I know what she wants me to do. She wants me to come over and put my arms around her and tell her it’ll be all right, but I can’t. I can’t because I don’t know if it will. I can’t because the thought of touching anyone right now makes me sick inside. Why is it so hard?
Eventually I say, “Yeah. I guess so.”
Her throat works as she takes a long swallow of wine. When she sets the bottle back down, I wrap my fingers around the neck and gently pry it away from her.
“You should get some sleep,” I say. I walk around the table to help her stand. “Here. Come on, let’s go.”
She doesn’t fight me on it. With my arm around her waist, I lead her to her bedroom, peel back the covers and carefully roll her onto the mattress. She makes a soft sound as I pull the comforter over her, blinking up at me, already half-asleep.
“Harper,” she says, voice slightly slurred. “I’m sorry about the eggs. I wanted you to have something to eat.”
It’s sweet, really, that she almost burned down the house in a drunken stupor for the sake of my appetite. Fucked up, but sweet. I hope this doesn’t become a habit, though. She drank a lot after Dad left. I thought we were done with that.
“Go to sleep, Mom,” I say softly. Her eyes flutter, her gaze vacant again, and a minute later I hear her breathing deep and even, so I know she’s out.
The house is eerily quiet. All this time I thought silence would be a welcome reprieve, but it’s less comforting than I imagined. The house feels so much bigger and colder than it ever has. I consider going downstairs to clean up my mother’s mess, but the thought alone leaves me drained, so I start for my room, only to end up in front of June’s. It’s like I’ve stepped into wet cement; my feet stay rooted in place.
I stand outside the door for a while, until I feel stupid enough for being scared of a freaking door to force myself to open it and go inside.
This time I look for the last signs of life. One of her pillows is askew; a gray sweater is draped over the back of her desk chair. Other than that, nothing. I go to her desk and pick up one of the plastic bags. Again I notice the blank CD. There’s no case for it, just the disc. As I slip it out of the bag, I realize that it must’ve been playing in the car stereo when I found her.
I turn the CD over in my hands. It’s a normal blank disc, silver, with the words Nolite te bastardes carborundorum scratched across the bottom in black marker. I don’t recognize the phrase—Latin, maybe?—or the handwriting. It’s definitely not June’s, which was round and loopy and girlish. I wonder if it’s a mix Tyler had given her, back when they’d dated, but that’s doubtful. Tyler’s not bright enough to quote another language, and promise rings aside, his romantic gestures don’t usually go beyond big talk. His idea of chivalry is coming to the door to pick a girl up for a date rather than honking from the driveway.
I switch on June’s stereo, slide the disc into the tray and flip it to the first track. There are a few seconds of silence, and of all the things I expect to hear from those speakers, it most definitely is not the startling guitar riff that comes blaring out. A backbeat chimes in, an echoing bass, accompanied by a man’s voice—rough around the edges and with a certain swagger to it.
I turn the volume up a few notches and stretch out on the floor, my back on the carpet, and feel the bass thrumming through me, vibrating. You make a grown man cry. This is not June’s music. When we were younger, she plastered posters of manufactured boy bands on her walls, bought the albums of teen pop princesses. As a teen she listened to girls with guitars who didn’t really know how to play, mainstream hip-hop hits, whatever generic pop medley was currently in high rotation on the Top 40 station.
The rock song ends and another by a different band comes on, slower, sort of bluesy. The singer is almost mournful, talking about a girl who had nothing at all.
I stay on the floor and listen to one song blend into the next. Some I can place—after all, everyone knows “Stairway to Heaven,” and Laney had a Billie Holiday phase that lasted long enough for me to recognize her distinctive velvety croon—but most of them I don’t recognize. Each one is different, ranging from amped-up rock to jazz refrains, strung together in a way that feels like it should be schizophrenic, but somehow the transitions work. It’s not jarring. The music rises and falls in the way a conventional story is supposed to, building up and hitting the climax and then easing into the conclusion.
I close my eyes and try to feel whatever my sister had felt in this. Which song was playing when she carefully, purposefully, popped sleeping pill after sleeping pill, those last moments of awareness before she slid into dark, permanent nothingness? More important, who made it in the first place? And what did they mean by it?
Did anything mean anything?
Aunt Helen comes over the next morning, as promised. She and Mom sort through the crazy amount of flowers and cards covering every spare inch of our living room. I stay in my bedroom, listening to June’s CD on the neglected Discman I recovered from the depths of my closet. I can’t stop thinking about it.
This isn’t June’s kind of music, and it’s not my kind, either. My iPod is loaded with recommendations from Laney, all of the underground rap she likes, and some of my favorite indie artists, like the Decemberists and Cat Power and Sufjan Stevens. The songs on this CD sound more like something my parents would’ve listened to when they were my age.
I listen to the music and stare at my walls. They’re covered in pictures I’ve taken ever since I got my Nikon SLR for Christmas and started taking photography more seriously. The only blank wall is the one nearest to my bed. I’ve been saving it for something special, but I don’t know what.
I’m still staring at the empty white space when Aunt Helen comes up to my room with a sandwich and a glass of milk. I take out my headphones and sit up when she enters. She doesn’t knock or anything, of course. Just barges right in and looks at me a little suspiciously. I think she does this because she wants to catch me in the middle of something. She probably thinks I sit up here carving emo poetry into my wrists with a razor blade. It’s like I’m on suicide watch, by mere association.
“I made this for you,” she says, thrusting the plate into my hands. “You should eat something.”
I look down at the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I hate jelly. I also hate when people come into my room without knocking.
“Thanks,” I mumble. She stares at me, frowning, until I take a bite. God, with the way everyone’s carrying on, you’d think I’m anorexic or something. I know I’m on the scrawny side, but seriously, this is getting ridiculous.
Satisfied, she takes a step back and surveys my room. Her frown deepens when her eyes land on the Reservoir Dogs film poster tacked up over my dresser. Jesus probably wouldn’t approve, so of course, by proxy, Aunt Helen doesn’t, either.
She tears her gaze away from the poster and looks at me again. “I know this is a difficult time,” she says. “It’s going to be an adjustment for all of us.”
An adjustment. Talk about your understatement. I put down the sandwich and take a drink of milk, waiting to see where she’s going with this.
“Your mother and I are worried about how you’re coping,” she continues. “She says you haven’t … been very emotional.”
It’s true. I can’t deny it. I haven’t cried at all, not once. Even when I try to summon tears, it’s like the well inside of me is bone-dry. There’s just … nothing.
I glance away and shrug. “Maybe my mom should be worried about how she’s coping. I’m not the one getting drunk off my ass, am I?”
“Don’t take that tone with me,” Aunt Helen snaps. “Your mother is doing her best. She only cares about you.” She sighs, the tension easing from her shoulders. “Listen, Harper. I realize how hard this is for you.”
A flash of anger heats