Waiting

by Carol Lynch Williams

Genres: YA Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

After her brother’s death, a teen struggles to rediscover love and find redemption in this gripping novel. Growing up, London and Zach were as close as could be. And then Zach dies, and the family is gutted. London’s father is distant. Her mother won’t speak. The days are filled with what-ifs and whispers: Was it London’s fault? Alone and adrift, London finds herself torn between her brother’s best friend and the handsome new boy in town as she struggles to find herself—and ultimately redemption—in this authentic and affecting novel from award-winning novelist Carol Lynch Williams.

Release date: May 1, 2012

Publisher: Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

Waiting
After it happened, no one in school would talk to me.

No one. Not even my best friend, Lauren Hopkins, who has hair to her waist, and who let me dress like her until I figured out how to dress for myself.

She had said, “You know what, London? You homeschool types never look like the rest of the world. Even when you wear the right clothes.”

(I had on blue jeans and a Billy Talent T-shirt and Vans, too. It must have been my face. It must have. A look. I’ve seen it myself in pictures. Wide-eyed, surprised. Happy.

But that’s gone. That look is long gone.)

“So teach me what to wear,” I had said, shrugging. Like I didn’t care, you know? But I did. I cared a lot.

And while I didn’t buy anything different from normal, she did show me how to use kohl eyeliner.

And that should be enough to keep you tight, right?

 

Clichéd.
So clichéd.
The whole thing.

Me sitting there, like I’m minding my own business. Eating a cheese sandwich from home. Just the right amount of mayonnaise. Swallowing, yes. But having a hard time with it. Like there’s a fist blocking my throat.

 

The five chairs around me are empty because no one sits with me now. (Including Lauren Hopkins.) Maybe they’re used to me being alone? Maybe they’re afraid my tragedy will rub off on them? Maybe it’s because I can’t quite talk still? Whatever, they leave me on my own.

 

Lunchroom noises . . . Popping sounds of sodas being opened. Trays dropped on the table. Forks scraping on plates. Lunch bags being smushed closed.

The clichéd part is me on the inside.

I am ready to bust wide open. I feel it. I feel it coming up from the pit of my stomach, like a fast-growing foam. Like vinegar added to baking soda (and there’s Zach pouring the liquid and saying, “People of Vesuvius, run for your lives.” And I’m laughing hard and so is Mom.). Like the feeling wants to burst out of me.

I’m the volcano.

For a moment I think, Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t. Do. It.

That’s how strong the urge to scream is.

The words I didn’t KNOW! echoing in my head, the o sound going on, screeching toward the ceiling. Higher higher.

Will they look then? Will they even hear me? Talk to me?

Sit next to me again? Leave me alone?

I hold it in, hold the scream back with both hands on my throat, tight, tighter, and it hurts. It all hurts. From the inside out. Tighter and tightest. Black in front of my eyes, no breathing for me.

The next clichéd part?

This new guy walks into the lunchroom and I gasp in air.

 

So I don’t see him.

I don’t see him.

I don’t see him.

Second half of the day just about over. I walk the halls alone. Check out the bathroom, make sure no one’s there. Lock myself in a stall. Take off my shirt, bundle it in a ball, and scream right into an armpit.

 

Then when I come into English class late (even this is clichéd—I used to read. I know.), I see him, right there, sitting in the row closest to the windows. His long legs spread out in the aisle. He’s grinning at what? Me? Can’t be. I’m just here. Late and all, with a wrinkled shirt now that’s wet from my scream and tears.

If my face would move, I’d smile. I’d laugh! Like before.

I would throw back my head and let the laughter burst from me.

But I just step over his feet, notice his dark brown eyes, dark hair, and head to the last chair in the row next to his.

“London,” Mrs. Pray says, “I’d appreciate you getting to class on time.”

 

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, not looking at her. Because I know what her face is. Full of sorrow for me. And after a screaming-into-my-shirt session, I cannot hold up under a look of sorrow. No way. That’s too much.

 

Somebody snickers (about me?) and I stumble. Why do I have to care what everyone thinks? Why do I have to care that I’m alone?

 

At home, all life has stopped, even though it’s been a while. You think things get going again. And they do.

Sort of.

Here’s how it works—

You become a shell. Fragmented. Soul seeping through the bigger cracks.

You walk. Move. Arms into sleeves. Zip zippers. Run your fingers through your hair. Swish mouthwash around your mouth. Avoid flossing.

 

Nod when someone asks, “London, how are you?”

Look away when someone says, “I heard about your loss.”

