Tell the Wolves I'm Home (31 page)

I brushed the leaves off her quickly. This time I decided she would
have to walk. Run, even. I yanked her up and shook her hard enough to wake her. She opened her eyes and looked at me. “June,” she whispered. “It's you.”

“Get up, Greta. Now.” I stood and pulled her arms until she was almost standing.

“No, no, no. Listen. Shhhh. June, I think I'm dying.” She was clutching on to a bottle of apricot schnapps. I'd seen that same bottle not so long ago, dusty and forgotten, in the back of my parents' liquor cabinet.

“You're not dying. You're just drunk. Now, get up.”

She laughed and her eyes closed again. Then for a second they fluttered back open. She raised her finger to her lips. “We're friends, right?”

“If you walk,” I said. “We're friends if you walk.”

And she did. Greta put her arm around my shoulders and stumbled along next to me through the woods. It was hard work, a slow slog alongside the river. We couldn't go back up to the parking lot, because of the police, so we had to go through the woods and then cut over like we did last time. Greta hung off my shoulder like a heavy bag.

“Come on,” I said, but she'd stopped and wouldn't go on.

“Remember beauty parlor?”

Here we go again
, I thought.
Me dragging Greta home while she stumbles down memory lane
. At first I was angry. At the whole thing. But then Greta lifted my hand into hers and ran a finger over each of my fingernails.

“Remember those geranium petals?” she said, and the anger faded because I did remember.

Beauty parlor was a game we used to play when we were little, when we were still best friends. If it was Greta's turn, I would have to sit down on the grass. Then she would disappear all around the yard, looking for stuff. She collected things like geranium petals and milkweed fluff and those little purple violets that grow wild on the lawn. She would tell me to lie down flat on my back with my hands spread out. Then she went to work. She'd lay violets on my eyelids and sprinkle the milkweed fluff in my hair and one by one she'd lay those bright red geranium petals on my finger and toenails, finding ones that were just the right size for each and every nail. Then she'd shout out, “Snapshot,”
and she'd make a clicking sound and pretend she had a camera in her hand and was going to preserve the moment forever.

When she was done I would try to get up as slowly as I could, so all her work didn't tumble off me. Usually I was able to keep only the toenails and the fluff from falling. That was enough. Especially the toenails, because those petals really looked like nail polish.

What's embarrassing is that the last time I remember playing that game was when I was eleven and Greta was thirteen. We both knew we were too old for it—Greta had real makeup by then—but we also knew we liked that game, and when it's only you and your sister, you can do any embarrassing thing you want.

“Lie down,” Greta said.

At first I didn't understand, but then I did. Greta wanted to do beauty parlor right there in the woods. I kept walking, tugging her along.

“No way,” I said.

“Awww, Junie, come on. Like we used to.”

“Like we used to? What are you talking about? You're the mean one. You're the one who wrecked how we used to be.”

She didn't say anything. Her arm dropped off my back.

“Did you ever think
I
might have problems?” I said. “That I might be dealing with … situations?”

Greta stumbled along ahead of me. She turned back and laughed. “Poor old Mrs. Lucky. Poor troubled Mrs. Special,” she said. “Maybe I should go out and get myself AIDS. Then everyone can come fawning around me and—”

“Shut up, Greta. Just shut up.”

“Would I be special enough for you then, June? Tragic enough?” She flashed me a look, then bolted ahead, like her body had somehow sobered up instantly.

“Wait,” I shouted. But she didn't. I had to run as fast as I could to stay with her. The moon lit that whole forest in the most thin and silvery light. I kept thinking Greta might get lost, but she didn't. She turned away from the river at just the right place, then cut onto Evergreen Circle, where I finally caught her.

We walked in silence the rest of the way, cutting between backyards
and down the streets of our town. I stared at Greta's back. At her matted hair, decorated with brown torn leaves and dirt. What was happening to my sister? What if I'd never come? How long would she have stayed hidden in those cool, damp leaves? How long before she woke up alone and scared, with nothing but the howling of wolves to keep her company?

“Greta, you have to tell me what's going on. You are seriously scaring me now. I'll tell. I'll tell Mom and Dad if I have to.”

She looked at me and smiled. “No, you won't. You're here, aren't you? And other places, right? Should I tell them about all the sneaking around? Should I tell them you're smoking now?”

“God, Greta. I'm not saying it to be mean. I'll help you with whatever it is. Really.”

Greta sat on the curb between the Aults' house and the DeRonzis'. I sat next to her. A streetlight shone down from right above us, so it was like we were in a little bright circle separate from everything else. She looked at me with her tired drunk eyes.

“Are you really scared, June? For real?”

“Yeah. Of course I am.”

Greta looked like she was about to cry. “That's nice,” she said. Then she hugged me—a real hug, hard and fierce. She smelled of liquor and the mustiness of the forest floor, but under it all was the baby-sweet scent of Jean Naté. Then she leaned in closer and whispered, “I am too, Junie. I'm scared too.”

“Of what?”

She stroked my cheek with the back of her fingers and pressed her lips to my ear. “Of everything.”

Forty-Two

The next morning we both slept late. As late as my mother let us, anyway, which was ten-thirty. We were going to the Ingrams' for a barbecue that afternoon. They threw one for my parents every year, right near the end of tax season. To help them get through the final stretch, they said.

