Tell the Wolves I'm Home Read Free Page B

Schegner was there, it still felt like we were alone. Greta would throw her arm over my shoulder and pull me right into her. Sometimes, if it was taking a really long time for the bus to get there or if it started snowing,Greta would sing. She’d sing something from
The Muppet Movie
or sometimes that James Taylor song “Carolina in My Mind” from my parents’
Greatest Hits
album. Even then she had a good voice. It was like she was another person when she sang. Like there was some completely different Greta hidden in there somewhere. She’d sing and hold me tight until she saw the bus round the corner. Then she’d say to me, or maybe to herself, “See, that’s not so bad. See?”
    I didn’t know if Greta still remembered that. I did. Even when she was being mean as anything, I could look at her and remember how we used to be.
    Greta glanced at me for a second, trying not to be interested. Trying to pretend she didn’t care. She put her hands on her hips. “Oh, the drama of it all, June. Your parents work late. Get over it.” She spun around and kept her back to me until the bus came trundling up the road.
    I went to Finn’s with my mother three more times. We’d started going every other week instead of just once a month. And not always on Sundays. I would have loved to go down there by myself, like I used to, at least one of those times. I wanted to have a good long talk with Finn. But every time I brought it up, my mother said, “Maybe next time. Okay, Junie?” which wasn’t really a question at all. It was my mother telling me how it was going to be. It started to feel like she was using me and the portrait as an excuse to go down and spend time with Finn. It never seemed to me like they were very close, and I guess maybe she was starting to regret it. Now it was like I was some kind of Trojan horse my mother could ride in on. It wasn’t fair, and underneath it all, lying there like quicksand, was the fact that there wouldn’t be that many next times. Without ever saying it, it was becoming clear that the two of us were scrapping it out for Finn’s final hours.
    On the Sunday that ended up being the last Sunday we went to Finn’s, Greta was sitting at her desk, painting her fingernails two colors. She alternated—one purple, one black, one purple, one black. I sat on the edge of her unmade bed and watched.
    â€œGreta,” I said, “you know, it won’t be much longer. With Finn, I mean.”
    I needed to make sure she understood the way I understood. My mother said it was like a cassette tape you could never rewind. But it was hard to remember you couldn’t rewind it while you were listening to it. And so you’d forget and fall into the music and listen and then, without you even knowing it, the tape would suddenly end.
    â€œOf course I know,” she said. “I knew about Uncle Finn being sick way before you knew anything.”
    â€œThen why don’t you come with us?”
    Greta put the black and purple nail polishes back on her little wooden makeup shelf. Then she pulled down a bottle of dark red and unscrewed the top. Carefully, she scraped the brush against the bottle’s rim. She pulled her knees to her chest and painted her toenails, starting with the pinkie.
    â€œBecause he’s going to finish that picture one way or another,” Greta said, not even bothering to look up at me. “And, anyway, you know as well as I do that if he could have, he wouldn’t have even put me in the portrait. It would have been just his darling Junie, all on her own.”
    â€œFinn’s not like that.”
    â€œWhatever, June. It’s not like I even care. It doesn’t matter. Any day now the phone will ring and you’ll find out that Finn’s dead, and you’ll have a whole life of Sundays to worry about. What’ll you do then? Huh? It doesn’t matter anymore. One Sunday