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ОглавлениеDavid Elliott
Forever and Ever
David Elliott is the author of many picture books and novels for young people, including the New York Times bestselling And Here’s to You! Among the many honors his books have received are: the International Reading Association Children’s Choices Award; Bank Street College Best of the Best; Chicago Public Library Best of the Best; NY Public Library Best Books for Children; ALA Notable; and the Parents’ Guide to Children’s Media Award. David teaches at Lesley University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is a faculty mentor in the low-residency MFA program in creative writing. This is David’s second Gemma Open Door title; The Tiger’s Back was published in 2012. Visit David at http://davidelliottbooks.com.
First published by GemmaMedia in 2014.
GemmaMedia
230 Commercial Street
Boston MA 02109 USA
©2014 by David Elliott
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5
978-1-936846-49-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Elliott, David, 1947–
Forever and Ever / David Elliott.
pages cm. — (Gemma Open Door)
ISBN 978-1-936846-49-8
1. Grief—Fiction. 2. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3605.L4456F67 2014
813′.6—dc23
2014031710
Cover by Laura Shaw Design
Inspired by the Irish series designed for new readers, Gemma’s Open Doors provide fresh stories, new ideas, and essential resources for young people and adults as they embrace the power of reading and the written word.
Brian Bouldrey
North American Series Editor
Open Door
To all that haunts us.
one
Jaimie disliked John and Muriel Malabrand almost as much as he disliked his own parents, if such a thing were possible. But that wasn’t why he balked when his mother said that John and Muriel wanted to talk to him. It was the mention of a surprise that had caused his stomach to turn. Jaimie was just sixteen, but he figured he’d had enough surprise to last the rest of his life.
The Malabrands could go screw themselves.
He tried to fake a headache, one of the migraines that after seventeen years of almost perfect health would flare up like a campfire left smoldering in the woods. The kind that left nothing behind but the charred ruins of a forest.
He walked into the kitchen with his hand to his temple, doing what he could to reproduce the scrim that blurred his vision whenever one of these attacks hit him. In her desperation to return to the way things were, his mother didn’t notice.
She had scrambled what looked like a dozen eggs. Why? Jaimie asked himself. Why does she do it? He had no appetite. She knew that. Knew he wouldn’t touch it. And yet every morning it was the same, enough protein on his plate to feed a village in India.
He slumped at the table, staring out the back window. A robin—the first he had seen this spring—was tugging at a night crawler. How long, he wondered? How long would it take until the worm gave up its hold in the dark, wet earth? Or snapped in two?
Behind him, his mother rinsed the breakfast dishes.
“It might be nice for you to see what John and Muriel have in mind,” she said. “They have always liked you. Everybody has always liked you.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “And anyway, it’s not like you to be rude, Jaimie. You can’t just ignore them.”
Oh, but that’s where she was wrong. He could ignore them. Shut them out the way he shut out everybody. His teachers. His friends. His mother. It was easy. All he had to do was close his eyes. Close his eyes and think of Jannie.
“Try to eat something, Jaimie,” his mother said. “You’ll feel better. I know you will.”
He shoved the plate aside. His mother had not approved of Jannie. Didn’t think she was the right kind of girl. She had never said so, of course. She never would. But Jaimie could sense it, just as he could sense her disapproval of the clothes Jannie picked out for him and the streak of blue she had dyed into his hair.
He could refuse. Put his foot down. Tell his mother the Malabrands could take their surprise and shove it. Stop once and for all everybody trying to help him. He didn’t need help. He needed Jannie. He only needed Jannie. But that kind of resistance took energy. Energy he didn’t have. Not now. Maybe not ever again.
That was why, two days later, on a wet Saturday afternoon, he found himself slumped at the door of the Malabrands’ grotesque McMansion. He raised a finger to the doorbell. John Malabrand loved that doorbell. Jaimie remembered his going on about it when they were building the house.
“You can program it,” he had bragged to Jaimie’s father. “You can actually program the damn thing! Thirty different tunes!”
Jaimie pressed the fake mother-of-pearl button. What would it be this time? “Home on the Range”? “La Cucaracha”? Or John’s favorite, “Camptown Races”? But no. Of course. It was “London Bridge.” John and Muriel had just come back from two weeks in England.
He was turning to leave when the door swung open.
“Jaimie boy!” John shouted. “You made it!”
Even from the doorstep, Jaimie could smell the booze.
But ten minutes later John and Muriel were offering him the use of their cottage on Lake Winnepocket, and he was glad he had come.
“It’s nothin’ fancy,” John said.
They were sitting in the oddly-angled space that Muriel insisted on calling the great room. Its ceiling was cathedraled so high above them that, in spite of the windows, Jaimie felt as if he were trapped underground.
John was perched on a gigantic sectional sofa. Jaimie supposed the horrible green fringe that trimmed the couch was meant to complement the sickly color of the walls. Instead, it served to highlight the rash of exploded blood vessels that stretched over John’s nose and oozed down his cheeks. The red blotch reminded Jaimie of maps of pandemics that were all over the Internet.
“Nope. Nothin’ fancy,” John repeated. “Just two rooms and a loo.”
Loo?
Seriously?
The man had spent two weeks in England and suddenly he was talking like one of the Beatles.
