The Number 7 Read online

  “Chris, this is my sister, Greta. Greta, this is my friend, Chris. We’re in History together,” I said cautiously, bracing myself for Chris’s ogling.

  But it didn’t come. In fact, he didn’t take his eyes off me. Since our last encounter, I’d begun to notice that when Chris looked at me, he often seemed to be looking into some more intimate part of me, like he could tell my secrets or see my thoughts. With Chris, I always felt vulnerable, and there was something intoxicating about the vulnerability.

  “How about two cappuccinos? On the house?”

  “Actually, do you have any Earl Grey? Cream and sugar?” Greta interjected.

  Chris looked to me for my order.

  “Make that two,” I smiled.

  “I’ll bring ’em round back when they’re ready.” His voice remained its usual, flat range.

  I led Greta to an empty table.

  “This place is neat,” she complimented, looking around the room. She put her coat on the back of her chair and offered to do the same with my shopping bag filled with ski apparel. “And what was up with that guy? He was really staring at you.”

  Greta eyed me suspiciously like there was something more I wasn’t telling her. I shrugged innocently and handed her my bag.

  “Just a guy from class.”

  The two of us sat quietly for a while. It was weird. I realized she and I hadn’t really been truly alone since the move. Despite the fact that we drove to school together every day and lived under the same roof, we didn’t talk about substantive, life stuff. Once again, I was faced with the quiet truth of just how far we’d grown apart. After all, Greta had her secrets and I had mine. Could I trust her with mine? Would she even care?

  “You know,” she paused, softly pulling a strand of hair behind her ear. “You never asked where I went.” For a moment she looked embarrassed with the admission.

  “Yeah, but—I mean, what did you—”

  “Or why. You didn’t ask why I left. You and Dad have both been in your own little worlds since coming up here. This family is so good at running away from our problems. Why is that? Sometimes it feels like I’m not even here in front of you.” The words came gushing out, like they’d been dammed up too long. Greta was showing the cracks in her shell.

  “Greta, you left. And then you just come back and act like nothing happened! Who’s the one in denial?” I felt my face growing hot. Were we really going to do this here?

  She held up her right wrist and pulled back her sleeve. I saw exactly what I suspected, what I feared: thin, purple lines. Scars. Four of them lined up against her skin. I felt sick, and I looked away.

  “Why haven’t you asked? Why hasn’t Dad? I know you’ve seen them. You’ve been suspicious ever since Thanksgiving,” she paused. “You want to know where I went? I went to see Mom. I took the Greyhound back to North Carolina to be with her again. I mean, we just left her there.”

  For whatever reason, I wasn’t surprised. It was like I knew all along. I knew, and all I felt was a deep, penetrating sadness that she hadn’t asked if I would go with her. I would have.

  She took a deep breath before continuing. “Dad didn’t give us a chance to prepare our goodbyes. He made the decision to move up here. He made the decision to leave her behind, but you know what? I wasn’t ready. So I went back to say goodbye for real.

  “It just seems like you and Dad both keep trying to move forward without her. You both keep trying to assure each other we’re not all screwed up, but we are, Louisa. We’re screwed up. We haven’t moved on. We can’t. We’re stuck in this pattern of pretending everything’s perfect. I know you and Dad think I’m just a spoiled brat. What does Greta have to be sad about? But it’s not as easy for me as you think . . . ”

  “It’s not easy for me, either!” I blurted out. “You act like I’ve just forgotten her. How dare you pretend to know what I’m feeling? You literally have no clue.” The words came spilling out, falling like guts in a botched operation. Other café patrons glanced toward our table, so I lowered my voice but stayed firm. “I haven’t moved on, Greta. And I haven’t forgotten her. I’m still trying to figure it all out just like you. Just like Dad.”

  Greta looked away when Chris brought us our tea. Before I could stop him, he pulled up a chair to join us. Greta stood up and started buttoning her coat.

  “I’m suddenly not in the mood,” she said, wrapping her scarf around her neck. Her voice was cold, and Chris gave me a sheepish look realizing he’d interrupted something.

  “I can drive Louisa home,” he offered.

