Some Kind of Happiness (24 page)

ARRRRRR,

Jack

At eleven forty-five Hart House is quiet and still. I sneak outside, pull on my sneakers, and listen to the leaves whispering, the train horn in the distance—and the call of a mourning dove.

I squint into the darkness. A figure stands at the other end of the Bridge, waving at me.

Once I cross, Jack throws his arms around me.

ABOUT JACK BAILEY

• Jack gives wonderful hugs,
real
hugs, like Mom's and Dad's hugs, like he never wants to let me go.

My heartbeat is officially out of control. Somehow I speak.

“Uh . . . what are you doing?”

(Of course, I do not manage to say anything intelligent.)

Jack gives me a look. “Hugging you? It's a thing friends do?”

“But . . .
why
are you hugging me?”

“Because I missed you.”

He does not seem embarrassed to say this. He says it like it is a plain and simple fact.

“You did?”

“Yeah. Without you, trees are kind of boring now.”

The Everwood, boring? “How dare you.”

“No offense. So, you escaped.”

We begin walking through the Everwood toward the Wasteland. “Barely. I kept thinking I would knock something over and wake everyone up.”

“Nah. You're better at stealth than you think. Hey, let's take the long way.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to talk to you, that's why.”

“Where's the long way?”

He points toward the part of the Everwood between his house and the Wasteland. “By the train tracks.”

“I keep hearing a train at night.”

“Yeah. It used to scare me when I was little.”

We crawl between a gap in an old fence at the eastern end of the Wasteland. The grass is taller here, and it tickles my legs.

“Why did it scare you?”

“I thought it was a monster,” Jack says, rolling his eyes, “and that it was coming to get me. I thought it roared because I'd done something to make it angry.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know. Dad always tells me I'm doing something wrong.”

I want more than anything to ask him about his dad, and why he never talks about him. I want to know about Mrs.
Bailey. I want to know about the loud noises that come from the Bailey house on quiet nights.

But I do not want to ruin this moment with Jack.

We walk in silence through another stretch of woods until we reach the train tracks. Jack helps me up onto the wooden fence running alongside them, and we gaze down the dark stretch of railroad.

A train horn whistles, down the tracks to our right, and Jack says, “When I figured out it wasn't a monster, that it was just a train, I started coming out to these tracks all the time.”

“Why?”

“To get out of the house. I sit and watch the tracks and imagine following them until I get somewhere else.”

“Where?”

Jack shrugs. “Anywhere but here, I guess.”

“Would you take Cole and Bennett with you?”

“Maybe. I don't think they'd make it, on the road. Bennett's too little, and Cole's too nice. He acts like he's tough, but he's not. What if we had to do bad things to survive? I don't think he'd be able to.”

Bad things.

The Baileys—their dad, I mean—he wasn't a good kid. He did . . . bad things.

I wouldn't trust them for anything.

The train horn sounds again. I feel cold, even though it is warm out.

Jack looks at me. “Do you ever think about running away?”

“Not really. I don't want to leave my parents.”

“They're nice?”

“Yeah. They're always busy, and they're kind of weird, but I love them.”

Down the tracks a tiny white light grows larger.

“That's cool, to have nice parents,” Jack says. “You're lucky. I wish I could meet them.”

I am lucky. I know that.

I am aware of the children across the world—even in my own city—who are poor, or sick, or hurt, or orphans.

Pretending to be a poor orphan girl is one thing; I would not actually want to be one.

But Jack does not understand.

I have nice parents. Yes, that is true. But I am full of sadness, and I wish I weren't, and I feel bad that I am.

And my parents are getting a—

They might be getting a—

(But I wouldn't have to say the word. Jack would understand.)

I wonder if Jack is mad at me for having nice parents, since I assume he does not.

It does not seem particularly fair for him to be mad at me for that.

It also is not fair that the Travers family is dead, that my world is filled with blue days, and that Jack seems to be hiding an unhappy secret too.

The train is coming. I feel its approach in the fence; the
wood vibrates against the bottoms of my sneakers.

I get an idea—something to make Jack smile. Something to shake off the heaviness I can feel settling onto my shoulders and weaving into my chest.

(Go away, go away,
go away
!)

I jump off the fence. “Come on. Let's run for it.”

“What?”

“The train. It'll be here soon. Let's outrun it.”

“You're crazy.”

(Possibly.)

The horn sounds again, louder this time. Jack sits on the fence, watching the train approach.

I shrug. “Fine. I'm faster than you, and you're too chicken to admit it. I get it.”

Jack jumps down. “No way is a queen faster than a pirate. You'll trip over your gown.”

“
You'll
trip over your wooden leg.”

The train is almost on top of us; the horn is so loud that I want to cover my ears, but I don't. The chugging wheels make my bones shake.

“In about five seconds you're going to be so embarrassed,” Jack shouts over the noise.

“We'll see about that,” I shout back, and as the train rushes past, I take off running.

All I can see is the open dark path in front of me—train on one side, forest on the other. I imagine following the tracks for days, finding what lies at the end of them.

