Perfect Glass (A Young Adult Novel (sequel to Glass Girl)) (32 page)

When they started playing, he leaned over and whispered in my ear. “See that guitar?”

I nodded.

“That’s a 1969 Martin D28. Hear me when I say if I had to choose between a beautiful girl and that guitar, I’d choose the guitar. Natch.” He took a huge gulp of water, clearly affected.

“Naturally,” I whispered. “It could be why you’re still single.”

He smiled at me and then started beating out a drum cadence on the table that matched the one the band’s drummer played. Tennyson was on her third beer and had loosened up enough to start dancing like a hipster in front of the stage. Quinn watched her, but seemed bored by it.

“I’m really glad you got what you wanted today,” he said.

“Yeah, so am I. I’m profoundly relieved, I think.”

He leaned forward. “Hey, even after I go back to Rhode Island and you move on to a nice life with Whitmire, can I still email you if I have, like, theology questions? Or just need to talk to somebody who thinks like I do?”

“You can email me anytime, but if your questions get too deep, I’ll have to forward them to someone else.” I fake punched him in the arm. “You and I probably have some of the same questions, Quinn.”

He stretched his lanky legs out in front of him and watched the band setting up for another set. The guy who’d been playing the guitar that made Quinn drool raised it up and said, “You wanna play something, man?”

Quinn cocked his chin at the guy and stood up, probably trying not to appear too eager. He bounded up on the stage, took the guitar and started playing a simple melody over and over, completely absorbed in the moment.

The afternoon passed like that. The band played for three hours. We laughed and ate sandwiches on stale bread and chips out of a bag we passed around. Tennyson stopped at three beers because I think she realized the value of sober conversation at times like this.

I’d wanted a senior moment, a day that felt like the beginning of goodbye, and they gave that to me.

On the way home, Tennyson slept in the back. Quinn lounged next to her reading a book about Keats’ letters I’d picked up at the bookstore the day before. In the passenger seat, Thanet reached for the back of my headrest, a familiar gesture I’d missed. He and I hadn’t spent much time together since he fell for Abby and I’d needed him. Besides Henry, Thanet knew me better than anyone in Chapin.

“The University of Wyoming,” he said, smiling.

I glanced over at him. “I know. And you—The University of Chicago. You’re going to love being back there.”

“Yeah, but I’ll miss you and Henry. You have to promise you’ll road-trip it to visit.”

“Yeah. Of course.”

He looked toward the backseat and then leaned toward me. “I know I put you in a weird situation with Quinn,” he said. “I really like Abby, but I felt like I needed you around to make me legitimate to her. I was afraid she wouldn’t see through this.” He waved his hand in an exaggerated game show host motion over his legs.

“She never saw anything but your heart, Thanet. You never needed me.”

He closed his eyes to say he didn’t believe me. “What’s going on with Henry?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…he’s not himself. He just sounds weird in emails now. I’m worried about him.”

I kept my eyes on the road and swallowed the question I wanted to ask. Asking how often he emails Thanet would give away the fact that he hadn’t emailed me much lately.

“He’s devastated about Quiet Waters and I think he feels like he should’ve been able to stop the government from taking the kids.” I said out loud what I’d been saying to myself for weeks. “He’s putting it all on himself. And with Kate losing the baby and Henry being so far from his family…I just think he’s dealing with a lot.”

“What are you doing to make that easier?” I felt Thanet looking at me with those thoughtful eyes of his. His question seemed like the most important, most convicting question I’d ever heard. What was I doing to make this easier?

“Not enough,” I admitted. “I wish I could say one thing to him that would give him what he needs to finish up and come home. And feel good about what he’s done there, so he could stop feeling guilty.”

“If there’s anyone on earth who could speak to Henry that way, it’s you,” Thanet murmured.

The satellite radio faded back in as we crested a hill and the background noise in the car went from road noise to melodic and sad. Like the soundtrack to my soul.

“You know he called me the other night,” Thanet said. “I didn’t mention it because he told me not to.”

