The Someday Suitcase Read online

  “Danny’s not getting better. He keeps getting worse.”

  Dad leans forward and grabs my foot in his hand. He squeezes. It crushes my toes a little, but it’s what Dad does when he wants to say he’s sorry and things will get better.

  “It will be okay?” I ask in a little voice I’ve been hiding from everyone. “Danny will be okay?”

  Dad is the only person I believe more than I believe science. If he says Danny will be okay, I’ll be able to relax a little. I could add Dad’s opinion to my list of notes and use it as a little piece of evidence.

  I think, I hope that Dad’s about to tell me that of course it will be okay and that I’m his brave, smart girl and that most things that seem scary actually aren’t, but he gets distracted. Jake has jumped out of the water and is cannonballing back in. The few people sitting by the edge of the pool shiver and grumble in response, but Jake doesn’t notice.

  “Careful, Jake!” Dad says.

  “Jake doesn’t really like that word anymore,” I say. Jake’s a little like Danny, in that I know what he likes and doesn’t like better than anyone else. There’s a catalog of facts in my brain about them both. Danny’s is fuller, Jake’s is messier. It’s hard to keep track, and I know Dad feels bad when he doesn’t get it right, so I try to say it gently.

  “What does he like?” Dad says, scratching behind his ear again.

  I want to say a billion things, but we only have this one day with Dad, so I have to be choosy.

  If Dad were a doctor or an accountant or a mailman, he’d live at home all the time and I’d get a million moments to tell him everything. But Dad leaves on another trip on Tuesday, and I guess he’ll have pockets filled with memories, but I still won’t have gotten my fill of him.

  Jake screeches.

  “He likes me to go in the pool with him to help him calm down. He gets upset when he’s in there alone,” I say. Dad nods, and I guess that means I should go take care of Jake now. He squeals an awful pig noise and makes his limbs drumsticks, beating at a rapid pace in some heavy metal band. I sink into the pool and move very slowly toward him. Other swimmers have waded away, so he has a corner of the pool all to himself and all eyes are on him. A group of girls look so angry I’m worried they’ll yell at him, and that will only make it worse. I take hold of his wrists, and he bites my shoulder.

  “Jake!” I yell. It doesn’t hurt, but I’m shocked.

  “Clover!” Dad calls out.

  “EEEEEE!” Jake screams.

  We are that family.

  I wish all the annoyed people at the pool could come to our house and see our cookouts with Danny’s family and the way Jake runs when we’re playing tag, all loose limbs and big smiles, making circles around the tree we all share. I wish they could see ketchup on Dad’s face and Mom’s paisley apron and Danny’s messy hair that somehow always gets mustard in it even though his mouth is pretty far from his forehead. I wish they could see us being a fun family under a big umbrella when the daily Florida rain comes down and the time capsule hidden in the backyard and our hiding place behind the rock.

  Dad steps into the pool too, but it won’t matter; it’s me who Jake needs when he’s like this.

  “Let’s play the stay-still game,” I tell Jake. “The statue game. Let’s be statues in the water! Do you think you’ll win?”

  The statue game is different with Jake than it is with Danny. With Jake, the statue game is about calming down, stilling the world, finding some quiet in all the chaos. With Danny it’s about shocking ourselves and dancing when we match shapes for the hundredth time and falling into the grass afterward, laughing. With Danny it’s about being the chaos.

  “I always win,” Jake says. He sticks his tongue out in concentration and puts his arms above his head and stays so still it’s as if his arms have forgotten the panic they just caused in the water. Jake can be one thing and then another. He moves quickly and slows down with the same amount of focus. I guess my brother is confusing to some people, but not to me. I understand that he doesn’t always know why he’s upset and that he gets scared at the not knowing.

  I get scared at the not knowing too. Jake and I are the same that way. We both feel best when we know as much as possible. That’s why I looked in the microscope and tried to make sense of what I saw, and that’s why Jake wants to hear the rules of the statue game again, even though they never change.

  “We both have to stay perfectly still. We are allowed to breathe and blink and that’s it,” I say. “Dad will tell us who moves first. Okay? Go.”

