But when I walked onto the platform, it was light and warm and the train had just pulled in. Toby was walking toward me, with a smile that wasn’t one of those adult smiles that’s too big with no thinking behind it. It was a real smile. Like he was so glad to see me he almost couldn’t believe his luck.
“Come on,” he said, like we already knew each other.
It was a strange time of day. Most people weren’t done with work yet, and if they were they were mostly headed north, coming home from the city. I walked onto the southbound train, trying not to think too hard about what I was doing.
The carriage we picked was almost empty. Toby pointed to a set of four seats, two facing two. “Here?”
I nodded and sat down. Toby sat in the aisle seat, diagonal from me. His knees poked out across the space between us, forcing me to lean in toward the window to avoid touching him.
“Thanks for coming,” he said. I could see him trying to make eye contact with me, but I didn’t want that. I kept my head turned away, staring out the window at an Absolut vodka billboard on the platform. On the bottom someone had written Def Leppard Rokz, but someone else had crossed out Rokz and written Sukz in its place.
“It’s okay,” I said, still staring out the window.
“You’re not scared or anything, are you? Because I know what I must have seemed like on the phone and I know what your family thinks of me, and I was trying so hard to find some kind of way to talk to you.”
The train pulled out of the station, slowly rocking side to side.
“No. You’re not scaring me.”
“Good. That’s good.” He stared over at the empty seat across the aisle, then slowly turned back to me. “Did you tell your parents you were coming?”
At first I didn’t answer. Then I turned and looked right at him and said, “That’s kind of a creepy thing to ask, isn’t it?”
Toby seemed worried for a second. He gave a tiny wince, like he knew he’d made a mistake. But then he laughed. “You’re right. It is creepy. Very creepy. That’s not how I meant it.” He rolled his eyes. They were dark brown and soft in a way that reminded me of an animal’s eyes. Like the big brown eyes of a horse. “Finn used to say . . .”
I sat up straighter when he said Finn’s name. My whole body went tense, and Toby must have seen that, because he frowned and gave me a kind of pleading look. “Oh, it’s nothing,” he said, waving his long hand in the air. He tilted his head, trying to catch my eye again. Trying to see if I was trusting him.
“Anyway, the answer’s no. I didn’t tell anyone about it.” I had a Swiss Army knife in my coat pocket with the corkscrew already out. Just in case.
Toby reached into his backpack and pulled out a crumpled Dunkin’ Donuts bag with a cruller in it. He twisted off a chunk and gave it to me. The sticky glaze had melted a little, making the whole thing a mess. I didn’t want to take it from him, but I’d come straight from school and I was starving.
“Thanks,” I said.
I sat there untwisting the two strands of donut, and when I looked up I saw that Toby was doing the same thing. We both smiled, nervous, not knowing what to say. Then I was sorry that I’d smiled, because I didn’t want him to get the idea that we were friends or anything.
The train slowed. The doors slid open and a blast of cold air drifted through. Toby didn’t even seem to notice that we’d stopped. I thought it must have been almost four o’clock by that time, but I didn’t want to say anything. I’d already said I wasn’t scared, and I wasn’t. The doors closed again and the train pulled out.
“It’s like DNA, isn’t it?” Toby held the half-separated donut up to the window. “You know, double helix.”
It was the kind of thing Finn might have said to me, and I couldn’t help smiling. There was something that felt familiar about Toby, and I couldn’t help carrying it on. “Dunkin’ DNA, Dunkin’ blood cells, a twleve-pack of Dunkin’ eyeballs—”
Toby threw his hand over his mouth to keep from spitting out his donut. His lips were coated in sticky glaze. “And Dunkin’ bacteria and Dunkin’ viruses . . .”
I could tell he hadn’t meant to say that word. Viruses. I looked away. Toby looked down, and when he looked back up his face was serious.
“Hey,” he said. “I miss him, you know.”
