Local Girl Swept Away Page 2

  “Why?”

  The question stumped me, but Tess, standing in the doorway, came to the rescue. “Because you aren’t dead!” she said. “Because you have to figure out how to keep living.”

  I stared at her. When did little Tess get so smart?

  It took him a minute, but finally, Finn sighed and sat up. He groaned like an elderly arthritis sufferer as he pushed himself to his feet, but he followed me outside as if I had a leash on him.

  We stumbled a hundred yards down the beach in silence and then Finn said, “I can’t stand it, Jackie. I. Can. Not. Stand. It.”

  “I know,” I said. I had a feeling Tessie was standing at the window, watching us.

  “No, I mean really,” he said, angrily pushing his hair out of his eyes. “I miss her. I need her. I’ll never not need her.”

  “I know. You’re not the only one.”

  Finn looked at me then, but I wasn’t sure what he saw. Our shells had been cracked open and we were oozing out all over the place. I wasn’t even sure where I started or ended anymore.

  “Right,” he said. “I know. You were her best friend.”

  Something about the way he said it bugged me. Best friend. She was my best friend, of course, but the words didn’t sound large enough for the way I felt about Lorna. And also, he obviously thought best friend came in a distant second to boyfriend.

  “But Jackie,” he went on, “I loved her. I always loved her. From the very beginning I was crazy in love with her.”

  It was as if he’d hit me with a big stick. A stick I knew he had right behind his back. A stick I was waiting for. “I loved her, Finn! I loved her too!” I was yelling and pointing to myself. “Just because I didn’t want to sleep with Lorna doesn’t mean I didn’t love her! You don’t own her, Finn! You don’t own the pain of losing her!”

  Then, of course, we both cried like crazy, and held on to each other to keep from falling over. And when I looked back at Finn’s house, sure enough, Tess was watching.

  After that, walking became our religion. The rhythm of one foot following the other calmed us. We spent hours slogging through sand and seaweed up and down the bay beach—before school, after school, every weekend—the smell of fish rising with the spring temperatures. Just the two of us—we gave up on Lucas. The mystery of his absence was irritating, but not remotely as painful as the disappearance that had changed our lives.

  Sometimes we walked in silence; sometimes we talked about Lorna. Never about the accident though, only about memories.

  “Remember that first day she showed up in our class?” I asked him. As if there was a chance in hell he wouldn’t remember that.

  “It was surprising because we almost never got any new kids,” he said. “And also because we’d never seen anybody like Lorna before.”

  “The way she looked you right in the eyes.”

  “The way she whipped that long red ponytail around like a weapon.”

  “The way she stood up to people, even that bully, Frankie Reeves.”

  Finn stared into the distance. “That first day I watched her swing herself hand over hand across the monkey bars. She lifted her legs over a crossbar, let go with her hands, and swung back and forth with her eyes closed. She hung by her knees longer than I’d ever seen anybody do it, boy or girl.”

  I nodded. “Everybody liked her right away, but she didn’t need everybody. She picked us.”

  “We were her gang. Lucas and I had never hung around with girls before that day we all walked home together. Remember that? It should have taken us fifteen minutes, but it took two hours and everybody’s parents were furious. Well, I’m sure Lorna’s mother wasn’t—she probably didn’t even know what time it was, or that her ten-year-old daughter hadn’t come home from school yet.”

  I’d thought about that first long walk at least a dozen times since Lorna’s death. Our skinny, sandy town was Lorna’s playground, and she showed us how to claim it as ours too. Every curb was a high wire to balance on, every tree trunk was a ladder to its branches, every shopkeeper was a potential giver of treats, every alley was the setting for a story to act out. The beach that ran parallel to the long downtown street was not just a sunny spot to take off our shoes—it was an undiscovered planet where treasure could be found by those willing to look for it. Without even realizing it, we all started to see the world through Lorna’s eyes. By the time we straggled home that day, we’d become a team, and Lorna was our undisputed leader.

  “When did she start wearing that white jacket every day?” Finn asked. “She thought it made her hair look like a bonfire. Which was true.”

