry at Elaine, but I’m angry. Angry at me. Angry at Bubba. Angry at the whole situation.
“I said I was sorry.” I say this into my plate.
Then I sneak a look at Elaine. Her eyes are filled with tears. She’s rearranging her tuna and noodles and peas into a picture of sorts—probably a guinea pig or a flying saucer. I think about Brian and our flying saucer. I drop my fork and push my chair from the table. “I’m not hungry.”
I run out the front door and head straight for the playground. I sit on the bleachers to wait for Brian. We will make plans. Plans to build the UFO, have the display, buy the stupid carburetor, and then head west. I want to go with him.
• • •
It is still hot, although some dark clouds are moving in. A huge, bottom-heavy thunderhead looks ominous. Rain won’t matter to me. I sit and fold my arms tight against my chest, and then I rest my head on my knees and wait for Brian.
“Hey.”
I look up.
“How long you been sitting here?” Brian asks.
All of a sudden, I have to fight back tears. “Not long.”
He sits next to me. “So what gives?”
“Mom says we have to call the whole thing off. But I don’t want to.”
“How come?”
“Because of something I did. Because I made a big, fat mistake.”
“What happened? Did your folks find out or somethin’?”
I shake my head. “Worse.”
“Worse? What is it?”
“I…killed my sister’s guinea pig. Elaine is so upset.”
“Wow, that’s rough,” Brian says. “What did you do? Step on the pig? Drop it?”
“She liked to run around the yard and eat dandelions and sit in the sun like a cow. She was safe as long as Polly was out there to watch her and as long as the side-yard gate was closed tight and…and that’s what happened.”
“What happened?”
“I left the stupid gate open, and a stupid dog got in and…and…”
“Oh man,” Brian says. “That’s pretty awful. But it ain’t all your fault. It was the stupid dog’s fault.”