I ate the last bite of my donut and stared out at the fenced-off backyards of the houses that bordered the tracks. Through some of the windows you could see people in their kitchens, cooking dinner. I rubbed my sticky fingers against the cloth of the seat.
“Me too,” I said after a while.
“He talked about you all the time,” Toby said. “You know that, don’t you?”
I could feel myself starting to smile and blush, and I turned away fast. Then I understood what it meant. I hadn’t been a secret. Toby knew about me.
“Yeah, right,” I said, shrugging like I didn’t care.
“It’s true.”
We sat there in silence. I saw Toby fidgeting with his train ticket. Folding and unfolding it again and again.
“So . . . are you some kind of artist too?” I said.
“Oh, no. No, I’m crap. Complete and utter rubbish.” Toby laughed. “Once Finn tried to show me some sculpture stuff, but . . .” He looked over at me. I must have been frowning, because he changed his tone. “I don’t know. It just didn’t work out, really.”
“Me neither.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I’m not a good artist. I’m not even one of the best in my class.” I didn’t mean to say anything about myself, but it came out before I could stop it.
“Well, Finn thought you were good. Really good.” Toby uncrossed his legs and leaned in. “Finn said art isn’t about drawing or painting a perfect bowl of fruit. It’s about ideas. And you, he said, have enough good ideas to last a lifetime.”
“He said that?”
“Uh-huh.”
Again I blushed and turned away from Toby, looking out the window. For a second it felt like Finn was on that train with us. Like Toby had a little ghost Finn on his shoulder telling him exactly what to say.
I didn’t want to let myself get suckered in by all this nice talk, but it was hard not to. It was hard not to want to listen forever to every beautiful thing Finn ever said about me. I glanced over at Toby. He was probably making it all up. He was the special one, after all. I was just the dumb niece, and suddenly it felt all wrong that this guy, this stranger, had talked about me with Finn. That he knew all kinds of things about me and I knew nothing.
“So you’ve taken over Finn’s apartment?” I said. I heard the mean edge in my voice, I heard myself sounding more like Greta than myself, but I didn’t care.
Toby bowed his head. “I . . .”
“Whatever. I don’t want to know.”
Quiet again.
“You know, you can come down whenever you want,” he said. “Whenever. I mean it. Night or day.”
I shrugged. Then, before I knew it, I felt my eyes start to sting. I felt tears pressing up, and the more I tried to stop them, the more they wanted out. I turned, but I felt Toby lay a hand on my back. I leaned away. I breathed in and out as slow as I could until I felt myself coming back to normal.
“Hey, it’ll be all right,” he said. Then he moved his sweater off the seat next to him and laid it on his lap. Just that. Just saying I could sit there if I wanted to. I looked at the empty seat so he could see that I knew what he’d done, what he was saying, but that I wasn’t going to move. I didn’t need his help.
But he didn’t put the sweater back down. He clutched it to his lap and left that empty seat between us. The train stopped at four more stations, and I sat there, letting it drag me farther and farther away from home. Out of the woods. Out of the suburbs and into the cold stone air of the city.
When the train pulled into Grand Central, we both got off.
He thanked me for coming about twenty more times and told me that he hoped it wouldn’t be the
last time we saw each other. He opened his backpack and handed me a brown paper bag. “From Finn,” he said, leaning in close, then quickly pulling back.
“And there’s more.”
I took the bag without looking at it, as if it wasn’t important.
“Well, why didn’t you just bring it, then? If there’s more.”
Toby looked embarrassed. He twisted his hands behind his back and looked down at the dirty train station floor.
“Because I didn’t think you’d come again once you had it all. And I need—I want you to come again. Very much.”
Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a whole bunch of money and handed it to me. It wasn’t stacked neatly or anything; it was like he’d just shoved the notes into his pocket from some big pile somewhere.
“Here. You know, in case you need anything.”
I didn’t look at it closely, but I could tell it was a lot. Our neighbor Mrs. Kepfler used to try to give Greta and me a dollar each sometimes. Just because we looked like nice girls, she would say. But my mother would never let us take it. “You don’t take money unless it’s family.” That’s what she always said before making us return it.
