says the recordings are lost but I know where she keeps them. Plus, I have things hidden too. In my room, under my bed, I have some of Helene’s school notebooks. I have letters and drawings and birthday cards. I also have some e-mails she printed out. And there’s tons of stuff still left in her room. A person, even a sixteen-year-old, leaves a lot of stuff behind. For a long time I couldn’t look at any of it, but then I realized there might be clues. I’ve started to spend more time in H’s room, but only when I’m alone in the house. It’s a better room than mine and I wouldn’t mind living there. Ma would never allow it though. Sometimes I leave the door to H’s room open, even though I know it irritates her.
I remember once, when I was little, I was looking out H’s window and I saw a hummingbird. Come quick, I said, but by the time Helene came over it was gone. Maybe it’ll come back, she said, and we both stayed by the window for almost a minute, waiting. I guess we didn’t have anything better to do. When I think of the two of us standing there, waiting for that stupid bird, it drives me crazy for some reason. I feel like screaming.
Why does a person push another person in front of a train? Does it have a meaning for the person, the pusher? The explanation of most people is madman. The voices of demons telling him to do it. But how did he get away is my question. It doesn’t make sense. Two men at the train station said they tried to grab him but he slipped away. He just pushed her and then he took off. The police say it happens all the time.
In my mind it’s almost as if the man disappeared after he did it. Like he had one job on Earth. To kill Helene. And after that there was nothing left for him to do but vanish.
I hate him. The feeling is tremendous. I’ve never felt anything like it. If we knew who the man was he’d be in jail. We could go to the jail and ask him questions. Ma and Da wouldn’t but I would. I would be all over him. Even if it was the voices of demons I would pull the demons out of him and make them explain. I would use every bit of my magic.
Next Thursday it will be the day Helene died all over again. It’ll be exactly one year. I marked it in my calendar like this: H.S.S.H. Which is Helene’s initials the right way and then backwards. If you stare at the letters it’s almost like someone telling you to be quiet. Ma and Da haven’t said anything about the big day. I want H.S.S.H. to be a day we’ll all remember. If Ma and Da think I’m going to ignore it, they’ve got another thing coming.
The thing is, Helene was supposed to live forever. That’s just the kind of person she was. You always felt she had some secret power that was going to make her immortal. I wish I could describe to you the color of her hair but there’s nothing to compare it to.
If the man was caught he’d probably be electrocuted. But electricity doesn’t kill demons as far as I know.
People say the hair was like pennies, but it was better than that.
And she smelled like lemons. When I said this out loud once, Ma looked away, but Da said he had to agree. He whispered in my ear. He said I was right. He said it was lemons all the way.
I said to my friend Anna how I want to be awful and Anna said, “What about your soul?”
“What about it?” I said. “Why should I care about my soul?”
“If I even have one,” I added, “and nobody knows for sure.”
“It can’t be proved,” I said. It made me a little mad that Anna brought up the subject of souls, considering everything she knows about me.
“And if it is real,” I said, “where is it?” Stuck up inside me like a baby all white and pudgy like a piece of dough? And what does it do anyway except stay inside you for your whole life and then it’s not born until you’re dead.
I said all this to Anna and she didn’t have an answer. But it got her thinking. I could tell by the way her face (which for the record is quite beautiful) went ugly with wrinkles. It’s hard for Anna to think, for her it’s like climbing a mountain. She’s in the remedial reading group, as well as slow math.
Finally, after a minute, Anna’s face came back and she said, “But the baby is you, Mattie, your soul is you, there’s no difference.”
And then she said she didn’t think it was at all like a piece of dough but more like a silk dress in the shape of your body, your head and your hands and your feet and everything.
“And see-through,” she says. When she says things like this you realize what a child she is. Religion has a way of making people into idiots is what my father says.
“If it’s see-through,” I say, “does that mean I can see your titties?”
“No,” Anna says, the total nun now. “The dress is on the inside,” she says, “and so who could look through it, no one but god.”
If Anna gets too smart I might have to stick pins in the head of a doll lumped up into the shape of her. If you added brains to Anna’s beauty it would be unbearable.
And by the way, Anna doesn’t even have titties. She basically has two anthills on her chest.
“Don’t you want to live forever?” she says.
“Heaven and everything,” she says. “A person like you has to believe in heaven, don’t you Mattie?”
I had started up Anna’s thinking engine and now she wouldn’t shut up. Plus I didn’t like where she was going with this conversation. Trying to get me to talk about private things.
Personally, I don’t believe in god. I never had any lessons in him like Anna. She got a bunch of information from her family and from Sunday school. I have my own beliefs, self-invented. What I believe is that there are people watching us, I don’t know who they are, they didn’t give me their names. The watchers I call them. They could be anyone. Who’s to say if they’re even human.
Anna kept talking but I just stopped listening and stared into the blue magic of her eyes. Anna has eyes, not everyone has them. Most people just have holes in their faces, it’s just biological, like pigs or fish. Plain ordinary eyes that don’t mean very much. Anna’s eyes are from outer space, they’re not animal and they’re not human either. I could kiss Anna sometimes she’s so beautiful. Blonde hair too. I only want beautiful friends, even though I’m not beautiful myself. My mother says I’m handsome. I look sort of like a baby horse. Striking is what I am.
I’m looking at Anna going on about her soul, but in my head was still that word. Awful. Awful Awful Awful Awful. Lufwa, if you write it backwards. I figure this out in my head and then I say, “Anna, shut up, listen. From now on,” I say, “I want you to call me Lufwa.”
Does she understand? Of course not.
“Why?” she says. “What does it mean?”
“Just do it,” I say. “Okay?”
“But what does it mean?” she says again.
If only she could have figured it out, that would have been the perfection of the moment. In my fantasy, the light-bulb goes on in her head and her face just starts beaming from the miracle of understanding. Lufwa, she’d say, winking at me with her magic eyes. Lufwa.
And by the way I’m not a lesbo. I’ve been told I have an “artistic temperament” which means I have thoughts all over the place and not to be concerned, Mr. and Mrs. Savitch, who are my parents. The doctor who said this was old and looked like a tree and he’s famous at the college where my parents teach and so they had to believe him. My parents have tried to become famous too, but they haven’t gotten very far. They’ve written one book apiece (academic not creative), but neither book made much of a splash. Both of them meant to write a second book, but they never did. Apparently they had a lot of hopes and dreams back in the old days.
When my parents