Chapter 49: Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Mallory

July 23

Well, today will be a first, I think. Dad is sponsoring a baseball game outing (which is going to last the entire day and well into the evening) and, for once, all the males in our household will be gone. Mom is going out as well, to visit our Aunt Bev and Uncle Tim who just had a new baby, so it's just going to be us girls in the house. We can have a real girls' day today.

"So, what do you ladies want to do?" Claire asked us.

I looked around at my sisters. It's kind of strange and funny how four people from the same parents can look so much alike and yet look so different from one another. At this point, my hair has darkened a little more into a darker auburn red (though it's still not dark enough to be considered a "sexy red," at least in my opinion), my freckles are more pronounced from the extra time I've spent outside this summer, babysitting the Newton kids, and I've slimmed down considerably from how I used to be in middle school. Vanessa's dark brown hair is a little lighter than it was when she was younger and patchier, too. Her face is longer than mine is, but she's still at least two inches shorter than I am. Margo dyed her hair behind our parents' back (a strawberry blonde that actually looks really nice on her) and is cut a lot shorter than any of the rest of ours. She grew like a weed, too, and is the tallest of the four of us, looking like a willowy, beautiful stranger compared to us short Pike women. Claire's hair ended up curling like mine, though the red that also wound up in her hair ended up being the enviable auburn. She still has her baby fat and looks more or less like she did when she was five, only taller.

"Girly things?" Margo suggested, which was met by a grimace from Vanessa.

It's also funny how four people from the same gene pool can be so very different in personality as well. Vanessa is the family dreamer, always shy and quiet. She's usually off on her own, writing poetry, daydreaming, or just resting. She's a sucker for animals, especially since Mom and Dad let her have her own kitten after the accident. Margo is our all around average girl, despite her looks. She gets good grades, joins up with school groups and clubs, and plays soccer. She has a boyfriend, who is over here once in a while and is pretty nice. Claire, to the farthest extreme, is the most outgoing of the Pike girls. She's in one of those junior cheerleader programs, takes gymnastics and jazz dance, and is, not unexpectedly, what I would consider a "popular girl." Of course, being the baby of the family hasn't helped Claire very much, especially since she's used to everyone helping her and being the cutest, sweetest, and most adored.

Still, as different as we all are, there's a kind of love that sticks us together so tight that we couldn't break it apart, no matter how hard we tried. Bratty cheerleader or brooding high schooler (me), family is one thing can't be torn apart. At least, not in the Pike world.

Now, moving on past the Lousia May Alcott lecturing…

"Why don't go into town?" I suggested. Margo shrugged.

"What are we going to do in town?" she asked.

"Well, we could walk there and have time to talk as we went. Then, we could go window shopping and get lunch in town." Claire smiled.

"I need to get some new jeans," she said. "Mom won't take me, though, because I have three good pairs and she says we can't afford to buy more pairs of jeans just for the heck of it."

"Well, we can't," Vanessa said, giving her an incredulous look. I smiled.

"You could bring your own money," I suggested gently and Claire sighed.

"Somehow, I knew you were going to say that." She shrugged her shoulder and rested her chin in her hands. "All right. I mean, I have to have a new pair of jeans, so I suppose I could use some of my spending money. I have been saving up for a long time."

"For what?" Margo asked. I felt surprised. Usually Claire and Margo knew one another inside out.

"Nothing in particular," Claire told her. "I guess, though, jeans."

"What do you guys think?" I asked. I already knew that Claire was in support of my 'going into town' idea, but I knew that Vanessa would be harder to convince. I supposed I could take back the walking idea, especially since it was hot outside and Vanessa had to protect her skin. I nodded at her. "We could always take the station wagon instead, if you don't want to walk."

"No, I think a walk into town would be nice, Mal," Vanessa said firmly. "I need to get out of the house and walk around. Besides, where would you park the car if we drove? It isn't like there's a parking lot for downtown Stoneybrook. I mean, blink and you miss it, right?"

Margo giggled. "Downtown Stoneybrook is kind of a joke."

"Come on," I told them, standing up to show them that I meant it when I suggested getting up and leaving. It wasn't so much that I wanted to do this and get it over with- it's just that when I have an idea planned, I want to follow through with it right away. It just tends to itch at the back of my brain until I do. "Does anyone need to get anything before we go?"

