The Opposite of Hallelujah (34 page)

“I just didn’t think it was my place,” I said. “Like
you
didn’t think it was
your
place to tell me about Sabra.”

“All right, all right, I get your point,” Dad said. “We did know that Sabra’s little brother, Byrne, never spoke to her again. He was only one or two grades behind Sabra and Hannah, and they played a lot together, the three of them. We offered to transfer her to public school, but she refused.”

“Why?” I asked.

Dad shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, but it was
the first time she ever threw a tantrum. She fought so hard to stay at St. Robert’s we felt like, after everything that had happened, we couldn’t tell her no. Whatever made her happy, whatever helped her—we wanted to do that. And anyway, the Griffins moved a few months after Sabra’s funeral, so we didn’t think it would be an issue.”

“She didn’t say why she wanted to stay at the school?”

“She said she needed to be close to God.”

“I still think I should’ve known,” I said. “A long time ago.”

“Maybe you’re right, Caro,” Dad said, gently putting a hand on my shoulder. “But Mom didn’t want to dredge up the past. She didn’t see the point, with Hannah gone, and you being so young.”

“What about you?”

Dad gave me a small smile. “You’ll understand when you’re married.”

“So what now?”

“I have no idea,” Dad said. “I wish I had the answers. But we all love Hannah—that hasn’t changed. What happens next is up to her. We just have to be there when she’s ready.”

When Dad was gone, I shed my clothes and put on my pajamas, then crawled under the covers. It wasn’t even that late—only about seven o’clock—but for some reason I could barely keep my eyes open. The fight with
Hannah had completely worn me out. I was so tired that even the incessant whirring of my constantly active brain—a perpetual-motion machine of thought and worry—wasn’t enough to keep me awake longer than five minutes.

25

“Are you ready?” I asked Pawel, raising my eyes to meet his. He nodded, jiggling the video camera we’d checked out of the AV lab. “Turn it on.”

It was weeks after my fight with Hannah and things had not gotten better. If anything, they’d gotten worse. Hannah wasn’t speaking to me, and she wasn’t eating; every night, my mother tried to get her to choke down something, but more often than not, the plate she left outside Hannah’s door was completely untouched the next morning. Even though she was trying not to make a big deal out of it, Mom wasn’t my biggest fan at the
moment, either. Only Dad was on my side, but in a silent sort of way. He was just trying to stay as far away from any possible yelling and screaming as he could. As a result, I’d thrown myself into my science project, remembering Father Bob’s advice—create. Do something productive with all that potential. It wasn’t knitting, but my science project—mine and Pawel’s, I kept having to remind myself—was my version of a craft, and it was beginning to take over my life.

But soon, all that would be at an end. This was D-day for single-bubble sonoluminescence. There was no more research or preparation to be done. The experiment was all set. The transducers were glued to the flask with a quick-drying epoxy, and the flask was affixed to the laboratory stand with a three-finger clamp. I poured in degassed water from an Erlenmeyer flask. I fiddled with the knob on the sine generator until I found the correct frequency, watching the oscilloscope closely as I slowly raised it to the maximum.

I had to admit, I was pretty proud of myself. I did very well in school and always had, but this was the hardest I had ever worked on a single project by far. Even Mr. Tripp was impressed with the progress we had made, and he was almost never impressed. I was starting to understand why Father Bob had suggested I find something to do with my hands; it was a distraction from the problems in my personal life, yes, but even more than that, it was
great to feel a sense of accomplishment after all that failure. I knew it wasn’t going to change the situation with Hannah, or my relationship with Pawel, but I had a feeling that it was on its way to changing me.

“Now what?” Pawel whispered, as if the mere sound of his voice would ruin the entire experiment.

“We’re going to create a bubble,” I told him. “Keep the camera steady.” I used a syringe to introduce a drop of water into the flask. A bunch of tiny bubbles appeared on the surface of the water; some disappeared, but some of the others drifted to the center of the flask and united. “Hit the lights.”

Pawel reached over and switched off the lights. I gradually increased the driving amplitude, and the bubble disappeared.

“It’s gone,” Pawel said. He sounded pretty bummed about it, which was cute.

“Don’t break your heart just yet,” I told him, placing another drop of water on the top of the flask. The bubbles came together in the middle just like before, and sure enough, they started to glow, like the tiniest point of light in the night sky.

“Let there be light,” I said softly. “Zoom in.”

“Oh my God, Caro,” Pawel cried. “It worked.”

“You had doubts?”

“A few.” I could hear the smile in his voice. In the dim light from the hallway, I saw him reach over and felt
his hand on my shoulder. “This was really cool. I didn’t expect it to go so well.”

I straightened up. “I’m glad you had so much faith in me.”

“I had faith in you,” he protested. “I just thought … it seemed so unlikely it would work.”

“Well, it did.”

What I didn’t tell him was that I’d spent several afternoons in the lab in the preceding weeks practicing the experiment—failing, trying again, failing again. It wasn’t till the other day that I’d gotten it to work, and even though it had happened only once, I was heartened by the possibility. I should’ve invited Pawel along, but I didn’t want him to be there for the close calls and the near misses. I wanted to prove to him that we could do it. I needed him to believe.

“Hey, Caro?”

“Yeah?”

“Before you turn the lights on, can we talk about Derek’s party?” The question came out rushed and mumbled, like he’d rehearsed it but was afraid he wouldn’t have the guts to say it if he didn’t say it quickly.

“Okay. What about it?” The party was long in the past and I thought we’d reached a mutual silent decision not to discuss it. I’d been drinking; we both had been. It seemed undignified to rehash what obviously had been a mistaken conversation.

