Every Single Second (23 page)

Clem wouldn’t care if they made her wear a burlap sack like the fig tree—she was only pretending for Nella’s sake. And even though they had an oath against pretending with each other, it felt nice. It felt like a token of friendship, and Nella accepted. Clem was pulling pens and notebooks out of her cargo pants pockets. Nella got a whiff of grapefruit. Clem! Infinitely hopeful and excited about the world and its million trillion wonders.

If any single person in this world was the opposite of Angela, it was Clem.

“Did I ever actually explain how it all works? There’s something called Earth’s Master Clock. And every midnight Universal time, which is eight P.M. our time in the summer, it goes from 23:59:59 to 00:00:00. The night of the Leap Second, though, they’ll make it go to 23:59:60 instead. Thus giving the world the gift of a free second.”

“Okay.”

“So here’s my idea. Patch used to be into model rockets,
and he still has a couple. They shoot up like three hundred feet! We go up on my roof. We have a countdown, and at the exact moment of the extra second—” She stopped. “Uh-oh. You think it’s a feeble idea.”

“No! It’s just . . . I mean, a rocket goes up and comes down and that’s it. What’s the point?”

“Okay.” Clem folded her arms on the table. “What’s your idea?”

“Shouldn’t it be something more permanent? Like . . .” Like what? Clem was looking at her expectantly. “How about a plaque?
On This Spot Clementine Patchett and Penelope Sabatini Witnessed the Leap Second
?”

“I don’t know.” Clem frowned. “It sounds cemetery-like. Like Here lies so and so, rest in peace.”

Why didn’t Nella give this more thought? She didn’t realize how much it meant to Clem. Why didn’t she realize?

“You’re right,” Nella said. “A second is so
ephemeral
.”

“Not as ephemeral as an attosecond.” Clem tapped her pencil on the table. “That’s the smallest unit of time we can measure. So far. One hundred attoseconds is to one second as one second is to three hundred million years.”

“Right.” Nella never used to say
right
so much, did she?

Clem did more pencil tapping, which made Nella more nervous. Suddenly everything seemed to hinge on this special second. How did that happen? It was so dumb. She
almost gave a fake laugh but stopped herself in time. Clem found her fake laugh excruciating. Nella couldn’t do anything right. At their feet, the pigeons grumbled and argued.

“I need more time to think about this,” Nella said. “Time for time!” She couldn’t help it. Out popped the fake laugh.

“You had weeks to think about it.” Clem set her pencil down. Then she picked it up and slipped it into a pocket. “Why don’t you just tell the truth? You think the whole thing is a waste of time.”

“No I don’t!”

The notebook disappeared into another pocket.

“I get it, Nell. It’s okay.” But Clem’s voice said no it wasn’t, not at all.

“You faker!”

“Me? You’re the faker! You don’t care about the leap second or anything else that’s important to me!”

“Who chose to go to a magnet school? And leave me in the dust?”

“The dust with
Sam
!”

A woman passing on the sidewalk stopped to frown at them. “Girls,” she said. “Don’t fight!”

“We’re not!” they said at the same time. Then shrank into their chairs.

“Yes we are,” Clem whispered.

“I know,” Nella whispered.

“Patch calls it clearing the air.”

“It doesn’t matter what you call it. Words are meaningless.”

Why did she say that? Why didn’t she say let’s make up? Nella knew it now for sure: Clem was going to ditch her. Soon she’d be among fellow geniuses and wonder how she could ever have been friends with clueless Nell. Clem wouldn’t miss her at all. Spoiled rotten Clem!

Nella’s insides started to crumble. She could feel bits and pieces of herself breaking off.

Maybe this was how Angela felt.

“Nell.” Clem reached into another pocket and pulled out a shell shaped like an ear. It was dull on the outside and pearly on the inside. “I forgot to give you this.”

Nella held the shell-ear to her human ear, and they were a perfect match. The sounds of the street faded away, and she heard breathing. Only not in and out. Just out—a breath long and never-ending, like the whole infinite universe releasing its secrets.

“I kept finding shells I knew you’d like. I collected about ten million, but I decided if it was going to be a meaningful gift, I had to choose. I had to choose one and dis-choose the rest.”

“I really like it.”

“I’m really glad.”

