Gap Life
Page 17
I appreciated her trying to make me feel better, but that seemed insignificant. “I’m sorry, Stephanie.”
“I’m sorry for all of us. We’re going to miss her terribly. Can you tell people?”
“Yeah. Rayne is here, too.”
“Good.”
I hung up and turned to see everybody watching me. I knew I had to be as clear as possible. “Kate died. She suffered a heart attack.”
I walked toward Rayne and she stood to give me a hug. Nicole got up and wrapped her arms around us. Then Sean and Brent did, too. The five of us stood together and tears flowed.
For the second time that morning I was crying, and it felt like the appropriate response—the age-appropriate response for all of us.
* * *
THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE A BLUR AS I STRUGGLED TO catch up to what had happened. Kate’s things got cleaned out and painters came to put a fresh coat of white on the walls. I walked around in a daze and kept Kate’s door closed when I worked. I hoped she would open it and walk out, and everything would go back to normal.
The day of the funeral was a relief in a way because everybody focused on the same thing. Grace Lutheran Church was packed with Kate’s friends, family, coworkers, and people from the other CSS houses. I sat between Rayne and Nicole in a pew of Oakcrest people. Sean tightened his tie and Brent looked down. Nicole dabbed her eyes with a tissue and I reached to hold her hand. I grabbed Rayne’s on the other side and she reached out to Brent. Pretty soon everybody from Oakcrest, including Eli, Stephanie, Kirsty, and Darla, were holding hands together.
The pastor described how Kate had been anxious and suspicious when he first met her. “But once she liked you, there was nobody more loyal.”
I looked around the church. It seemed a number of people had gone through the same thing I had with Kate. The pastor was right. She didn’t accept people easily, but once she did, she accepted them totally.
Kate’s sister, who looked a lot like her, talked about how close the two of them became after their mother died. She said she spoke on the phone with Kate every day and, depending on what was going on, sometimes multiple times a day. “Her voice is so clear in my head that my daily conversations with her will continue.”
Kate’s father also got up. He was an old man with a white beard who walked with a cane, but he spoke strongly. He thanked everybody at Oakcrest, including somebody he said Kate called Race Car. Everybody laughed, and I was surprised to be singled out. “Thank you for everything you did to provide Kate with such a full life. We could never have done it without you.”
I gave Rayne’s hand a squeeze and she smiled softly through her tears.
BEGINNING
LATER THAT WEEK, Rayne and I walked among the cemetery gravestones. Acorns fell on the path, and the earlier dark hinted of fall. A place that had once seemed scary now felt familiar. I thought about being with everybody at the funeral. “I’m going to miss Oakcrest when I leave.”
“Me too.” Rayne picked up a plastic bag that had wrapped around a gravestone and shoved it in her pocket. “You’ve really connected with people there. Stephanie would hire you back in a second.”
I’d been so focused on leaving that I hadn’t thought about coming back. It was reassuring to know I had a place there.
Rayne turned to me. “Getting excited about Barcelona?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a youth hostel lined up for a week, and there are so many other places I want to see. That guide you gave me is great. I’m going to Madrid, where many of those Almodóvar films are set, and then to the Alhambra in Granada and the Mezquita, the giant cathedral that used to be a mosque, in Córdoba. Southern Spain is very close to Morocco, so I can take a ferry to Tangier and be in North Africa, on a different continent, and go to Casablanca and Marrakesh.”
“How are your parents handling it?” Rayne asked.
“Dad’s not saying I’ll be home in a month anymore. He’s switched it to the end of the year, which is progress. Mom shocked me by giving me back all the rent money. She didn’t think I should have been paying it in the first place and told me not to tell Dad but to use it for my trip. And Lansing came up with the idea of them meeting me in Spain for Christmas. Mom said if I was there then, she wanted to do it, and Dad didn’t rule it out.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, the clearer I’ve been about going, the fewer arguments I’ve had with them and the more they’ve accepted it. In a strange way, it seems Dad even wants me to go. He keeps saying it will show me how great college is, but I also think he wants me out of the house. He worries I’m a bad influence on Lansing, but I think he’s jealous.”
“Why?”
“He’s always been into art and stuff from around the world but he’s hardly traveled. I bet he would have liked to but got scared after his brother died.” I told Rayne the story of Stevie as we walked, and she listened closely. “I think Dad wishes he’d done what I’m doing.”
“That’s interesting,” Rayne said.
“Dad knows I’m not going to St. Luke’s and isn’t sure what to do. I hope being independent and on my own for a year will change how he sees me.”
“That’s huge.” Rayne gave me a fist bump.
“Yeah.” We walked down the hill to the new section of the cemetery, and an owl hooted a lonely call. We stopped in front of a freshly dug grave with dirt mounded on top. I bent down to examine the temporary marker. I couldn’t read it in the dark so I took out my phone and tapped the flashlight on.
“Is it?” Rayne asked.
I nodded as the two of us stood over Kate’s grave. I said a silent prayer for her and for us.
“Safe crossing, Kate,” Rayne said.
I crouched down and picked up a clump of dirt. Life could end so quickly: Kate, Stevie, me that time I almost got hit by the car.
Rayne squatted down beside me and reached for my other hand. “Do you know the Mary Oliver poem ‘The Summer Day’?”
