Tell the Wolves I'm Home (37 page)

I stood in Finn's kitchen, leaning up against the counter. The whole place smelled charred, because Toby was making toast, which he kept burning even though he was standing right there. This was almost a week after the journal thing. He called and said he felt bad about how things had gone last time. He said he wanted to make amends. I caught the train straight after school and then I took the subway up to the apartment. It didn't bother me to take the subway by myself anymore, and it was a whole lot cheaper than taking a taxi.

“Well … what do you think?” I was sure Toby was going to love the England plan. He would love it because it was perfect.

“What do I think about what?”

“You know—the passport. The trip?”

So there I was, beaming like a moron, and right away I could see that Toby didn't actually look pleased at all.

“Ah. That.”

“You said we could do anything, and so I was thinking England. You could show me everything there. Castles and … I don't know—everything. Your town—I looked it up. You could show me the moors. You know,
Wuthering Heights
? We could go in the summer. I'm still working on the details, but maybe I'd get my mother to send me to sleepaway camp and then—”

The toaster popped. Toby took out the toast, examined it, then
scraped at it until it barely held itself together anymore. Then he tossed it on a plate.

“June, I'm sorry. I really am, but that's impossible.” He opened a drawer in the kitchen, pulled out my passport, and handed it to me. I took it, and we walked through to the living room. Toby pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and slid one out without even offering one to me.

I threw my passport on the coffee table between us. I was starting to feel a little bit sick, because I'd spent a lot of time thinking about this plan. I'd searched all over the house to find the place where our passports were kept, and it had taken me forever to find the key.

“Nothing's impossible. You said—”

“Castles, June?
Wuthering Heights
? Christ. I'm from the outskirts of Leeds.”

“Well, okay, I don't know, whatever. Whatever you want to show me. Your England.”

“That'd be a laugh a minute.”

“I don't care.”

“June, I can't just take you out of the country. Finn would never … You're only, what? Fourteen? Fifteen?” Toby thought I might be fifteen. I almost smiled, but I held it back. “Plus …”

“Plus what?”

“Plus they wouldn't let me back here if I left. All right? I can't go.” He looked down, like he was disappointed in himself, then he said, “I'm sorry, June. I know I promised anything, but …”

“So? Would it be so bad to stay there?”

Toby shook his head slowly, thinking. “For me? Yes. It would. It would be awful. And the summer … Well, it's a long way off.”

It was already halfway through April. Summer was only a couple of months away, and I was about to argue with Toby, but then I looked at him. His eyes ringed with gray circles. His cheeks collapsing as he inhaled his cigarette. I suddenly understood what he was trying to say.

“But Finn wanted—”

“You don't know what Finn wanted,” he said. And for a moment it was like Greta was right there, talking out of Toby's mouth. I hoisted
my backpack onto my shoulders and started to walk out. Then I turned back.

“I do. I know. He wanted me to take care of you.”

Toby stubbed out his cigarette and, for the first time that day, he smiled. First a little bit, then more, until he was laughing. At me. He was laughing at me. Then he collapsed into Finn's blue chair, because something was so funny that he couldn't even manage to stand up anymore. I blushed and turned to go. Before I got to the door, I zipped open my backpack and reached down for the
Book of Days
. I opened the book, flipping through to find the page.

“You can laugh all you want, but he wrote it. In here. Plain as anything. He said,
Look after Toby
. Is that enough proof for you?”

“June, I'm not laughing at you.”

And suddenly I got a burst of meanness that shot straight from my heart to my lips. “He said you have nobody. Nobody at all.”

Toby didn't look away. His laugh turned into a soft, knowing smile.

“That's right,” he said. Then he stood and walked over to the windowsill. He reached his hand into a big electric-blue vase and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He slowly unfolded it and passed it over to me.

It was all wrinkled and thin, like it had been read a hundred times.

I read it twice, staring at each and every word, imagining Finn's shaky hand forming each sloppy letter. I looked around the apartment. There were those two pictures I used to think were my grandfather's hands, until I found out they were the hands of Toby's grandfather. There was the old carved trunk that Finn kept blankets in. There was the door to Finn's bedroom, which was closed again. Private. I reread the note, feeling stupid and confused.

“Come here,” Toby said.

I shook my head hard. There it was. All along I'd been looking for Finn shining through Toby, and there he was the whole time. Every little thing Toby had done for me had come from Finn. I felt a warmth spread through my body from my toes all the way up to my scalp. I thought back to that very first day I'd seen him at the funeral. Toby trying to catch my eye, trying in his clumsy way to do right by Finn. Just like I was trying to do.

“It's all right. Everything will be all right.”

I knew it wouldn't. That was obvious. But Toby stretched his arms out and I stepped into them. I walked right in, like Toby was a huge wardrobe that could take me anywhere I wanted to go.

“Shhhh,” he said. “Shhhhh. It's okay,” and we rocked. I cried right into Toby's chest. Right into Toby's heart. “Shhhh,” he said over and over, until it felt like we weren't even two separate people anymore.

“See?” he said. “See how much he loved you?”

I clung to Toby, his ribs pressing against me like train tracks heading far, far away. I clung to him like I had the power to keep him here. I held him the way I thought Finn might have held him. With everything I had. With all the love I've got.

