by Caela Carter
I’m already the shortest person standing on this stoop. Mom’s mumbling makes me shrink another inch.
“It’s OK, Mercy,” Julia’s mom says. “Listen, I have to take the girls with me to work later. I have some patients coming in the afternoon. Julia usually hangs out with her iPad in the waiting room. I sometimes let her wander into town for Dunkin’ Donuts.”
“Whatever you say, Beverly,” Mom says. She has no opinion. This is so new. It’s like her loneliness ate all her opinions.
I run a hand down the frizzy waves of my hair and look up at her. I beg her with my eyes to look at me, smile at me. Just one look and I’ll feel so much better today.
“OK, then,” Julia’s mom says. “You get going. I know you have a lot going on.”
Mom doesn’t look away from her. She keeps her eyes glassy. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”
Julia’s mom shifts her weight on her feet. “Just remember, school starts on Monday.” She pauses. Then adds, “So tomorrow night is a school night.”
Mom nods. “I know,” she says. Then she leans through the doorway and plants a kiss on my forehead like it’s bedtime. “I love you,” she says. “That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing.”
It’s a slightly different refrain. She loves me and that’s why she’s doing what she’s doing? Why she’s dropping me off again like she can’t stand to have me around? Why she’s working on some mysterious project I can’t know anything about?
Because she loves me?
I don’t say anything.
I watch through Julia’s front door as her halo-frizz disappears into her car. I never knew I could miss her tight bun.
Julia’s mom should have explained that “school night” means no more sleepovers. She should have said it directly: my mom can’t drop me off and leave day after day after day anymore once school starts. Mom probably didn’t realize that’s what she meant. Probably in two days I’m going to stand on this doorstep while my mom tries to pass me off and the woman who has been acting like my mom all summer says, “No, not today.”
Julia shuts the door and does a happy dance. “Yes!” she says. “Another sleepover! Another sleepover!”
I love Julia.
“Lunch in an hour,” Julia’s mom says.
“OK!” Julia says. She’s already pulling me into her room, a huge smile plastered on her face.
“Be ready to leave for my office when lunch is over,” Julia’s mom calls behind us.
Julia’s mom works as a dermatologist in Parkville. We haven’t been to Parkville yet. I know what we’re going to do there. And I know Julia isn’t going to like it.
Once her bedroom door is shut, Julia plugs her iPod into her speakers and I lunge for her desk chair and open the internet on her laptop. Julia spins in front of me, dancing a little to the Taylor Swift song she just turned on. Julia is all arms and legs, tall and skinny, just the opposite of me. Her hair is sleek and always in a bump-free ponytail. She only wears glasses at night because her mom got her contact lenses last year, and even when she does, her glasses are small and square and black. She usually looks so much older than me.
But I don’t mind. I like my bright green glasses with huge lenses. I like that my hair looks a little different every day. I like that my hair isn’t a definite color, somewhere between brown and black and red, and that my eyes are a sort of catlike shape that my mom calls “particularly Portuguese.” I like looking different than my best friend.
“What should we do today?” Julia asks.
Then she sees the screen I opened on her computer.
It’s a map.
She stops dancing.
“No,” she says. “No, Alma, come on. Not today.”
“There’s one right across the street from the Dunkin’ Donuts near your mom’s office!” I say, pointing to the Google Earth photo of a graveyard.
“Alma!” she says. “I don’t—”
“Look!” I interrupt her, still pointing. “Look how close! It’s a sign!”
I wave frantically around the screen. I’ve zoomed in almost as far as you can go. All you can see is the street angled across the laptop screen. On the lower corner of the screen it says Dunkin’ Donuts. On the upper corner it says First Presbyterian Cemetery.
“Right across the street!” I say again.
“That’s a main highway,” Julia says. Julia doesn’t believe in signs.
I shrug.
“My mom will never let us go there,” she says. I do feel bad about the way her shoulders are drooping. The spring in her step is gone. Five minutes ago she was joyful at the sight of me. Now I’m scaring her again.