  The girls with the angry faces and arms relax, and Dad mouths I’m proud of you at me. That’s probably the end of our Dad-and-Clover talk, and it will have to be enough to get me through another few Dad-less weeks.

  I move my hands above my head and spread my fingers wide. Jake arches his back and puts his hands on his hips and sticks out his tongue.

  We stay as still as we can for as long as we can.

  On the drive home, Dad tells me there are gifts for us in his duffel bag, which is at my feet. He always brings something small back for me and Jake. Dad’s truck brings oranges from Florida to Boston, seafood from Boston to San Francisco, and apples from San Francisco back to Florida. He finds little presents for us in different states along the way. This time he’s brought Jake a Boston Red Sox hat. Jake started collecting hats. He likes to know the whole history behind each logo.

  “I have something special for you, Clover,” Dad says. He hands me a snow globe. I have been collecting snow globes for years, and this one is especially beautiful. “That’s the Public Garden, in Boston,” he says. I shake it up and watch the snow whirl in the globe before covering the garden’s grass.

  I imagine for the millionth time what it must be like, to watch your world get covered up in white wonder. I imagine me and Danny in the garden, sticking our tongues out to catch stray flakes, shivering in the cold, instead of sweating in the heat.

  “It’s beautiful,” I say. Dad nods and hands me another identical one.

  “Thought I’d get one for Danny too,” he says. Danny doesn’t collect snow globes, but he loves the idea of snow even more than me, if that’s possible.

  And maybe I didn’t get enough time to tell Dad every single thing about Danny and all my feelings, but somehow he seems to know anyway. I hold one snow globe in each hand, shaking them up for the whole ride home.

  Maybe getting lost in the magic of snow globes can’t cure Danny, but it fixes something in me.

  I don’t get to give Danny the snow globe right away because by the time we get home, he’s in the hospital.

  10

  On Monday, Elsa brings me a plastic ring with a huge purple bauble and a sparkly band. It’s almost like she knew about Danny’s hospital stay and how sad I’ve been since he went in on Saturday.

  “It reminded me of you,” she says, taking my finger and squeezing the ring on.

  It’s self-portrait day in art class. “Now that we’ve worked on interpreting someone else, it’s time to express our inner selves,” Ms. Fitch says. There are no outlines for the self-portraits, just big blank pieces of paper. “Get creative. Maybe you see yourself as an animal or with rearranged features or entirely neon pink. Whatever feels right to you is right.”

  Elsa scoots next to me and I worry that Levi will be jealous, but he’s fine, sorting colored pencils in front of him. It’s a good choice. Levi was made to be drawn in colored pencils. Elsa’s outline of him from last week is colored in with blue stripes and he looks like a ship captain and not a sixth-grade boy. I can’t wait to see the difference between how she sees him and how he sees himself.

  I love this project, even though it hurts that I don’t have Danny to do it with.

  I hold my hand up and out so I can stare at the ring. “This reminded you of me?” I ask. I like the idea of a ridiculous glittering purple ring making Elsa think of me. I’ve always thought I’m boring and shy and too serious, but I guess Elsa sees special things in peop
le—sea-captain-ness and purple sparkly insides.

  “Danny’s the fun one,” I say, and Elsa looks confused.

  “I wasn’t talking about Danny,” she says.

  “No, I know, but with me and Danny—we fit together. We’re like one person. He’s fun and I’m responsible. He’s bright colors and I’m plain colors and that’s really okay. I’m not a sparkly ring.”

  “I know you’re not a sparkly ring. But you can wear a sparkly ring.” Elsa smiles, and her smile makes me smile.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get ice cream last week,” I say. After Danny went to the nurse, I walked around like a ghost of myself and totally ignored Elsa when she asked if I was going to come with her and Levi.

  “That’s okay!” she says. “You’ll come next time, right? It’s fun. We try to eat the whole cone before any of it melts. I usually win.”

  I usually get ice cream in a cup, but I don’t tell her that because I’m worried she’ll disinvite me and it sounds really fun. Elsa is really fun, I’m realizing. I’ve known her for my whole life. I’ve known everyone at my school my whole life, basically. She has a sweet voice and chubby cheeks and is really good in art class. I don’t know why she’s suddenly wanting to be my friend, but it feels good.