Then my crying turned into laughing, and I pulled back and looked at Toby.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Look at us. We must be the worst caretakers in the whole world.”

Then Toby laughed too. “I don't know,” he said. “I thought I was doing all right.”

I raised my eyebrows. “We got drunk on Volcano Bowls last week. I'm not sure that's what Finn had in mind.”

Toby gave a sheepish smile. Then he put on a fake serious face and cleared his throat. “As you head into adulthood, June, you may occasionally encounter oversize exotic beverages of an alcoholic nature. I felt it was my duty to acquaint you with these potentially hazardous drinks.”

I laughed and gave him a shove in the arm.

His serious face fell apart. “Plus,” he said, “it was fun, wasn't it?”

I nodded.

And I thought that maybe Toby had figured it out. Maybe that was all Finn wanted us to do. To make each other laugh. Maybe Finn just wanted to think that his two favorite people might sing and smile and stumble around the city like they were having the time of their lives.

I managed to keep the warm feeling with me for most of the train ride home, but by the time we got to Hawthorne something else started to creep in. The note meant two things. The first, the good one, was that Finn cared. That he loved me enough to make sure Toby looked out for me. But the second thing it meant was that the only reason Toby had spent all that time with me was because of Finn. Because Finn asked him to. It had nothing to do with me. Greta was right. As usual, she had it all figured out.

Fifty-Two

That's what it said on the cover. The words were in bold black type, spread right across the page. Under them were Greta and me. The portrait. The two of us right in the middle of the cover of
Newsweek
magazine.

The article was about art that's missing or is maybe in people's private collections without anyone knowing about it. Hidden stuff. Apparently we were only number six. More important were an Andy Warhol painting, a painting from the 1700s showing an important battle in the Revolutionary War, two sculptures, and an American flag that had just twelve stars and was supposed to have been made even before the Betsy Ross one. Then came us.

I thought it was probably the same picture that they used in
The New York Times
, because the buttons weren't there. My T-shirt was plain black.

There was a picture of each of the top ten missing things and then there were another fifty listed below. A man from the Whitney said he was trying to put together an exhibition called “Lost and Found,” and if he managed to get hold of enough of the stuff on the list, it would be able to go ahead.

In the article he said,
We know about these works only because somebody has written about them or they've appeared in a photo or a film at some point.
We call them ghost works, because we have only a trace of them, not the real physical object
.

The part about our portrait said mostly the same stuff that was in the
Times
. The only difference was that they'd interviewed the owner of the gallery where Finn used to show his work. He said that he could not think of a greater tragedy than Finn Weiss ceasing to produce art. I thought that seemed like an exaggeration, but still, I felt proud that someone would say that about Finn.

It was Beans who brought the magazine in to school and showed it to me. At first I thought of hiding it or throwing it away, but it was
Newsweek
. There were thousands and thousands of copies all over the country. It was probably already up on the library bulletin board. Someone had probably called the Whitney guy to tell him where we were.

The article ended with the guy from the Whitney saying he was like a detective. Always on the hunt for missing art. I flipped back to the cover and stared at Greta and me. I thought of that guy searching for us. Trailing us. I realized we wouldn't be very hard to find, and somehow that scared me. The idea of him knocking on our door made me shudder.

My mother brought that
Newsweek
home from work. Two separate people had given her a copy. We all sat around the dinner table. My mother and father and Greta and me. The magazine sat in the middle. There was no crockpot delight that night. Instead, my mother had cooked two boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese. The bright-orange pasta sat on our plates, untouched.

“I've decided to call him,” my mother said.

My fork fell right out of my hand. For a second it was like the portrait was right there in front of me. The gold painted hair. The little black skull.

I started to argue, but Greta kicked me hard under the table. She got me right on the anklebone and I had to try hard not to punch her back. I glanced at her, and, even though she still wouldn't look me in the eye, I could tell she had a plan.

“The longer we wait,” she said, “the longer we keep it hidden, the more valuable it'll get. Right? Think about it. Even if he figures out that we have the painting, we don't have to show it to him. Do we?”

My parents looked at each other. I saw that they were reading each other, trying to work out the right thing to do.

“Well,” my father said, “you do have a point, but maybe it'd be good to get it out there. Maybe it's what Finn would have wanted.”

“No,” I said. Greta kicked me again, but this time I ignored her. “He wouldn't have wanted that. He painted it for us.”

“Honey, an artist's work belongs to everyone. In a sense.”

“But it's my face. Mine and Greta's. We don't belong to everybody. Finn made it for us, and I say no.”

“Just calm down, Junie.” My father was always like that, trying to keep everything peaceful without taking any kind of position.

I glanced at Greta, who was leaning back in her chair and had her arms crossed over her chest.

“He'll probably just want to have a look at it and then we can take it from there,” my mother said. “Nobody's talking about selling it or even showing it. Let's take it one step at a time.”

I looked at Greta again. Right in the eyes. We both knew what we'd done to the portrait. I couldn't imagine how my mother would react. Or maybe I could. Maybe that was the problem. Across the table, my mother and father were also looking at each other. My mother turned and reached her hand out toward us.