Sweet Sixteen, Chapter 16 ~ Too Easy
“I’m sorry, Elly, but I can’t let you in. I’ve been given strict orders not to let any of you in.”
Elly stood at the door to her uncle’s house, staring Eponine down. “Will you please tell my Uncle that I’m here?”
“But—”
“You don’t have to let me in, just go get him. Okay?”
“He really doesn’t want to be bothered—”
“Well I don’t care, I’m family, I don’t like being turned away by the maid,” Elly said harshly. She felt a little bad — she liked Eponine mostly, and didn’t want to be mean to her, but she wanted her way more. She was going to get it.
Eponine dithered a little, then shut the door. Elly heard her lock it. She decided to give it five minutes, maybe ten, before she rang the doorbell again.
She didn’t have to wait that long. After a few moments, Jake opened the door again. “What’s up?” he asked, leaning against the doorframe in just such a way to block the whole doorway.
“I wanted to see my grandfather.”
Jake cast his eyes to the sky, and she knew she was in for an argument. “Yeah . . . you can’t. Sorry, Elly, but it’s not my call. Your dad doesn’t want you over here.”
“I’m not Hollie,” Elly protested. “I’m sixteen, I think I’m old enough to make my own decisions about who I can meet.”
He looked down at her and shook his head. “I’m not your dad, kid, you need to tell him that. Right now, I’m not letting any of you guys in until he says you can.”
“So what, you take orders from my dad? That’s so lame.”
“I’m not getting involved in how he raises his kids, and that includes you, so yeah, just go away now.” He made a move to shut the door.
“Uncle Jake!” She stopped just short of stomping her foot. “Please! I just want to see my grandfather once before he dies. Is that so awful?”
He sighed. “You’re preaching to the choir, Elly, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not the one you should be talking to. So, why don’t you go try to convince your dad?”
Elly looked at the ground. She didn’t want to do that. It would cause way too many problems at home, and she knew her father would look on any request to see his father as a betrayal. “I . . . I just don’t want him to know about it, because he’ll think I’m choosing sides,” she said. “And I’m not; I just don’t want to regret never even having met my own grandfather.” She looked back up, making her eyes big and round and pleading.
It didn’t work. Jake shut the door in her face.
Elly frowned.
She guessed all this drama with Russ and their father had put Uncle Jake in a bad mood.
Fine, then. She’d just have to do it the hard way. Elly went invisible and walked round to the side of the house. The front yard was open to the street, but the back and side were closed in by a tall brick wall. Luckly, one of the trees in the front yard grew close enough to the wall that she thought if she climbed it she might be able to jump onto the top of the wall without too much trouble. Elly kicked off her sandals at the base of the tree and grabbed a branch, swinging and scrabbling her way up.
She climbed out about halfway down the branch that extended closest to the wall, then leapt. She landed on the wall with an “oof” and almost slipped off. It took a moment to gain her balance, and a few moments more to let the burst of pain that came from hitting the stone with bare feet and palms, subside into a dull throb. But she only rested those few moments before she crept along the top of the wall to the roof.
She walked as softly as she could, whispering “hush” to the roof, willing her footsteps to be unheard. She didn’t know if it would work, but she didn’t dwell on it too long. She went to the window which she knew led to Adrian’s room, since she didn’t know where her grandfather was, and Ade’s room was likely to be empty at this time of day.
She was, herself, skipping school to be here.
She found that Ade’s window was open, and she was glad of it — all she had to make disappear was his screen. She knew it would confuse everyone, but not as much as if she had to make the actual glass windowpane no more. They’d probably think Ade had taken the screen for one of his art projects, and only Ade would be permanently confounded by the disappearance.
She put her hand on the metal weave of the screen. She wasn’t sure if touching something was necessary, but she knew she’d touched the nesting dolls and the vodka bottle when she’d made them disappear, so it couldn’t hurt.
With a moments’ thought, she felt nothing but air on her palm. The screen was out of the way, and it was almost too easy. She smiled.
Once inside Ade’s room, Elly shut the window behind her. Then she crept out into the hallway and went looking for her grandfather.
She found him in a bedroom down the hall. Elly stood by the bedside and looked at the elderly man sleeping there. At first she thought how odd it was that he should be asleep in the middle of the day, but then reminded herself, You would be too, if you were dying.
She didn’t try to wake him, just pulled a chair over and sat down, crossing her legs Indian style and resting her chin in her hands. She watched the steady rise and fall of the blanket as he breathed underneath. She wondered if cancer was something she could make disappear. She couldn’t do anything about the years of estrangement and bitterness, she knew. At least, not with a thought and a wish. But it would be nice if there were some problems she could make go away that easily.