  “Next time. Definitely,” I say, and I silently hope that there’s a next time really, really soon.

  Everyone likes Elsa, and she likes me.

  Then I remember that every day after school Danny and I walk home together and his mom makes us sandwiches and we eat them on my front lawn. We get cookies from my parents’ cabinets and it works out perfectly. Danny hasn’t been at school in a week, but it feels wrong to do something else.

  “Girls, time to take all that wonderful talking-energy and turn it into creating-energy,” Ms. Fitch says. She has the best way of scolding us without doing any scolding. We get right to work. Elsa invites me to where she and Levi are set up so that I don’t have to work alone, next to the outline of Danny with his sick insides.

  I’m relieved. Standing next to that outline gives me a nervous feeling in my belly that I haven’t figured out the right word for yet—not quite sticky or achy or dizzy, but something else.

  Elsa is making a collage of eyeglasses and eyes. I’m trying to draw my face in charcoal, but it keeps smudging and I’m not sure I know what I look like. I am not good at art class.

  “I always wished I had outfits like yours,” I say, when we’ve been quiet for long enough for Ms. Fitch to wander to the other side of the room. Levi looks up like maybe I’m talking about him. He glances down at himself, finding a blue plaid button-down tucked into khakis. He shrugs, and I think I get how he and Elsa are friends. They’re different, but they have something important in common—not caring so much about what everyone thinks.

  Elsa’s skirt is long and flowered and her T-shirt is sort of too long, but it doesn’t matter on her.

  “Thanks,” she says. “I try to look like Levi’s mom. Have you ever met her? She’s so cool.” I relax. I want to be more like Elsa and Ms. Fitch, but it’s okay because there’s someone Elsa wants to be more like, too.

  “And your hair. It’s curly. I want curly hair,” I say. I don’t talk about this kind of thing with Danny, so I’m not good at it yet. For instance, Elsa knows her hair is curly, so I didn’t have to remind her about it. I sort of forget how to talk to people who aren’t Danny. I shake my head and try harder. “Why is your self-portrait eyeglasses?” I ask, thinking Danny would be so much better at this whole talking thing. Danny knows how to make friends, and I’m good at remembering things like their birthdays and favorite colors and whether they eat meat or pork or dairy or peanuts. But the friend-making part at the beginning is Danny’s domain. He talks fast and makes jokes and everyone spits up milk from laughing so hard. I try to pretend to be Danny. “You don’t have glasses,” I say.

  I am not Danny. I’m not even good at pretending to be a little like Danny. But Elsa doesn’t seem to mind. She gets this dreamy look on her face, and I can tell she loves nothing more than talking about art.

  “You know how Ms. Fitch said self-portraits are about the artist’s view of themselves?” Elsa says. I fall in love with her voice. It’s light and breathy and sounds like what I imagine a doll would sound like. It’s the kind of thing people would make fun of if Elsa were the sort of person people made fun of.

  “I remember,” I say.

  “I think of myself as having glasses,” Elsa says. She laughs and blushes. “That sounds stupid. But when I think about myself, that’s what I see. So that’s what I’m doing.”

  “That’s not stupid,” I say, and feel extra sad that I chose to do my self-portrait in charcoal. Is that how I see myself? Cloudy and gray?

  “It’s funny yours is all dark and blurry,” Elsa says. “I mean, it’s cool. I like it. But it doesn’t remind me of you.”

  “I feel sort of blurry sometimes,” I say, and I’m surprised I’ve said it out loud. Danny’s the only person I say things like that to—weird, sad things. Secret things. Things Mom would never want me to say out loud.

  “Funny,” Elsa says. “Like me and the glasses.”

  I play with the ring she bought me. I love how it shines and looks a little too big and a little too strange. Most of all I like that Elsa gave it to me. Maybe Elsa’s right. I like things that are bright and fun, even if I don’t feel that way inside all the time.

  Elsa is my new friend, I realize.

