Some Kind of Happiness (30 page)

Everything is quiet except for the crackling fire and the radio.

“What?” Gretchen crosses her arms and glares at the ground. “Everyone knows about that. People at school say—”

“Shut up, Gretchen.” Jack holds his cheek. “You don't know anything.”

“Gretchen, don't be a jerk, and put out that fire,” says Avery.

“But Cole—”

“I don't care.
I'm
telling you to put it out.”

But it is too late. Cole is already running toward the Bailey house.

I take off after him.

Avery yells at me to come back.

“Finley!” Jack calls. I hear him running after me. “Don't! Stop!”

But I will not stop. If Cole tells his father about our party, about the fire, Mr. Bailey will probably tell Grandma and Grandpa, too—and then what?

“The queen in her forest, far from home,” the Dark Ones chanted, grabbing on to the queen's shoulders and twisting, twisting. “The queen in her forest, all alone.”

Cole must have really hurt Jack, because I am outrunning him, chasing Cole up the steep hill to his house on all fours, pulling myself up by the roots of a gnarled tree.

“Finley, please, stop!” Jack shouts. “Don't go inside!”

I follow Cole across the Baileys' run-down wooden porch and through a swinging front door with the screen broken. He stops at the entryway to a dark living room with peeling wallpaper, lit up by a television.

I am dizzy and out of breath. “Please, Cole, don't tell your dad. Grandma will—”

“Who are you?”

A woman stands in front of me, thin and tired-looking. Her mouth is hard; her eyes are harder.

“I'm . . . Finley. Finley Hart.”

“Hart? What do you want? Don't you know how to knock? Or are you too good for that?”

Cole hurries over. “Mom, leave her alone—”

Mom?

“I'm sorry,” I say. “I was trying to talk to Cole—”

“You're friends with my boys?” The woman steps toward me. “Stay away from them, all right? They don't need to get mixed up with you people on top of everything else.”

“Are you still here?” bellows a voice from another room. “I told you to get out!”

The woman yells back, “Don't worry, you won't see me again for a
long
time.” Then she looks back at me. “Seriously, girl. Don't stick around here. Baileys have bad blood.” She grins. It is not a friendly smile. “But I guess you know all about that, huh?”

Then she shoves past me and out the door, car keys in hand.

Cole watches the woman leave. The headlights of her car make his face look frightened and small. “Finley, get out of here, seriously—”

Something crashes in the other room, like a chair falling over.

Jack barrels in from outside. “Please, Finley, just go.”

Jack is crying.

Jack is
crying
.

I stare at him. “Jack?”

“Who is that?”

We all freeze at the sound of Mr. Bailey's voice. He stumbles out of the living room toward us.

The queen stepped back in horror. Here, at last, was the infamous Fellfolk troll.

His lair was a festering pile of waste—a once-grand castle now fallen to ruin.

Curled on her back, the Dark Ones cheered. “Run, little queen! Or he'll pound you and smash you and grind you to bits!”

I do not run.

“It's nobody, Dad,” says Cole. “You can sit down and watch—”

Mr. Bailey ignores Cole. His face is pale and thin, his dark hair greasy. Like that night two weeks ago when we watched the stars, I think he looks like Jack—but this time it is all wrong. He reeks—like Aunt Bridget's drinks, but so much worse—and he cannot keep his balance.

“Hello, sir.” I will not run. I will not run. “It's Finley.” When he does not answer, I add, “Remember? I told you the story about the Everwood?”

Mr. Bailey points at the door. “Get out of here. No Harts allowed on this property.”

But I am afraid to move, even though Jack is tugging on my hand. “Leave, Finley,
leave
.”

“Get out, I said!” Mr. Bailey yells. He looks like he either wants to throw something or cry. “Get off my property!”

My ears ring with the horrible things he proceeds to say about my family: We are snobs. We are criminals. We don't deserve what we have. I run out onto the porch and to the edge of the hill that leads down to the river.

Someone approaches the hill with a flashlight—Avery, holding Bennett's hand.

Jack catches up with me. I could reach out and touch his arm, but I have never felt so far away from another person.

“Jack,” I whisper, “I'm really sorry.”

“It's fine.”

“You kept telling me to stop and I wouldn't—”

“You should have. You weren't supposed to see them. He's not always like this. You saw him that one night. Mostly he's fine.”

I cannot see Jack's face, but I can hear him crying. Jack is not supposed to cry. Jack is supposed to smile and make jokes and talk like a pirate.

“That was your mom?” I ask. “That woman who left? Where did she go?”

Jack won't look at me. “Away. Like usual. I guess I don't blame her.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just leave, Finley. Get out of here.”

“Not until I know you're okay.”

“I know how to handle him.”

“Maybe you can stay with us tonight, until your dad calms down.”

“We're fine, okay? He won't hurt us. He'll fall asleep and wake up and not remember anything.”

“But, Jack—”

“Did you not get it? I told you to leave!”

Then Jack shoves me—not hard enough to make me fall, but hard enough to break something inside me.

Jack has never looked at me like this before, like we are worse than strangers. Like he wants nothing to do with me.

“Jack, I'm sorry—”

“Get out of here, Finley. And don't come back.”

As Jack helps Bennett up the hill, I stand there, shaking. Jack leads Bennett inside and slams the broken screen door closed. Bennett presses his face against the screen and waves at me. His cheeks are painted yellow and orange.

At the bottom of the hill Avery waits with her flashlight. “You okay?”

“No.” I feel like I am going to cry, but nothing comes out.

“Are
they
okay?”

“I think so. I hope so.”

