Maureen Johnson - The Name of the Star

I turned the television off, and my mom pushed it to the side.

“Rory,” she said, smoothing my hair back from my forehead, “whatever happened, you’re safe now. We’ll get you through this. Do you want to tell us about it now?”

I almost laughed.

“It’s just like the news said,” I replied.

That answer would hold water for a while—certainly not forever, but for a few days, while I recovered. I fluttered my eyes a bit and tried to look extra tired, just to steer them away.

“You’re supposed to stay here for a few more hours at least,” my dad said. “We have a hotel room for the night, where you can get some rest, then tomorrow we’ll all go to Bristol. You’re going to love the house.”

“Bristol?”

“Rory, you can’t stay here, not after this.”

“But it’s over,” I said.

“You need to be with us. We can’t . . .”

My mom gave a terse head shake, and my dad nodded and stopped talking. Silent communication. A united mental front. That was a bad sign.

“That’s for now,” my mom said carefully. “If you want to go home . . . we can do that. We don’t have to stay in England.”

“I want to stay,” I said.

Another silent communication—just a look this time. Silent communications meant that they were serious and it was a done deal. I was going to Bristol. There was no fighting this one, really. There was no way they’d let me out of their sight now, not after I’d been slashed open in the school bathroom. I would be watched carefully for a while, and if I appeared in any way bonkers because of this, we would be on a plane back to New Orleans in a minute and I would be in a psychologist’s office the minute after that.

Which was all really undesirable right now. England was my new home. England was where the squad was, where I was sane. This was all too complicated for me to figure out right now.

“Can I have another shot?” I asked. “It hurts.”

My mom hurried off to find someone. She returned with a new nurse, who gave me another injection into my IV. This was the last, she told me. I would be given some painkillers to take with me when I left.

I spent the afternoon drifting in and out of sleep and watching television with my parents. There were still a lot of Ripper roundups, but some stations had decided it was okay to start running non-Ripper-related programs. Normal life was taking over again on midday television—trashy talk shows, and antiques shows, and shows about cleaning. English soap operas I couldn’t understand. Endless commercials for car insurance and strangely seductive commercials for sausages.

Just after four, I saw two very familiar figures in the doorway. I knew they would come eventually. What I didn’t know was what to say to them. Their version of reality and mine had diverged. There was formal handshaking with my parents, then they came to the bedside and smiled slightly fearful smiles—the kind of look you give when you have absolutely no idea what to say.

“How do you feel?” Jazza asked.

“Itchy,” I said. “Kind of high.”

“Could be worse,” Jerome said, trying to smile.

My parents must have realized that my friends needed a minute to say whatever it was they wanted to say. They offered teas and coffees all around and excused themselves. Even after they were gone, the awkward silence reigned for a few moments.

“I need to apologize,” Jazza finally said. “Please let me.”

“For what?” I asked.

“For . . . well . . . it’s just . . . I didn’t . . . Well, I believed you, but . . .”

She collected herself and started again.

“The night of the murder, when you said you saw someone and I didn’t. For a while I thought you made it up, even when the police were around you last night. All along you were a witness—and then he came after you. I’m sorry. I’ll never . . . I’m sorry . . .”

For a second, I was tempted—I just wanted to spill the entire thing, start to end. But no. Mr. Thorpe was right. I couldn’t do that, ever.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I would have thought the same thing about me.”

“Classes are still canceled,” Jerome said. “But we were stuck there until they chased the news people away. It’s a circus. Wexford, site of the final Ripper attack . . .”

“Charlotte,” I said suddenly. “I forgot Charlotte. Is she okay?”

“Yes,” Jerome said. “She needed some stitches.”

“She’s acting like she was as hurt as you,” Jazza said in disgust.

Charlotte had been beaten over the head with a lamp by an invisible man. I was prepared to give her a pass.

“You’re famous,” Jerome said. “When you get back . . .”

Something in my expression made him stop.

“You’re not, are you?” he asked. “They’re taking you out of school, aren’t they?”

“Is Bristol nice?” I asked them.

Jerome exhaled in relief.

“It’s better than Louisiana,” he said. “That’s what I thought you were going to say. Bristol is reachable by train.”

Jazza had remained quiet through all of this. She took my hand, and she didn’t have to say a word. I knew exactly what she was thinking. It wouldn’t be the same, but I was safe. We were all safe. We’d survived the Ripper, all of us, and whatever happened now could be dealt with.

“There’s just one thing I wish,” Jazza said after a moment. “I wish I could have seen her get hit with that lamp.”

38

SO MY UNCLE WILL HAS THESE EIGHT FREEZERS UP IN his spare bedroom. It took a lot of effort to get those freezers up the steps, and I think he had to reinforce the floor. He keeps them filled with every kind of provision you can imagine. One is filled with meat. Another with vegetables and frozen dinners. I know one has things like milk and butter and yogurt. I think he even has frozen peanut butter in plastic jars, and frozen dried beans, and frozen batteries because he read somewhere that freezing them makes them last longer.

I don’t know if you’re supposed to freeze things like peanut butter and batteries, and I know for certain that I don’t want to drink three-year-old frozen milk, but I know why he does it. He does it because he’s lived through a dozen or more major hurricanes. His house was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. He barely made it out alive. He escaped out of one of the windows in an inflatable raft and was picked up in a helicopter. He lost his dog in the flooding. So he moved closer to the rest of us and bought a little house and filled it with freezers.

Of course, when hurricanes come, the power goes out, and what he’ll probably have are eight freezers filled with rapidly decaying old food, but that’s not the point. I don’t know what he saw when the waters rose around him, but whatever it was, it made him want to get eight freezers. Some things are so bad that once you’ve been through them, you don’t have to explain your reasons to anyone.

I was thinking about this as our big black cab pulled into the Wexford square, bumping up along the cobblestones in front of Hawthorne. I could have let my parents go and get my things for me—I could have left London and never looked at the place again. But that felt wrong. I would go to my room. I would get my own things. I would face this place and everything that had happened here. I might get stares, but I didn’t care.

Anyway, I could tell from a quick look around and a check of the time that that wasn’t going to be an issue. It was seven in the morning on a Saturday. The lights in Hawthorne were mostly off. Aside from two people crossing the green and walking toward the refectory, I saw no one. Everyone was still in bed. There were two news vans around, but they were packing up their equipment. The show was over.