Every Single Second (25 page)
Read Every Single Second Online
Authors: Tricia Springstubb
“I told you. Cesium clocks.”
“So they’re exactly sure it’s tonight?”
“Of course!” Now Clem’s look grew suspicious. “Why? What are you thinking?”
“Nothing. Only . . . I feel bad for all the other, regular seconds. The ones that just pass into nothingness and never get to be special.”
Clem pulled her glasses off. “Are you making fun?”
“Huh?” Nella re-panicked. Was she? “No! I’m just asking a question.”
“Hmm.” Clem cleaned her glasses with the hem of her T-shirt and carefully settled them back on her nose. “I haven’t come across any research that says seconds have
feelings
. So I don’t think we need to feel sorry for them.”
Heat lightning flashed above the rooftops. Nella didn’t like her neighborhood at night, when it mostly belonged to Invaders who came to drink and eat too much. Somebody had left an empty pizza box on the church steps. By now the school was well on its way to becoming the Heavenly Spa. In the school yard, two Dumpsters overflowed. St. Amphibalus gazed out on a pile of rubble. Nella looked up at the windows of their sixth-grade classroom. There were no such things as ghosts, but sometimes in the dark, eyes played tricks. A nun glided by, holding a book. A girl pressed her nose to the glass. The cemetery didn’t spook Nella, but her abandoned school did.
“Not here,” she said.
Out on the sidewalk, someone was hurrying in their direction, head down. Clem clutched Nella’s arm. She hadn’t seen Angela all summer and looked confused.
“Zoinks,” she said.
Angela looked up, startled. “Nella!”
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t know where he went.” Angela looked around wildly, then pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket. “I shouldn’t have left him. But he was drinking again and I couldn’t stand it, so I went to see Marie.”
Clem pivoted back and forth between them. Him? Marie?
Nella saw the questions on her face.
“When I got home, he was gone. This was on the table.”
It was one of Anthony’s drawings—a portrait of Angela missing a front tooth. What was Mr. DeMarco doing with such an old drawing? Could he have saved it all these years? A note was scrawled across the back, the handwriting impossible to read. The only words Nella could make out were
I’m sorry
.
I’m sorry.
The list of all the people Mr. DeMarco was furious at scrolled through her brain. The list was so long, her brain gave out.
His gun. He had a gun.
“He took the car. He shouldn’t be driving.” Angela looked around again, as if he might appear out of the air. “He hasn’t left the house in weeks. I never thought he’d—”
“Who should I call?” Clem whipped out her phone. “Should I call my father?”
Angela jumped like she’d forgotten Clem was there.
“What? No, never mind!” She stuffed the note back in her pocket. “He’ll be fine. I’m such a drama queen. What . . . what are you two doing out here, anyway?”
Clem hesitated, then explained the Leap Second. Angela pretended to be interested. She was such a bad liar, it was painful to watch. Clem didn’t seem to notice. She pressed the light on her father’s watch, and a circle of eerie green glowed.
“Do you want to come with us?” she asked. Which was, Nella knew, an enormous sacrifice on her part. Which was so generous and kind, it made Nella want to be friends with her forevermore.
Of course Angela said no.
“I . . . I have things to do.” She darted Nella a look, and it was as if she put something in Nella’s hand. A small stone. “Thanks anyway.”
“Are you sure?” pressed Clem. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Angela was already walking away, waving, fake smiling. Nella’s hand closed over the invisible thing it held.
“That was very strange,” Clem said. “I cannot figure out that girl.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance.
“We really need to decide.” Clem tapped her father’s watch. “Time is running out.”
Angela was a small, pale person who grew paler and smaller as she walked away. In Nella’s hand, the invisible thing began to pulse. It beat like an impossibly fragile heart.
“Clem, I don’t think I can do this.”
“Huh?”
“I should go with her.”
“But . . .” Clem took off her glasses and put them back on. “But she said everything’s all right. She said—”
“I’m really sorry. I know how much you—”
“You seriously want to?”