“I can’t,” I said to Toby, handing it back.
“No, no, no. You can. It’s Finn’s. It’s not like you’re taking it from me or anything. There’s still loads left. Don’t worry.”
“The kinds of things I want don’t cost money,” I said, pushing the notes back into his hands. I didn’t know if he understood what I meant. That what I wanted was for time to roll back and for Finn never to have met Toby and never to have been given AIDS and to still be here, just me and him. Like I always thought it was.
“Oh,” Toby said, seeming like he felt foolish suddenly. I wondered what the two of us looked like, standing in the middle of the crowded Grand Central concourse, Toby holding out this fistful of money, just waiting for someone to come up and grab it out of his hand. He tried to shove the money back into his pockets, but it wouldn’t fit, and right then, just for a second, I kind of felt sorry for him.
“Okay, okay,” I said. I held my backpack out. “But hurry up.”
He smiled and shoved the money in. “It’s what Finn would have wanted, all right?”
I was about to say that nobody knew what Finn would have wanted, but I had the awful thought that maybe Toby did know. Maybe it was only me who had no idea.
“We could . . . I don’t know, maybe get some coffee? Ice cream? A drink?” Toby nudged his head toward the bar in the station.
I looked at the big clock: four-fifty. Even if I’d wanted to go somewhere with Toby, it would have been too late. I had to get back for the party.
I shook my head. “I’ve got somewhere to be.”
“Of course. Some other time, right? I’ll see you again?”
I looked Toby up and down. He stood there, shoulders stooped. His fingers playing with a loose thread on the edge of his sweater, his big brown eyes staring right into me like he really cared about my answer.
“I . . . I guess I might call you. Sometime. If I don’t have anything better to do.”
Toby’s face lit up. He nodded and thrust his hand out to me, like he wanted to shake on it, but I didn’t take it.
“Brilliant. Whenever you want, all right? Whenever. I’m always around. And if you ever need anything . . . anything at all. I mean it.”
That’s how we left it. Toby asked me five or six times if I would be all right getting home, and when he finally believed that I would, we said goodbye. He headed through the archway toward the exit, then he stopped and turned and looked back again. He smiled and waved and made like he was dialing an invisible telephone. Then he pointed at me. I nodded so he would go, then I bought a ticket home. I used the money I’d brought with me. My own, not what Toby had just given me. I didn’t look in Toby’s direction again. I stood there on the platform, staring down at the grimy tracks, waiting for my train, thinking that I would probably never see him again.
Twenty-Two
Almost the whole cast of South Pacific was out in the woods behind the school. Ryan Cooke, Julie Contolli, Megan Donegan. And some of the crew. Lighting and set builders. The people who wore all black and snuck around between scenes. If I was in the play, I’d be crew. I felt like stage crew right then, hiding behind a tree, watching everyone hunched around a fire. I heard Greta before I saw her. Her voice warbled through the trees. Snatches of “Bali Ha’i,” Bloody Mary’s big song. Island . . . sea . . . me . . . Then it went quiet and I spotted her. I saw Greta tipping a bottle to her mouth. A brown drink, whiskey or brandy. I didn’t even know Greta drank alcohol. I didn’t want to know.
I’d run from the train station right across town, and it had felt like maybe I was running for my last chance at being normal. Charging through the cold air, over the crusty little patches of snow, away from the weirdness of the whole afternoon with Toby. I didn’t feel like me. It was like I was in a show about someone almost exactly like myself but not quite.
I waited for the moment when it might be right to step out from behind the tree and become part of the party, but it didn’t seem to come. I stood there getting colder and colder, until finally I got my coat out of my backpack and put it on. I didn’t care how I looked anymore. I took a step backward and stumbled, and a few kids saw me. One of them was Greta, who smiled for a second, then turned to say something to the boy next to her. Another was Ben Dellahunt. He glanced down at my feet and then walked over.
