Tuesday Mooney Wore Black. Kate Racculia

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СКАЧАТЬ they’d all been watching her, like she was a pathetic puppy, maybe with one eye and a limp. It was a relief to be the new kid, the half-Asian girl (her mom was Chinese; her dad was Jewish) who kept to herself and wasn’t even on Facebook. By spring, her new-kid cool had faded to general disinterest. And the disinterest was totally mutual. She’d rather hunt around for every last bite of information she could find about ghosts. Sightings. Famous hauntings. Modern methods of detection. Contact.

      But that Thursday she’d been looking forward to delivery from Café Kiraz (they actually delivered frozen yogurt; reason number eight thousand why living in the city was better than stupid old Haverhill) with Dad, and watching his Seinfeld DVDs. If they were watching something, then they didn’t have to talk. About anything, but especially the accident and Mom and the fact that her dad was spending more and more time not at home. At least watching Seinfeld was a way for them to still be together, in the same room, without her father constantly clearing his throat like he was about to announce something. Sometimes Dorry worried that she was the reason her father was staying long hours at work, not that he’d lost track of time or whatever he was working on was so important, his usual excuses. Dorry was always in the apartment when she wasn’t at school; his office at work was the only place her father could be alone. And he wanted to be alone. And the fact that Dorry didn’t want to be alone apparently wasn’t that important to him.

      That Thursday, he called from the lab and said he’d be late. Really late.

      “There’s a pot pie and some Amy’s enchiladas in the freezer. And maybe a pizza?” He sounded exhausted. She wondered if he’d eaten lunch. He was probably going to drink a lot of coffee and call it dinner. “Does that sound okay, Dor?”

      Not really. But all she could say was, “Yeah, no problem. Go make science. And don’t stay out too late.” As soon as they ended the call, she pulled up the number for Kiraz. She’d had her dad’s credit card memorized for months.

      As she waited for her sandwich (turkey with green apples), her cup of minestrone, and her vanilla frozen yogurt with double Heath bar mix-ins, she began to sink. Sinking had become something of a problem lately. That was the only way to describe the feeling: one minute she’d be sitting on the couch or her bed, rereading her mother’s old Sandman comics or highlighting entire paragraphs in her American history textbook because it all seemed important, and the next she would feel heavy, like she was made of stone. Solid and cold and dense, so dense she couldn’t move her legs or lift her arms or even look up.

      She started sinking after Mom died, a few days after the funeral. Everyone had gone home. Life was supposed to be normal, or whatever kind of normal was possible now. Dad was at the grocery store, and Dorry, alone, sat on the couch and felt herself pressing into the cushions. It was like gravity had tripled. She sat there sinking until her dad came home and asked for help unloading the groceries. And the weight lifted. Just like that. She thought she’d dreamed it at first.

      But it came back. It usually happened when she was alone, but not always. Even if she was surrounded by people, the weight made her too flat, too slow, to tell anyone about it. So she didn’t. The weight made her too heavy to care. It happened in fifth-period English. It happened while she was waiting to cross the street, at the dinner table, and that day, that Thursday when she met Tuesday, it happened while she was sitting in the recliner, waiting for the delivery guy. She felt cold and hard and heavy, and she sank without a sound.

      Sound. She heard a sound. Someone was thumping down the hallway toward the apartment. Food, she thought, and the sink let go a little, enough for her to get out of the recliner and walk across the living room, enough for her to open the door.

      It was the woman in black.

      “Oh hi!” said Dorry. She was a little too excited, but it was hard not to be whenever the sink let you go. And it had; it was gone. The woman had vanquished it.

      “Hi there,” the woman said, and if Dorry had freaked her out, she was totally cool about it. She pushed her sunglasses up in her hair. She was holding keys, and Dorry realized – right then, for the first time – that the woman in black didn’t just live in her building. The woman in black was her next-door neighbor. There were two apartments at the end of Dorry’s hallway, their front doors adjacent to each other. She had heard muffled music through the wall they shared, had heard the door open and close, but had never met her neighbor until now.

      “Are you okay?” asked the woman. “Do you want a tissue?”

      Dorry’s hand jumped to her cheek. Her fingers came back smudgy, damp with mascara. She’d waited until she was thirteen to start wearing makeup (Mom’s rule, even if she hadn’t been around to enforce it), and she still forgot when it was on her face. She’d been crying. Sometimes that happened when she was sinking.

      “Oh—” she said. “Um. Yes. Thank you.”

      The woman dug into her bag for a plastic packet of tissues. “I’m Tuesday,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”

      “Dorry,” said Dorry, and wiped at her eyes. Her cheeks felt very hot. She didn’t know why she was mortified, but she was. “I’m waiting for delivery. I thought that’s who you were.”

      “Ah, I see,” said Tuesday. “I get pretty sad waiting for delivery too.”

      What Dorry did next happened because she’d been sinking, and because she wasn’t sinking anymore. And because this whole time the ghost had been living right next door.

      She threw herself at the woman in black. She wrapped her skinny arms all the way around her and hugged like she hadn’t hugged anyone in months, which she hadn’t.

      And the woman in black – Tuesday – hugged her back.

      That was the beginning. By now, Tuesday Thursdays had settled into a simple pattern: They ordered Indian. They talked about Dorry’s classes and homework, per her dad’s wishes. She wasn’t flunking or anything, but Dorry knew she could be doing better. She’d always been a straight-A to A-plus kind of kid until the accident, which had sort of redefined what did and did not feel important. Homework was definitely the latter. And she had been doing better in school since Tuesday Thursdays started.

      But it wasn’t because Tuesday was knowledgeable about the War of 1812 or vectors or Animal Farm or quadratic equations (though she was); it was because Tuesday was her friend. And a grown-up, but the sort of grown-up who made growing up look pretty great. Tuesday came and went when she pleased. Tuesday bought her own groceries and washed her own dishes. She took care of herself. She had a job in the city at the big hospital, and from what Dorry understood, she was great at it – and she cared about Dorry. Having someone care about you makes you want to give a shit, especially if you’re having trouble caring about yourself.

      And she had great taste in music and movies and TV. That was the real tutoring Tuesday did: every Thursday, Dorry got a new lesson in the culture she’d missed out on because she hadn’t been born yet. Tuesday had introduced her to every season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, even the bad ones. To Twin Peaks, which Dorry didn’t really understand, though that seemed like the point. They started The X-Files over the summer. Dorry loved it so much she dreamed about it. It made Dorry want to grow up, because the world was big and strange and exciting, and as long as you had your true partner – and you loved each other so much you couldn’t even, like, discuss it – you would live to fight another monster. You might meet a miracle.

      But tonight the pattern was off.

      Dorry pressed her hand to Tuesday’s door. It vibrated. СКАЧАТЬ