Tell the Wolves I'm Home (27 page)

“No, really. Very good use of detail. Top marks.” Toby was whispering, even though he was all alone on his end.

We were both quiet for a few seconds, then Toby said, “You know,
it's all right, June. You don't have to give me one of your stories if you don't want to.” I heard him take a sip of his brandy.

I unscrewed the bottle in my hands, dipped a finger in, then touched it to my tongue.

“No. I want to. Next time.”

I could almost hear Toby smiling on the other end.

“Come whenever. Whenever you can. You know that, right? If you need anything …”

I thought that if I was drowning in the ocean, Finn would be like a strong, polished wooden ship with sails that always caught the wind. And Toby? Well, Toby was more like a big yellow rubber raft that might pop at any moment. But maybe he'd still be there. That's what I was starting to think.

I nodded and tipped the bottle to my lips. The brandy shot through my body with so much heat that for a second I felt like my insides might have turned to lava.

“I know,” I whispered.

Again, quiet.

“Well … Good night, then,” I said.

“Good dreams, June.”

I stretched out flat on my back on the cold linoleum floor and held the receiver against my chest. The only sound in the kitchen was the ticking of the yellow clock high up on the wall over the sink. It must have been a minute or two like that, and then in that quiet dark kitchen I heard my name.

“June.”

I put the receiver to my ear.

“Yeah.”

“Go to bed.”

“Okay,” I whispered. “You too.”

Then I hung up, leaving Toby all by himself in Finn's apartment.

I didn't know how to seal a promise with a dead person. With someone who isn't dead, you can get a pair of scissors and snip a tiny little cut into your clothes. The clothes can't be scrappy clothes. They have to be newish ones that you wear all the time and that you'd be in huge
trouble for cutting. The cut can be anywhere. Just on the inside hem or in the armpit, and it can be as small as you can possibly make it. That was one of the tricks. Learning to make really small cuts. Those are the rules Greta and I used for sealing promises when we were little. When we were too scared to use blood.

I stood and pulled a postcard of Miami Beach off the bulletin board and tossed it onto the counter. I held the thumbtack in my hand and poked it into my index finger, squeezing until a drop of blood sat there like a tiny jewel. I read Finn's note one more time, then pressed my finger down hard right in the middle of it.

Finn was right. I could tell. Toby had nobody. But it was okay. It was all sealed. He had me now.

Thirty-Eight

March was going out like a lamb. Just like in the saying. The trees were still bare, but other than that and the scrappy remnants of snow in the corners of big parking lots, winter seemed to be gone.

Posters for
South Pacific
had started to go up all over town. They put them up early so that if enough performances sold out, there would be time to schedule a couple of extra nights. It was Beans who won the contest to design the posters. She'd made the
S
of South and the
P
of Pacific look like palm trees, and the whole poster was shaped like a tiki hut. It was pretty good, and I thought I'd make sure to tell her that next time I saw her.

Everything was starting to feel springy except my parents, who were entering the haggard phase of tax season. The gray stripe in my mother's hair was getting wider, and I hadn't seen my father clean-shaven for days and days. Greta and I were on the verge of stew poisoning, which, we used to say, is when your blood actually turns into gravy.

I left school and walked straight downtown to the bank.

Gold leaf—real gold leaf—is expensive, but gold paint can sometimes look just as good and it's the same price as any other color. I bought a tiny bottle of gold paint and a thin paintbrush from Kmart. I'd been keeping them in the side pocket of my backpack, right next to the key to the safety-deposit box.

This time, Mr. Zimmer didn't say anything about AIDS. He acted normal and took me right down to the basement.

“We'll be closing up in about half an hour,” he said, looking at his watch. “I'll give a knock so you have some time to pack up, okay?”

“Thanks. That's great,” I said.

I laid the painting flat on the desk and touched a finger to each black button. One at a time. They didn't look so ugly now. Now that I knew their story, they were almost kind of beautiful. Shiny black pearls. Then I traced the skull on Greta's hand with my finger.

I propped the painting up against the wall and smiled at it. Finn would like—no, he would
love
this thing I was going to do. I pulled out the jar of paint and the brush from my backpack and set them on the desk. It took some effort to unscrew the lid, but I got it after a few seconds. A light whiff of paint fumes filled the room and I breathed in deep, because that smell reminded me so much of Finn. Then I dipped the brush into the jar and scraped it against the edge. I stopped, my hand hovering over the surface of the painting, suddenly scared to touch the bristles to the canvas. But I knew Finn. I wasn't like the people who tried to finish the
Requiem
for Mozart. I knew what Finn would say.

So I started, lightly at first, dragging the brush down a strand of my hair in the portrait. Then I did one of Greta's. I stepped back and looked, like artists do. Tilting my head like I'd always watched Finn doing when he was trying to size something up. I didn't want to do too much. I knew how easy it could be to get carried away. I dipped the brush again, and in that little underground room I tried to imagine Finn's hand guiding mine, barely touching, his soft palm against the back of my hand. I imagined that and let the brush slowly stroke down the length of my painted hair, the hair Finn had made. His work. How close did Finn have to look to make this other me? What did he see? Could he tell that I always wore Bonne Bell bubblegum lip gloss when I went to see him? Did he see me studying his bare feet while he was working on the canvas? Could he read my heart? I'd like to think he couldn't. I'd like to think I had enough skill to keep that much hidden.