“So, we meet again. You’re the younger Elbus.”
I blushed. “Yeah. June.”
“I’ve noticed those boots of yours.”
I put one foot behind the other, trying to make the boots smaller than they were. I didn’t want Ben Dellahunt looking at my boots. It had been a long day, and I didn’t think I had the strength to defend my best present from Finn.
“You said that last time. What about them?” It came out harsher than I meant it to.
“Whoa there.” Ben put his hands up like he was trying to protect himself. “Nothing. Just . . . they’re cool. That’s all. I wouldn’t mind some like that.”
“Well, they’re not for sale.”
“I know,” he said, laughing. “Don’t worry.”
I wondered if Greta had asked Ben to look out for me. If this was why she’d asked me to go to the party. If maybe she’d seen us talking in the auditorium that night.
Ben walked over to a cooler and grabbed a bottle. He handed it to me. “Beer?”
He’d already opened it, so there wasn’t much else I could do except take it from him. I thought I’d have a sip and then pour the rest out somewhere.
“Thanks,” I said.
Ben eyed me up. “You’re, like, way taller than your sister.”
“Yeah. I know.”
We stood there awkwardly for a while.
“You want to go for a walk or something?” Ben asked.
I thought about it for a few seconds. Maybe a few seconds too long, because Ben said “It’s just a walk, you know. Nothing life or death about it.”
So I said yes. Not because I wanted to go for a walk with Ben Dellahunt, but because at least it meant leaving the party. I didn’t want to stay around that fire. Near Greta drinking, with all those people I didn’t know. If we went into the woods, it would barely be like a party at all. And if anything went really wrong, I still had the corkscrew in my pocket. I’d folded it down halfway through the train ride with Toby, but I still had it, ready and waiting. And I had a flashlight, which I was pretty sure I wouldn’t need but Greta had insisted I bring along.
As we walked farther into the woods, I heard one of the boys yell, “Go, Benno!”
“Ignore him,” Ben said, and edged closer to me.
We were heading toward the brook when he stopped.
“Do you hear that?” he said. “That sounds like, I don’t know . . . dogs or something.”
“They might be wolves,” I said, and then regretted it rig
ht away.
He laughed. “Yeah, right. All the wolves were killed off here, like, a hundred years ago. You have to go way the hell up north to find wolves.”
“We don’t know everything. Maybe wolves from the north could just walk right down here to Westchester. How would we ever know?” I took another sip of the beer, suddenly feeling bold.
“Shhh,” he said. “Let’s listen.” He put two fingers up. “Anyway,” he whispered, “not all wolves are bad.”
I looked down. “No. Not all. Not bad. Just . . . just selfish. That’s what they are. Hungry and selfish.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. “Yeah, well, anyway, it’s probably just coyotes or dogs. Probably mongrel dogs.” He looked around, then back at me, and picked up my hand. “If you want, we could try to find them.”
Behind us, the fire was still burning strong. People were huddled close to it, tipping beer bottles to their lips. Farther out in the woods were little specks of light, candles and flashlights of other people who’d left the fire.
“I don’t think I want to know.” I didn’t want to tell him that I liked believing in the wolves.
“Why wouldn’t you want to know?” He reached into his coat pocket, then held out his palm to me. “You ever play D&D?”
I shook my head.
“Ah, well . . .” Ben kind of puffed himself up and started to explain about percentages and character alignment and experience points. Then he handed me a weird-shaped die and told me to roll it.
“Go on,” he said. “Right here.” He laid out both his flattened palms. He had hands the size of my father’s and a voice that was low and even. He had a small patch of stubble on his chin. We were alone together, and somehow the two years between Ben Dellahunt and me seemed wider and darker than the fifteen or twenty between me and Toby only a few hours before. I didn’t really understand what I was trying to do, but I let the die fall from my fingers into his hands.
Tell the Wolves I'm Home: A Novel Page 9