Learning Seventeen Page 6

  “Jane,” she begins, “I don’t know how to tell you this. I’m sorry to tell you…”

  “Sorry? What do you mean? Is Hannah okay?”

  Mrs. Henriks shakes her head. “She’s gone. My Hannah is gone.”

  “Gone? What do you mean, gone?” I look past her into the house, but all I can see is a huge open staircase lined with immaculate white carpet. Hannah told me about this staircase. She said her room was at the very top of it. I have to find her.

  With my heart in my throat, I lunge through the doorway. Mrs. Henriks gasps. I run toward the stairs.

  “Jane, wait!” Mrs. Henriks calls from behind me, her voice strangled.

  No, I can’t wait. I have to find Hannah. I race up the stairs to the white door at the top of the landing. It’s ajar. I push it open and step inside. I’m in Hannah’s room, a place I’ve daydreamed about based on her descriptions. There’s her four-poster bed, her writing desk, her wardrobe. But I don’t see any of her posters, her books, her clothes. I don’t see her. The room is filled with boxes. On the bedspread is a printed program. It has a photo of Hannah on it. I pick it up and then immediately drop it. It’s a funeral program.

  “No, no, no…” I hear my voice but can’t feel it coming out of me. My chest tightens, and I can’t breathe.

  Dad comes up behind me. He stands close and places a hand on my shoulder. I jump from the shock of it.

  “Jane, honey. Come now, baby. We should leave. Come home with me now.” He leads me by the hand back down the long white staircase. Mrs. Henriks weeps silently as we pass.

  “I’m so sorry,” Dad whispers as we step through the doorway.

  “Dad?” I ask, dazed. “Dad, what is happening?”

  “Jane,” he says, “try to breathe.”

  “We were going to get an apartment. We were going to buy all our stuff from thrift stores and eat noodles every night.”

  “I’m sorry, honey. I’m so sorry.”

  I collapse in his arms, and he carries me to the car.

  For the first time since I was a little girl, I let go and cry hard. Not just a few tears, but huge, racking sobs. How can there be a world without Hannah?

  When we get home, Dad calls Jake to see if he can get some answers. He talks for a long time in hushed tones. Eventually Dad sits down on the couch next to me and hands me the phone. I am so shredded, I don’t know if I have the energy to speak.

  “Jane,” Jake says through the receiver. “I’m so sorry. We only just found out ourselves. Hannah’s mother wanted to keep this private. I was going to call you today to see if we could meet. I didn’t want to tell you over the phone.”

  “What happened?” I ask. “Did she—”

  “She died by suicide, Jane.”

  I let the words sink in.

  “Why?” I whisper, even though I know Jake won’t be able to give me an answer.

  “She was very ill, Jane. And she was in a lot of pain. Hannah had bipolar disorder, a very severe form, and when she was in a depression, it was very dangerous for her. There wasn’t anything you could have done.”

  “But…but she said she loved me.” I am crying again, the pain ripping through me.

  “I know,” says Jake. “And she did. She did love you. But she was hurting, Jane, and this had nothing to do with you.”

  Jake asks to speak to Dad again, and when Dad hangs up he looks really worried.

  “What did he say?” I ask.

  Dad hesitates. “He said to watch you closely…so that you don’t…”

  “You’re afraid I’ll do it too,” I say, the realization dawning on me.

  Dad just stares at me, like he’s afraid to say it out loud.

  “Dad,” I say. “No matter what, I will never do that to you. Okay? You need to believe me. I know I scared you before. And I was careless, confused. But I couldn’t do that. Not to you, not to me. I want…I want to live. Oh, Dad, why is this happening?”

  Dad puts his arms around me. “I don’t know. I wish I did. All I know is that I’m scared, Janey. I almost lost you once. I won’t again. I’m going to stay with you right now. Every minute. Until we both feel a little less scared.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  Dad pulls a blanket up over both of us, and we spend the rest of the night on the couch, watching mindless TV. Eventually, with no tears left, I fall into a dark, dreamless sleep.

  Chapter Sixteen

  One day while I’m at the laundromat, washing our stinky clothes, two envelopes pop through the mail slot at our apartment. Dad collects them both and places them on the counter for me. They’re the first thing I see when I walk through the door. Them and Dad pacing back and forth.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Hi. What are those, Dad?”

  “Uh, you got mail. One letter is from Beacon College, and the other is from… from Hannah.”

  “What?” I race forward and scoop them up.

  I scan the envelope with Hannah’s return address and see that the letter has been redirected several times.

  “I guess because we moved,” Dad says by way of explanation, but I am way ahead of him.

  I race to the bathroom and lock the door.

  I tear open the envelopes. The letter from Hannah doesn’t say much. It’s a series of weird doodles and the words love and sorry all over the place, but there’s no goodbye and no explanation. If anything, it’s evidence that she was really lost. I brush a tear away and smell the paper, hoping for a hint of her green-apple perfume. It just smells like paper.

