Table of Contents 17 страница

I drop my keys on the counter and everyone turns to look at me. Somehow, even Mom heard it over her own voice. She comes barreling down the back staircase, eyes wild, and hair sticking out in odd places. She reaches the bottom step and freezes. No one speaks.

“I’m sorry,” I say to them all. “I needed some time.”

They still don’t move. Dad asks, “But you’re okay?”

“No. Not really.” I try a smile, but it’s like it doesn’t fit on my face anymore. “But I’m not the Romeo type, so everyone can relax.”

Dad’s mouth pulls up on one side, and he turns away to stir his soup. James grabs Greta’s hand from where she’s biting at her cuticles. Mom approaches me like I’m a wounded animal she’s not sure about. She reaches out and runs her fingers through my hair, then hugs me and smothers me all at the same time. I give in to the comfort of it for a second before I pull away.

“I’ve got to talk to Becca.” I squeeze mom’s arm before going up to Becca’s room.

I pull the chair back over to the wall and climb up. “Hey!”

Her eyes flit up to mine.

“Good,” I say. “Eye contact is good. Now, how about coming out of there?”

Becca looks back down at the book in her lap. I can just make out one page. A brown rabbit pokes out of a garbage sack as a fairy with electric blue eyes flits above its head. It’s the copy of The Velveteen Rabbit that Charlotte illustrated for her.

“Oh, Bec.”

The silence from within her wall shatters into big, hiccupping sobs.

“Please, come out, Bec. Please?”

She nods, the barest of movements, but it’s all I need to start chucking books off the top of the wall. Inside, she stands and starts to push them away from her. Open books cascade like an avalanche of snowy paper. I hurdle over the books between us and grab her in a big hug.

She disintegrates, and it’s all I can do to catch her and hold her while she sobs and melts through my fingers. I realize I’m not alone. Becca won’t forget either.

0.6

The funeral is the worst thing I’ve ever endured. I’ve decided I hate funeral flowers more than I hate poetry. I leave the rose Mrs. Dunwitty gave me on Charlotte’s coffin. I think it’d make both of them happy. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Possibly ever.

Charlotte’s buried in a cemetery next to her mother. There’s space for Mr. Finch and Ms. Finch. It’s a family plot. There’s no room for me.

We stop at a gas station on our way out of town. Greta and Becca go inside to use the restroom. I pump the gas.

“It’s getting cold,” James says as he climbs out from the backseat. “You got a sweatshirt or something?”

I nod toward the trunk and toss him the keys. He unlocks it and swears. “Jesus, Charlie. This trunk is disgusting. How do you find anything?”

“I don’t. It’s where I put things to forget about them.”

“Wait, I see a sweatshirt trapped under all this crap. I’ll save you.” He dives in, his feet kicking in the air. I shake my head as I walk around to help him.

“You can relax,” says James, as he scrambles back out of the trunk with the hoodie. “You’re safe now.” He pulls it on, and even though it’s big on me, it looks like he went shopping at the baby gap. I smirk.

“Little tight,” James grimaces. “You need to clean this trunk, man. I may have even seen a body back there.”

I chuckle and peer further into the depths of my trunk. My heart misses a step as I recognize a face. Mrs. Dunwitty’s angel. The angel I smashed in a time and place far from this reality. She is lying on her side, broken wing lost somewhere in the clutter, neglected.

“Get me that trash can,” I say, pointing toward the pumps.

“Man, I didn’t mean clean it now.”

“Trash can,” I plead and start pulling out crap as fast as I can. As James returns, dragging the heavy canister, I emerge from my trunk, arms full of papers, fast food wrappers, and a single shoe. I shove it all in the can and dive back for more. My hands shake and I feel like I’m moving through Jell-O. I can’t get the stuff out fast enough.

I look at James. Behind him, Becca and Greta are walking toward us from the station.

“Help me.”

James nods and starts to pull out papers and soda bottles. He holds a few questionable things up, dangling each over the trash can in turn and asking, “Trash?” Things like gym shorts, an old duffle bag, and a science journal stolen from my dad’s office at school. For each of these I grunt and nod. Trash, trash, trash. It’s all trash.

