All Rivers Flow to the Sea Read Free Page A

embarrassed, leans against the locker next to hers.
    Tracy’s eyes dart back and forth the way they always do when she’s about to lie. I know. I’ve known Tracy Benova all my life. I stand and wait for the Benova lie. I am patient.
    “Rose, we were talking about my aunt,” Tracy says. “My great-aunt? She’s like a thousand years old and she’s in a nursing home and she has to be fed through a tube and —”
    “You were talking about my sister.”
    Todd clears his throat. Todd, captain of the debate team. Todd, Mr. Football. I hold up my hand before he can start talking in that way he talks, like a politician on the television news.
Halt, Mr. Forrest. Cease and desist. You have already lost my vote.
    “And she can open her eyes,” I say. “I’ve seen her open her eyes.”
    Then there is pressure on my shoulder from behind. I turn, ready to smite the invader. Ready to defend my homeland against the forces that would overpower it.
    “Hey.”
    Tom Miller, his eyes on mine. “Let’s go,” he says.
    He turns me around with the pressure of his hand, and he walks me to my locker with that hand on my shoulder the whole way. I think about saying,
Who the hell do you think you are?
But I’m too tired. And I already know who he is. He’s Tom Miller. I’ve known him, too, all my life. That’s how it is when you’re born and grow up in the same place, a place where there aren’t too many people to begin with. A place like here, in the Adirondacks, where the trees outnumber the people by a thousand to one.
    “How is she?” Tom Miller asks.
    He stands by my locker as I try to open the combination lock. Why do I even bother locking the stupid locker to begin with? There’s nothing of value in it. A rusty barrette, a sandwich left from the day before the accident, so moldy now that it’s half dust. A dirty T-shirt. A broken-backed book of wars. Who would want any of this crap?
    “How is she?”
    Twirl. Twirl. Twirl. Yank. Tom waits. Stupid combination lock. Twirl. Twirl. Twirl. Yank.
    “Rose? How’s Ivy?”
    I shake my head. What can I say to him? Nothing.
    Twirl. Twirl. Twirl. Yank.
    “Okay,” Tom says. “How are
you
?”
    Twirl. Twirl. Twirl. Yank.
    “Rose.”
    I do the combination again, exactly right, 11-5-36, and still it won’t open. By now I’m late for history and I need the book of wars. Wouldn’t want to miss a war, would I? We’re up to Korea. Since March the class made its way through the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. And now it’s the end of April, and I’m back in school, and soon we’ll be on to Vietnam. Tom Miller’s father fought in Vietnam. He fought, and he lived, then he came home, then he kept on living for twelve more years, then he stopped living. Too much Jack Daniel’s. Cirrhosis.
    “Rose.”
    Twirl. Twirl. Twirl. Yank. Nothing. Again. Nothing. 11-5-36. Tom’s hand again, on my shoulder.
    “Shhh,” he says.
    Am I crying? Yes, I’m crying. Crying, and I’m late for history, and I still don’t have the book of wars, and I don’t even want the stupid book of wars, because how many times can you read about Adolf Hitler, and see those black-and-white photos of him and his caterpillar mustache, and see those lines of German soldiers with their goose-stepping, without wanting to reach right into the book and rip him out of there, wring his maniac neck and stop him from doing everything that he and everyone who followed him did? All those naked dead bodies, calling out from their mass graves, their incinerators, their gas chambers.
This is not the world I want to be living in,
I want to scream to that awful, psychotic face of his, barking out all those speeches in German —
this is not the world I want!
    “Shhh. Shhhh.”
    Tom’s looking at me. I’ve grown up with him. His cousin Joe is Ivy’s boyfriend. I’ve gone to school with Tom from kindergarten on, ridden bikes with him, fished with a string and a safety pin,