But I have to go. I have to at least look. What if this is the one?
“Your MOM?” I squeal. I laugh a little. I make myself seem big so that she’ll have to agree with me. I do what my mom does. “We’re not going to tell her.”
“Alma,” she says. Then she stops. She drops onto her lime-green bedspread. Her room is exactly like her, all bright colors, sleek, sophisticated, cheerful. She has posters of giraffes and magazine ads of giraffes and National Geographic pictures of giraffes taped to the wall above her bed and framed pictures displaying me and her family lined up on her desk. A map of Korea hangs on the back of her door and recently she’s added some cutouts of Korean characters to the giraffe collection. I don’t know what they say.
A normal room for a girl with a normal family.
My room is nothing like this one. It’s all white and beige with almost nothing on the walls. And it’s full of scraps of paper with questions written in my handwriting. Crowding the corners of every drawer. Wedged in between the pages of my books. Squished between my pillow and my mattress. My room, like me, only pretends to be normal.
“Alma,” Julia says again.
I pause and look at her. I raise my eyebrows. “You know I need to look.”
“Yeah, but . . .” Julia’s voice edges toward whining. “Can’t we do something fun today? Summer’s almost over.”
I point out the window. Dark clouds are rolling over Julia’s house. It’s so windy that we can see the undersides of the leaves in the trees in her yard. “It doesn’t look like summer anyway.”
“That doesn’t make me want to hang out with dead people!” Julia says.
“We’ll go quickly, OK?” I make my eyes do that glassy thing like Mom. Then I say, “You don’t have to go with me if you don’t want to. I’ll figure out a way to go on my own.”
“Hmm,” Julia says. She waits just a beat too long. “Of course I’ll go with you.”
I flash her a huge smile, leap out of my seat, and hug her, squeezing my arms around her elbows and pushing my face into her shoulder. “You’re the best friend ever!” I say.
We both collapse onto her bed, humming along to Taylor.
“I’m changing the subject,” she says, scooting a bit away from me so we’re sitting side by side on her bed, but not touching. I wonder if that was normal girl behavior or if she had to scoot away from me because even though I’m her best friend, she’s a little scared of me.
“OK,” I say.
“Do you have it today?”
It takes me a minute to remember what she’s talking about. “Oh!” I say. “Yeah, of course.” I pull the sealed envelope from the back pocket of my jean shorts.
Julia puts it in both of her hands and studies the front where my mom’s name and my address are printed. She turns it over to where PS 125: New Bridges Elementary School is printed above the flap.
“Ready?” she says. She slips a finger into the corner as if she’s going to open it but I yell “NO!”
Julia jumps, startled.
The regular panic is setting in. Now that Julia was in my fourth grade class and my fifth grade class, it’s impossible to remember what school was like without her in the same room all day every day. And yet, I know we won’t be so lucky three years in a row. There’s no way we’ll have the same sixth grade teacher. So I’ve bee
n putting it off, shoving it off.
Fifth grade was the year I lost Adam.
If sixth grade becomes the year I lose Julia . . .
“But tomorrow is the last day of summer,” Julia says.
“I know,” I say.
Her eyes dig into me. “Please?” Julia begs.
She always says she wants to be in the same class just as much as I do. She says she needs it just as much as I do. She says I’m the only one who gets her and that makes sense because we’re the different ones. Julia’s different because she was born in Korea and then adopted by her white Pittsburgh-suburbs family. I’m different because my dad is Portuguese and after he died we moved to Florida, then we moved back here. So yes, we’re both different. But Julia’s life got normal after she was adopted and I’m not adopted so my life is going to stay screwed up. I know I need her more than she needs me. I’m the worse friend, and the needier one.
“Let’s open it tonight,” I say. “After it gets dark. When it won’t be so bad if we cry.”
“Alma!” Julia says. “We won’t be crying. You’ll get Mr. Hendricks too.” She says this like she knows even though there’s no way to know. She says it like a girl who’s used to having everything work out.
