Free Words and Their Meanings by Kate Bassett Page A

and match his hands against mine, but I did maybe hope I’d imagine him there. I’ve read lots of books with people who see their dead friend or relative in a familiar spot. I know, fiction.
    When nothing happens, I push up on the glass. The window cracks open. My hands fly off like I touched a hot stove. Then they go back again, palms against glass, pushing up until there is enough space for me to crawl through.
    Joe’s room is locked from the outside. There’s a high little latch Mom had Gramps install one day after Bea hid for three hours by simply sitting on top of Joe’s bed. I could reach up and unlatch it if I wanted to, but the day Gramps locked it was the last time anyone stepped foot in here.
    The air still smells like Joe; it delivers an invisible punch in the gut. My eyes adjust to the familiar shapes of his room. His clothes hang in the half-open closet. A little pile of his laundry sits in a heap on the floor. His bed is made, but everything else is exactly as it was the day he went into the hospital.
    I tiptoe over to his bookshelf, afraid if Mom hears movement in Joe’s room and gets up to find the door still locked, she’ll go right over the edge. His shelves are crammed with books that Dad wanted to donate to the local library and Mo m insisted we keep to be divided between Bea and me someday. It’s tricky to navigate without making noise. I want the biggest book on the shelf, his Anthology of American Literature , still dog-eared in a hundred places. When I free it, I flip through, tracing imprints of notes written in the margins.
    Nineteen minutes go by. I count the seconds. I sit perfectly still until I say “sixty” under my breath for the nineteenth time. It’s like I’m a cuckoo clock striking midnight. I stop counting and start ripping pages from his book. I tear slowly at first because I don’t want to wake anyone up, but at some point I stop caring and I’m thrashing around like the book and I are in a fight to the death, and there’s a confetti storm of paper floating around me.
    When there’s nothing left but two ragged covers, I curl up on the floor amid the mess.
    I wake up to my phone ringing. It’s still out on the roof. It takes me a second to realize where I am. The window is wide open. So is the bedroom door.
    The ringing stops and then starts again. I get up and lean out to grab it.
    â€œHello?” I say, rubbing my eyes. Everything is still dry and fuzzy, so I can’t see the number.
    â€œHey.”
    Pause.
    â€œUm … hey.”
    â€œIt’s Mateo.”
    â€œRight. Hi. Uh, how’d you get this number?”
    â€œIt’s on the waitress board that goes to all the catering jobs—you know, in case one of you flakes and we need an immediate replacement.”
    I’m pretty sure it only takes a second to recover, but in that time I’ve worked out (a) I am standing in a sea of shredded pages in my dead bruncle’s room, (b) I am talking to Mateo, who just called me, which means (c) he took down my number before pulling over and splitting the world’s biggest dessert and not kissing me. And this means (d) he might … wait, (e) I have no right to even be thinking like this or feeling a flutter of happy when I’m in Joe’s room and Joe’s gone and—
    â€œAnna?”
    â€œAh, yeah. I’m here. So did you need something or did I forget some—”
    â€œI just wondered what you are doing after work tonight.”
    â€œI’m … I’m busy. Sorry.”
    I hang up without saying goodbye.

Daily Verse:
    I was always looking backward. It took me a long time to appreciate the present.

14
    I stand. I walk toward the hallway. I head down the stairs.
    I do not prolong the inevitable.
    Logical deduction: open door means Mom knows where I slept. Which means she knows about the shredded book mess. Which means she knows I’m a bigger disaster than