  “That’d be great.” She grabbed her keys off the table and didn’t bother to say goodbye. Her mug sat untouched.

  The darkness outside seemed overwhelming. Brandywine Valley was quiet tonight. Chris was bundled in a bruised leather bomber jacket, his hair pulled back. I wondered if it took effort to find clothes that looked so used.

  “You—” Chris paused as he blew into his clamped hands, shifted his weight, and looked intently at me. “You want to get outta here?”

  “Yes,” I said breathlessly.

  We walked to his car in uncomfortable silence. I was clearly distracted, and he looked like he was brainstorming ways to apologize for earlier. But the thing was, I was glad he’d interrupted the conversation. I wasn’t ready to confront Greta. I didn’t want to have that conversation.

  “Your sister’s hot,” Chris said as he turned the ignition and the Volvo growled awake.

  I punched him on the arm. He laughed and held his bicep in mock-injury.

  “Shut up,” I sighed, playing mindlessly with the automatic window toggle.

  “There’s a place I want to take you,” Chris said seriously.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before. From you, actually.”

  He smiled in response, looking at the road. I studied his silhouette. His brown skin looked even darker in the dimly lit car. There was something so exotic about him. The skin? The hair? The tattoo I’d recently spotted on the inside of his forearm? He ejected a cassette tape from the old car stereo, flipped it over, and inserted it again. Then he adjusted the volume to a loud Roger Daltrey belting out “Teenage Wasteland.” He began strumming his fingers on the steering wheel, and I unleashed on an invisible drum kit. For a moment I just let it all out. With Chris, I felt I could be reckless. I never knew how far he’d push me, or how far I’d allow myself to go.

  As the music slowed, I decided to question him.

  “So what’s your deal?” I folded my arms. He furrowed his eyebrows in response. I rephrased my question. “What’s with the ponytail and the tie-dye? The flip-flops in winter? You enjoy being different,” I brazenly declared. It was so easy being daring around Chris. I didn’t feel like I needed to impress him. He didn’t make me feel nervous, not in the same way I felt around Gabe.

  “What do you want to know?” Chris shrugged.

  “The tattoo? What does it mean?”

  “Which tattoo?”

  I reached over and grabbed his wrist, turning his arm upward and exposing the small, black character. I didn’t dare ask about possible others.

  “It says ‘turtle.’”

  “Why do you have ‘turtle’ tattooed on your wrist?”

  “What about you, Louisa? What’s your deal?” he deflected.

  “What do you want to know?” I swept my bangs out of my eyes.

  Chris looked over at me, inhaling in contemplation. “Tell me something no one else knows about you.”

  His eyes went back to the road. I scrunched my mouth to the side. Not a question I willingly wanted to answer. We sat for a minute without saying anything, the music soft and distant, before pulling into the dark parking lot of an industrial block of warehouse buildings. Chris parked the car, and I reached for the door handle. Chris grabbed my arm, holding me back.

  “Come on. There must be something.”

  “I can kind of hear dead people. Well, not people. Just one person. One dead person.”

  I don’t know
why I said it. Why the honesty? Maybe I knew Chris wouldn’t call me crazy. Maybe I knew he’d believe me. Maybe it was Rosemary’s initial assessment: Chris can get people to do things for him—admit things to him. Or, maybe I just needed to tell someone.

  He didn’t look at me like I was crazy. He didn’t scoff, or taunt, or even ask whose voice I was hearing. He just smiled, patted my knee, and looked up at the lit building in front of us.

  “Come on.”

  He opened the door and got out of the car. I followed, dumbstruck and slightly smitten. Chris led me to a heavy-looking, rust-colored metal door on a loading dock. There was a small handwritten “Open” sign stuck next to the doorknob with electrical tape. I had no idea how we got here. I didn’t know if we’d been in the car for ten minutes or thirty. I didn’t know if we were still in town or somewhere else. Part of me knew I should be nervous—standing in front of this most unwelcoming door in the bitter cold—but part of me felt excited. A new journey with a new friend. A confidant I trusted. Someone who knew my secret, or at least someone whom I’d entrusted with it, whether he believed me or not.