Nella went back inside Franny’s. She spent the five dollars she’d meant for the bail fund on lemon sodas and Chinese almond cookies, which to her tasted like sawdust but were Clem’s all-time favorite. When she came back out, Clem wore a weird look.

“I was praying so hard you wouldn’t ditch me,” she said.

“You don’t pray!”

“I know.”

SPEAK

now

E
arly the next morning, a sound woke Nella. She thought it was Vinny crying, but when she checked, he was deep asleep, bottom in the air, fistful of blanket pressed to his cheek.

Sssh. Did she hear it again?

She went downstairs. Nobody. The front door stuck in the humidity, and she had to tug it open. When she stepped out onto the porch, the world was misted gray and silver. Maybe this was how it looked before God created humans.

The birds were singing so loud, it was like they were
trying to wake the dead.

Turning to go back inside, she noticed something dark in the dewy grass. A footprint? There was another one, and another. A trail leading away from the house.

Nothing on the porch looked out of place. The boys’ baseball bats, the stroller, Dad’s dusty boots. The chairs were lined up same as always, and their cushions, when she touched them, were cool and damp. Except. This one, the one closest to the door. When Nella touched it, it was warm, as if someone had sat on it just moments ago.

“We’re so proud!” the aide warbled, wheeling Nonni back from therapy. “We really worked hard today!”

Nonni drew a finger across her throat, which made Nella want to shout
Hooray!

She and the aide helped Nonni into bed for her afternoon nap. Nella didn’t want to go home yet, so she clicked on the TV with no sound and watched a soap opera, where you could tell who was good and who was evil just by their hairstyles and makeup. If only real life was that simple. It’d be so much less confusing.

Her sleeping great-grandmother snorted.

Nella used to tell Marie secrets she didn’t tell anyone else, even Angela. How she was afraid her father wouldn’t go to heaven. How sometimes she wanted to do crazy
random things, like shout curses or smash dishes. How just between the two of them, if she had to choose between being bad and being happy, she wasn’t sure which she’d pick.

“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered now to her great-grandmother. Who lay so still, eyes closed. Who could be a statue. Nella whispered how Angela made her promise to keep silent. “But should I?” Her voice rose—she couldn’t help it. “She never snitched on me, ever. I owe her. Her and Anthony both. But what if something bad happens? Something really bad could happen. All because I didn’t tell.”

On TV, a woman with makeup thick as cake frosting laughed a silent, villainous laugh. Nella tried to swallow around the hard thing in her throat. For once in her life, she had choices, and she didn’t want them.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said.

Nonni’s arm shot out and grabbed Nella’s wrist. Nella’s heart tried to leap out of her chest. Those knobby fingers dug into her skin with all their old, furious strength.

“You.” Loud and clear. “Know.”

“I do?”

Leaning closer, she saw herself reflected in her great-grandmother’s dark, shining eyes. Was Nonni awake all this time? Or maybe she was still asleep, talking in her
sleep? When had Nonni ever told Nella she knew anything? She looked into Nonni’s eyes, into her own face.

“What do I know, Nonni?”

“Amore.”

Nonni released Nella and folded her hands on the covers. Within moments she was really truly asleep. Nella looked down at the red dents her great-grandmother had left in her skin.

Love
?

Back home, Mom was all upset. Dad was an hour late and not answering his phone. Dad always answered his phone.

“Maybe it died,” said Nella. “Or he left it in his truck.”

But Mom was worried. All that dangerous machinery, accidents just waiting to happen. Dad always took the worst jobs for himself, mowing the steepest hills, clearing brush in the most remote spots. The rest of the crew would be gone by now, the gates locked, and if something had happened there was nobody to know or help him.

Mom picked up Vinny, but he wouldn’t cuddle. He squirmed, and when she set him down, she looked ready to cry. She hated empty arms. Nella saw it on her face: Mom, who always expected the best, was imagining the worst.

“I’ll walk up and see,” Nella said.

“The gate’s locked by now!”

“No problem.”

Mom’s eyebrows went up, but she was desperate. “Be careful.”

Nella scrambled over the low spot in the cemetery wall. She listened for the telltale sound of a weed whacker or backhoe, but all she heard was birdsong, spilling from every bush and tree. This time of day, when no living humans were around, was the most beautiful of all. In the slanting light, the grass was Day-Glo green. The neatly trimmed bushes stood guard along the paths. She circled the pond, where a family of ducks glided, a mirror family below them.