  “Last fall. I was with her the day she found it at Old Hat, where her mom works,” I said. “A woman from up-Cape brought in a bunch of gorgeous old clothes from the fifties and sixties. In perfect condition. Carla snagged some dresses for herself, but Lorna fell in love with that jacket. It had black diamonds embroidered on the collar and cuffs.”

  “I don’t pay much attention to girls' clothes, but everything Lorna wears is beautiful. It doesn’t matter what it is—any old shirt or pair of jeans—she makes it look great.”

  I’d had years of practice ignoring the little stabs of jealousy that stung like hornets, but it still wasn’t easy. “Lorna always knew what looked good on her,” I said, “and that jacket fit her perfectly. Of course, Carla didn’t want her to have it. She said it was a couture piece and she could get a good price for it, but you know how Lorna was when she wanted something. She just buttoned it up and walked out of the store. No way was Carla getting it back.”

  Finn nodded. “When Lorna sets her mind on something, you might as well not argue with her because you aren’t going to win.”

  It broke my heart over and over, the way Finn couldn’t talk about Lorna in the past tense. But at least we were both standing up now, walking around, impersonating normal people. Those first weeks Finn and I were inseparable. We’d both had an amputation, but if we leaned on each other, we could limp along. I couldn’t imagine how much worse it would be going through this alone. And sometimes there were brief moments when I almost forgot about Lorna and allowed myself to feel just slightly joyful about having Finn to myself. Spending hour after hour with Finn, even this hollow, miserable shadow of Finn, was almost a dream come true. But it was a dream that arose out of a nightmare, and I felt guilty taking even a tiny bit of pleasure in it.

  When we walked down the hall at the high school, people smiled at us, but almost never stopped to talk. Sometimes Tony Perry or another one of Finn’s friends from the basketball team came over and silently smacked him on the back or shoulder. He didn’t seem to mind, but it aggravated me. Why would you hit somebody who was already in pain? I suppose it meant, I’m male and I don’t know how to talk about anything emotional, so I’m just going to pound on you. I understood that people didn’t know what to say, but I appreciated the ones who at least made an effort. “I’m so sorry,” was enough and didn’t beg for a response.

  I didn’t have a lot of friends. Neither did Lorna or Lucas, for that matter. We didn’t need them. Finn played sports, so he knew pretty much everybody. If he hadn’t been exclusively with Lorna, he would have been extremely popular—he had all the attributes: looks, brains, athletic ability, even money. But popularity was a goal for suckers—Lorna taught us that. We had more. We had a gang of amigos, a winning team, an endless party, an exclusive club, a band of like-minded souls, a full circle.

  But now that Lorna was gone and Lucas was AWOL (showing up at school just long enough to take tests and then racing back home so he didn’t have to talk to anyone) I was lonely. Of course I had Finn, but he was hardly the comrade he used to be either, so I was grateful when Charlotte Mancini came over to us in the cafeteria one day.

  “Hi, you two. Mind if I join you?”

  “Hey, Char,” I said. “Yeah, sit with us.”

  Charlotte and I had been friends when we were little kids, before Lorna came to the elementary school. After that, we drif
ted apart, but I’d always liked Char. She was a quiet kid when we used to hang out together, but she’d blossomed the past few years since she started getting a few parts in school plays. It was funny, but the minute Charlotte sat down, I felt a wave of comfort, almost relief, wash over me.

  Finn didn’t have much to say to Char, but then, he didn’t have much to say to anybody these days.

  “I know you both must feel pretty terrible,” Charlotte said. “I wanted to say I’m sorry about what happened, and if you need anything—I don’t know what it would be, but anything—I’m here for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and Finn mumbled something similar under his breath.

  “Do you have jobs lined up for the summer?” she asked.

  “I don’t yet, but Finn’s working on a whale watch boat starting next week. The Poseidon.” For some reason I felt I had to speak for Finn, as if grief had rendered him mute.

  “Oh, Captain Fritzy’s boat?”

  Finn nodded and finally opened his mouth. “Yeah. I practically have to pay him to let me work on it, but I don’t care. I want to be out on the water.”