“No.”
“It’s one I love. She starts by describing how amazing a grasshopper is. Then she goes into how we’re all going to die and closes with a question: ‘What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’”
I felt the cool dirt in one hand and the warmth of Rayne in the other. I liked that line and finally knew. I was going to live my one wild and precious life. I couldn’t live it for someone else. Not Mom. Not Dad. Not even Rayne. I needed to live it for myself.
“Farewell, dear Kate.” Rayne let go and stood up.
I crumbled the dirt and it fell on the grave.
“I’m glad we came here,” Rayne said as we walked up the hill.
“Me too.”
“I’ve been thinking,” she said when we were back in the older part of the cemetery. “If we’re on the same flight to Amsterdam, it would be silly to sit apart.”
“I agree.” I went over to the statue of Zoran and rubbed his nose for good luck.
“Window or aisle?”
“What?”
“There are two seats on the side in that plane. Which do you want?”
“Window, definitely. I want to see.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d go,” Rayne said.
“I’m going.” I sat down on Mr. Driggs’s grave and leaned back. I tried to sound low-key even though I was bursting inside. I was flying overnight to Europe with Rayne MacCrimmon beside me. When we got to Amsterdam, she’d go to Scotland and I’d go to Spain, but who knew what would happen after that? A year was a long time, and those places weren’t that far apart. We could meet up someplace fun like London or Paris or Casablanca or Marrakesh.
I thought back to the first time I’d met Rayne at the Edge and how much had changed. “Sing that song again, the one your grandpa used to sing.”
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,
Onward! the sailors cry;
Carry the lord that’s born to be King
Over the sea to Skye.
Her voice was strong and clear.
Loud th
e winds howl, loud the waves roar,
Thunderclaps rend the air;
Baffled, our foes stand by the shore,
Follow they will not dare.
I joined in on the chorus and we sang together sitting side by side among the gravestones with Kate’s newly dug plot down the hill.
Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing,
Onward! the sailors cry;
Carry the lord that’s born to be King
Over the sea to Skye.
Onward! I was going over the sea to explore a world that was so much bigger than Clairemont, bigger than college, bigger than what I could imagine. I wasn’t ruining my future like Dad had warned. I was living my gap life, my wild and precious life.
“I can’t believe everything that’s happened this summer.” I peered into Rayne’s bright eyes.
“You should write it down,” she said.
So I did.
From the beginning.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For ten years, I worked in group homes, residential facilities, and community houses and the experience changed my life. I am grateful for all that I learned from the people at Carlson Group Home and First Avenue of Hammer Residences and Hill House at Mount Olivet Rolling Acres. Thanks to Kim Becker, Terry Benson, Steve Bristol, Greg Burns, Bob Clough, Mary Coleman, Mary Ruder Daniels, Jim Davis, Gary Gore, Livia Gunther, Liz Koltes, Art Lehmann, Shelly Marano, Noel Pauly, Chip Pearson, Debbie Pearson, Don Rudd, Ken Sprute, Denny Spurling, Lynn Steinman, Jim Stone, Missy Swanson, Steve Tschimperle, Janet Tuckner, Lynn Vertnik, Virginia Volkenant, Steve Wilmes, and Wendy Zahn. Special thanks to the best boss one could have: Lisbeth Vest Armstrong.
Thanks to David LaRochelle, Janet Lawson, Jody Peterson Lodge, Cindy Rogers, and Mike Wohnoutka for making this so much better. Thanks to Eibhlin Caimbeul, Maddie Coy-Bjork, Joe McCrae, and Geoff Herbach for excellent ideas and suggestions.
My deep appreciation goes to everybody at the Anderson Center in Red Wing, Minnesota, for the gift of time and space.
Andrea Cascardi offered essential encouragement and guidance in shaping this story, and Liz Szabla is an absolute gift as an editor. Thank you, too, to Anna Booth for a great cover and to all my friends at Feiwel and Friends.
Onward!
Thank you for reading this FEIWEL AND FRIENDS book.
The Friends who made
GAP LIFE
possible are:
JEAN FEIWEL, Publisher
LIZ SZABLA, Editor in Chief
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Coy has written several books for children, including Top of the Order and Love of the Game. He spends much of his time as a writer-in-residence at elementary schools. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
The End
No Deal
Rayne Man
Help Wanted
Lucky Day
Experience
Independent Living
Interviewing
Like Any Other House
It’s Different
Gone
Oakcrest
Orientating
Her Favorite Place Is Where?
A Mess
Be Careful
The Crash
Some Space
Complicated
The Call
Gap Life
Flexibility
Laying Down the Law
Age Appropriate
Meeting Marco
Zero
On the Bridge
Breaking Up Properly
The Disappearance
Eighteenth
Time to Tell
Uninvited
Beginning
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
A FEIWEL AND FRIENDS BOOK
An imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
GAP LIFE. Copyright © 2016 by John Coy. All rights reserved. For information, address Feiwel and Friends, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Our books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact your local bookseller or the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945 ext. 5442 or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016937596
ISBN 978-1-250-08895-6 (hardcover) / ISBN 978-1-250-08896-3 (ebook)
Feiwel and Friends logo designed by Filomena Tuosto
First Edition—2016
eISBN 9781250088963
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