Want to tear skin with your teeth when someone says,

“Oh, he’s in a better place.”

You pass the closed door when you walk down the hall.

Wish things were different so we could sell. Move from this house. Get away from here. Run.

 

Dad at work all day. More than all day. Sleeping under his desk sometimes.

Drinking so much coffee that I can smell him from across the room.

 

And Mom. On her knees. On her knees. Weeping into her pillow.

Looking the other way when I’m near.

 

“London?”

I look up from a stack of newspapers I haven’t even read. Don’t even know the name of the top one. I look only for stories of death. And nothing touches it.

“You’re London, right?”

My eyes don’t focus at first. How did she recognize me out of school? What was I doing? Nothing? Just sitting here? I nod.

She sits next to me. “Can I sit with you?”

She’s in the chair. Why does she ask? I want to say that, be my old sarcastic self. Instead, I think shallow sarcastic thoughts that are only half feelings, really, and nod again.

“My name is Lili.” She holds her hand out for me to shake. I don’t. She drops her hand. “I just moved here with my family. And I heard about you so I thought I’d sit here. Do you care?”

 

I nod a third time, then shake my head no. Meaning yes.

I want this warm body next to me till she finds out and leaves. Like everyone else.

 

Everyone’s the same, you know?

Even when they say they’re different, they aren’t.

I scare them.

No one wants what happened to me to happen to them.

And I can’t blame them at all.

“Oh good. It’s hard to be in a new place. Especially this close to the end of the school year. I’m from Utah. It was cold when we left. And look at the weather here.”

She holds her hands out like I’ll see a sample of the weather—Utah, Florida—on each palm.

 

I glance out the library window. The sun’s bright today, I squint. I hadn’t even noticed. And I’m sitting in a rectangle of light so hot that all the sudden my neck starts to itch and I feel all sweaty under one arm.

 

Look at this. See it.

There are dead people everywhere. Not like in that movie. I mean, everywhere.

In real life. On the news. In the papers. In history books.

In my life.

I cannot wait to get away from this.

So how do I? Get away, I mean?

Die myself?

Cause that much more grief.

Tear a hole open in the universe and just get the hell out of here?

 

Mom wouldn’t like it that I swear. She hates it when we do. I mean, when I do.

Or maybe not.

God expects more, is the whisper in the back of my head.

Well, the truth is, so do I.

A missionary’s kid can’t kill herself. It’s against all the rules. It’s against God’s law.

But

But would He stop me?

Would Jesus come here, right here in this library, if I was getting ready to off myself, and stop me?

I didn’t think so.

So I just have to stick around. No matter how I struggle to breathe. Be part of the plan. Part of the deal. Why?

Because accidents happen.

My whole family is aware of that.

 

Lili is settled all around me. She has on shorts and a long-sleeve T-shirt with SONS OF HELAMAN MOMMA’S BOYS written across the front of it (huh?), and I don’t even see her coat.

“It’s February,” I say. It’s hard to get the words out, but I do. Like that’s enough. But she seems to understand and smiles.

“Isn’t that great? Back home there’s snow everywhere!” Her library books slide all over my newspapers, pushing one to the floor. I ignore it. She puts her laptop on the table. “I’m writing a book,” she says, and I think of Daddy with his nonfiction, talking about our family Before and the travels and the people we met and missionary work. I think how he used to read every section out loud to all of us.

Before.

I look at Lili. She’s talking, but I don’t really hear her. Her teeth are so white, and when she smiles she seems happy. I wonder if Zach would have liked her.

 

Would you have liked Lili, Zach?

 

Here’s how I know God doesn’t hear me:

Daddy, my daddy the missionary, traveling us all around the country, all around the world, serving others.

Oh, what I have seen, what I have seen. Earthquakes, murders, orphans, flooding, people lying dead by the side of the road—the list goes on and on. And all that happening with us praying together, as a family, whole. All in a circle, holding hands, my daddy’s voice piercing the ceiling and headed straight to heaven.

And not one thing changed.

“You’re changing,” Daddy said. “Maybe God isn’t sweeping the world clean of injustice, but, London, you’re changing. You’re getting stronger. Learning more. Loving God with a fierceness no one would expect.”

 

And Zach just nodded, wide-eyed.

He believed. More than me. Always more than me.

He held on to his faith, even through his sad times, his hard times.

 

“It’s gonna be okay, London,” Zachy said. “It’s never what we think.”

I remember it was a hot November night. Our first

Thanksgiving in the South and here was this freak weather.

“It should be,” I had said.