  “Ladies first,” Chris mused as he heaved the door open, flooding the landing with fluorescent light.

  Squinting my eyes and knocking the snow from my snow boots against the building, I took a step inside. I was awestruck. Rows, towers, and carefree piles of books upon books upon books. Chris had brought me to the Mecca of used bookstores. Housed in a vacant warehouse, Skip’s Used Books was a Brandywine Valley institution. Genres were written in Sharpie on scraps of white paper haphazardly taped to the end of each aisle. I’d never seen anything like it. I turned to look at my friend, my mouth agape. His turned up in a knowing smile. He grabbed my hand and steered us down the first aisle, letting the books consume us.

  “This is awesome!” I giggled excitedly, tugging tightly on Chris’s grip.

  My friend let me navigate the bookstore. Occasionally he’d pick up a book and read the inner sleeve while I selected books by the armful: an illustrated Jane Eyre, a book on photography, a history on Scandinavia, and a collection of Charles Schulz’s early works. I even found a Swedish-English dictionary, circa 1948, and picked it up just to have on hand. After I’d explored every aisle twice, handling hundreds of used books that spanned a century (or more) of publication, I took my stack to the front desk.

  “Seven dollars,” the balding man in glasses held out a greasy hand.

  “Seven dollars for ten books? That’s less than a dollar a book!” I said in disbelief.

  “How much did you want to pay?” the awkward man chuckled, looking to Chris.

  I looked at Chris to express my amazement but came up speechless. It was the first time I really looked at him under the fluorescents. He stood there, gazing intently at me with his large brown eyes in his vintage leather jacket, looking absolutely incredible. Under all the unshaven scruff, long curls, holey jeans, and dirt under the fingernails, Chris had a James Dean appeal. I’d seen it before: the first time we met in class when he told me about his backpacking in North Carolina, the time I watched him make advances with Lacey in the cafeteria, and that night in his Volvo when he took me to the Agnew Pennsbury Township and questioned his likelihood of doing the right thing. Everything Chris did was tender; under it all, he had such a gentle soul. And he carried himself with such humility despite being, quite possibly, the most handsome guy in school. He was a rough-cut diamond. Standing there in the bookstore, the balding man’s hand still outstretched, I felt privileged to see the real Chris, the one he didn’t show most people. And I felt connected to him. As if this bookstore was now our hidden secret. As if we both understood one another, even if no one else did. At sixteen, it was rare to find someone else who truly got me.

  I handed the man my seven dollars, grabbed my books, and walked over to where Chris stood by the door.

  “Ready to go?”

  He quietly smiled, putting his hand on my back as he held the door open for me. His hand on my back transcended all of my previous girlish experiences with innocent flirtations. Chris was older and wiser. He had done this before. And this? Whatever it was left me breathless.

  “With you? Anywhere.”

  We climbed into his cold, dark car that smelled sweetly of orange rind and sandalwood. The windshield had already developed a thin sheet of ice. Under the pale blue light of a humming street lamp, Chris took my books off my lap and tossed them casually in the backseat. I sat motionless, helpless to do anything but watch as he leaned across his armrest and nuzzled his chin against my neck. He breathed deeply, hot air moistening my skin. This is too much, I thought. But when his lips at last met mine, I was already gone.

  XVIII.

  On Christmas Eve, the streets of Trelleborg were frozen, dark, and quiet. A candle flickered in a lone window here, a shadow brushed against a laced curtain there. Where was the moon?

  For the fourth time that night, Gerhard stopped to set his gift down, rest his shoulders, and wrap his scarf tighter around his neck. He clapped his mittened hands together, the sound echoing down the empty street, before lifting his load and traveling on.

  The bell tower at Sankt Nicolai kyrka loomed tall and great against the black December sky. Beneath it, Gerhard felt incredibly insignificant. He wished Lasse were there to keep him company so he didn’t feel so alone.

  “God jul! Merry Christmas!” Gerhard warmly greeted the church pastor who crouched on a small ladder in front of the church’s doors with a hammer in one hand and two wreaths in the other.

  “Oy!” jumped the frail man, steadying his balance. “Välkommen, Gerhard! You frightened me! Without your brother, I didn’t hear you coming. How his laugh can carry.”