  I made a new friend, without Danny.

  I feel a little proud and a little guilty.

  “Can I start over?” I ask Ms. Fitch. She makes her way to me and my sad charcoal failure and hums at it.

  “Why don’t you add on to it, instead of starting over?” she says. “This is one layer. There can be others. I bet this charcoal you is one layer of you, and now we can find the other parts of you.” Ms. Fitch says things that blow my mind a little. I want to remember this sentence and tell Danny. I write it down on a sheet of construction paper, and Ms. Fitch doesn’t have to ask why I’m writing it down. “What can I bring you?” she asks.

  “Glitter,” I say. “Markers. Paint? Like, watercolors maybe?”

  “A little of everything,” Ms. Fitch says. She winks. Ms. Fitch is the only teacher I know who can wink without it seeming silly.

  I fold up the construction paper and put it in my pocket with the slip of paper telling Danny about what the score was at dodgeball in gym class and what next three books Mr. Yetur is assigning us to read. I’m filled up with wanting him to be here. I’m filled up with not wanting construction-paper notes in my pocket. I’m filled up with guilt that I’m liking Elsa so much.

  Ms. Fitch gathers the supplies for me, and although I’d like to cover the thing with glitter and be the person Elsa maybe sees, I start with the watercolors. I make my hair a watery yellow and add a pink halo around my head. Then I’m stuck.

  I like who Elsa sees, but I don’t know what I see. And I don’t really know what Danny sees either.

  I don’t think I can know what I see without knowing what Danny sees.

  Maybe I could call home sick and see him right now and do the self-portrait on his kitchen counter.

  He wouldn’t be there, though. Mom said she wasn’t quite sure how long Danny would be staying in the hospital. She said it with a sigh and a shiver.

  “I like what you’re doing,” Elsa says. She’s picking glue off her fingers and flipping through magazines for more images for her collage. She adds huge red-framed glasses and pointy cat-eyed ones.

  “It’s not . . . whole,” I say. I squint at the image. It’s missing glitter and bright colors, I guess, but it’s missing more than that.

  I don’t look like me, even though my hair and my lips and my nose are right. I don’t look like me even with eyes that look a lot like mine and a polka-dot shirt.

  I don’t look like me because I’m not me without Danny.

  I pick up the charcoal again and draw a figure to the l
eft of my face. Small. Bony. Spiky-haired. Danny.

  Right away the portrait looks more complete. More like me. More like the me in my mind. More like the me I’ve always been.

  “It’s supposed to be a self-portrait, though,” Elsa says a few minutes later when she’s blowing on her collage, waiting for glue to dry. She makes a whistling noise with each blow.

  “It’s like you with the glasses,” I say. “It’s how I see myself, right? I see myself with Danny.”

  “Right,” Elsa says with one big nod. And I can see that she doesn’t quite get it, that she thinks it’s a little silly or strange, but that’s okay. Danny and I aren’t easy to understand. We’re like science or math—it seems really complicated, but actually it’s so simple and perfect and true.

  Danny and I are a science experiment. We’re a math equation. We’re a self-portrait with two people instead of just one.

  11

  When Mom picks me up after school and asks how my day was, I’m embarrassed to tell the truth: that it was a great day.

  I don’t think I’m supposed to have great days without Danny.

  “It was okay,” I say.

  “Only okay?” she says, like she knows I’m hiding a secret. I fidget. I hate lying.

  “It was a really good day, Mom.” I hang my head.

  “Good days should make you smile, honey.” She keeps trying to decide if she should look at me or the road. I want her to look wherever she needs to look to get us to Danny faster.

  “I shouldn’t have been doing something fun while Danny’s so sick,” I say.

  Mom reaches over and squeezes my shoulder.

  “Nothing you do can make Danny better or worse,” she says. “It’s not your responsibility, okay?”

  I nod, but I’m not sure I believe her.

  “I want your Jell-O,” I say when Mom, Helen, Ross, and I are all up in his tiny hospital room. It’s sitting there, all jiggly, on Danny’s lunch tray, and no one can think of anything else to look at, so we’re a room of people staring at Jell-O.