The Great Alone - Page 100
“Yeah?”
“You be careful as hell until the day you leave.”
* * *
ON THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL, Leni thought her heart might explode. Maybe she would pitch face-first into the ground and be another Alaskan statistic. The girl who died for love.
The idea of summer, all those long hot days spent working from sunup to sundown, made her insane to contemplate. How could she last until September without seeing Matthew?
“We will hardly see each other,” she said, feeling sick. “We’ll both be working constantly. You know how summer is.” From now on, life would be chores.
Summer. The season of salmon runs and gardens that needed constant tending, of berries ripening on hillsides, of canning fruits and vegetables and fish, of salmon that needed to be cut into strips, marinated, and smoked, of repairs that needed to be made while the sun shone.
“We’ll sneak out,” he said.
Leni couldn’t imagine taking that risk now. The banishment from the Harlans had broken the last thread of her father’s control. He cut trees and skinned logs daily and woke in the middle of the night to pace. He muttered under his breath constantly and hammered, hammered, hammered on his wall.
“We’re going to college together in September,” Matthew said (because he knew how to dream and to believe).
“Yeah,” she said, wanting it more than she had ever wanted anything. “We’ll be normal kids in Anchorage.” It was what they said to each other all the time.
Leni walked beside him to the door, mumbled goodbye to Ms. Rhodes, who gave her a fierce hug and said, “Don’t forget the graduation party at the saloon tonight. You and Mattie are the guests of honor.”
“Thanks, Ms. Rhodes.”
Outside, Leni’s parents were waiting for her, holding a sign that read HAPPY GRAD DAY! She stumbled to a stop.
Leni felt Matthew’s hand at the small of her back. She was pretty sure he gave her a push. She moved forward, forcing a smile.
“Hey, guys,” she said as her parents rushed at her. “You didn’t have to do this.”
Mama beamed at her. “Are you kidding? You graduated at the top of your class.”
“A class of two,” she pointed out.
Dad put an arm around her, drew her close. “I’ve never been number one at anything, Red. I’m proud of you. And now you can leave that pissant school behind. Sayonara, bullshit.”
They packed into the truck and headed out. Overhead, a plane flew low, making a dull putt-putt-putt sound.
“Tourists.” Dad said the word as if it were a curse, loud enough that people heard. Then he smiled. “Mom made your favorite cake and strawberry akutaq.”
Leni nodded, too depressed to force a fake smile.
Down the street, a banner hung across the half-finished saloon. CONGRATULATIONS LENI AND MATTHEW!!! GRAD PARTY FRIDAY NIGHT! 9 P.M. FIRST DRINK FREE!
“Leni, baby girl? You look sad as a lost dollar.”
“I want to go to the graduation party at the saloon,” Leni said.
Mama leaned forward to look at Dad. “Ernt?”
“You want me to walk into Tom Walker’s damn saloon and see all the people who are ruining this town?” Dad said.
“For Leni,” Mama said.
“No way, José.”
Leni tried to see past his anger to the man Mama claimed he used to be, before Vietnam had changed him and Alaska’s winters had revealed his own darkness. She tried to remember being Red, his girl, the one who’d ridden his shoulders on The Strand in Hermosa Beach. “Please, Dad. Please. I want to celebrate graduating from high school in my town. The town you brought me to.”
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