Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands (29 page)

Which, to be honest, was the main reason some kids broke in that night. It didn’t start out as a party. There were half a dozen Reddington seniors who were pretty stoned and had the munchies. One of them had a dad who was a sugarmaker and volunteer docent at the museum, and he knew where his dad kept the keys. So the plan was to stroll in, grab bags full of the sugar candy, and stroll out. Except that once they were inside, they decided to start a fire in the stove beneath the evaporator and hang out. And smoke some more dope. And once they had the fire going, they started texting friends to join them—and to bring more weed and beer.

Which was how I wound up there. I was with Lisa Curran and we figured, why not? So we got a ride from a senior named Paul. By the time we got to the museum, there were at least thirty or thirty-five kids there, and maybe half were from the Academy
and half were from as far away as St. Johnsbury. Someone actually brought a keg. By the time the police showed up, all of the boys had—I am not kidding—peed into the evaporator because someone figured out that there had to be fluid in the evaporator. A couple of the girls had pulled up their sweaters and were allowing the boys to lick maple syrup off their stomachs.

Lisa and I were only sophomores then and this was the wildest, grossest thing either of us had ever been part of. The two of us didn’t get in trouble for breaking and entering or criminal trespassing or vandalism, the way a couple of kids did. But we were punished by our parents and the school and, yup, the law. We were among the students whose parents had to pay for all the damage we did. (This resulted in a scream-fest between my parents and me that I’m really not proud of at all.) And Lisa’s and my “legal” punishment? We were among the twenty-four minors who had to go to special after-school seminars for a week on the “important” work of Snowman Haverford. It seems when Snowman wasn’t taking pictures of snowflakes and making maple syrup, he was a poet. He might even have been the world’s worst poet. But the Academy didn’t think so.

Or maybe they did. Maybe they figured out that ten hours of after-school “tutelage” in his accomplishments and work—his tree-tapping innovations, his pictures, his poems—would make sure we never again broke into a sugarhouse to party.

This was one more black mark against me in the eyes of a lot of people at the Academy: further proof that I was the smartest loser they’d ever had to teach—the absolute Queen of the Underachievers.

When I think of the word “homesick,” I think of kids the first week at a sleepaway summer camp who are missing their moms and dads and their house. I think of some of the boarders when they first arrived at the Academy. Not a super big deal. If
they’re summer camp kids, they’re going to go home in a week or a month. If they’re Reddington boarders, they’ll blend in soon enough and get over it. They’ll outgrow it.

As for me: after the meltdown, I was always and I was never homesick. Never, because—remember—I thought I was never going to see my home again. Never, because I knew for a fact that I would never see my parents again.

So, homesickness becomes merely wistfulness if home has become uninhabitable. It’s more like a phantom pain than the kind you can gift yourself with an X-Acto.

On the other hand, I never stopped missing what I had. What I was. What was home.

Not always, but often I kept an eye out for Camille or some of the other kids from the shelter. I was especially careful when I was getting Cameron and me food at the Salvation Army or we were using day passes at the Y. And sometimes I did see people—shelter kids as well as the counselors—and either I was able to steer clear of them or they didn’t recognize me. The thing is, most of the teens at the shelter would eventually move on: either the shelter would help them figure it all out and they’d go to college or get jobs and decent apartments, or they’d fall off the map and wind up at places like Poacher’s. Sometimes they’d disappear completely, heading south to New York or Boston (like Andrea) or even west to L.A. And sometimes their parents would come and get them and maybe over time they would get their acts together. I’m sure Missy’s okay. The pendulum could swing either way.

My point? I was totally unprepared when Camille surprised me one day in February. I had seen her from a distance two or three times, but I’d managed to avoid her so we hadn’t spoken in almost eight months.

“Hey, you want a cigarette?” Those were the first words out of her mouth.

Cameron and I were sitting downstairs in the food court in the mall downtown. It was, just so you know, the most depressing food court in any mall anywhere in the world. It was belowground and had no windows. No plants. Nothing but the smell of crap Chinese food. But it was warm and it was private because no one ever went there. Everyone ate at the nice places on Church Street or the Starbucks on the floor above the food court. I recognized the voice instantly and looked up. I was reading a three-month-old
Cosmopolitan
magazine I’d found in a blue recycling bin (it was a little too much about Christmas by then, but what the hell), and Cameron was reading one of those classic novels that have been turned into a comic book. I used to pick them up cheap for him at the comic book store. This one was
A Tale of Two Cities
. The pictures of the guillotine and the nobles who were about to be beheaded were seriously cool and, given my frame of mind, a lot more interesting to me than glossy photos of stiletto heels and tips on how to drive a man wild in bed.

