lawn next to the aspens and pines.
“You need a ride to school?” Grandpa asks.
“I guess I do. Since you sent the bus away.”
Grandpa reaches over and snaps the ukulele case shut. We stand up and walk to his truck. Grandpa doesn’t say good-bye to Mom. Lately his general annoyance with her is heightened by her giving that land to Paul.
As we pull away, I see her, watching us through the kitchen window. She waves to me, and I can tell she’s trying to look like she’s not crying. Carlo lived with her, too, all these years. I wave back, suddenly sorry I turned down her offer to stay home.
* * *
The day passes in a lonely fog until lunch, when Evie Burdick finds me in the cafeteria. Outside, a drizzling rain has started spitting against the windows. It might very well ease into the first real snowfall of the season. Here in Rabbitbrush it almost always snows by October, and this year is no exception. But there hasn’t yet been a real dumping , the sort to make everyone pile onto skis and snowshoes.
Evie slides her tray onto the table across from me. She wears faded jeans and a skimpy Johnny Cash T-shirt. I’m huddled in a thick wool sweater. I remember how cold I always got when I had zero body fat, and think that Evie must be freezing.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” I say back. “Aren’t you freezing?”
She laughs. “Everybody always asks me that. I never get cold.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
I usually make my own lunch, but this morning Mom made me a turkey sandwich and packed it into an insulated lunch box along with an ice pack. She also gaveme a stick of string cheese, an apple, and a thermos of pomegranate-grape juice. I sip the juice and bite into the apple but try to avoid the rest of my lunch. My fingers have gotten so fat that the pearl ring Luke gave me digs into my skin, creating a cracked and itchy indentation. If I don’t start losing weight soon, they’ll have to cut the ring off me with metal pliers.
Evie’s tray is piled with food from the cafeteria: chicken nuggets, a slice of pizza, SunChips, a Diet Coke, and a package of little chocolate doughnuts. She slides her book onto the table. I try to peek at the title for a possible conversation opener, but she turns it over and dives into the pizza. Ordinarily I would make some excuse and clear away. Maybe I would bundle into my coat and sit under the awning outside, or just toss my lunch and hide out in the library until my next class.
But I remember the other day, when Evie asked about Carlo. Weird, but I find myself hoping that she’ll ask again. All day I have felt so sad. It seems, I don’t know, disrespectful, not to talk about him.
Evie doesn’t say anything; she just eats her food. I want to ask her how she managed, in those weeks after her parents died. Last spring I couldn’t stand living in this world anymore. I just couldn’t, I wasn’t capable. The impossibility of Luke being gone because of that one stupid moment. The very second that moment passed, it was too far away to ever make right. And the further away I got from it, the more impossible it would be toever go back and fix it. The guilt and the loss were too huge. I couldn’t continue living, not even for Carlo or my mother. Not even for my grandparents. I understood that I ought to, but I just couldn’t.
Sitting across from one of the few people who might understand that feeling, I want to say something meaningful, or tell her about Carlo. Instead I find myself saying, “How was the corn chowder?”
She glances down at her tray, confused for a minute, and then remembers. “Oh, it was pretty good. H. J.’s a decent cook. He’s very into it these days. He stops at the grocery store on the way home from school, and as soon as he walks through the door, he just starts cooking. He even said something about culinary school, after I leave for college.”
She says this so nonchalantly, as if it hardly matters—the two orphans, living together. I
“You need a ride to school?” Grandpa asks.
“I guess I do. Since you sent the bus away.”
Grandpa reaches over and snaps the ukulele case shut. We stand up and walk to his truck. Grandpa doesn’t say good-bye to Mom. Lately his general annoyance with her is heightened by her giving that land to Paul.
As we pull away, I see her, watching us through the kitchen window. She waves to me, and I can tell she’s trying to look like she’s not crying. Carlo lived with her, too, all these years. I wave back, suddenly sorry I turned down her offer to stay home.
* * *
The day passes in a lonely fog until lunch, when Evie Burdick finds me in the cafeteria. Outside, a drizzling rain has started spitting against the windows. It might very well ease into the first real snowfall of the season. Here in Rabbitbrush it almost always snows by October, and this year is no exception. But there hasn’t yet been a real dumping , the sort to make everyone pile onto skis and snowshoes.
Evie slides her tray onto the table across from me. She wears faded jeans and a skimpy Johnny Cash T-shirt. I’m huddled in a thick wool sweater. I remember how cold I always got when I had zero body fat, and think that Evie must be freezing.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” I say back. “Aren’t you freezing?”
She laughs. “Everybody always asks me that. I never get cold.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
I usually make my own lunch, but this morning Mom made me a turkey sandwich and packed it into an insulated lunch box along with an ice pack. She also gaveme a stick of string cheese, an apple, and a thermos of pomegranate-grape juice. I sip the juice and bite into the apple but try to avoid the rest of my lunch. My fingers have gotten so fat that the pearl ring Luke gave me digs into my skin, creating a cracked and itchy indentation. If I don’t start losing weight soon, they’ll have to cut the ring off me with metal pliers.
Evie’s tray is piled with food from the cafeteria: chicken nuggets, a slice of pizza, SunChips, a Diet Coke, and a package of little chocolate doughnuts. She slides her book onto the table. I try to peek at the title for a possible conversation opener, but she turns it over and dives into the pizza. Ordinarily I would make some excuse and clear away. Maybe I would bundle into my coat and sit under the awning outside, or just toss my lunch and hide out in the library until my next class.
But I remember the other day, when Evie asked about Carlo. Weird, but I find myself hoping that she’ll ask again. All day I have felt so sad. It seems, I don’t know, disrespectful, not to talk about him.
Evie doesn’t say anything; she just eats her food. I want to ask her how she managed, in those weeks after her parents died. Last spring I couldn’t stand living in this world anymore. I just couldn’t, I wasn’t capable. The impossibility of Luke being gone because of that one stupid moment. The very second that moment passed, it was too far away to ever make right. And the further away I got from it, the more impossible it would be toever go back and fix it. The guilt and the loss were too huge. I couldn’t continue living, not even for Carlo or my mother. Not even for my grandparents. I understood that I ought to, but I just couldn’t.
Sitting across from one of the few people who might understand that feeling, I want to say something meaningful, or tell her about Carlo. Instead I find myself saying, “How was the corn chowder?”
She glances down at her tray, confused for a minute, and then remembers. “Oh, it was pretty good. H. J.’s a decent cook. He’s very into it these days. He stops at the grocery store on the way home from school, and as soon as he walks through the door, he just starts cooking. He even said something about culinary school, after I leave for college.”
She says this so nonchalantly, as if it hardly matters—the two orphans, living together. I
Similar Books