  “Right. I remember you always loved boats. You used to hang around on the wharf when you were a kid and watch the fishermen unload their catch,” Charlotte said. But Finn had gone back into hibernation.

  “So, Jackie, you’re not working at the Riptide this summer?”

  I was surprised Charlotte knew where I’d waitressed last year, but then, it’s a small town. “No, he hired two of his nieces, so I’ll have to look around. I should have started before this, but, you know, I haven’t had the energy.”

  “Want to work with me at my dad’s place?”

  “At the café? Really? I didn’t know he was hiring.”

  “One of our regulars retired. You’d be working with me, breakfast and lunch. Tips aren’t stellar, but we get busy in season.”

  “Absolutely! I love the Blue Moon.”

  “Great! I told my dad I’d ask you, but you should go by and talk to him after school. He’ll pretend like he’s going to make your life miserable, but he’s all bark.”

  I felt a smile break across my face and recognized it as a first since Lorna’s death. There was a lightness in my chest that felt like hope.

  As Finn and I trudged down the hall after lunch, he said, “You sounded pretty excited about that job.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be? I have to make some money this summer, and it’ll be more fun to work with Charlotte than down at the Riptide.”

  Finn didn’t say anything else, but as he headed off to his next class, I felt like I’d been scolded. Did he think I was replacing Lorna or something? That was ridiculous. Lorna was irreplaceable. But I needed a friend, I needed a little bit of normalcy in my life, and if Charlotte was offering that, I was damn well going to take it.

  3.

  Lorna’s memorial service didn’t take place until a month later, at the end of June, the day after school let out for the summer. At first it looked like there might not be one at all because Lorna’s mother had gone into a drunken seclusion and was incapable of planning it. I stopped by to see her a few times, but she wouldn’t even open the door. Finally, Ms. Waller, the guidance counselor from the high school, managed to force her way into the house, and she got Carla to agree to let her plan something in the school auditorium.

  “We all need to find some closure,” Ms. Waller told me when she called me into her office to discuss it. If that’s what she said to Carla, I’m amazed she got out of there alive. “Closure” sounded to me like what happened when the lid of the casket banged shut. Only we didn’t have a casket or a body or a grave. We just had a big hole in our lives.

  The day of the service, I changed clothes four times. Nothing I owned sent the right message: Everything is ruined. I understood now why black was the traditional funeral color, not dull gray, not muddy brown. Only stark black told the world that the worst had happened, the inconceivable worst, and there was not a bit of color left in your life.

  Mom went to the memorial with me, but Dad was out on his boat, unwilling to lose a whole day of fishing. We were a little late getting to the high school because of my clothing dilemma, and I was surprised to see the auditorium was almost filled. Who were all these people? Did they really know Lorna, or were they there because she was young and beautiful and she fell from a place every one of them had also carelessly walked?

  Finn came up the aisle toward us wearing his usual jeans and dark T-shirt, the uniform of every teenage boy I knew. He always looked a little sharper than the other guys though, probably because Elsie bought his clothes in New York when she went to her gallery in the city. The locals mostly shopped at the mall in Hyannis, if not the Goodwill.

  “We saved seats for you up front,” he said, pointing. The whole Rosenberg clan was in the front row, Elsie motioning for us to join them.

  “You go,” Mom said, giving me a little push. “I’ll stay here in the back.”

  “No! Mom, come with me!” I begged. I wanted her by my side for this, but I wasn’t surprised when she backed away. Not only did she hate funerals, but she pretty much despised any public gathering of more than two or three people. It was kind of amazing she came at all.

  “There’s plenty of room up front, Mrs. Silva,” Finn said.

  “Oh, I know. Thank you, Finn. But I don’t like to traipse up the aisle in front of everybody. I’m fine back here.” She plopped into a seat in the very last row, and I could tell by the set of her jaw she wouldn’t change her mind. If she had her way, Teresa Silva would be completely invisible.

  As I followed Finn up the aisle, I spotted Charlotte in the crowd, sitting with a girl from our Spanish class. Finn’s friends from the basketball team were all there too.

