Write This Down (20 page)

This year, when we sit down at the huge, long table in the soaring, stone-walled great room, my little cousin Molly goes first. She's four, and she's grateful for her new puppy; my six-year-old cousin, Tobias, is grateful for the dollar the Tooth Fairy gave him for losing his first tooth. We're off to a good start.

Uncle Randall is grateful for a “terrific season” in his construction business, which translates to being grateful he made a lot of money this year. Not so good. I hope Dad doesn't say he's grateful for being named top orthodontist for the seventh year in a row.

Too soon my family's turn comes.

Mom: “For the two most wonderful kids in the world.”

That's sweet, but does she really think Hunter and I are more wonderful than all the other kids in the world, not to mention all the other kids at this very table? I decide I'm being too literal.

Dad: “That we're all together once again this year.”

A safe one.

Hunter: “For being alive.”

For the first time I think how terrified he must have been when the Subaru careened into the tree. Not just:
Oh my God, my parents are going to find out I borrowed the car
. But:
Oh my God, I might die.

I don't have time to process this thought, because it's my turn. I should have come prepared, given we do this every single year, but I was placing my faith in the power of inspiration. Everyone is looking at me. Uncle Steve, who has a teensy tendency toward being a control freak, has
another
rule that you can't take more than a minute to come up with your thing. For all I know, he times us on his watch.

“Autumn?” he prompts, as the seconds tick down.

“For my brother,” I blurt out. “I'm grateful for Hunter.”

I definitely hadn't planned to say
that
. But what if Hunter
weren't
alive? What if he had had a funeral instead of a court date? But I didn't get
too
carried away: I certainly didn't add anything like
For Hunter, who is the best brother in the world.

Anyway, now we're on to my great-grandma, who says, “I'll echo Hunter. Every morning when I get up, the first thing I do is read the obituaries, and if my name's not there, it's a good day.”

Everyone laughs.

Hunter didn't react when I said mine, and he's not looking at me now. Maybe he wasn't even listening. Very few people pay attention to things the way I do. This goes along with my tendency to overanalyze even tiny things like what I'm going to say for Uncle Steve's gratitude round-up.

Am
I grateful for Hunter? Well, I'm definitely grateful he's not dead. And that he's not as mean to me as he was before. Those are two big positives in my life. But despite what I just said, I don't think Hunter is what I'm most grateful for. Even if it's wrong to love a friend more than you love your family, I love Kylee more than I love Hunter, because she's never been mean to me
ever
, and that means more than that Hunter's not
as
mean as he was before.

If I was being totally honest—and a big family holiday meal is not the time to be totally honest—what I'm most grateful for is being a writer. I love being a writer. It's what gives magic and beauty and purpose and meaning to my life. It's the biggest part of who I am. And I'm grateful that I wrote something good enough to win a contest. Maybe that's a braggy thing to say, and I wouldn't have said it out loud in front of everyone, but it's true.

If I love being a writer more than I love being Hunter's sister—and let's face it, being Hunter's sister has not been a ton of fun these past few months—does that mean I'm ready to email the form back to the contest people?

Or not?

I'm pretty sure I know what I'm going to do, but I wait until Sunday night to send the email, anyway.

I'm crying as I type it.

I'm crying even harder as I press Send.

 

31

For Christmas, Kylee and I are giving each other necklaces we worked on together at her house. I love knowing Kylee will have a necklace made by me and I'll have one made by her. It's the most perfect best-friend present ever.

For my dad I found a shark puppet that manages to look cuddly and friendly even as you open its mouth to display its long row of big white (perfectly straight) teeth.

For my mom, who always says she doesn't want anything, I got a book of easy knitting patterns for beginners, some yarn Kylee helped me pick out, and a handmade coupon for five knitting lessons from Kylee herself. Kylee's giving knitting lessons all the time these days. She did start a knitting club at school, with seven girls in it and one boy. (Yes, it's Tyler!)

It's hard to know what to get for Hunter. Maybe I'll get him a cool kind of tie. The band might have a fancy gig someday where they'd need to dress up. My getting him a tie for a dress-up gig would be sort of like his getting that writer mug for me, only serious instead of funny.

Hunter had his court date. Alas, I didn't get to tag along to see what a real court date is like, in case I ever need to put one in a novel. I did ask Hunter about it; we're back to talking again.

“It was boring,” he told me.

“Boring?” How can a court date be boring? I would have expected it to be terrifying. The judge enters in her black robes, and all the criminals stand to face her, their knees knocking together, as she looks upon them in her august majesty—
I am the judge, great and terrible!
—before deciding who goes to prison for life and who is set free.

“It was boring,” Hunter repeated. “You wait forever in this room with a bunch of other people who are waiting forever, and then they call your name, and you think something is going to happen, but all that happens is that you go to this
other
room and wait there forever, and then they call your name again, and you wait some more, and then you talk to this guy, who's not even a judge, for about two minutes. And Mom made me wear a suit to make a good impression on the judge, and hardly anyone else was wearing a suit, so I looked like I had a great big ‘P' on my forehead for Pitiful.”