Zach slipped his arm around my shoulder and we sat there, quiet between us, for the longest time. Then he said, “I know.”

Zach was right.

Daddy doesn’t know. Mom doesn’t know. But on those trips, I think I started wondering about a god that would let all this bad stuff happen. All of it so awful. I was changing. Stretching from my old religious skin. Feeling itchy with the worrying and the cracking free.

 

And just know this. You don’t have to be the daughter of a missionary to know what’s going on. Watch the news.

Read the paper. Check online.

I told you so.

 

So when I was little, Daddy said, “God answers prayers through Jesus Christ.” And I believed. One day, believing, I wrote this note to Jesus. It was like, Are you there? Check one box, yes or no. And I folded the note up small and set it on the bar in the kitchen. I spied around for a while, watching, to see. Left. Came back.

 

“What are you doing?” Zach said.

“Waiting,” I said.

“For what?”

I couldn’t say, “For Jesus.” Or maybe, with Zach then, I could have. But I didn’t. That’s all I’m saying now.

 

I didn’t.

 

Now with this company I don’t look for a quiet moment. In fact, there’s nothing quiet about Lili. She runs her mouth and never takes a breath, I don’t think.

 

She’s here, that strange Lili. Sitting up close, hands folded, ponytail falling forward, leaning at me as she chatters.

Utah this and that, she says.

Grammy and Grampy this and that, she says.

And what about Disney World, it’s waaaay better than Disneyland, right?

Sure.

I look at her and stay quiet. I let out a sigh.

She can talk. Wow.

This talker saves me from having to speak.

This talker is better than being alone.

 

How did Lili happen upon me here at the library? I shift in the sun, glance at the clock. Forty-five more minutes before Daddy will pick me up.

 

“Tell me about your family,” Lili says. “Do you have any brothers or sisters, London?”

Just like that. Like she has a right to know.

I swallow, swallow, look at her side-eyed, back at the clock. In the sun her dark hair has a red tint. She’s thin, looks like an athlete. I catch my breath and there’s time for my words because she’s stopped talking. She waits. Quiet.

 

After the account of the long drive from Utah, after Provo High, after being the middle of five kids (four boys and her) and being an aunt when she was twelve, after how her father is the new football coach at the local university, after how her mother can’t get bread to rise in the Florida humidity, she looks me right in the eye and waits for my answer.

 

That’s an ugly question sitting on the books between us.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

 

My body takes over.

I’m up, going, headed toward the door. Leaving everything behind.

I look back once, flip her the bird. Her mouth drops open.

How the hell did she find me, anyway? All tucked away in the back like that?

For a moment I imagined her as a friend. A good friend.

I could have lived with all the talking, turned my ears off, nodded when I needed to, if I had a friend again.

 

But she is, I see, just like everyone else—wanting to know the end.

 

Daddy beeps as he passes, makes a U-turn. Pulls up alongside me. I climb in the car.

“London, you didn’t wait for me.”

My mouth is dry as a sock and I’m cold. I want to say something, answer him, tell him what just happened, but my voice is trapped in a box.

Lili and her stupid T-shirt and shorts.

“Honey, I told you I’d pick you up. You’ve been walking a long while. You’re halfway home.” He sort of looks at me.

We pass a huge orange grove. This is why we live here now. After Daddy retired and decided to settle down in one place. We came here for the oranges and avocados and hot, steamy weather.

“Are you okay, London?”

I glance at my father. My eyes are dried out too. Now

I’m hot all over, though my fingers remind me of ice chips. And I can’t stop trembling.

“Let me get you home,” Daddy says.

I open my mouth to speak, to say anything, but Lili seems to have used up all the words I might have said today.

 

She has four brothers.

Count them. One, two, three, four.

And my one is none.

 

When almost all the shivering has stopped, Daddy says, “Honey, your mom’s resting again today.”

I look at my hands, empty of everything. Not one library book, not even a magazine, though I’d thought of putting together a stack on the table, if I hadn’t been so tired, and checking them out.

I stare at what might be the lifeline on my palm.

The truth is, books used to connect us.

They’re something we always had, even in Africa, though not like what’s here in this house.

I can do without the books this weekend—I haven’t read anything I wasn’t forced to in months. What I need is to share the air with what’s left of my family. Take small steps. Sleep on the edge of life.

 

“I’m going back to the church to look over photographs for this next book. I’ll work in my office some more.”

 

Sunnyside Baptist Church opened its arms to us when we arrived, because Daddy is a well-known missionary. They wanted him here. Gave him an office to work from. He’s even spoken from the pulpit several times over the past three years.

