Susan Pfeffer - This World We Live In

“No,” Alex said. “She’ll be all right. Let her cool off.”

He had to have felt all of us staring at him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “She doesn’t want to leave. But it’s the right thing.”

“Is it?” Dad asked. “You know how much we love Julie. She’s family. She’ll be safe with us.”

Alex shook his head. “I know you mean that, Hal, and I’m grateful. But there’s food now and it feels safe. Things change too fast.”

“Even if we left, we’d take her with us,” Dad said. “She’ll always have a home with us.”

“If you have a home,” Alex said. “For as long as you have food. No, the decision’s been made, and it’s the right one, even if Julie doesn’t see that. No matter what happens, we trust the church to protect her.”

Which was more than Alex was doing, letting her run outside without a coat. I got up, grabbed one, and carried it outside.

Julie was standing by the garage, close to where I’d been the night Mom kicked me out. Only it was raining that night, so I got to suffer more. I grinned at winning the martyr contest.

“I brought you this,” I said, handing Julie the coat.

“Thank you,” she said, putting it on. “What’s Alex doing? Explaining how wonderful the church is?”

“Pretty much,” I said. “Would you rather stay with us? Even if Alex goes?”

“Yeah,” Julie said. “But he won’t let me. Carlos said I had to go to the convent. We told him about it, and he couldn’t find anyplace else for me to stay, so he said I had to go there. I told him I didn’t want to, but he said I had to anyway. And Alex said Carlos was right.”

“It’s a shame you couldn’t find your aunt and uncle,” I said. “Alex told me about them, how you could have stayed there while he worked in the oil fields.”

“We didn’t want to live in Tulsa,” Julie replied. “I’d have been stuck taking care of my cousins. You think Gabriel cries a lot? He’s nothing compared to them. And Alex’ll be much happier in a monastery than he would be in an oil field.”

“Monastery?” I said. I don’t think I’ve ever said that word before. “Alex wants to enter a monastery?”

“Didn’t he tell you?” Julie asked. “I thought Alex told you everything. I thought maybe he’d like you so much, he’d change his mind.”

I almost burst out laughing. The last living boy in America drops into my bedroom only he wants to be a monk. I think that pretty much sums up my life.

“He doesn’t like me that much,” I said. “And he never told me.”

“It isn’t what he used to want,” Julie said. “Before. He wanted to be president of the United States. And I bet he could have been. He’s so smart and he worked all the time. But after we left Carlos, Alex said he’d take me to the convent and then he’d enter a monastery. There’s a Franciscan one in Ohio that’s still open. I’m never going to be a nun, though. I’ll stay as long as I have to and then I’ll come back here. If you’re gone, I’ll try to find you.”

“We won’t be going anytime soon,” I said. “Mom doesn’t want us to leave, and since Dad and Lisa and the baby can stay at Mrs. Nesbitt’s, there’s no reason for them to go, either.”

“People leave,” Julie said.

I knew she was right, even though I couldn’t picture us leaving anytime soon. “If we do go, we’ll let you know,” I said. “I promise you that.”

“And I promise you, you’re going to freeze without a coat,” Charlie said, approaching us. “It may be the middle of June, but it’s freezing out here.”

“Not freezing,” I said, gratefully taking my coat from him. “It’s definitely above freezing.”

“You’re right,” Charlie said. “It’s got to be at least forty.” He laughed. “I used to hate hot weather,” he said. “Just breathing made me sweat. But now I think about hot summer nights and everything I would give up for one.”

“What?” Julie said. “What would you give up?”

Charlie laughed again. “I don’t know,” he said. “Not any of you and I don’t have anything else. I guess I don’t have anything to barter.”

“I used to think there’d still be stars in the sky,” Julie said. “In the country, I mean. We used to spend summers in the country with Fresh Air Fund families, and there were always stars. I had a postcard once of a painting with big crazy-looking stars.”

“Starry Night,” I said. “Vincent van Gogh painted it. I saw it in a museum in New York. You’re from New York, aren’t you, Julie? Did you ever see it?”

“No,” Julie said. “But I’ve been to museums. I went on a school trip to the Natural History Museum once. We looked at the dinosaurs for hours.”

“The dinosaurs are gone,” I said. “Just like the stars.”

“The stars are there,” Charlie said. “Hiding behind the ash clouds, but they’re still there.”

“I don’t believe in anything I can’t see,” I said.

“You don’t have to see God to believe in Him,” Julie said. “You can feel Him and la Santa Madre and the saints. Like you can feel the sun, even though we can’t see it anymore.”

“I can’t see the stars and I certainly can’t feel them, so I’ve given up believing they’re there,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, they no longer exist.”

“Look at it this way,” Charlie said. “Do you think there’s life on other planets?”

“Yeah,” I said. “And I hope they’re having a better time of it than we are.”

Charlie laughed. “Okay, then,” he said. “Picture Princess Leia on her planet, or a Klingon, or some eight-eyed thing with four brains. And whatever it is, it’s outside on a hot June night, looking at the ten thousand stars in its sky. Our sun is one of them. It can see our sun better than we can, and it has a name for it, like we have names for the stars. But Princess Leia doesn’t know we’re standing here looking up to where the stars used to be. Does that mean we don’t exist just because she can’t see us?”

I had never thought about that before: all the life on all the other planets throughout the universe as unaware of our lives, our suffering, as we are of theirs.

I wondered how many teenage boys there were out there and how many of them planned on becoming monks, and I laughed.

Charlie laughed with me and Julie did also. We were probably all laughing at different things, but that was okay. We were alive, we were together, and somewhere in the June sky there were stars.

Moving day.

Naturally it poured.

Mom stayed in and watched over Gabriel while the rest of us lugged stuff over to Mrs. Nesbitt’s. Food, blankets, sheets, the clothes we’ve been sharing with everyone else. Lots of books.

I didn’t believe it until Dad came back for Gabriel. But they really are gone. Even if it’s just down the road.

There are only five us now, and it’s so quiet.

Lisa came over this morning, distraught.

“Alex says he’s taking Julie away tomorrow,” she said. “Miranda, you’re the only one he listens to. Please talk to him.”

I don’t know where people have gotten the idea that Alex listens to me. Matt listens to Syl and Jon listens to Julie, but that seems to be where the listening ends.

Still, I told Lisa I’d give it a try.

I walked outside to where the guys were chopping wood. “I was wondering if I could borrow Alex for a few hours,” I said, nice and casually. “I’d like to do some house hunting, and Mom doesn’t like me to go alone.”

“Good idea,” Matt said. “Alex, you don’t mind, do you? You and Miranda had great luck last time.”