Avery takes my hand. “It was a good party, for a while.”

I do not answer her, but she is correct.

I suppose most things in a person's life are good for a while, even if that doesn't last very long.

Maybe that is why, even after something has gone wrong, we spend so much time trying to fix it.

Because we remember when it wasn't broken.

A
FTER THE PARTY,
A
VERY AND
I take everyone home and help them sneak back into their houses. Then we return to Hart House and get rid of any evidence of the party. Avery insists on making me pancakes at four in the morning. I can only swallow a couple of bites.

The hollow place inside me that once held my friendship with Jack has been cut open and is bleeding into the rest of me.

Now it is nine in the morning. Ten. Twelve. Grandma and Grandpa will be home soon. I should shower; my hands and arms are covered in dots of paint. Looking at them makes me remember how excited I felt yesterday.

How naïve that Finley was.

(Five-letter word for “gullible, childish, lacking in worldly wisdom.”)

At two o'clock I hear the wheels of Grandpa's car crunch on the gravel driveway. I sneak out onto the stairs and listen as Grandma walks across the house, goes straight to her room, and shuts the door.

When I find Grandpa, he is in his office, sitting at his desk and staring at his blank computer screen.

“Grandpa?” I inch inside. “Are you okay?”

He blinks and smiles tiredly at me, and I do not realize until that moment how lost and small he looked before, sitting there all alone.

“Fine. I'm fine.” He waves me over to the window seat.

“Grandma's okay?”

“She's very tired, but she'll feel better after some rest.”

I fold my arms across my chest. I cannot possibly sit down. “Are you scared?”

Grandpa nods. “Yes.”

“Is Grandma?”

His smile is soft. “Your grandmother isn't scared of anything.”

“Do you want to go on a drive?”

“Not today. Too much driving this weekend. But, actually, I wanted to tell you something.” He folds his hands in his lap and clears his throat. “Your parents are coming by this evening.”

“My . . .” I sit down. “Dad's coming?”

“Yes, and your mother. For dinner. They wanted to surprise you, but I . . . I thought you might want to know ahead of time.”

There is a thrumming sound in my ears. The rest of the world goes quiet. I cannot think of a reason why my parents would want to show up here to surprise me, except for—

“Okay,” I say. I cannot look at Grandpa. If I see his face, it will tell me everything I need to know.

•  •  •

Mom and Dad arrive at five o'clock.

Grandma is still shut away in her bedroom and shows no signs of coming out.

It is probably better that way.

Part of me hugs Mom and Dad; the other part of me is hiding deep inside myself and does not notice much of what is going on around me.

(Are they really here? I do not want to know.)

Grandpa dishes out leftovers, and we all sit around the kitchen table trying to eat. I manage five forkfuls of pasta salad with Avery sitting across from me, watching me, before I cannot take it anymore.

“Why are you here?” I ask.

Everyone is quiet. “We wanted to see you,” Mom says, and her smile is so thin and flips my stomach.

“I don't believe you.”

Grandpa sets down his fork and wipes his mouth. “Avery, why don't we let them have the room to themselves?”

After Grandpa and Avery leave, I am left stuck between my parents.

(Avery, please come back.)

“So!” Dad tries to sound cheerful. “You know Donovan in 4C?”

“Yeah.”

“Mr. Finch got him his first car last week.”

“No way.”

“Way. Donovan Finch is now officially a driver.”

“That's disturbing.”

“I agree,” says Mom. “They should raise the driver's license age to eighteen.”

“Or twenty-five,” Dad suggests. “Or never.”

Mom laughs, kind of. Silence fills the kitchen like a cloud.

Dad blows out a breath. “So, Finley, we've got something we need to tell you, and it's not going to be an easy thing for us to say, or for you to hear.”

“You might not want to talk to us about it at first,” Mom says, “not for a while, and that's okay.”

“Mom?”

She reaches across the table for my hand. “Yeah, sweetie?”

I am right between okay and freaking out. “What is it? What's wrong?”

(I know exactly what, but I cannot admit it yet, not even to myself, not in these last few seconds before everything changes.)

Then they tell me.

The colors and sounds of the kitchen fade away into static—except for certain words. They buzz around my brain like flies:

We'll always love each other . . . just not in the same way we used to.

Your dad and I . . . we just want to be happy. And we aren't anymore.

Sometimes you can love someone, very much, and then things change.

This is not because of you. Okay, Fin?

(No, no, no, no.)

“. . . so we think it'd be a good idea if you came home with us,” Dad is saying, “instead of waiting a couple more weeks. Then we can start figuring out some things together, and we can talk through what comes next. There'll be a lot of big changes, but—”

“I'm not leaving.”

They stare at me. “Sweetie,” Mom says, “I know this is hard, but—”

“If you make me leave, I'll hate you forever.”

Dad tries to hug me, but I jerk away and go to the other side of the room. “I'm having fun, okay? I'm going to stay until the middle of August like we said I would. I shouldn't have to leave because of your problems.”

Mom starts to cry, but I really couldn't care less. I am alone in my static-filled world where sounds cannot hurt me and words cannot hurt me and my parents cannot hurt me.

“Fin, we need to start tackling this as a family,” Dad says, “and it'll be easier if you're home with us.”

“Home? What home? What family? We're not a family anymore. That's what you just said, isn't it?” I point down the hall toward the rest of the house. I don't even know what I am saying. My voice pinches and cracks, and I hate it. “This is my family.
This
is my home. You brought me here, you made me come here, and I'm going to stay. Isn't that what you wanted? I'm staying. You can leave.
You
can leave.”