I didn't mind going to the Ingrams' too much, but Greta tried everything she could to get out of it. What's funny is that in the end she was forced to go because it would be impolite to Mikey if she didn't, but when we got there it turned out that Mikey himself had gone out with his friends. We were also told he didn't want to be called Mikey anymore, just Mike. So there we were in the Ingrams' backyard, hungover Greta and me, hanging around their rusty old swing set. Greta sat on a swing, digging the tip of her boot into the bare patch of dirt. I swung as high as I could, forcing one leg of the swing set to pull up and out of the ground again and again, making it feel like the whole thing was about to fly us both away.

“Could you stop that?” Greta said.

“Nope,” I said, and kept swinging.

She stood up and looked toward the picnic table, where all the adults were sitting with glasses of beer and wine. My dad had brought Trivial Pursuit over, and even though the Ingrams had owned a copy for a couple of years, he got them to play. I heard my mother laugh, and I wanted to cover my ears because I couldn't stop thinking about
what I knew about her. How could someone act so strong and normal and under it all be so desperate and sad? And mean. That was the hardest part. It was only in the past few years that I'd even thought of Finn and my mother as brother and sister. That I really believed that who they were to me—mother, uncle—wasn't all that they were. Maybe Finn and my mother sat on a swing set at a backyard barbecue, bored out of their minds, just like me and Greta. They must have held each other's secrets. Just like us.

Greta put her hand up over her mouth, made a nauseated sound, and let out a sigh before sitting back down on the swing. I was trying to think of a way to bring up everything that had happened the night before. Something that made it so Greta wouldn't turn on me right away. I had my arms linked around the chains of the swing and my hands in my coat pockets because it was cold. Too cold for a barbecue, even though everyone was pretending it wasn't. My fingers had been playing with something in my left pocket, and I realized it was that weird die that Ben gave me. I took my hands out of my pockets and waited until the swing was at its highest point, then I leapt off onto the grass.

“Hey,” I said. “Look at this.” I held my palm out to Greta. It was the first time I'd seen the die in daylight, and I saw that it was kind of pretty. Translucent blue with ten sides, so that it was like two five-sided pyramids stuck together at their bases. It looked like a big jewel with numbers carved into it.

She glanced at it. “Yeah, so, what is it?”

“A Dungeons & Dragons die. From Ben.”

Greta perked right up. “Oooooh,” she said. “Nerd courtship rituals.”

I could tell I was blushing, but as painful as it was to pretend to have some kind of dishy news about me and Ben, I could see it was a way to open Greta up. I could see her loosening. And I guess there was the kiss.

“Did you see him last night? In that cloak?”

She shook her head. “Apparently
you
did, though.” She raised her eyebrows and gave a crooked smile.

I nodded so the whole thing would stay kind of murky and keep
Greta thinking. She eyed me up, then gave me a look that said she understood every single thing in the world.

“You know, June, I'm just playing along here. You can drop the act.”

“What act?”

“The Ben thing. There's no Ben thing.”

What's funny is that for once there was something. Ben
had
kissed me. It was clumsy and quick and maybe it meant nothing at all, but it was real.

“You know what, Greta? You don't know everything. You think you do, but you are so far from knowing everything—”

“I know that I saw Ben go off with Tina Yarwood last night.”

I looked away quick. What she said stung more than I would have expected. “Oh,” I said after a while.

It wasn't like I'd been sitting around fantasizing about Ben Dellahunt. It wasn't that I even liked him particularly. He was smug and nerdy and he had nothing on Finn or Toby. But still, when Greta said that, about Tina Yarwood. When I thought of that kiss. How I'd blushed after, like it meant something. When I thought of all that, it hit me right in the throat. Nothing had changed. I was the stupid one again. I was the girl who never understood who she was to people.

Greta held my gaze for a second, smirking. She could see that she'd hurt me. I could tell. And even though I knew it was the worst thing I could do, that Greta was the worst person in the world to say anything to, I looked back at her hungover face and said, “Ben's nothing, Greta. I have a boyfriend in the city. He's older than me. Older than you, even. I go to the city by myself all the time, and we smoke and drink and do whatever we want.” I almost kept going. I almost mentioned my plan about England, but I didn't.

“Liar,” she said. She said it with so much viciousness that I knew she thought it might be true.

I shrugged. “Believe what you want.”

“Don't worry. I will.”

It had taken every last bit of concentration to sound so confident, and I sat on the swing, shaking for a few minutes, thinking about the stupidity of what I'd just done. About all the trouble it might lead to.
Not only for me but for Toby. I got up and started to walk away, but then I thought of something.

“How do you know about that place in the woods, anyway?”

She smiled. “I've seen you, June. The hills have eyes.…”

“What do you mean?”

She looked so full of power right then that I started to worry about what she would say. But I had to know.

“Tell me,” I said.

“I followed you. I saw you heading down to the woods after school one day, at the beginning of the school year, and I followed you. I stayed there all afternoon, watching you play your weird stuff. Talking to yourself. Wearing that dumb old dress. Those
special
boots of yours.”

“You spied on me?”

“Lots of times.”

I stood there staring at Greta. I should have been embarrassed, but all I felt was rage. I turned and walked away without saying another word. I was still shaking, and I clenched my fists to stop it. I squeezed the blue die tight in my hand and thought about Ben again. Then I hurled the die across the Ingrams' lawn. In a few months it would end up shredded by their lawn mower. Good. I walked over to the picnic table and sat down with the adults. I pretended I wanted to play Trivial Pursuit until it was time to go home.

Forty-Three