“I didn’t go with Briana just to make you feel uncomfortable,” he said. “I went with her because she asked me to, and because I thought it’d be fun. I’m still pretty new. I wanted to meet people.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“I was just afraid maybe you thought I was angry with you and that I wanted to find a way to punish you, I guess. But I didn’t. I don’t.”

“I understand,” I said. I wished he would let it go. If I couldn’t be with Pawel, all I wanted was to avoid any awkwardness between us so that we had a shot of becoming real friends one day, and he was ruining it with all this forced explanatory chitchat.

“Really?”

I took a deep breath. “Really. And I appreciate you clarifying that for me. Now, what I think we should do is … we should transfer the digital file onto a DVD and then bring a portable player into the fair, so that we can show the experiment to the judges.”

“Caro.”

“And I’m going to go home and start working on the display board with pictures of the setup—I took those before you got here, so I’ll have them printed at the drugstore and everything—and a write-up. We can work on that together, or separately, or split the work, or whatever you want to do. The fair is in two weeks, but I’d like to get it done before then, just in case. Okay?”

He turned the lights back on. We both squinted in the glare, and I shielded my eyes with my hand.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said, turning away from him to pack up my bag.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” I said.

“I’ll help you with the board,” he offered. “I mean, I think we should do it together. You can come over to my house after school tomorrow.”

I hesitated. It was probably a bad idea to go over to his house and sit on his floor in proximity to him while we glued photographs to a piece of poster board. I wasn’t sure my heart could take it. But I couldn’t help feeling warmed by the offer, and excited at the idea of spending more time alone with him. I genuinely liked his company, and I missed it, badly.

“Yeah, that sounds good,” I said. “I’ll bring the pictures.”

“Cool.” He looked at me. “Good work, Caro.”

“Ditto.”

The next afternoon, I pulled my parents’ car into Pawel’s driveway. I’d gotten special permission to take it, since my punishment was still in full effect. That morning, I’d rapped on Hannah’s door, feeling for some reason
that I wanted to speak to her. She didn’t answer, but I went into the room anyway and found her in bed still sleeping.

“Hannah?” Not a peep. “
Hannah
. Are you awake?”

“No,” she mumbled. “Go away.”

“Are you okay? You’re usually up by now,” I said.

“Leave me alone, I don’t feel good.” Her voice was raw. I looked at the armchair where I often found her reading, and wished she was sitting in it right then, being her quiet, solemn self.

“Please get up,” I said. “I want to talk to you.”

“I’m tired, Caro. I’m so tired, please go away.” I thought I could hear tears, but I couldn’t be sure. I felt everything drain out of me, all the bitterness and anger. It ran off my skin like water. She wasn’t just tired. She was sad, and though it’d been there since she’d gotten off that train, and for years and years before that, I’d never really seen it. Not like I was seeing it now. And the worst part was I’d just sat idly by and watched her drown.

“Okay,” I said. “If you need anything today, you should just call me. I’ll be at school, but I’ll come home, I promise.” I waited for an answer, but none came. I left the room feeling anxious. I wanted to put it aside, but I couldn’t. I wanted to talk to Father Bob, but I couldn’t. I had to go to Pawel’s after school. It was the weirdest thing, feeling as though you’d rather spend your afternoon with a priest than your crush. But Father Bob could
give me something Pawel couldn’t—answers. Or clarity. Or something. Something more than a pat on the hand. Which wasn’t going to happen anyway, since I wasn’t planning on telling Pawel anything about what had gone on at home. It’d just be one more piece of evidence that I was an insensitive lunatic who hated her sister.

I walked up to Pawel’s house that afternoon with no little trepidation. I rang the doorbell and listened to the rustling inside. A few seconds later, Pawel opened the door.

“I have to warn you,” he said. “My sisters are back from school, and Jake’s had about three sodas in an hour, so it’s mayhem in the Sobczak homestead. Prepare yourself.”

I laughed, grateful for the imminent chaos; hopefully it would mask the things that I couldn’t. “No problem.”

As I crossed the threshold, a loud crash came from somewhere in the back of the house.

“Can you cage the creature, please? We have company,” Pawel called into the void. He smiled at me. “Jake. If he’s not sleeping, he’s breaking something.”

“I hope you have a permit for him,” I said. “The fines for keeping a wild animal without a license are astronomical.”

“I think he came with some kind of paperwork,” Pawel said. “Can I take your coat?”

“Such a gentleman,” I said, shrugging off the sleeping bag I was wearing and handing it to him.

“Nah, just well trained,” he countered. “Do you want something to eat or drink?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Should we get started?”

“Yeah, let me put this away and we can go upstairs,” Pawel said. He disappeared down a short hallway for a second, then returned without my coat. “Okay. Do we have everything we need?”

“Did you get the poster board?” I’d asked Pawel to pick up a trifold from the office supply store.

“Yeah, it’s upstairs. You have all the pictures and stuff?”

I nodded. “And my notes. I figure we can type up the abstract and the picture captions and print them out on colored paper in the computer lab. That way the board will be more dynamic.”

“Dynamic, huh?” he asked, raising his eyebrows in what I hoped was amusement.

“To distract the judges from the fact that we don’t actually have a demonstrable experiment,” I explained.

“Do you really care how we do in the science fair?” Pawel asked, starting up the stairs. I followed.

“No,” I admitted. “I just want a good grade. I don’t care about winning or anything.”

“Good,” he sighed. “Neither do I. I just want this thing to be over with.”

Something crumpled inside my chest. Did he mean he was sick of working with me?

“I don’t really like physics,” Pawel confessed as we approached the end of the upstairs hallway. There was
a closed door to my left; I assumed it was his, but we stopped in front of it and he made no move to go in.

“So you don’t like French, and you don’t like English, and you don’t like physics,” I said. “What do you like, then?”