I shrug. “Tonight,” I say.
Julia holds the letter tight and for a second it looks like she may open it anyway. But, because she’s the better friend, she hands it over. “OK,” she says. “Tonight.”
Five
Why Is Life So Unfair?
AN HOUR AND A HALF LATER we’re in the graveyard. A shiver runs up my spine and dances around the roots of my hair. I love those shivers, but I can’t enjoy it fully because I feel extra bad for dragging Julia here. The dark clouds in the sky make it almost feel like night. Most of the trees in this graveyard don’t have any leaves, as if they’re as dead as the bodies rotting among their roots. They spread black across the gray sky, looking like arms and spines hunching over the dead grass.
We’re the only two people here. Usually, during the day, graveyards have lots of people. People praying. People sitting and talking to a tombstone. People walking their dogs. This one is empty. It’s full of old forgotten graves.
A bit of hope mixes in with the warm wind that’s whipping around our hair.
“You check the ones closest to the path,” I say.
Julia is biting her lip and studying her bright purple rain boots.
“I’ll go to the ones down the hill.” I point about ten yards away.
“Really?” Julia says, her voice wavering. I call this her Graveyard Voice. She has a Graveyard Voice, which is high and shaky and scared. I should stop making her come to graveyards with me. “Don’t you think we should stick together for this one?”
I watch her purple rain boot turn on its side, then right itself. I hesitate. I know I should stay with her. I know that’s the good best friend thing to do. But there’s that tugging on my heart, like a finger has hooked itself behind my rib cage and it’s pulling me heart-first down the hill.
“I’ll be right there, where I can see you,” I say. “Ten minutes. Then we’ll go get Coolattas.”
She stares. I have to do something to make her feel OK.
“It’s not that bad, Jules,” I snicker. “They’re already dead. They can’t hurt anyone.”
Then I walk away, shaking my head. Even I don’t believe myself. The dead hurt everybody, just by being dead.
After about ten steps, I check over my shoulder. She’s hunched over a gravestone, reading, her black ponytail dancing in the wind behind her. I only let the guilt seize me for a second before I start digging.
“I hope you can get this to my dad,” I whisper to the headstone. It says Gloria MacAvee. She died in 1992.
I open the earth near where her hand would be. But that’s as far as I get before thunder claps loud enough to make the branches on the ground bounce around us. Lightning spreads a neon spiderweb across the black sky.
“AAALLLLMMMMMAAAA!” Julia screams, not caring about the dead who are all resting and missing their daughters around her. “WE’RE LEAVING! NOW!”
I close my eyes for half a second. I barely got to read any of the graves. I feel for my heart. There’s no tugging. The goose bumps are only from the chill in the air.
He’s not here.
“Ms. MacAvee,” I whisper. “Please get this question to my dad.”
Will I ever find you?
The paper is getting wet.
I shove it into the tiny hole and throw some dirt on top of it.
I pause long enough for the sky to open up. Rain falls in one huge sheet, drenching the entire graveyard and everyone in it—dead and alive—all at once. I can’t help laughing. I rush at Julia and grab her hand and she grabs me back. We sprint toward the highway, laughing and shrieking and holding on to each other, puddles blooming under our rain boots.
That night we’re in Julia’s kitchen with her parents, homemade pizzas between us. Bradley, Julia’s brother, comes pounding up the stairs. Food is being passed. Days are being discussed. I’m quiet like I always am at Family Dinner with not-my-family.
I lean back on their words. I let the words surround me like walls. I let them hold me up. Because Family Dinner is a thing you hear about. A thing every kid is supposed to have. And this is the closest I come to having it.
I know I don’t belong here. All of this isn’t really mine. But I take a bite of cheesy pizza and let the warmth spread through and around me. I borrow Julia’s family the way I borrow her clothes. It’s another thing that makes her a better friend than I am.
I don’t have a family for her to borrow back.