The suit must have worked, though, because Hunter's only punishment as a kid with a first offense was having to pay the $250 court costs plus a $75 fine, and take a driving class called Alive at 25 that's going to start in January. Dad is making him earn the money to pay for it, so all of his gig money, and then some, is going to pay his debt to society. Insurance ended up covering the loss of the car, to Hunter's great relief. Dad's even letting Hunter keep on driving with his permit. I think Dad just felt so awful about what Hunter overheard and how much it ate away at him for all those months. And guess what? Hunter's first grades of the new quarter are better, too—not great, but better.

It's a Saturday afternoon, halfway through December. The band is coming over to practice in a couple of hours. Hunter is in the family room working on a new song, trying out chords on the secondhand guitar he bought himself with birthday money back in middle school.

I plop down on a corner of the couch across from him. I love being around anybody's creativity. Every spring a bunch of artists in Broomville open up their studios so people can stop by and watch them painting, sculpting, quilting. Mom and I both love going. I always feel like writing even more after smelling oil paint or wet clay.

Hunter ignores me for a while. That's okay. I'm used to being ignored. It's good for me to practice my invisibility skills. In fact, I'm so invisible that Hunter doesn't mind singing the lyrics of the song, low but audible. His voice isn't bad. Maybe it's even as good as David's.

The song, so far, goes like this:

“The thing I want to tell you,

The thing I don't know how to say,

The thing you might not want to hear,

I need to tell you anyway.”

Hunter looks up then. “What do you think?” he asks me.

I do a double-take: I can't remember the last time he asked my opinion about anything. It feels good to have him act like he cares about my reaction.

“I like it,” I say.

“You don't have to say that. You can tell me what you really think.”

“I really do like it,” I tell him, and it's true.

Hunter strums a couple more chords. “I'm good at starting songs,” he says. “I'm not as good at finishing them. I'm not sure what to do with this one.”

“Maybe … what's the thing you want to tell her, or him, or whoever it is, in the song?” I ask. “You could put that in.”

“Yeah. But I want people hearing the song to be able to put their own thing in. Like, maybe it's ‘I love you.' Or maybe it's ‘I don't love you anymore.' Or maybe it's”—he looks over at me—“‘I'm sorry.'”

Is Hunter apologizing to me? For everything that happened?

I think maybe he is.

“I wrote something about you,” I tell him.

“About how horrible I am?” he jokes, in a not really joking way.

“Sort of. Well, it's about me, too, and Dad, and … everything.”

“Can I read it?” Hunter asks.

For a moment I'm tempted to go to my room and get the copy I put in the treasure box I keep in the bottom of my closet. In the box I still have a doodle of Cameron's that he did on the back of a journalism class handout and then crumpled up and threw away. Back in October, I saved it out of the trash when he wasn't looking. It's totally weird not being in love with Cameron anymore, having him sit next to me doing his doodles and me not even caring what he's doodling and whether the doodles contain a secret code revealing his love for me. Now he's just a smart, strange guy who is a terrific writer, a terrific rock-formation maker—and a terrible dancer.

I shake my head. “Not now. Maybe someday. Now is kind of … soon.”

“That's a good line,” Hunter says. “‘Now is kind of soon.' Hey, that could go in my song.”

I make up a new verse on the spot and say it out loud so Hunter can hear it:

“But now is kind of soon,

Later's kind of far away.

If I could do it all again,

I would have told you yesterday.”

“Yeah!” Hunter says. “Is it okay if I use it?”

“You want to use my lines in your song?” I ask.

Hunter nods.

I nod back. It's totally okay with me.

“Were you bummed?” Hunter asks then. “When that girl in your class—Olympia? Octavia?”

“Olivia.”

“When she won that big
Denver Post
writing contest, for her essay?”

I wrote the feature article about it for the
Peaks Post
, and it got picked up in the
Broomville Banner
this week. So I do have my first publication now. But it's not as big as the one Olivia got when it turned out that she was my twelve-year-old-category alternate. It's strange. I actually liked Olivia's personal essay a lot. It was about how much she dreamed of being a ballerina when she was little, and how she felt when she found out she could never be one: there's this weird way her right foot turns inward that means she can never be good at dancing. When I interviewed her, she was just so happy about winning the contest, the way I would have been, and not braggy about it at all. And—get this—she told me she had been sure the prize would go to me! I didn't tell her I got picked first. I'm never going to tell her.

“Was I bummed that I didn't win?” I echo Hunter's question. “Sort of. But I'm going to publish my poems in
The New Yorker
someday. And I'm going to write a book they'll make kids read in their high school and college English classes. And I'll get—”

“The Nobel Prize in Literature,” Hunter says, finishing the sentence for me, and he doesn't sound sarcastic. He sounds like he thinks I might really do it.

He plays and sings his song—our song—again. And it sounds even better this time.

 

Also by
Claudia Mills

Losers, Inc.

Standing Up to Mr. O.

You're a Brave Man, Julius Zimmerman

Lizzie at Last

Alex Ryan, Stop That!

Perfectly Chelsea

Makeovers by Marcia

Trading Places

The Totally Made-up Civil War Diary of Amanda MacLeish

One Square Inch

Zero Tolerance

 

About the Author

Claudia Mills
is the acclaimed author of many books for children. She lives in Boulder, Colorado. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

 

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