But then James is holding a can of flamingo-ass paint over the can and jiggling it, saying, “Trash?”

“No!” I rescue the paint can and dig around to find the brush, setting them to one side.

After a few more armloads, the trunk is empty except for the angel, her wing, the paint, and paintbrush. I’m frozen in the angel’s concrete stare until James clears his throat beside me.

“It looks much better, but we should get on the road. Don’t you think?” He places one hand on my shoulder and the other on the trunk lid, ready to close it. I nod, still watching the angel watch me. “Okay, good,” he says as he begins to close the trunk.

“Wait!” I shout and brace the lid. I reach in and pull the angel out. She’s heavy. My body strains against her weight. But I lift her out and hug her to my chest.

James looks at me as if he’s wondering what size straightjacket to get me for my birthday. He screws up his mouth into a twisted half-grimace. I can’t meet his eyes, so I look down at the angel in my arms and say, “Okay, now I’m good.”

Greta recognizes the angel. “Oh,” she says, like she’s been holding her breath for too long. She helps me place the angel on the bench seat in the back. She slides in on one side and braces it with her arm. I do the same with mine.

From the front seat, I can hear Becca sniffle. I pull Mrs. Dunwitty’s handkerchief from my suit coat pocket and hand it to her.

“Where to?” James asks from the driver’s seat.

“I need to see Charlotte one more time.”

James nods and puts the car in gear.

Becca wipes her tears on Mrs. Dunwitty’s starched white handkerchief that still smells a little like the Harvest Moon it cradled. She looks from me to the angel and back again. “Charlotte will love her, Charlie.”

I nod and hold more tightly to my angel.

“You make a good hero.” Becca’s voice is a whisper of wings. “Atticus would be proud.”

0.7

The cemetery sits in a valley, surrounded by rolling green hills, ringed by woods. The funeral home has taken away the tent and chairs, but from the parking lot I can still see the huge bouquets of flowers surrounding the place where Charlotte lies.

I heft my angel out from the backseat. James hops out and pops the trunk lid. I feel good now that I have a plan, like I’m in charge of at least one small thing in this world.

“Bec, could you grab that paint and brush?”

Becca peers into the clean trunk. “Is this her wing?” she asks, holding up my angel’s broken wing. I nod. She takes the wing and the paint supplies.

Greta comes around to the back, too, and asks with definite mom-ness in her tone, “Whatcha doing with the paint, Chuck?”

James touches Greta’s shoulder to keep her from following. “Let him go.”

“What’s he going to do?”

“Whatever he has to do.” He closes the trunk, and as I walk away, I hear him saying something about trusting me for once and haven’t I grown this year and Greta isn’t the boss of me.

She punches him in the shoulder saying, “I’m the boss of everyone.” And he laughs and pulls her close, kissing her on the top of her head.

Becca and I walk through the maze of graves. The angel is pretty small (as angels go), but she feels heavier the closer I get to Charlotte. There’s a layer of sod covering her grave, bits of black earth visible in the seams. I place the angel at Charlotte’s head.

“I hate that she’s broken,” I say, straightening the statue so she can watch over Charlotte.

Becca takes Mrs. Dunwitty’s handkerchief from her pocket, saying, “Hold her steady.”

I kneel beside the angel and watch as Becca ties the handkerchief like a sling, fastening the wing back on the statue.

“How’d you do that?” I ask.

“It’s not like I fixed it, really. I just made it more bearable.” She leans across the angel and kisses me on the cheek like she did when she was a little girl. Her eyes are calm.

She dips her head toward the earth where Charlotte lies. “Best friends forever,” she whispers. She only glances back once as she returns to the car.

As I paint the angel pink, I think about the Finches, and all I’ve learned from them. The more I think, the more confused I become. There’s no way to sort it out right now, and in the end, there’s no reason to. I have plenty of time. Perhaps I’ll be an old curmudgeon like Dimwit one day. Imagine how genius I could be with so much time to sort through this mess.

Or not.

What I do know is that the world looks different crouching here on Charlotte Finch’s grave, a paintbrush in hand, the smell of flowers in my nose. From here, the world looks less like the orderly line of concrete numbers I had always relied on and more like chaos.