  Gerhard forced a smile. He looked back at his gift and then at his wet boots. Suddenly, it didn’t seem sufficient.

  “Forgive me,” he apologized, trying to block the sight of his gift, a tall and heavy pine, behind him.

  He knew he should have selected a different one. This tree was smaller than the ones he’d picked in prior years. But there was something about this one that had called to him earlier that afternoon. You deserve greatness, he’d told the tree, and he’d chopped it down with the utmost care. But now, standing in the dark, he wasn’t so sure.

  The old man carefully descended from his post.

  “Here!” He chuckled and handed the wreaths to Gerhard. “I’m just getting ready for the others. They haven’t come yet, but they will.”

  The man quietly smiled, cocking his ear to one side as if expecting to hear footsteps in the snow. He stuffed his pipe with loose tobacco while Gerhard surreptitiously set the tree to the side of the yard. But the pastor followed him, and Gerhard cringed, expecting disappointment.

  The pastor patted the exposed trunk approvingly, “It’s good.”

  The two men stopped and looked out at the dark streets, silently sharing the moment. The older man breathed deeply to assure himself he still could, while Gerhard’s thoughts took him to the latest news coming out of Finland. Helsinki had recently been bombed, the Soviets officially invading, crossing Finnish borders, on November 30.

  “The world seems to be getting colder,” Gerhard remarked, not really knowing the proper thing to say.

  “Oh, it’s never as cold as you think,” the pastor smiled, taking Gerhard’s arm and leading him back into the church.

  Gerhard set the damp tree at the front of the altar, and the pastor handed him two long planks of wood to make a simple stand. Once in its proper place, there was no denying this was the leanest tree Gerhard had ever cut down. It was tall, but it was also thin and the branches spare.

  “It’s not the best tree, is it?” Gerhard tilted his head to confirm the pine was, in fact, leaning heavily to one side.

  “Nonsense,” the pastor scoffed and handed Gerhard a crate of paper decorations, the same ones that had adorned the tree every year since Gerhard was a boy. “‘In simplicity and godly sincerity . . . do we have our conversation in th
e world.’ 2 Corinthians 1:12.”

  “It’s leaning!” Lasse cried as he entered the church carrying a copper kettle and a basket of warm saffron buns. “Can’t you straighten it?”

  “Tack, Lasse. Are your mother and father far behind?” The white-haired pastor took the pot and beckoned to a table where Lasse could set the buns.

  “They’re waiting on Pontus. He cut himself shaving and there’s blood everywhere,” Lasse laughed and scratched his brow. “Idiot,” he muttered quietly.

  Gerhard started hanging red strips of thin paper on the bare branches and filling paper cones with caramel candy. His brother joined him.

  “Have you ever seen such a thin tree?” Lasse dipped his hand into the crate.

  “But it smells good,” Gerhard inhaled slowly.

  Lasse leaned in and sniffed. “Smells like winter.”

  “Smells like Christmas,” Gerhard corrected.

  “You’re such a romantic.”

  By eleven, the first families arrived on foot. Fathers on kick sleds pushed young children through snowy streets. Cloaked women with wool kerchiefs clung to lit torches and hummed Christmas melodies. They stepped carefully in wet sled tracks and clasped hands with young daughters. Leif, Åsa, Pontus, and Anna arrived just in time to join the church choir. The small assembly started low, quietly warming up. Godafton mitt herrskap. Good evening, gentlemen.

  It was nearly two o’clock when the sanctuary finally fell still. Gerhard and Lasse sat in the front pew, teasing a pigtailed girl about the jultomte, the Christmas elf.

  “You better hurry and put out some porridge on your front step! He’ll pass your house if you don’t, and then no presents for you!” Lasse grinned wide-eyed as the little girl stared doubtfully at the two older boys. He jabbed Gerhard in the side.

  “Everyone knows the jultomte isn’t real,” the girl protested.

  “Yes, but why take the chance?” Gerhard asked earnestly.

  “He still puts out the porridge for the jultomte, and he’s seventeen!” Lasse laughed, pointing at a blushing Gerhard.