No, you don’t,
cried her heart.
Going after Angela is the last thing you want to do.
“She needs me.”
“So do I!” Clem’s face crumpled into confusion and hurt. “You promised.”
Stay,
Nella’s heart said.
That’s what you want.
But what if your heart wasn’t the only voice you needed to listen to?
“Fine. It’s your choice!” cried Clem, suddenly angry. This was it, the end of their friendship. “Go ahead. Do what you want. Go on!”
“I’m really really sorry.”
Nella turned and started to run. For once, her feet skimmed the ground, sure and quick.
“Angela! Angela, wait!”
Her voice leaped out from somewhere impossibly deep inside. Like something that had been waiting a long time, it unfolded and stretched, reached and glimmered on the dark air.
H
ow could they ever find him? By now he could be miles away.
Still, they searched every street, checked every parking lot. Nella walked ahead, their old pattern. In the rubble-strewn lot at the end of Sam’s street, a bulky, dark shape lay in the weeds. Together, not breathing, they inched toward it.
An old mattress. A pile of rags.
They checked the alley behind Mama Gemma’s. A huge rat scuttled out from a row of trash cans. It was dark now. If Dad knew Nella was out here instead of at Clem’s, he’d have a fit.
Because he loves me,
she thought.
Because he wants me to be safe.
And then she thought,
All this time I was sure I was stronger than Angela. But maybe, maybe I was just safer.
Somehow they circled back to the school yard. Clem was nowhere in sight. Clouds blotted out the stars. The air had a metallic smell. Without even thinking, they headed for St. Amphibalus and huddled, exhausted, at his feet.
The first drops of rain fell. Looking up, Nella saw those faithful, eyeball-less eyes were wet and shining. He was trying his best to keep them safe and dry, but he couldn’t. The wind picked up, slanting the rain toward them, and now it seemed as if there wasn’t a single dry, warm place left in all the world. Nella wanted to go home. She needed her family.
She was so lucky to have her family.
You know,
said Nonni.
Love. You know love.
“Angela, let’s go to your house. Maybe he came back by now.”
What the Statue of St. Amphibalus Would Say if It Could
G
od bless you, secret sisters! Be careful!
T
he driveway was empty. The house dark. Nobody was here.
In the distance, a dog gave one short, sharp bark. How long had they been searching? Nella had no idea, but she knew she’d missed the Leap Second. It had slipped by without her noticing, and now it was lost forever.
Nella felt sad, but relieved, too. It was over, and she didn’t have to pretend to care about it anymore.
Angela put a hand on the doorknob. She drew a quick, choppy breath.
“Thanks for looking,” she said. “I appreciate it.”
It took Nella a moment to understand that Angela expected her to leave now. Well, why wouldn’t she?
The rain pelted the cardboard, the dried-up grass, a cat skulking across the street. It hit Nella’s cheeks and shoulders and washed everything together, and she heard Clem saying,
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.
How could anyone ever believe one second was more important than another? Every one mattered.
Like this one.
“I’m not leaving you,” she told Angela.
Inside, the trash can was overflowing, and there was a bad smell. Nella had never seen so much as a fingerprint or scuff mark in this house. Angela got some not-exactly-clean towels and they rubbed their wet hair.
The ringing of the phone was loud as a shot. Angela crossed the kitchen and read the caller ID.
“Police,” she whispered.
What the Statue of Jeptha A. Stone Wanted to Say More than Anything
W
hen the nestling plummeted, my heart stopped.
Jep Stone,
I told myself,
you no longer possess a corporal heart. You are deceived and deluded!
My exquisitely carved ears refused to listen.
Yet no matter how desperate I was to rescue her baby, I could not move. Never in my 120 years have I felt more helpless.
Steady on, Jeptha,
I admonished myself.
You are surrounded by departed souls. Death is your constant companion. This is a mere featherless bird!
I could see its tiny heart beating beneath its skin.
I heard the rumble of a vehicle. The quiet, faithful man who cares for us all! If anyone could save the day, it was he.
