Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry (24 page)

And something cool and metal pressed into my palm.

My eyes widened. Mac's gaze bored into mine, and he
seemed to be willing me to understand, to not react, to be very, very quiet and just keep shaking, even as I patched together that Dr. Harper really was a good guy, that he had gone to my house to bring me the key as soon as Ms. Donalvan had given it to him, and that he had just passed the key to Mac without ever giving the secret away.

I kept shaking Mac's hand.

The corners of Mac's mouth tugged upward as he let go. His left eye closed quick in a wink, then opened as he looked up at Mom and Dad and nodded his thanks.

When Mac pulled his hand away from mine, I closed my fist tightly around my grandmother's key.

Excerpt from
Night on Fire
(1969), by Avadelle Richardson, page 453

“Are you leaving Oxford now?” I asked Leslie on the third week after the riot, because she'd gone quiet on me for days, and I had started to wonder.

She looked up from the mailers she was working on at the student desk closest to the front of my classroom. “No. I'm not leaving.”

“You answered me too quick.” I sat back in my own chair, pushing at the registration cards I had stacked in front of me. “Think about it, Leslie. Mississippi isn't your home. This isn't your fight.”

“You're wrong,” she said, as sure as I'd ever heard her sound. “It's everyone's fight, CiCi—even if they don't know it yet.”

I
NDRI AND
I
SAT NEXT
to Grandma's bed on Wednesday evening, two weeks after the Great Closet Disaster, watching her sleep. Grandma hadn't said a word since I got in trouble, but she wasn't sweating. Her pulse was eighty. Her breathing was even. Death really was being mean to her, wasn't it? Coming too late, and letting her linger like this, with her body working and her mind so far away.

“Sooner or later, Grandma, we're all gonna be okay.” I said it like always, but I wasn't sure I meant it, even though there had been an itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny crack in
grounded forever
.

Dad and Mom and Ms. Wilson had decided to let Indri and me spend some time together outside of camp—where we hadn't even been allowed to sit with each other. Some very supervised time, at one house or the other. Something about moping/depression/driving them crazy with chatter—whatever. At least we could see each other some, and maybe sit with each other at camp again, even though we still didn't have phones, and probably wouldn't again until we were thirty and married (this was Mom's estimate).

Grandma shifted in her bed, and Indri flinched from surprise. Then she asked for the tenth time that hour, “Do you think Mac ever got in any trouble?”

“No way to know,” I said. Again. “Haven't spoken to him since it happened, 'cause I'm not allowed to speak to anybody but my family, and now you.”

Silence.

Indri picked at her yellow blouse, then the dark ends of her
loose hair. For the twentieth time, she said, “I feel bad about how we didn't trust Dr. Harper, and all the, um, stories we told.”

I didn't say anything. I felt awful about that part too. But not about getting the key back. Part of me wanted to yell at Indri for asking the same stuff over and over, but I couldn't, because I was just too glad to be talking to her in some way other than hand signals and tossed notes at camp. Plus, even though I was watching Grandma, from the corner of my eye I could see Indri fidgeting in her chair. She seemed absolutely miserable, way more than she should have been, especially since we had a chance at getting some of our lives back.

“What's wrong?” I asked her.

She fidgeted some more, then shrugged, then looked away from me. “I just feel bad about everything.”

“I've seen you feel bad about a lot of stuff,” I said. “But you don't usually have that awful look on your face.”

The look got awful-er.

And all of a sudden, panic gripped my insides, and I knew, just knew, she was going to tell me she didn't want to be friends anymore. The closet thing, it had been too much. She probably thought I wasn't good for her, or that I didn't care how much trouble I had caused her.

This is it
, my inner worrywart insisted.
The scene at Dr. Harper's office was the thing too awful and huge to fix by saying I'm sorry.

Tears ran down my face, but just before I started sobbing, Indri said, “Do you think God's going to get even with me?”

“Huh?”