I did a few more strands of my hair, then a few more of Greta's. I stepped back again. What I was going for was something like the wings
of the angels in one of the illuminated manuscripts downstairs at the Cloisters. Something a little bit like that but not exactly, because we didn't have wings, only boring straight hair. But illuminated. I wanted that painting to beam with gold. I wanted it to sing out about Finn and how much I loved him. The way Toby's buttons did, if you knew the story.

I screwed the cap back on the paint, wrapped the brush in a piece of loose-leaf paper, and slipped them both into my backpack. We were all on that portrait now. The three of us. Greta, Toby, and me.

And the wolf. As I slid the painting back into its metal box I caught a glimpse of him. Still there, still hiding in the shadow of the negative space.

Thirty-Nine

“What are you wearing?”

I looked down at myself.

“My maroon skirt and a gray sweater.”

“No, brainless. To the party. On Saturday.”

“I don't know. Why?”

“Ben asked if you were going.”

I rolled my eyes.

We were at the end of the driveway, waiting for the bus, which was even later than usual. Greta looked tired. She wasn't wearing makeup, and her hair was twisted into a messy bun. The strap on her usual backpack had broken on the way home from school earlier in the week, and so she had to use this old Snoopy one from years ago, where Woodstock is fluttering around Snoopy's head, just about to land.

“Why are you always trying to get me to care about Ben Dellahunt anyway? I hardly even know him.”

She let out a frustrated breath. “You are so hopeless.”

“No, really.”

She pursed her lips, put her hands on her hips, and stared at me. “Maybe I'm trying to help you. Did you ever think of that?”

“No.”

I saw a look pass over Greta's face then. Like she wanted to say something but couldn't do it. “Whatever, June. What. Ever. You … you …”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Anyway,” I said, “maybe you should think about what
you're
going to wear to the party. Maybe you're not looking so great either.”

Greta spun around, hands on her hips. Her face had turned from normal to murderous in an instant.

“I know you weren't at the rehearsal on Monday. You're a big liar, June. You told Mom and me and you think nobody's gonna find out where you go? You really think you can keep your big secret forever?” She was actually shouting at me. Right out on the street. It felt like a bomb going off, and I stood there frozen. Then, just as fast, Greta turned her back to me and walked to the other side of the maple tree. She leaned up against it so her whole body disappeared. All I could see was one of her feet edging out from the trunk, tapping at the dirt. We waited another five minutes for the bus, and the whole time I watched Greta's dainty foot tapping, like she was sending some kind of Morse code message into the ground.

That night my parents came home in time for dinner. Greta had mentioned that there was no rehearsal, so they decided it would be nice to have a real family dinner together. I was glad I was there, that I hadn't made plans to go to the city. Sometimes I didn't even remember that I kind of missed my parents during tax season. It was only when they were finally around that I'd remember how nice it was to have them there. When I got my own dinner I just ladled some stew into a bowl, but when my mother did it she'd make garlic bread and a salad and she'd put a dollop of sour cream on everybody's stew. It felt like a real meal instead of just something you were supposed to do.

Greta and I were doing homework at opposite ends of the kitchen table when they got home that night. Greta had made a wall out of her biology and calculus textbooks so she wouldn't have to look at me. She laid them down when my father came in the door.

“Guess what I have,” my father said, raising a Caldor bag over his head. He had a huge grin on his face.

“What is it?” I said.

“Guess.”

Greta eyed the bag. “Trivial Pursuit,” she said.

“Oh,” he said, looking disappointed. “Well, okay. I guess you got it.”

The disappointment hung on his face for a few seconds, but as soon as he had the box open, he started to get excited all over again. I figured we were probably the only family in the nation not to own Trivial Pursuit. My father always held out on buying the latest thing. He always said the smart people waited awhile, until the price came down.

“So who's up for a game?” he said, shaking the little pie pieces out onto the table.

Even though it was a weeknight we played until late. All four of us. My mother made popcorn and instant iced tea, which was sweet and lemony.

It was the first game in years that our parents were actually good at, and even though Greta refused to look at me for the whole game, it was fun.

“Who played aging rodeo rider Junior Bonner?”
Greta read out, and right away my mother knew it.

“Steve McQueen,” she said, without a second of hesitation.

I got a few of the science ones like,
What element's chemical symbol is Fe?
and
What is the scientific name for the Northern Lights?
, but mostly they were really hard. The funniest ones were the sports questions that were actually about drinking. Greta got
How do you make a Black Russian black?
which she had no trouble getting right. The answer was Tia Maria
or
Kahlua, and Greta knew both.

In the end, my dad won it with a history question:
“A 1962 agreement between Britain and France led to the building of what?”
Greta asked.