"My purse and money!" Claire said almost instantly and hopped off the couch. She hurried out of the room and I could hear her footsteps pounding upstairs. Vanessa shook her head as our baby sister ran off.

"I'd better get some sunscreen and my straw hat," she said.

I glanced at Margo who shook her head. "Not me. I've got a few bucks in my pocket and I don't burn."

I smiled. "Do you realize that when I used to baby sit for you guys, it would take sometimes up to half an hour to get ready to go any place?" Margo shook her head with a grin. "Honestly, we'd be just about to step out the door when someone would say they had to pee or would shout out something they had forgotten. Mom and Dad would go absolutely crazy whenever we went on big trips. One year, it took us over an hour just to leave the driveway because everyone kept running back inside to bring out something they forgot then we'd have to make run for it. Then, once that would be done, someone would have to go to the bathroom again or something." I shook my head. "It was crazy."

"You sound like you were our mother or something," Margo said with a smirk.

"Well, don't envy being the oldest of eight kids, Margo," I advised her. "It's like being a mom, only much worse. At least Mom had a Mother's Day. There's not annual poor, abused, oldest sister celebration day."

Margo gave me a hug and I laughed. "The way you tell things, Sad Sack Pike, there ought to be."

"We're ready!" Claire announced, thundering back into the room.

"Did we miss something?" Vanessa asked.

Margo pulled away. "Not too much. Poor Mallory just feels unappreciated."

"What, again?" Vanessa groaned. "Get over it, Mal."

"You people wonder why I need to see a shrink," I said, rolling my eyes. "Come on already. I can hear downtown shrinking as you people stand here and make fun of me."

"We would never make fun of you," Claire said sweetly, holding open the door for us. I stepped through first, with a big harrumph of disbelief. "At least, not to your face."

"Thanks!"

49

We came back home about three hours later, sweaty but happy. Claire found her new jeans in one of the little boutiques and ended up spending every last cent of her spending money (as well as bumming some money off of Margo and me). Vanessa bought an anthology of Edgar Allan Poe stories and poems. I purchased a stack of new notebooks, a fountain pen, and a few packs of mechanical pencils. Margo just looked around and settled for a strawberry ice cream cone.

The entire outing was a huge success. Not once did any of us fight, which is rather extraordinary, considering the fact that we get into fights with one another at home on a regular, hourly basis. Not big, life altering fights, but frequent, nitpicking fights that just served to annoy each other and get one another's skin. Not even Claire and Vanessa found fault with one another.

I was very pleased with myself, something that was starting to happen more and more often. Lately, ever since I resolved myself to stop worrying about every single little thing that happened to me and my loved ones and to just start taking life as it came and enjoying it as it came, I've been finding myself smiling more. Today, I laughed just as much as I had laughed before the Ramsey accident and it was amazing. In fact, not once did I even think of poor Jessi. My therapist, Anna, would tell me that's a good thing. I'm starting to move on.

It felt kind of cheap, moving on past the deaths of someone else's family, like I didn't really have the right to do so. When I thought about it, really sat down and thought about it, I sometimes felt downright slimy whenever I spent a day or more not thinking about the Ramseys. Logically, that's not right, I've been told. I need to move beyond that because it isn't healthy to dwell on their deaths forever, even if they were my own family. Nevertheless, logic doesn't usually mean anything to my emotions, which like to trample on logic's head and leave it dazed and dizzy in the corner of the room.

I went upstairs to the bedroom I shared with Vanessa. I saw her head downstairs into the basement once we got home, her newest purchase clutched tightly in her hands. I knew that she loved reading anything even remotely scary down in the basement, with all the creaks and moans, kind of like Dawn used to do when we were in middle school together. Of course, our house isn't haunted like we always were convinced Dawn's was, but reading horror stories in the darkened basement is still creepy.

I shook my head with amusement as I walked into our bedroom, shut the door behind me, and flung myself onto my bed. I had actually gotten around to making it today and it felt really nice to fall face first onto my smoothed out comforter. I sighed happily into it and closed my eyes. My legs were tired from walking for so long and I felt like I could lie that way forever.

