Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [91]
“Thanks,” I say, taking it from him. But I don’t mean it. I’m not thankful. I don’t want it back. It means the end of my late night calls to him. And his early-morning calls to me. The end of songs and lullabies. The end of the only happiness I’ve known in the last two years.
“Call me, okay?” he says.
I picture myself doing that. Calling from New York. Hearing his voice and talking and laughing, and then hanging up after a few minutes and feeling ten thousand times more lonely after I call him than I did before.
“Sure,” I say.
I open my door and start to get out of the car, but he catches hold of my hand.
“Like this isn’t hard enough?” I say, my voice breaking.
He leans his forehead against mine, then lets me go.
47
My father’s at the table, dressed and eating breakfast. He looks up from his laptop as I come in.
“Andi?” he says. “I thought you were in your room. Asleep. Where have you been?”
“I went out to watch the sun rise.”
He looks at me as if I told him I just got into Harvard.
“Really?” he says.
“Really.”
“That’s nice, Andi. I’m glad you did that.”
“Yeah, it was nice.”
It was the nicest, most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. And now it’s over. And all I want to do is lie down in my bed and curl up into a ball.
“I went out for croissants,” he says. “Do you want some? There’s coffee, too.”
“No thanks, Dad. I’m really tired. I think I’m going to lie down. Catch a few more Z’s. I need to visit Malherbeau’s house today. Do a bit more work on the outline. I’ll have it for you by tonight. And the intro, too. Are you going to be here?”
“Yes, I’ll be here. I’ll be a bit late—I’ve got to be in the lab all day, and then there’s a dinner—but I’ll be here. Do you mean that, Andi?”
“Mean what?”
“You’re really going to have your outline and introduction done by this evening?”
“Yes. I’m close. But I could use more visuals on Malherbeau. That’s why I’m going to his house.”
“That’s wonderful news. I’m proud of you. Maybe the trip wasn’t such a bad idea after all.”
I smile at him. It takes everything I’ve got. “Yeah, maybe,” I say.
I go into my bedroom, close the door behind me, and sit down on my bed. I open my bag and fish out my cell phone. I’m going to call him. Tell him I was wrong. I’m going to say I want to figure it out somehow.
But I think about what he said, that I’m sad and angry. And I know he hasn’t seen a tenth of it. How do I tell him about the pain? About the pills I pop like M&M’S? How do I tell him how hard it is sometimes, to stay away from the edge of rivers and rooftops? How do I tell him what happened?
I can’t, so I don’t.
I lie down and try to sleep, but I can’t do that, either. I keep thinking of Virgil. I decide to listen to some tunes to help me sleep—I can do that again, I have my iPod back—but then I realize that music will only make me think of him more.
I reach across the bed to the night table for Alex’s diary.
16 May 1795
The dead are all around me now.
They push and jostle in the streets like housewives on market day. They wander the riverbank, silent and lonely. They haunt the places and people who once made them happy.
Look at the Noailles children walking with their tutor. It’s not the breeze that ruffles the little girl’s hair, but her ghostmother’s breath. And there, upon the Queen’s Walk, see the rosebushes shudder? Antoinette has snagged her skirts again. Look there, at the Café Foy. See that shadow on the glass? It’s Desmoulins. Once upon a time he jumped up on a table and urged all of Paris to the Bastille. Now he stands outside, palms pressed to the window, weeping.
There is Mirabeau, the thunderer, who wore jeweled buttons on his coat while the children of Paris wore rags. Danton, our last hope, laughing on his way to the blade. And Robespierre, the Incorruptible, who loved us so much he cut off our heads so we would not be troubled by too many thoughts.
Can you not see them?
Late last night, while I was out with my rockets, I saw