I didn’t look at Thanet. I couldn’t because he would see the hurt on my face.

“He loves you,” Thanet said. “He’s hurting and it’s not just the Quinn thing. It’s being away from you and wondering if you’re hurting, too. Or if you’re having too much fun to hurt. What he really needed was to laugh, though. So we laughed…until he cried.”

That undid me. I looked at Thanet with so many questions on my lips. He just shook his head. “One word from you. That’s really all he needs.”

henry

“W
atch me, Raf! I need you to follow my lead.”

The cradles for the load-bearing beam groaned a little when we placed the beam. I forced my side in with a hammer and watched as he repeated my moves exactly. A couple of shims later, and we had a safe wall. I jumped off my ladder, grabbed a water bottle and sat on the concrete floor to rest for a minute.

The time had flown. I’d slept during the heat of the day, gathered supplies, and started working at dusk. After dark had completely overtaken the place each night, the air would shift, and Raf would be there. He’d soundlessly pick up the tools I’d placed out for him and get to work.

The roof only took Raf and me a few nights of hard labor. After that we moved to window and door replacement. Next came siding replacement and, finally, gutters and other finishing touches. By the time we finished the exterior, the building, even in the dark of night, shone like a new penny. It was a beauty, truly.

We moved inside to make sense of the plumbing nightmare. After several nights, we got it. We held dominion over the guts of that building and crossed our fingers as we did a test flush. After one worked, Raf flushed a toilet ten or twenty times in a row without a single problem.

We turned on every faucet and shower in the place, letting them run through the colors from dark brown to tan to sickly yellow to beautiful—clear, cold, and perfect. Raf sat down and drank a big glass full. I still avoided Nica tap water on principle, although by now my intestines were probably tough enough to handle it.

The best part of pulling graveyard shifts with Raf was the conversation. I’d learned which subjects made him uncomfortable. But I’d also figured out the keys to opening doors with him. I knew what made him talk and talk he did.

“
Mi madre
came from money,” he said one night. “So much money. I heard her sisters inherited it all and made sure we didn’t get a dime. Cause I’m
el hijo ilegítimo
.” He used a falsetto and a heavy Nica accent to sound like a mean Managuan woman.

I chuckled. “What happened?”

“She hated the money. Hated her parents. They died when I was little or I’d be with them now.” He laughed a little and stopped working while he captured a memory. “I only met
mi abuela
once when she grabbed me and ran into a church. She told the priest to baptize me, but he wouldn’t because my mother wasn’t there. My mom moved us deep into
el barrio
after that and I never saw my grandmother again.”

Why had I spent all those months talking at Raf but never listening to him? Now that I’d listened to the kid, heard his heart, I was astounded at his strength. I had a second chance with him. Not a chance to get him back or arrange his future, but a chance to get to know him.

In so many ways, it was a more powerful, meaningful thing than his custody arrangement. It was a relationship.

Plumbing work transitioned easily into rewiring the building, with me crawling through the rafters, dropping wires to Raf, and testing connections. This work had to be done right and Raf hung onto every word I said about it. He loved the technical aspect of making a building hot, making it come alive so it could be inhabited. So while we Thomas Edison’d the place, I pictured his future all laid out and wrapped up in red and blue wires.

After the high of electrical work, we looked at our list and realized how short it had become. I wanted to find a way to stretch things out because once the last room was painted, Raf would disappear. How could I lose him all over again, especially now that I considered him a friend? So we became drywall perfectionists, ceiling tile gods, and cabinetry masters. We polished every piece of hardware before we placed it. We argued over where each ceiling fan belonged, and the angle of every canned light.

Unspoken in those fake arguments were words like “I’m thankful for you” and “finally, someone understands me.” And that road went both ways, for sure.

The insane drive I’d had to make sure this building, this property, served a purpose, became almost like background noise, covered over by what I thought might be happening with Raf. This time with him could be the real reason I’d stayed behind. Maybe it was the reason I’d come to Nicaragua in the first place.