Of course, after a few minutes, boredom set in and I wiggled up onto my bed, rubbing at my eyes. I looked around our room. I had no desire to read or write at the moment, nor did I really feel like leaving my room to hunt down any other kind of entertainment. I lifted my hips up and slid my cell phone out of my front pocket, figuring that I might as well catch up with some of my friends while I was feeling so deliciously tired in body, but active in mind.

The first thing I noticed was a missed call and a voicemail from Jessi. I deleted the missed call notice and opened the voicemail. Jessi's voice was in my ear, sounding more distressed than I had heard it in quite some time.

"Hey, Mal. Um, listen… I was just wondering whether or not you were busy right now. I guess you must be or else you would've answered the phone, right?" She let out a nervous bit of laughter before continuing. "Uh, do you think you could call me when you get this? I'm just… Mal, I'm really starting to freak out right now. I need you. Thanks."

The voicemail stopped and I hung up my phone slowly. I had no idea what she was so upset about and a whole string of reasons started racing through my mind. I had to clear my throat loudly to snap myself out of imaging all the worst case scenarios as to why my best friend could possibly be so upset.

Once I had a bit more control over my head, I checked the time she had called. About a half hour ago, when I had been walking home with my sisters. I hadn't realized the phone had been set on silent and made a mental note to make sure undo that default setting since school was now out.

I got to my feet. Since Jessi had called so recently, I figured that my safest bet would be not to call her back, but to just go straight to her. The caller ID on my phone said that she had called from home (well, her new home), so she was probably still there. If she wasn't, I could always check to see where she was once I got there.

Hang on, Jessi. I'm coming.

49

"God, Mal, I'm so embarrassed," Jessi said softly.

I glanced over at her. She was seated in the passenger seat of my station wagon, clutching a wet tissue in her hand and looking miserable. I nudged the box of tissues at her again and she took out a new one, but didn't use it right away. I sighed.

"Jessi, for the millionth time, don't be," I told her. "You're my best friend. We're supposed to be looking out for one another, aren't we? Isn't that the whole point of having a best friend in the first place?"

She nodded with a muffled sound hint of a laugh. "I guess. It's just… I'm sorry that I keep on dragging you into all of this stuff. You shouldn't have to keep on dealing with all of this."

"Stop it," I advised. "Really. If I didn't want to be doing this, I wouldn't be."

"All right," she sniffled and fixed her gaze out the window.

We drove in silence, which was all right to me. It gave me a little extra time to think. Poor Jessi was being overwhelmed with grief right now, for no apparent reason that she was letting on to me, and had been crying for most of the afternoon while I had been having fun with my sisters. I didn't feel ashamed, like I might have felt earlier, before I had resolved not to feel so guilty about things which were never my fault to begin with. Of course, not feeling ashamed didn't mean I didn't feel bad that she was so miserable right now. I could almost feel the hurt pouring off of her body and wanted nothing more than to hug her and make everything all right again.

Instead, I just kept on driving.

When we reached the cemetery, I parked the car and sat behind the wheel. I didn't say anything. I wanted to follow Jessi's lead. This wasn't my family and this wasn't my grief. It wasn't my call when to get out of the car and take that first step.

By first step, I really do mean first step. Jessi had been far too sick to come to her parents' and brother's funeral and hadn't come to their graves between now and then. This was the first time that she had seen the Stoneybrook cemetery, a place where some of Jessi's family had objected to having her parents and brother buried. I didn't really feel that it would be a good thing to push her too fast.

"Where… uh, where are they buried?" she asked quietly. I looked over at her. She was still staring out the window.

"Close," I told her. "The oldest graves are in the back, near the woods. Actually, some of them even date back to the 1700's. Which is kind of cool, when you think about it. Mom and I went here once and did gravestone rubbings which is where you put a thin piece of paper over the stone and rub charcoal on the paper to get a copy of exactly what the stone looks like. My history teacher gave me an A on my history project and said that I really…" I trailed off. Jessi was staring at me. "Sorry."

"It's all right," she murmured. "Can we just… go? I don't think I can sit in here any longer. I feel like I'm going to burst."

I knew the feeling and nodded. We got out of the car and I made sure to lock it as Jessi headed towards the graves before I did. I followed carefully behind her, knowing that I could point out her family for her if she didn't find them herself. I knew she would be able to since they were in the front, but maybe grief does funny things to our senses.