  “Wait.” I pulled on Finn’s arm. “There’s Lucas with Simon and Billy. They should be up front with us. We should all be together.”

  Finn scowled in Lucas’s direction. “Good luck with that. He won’t even talk to us.”

  “Not true. I talked to him this week.”

  “For more than thirty seconds? Did he want to hang out with you?”

  “He had a dentist’s appointment that day—”

  “There’s an original excuse.”

  “Look, I don’t know what’s going on with him either, but I’m asking him to come up front with us,” I said.

  “Well, hurry up. The service is starting.” Finn loped up the aisle without me.

  Lucas was sandwiched between his fathers who seemed to inflate around him like protective packaging as I approached.

  Simon was on the aisle and I leaned over him to speak directly to Lucas. “You should all come up front. Finn saved seats so we could be together.” Simon, Lucas, and Billy exchanged nervous glances, as if I were speaking a language they didn’t quite understand.

  Mr. Coleman, the high school music teacher, started pounding out a somber piece on the out-of-tune piano just as someone with a loud voice came stomping down the aisle behind me.

  “Oh, leave me alone, will ya? I don’t need you holding my hand!”

  Carla Trovato, wearing what looked like old black pajamas, her faded rusty hair pulled back into a lumpy bump on the back of her head, sideswiped me, then bounced off down the aisle, followed closely by Ms. Waller, who was attempting to grab her arm.

  “There are still some seats in the front row,” Ms. Waller said.

  “Where do you think I’m going? I’m her mother, for Chrissakes.”

  Ms. Waller stopped in her tracks for a second as if she’d been smacked, then rallied and trotted after Carla. I was so absorbed in watching this little drama I almost forgot what I was doing until Simon tapped me on the hand. “Sweetheart, I think we’ll stay where we are. It’s getting crowded up there.”

  I tried to pin Lucas with my eyes, to see if this was his choice or Simon’s, but he wouldn’t look at me, so I gave up and went to sit by Finn.

  “Wouldn’t come, would he?” Finn asked, frowning
. “Told ya.”

  “I give up,” I said.

  I was so aggravated by Lucas’s behavior I couldn’t pay attention to the Unitarian minister, not that he was saying anything of interest. He didn’t know Lorna, and he was giving what I assumed was his standard speech for young people “taken before their time.” All I could think about was that Lucas didn’t want to be with us, didn’t even want to talk to us. Something was very wrong and I couldn’t bear not knowing what it was.

  We sang a few hymns, everybody but Carla, who was fussing with something in her purse and didn’t even stand up. I closed my eyes and tried to remember Lorna’s face. I still could, of course, but I wondered how long it would be before I’d forget some of the details. I swore I’d never forget her luminous eyes.

  “My eyes have no color at all,” I could hear her say. “Yours are chocolate brown and Finn’s are blue as water, but mine are see-through eyes.”

  “That’s not true,” I’d argued. “They’re hazel.”

  “Hazel is a name, not a color,” she’d come back. “In eyes it just means a muddy mixture. I have alien eyes.” She’d narrowed them into slits. “I can see right through you.”

  I was sure she could.

  The minister asked if anyone in the audience wanted to say anything, to give a remembrance. At first no one came up. Most of the high school kids looked down at their laps as if they were afraid someone might call on them. Finally, Ms. Waller took the microphone herself to start things off. She said Lorna was a leader whom other students looked up to. “She had a bright future ahead of her,” the guidance counselor said with a quivery lip. Which made me remember how hard Ms. Waller had campaigned to get Lorna to consider college. But Lorna hadn’t even wanted to talk about it. She always said, “College is a waste of four years. I want to start living my life now!”

  The principal got up and stumbled through a few sentences about what an asset Lorna had been to the school, which everyone knew was a total lie. Lorna would burst out of her chair at two forty-five every afternoon, thrilled that the school day was over. You couldn’t pay her to stick around after class for a meeting or a rehearsal or a practice of any kind, ever. She wanted to get out, do as she pleased, make her own rules.