 

I mean, Before.

Not as much now.

He needs time.

When I glance at Daddy, I see he doesn’t look in my direction. He grips the steering wheel. Holds tight. Stares ahead. Just stares ahead, hanging on to the steering wheel. Looks at the road like it’s his best friend.

I bet it is. I bet the road is his best friend, because he has always loved to travel.

“Right,” I say. I’m surprised I found my voice, like all along it was hiding in the backseat or near my lifeline or something. “Thank you for picking me up.”

“Sure thing, honey.”

We drive down our street, so green. Trees hunch over the road, cold sunlight splashing through, houses set far apart, wide spaces between, and a breeze moving American flags like a gentle wave, like they’re saying good-bye to an almost-friend. A talkative almost-friend.

“I’ll be home by dinner.”

I nod.

We pull in the driveway. The house seems all closed up, the windows dark-eyed. The sidewalk even feels like it might roll up and pull the welcome sign off the tole painting Mom did so long ago.

“Check on your mom for me, huh, London?”

When I touch the car door handle, a shiver runs up my arm, makes me look Daddy in the eye.

For a moment we stare at each other.

Who would think someone could get old in just a few short months? But it’s happened to my father. His hair graying like it is at the temples. Wrinkles that make him look sad, even if he smiles. He just seems brittle somehow. We all are, I know.

 

Then I see it. Past the age. Past the gray and sadness. I see him—

Zach, my older brother,

hidden in my

daddy’s face.

 

“London, come with me.”

That long-ago night, my eyes popped open. Zach stood over me, in his pajamas. His hair was all messed up from being asleep. He was right in my face, so close I clapped a hand over my nose to keep from smelling his breath.

He laid a finger on my hand like he was silencing me. “Come on. You have to be quiet.”

I got out of bed, clutching Mandy, my little one-eyed doll.

The wooden floor was cold.

“Guess what I found?”

“What?” My voice came out low and full of gravel.

“Shh!”

“I’m tired.”

“You’re going to like this. You will.” He took my hand in his.

We went down the hall to Mom and Daddy’s room. The door was open just a bit.

Everything was gray. Even Zach. But the hall night-light was a yellow blob with shadows spreading away. It scared me, seeing it like that, but I didn’t tell Zach.

“They’re sleeping in there. So really shush now.”

“Okay.”

He pushed the door open. I could see our parents in bed. He pulled me to the closet. Their big walk-in closet. Opened that door. Led me in. Closed the door. I could smell the leather of Daddy’s shoes and Mom’s perfume.

He flicked on the flashlight.

“Look.” The beam of light circled the tippy-top of the closet. Christmas presents. Wrapped already. Way up there. “Santa’s been here.” He lighted the presents again.

“How do you know it was Santa?” My voice was a growl.

“Right there. See?”

I saw. FROM SANTA in black marker.

Zach flipped off the light. We stood in the dark closet.

The space smelling of our parents. I felt disappointed. I had thought, well, that Santa did work at the North Pole.

That he brought things from there on Christmas Eve.

Not that he stored presents in my parents’ closet.

I felt Zachy’s hand. He tugged me out into the bedroom, out the door, back down the hall. He tucked me into bed.

 

“We won’t tell them we know,” he said.

And we never did.

 

Mom is in her room. I knew she would be when I stood on the front porch and watched Daddy leave. I open her door, which is closed almost all the way, remembering that Santa night even though we lived in a different house then.

 

“Mom?”

She moves in bed. I can see she’s lying on top of the covers. She’s fully dressed, so that means she’s been out.

But she doesn’t answer.

“Daddy wanted me to look in on you. Is there anything I can get for you?”

Nothing.

She hasn’t spoken to me in months. Not when it’s just the two of us. Not when Daddy is home. Not at all, not at all, not at all.

 

“He’s put dinner on,” I say.

Has she plugged her ears?

Does she hear me?

Do my words make their way to her?

I see her roll over, turn her back to me.

A part of me wants to run in there. Run in and shake Mom. Scream in her face. Make her SEE me. I touch my throat, squeeze my eyes shut. Turn around and pull the door to, leaving it cracked open just a bit.

 

I finish making dinner—glass pitcher of iced tea cooling in the fridge, brown-and-serve rolls ready to bake as soon as Daddy gets home, a Sara Lee pie pulled out of the freezer to thaw.

It’s quiet here. Like I live all alone. The house breathes opposite me, breathing in when I breathe out. Presses its memories on me. If walls could talk, what would these walls say? Would they close their eyes to memories, like I want to?

