Page 28

Olive Branch

Seventeen Years Old, Tennessee

The portrait Isaiah drew during Art Club finds its way onto my bulletin board. It’s weird to see it adjacent to photographs of Beck, but I like the way Isaiah sees me: a girl with a sparkle in her eye, a girl with a tiny scar and a bounty of secrets.

The portrait lives in my room for a few days before Mom comes in to leave a pile of folded laundry on my desk. She bends to peer at it. “Did you make this?”

I’m sitting on my bed, slogging through Physics homework. “No. It’s from Art Club.”

“You’re in an art club?”

“Yes. At school. During Advisory, every Thursday.”

There. All the information. Hopefully she’ll move along.

She sits on my bed, jostling Major, who’s snoozing. “You didn’t need parental permission?”

“To draw and paint on school grounds, during school hours? No.”

She points at the portrait. “Who’s the artist?”

“Another club member.”

“A friend of yours?”

“God, Mom. What’s with the interrogation?”

She flinches. My sharp pitch might as well have been a raised hand. After blinking hurt from her eyes, she says, “Reminds me of Picasso. She did a good job.”

“He,” I correct without thinking.

Her breath catches, that male pronoun like a thunderclap on a clear afternoon.

“His name is Isaiah,” I say in explanation, my tone gentler now. “We’re in Ceramics together. When he mentioned Art Club, I thought it sounded like fun. So I joined.”

“Oh… Well, that sounds like a productive way to spend Advisory.”

She’s taking care with the olive branch I’ve offered. It’s weird, interacting with her, all caution and courtesy, after so long spent keeping her at a distance.

I shrug. “More productive than hanging out with my friends in the library.”

Now she smiles. “Don’t discount the value of your friendships. Bernie and I’d be a mess without each other. Speaking of, she told me she mentioned spring break to you. Connor’s retirement. Daddy and I hope you’ll come. We’re going to stay with the Byrnes. They’d love to have you too.”

I’m hung up on stay with the Byrnes .

I haven’t been to Connor and Bernie’s since the week after Beck’s wake, when I woke up in the middle of the night, covered in a sheen of cold sweat. It was hours before daylight, but I was too wired to do anything but get out of bed. I tugged on a fleece and pulled wool socks over my leggings, then slipped my feet into Birkenstocks. Tiptoeing into the kitchen, I filched my dad’s keys, then escaped through the front door.

There were patches of black ice on the ground. My parents would’ve gargled paint thinner before letting me drive slippery streets while exhausted and mourning, but I was on a mission. I’d startled out of sleep remembering a text from Beck, deep in the thread he and I’d once shared: If I die today, go into my closet and find my nudie magazines… Trash them before my mom sees them.

I texted Bernie to tell her I was on my way.

I drove hunched over the wheel of the Explorer, testing the brakes every ten feet, worried the SUV would go skidding across a patch of ice, leaving me in a ditch with my face buried in an airbag. More than once I thought about turning back, but I swear to God, it was as if Beck’s magazines were summoning me from across town.

Bernie was waiting on the front porch in a flannel robe, the oversized sweatshirt she had on underneath peeking out: Rosebell High School Track & Field .

It’d been Beck’s.

After I’d navigated the slick porch steps, she gave me a long hug, then led me into the house and to the living room, where she’d made a nest for herself on the couch. On the coffee table sat a half-empty mug with a tea bag’s string trailing over its rim. “I can make you some,” she said when she noticed me looking.

“That’s okay.”

“Hot cocoa?”

“No thanks.”

“You want me to put on the TV?”

“Actually, I was hoping I could go down to Beck’s room. I won’t mess anything up,” I added.

In the nearly two weeks since her son’s passing, I’d seen Bernie shatter once: the day before the funeral, when she’d caught the twins under their big brother’s bed, using flashlights to look for him. Her hands went to her hair, her face went crimson, and her eyes filled with rage. Stay out of Beck’s room! she’d screamed with such savagery, Norah and Mae burst into tears. I’d looked on from the top of the stairs, stunned, while Connor comforted the twins and my mom led Bernie, sobbing, to her bedroom.

“I just…” I said, shaking off the memory. “I want to feel close to him.”

“Lia,” she said. “Of course. Go on down.”

I hadn’t been in Beck’s room since the morning after he passed, and it must have been a full minute before I found the courage to push open the door. It felt as if he’d come barreling in any second, kicking off his shoes, flopping onto the bed, pulling me down with him.

I wanted that more than I wanted my next breath.

I crossed the room and, kneeling on the rug, pressed my forehead to his comforter.

It smelled of him, clean and familiar.

My chest constricted with the realization that it wouldn’t always.

I rose and flipped on the desk lamp, then shuffled to the closet and slid open the door. As I took in the clothes, the sports equipment, the many pairs of sneakers, all so quintessentially Beck, the air fled my lungs.

It was the beginning of a panic attack, I think, my body at last surrendering to the assault of grief.

I could not make myself inhale.

My pulse raced and my head spun. My vision swam—

—and then a faraway echo: Amelia, breathe!

I sucked in a shuddering gasp that wasn’t enough but was also, somehow, too much.

Lightheaded, I waited for my heart to slow, for my breathing to even out, before peering up at the top shelf. There was a box labeled GI Joes . Taking it down, I set it on the floor. Hands trembling, I pulled back the flaps to find Beck’s GI Joes. It was an impressive collection. I’d spent hours playing with them alongside him, acting out romances between soldiers and Barbies while he set up battle scenes, blowing apart bunkers fashioned out of Bernie’s Real Simple magazines.

One by one, I took the action figures—Beck would never call them dolls—from the box, piling them on the carpet until I unearthed three Playboy s and a Hustler , showcasing women who were very beautiful, very augmented, and very naked. All four magazines had publication dates older than me, and their once-glossy covers were rife with tears and creases. They looked well loved, which was so gross but, even in my emotionally battered state, kind of funny too.

Where’d Beck get them?

I’ll never know.

“Lia?” Bernie called.

I jumped, slapping a hand over my heart. God—if she caught me in her dead son’s room looking at porn, she’d never speak to me again.

I whisper-shouted, “Be up in a sec!”

I stacked the magazines, folded them once, then slid them into the waistband of my leggings. Pulling my fleece over the top, I gave my reflection a check in the mirror that hung on the back of the door. My face was wraithlike, but the magazines were undetectable. Bernie would be none the wiser. Then I set the GI Joes in their box, heaved it back onto its shelf, and swung the door open.

Bernie stood at the top of the steps, looking down at me. “You okay?”

I nodded, linking my hands, further shielding the magazines I intended to smuggle through the front door. “I’m going to head out.”

“Oh—okay. Come visit again soon. Norah and Mae will be sad they missed you.”

I nodded. “Of course.”

On my way home, I stopped by a gas station and dumped the magazines into a rank dumpster, weeping as if I was disposing of something really and truly precious.

I haven’t braved the Byrnes’ house since.

“I’m not ready to go back to Rosebell,” I tell my mom. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready.”

“Think about it,” she says, patting my arm. “It might be cathartic.”

Or it might be traumatizing.

Our eyes meet. Optimism shines in hers. She thinks she’s getting through to me, except now I’m questioning her motives.

Did she come in just to work me over about visiting the Byrnes?

“I don’t want to go to Rosebell,” I say. “Not ever.”