“Get even.” She rubbed both her eyes, and her tears came right out. “God. Do you think He'll get even with me for me doing something bad?”

“No! I mean, I don't—um, I guess I don't—well, you know I kind of sit on the fence about God.” I watched her, and saw more tears sliding down her face, so I added, “But if I did believe totally in a God, I wouldn't see God like that. All mean and vengeful.”

When Indri kept crying, I gathered up both of her hands in mine, squeezing them and waiting for her to tell me why she was so upset.

“I always promise to be good,” she said, gulping air between bouts of sniffles. “I tell God I'll be as good as I can be, and to pay me back for that, He'll keep letting my dad be safe and lucky. It's a deal, see? But I didn't keep my part of it.”

“And you think—oh, wow. No. Come on now.” I scooted my chair closer to hers and hugged her. She pushed her face into my shoulder and cried really hard.

“God definitely wouldn't be like that,” I said, hoping I was telling her the truth. “He's not going to hurt your dad because you made a mistake.”

“If I can just be good enough,” she babbled. “Strong enough. I have to be. All the time, or something awful's going to happen to him.”

I squeezed her harder. “No way. That's not how it works.
Your dad'll be home for the holidays, just like you said.”

Please, God, be there, somewhere over my head, floating up in Heaven. Please, God, don't let me be lying
.

Indri kept crying and I kept holding on to her. When she finally sat up and pulled her fingers out of mine, she used Grandma's sheet to wipe her face, and said, “Sorry.”

“Don't be sorry. I don't blame you for being scared about your dad.”

She dropped the tear-stained sheet and nodded. Then she seemed to zone out, and I closed my mouth. Too much talking about her dad now.
Roger that
, as my dad would say. Time to hush unless she brought it up again.

I opened my mouth to ask her if she needed me to get her a damp cloth to wash her face, but what came out was “Do you—do you ever think about not being friends with me anymore?”

Indri gaped at me. “Uh, no? Where did that come from?”

“Because, Mac—I didn't see that coming,” I finally cried, and it felt sort of good, not fighting the tears. “And I've been thinking a whole lot about what makes friends friends, and what makes them stop being friends, and
Night on Fire
was so amazing, but Grandma and Avadelle stopped being friends.” I tried to stop and breathe, but I couldn't do it, and the tears and words just kept coming. “And it's hard to sort out what's my circus and what's my monkeys, and how the truth isn't always the truth, and what makes people be people, and when they're really gone, and what ghost stories really mean,
and why people wouldn't make up if they really cared about each other, and I guess I worry.”

“You think too much, that's what you do.” Indri pulled up Grandma's damp sheet and wiped my face. “Circuses? Monkeys?” She wiped my nose, too. “Never mind. Dani, you're my best friend. You'll always be my best friend.”

“Ava,” my grandmother rasped, rough but clear enough to make us both jump. Indri almost yanked the sheet straight off her bed. We looked at Grandma, then we glanced at each other, and back at her.

“Ava,” she said again, and she started to cry too.

Indri stood and leaned over my grandmother and just put her head on Grandma's belly and hugged her. I snuggled my face to Grandma's, and I held her too. “It's okay,” I whispered. “We're all gonna be okay, Grandma. I mean it.”

I traced her tears with my fingers, wiping them gently from the dusky wrinkles on her face.

“She said
Ava
,” Indri murmured. “No question.”

“I know.”

“I think maybe she wants to see her,” Indri said.

“I've been wondering about that too.”

“Maybe we should ask Avadelle to come.”

And two weeks ago, I would have called that a stupid idea. But now . . .

Now the three of us just stayed there, cuddled together, until Grandma stopped crying and started snoring. I sat up, I checked her pulse and watched her breathe.

As Indri settled back into her own chair, my focus shifted back to her. Maybe watching that stuff so carefully like I did with Grandma really wasn't so different from Indri trying to do all the right things to bring her father home, or people telling ghost stories about stuff that scared them to death. Just something to do, to pretend we could do
something
to make a difference.