By the time I got there, maybe I would have outrun my sadness, forever.

No more blue days.

No more fear.

The thought makes me dizzy—or maybe I am out of breath already.

Jack shoots past me.

I assumed he would beat me; his legs are longer than mine, and I am not an athlete like Kennedy. But I did not realize just how fast he would be.

My lungs are on fire. I am pumping my arms through the air and pushing my legs faster than they have ever gone before. Still, I am not fast enough to catch Jack.

He races on, and I think I see him reaching for the train.

He will grab hold, jump on board, and leave this place behind forever, like he has always dreamed.

But then the train pulls ahead, and Jack falls behind. He throws up his arms to the sky and shouts.

Gasping for breath, I stop beside him. “I thought you were going to do it. I thought you'd leave, like you said.”

Jack looks after the train. It has disappeared into the darkness, but the sound of its horn floats back to us, reminding us it is there.

Then he looks at me. “Not without you,” he says, and grins the Jack grin I know.

A
FTER THAT, THINGS ARE QUIET
between me and Jack, like we traded all our words for running power and now have nothing left.

Strangely, I do not feel the need to try to fill the silence with talking. Not this time.

We walk back through the woods toward his house. Cicadas sing from the trees, and the sky is dusted with a million stars. My fingers brush against the tall grass, and once I think I feel Jack's fingers touch mine, but I am too nervous to look down and check.

When we get back into the woods, everything is velvet: the sky, the still air, the soft earth. The trees blot out the moon. Jack holds back branches for me, and I do the same for him. He touches my hand again—I know it is real this time—and I hold on. I cannot look at him, but I don't let go, not even while we climb up the hill to his house.

“Well,” Jack says when we get to the top.

“Yeah,” I answer, and I'm probably supposed to go home now, but that seems unthinkable.

(Eleven-letter word for “no way I am doing that.”)

“Jack? Is that you?”

Jack lets go of my hand.
“Dad?”

I turn and squint, see a man sitting in a lawn chair a little ways from the Bailey house. The flickering porch light buzzes.

So this is Mr. Bailey. He does not
look
like a troll.

Jack steps toward him cautiously. “What's up?”

“Enjoying the night,” says Mr. Bailey. He takes a sip from a bottle of root beer. I recognize the orange label. “Who's your friend?”

Jack relaxes, stuffs his hands in his pockets. “This is Finley. We were just talking.”

“Hey, Finley. Hart, isn't it?”

I nod.

“Nice night, don't you think?”

I glance at Jack. How are we not in trouble right now? Why is Mr. Bailey not marching Jack to bed this instant? “Yes, sir.”

“So polite. But then you Harts always were.”

Jack sits on the ground by his dad and waves me over. “Can Finley stay for a while?”

Mr. Bailey laughs a little, raises his bottle in the direction of Hart House. “Sure. Why not? No one's awake to see.”

I sit beside Jack and bring my knees to my chin. Dad's words keep coming back to me—
I wouldn't trust them for anything, he did bad things, he did bad things
—but Jack is leaning against his dad's leg, and Mr. Bailey puts his hand on Jack's shoulder, and I do not see how this could be a bad man.

Or why Jack would call him a troll.

“I love the woods best at night,” Mr. Bailey says, after a while. “It's like you can hear the trees thinking.”

Jack nudges me. “Tell him a story.”

“What?”

“One of the Everwood stories.” Then Jack says, louder, “Finley's a good writer. She has a whole notebook full of stories at her house.”

“Really?” Mr. Bailey actually sounds interested. “What are they about?”

I stare at the ground. “They're not very good.”

“Shut up,” Jack says. “They're amazing.”

I glare at him.

(Jack thinks my stories are amazing!)

“This is embarrassing,” I mumble.

“No it isn't. Come on, do your thing.”

Jack thinks it is so easy to just
do
things: to steal your neighbors' property so they will chase you. To hug your friend because you missed her.

Mr. Bailey takes another drink. “You don't have to, if you're scared.”

“Finley's not scared of anything,” Jack says. “She's the queen.”

“Is that right?” Mr. Bailey laughs a little. “Of course she is. All those Hart girls are queens, didn't you know?”

Something about Mr. Bailey's words stings, like I have stepped into those pale green prickers hiding beneath the grass in the Wasteland.

Those Hart girls
are my aunts, my cousins, my grandmother. We share blood. What does Mr. Bailey know about anything?

“Fine,” I say sharply. “I have a story about how the Everwood was first made, when the world was very young and full of magic. Would you like to hear that?”

Mr. Bailey throws his empty bottle into the weeds. “Sure thing. Can't sleep tonight anyway. Maybe this'll help.”

“He means that in a good way,” Jack explains, lying back in the dirt. “Reading relaxes him. I've been reading
Tom Sawyer
to him sometimes. You like that, right?”

“I like it when you do their voices.” Mr. Bailey reaches down to Jack, and Jack grabs his hand and squeezes. “You're good at making me laugh.”

Jack smiles up at him.

I take a deep breath, and begin.