I am so involved in painting the broken wing that I don’t hear the footsteps. I feel a change in the air around me and smell a certain familiar perfume—Charlotte, but not quite.

“Hanson, what are you doing?” Ms. Finch asks.

“She shouldn’t be alone.”

There’s silence behind me. I keep painting. Luna sits beside me, watching my every move, like she’s still protecting Charlotte somehow.

I finish the wings before I face Ms. Finch. She’s changed out of her funeral clothes. Her blue eyes are ringed with red and her skin is as pale as the bleached stones in the oldest section of the cemetery. She looks like hell.

I hold out the paint can and brush and nod at the angel. “Want a turn?”

Ms Finch stares at the angel. “She’s broken,” she mumbles.

“It happens,” I say. “But, see? She’s on the mend.”

“How did she break?”

“I ran her over with my car.” I smile at the memory of my time with Mrs. Dunwitty.

Ms. Finch laughs, a short, hard sound. She runs a finger over the handkerchief holding on the broken wing. “Hand over that brush.”

I watch her in the failing light. Her eyes focus on each molecule of paint adhering to the rough stone of the angel’s body. And I have to know.

“Are you coming back to school?”

“No.” She paints a few more strokes and lets the brush fall across her lap.

“For what it’s worth, you were a good teacher.”

She smiles crookedly and something that should have been a laugh gurgles in her throat.

Ms. Finch finishes painting. She sets the brush down and wipes her fingers on her jeans, leaving pink smudges along her thighs. “I have something for you.” She reaches into the purse behind her. “I wasn’t going to give it back. I’m sorry about that.”

A familiar paperback novel is in her hands.

“No,” I say, an electric current coursing through my spine, “I gave that back to Charlotte. It belongs to you.”

Ms. Finch opens the book to the page with the inscriptions. “Not anymore,” she says as she leans across Charlotte’s grave to hand me the book. Inscribed in Charlotte’s looping script I see my own name.

To Other Charlie, who may need reminding he's the reason the mockingbird sings.

I choke back a sob and flip through the pages, running my finger along the lines of the drawings as if they were the lines of Charlotte’s face. I love this book.

0.8

When Ms. Finch leaves, I notice she’s in Charlotte’s silver Civic with the dented fender. For a moment, I pretend it’s Charlotte pulling away. I tell myself that she’ll be back. She’s just going out for donuts.

It’s a nice dream, and short-lived.

“Charlotte, did I ever tell you about time travel?” I pluck a few blades of grass and shred them, my fingers turning green from the chlorophyll. “If you plot your life along the real line, it will encompass a finite space. We begin, move steadily in a positive direction, and end. The bodies we’re given aren’t meant to last forever.” I lie back in the grass beside her. In my mind’s eye, our fingertips are touching.

“Here’s the bit I never told you. The real line, and I mean the whole line—the line all of our lives and the life of the Universe itself can be plotted along—begins and ends in infinity. If you take that line and make infinity one point, the straight line becomes a circle. It’s never ending. Boundless. Infinite. Any two points in the circle can be connected.

“Scientists believe time travel is something like that, in its simplest sense, the leaping across from one part of the circle to another. If it’s true, everything lasts forever.

“Which sucks, because it means I will miss you forever. But it’s cool, too, because it means in my own stupid way, I get to love you forever.”

I don’t want to cry anymore right now, so I focus on my infinite circle and pull up a memory that has nothing to do with crying.

In the memory, the afternoon sun is sliced into parallel lines by the blinds in Charlotte’s window. We’re stretched out on her bed, Charlotte quiet, almost asleep, but she looks up at me, resting her chin on my chest, a question in her eyes, and I’m suddenly terrified I won’t know the right answer.

“Are you here because I’m dying?”

“No,” I say, my voice cracking, nerves exploding. I feel larger than every infinite set in the infinite universe, because I know the answer. “I’m here because I’m alive.”

“Good answer, Charlie Hanson. Good answer,” Charlotte says, stretching up to meet my lips. Our fingers tangle in infinite knots.

We kiss, forever.

0.9

I’d like to say my story ends with the kiss, but it has no real end.

A beautiful girl once gave me an extraordinary journal. The infinite possibilities of the blank pages were so intimidating I almost left them blank.