  Dad knocks on the door. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I manage. “I’m okay.”

  I can hear him shuffling outside, and I decide to put him out of his misery. “I’m opening the letter from Beacon now, Dad.”

  I open the precisely folded official stationery and see the words:

  Dear Miss Jane Learning,

  We are pleased to inform you…

  I scream and run out of the bathroom, nearly knocking Dad over in the process.

  “I got in,” I say. “I’m going to college!”

  Dad grabs me in a bear hug, and we dance around for a while.

  Once we calm down, he looks at me and asks, “Hannah?”

  I shake my head. “No answers there, Dad. There never will be. I think from now on I’m just going to try to remember the good things.”

  “That sounds like a smart idea,” he says.

  “I know another smart idea,” I offer.

  “What’s that?”

  “Take me out for dinner to celebrate? I’m thinking pizza and ice cream.”

  “You’re on, college girl.”

  We laugh as we make our way out the door, but it’s bittersweet. I have a feeling that a lot of things in my life are going to be like that, and not just because of Hannah.

  I’ll go to college, and maybe I’ll be a writer. Maybe I’ll fall in love with another girl the way I did with Hannah, and maybe I won’t. There will be good things. And there will be hard times too. I’m starting to understand that that’s okay.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sometimes when I’m sitting in my creative writing classes and I feel a bit lonely, I imagine Hannah sitting with me and making me laugh. I like reading the stuff the other students write, and every day that goes by brings me closer and closer to a real future as a writer. It makes me sad, too, to think that Hannah won’t get to live in that future.

  Then I remember her telling me everything will be okay. Sometimes I believe it, but faith is slippery. It’s like sand falling through my fingers. Or those bubbles that floated over the world. I have to remind myself of the truth every day. When I need to know what’s real, I just open my journal and visit with the Hannah I hold in my heart. I concentrate on the details of her face, her dark eyes, her wild red hair, the energy that lived in her. Every night I sit down to read the story of how one red-haired girl changed my life—a life I wasn’t really living until she walked in.

  I take a breath and c
lose my eyes. I know I will be okay. And you will too.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It is important to note that I am able to write books because I benefit from the love and support of my husband, Robert, and our children. Everything flows from that.

  Thank you to Andrew Wooldridge for giving this story a shot, and to Tanya Trafford, my editor (and “dream-fulfiller”), for making it better.

  I’d like to express my gratitude to the team at Orca Book Publishers for their hard work and dedication to publishing diverse books for teens.

  This story is for my friends, the misfits, my kindred spirits and my chosen family. You keep me going.

  Brooke Carter is a Canadian novelist and poet. She was born and raised in beautiful British Columbia, where she earned an MFA in Creative Writing (UBC). She is also the author of the Orca Soundings title Another Miserable Love Song and the forthcoming Lucky Break from Orca Sports. For more information, visit www.BrookeCarter.com.

  Chapter One

  One good thing about watching a matinee alone on a Thursday afternoon is there’s no one around to see you bawl your eyes out. The Outsiders always got me—especially the part where Patrick Swayze’s character lets down his guard and shows some love for Ponyboy—but this time I was a mess. Maybe it was because it was my eighteenth birthday (which should have been a bonus, seeing as I waited an eternity to say goodbye to seventeen). Or maybe it was because my dad had promised to be there and wasn’t. Death has a funny way of preventing you from keeping your promises. Dad used to say, Kallie, not even death could keep me from our Swayze-fest. I guess that’s another thing death does. It makes liars of us all.

  The Outsiders being my all-time favorite book-slash-movie, every year on my birthday my dad and I would visit the run-down Dolphin Cinema on Hastings Street for the dollar-matinee showing. Until this year, when he decided to die.

  Scratch that—I shouldn’t have said that. Jeremiah Echo would never have chosen to die, and certainly not before we got to see our favorite greaser gang come of age one last time. If he’d known he’d die before seeing Ponyboy bleach his hair or Two-Bit start the day with chocolate cake and beer, well, I’m sure Dad would have arranged a final viewing, no horrible death puns intended. Pancreatic cancer is one swift downer. By the time Dad found out that the dull pain in his side was a super deadly tumor, it was too late. He was gone two weeks later, and I began spending a lot of time in dark movie houses.

  Dad had been my best friend. Hanging out with him had been like being with an older, cooler version of myself. It’s a little cheesy to say that about your own dad, I know, but Echo Senior was special like that. And seeing as my mom was a deadbeat or maybe not of this earth anymore, and my extended family consisted entirely of distant cousins back in Greece, well, I was on my own.

  It was going to be a long walk in the blazing early-July sunlight, and as usual I was ill equipped in the fashion department. I was not meant for a hot climate—not that Vancouver was particularly tropical or anything, but it was muggy as hell in the summer, and I didn’t do shorts. Or sundresses. I had some curvy thighs, and I did not want them rubbing together and getting all sweaty or sticking to a janky old bus seat.