My stomach tied itself in knots, and I shoved all that thinking straight out of my head. That is, until Indri asked, “Do you think you'll be sitting next to Ms. Beans when she passes—you know, like we're sitting right now?”

I bit at my bottom lip and tried to think about witches or fairies or sprites or vampires or even ghosts. Anything but what it was going to feel like to watch my grandmother breathe for the very last time. I had to clear my throat before I spoke. “I don't know. The hospice nurses say lots of folks die really early in the morning, when everyone else is sleeping. It's almost like they don't want to be any trouble to the people they love.”

“Mmm.” Indri fiddled with her hair, smoothing it behind her ears. “Well, if you have the choice and it doesn't sneak up on everybody, do you
want
to be sitting here when she goes?”

Oh God
. I blinked really fast so brand-new tears wouldn't leave my eyes and make Indri feel like she was bringing her dad bad luck again. “No. Yes. I don't want her to be alone.”

The front door opened and closed downstairs, and I almost yelled with relief, because that was probably Ms. Wilson,
come to gather up Indri and head to their house. After a few seconds, we heard voices, male and female both, and Indri went the color of Grandma's linens. I felt the blood leave my own face too, and I grabbed Indri's arm because I knew what she was thinking.

“Look at me,” I demanded. “No, I mean it.”

I waited for Indri's huge eyes to fix on mine, then said, “That is
not
your mom with a chaplain and some soldier coming to tell you something's happened to your father. It's just my dad talking to your mom.”

Indri got up from her chair, pulling me with her. I didn't even have a chance to make sure Grandma was all tucked in before Indri bolted for the bedroom door. I followed her, heart pounding and pounding and pounding, willing the voices downstairs to be Dad and Ms. Wilson, or Mom and some friends from work, or buddies of Dad's.

We ran down the stairs together, and almost smacked straight into Dad and Ms. Wilson as they came up to meet us.

The two of us stopped so fast and stared so hard that Dad folded his arms and looked suspicious. “What? You two
already
up to stuff?”

“No,” Indri and I both said at the same time, which didn't help anything.

Indri threw herself at her mom and hugged her hard. Ms. Wilson, who looked like a taller version of Indri, but even more colorful with her purple and gold sari, hugged Indri to
her hip, looking confused. “Well, okay,” she said. “Hello, little one. I thought this visit would make you happy.”

“It did.” Indri pulled away from her mom and forced her face into some semblance of normal. She even worked up a decent smile, which impressed me. “Can we do it again soon? Or sit together at camp?”

“We'll see,” Ms. Wilson said.

I raised my eyebrows at Dad, who shrugged and said, “I'll talk it over with your mother, but probably not until tomorrow. She's working an extra two hours tonight, playing catch-up from teaching that class.”

Ms. Wilson made a sad sound. “She really is the best friend ever, for helping out at the university. I wish I could help her like she's helping us.”

“Even trade,” Dad said. “We needed the extra income for Mama's supplies.” He walked Indri and Ms. Wilson down the stairs and toward the front door, his hand on Ms. Wilson's shoulder. “We appreciate it a lot, you helping Cella get that opportunity.”

Right before they went outside, Indri turned and waved at me. “Don't think too much,” she instructed.

I waved to her and mouthed,
Best Friends Forever
.

She nodded, and Dad closed the door behind them. Then he turned to me and raised one eyebrow. “What on earth was all that about, when you came down the stairs?”

I sat on the bottom step and gazed up at him. “Indri told me she was scared her dad would get killed because she did
something bad. When her mom came and we heard y'all talking, we thought it might be—you know. The chaplain and those guys in dress uniforms that come with him.”

Dad sat on the floor across from me, his back against the stone wall of the entryway as he looked at me. “That's pretty heavy, kid.”

“I know.”

He closed his eyes and rubbed the sides of head. “I'm glad I retired so you don't have to worry about that.”

“Me too.”

When Dad focused on me again, I noticed his eyes were bloodshot. “What did you tell Indri?”