But then, I didn’t.

1.0

Beginnings are tricky things. I’ve been staring at this blank page for forty-seven minutes. It is infinite with possibilities. Once I begin, they diminish.

Scientifically, I know beginnings don’t exist. The world is made of energy, which is neither created nor destroyed. Everything she is was here before me. Everything she was will remain. Her existence touches both my past and my future at one point—infinity.

Lifelines aren’t lines at all. They’re more like circles.

It’s safe to start anywhere and the story will curve its way back to the starting point. Eventually.

In other words, it doesn’t matter where I begin. It doesn’t change the end.

Dear Reader,

Years ago, I sat in a hospital lab with wide windows that let the sun shine in, overlooking a green courtyard bursting with flowers. I joked with my friend, Em, as a nurse in full Hazmat gear hooked her up to a bag full of toxins. There was a small moment, tinier than a breath, where I saw fear flit across Em’s face, but then she smiled and the fear was gone, replaced with a joke to keep us laughing and the hope that one day, one of these bags of poison would hold the cure for cancer.

That moment defines bravery for me. And since then, I have tried to face my fears with laughter and a hell of a lot of hope.

My hope for you, readers, is that you find what you are passionate about—be it math like Charlie, drawing like Charlotte, writing, cancer advocacy, animal rescue, or unicorn needlepoint—find it and hold onto it despite any fears you may have. Fill your life with what you love. That’s my hope for you.

Yours with heart, humor, and hope. Always hope,

Acknowledgments

This story began with encouragement from my friend Emily Bright. Her beautiful life, laugh, and infinite hope inspired me to become a Real writer. Thanks, Em, for showing me how to be brave. I’m hopelessly devoted to you!

I want to thank everyone at Entangled who had a hand in bringing Charlie and Charlotte’s story to readers. Thank you, Heather Howland, for your enthusiasm, patience, and insight—and for understanding the importance of reaching 1.0. Thanks to Liz Pelletier, Stacy Cantor Abrams, Kari Olson, the entire Entangled Teen team, and the amazing Entangled authors who’ve been so helpful along this path to publication.

Huge hugs and bouquets of thanks go out to my wonderful agent, Jessica Sinsheimer. Our first phone conversation is plotted on my life’s number line thingy as one of my happiest moments. I can’t imagine doing any of this without you. Thanks to everyone at Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency for your continued support.

Every writer needs an amazing critique group like the YA Cannibals. Mike and Margaret Mullin, Jody Sparks, Robert and Sharmin Kent, Lisa Fipps, and Virginia Vasquez Vought, your critiques, support, and shoulders to cry on were instrumental in helping me tell Charlie’s story properly. Thanks for ripping my heart out, Cannibals! Josh Prokopy and Julia Karr, I’m so glad you’ve joined us for the fun and bloodshed.

For my friends that have been with me throughout this journey, the coffee is on me! I’d be lost if it weren’t for you (and the candy you gave me). Avery, Lisa, Ann, Devee, Tabbatha, and my Gwen, you are all irreplaceable. Cheers!

I have an amazing, insane family that I love to pieces. Thanks to each and every one of you. Special thanks go to Beth Weibust and John Kelley for reading a very early version of this story. Wait until you guys see what I’ve done with it! Bethann Wilkie, I’m the luckiest big sister in the history of ever to have such an inspiring little sister. Thank you, Mom, for teaching me the art of kindness. And Dad. Well, Atticus has nothing on you.

Finally, without the unflagging love and support of my kids and husband, I would never have had the courage to see this through. Thanks for being my own personal cheering section. I love you all more than anything in this infinite universe.

And to my husband, my heart, my Drew—I’m so glad I wore those hand-me-down jeans on that night long, long ago. You are the center of my circle.

About the Author

Shannon Alexander was compelled to write this story after the death of her best friend to ovarian cancer. She is a member of SCBWI and She Writes, and works as a copy editor for Sucker Literary, a showcase for new and undiscovered writers of young adult literature. She recently completed her seventh Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure in Washington D.C., and is an active supporter of cancer research. http://wanderthewords.blogspot.com

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Дата добавления: 2014-12-24