“W-w-will i’ be ’afe?” she asks.
All I can do is shrug. “I’ve done nothing like this before, but I love singing, and this area is safe so I can’t imagine it would be dangerous.” Although I can imagine it could be dangerous walking home alone at night, but it’s a risk I might have to take. If Dale was around, he would walk with me, but he disappeared off the face of the earth almost two months ago without a word. Even at this moment, it’s clear I still think about him far too often.
“Good morning, ladies.” Miss Blum is walking toward us with an apple clutched in her hand, the deep red color almost perfectly matching her manicured nails. “I was wondering if you both have a few minutes to stop by my office after school today?”
Nora and I exchange a look of confusion. We’ve been meeting with her regularly, both together and alone, to talk, but neither of us sees her on a Monday.
“Of course,” I answer. “Is everything okay? Are we in trouble?” We as in me, as it usually is around here. Although as of late, I’ve flown under the radar by staying off the roof and keeping quiet when around Vallentine. With Dale missing, there isn’t much incentive to break the rules, which has left me to read more psychology books while Nora spends her free time drawing random objects in our room.
“Yes, everything is just fine,” she says, reassuring us with a genuine smile. “Nora, is the meeting okay with you as well?”
“Ye’,” I echo my sister.
“Is everything okay? You seem distracted.”
“It’s Elek’s eighteenth birthday,” I tell Miss Blum. “She hasn’t received a response from the letters she sent him.”
Nora continues nibbling her banana as if I’m not talking about her. She must feel like there’s no chance of hearing from him now, but I disagree. In my heart, I’m not ready to give up hope for her.
“I see,” Miss Blum says. “The delay with mail is certainly frustrating, but I wouldn’t get discouraged yet. He may have written to you two weeks ago, and it’s still on its way. You just never know.” She places her hand on Nora’s shoulder and squeezes gently. “I’ll see you later this afternoon.”
“I kn-kn-know you have hope f-f-for me bu’ I have n-n-no way of exchanging mail n-n-now,” she says, dropping her banana peel onto the tray.
“You can still write him notes and once you have a mailing address for him, you can send them.”
“Wh-Wh-Wha’ if he never go’ any of my no’e’?”
“Don’t think that way,” I say, taking her hand and holding it between mine. “At least he isn’t hiding from you like Dale.”
“He’ no’ hi-hi-hiding from you,” Nora says.
“You don’t know that.” She gawks at me for a long moment, and I can’t tell if she’s staring through me or trying to make me understand the look in her eyes.
The school day crawled by as I went through lists of topics Miss Blum might want to discuss with us. She’s mentioned various methods of trauma therapy but usually brings that up during a scheduled session. She’s also been asking about our plans for what we’d like to do once we turn eighteen, but we both spout off various ideas without a way to implement them. Miss Blum hasn’t seemed concerned about our lack of focus on what we will do next month.
Upon stepping out into the mild March air, I find Nora waiting in her usual spot along the flat ground next to the ramp. “How was your day?”
“B-b-boring,” Nora says with a yawn.
We’re bored while all the other seventeen and eighteen-year-old students are excited about the spring dance and graduation. It’s easy to listen to all of them gush about their hopeful futures, but it’s even easier to stay quiet and listen. I wonder if this is how Nora and I would have been if we were still home in Debrecen. We would be in our final year of school, looking forward to the next adventure and doing so with our friends. The summer would be rolling in and we’d dream about spending days at the lake with nothing more than a rope hanging over a tall rock that would offer hours of entertainment, swinging like jungle animals into the crystal blue water. It’s different here. If the kids have a lake that they spend their time at, they haven’t invited either of us to join them, but that’s as much our fault as it is theirs. We keep to ourselves, which isn’t a new trait I like about myself.
I peer to the left of the sidewalk like I do every day, hoping Dale will appear out of the corner of my eye. Each day that passes without him becomes less painful, but more frustrating. He knew I needed a friend. He knew everything I had been through.
“I-I-I’m ’orry you haven’ ’een him,” Nora says.
“Me too.”
The walk back goes by quicker when we’re talking. It doesn’t hurt that the sun is warm enough to feel a tease of heat on our cheeks, too. The winter has felt longer than most this year. “We should drop our knapsacks off before going to Miss Blum’s office.”
“O-okay.”
The entryway smells freshly cleaned as the fragrance of pine and lemon swirls around us.
“Nora,” Mrs. Kesler calls out from the office door. She’s new on staff, assisting with administration. “Hold on one moment, dear.”
Nora peers over at me, her eyebrows knitting together, wondering what I’m wondering, I’m sure. What could Mrs. Kesler need from her and not from me, or the other way around?
Her short, stout heels clunk heavily on the way out of the office. She’s holding a stack of envelopes. I can almost feel Nora’s pulse within mine, thumping quicker than an urgent message being delivered through Morse code. She’s hoping they’re from Elek. I’m hoping they are from Elek, and if so, that they contain good news. She needs some good news. We both do, but I’d settle if just one of us got some today.
Mrs. Kesler hands Nora the stack of envelopes with a tight-lip smile. “You may want to check on the address once more, dear. It looks like the post office has had trouble. I don’t mind sending them back out for you once you figure out what’s wrong,” she says with an uplifting tone, as if everything will be all right.
Mrs. Kesler scurries back into the office, the same thuds from her heels echoing behind her. Nora holds the envelopes in front of her face, her hands shaking. Her chin trembles and the skin on her throat strains as she tries to swallow.
She drops the envelopes onto her lap and rolls her chair down the hall quicker than usual. I can hardly keep up with her. I reach our room just in time to catch the door before it closes.
“What happened?”
“M-m-my no’e’ didn’ make i’ ’o him,” she struggles to say.
“Those are all from you to him?”
Nora thumbs through the stack, shuffling them around. She pauses as she scrutinizes the top envelope, her eyes narrowing as she shakes her head with obvious disdain. “Ye’,” she says, tossing the pile onto her bed. “Wh-wh-wha’ a was’e of ’ime.”
“It wasn’t a waste of your time. Writing is therapeutic,” I say, sounding more like the book I’ve been reading rather than her sister. The response of Nora’s grimace says so, too.