The night came when he and I had crossed through everything on the list except for a final coat of paint on a couple of rooms. Instead of cracking open the buckets of Barely Beige again, we decided to call it a night by midnight. He went his way and I went to bed. Not to sleep. Not yet anyway. Emails had piled up in my inbox and I needed to burn through a few of those.

Meg and I had communicated a little every day—mostly short texts and emails that verified we were still among the living. She’d been busy with homework and cataloguing art at Jo’s house and I’d been busy closing up shop here. The emotions I’d dredged up after she’d gone to the dance with Quinn had simmered and felt more like a dull ache. If I let them, they roared, but I hadn’t let them in days. Now, I just missed her. I wanted her next to me. I opened an email from her and nearly lost it. It was only five words—
I still believe in you
.

It was too late to call or Skype so I wrote an email.

Megan Grace,

I was wrong to leave you wondering if we were okay. I’m sorry if you doubted me for a second. Nothing, nothing, nothing has changed. My heart is yours.

The fact that you believe in me feels good, like rain. You have no idea.

You are kind, generous with your spirit, sensitive to others, empathetic above all, and you are mine. Thank God. Thank God. Thank God. Because I have so much to learn from you.

I know you’re probably steeling yourself to hear me say that things are awful here right now. And on so many levels, things are awful. But there’s this cool new layer resurfacing this place, like it’s been acid-washed. I’ve worked hard and I hope I’ve done it right. I’m a different person than I was even a few weeks ago.

I hope you’re doing okay. I’m coming home soon because I do need you. I do miss you. I do love you.

Forever,

Henry

I come from a long line of insomniacs. Give the Whitmires something to stew over and we’ll work on it all night. I didn’t sleep much because I’d reached the point where I felt finished here and all I could think about was getting home to Meg, letting O’Neill know I was back in town, and making up for lost time.

About six, I walked to the kitchen looking for coffee. Rosa, who had been asked by Patrick to stick around to run the kitchen of the new campus, was already making fry bread for my breakfast.

“I had a feeling you’d be up early.” She handed me a cup of coffee made nearly white with cream the way she drinks it. When she turned back to her frying pan, I poured half the cup down the sink and darkened it back up with strong coffee from the pot.

“I figured I’d get started on the painting,” I said. “If I can knock it out today, Raf and I can just relax tonight and hang out.”

Rosa smiled. “He’s a
granuja
, you know…a rascal…but he grows on you.”

“Oh, Rosa, you know you love that kid,” I said, grinning at her. “And he’s pretty fond of your flat bread.”

“
Sí
, I do love him. You love him, too. You’re glad you stayed,
verdad
?”

I nodded, taking a long swallow of coffee. “I’m glad I stayed, but now it’s time to go home.”

Rosa reached up and pressed her palms, hot from holding a frying pan and spatula, against my cheeks. “You made a new ending,” she said.

“Ma’am?”

“This,” she said, waving her hand toward the courtyard. “This isn’t how you thought it would end. You made a new ending and it’s the right one, I think. Now, go home.”

I laughed and leaned against the counter, watching her control all the moving parts of this kitchen. Whether she was cooking for an orphanage full of kids or one lonely guy, she had it going on. “I reserved a flight for tomorrow. I’ll paint and pack and get things ready to hand the keys over to Patrick and Hadley.”

She nodded her head and started humming. At some point, I guess we all realize that life goes on and we’ll survive.

Painting the final rooms took four hours and then I spent two more hours stripping tape, sweeping the floor, peeling tags off appliances, and checking lights. I’d saved the most important task until last.

Using a wood-burning tool I’d picked up in town, I carved a message into a plank prepared ahead of time for this purpose.

For the children of the Quiet Waters Home, San Isidro—

The Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing.

When I had the words clear enough, I nailed the plank into place in the notch I’d created above the main door.

Just as I finished the sign, I heard a noise behind me and turned to find Raf standing in the room, watching.

“Looks good there,” he said.

“I thought so.”

“Look,
vaquero
, I can’t stay tonight, but I brought you something.”