On the way to the office she passed Jeptha A. Stone and stopped. What did he have in his lap? As she tried to see, a somehow familiar bird swooped through the air, whistling a merry tune. Tiny whistles, whistles no bigger than a newborn’s fingernail, answered. Tiny beaks tweezered the air. Nella laughed.

“You’re a bird nursery!” she told the monument. Which of course didn’t answer. Which couldn’t hear, let alone speak. Nella felt a stab to the heart—a sudden, unreasonable pity for stony old Mr. Stone.

The office was locked up for the day. Dad’s truck was parked behind. His phone lay on the seat, just as she’d guessed. But where was he? Mom’s anxiety infected Nella.
She walked faster. The cemetery was like a city, one small neighborhood after another. She climbed a hill, hurried back down. People had gotten lost on these twisting paths. They’d gotten locked in after closing. Once, a man visiting his wife’s grave had a heart attack, and nobody found him till the next day.

Nella started to jog. She tried the doors of the chapel—locked. A couple of geese, those poop machines, hissed as she ran by. Doubling back, she passed Daffodil Hill, then dipped into a hollow where most of the names were familiar. Lombardo, Manzini, Sabatini.

“Hi, PopPop,” she whispered as she jogged by.

Past two square stones with a smaller one beside it. The little one had a carving of a woolly lamb.
BABY
, it said.

Maybe that was why, she thought suddenly. Maybe her parents had so many kids because they knew, knew so well, how fragile life could be.

The back of her throat drew closer. Where was he?

Ahead, a grove of trees glowed silver in the late sun. An ATV was parked nearby. At last Nella saw him, kneeling in the grass. She thought he’d dropped something, but then an invisible hand tipped him forward, and his palms flattened against the ground. His head hung down. He didn’t move.

“Dad!” She hurried to him. “Daddy! Are you okay?”

He jerked upright, face contorted. “Nella! What’s wrong? Is—”

“We didn’t know where you were! We were so worried.”

He sat back on his legs, and his face relaxed. Now he looked embarrassed.

This was when Nella noticed the flowers. Pots and pots of them, crimson and white, royal purple and butter yellow. And butterflies. Flitting and dipping, dusky wings trembling. The silver tree branches netted the air, and the breeze, caught by the leaves, murmured a sound soft as a lullaby. Nella must have walked past this spot before but never paused to appreciate it. Cradled in the grass was a single polished stone. Kneeling down, she read the inscription:

MARIE PONZO, AGED 7 YEARS

BELOVED DAUGHTER AND SISTER

NOW ANGELS ARE YOUR PLAYMATES

She read it again, then turned to her father. He gave the barest nod.

A yellow butterfly drifted down to settle on the stone. Nella shook her head.

“But I already found her grave.” She pointed. “Back on the woodland path, the girl lifting her arm.”

“That was you?” Dad’s eyebrows did a backbend.
“Those funny presents? The stones on the bench?”

Nella flushed. “Me and Angela. We felt sorry for her, because no one ever came to visit.”

“There’s a good reason for that. That grave’s over a hundred years old. Anyone who knew that Marie is long dead too.”

He had to be wrong. “Are you sure?”

Dad smiled. He knew every grave, every single one.

Marie was not Marie. Nella had believed something else untrue, believed it with all her heart.

She was wrong again.

“Nobody’s forgotten Marie Ponzo,” Dad told her. “Her family moved away after she died, but they come back. Her parents, her big brother. He’s married. His wife comes too. Soon Marie’s going to be an aunt.”

“You’ve seen them?”

“A few times.”

More butterflies dipped among the flowers. It was Butterfly Paradise.

“I tried to talk to them once, right after, but they refused. I wrote them a letter from prison, but I don’t know if they got it. Anyway, they never answered.” He looked up into the protective branches of the tree.
EUROPEAN BEECH
said its sign. “It’s too late now. I’d never approach them here. People come here to try to find peace.”

The bird choir sang and sang, trying to hold the night and darkness back as long as they could.

“Maybe they forgive you,” Nella said. “In their hearts, even though they never said it.”