“We bought the place furnished a couple of years ago,” John went on. “Built in 1922. Thought we’d fix it up, but one thing led to another. I don’t think we’ve gone up there but twice. Probably should sell it. Muriel never liked the place.”
“It’s in New Hampshire, for Chrissake,” moaned Muriel, lighting another cigarette. “The mosquitoes! My god! The mosquitoes!”
Between her chain-smoking and her perfume, Jaimie didn’t believe a mosquito could get within ten feet of her.
“And those ducks!” Muriel said.
She took a long pull on her cigarette.
“Loons,” her husband corrected.
“Honestly, it’s like the criminally insane are out there paddling around in the dark. No thanks.” She turned to Jaimie. “I understand why you might want to spend a week or two up there in Godforsaken, New Hampshire. After everything you’ve gone through, I mean. But between you and me, Jaimie, I’ve squashed my last mosquito and heard the gibbering of my last duck.”
“Loon,” John said again.
Muriel stood up and walked into the kitchen. A stainless steel nightmare. Like the inside of a UFO, Jaimie thought. For a second he imagined a spaceship filled with Muriel clones. Terrifying.
She mixed herself another drink as John gave Jaimie instructions for the cottage, detailing its many quirks.
“I’ll tell Moses Eldred to put a key under the mat,” John said. “He’s the local who looks after the place for us. And don’t try to open the back door. You’ll never get it shut.”
Jaimie stood up to go.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” John added. He steadied himself on an end table. “The water in all the faucets will run brown the first day or so.”
“Like blood,” Muriel yelled from the kitchen.
two
After everything you’ve gone through.
The words stayed with Jaimie. They were with him now as he headed out of Boston, driving north to New Hampshire. He could hear Muriel’s smoke-ravaged voice. Could see her downturned lips.
Muriel was clueless. Like everybody else. His parents. Barry Pryce. His friends. Why couldn’t they see it? He hadn’t gone through anything. That was the point. There was no going through. Jannie was dead. There was no going anywhere.
His lips twisted into a half smile. He was thinking of the way he’d tricked Barry Pryce. Barry Pryce. PhD. The so-called grief counselor his parents made him see after the accident.
The man was a dick. Him and his five stages of grief. As if what Jaimie was feeling was nothing more than a recipe in one of the glossy magazines his mother fanned so precisely on the coffee table.
Want a surefire fix when the love of your life kicks the bucket? Follow these five easy steps and you’ll be twerking on her grave in no time.
Start with a healthy dollop of denial.
Now shake in a little anger.
“I’m feeling better,” Jaimie had lied in his last session with Pryce. He was good at lying now. And why not? With Jannie gone, it was all a lie. Getting up in the morning. Brushing his teeth. Please. Thank you. Yes. No. All of it. “My appetite is coming back, too.”
Pryce smiled and bobbed his head. He reminded Jaimie of a weird toy ostrich. The legless kind that dunks its head in water.
“Right on schedule,” he had said to Jaimie. “You’ve moved through the first four stages. Now, you’re entering the final one: Acceptance. Right on schedule.”
Jaimie tried to assume the posture of someone dumb enough to swallow this BS.
“Thank you for your help,” he said. “It’s . . . it’s been rough.”
Pryce continued to nod and smile. Jaimie had him right where he wanted him. His parents would never let him spend a week at the cottage alone unless Pryce approved it.
He’d thrown out the bait. Now it was time to hook the bastard.
“I . . . I really feel like I could use some time to myself. You know . . . to get my head back together and everything.”
“That’s only natural,” the doctor said. “You deserve it.”
And that was that.
Jaimie pulled into the left lane to pass a white, late-model Ford puttering along at forty-five miles an hour. He accelerated as he turned his head to check out the driver. His breath stopped so suddenly that, for a moment, he thought he might pass out.
An old woman sat hunched in the driver’s seat. Her upper body leaning toward the windshield. Her fingers curling around the steering wheel. Her fingers, with their gross, swollen knuckles. Like leeches, he thought.
He lowered his speed so that his Volvo ran parallel to the Ford.
One mile.
Two.
With each click of the odometer, his rage burned hotter. She had to be in her eighties. Older even than the old man who had run the stop sign. The man who had killed Jannie.
What was that old bag doing behind the wheel of a car? She had no right. Any fool could see that. She was too old. Too old to live even. Why was she alive and Jannie gone? Hadn’t he and Jannie sworn they would never be apart? Hadn’t his classmates voted them The Couple Most Likely to Stay Together? Jannie and Jaimie. Jaimie and Jannie. That’s the way it was supposed to be. Forever. Forever and ever.
What would it feel like to run the old woman off the road just the way the old man had run Jannie off the road? See her go through the windshield just the way the police said that Jannie had? Watch her choke on her own blood?
It would be easy. The slightest downward pull of his right arm. That’s all it would take. Easy! Easy-peasy! Easier, when he thought about it, than not doing it. He tightened his grip. The Volvo inched closer to the center line.
If she so much as glances at me I’ll do it, he thought. Swear to God! I will!
He brought the Volvo so close to the old woman’s car that if the windows had been open, he could have flicked her on the temple.
Look at me! Look at me!