So, there was Camille standing over us. She looked great, she really did. I knew instantly she was one of the shelter alumni who were rocking it. She was wearing a very cheerful, robin’s-egg blue peacoat, khaki slacks, and a scarf that fell like waterfalls down her front. She was no longer using peroxide on her hair and it was growing out. It was mostly red now.

“No,” I said, “I really don’t smoke.”

She put the pack in the pocket of her coat and smiled. “We’re not supposed to smoke in here anyway. Not that anyone cares in this sad little corner.” Then she nodded at Cameron, who was looking up at her warily, and asked, “What’s your name?”

He turned to me, unsure whether this was someone who would give us our space or someone who might rat us out. I couldn’t tell myself. Still, I answered for him. “This is Cameron,” I said. To try and turn the attention away from us I told her that I liked her coat and I thought she looked really good.

“I’m at CCV now,” she said, referring to the community college. “And I’m a waitress at Leunig’s.”

“Where are you living?”

“I have an apartment on South Union Street with another girl. It’s small—one bedroom. But it’s nice. My parents are helping out with the rent.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. And you? What’s your deal?”

“Just hanging out.”

“And Cameron is your …”

“He’s my nephew.”

She seemed to think about this and then decided I was lying. I could tell. “I’m working tonight,” she volunteered. “My shift starts at five. Why don’t you two come by? The food’s good.”

“I don’t know.” There was no way I could afford Leunig’s.

“Don’t sweat it. I’ll take care of you. The manager tonight is pretty excellent—the kind of dude who plays Santa Claus when they light the tree on Church Street. Come by early—before it gets crowded.”

“Okay. Maybe we will.”

“Hey: Wanna know something?”

I waited. “Sure,” I said finally.

“I got a new phone.”

I waited. She was grinning and I couldn’t read her expression at all. I wasn’t sure where this was going. Suddenly I was afraid she was going to out me. I feared at the very least she was going to call me “Emily,” and I had no idea how I would explain that to Cameron.

“Yup,” she continued. “But I made sure that all the numbers and calls were deleted from the old one before I got rid of it—even the calls made by other people to, I don’t know, the Northeast Kingdom. I made sure I had wiped it clean.”

“Thank you.”

“No biggie.” She reached into her purse and got out a pad of pink Post-it notes shaped like hearts. She scribbled her phone number on the top sheet and handed it to me. “You never know,” she mumbled, patting me awkwardly on the shoulder. “See ya.”

“See ya,” I said.

Then she turned and left us alone. She probably figured that Cameron and I would never call her or make it to Leunig’s. Still, it was nice of her to offer. She was right: you never did know.

I never thought I was going to live forever—even before Reactor One exploded—and I sure don’t think so anymore. One time for an English class I made this chart of when all these important people in Emily Dickinson’s life died. Her dad in 1874. Samuel Bowles in 1878. Charles Wadsworth in the spring of 1882; her mom in the autumn that year. Her nephew in 1883.

She herself suffered from something called Bright’s disease, a kidney disorder, the last two years of her life. Some of the symptoms of Bright’s disease and radiation sickness are the same. Vomiting. Fever. Weakness. Of course, those are also the symptoms of practically everything, so maybe I shouldn’t read too much into that.

Still, I really want to be sure you know that I was never one of those teens who thought she was going to live forever. It’s okay. It really is.

The only good thing about March in Vermont is the sugaring season. Everything else about the month sucks. I know that makes me sound like a surly teen, but even the adults who live here know that the month is a total train wreck. It rains or it sleets or it snows. Then you get this day where it’s fifty-five degrees and sunny and you think spring is coming … and then the next day it snows. The dirt roads become car-sucking swamps. Somehow, there’s mud everywhere. It used to make my mom bonkers. (I mean it: she and my dad were just never meant to live here. They just weren’t.) Plus, the school breaks are always in February and April, so you can’t
even get away from here on a vacation with your family. Seriously, the whole month is one long buzzkill.

And that year, March came in February. We had those sugar runs that I told you about just after Valentine’s Day. We had March mud in February. And we had March warmth in February.

And if you’re living in an igloo, March warmth in February totally sucks. It is, quite literally, a home wrecker. The long thaw we had in the third week of February completely wrecked Cameron’s and my igloo. The igloo could survive one or two warm days in the middle of winter just fine—like the day of the anti-nuke rally and march up the hill. But I saw quickly that two warm days in a row was the max. The ice was the glue. The igloo would start to sag and buckle on day three. I tried to prop it up with tree branches and a couple of ski poles I found in a dumpster, but they were no help. Cameron tried to duct tape it together, but everything was just too wet. I tried to make a structural skeleton beneath the trash bags with a grungy piece of plywood and this crappy card table—it only had two legs and the plastic covering on the top had big gashes like a serial killer had taken a knife to it—but then the bags just slid down the sides instead of collapsing in the center. What it needed was an architect or a builder and an expense account at the building supply store down on Pine Street. It was a goner.