Maybe if Grandpa had some more years to live, they’d be able to work things out. There was nothing that couldn’t be worked out, was there? Fathers and sons had reconciled before, it could be done. She didn’t much care about what had happened to create the rift, she just knew it was making her father miserable. It was going to make Hollie miserable, to not be allowed to go over by Ade or Grandpa. She knew Marc and Eric would abide by their father’s wishes while secretly wanting to meet their grandfather, because like her they were old enough to decide who they could and could not meet. But they wouldn’t act on what they wanted, they were too loyal.
Her father had deserted her once. Elly remembered. It had only been for a week, but what a terrible week it had been. He had come back, of course. She had forgiven him — there’d never been any question that she would. She thought that even if he’d been gone for years, she would have forgiven him. She decided to forgive her grandfather for hurting her father, all those years ago, just because it was easier that way. She didn’t have to think about things anymore if she decided that it didn’t matter who deserved to be forgiven, if she decreed that there was no answer to the question of whose transgressions were irredeemable and who could be allowed to be loved again.
All she had to think about was how she could help fix things.
She’d fixed her mother, after all. She’d made the Lost One leave her alone, stop tormenting her with guilt, and things had been better after that. Things had been better between her parents for the ten years since that time, and Elly gave herself the credit. She’d removed the ghost from her mother’s life and even though the Lost One haunted her now instead, she could take it.
She’d fixed things then, she’d fix them now. This was more important than Sien and his fantasy world — she didn’t care about Airidan, and if he didn’t care about her she wouldn’t care about him. This was her life. This was her family. They needed her.
She had to help her grandfather live, first. She needed more time. Her father had been stewing over things for thirty years, he might not come around in only a few months. And even if he did, soon her granpda would be dead . . . no one would have time to enjoy the reconciliation.
Elly stood up again, and leaned over the bed. She knew the cancer was there, on the inside, but she wasn’t sure she could do anything about it if she couldn’t see it. She tried to look at him differently, not just look on the outside, but to see through the layers to the bone and organs under the skin. Under the skin, where the cancer grew.
She didn’t even know what kind of cancer her grandfather had. So she just focused her mind on that nebulous concept, the idea of something foreign growing inside, and willed it away. Willed it to disappear. Whatever was inside that was not flesh and bone, shouldn’t be there. She reached out to touch him, and told it to leave. She looked at him and thought, Go away. Disappear. Be no more.
Elly sighed and stepped back from the bed. She had no idea if what she’d just tried had worked. She watched his still form for a moment, wishing he’d just wake up, sit up, and say, “Zounds, I feel so much better!” Then she’d know.
But he didn’t wake up. He didn’t stir.
I took her a few moments to realize that he wasn’t even breathing. Not anymore.
Elly felt panic rising. She leaned over and put her ear to his chest, hoping he was just breathing faintly and it didn’t mean what she thought it meant. . . . It couldn’t. He’d been alive and breathing when she came in, when she sat by watching him and thinking over things. Now there was nothing. No rising, no falling, just complete stillness.
Hands shaking, she tried to take a pulse. She felt nothing. No beating. No blood flowing. His skin was still warm, but there was no life left in it.
“Hello? Mr . . . um . . . Grandpa? Wake up,” she said, giving him a shake. “Wake up, please.” Maybe she was wrong, maybe she was just panicking, maybe he was breathing and she couldn’t see it, maybe his heart was beating and she just couldn’t feel it.
But he didn’t wake up.
Elly backed away from the bed until she hit the opposite wall, then slid down to sit on the floor.
I’ve killed him.
I’ve just killed my grandfather.
He’s dead.
I’ve killed him.
She didn’t think anything else for the longest time. She couldn’t.
She didn’t know what she’d done, how it had gone so wrong, how he’d just quietly died when she was trying to remove the thing that was killing him.
But there was no other answer for it. She had done it. He’d been alive when she stooped over him and he had died under the force of her thoughts, her will, willing away what she should never have touched.
Elly got up eventually. She pulled herself to her feet and felt, suddenly, that she just had to leave. That was all.
She left the room in a daze.
She’d felt nothing, no spark of anything to tell her she’d been playing with fire, going where she shouldn’t go, tampering with matters too dangerous. It was unreal. It was too quiet, too clean, too uneventful for death. Too easy.
She’d known she might fail to heal him. But she hadn’t thought . . . she hadn’t known. . . . She should have stopped and thought about it. Thought it through. Thought about what might happen.
She should have thought . . . .
Elly walked through the house. She walked past Eponine, who was humming lightly to herself as she dusted. She heard the faint noise of a TV somewhere in another room, and knew Uncle Jake was watching it. Watching TV, and never guessing that his father had just died.
She went out the front door and stood in the sun.
Where should I go? What should I do?
In the end, she went to the only place she could. Home. She walked barefoot all the way home, alone in her invisible shell. She went up to her bedroom and curled up on her bed, still hiding. She knew there was no way she could fix what she’d done. No way at all.
next: Sweet Sixteen, Chapter 17 »
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- Published:
- 7.16.08 / 1am
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