Then, if ever, did I yearn to speak. Then, if ever, did I summon all my formidable strength and try.
Stop! Halt! Help us please!
She heard me. She looked up, her father’s goodness shining in her eyes.
Y
es. . . . Yes, I’m his only relative. . . .” Angela clutched the phone. “Could you say that again?”
Nella sat on the edge of the couch. The patched front window looked like a scabbed-over wound. She couldn’t hear what the person on the other end was saying, only a flat monotone, the voice of someone used to giving bad news.
“Wait. Where?” Angela knuckled her forehead. “Is he—”
Nella closed her eyes.
“Which hospital?”
Oh no. No.
“Yes. . . . No, I’m not alone.”
Nella opened her eyes to find Angela looking at her.
“Okay. Okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Thank you.” She clicked off. “He crashed the car. They took him to the VA Hospital.”
All Nella could think was
Thank God
. Because if he was hurt, he couldn’t hurt someone else.
It took a moment before she noticed how Angela had begun wildly rummaging through the kitchen junk drawer.
“Do you have some money I can borrow?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Money? What? Angela, is he okay?”
“He’s not going to die, if that’s what you mean.” Now she pulled her father’s jacket off a hook and went through the pockets.
“What are you doing?”
“They won’t let me on the bus for free.”
“The bus? This time of night? You’ll wait a million years for one.”
Angela ignored her. She opened the front door, and the rainy night gusted in.
“He crashed on D’Lon Andrews’s street. They think he passed out. But when the police came, he fought them off.” Angela put a hand up against the rain. “I bet he had a flashback. Nobody can reach him when that happens.”
She stepped outside. It was raining harder, the kind
of rain that wets you to the skin in half a second. That old, familiar anger rose up inside Nella. Mr. DeMarco was drunk. He had a gun. Who knew what would have happened if he hadn’t cracked up the car? He was a dangerous man, and he’d hurt Angela far too much already.
“He’s in the hospital,” Nella said. “You don’t need to go tonight. They’ll take care of him. Come on, Angela. Let someone else take care of him.”
“You don’t know what a flashback’s like. I can’t leave him alone.”
“He left you alone! He didn’t take care of you!”
Angela spun around. She looked at Nella as if she was speaking another language. Babbling gibberish.
“Because he couldn’t! He meant to, but he couldn’t.”
For the second time that night, Nella watched her hurry away into the dark. How would she ever get to the hospital? She’d walk if she had to. Nothing Nella could say would change her mind. Angela’s stubborn, infuriating goodness—nothing could touch it.
“Wait!” Nella shut the door and ran to catch up. She grabbed Angela’s shoulder. “Stop! You can’t go by yourself.”
“Yes I can!” She pulled away.
“All right. I know you can. But Angela, you don’t have to.”
T
he hospital lounge was a deep freeze. Nella, wet hair, wet feet, was a shiver machine. Dad and Angela were still in Mr. DeMarco’s room. Dad had to show ID and answer a zillion questions from the armed policeman outside the doorway. The officer was young, and now he flirted with a pretty nurse, making her laugh. The clock in the lounge said two thirty, but it could as easily be the middle of the day instead of the night. Two doctors bustled by, cheerfully chatting in a language she didn’t recognize. When Nella looked at the tall, dark windows, she saw a girl with legs that went on forever. The girl’s feet disappeared at
the edge of the window, like she’d stepped into some other dimension.
The space-time continuum. Nella’s bleary brain finally got it. No boundaries, no
up and down
or
beginning and end
. Everything was relative, every thing and being flowed into every other thing and being, and there were way more than three dimensions. Everything, even the things that seemed to stay still, was moving. Wait till she told Clem she finally understood.
Only she couldn’t. Clem was now in a galaxy far far away. . . .
Rem and Bell are measuring time. It comes in sparkly, rainbow-colored drops. In fact, it looks a lot like Jolly Ranchers. They measure it into jars and seal the lids. They touch their light sabers and . . .
“Kiddo?”