When I can’t stand it, I turn on some music, classical, so soft it can’t be heard down the hall.

Sometimes, when it’s late, really late, I’ll pull out some of Zach’s music. I hid his iPod when Daddy searched my brother’s room for answers. I don’t listen often. But on a night like this, maybe someone else’s wailing will help me

out.

 

I dream he’s alive.

He wakes me with a low, “London.” I cover my face, hide my nose from his breath that is cold as frost. “I’m okay,” he says. “I promise. Come with me.”

“You’re taller,” I say.

He nods. “Maybe,” he says. “Anything is possible here.”

“Where?” I say. And I’m up, following him. “Where?”

I open my eyes when my feet touch the floor.

He’s gone.

 

Zachy was so good-looking, even grown women did a double take when they saw him.

His hair was blond (mine is sandy-colored with a highlight of auburn)

his eyes so blue they made you think fake and he was way taller than me, more than six three. He might have kept growing forever if he’d stayed alive.

 

But the best part of my brother was when he was happy, and he was, mostly—though there were times— how he would throw back his head and laugh.

 

No one had a laugh like that.

 

Daddy misses dinner. Again.

(This never happened Before.)

Mom eats in her room with a bottle of wine I didn’t even know we had.

 

It’s me

alone

looking at three empty chairs and wondering.

“Why do I even bother to eat?” I ask Zach’s chair. “I can hardly do it.”

And that’s true.

It takes real effort to lift the fork open my mouth chew swallow breathe lift the fork open my mouth chew swallow breathe lift the fork . . . you get the picture.

 

And if there isn’t anyone to help by just being there, well, what’s the use?

So in the end I just eat a huge slice of Sara Lee pie.

“Before you get it, Zach,” I say. My voice is a whisper, but I can imagine him reaching for that pie, eating it from the tin, and Mom laughing. “Before you hog it all.”

 

I’m doing my homework at Zach’s desk when the phone rings.

 

(Right after, there were a lot of people who called.

And then they found out more and the calls stopped coming. People didn’t know what to say. At church they wouldn’t look any of us in the eye.)

 

It’s weird hearing the phone ring.

I stand, step into the hall, and I hear Mom answer,

“Hello?”

Her voice is soft as warm air. I can almost see her in my head, in her room in the dark, sitting on the edge of her bed, hair a bit messy from lying down.

“Yes, she lives here.”

She?

Me?

“Yes, I’ll get her.”

I stop walking.

She’ll get me? She’ll get me? That means, that means, she’ll have to call for me. I don’t move. Can’t move.

I can hear sounds coming from her room, but I don’t volunteer anything. Just wait. Wait. Wait.

She says nothing.

I’m still.

I hear her settle on her bed.

My stomach is thin as paper.

After a while the phone starts that loud beeping sound, and I turn and go back to Zach’s room, where I crawl under the desk and sit where his feet used to be.

 

“Jesus,” our pastor says, “is the answer.”

He says it to a room full of people. We sit in the front, just me and Daddy, almost alone . . . except for the Smiths at the far end of our pew. (People are afraid. Don’t look and it won’t happen to you.)

 

Taylor Curtis sits in the choir seats opposite me here in the congregation. Mom’s not here. She quit church months ago. Anyway, he’s seventeen and has blond hair and this big smile and eyes such a pale green that in black-and-white pictures he looks crazy.

 

No one knows this except Zach—I mean he knew it— but I think I loved Taylor before he decided he wanted to be with Heather Nelson.

 

“I’ll beat the crap out of him if you want me to,” Zach said. “Look at this.” He showed me his muscles. Flexed. Tried to make me laugh. “Long skinny muscles can pack a punch. Want me to bust his butt?” They were friends, my brother and Taylor. Good friends. On the football team together.

 

“WWJD?” I had said.

 

“Probably send Taylor’s soul into a herd of pigs that would leap off a cliff and drown in the sea below.” I had laughed then, though I’d been crying before.

 

Now Taylor looks at me and he lifts his eyebrows, something he did when we made out, like he’s asking if I want to meet him again.

 

No.

No. Way.

Even though kissing right now might make me feel better. For sure would make me feel less lonely.

 

“He’s right,” Daddy says in a whisper, his hands folded in his lap like he might be praying when he isn’t talking, and for a minute I think he means Taylor was right to like Heather (it didn’t last long). “Jesus is the answer.”

Oh.

“He is the answer.” And to hear him say it, why, I know, I know, he believes, even if he carries the whole Castle family belief on his own back.

 

Every day.

Every day is the same

is like the other