After a couple of minutes, Jessi stopped dead in front of pair of gravestones that had been seared into my mind the previous autumn. I licked my lips cautiously and stopped about ten feet away from her, wanting to give her all the space she needed.

"Daddy," she whispered. "Mama. Squirt." She looked over at me. "None of those names are on the tombstones."

"No," I confirmed quietly. "They wouldn't be."

"That's who they were," she argued. "'Beloved Father,' 'Beloved Mother,' 'Beloved Brother?' Those sound so formal and stuffy. They don't sound like my family." Her voice sounded strained.

"I'm sorry."

"This is all that's left of them now," she said and suddenly sunk down to her knees. I took a step forward. She stared at her parents' marker for a long minute before slamming her palm hard against it. "This is supposed to be my mother and father now?"

She burst into tears and sagged against the stone. I hurried to her side and sunk down onto the ground next to her. Jessi turned to me before I had the chance to decide whether or not to reach out to her and buried her head against my chest. I cradled her head with my hands.

"That's not my family!" she sobbed loudly. "It's not!"

"You're right," I soothed. "It's only a rock."

"But, they're dead right underneath us, Mallory!" I swallowed. "This just says where they are. Oh, God, I don't even make any sense, do I?"

"That's all right."

"It's not all right," she moaned and tried to pull away from me. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders tightly, not knowing why letting her go was a bad idea, but just feeling that it was. She struggled against me, knocking me onto my bottom and spilling her fully into my lap. After a minute or so, she stopped struggling and just sobbed wildly against my chest. "I hate you!"

I closed my eyes. It was the only thing left I could do. There wasn't anything I could say to her to help her feel better right now. I couldn't possibly understand the pain she was in right now, so I couldn't possibly understand how she could cycle between loving me and hating me so fast. I started to rock back and forth.

"Why did this happen to me?" Jessi demanded through her tears.

"Not to you," I told her. "It just happened."

"It's God. He hates me. He wants me to suffer."

I felt my own tears give way and splash down my cheeks. I shook my head. "No, Jessi. Why would God want to make you suffer? What good would that do for anyone?"

"Maybe it's just some cosmic game," she moaned. She started crying harder again and didn't speak for another few minutes. "Have you read the Bible, Mallory?"

"Not much of it," I confessed. Mom and Dad hadn't really taken us to church. Grandpa Pike insisted that we attend Catholic mass at Christmas and we sometimes went to the church Mom grew up in on Easter, but otherwise, we weren't really churchgoers.

"There's a book in the Bible called Job," Jessi told me. I felt her push against me and this time allowed her sit up. She wiped her eyes. "God agrees to place a bet with the devil that no matter how much suffering Job endured, he would remain faithful to his God." She tapped her chest. "Maybe I'm Job?"

"Do you really think so?" I asked her gently. "Do you really think that God is playing a game with you, trying to see how much pain you handle? Do you really believe that?"

"I don't know what I believe anymore." She began to cry again, hard like before, and I took her in my arms once more. "Everything I thought I believed in fell through when that truck hit our car. My family, my health, my life. I don't know that I can believe in a God who loves me anymore when I've been through so much and seen so much pain."

"Nobody's asking you to do anything right now," I said quietly. I rubbed small circles on her back as I resumed my rocking. "Really, Jessi."

She nodded and the more I rocked, the more her sobbing subsided. I closed my eyes again and began to think back to the things which helped me calm down my little brothers and sisters whenever they were sad or sick and crying. I cleared my throat and began to sing.

"Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high, there's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby," I sang to her in my slightly off-key, slightly tone deaf voice. I heard Jessi give a small snort of laughter and felt myself swell happily as she snuggled closer against me. "Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true."

We continued that way for a long time. I don't know how many times I kept repeating the parts of the song that I could remember and I don't know how many times Jessi would be nearly silent then start to whimper again. I just know that it was dark before she finally pulled herself away from me, looking completely drained and exhausted.

"Thank you," she whispered. I leaned forward and hugged her.

"I love you, Jessi," I whispered into her ear. "Anytime you need me, I'll be there for you."

"I know." I helped her stand up and we started to head back to the car. I led the way and was startled almost to shrieking when a pair of arms suddenly wrapped around me from behind and squeezed tightly. "I love you, too."

I smiled. I was done now. It was finally over.