  I stood in the sunshine and tried to will myself to enjoy the heat, to be one of those gross people who feels energized by the sun instead of cooked by it, but it wasn’t happening.

  I took out my dad’s ancient iPod and started walking. On the playlist? The sad-sad-birthday-after-your-dad-dies-and-you-are-suddenly-homeless playlist? A downbeat mix of Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana (because my dad loved them the most), Portishead and a little Chopin thrown in for the died-way-too-young factor.

  I walked down the side street at a good clip, wanting to get to the main road and the bus stop as soon as possible. It wasn’t the worst place in the city to be, but it definitely wasn’t the best. When I spotted the old blue van trailing me, suddenly I wished I was one of those kids whose parents had bought them a cell phone. If you don’t have a cell phone, you might as well be marooned on a desert island or stranded on the moon. When you’re a teen girl alone with a suspicious vehicle following you, being stuck on the moon sounds like a really good option.

  The van sped up until it was right alongside me. My heart skipped a beat, and I could feel my pulse bubbling in my throat. I did not want to look, because I felt like if I did, I would be making something happen.

  “Hey, hot stuff,” a voice said, and I was just about to break into a run when the voice said, “Hey, Kallie, like my new ride? Kallie? Didn’t you see me waiting for you?”

  I stopped and turned, and relief flooded my body like a warm flush. It was Jamie, my friend, and right then absolutely my most favorite person on the planet. She stopped the van.

  “Jamie, Jesus!” I said. I walked over to her.

  “Well, okay then,” she said, leaning her long arm out the window and tipping her imaginary cap at me. “I’ll be your lord and savior if you like, little missy.”

  I rolled my eyes. “What are you doing here? And where did you get this…thing?”

  I took a look at the beast Jamie was driving. It was absolutely enormous—calling it a beast was an understatement. It was long, blue, wide, rusted and vibrating with an intense rumble that made it seem like it was going to fall apart at any second, explode or take off into the stratosphere. Maybe all three.

  “This, sweet lady,” Jamie said with pride, “is your ride home. And my new tour van. So I wouldn’t go insulting it too much. Old Blue here has a sensitive disposition. And”—she lowered her voice—“I’m worried it might quit on me if it hears you.”

  “Dude,” I said. “This thing is not Christine, right? It’s not going to hunt us down and kill us, is it?”

  Jamie smiled—the same amazing, wide smile that had charmed me into being friends with her a few years back. The first time I met Jamie was when she came to my door looking for donations for the junior football team. I knew who she was because I had heard about this girl who went through hell just to get on the football team, and then there she was at my door, looking for cash. She had come to the wrong place. I guess the guys on the team had given her the crappy ’hood to canvass while they took Plum Hill and Tower Heights. Coming to Northside was not a good strategy.

  I opened the door and there she was, giving me a world-class smile. It was a true-blue, weak-knee genuine dazzler. It wasn’t fake or put on or practiced. It was sincere, the kind of smile you can feel in your chest. The kind that makes you grin back in a stupor. It was a wide smile too, full of teeth, and her eyes were all crinkled up. It felt like that smile was meant just for me. It felt like that smile was saying I was beautiful, that she was happy to see me, that she liked me, really liked me a lot. Jamie’s smile was the warmest I had ever felt, and it came on a day when I was not feeling so good about myself. That smile was a surprise for a girl who never got surprised, and I have loved Jamie for that ever since.

  And, in true Jamie style, she had shown up again just when I needed her. This time in her big blue boat of a van.

  “Hey,” I said. “Were you waiting for me the whole time?”

  She shrugged. “Nah. I mean, I figured you’d need a ride after your yearly movie, right? Anyway, can’t let you walk home alone around here. And I wanted to show off my new wheels.”

  “Cool. You could have come to the movie too,” I said, but as soon as I had, I knew it wasn’t really true.

  Jamie, to her credit, just nodded. “It’s all good,” she said. “You going to get in or what?”

  I looked at the van. “I don’t know. Maybe I should take my chances on the street.”

  Jamie revved the engine. “Be careful what you wish for, Kallie.” She smiled that infectious smile again, and I felt it lift me up inside.

  “Thanks,” I said and walked around the front of the van. I opened the passenger door, and the weight of it swinging open nearly knocked me over.

  “Jesus,” I muttered, hopping in and buckling the ancien
t seat belt.

  “That’s me,” said Jamie. “Your own personal Jesus.”

  She pressed on the gas and we lurched forward, tires squealing, and sped off.

  On the ride back to my neighborhood, Jamie kept quiet and turned on the radio. She tuned it to a classic-rock station, and the sounds of the music my dad loved so much filled the van as we drove. The windows were rolled down, and the wind stirred up my hair and cooled me off. I relaxed into the cracked leather seat and let my hand float on the breeze. Jamie didn’t say a word the whole time, and she gave no indication that she saw me crying. That’s just something you don’t find in a person all that often. That was my Jamie. One of a kind.

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