“I don’t understand how you two got so soaked going to Dunkin’ Donuts,” Julia’s mom says.
My face burns.
It’s my fault of course. All my questions are going to get Julia in trouble too.
“It was raining hard, Mom,” Julia says, reaching to dish herself some salad. She says it like it’s nothing. She didn’t used to lie like that.
I think I taught her.
“It looked like it took you guys half an hour to walk the three minutes between Dunkin’ Donuts and my office!” Julia’s mom says, but with a laugh.
“Mom!” Julia says. “We just—”
Her mom interrupts her. “It’s OK, sweetie,” she says. “I remember. When you have a best friend, everything becomes an adventure. Even a three-minute walk in the rain.”
It’s nicer than my mom would say it, but in the end it means the same thing. We were off being silly little girls. Having adventures. Doing unimportant things in the middle of a rainstorm.
Everyone wants me to be that girl. I don’t know how.
Well, everyone except my dad.
“So are you ready for sixth grade?” Julia’s mom says.
The doorbell rings before we can answer. Julia’s dad leaps up and says, “That’ll be for me. I’m going out to watch the game tonight.”
“Don’t run out like that,” Julia’s mom says. “Invite him in for a minute.”
Julia’s dad freezes, half in, half out of his seat. His eyes fall on me.
“Oh,” Julia’s mom says.
Both her parents stop moving and stare at me for a full minute. My heart stops. All of me stops. I freeze with a slice of pizza halfway to my mouth.
Julia’s dad leaves the room without saying anything else. I hear the front door open. Then “Hey!” in that voice.
My hands start to tremble. I’ve been longing for that voice. I’ve been aching for that voice. And the second I hear it it’s like nails in my ears, it hurts so badly.
My heart yanks itself into a million pieces. My legs make me stand up and march me to the top of the stairs.
Below me, I watch Adam and Julia’s dad hug.
I should have known this would happen eventually. Adam and Julia’s dad are brothers. Adam is Julia’s uncle. My mom met Adam through Julia’s parents.
But to me they’ve always seem
ed so separate.
I’m not ready to see him on the doorstep of the wrong house, but he looks up and sees me.
He looks startled for a second. I see his graying black eyebrows bunch over his blue eyes. I see his jaw drop. Maybe there’s some pain. Maybe it’s just shock.
He says, “Alma.”
I’ve heard my name in his voice hundreds of times. Millions. Cheering at my soccer games and piano recitals. Waking me up in the morning for school. Handing me my plate at the dinner table. It sounds different now. Like it shouldn’t belong to me anymore. Like the sound of my name in his voice traveled through time to reach me here, on Julia’s stairs.
Julia’s mom is behind me at the top of the stairs now.
“Come on in, Adam,” she says. “Henry made pizzas.”
Julia’s dad, Julia’s mom, and Adam all look at me a little too hard and a little too long after she says this. It makes my bones feel electric. I feel powerful and dangerous. They can act like it’s something else, but at this moment I know it. Whether Adam has dinner with us is up to me.
Part of me wants it. To sit at the table in Julia’s house and pretend it’s the table in mine. To sit next to him and have him tell me all about the intricacies of professional soccer as if it’s two years ago and I’m sort of interested and sort of just happy to have something close to Family Dinner happening in my own house. But also, this isn’t my own house. And the thought of Adam and me having dinner with some other family while my mom is alone doing who-knows-what in the empty house that we all used to share makes me so itchy I want to take my skin off and wash it and hang it up to dry before I eat anything.
I open my mouth to say no. Instead I say, “Where did you go? Why did you leave? Are you ever coming back?”
The questions fall out of me. They make all the adults stand up a little straighter.
Adam climbs the stairs to me. He puts his hands on my shoulders. “You have to ask your mom that, sweetie,” he says.
“I want you to tell me,” I whisper.
My face is on fire. My knees are shaking. I pretend the whispering protects me. I pretend all the other people in the room can’t hear my pain.