Free Stay With Me by Garret Freymann-Weyr

#7674 pick up. Eyebrows. Check flour stats. 4:00 w/ T. Caffé Acca. Lettuce for C.
    T. That's not overly helpful. I pick up Rebecca's address book and almost scream when some pages fall out from the ancient binding. The book's not well organized—Raphael, for example, is under
C
(for
cousin
?)—and there are thirty-one people in the
T
section. Even if I knew what to say, I don't think I could place thirty-one phone calls to strangers. I put the datebook and address book back in their places. Then I sit on Rebecca's bed, asking whatever is left of her to forgive me for trespassing. And to let me know, if she can, how to find T.
     
    I've been putting off quitting the tech crew. It will upset my parents, especially if I have to explain how I've reduced
The Children's Hour,
a play considered a political masterpiece (I've looked it up; this is the agreed-on opinion), to a reminder of Rebecca's death. Not to mention, how will it look to colleges?
    How I will look to colleges is a question that has been stalking me since the end of tenth grade. Except that I need another four years to figure out what it is I want to do in the theater, I don't care about college so much. It matters a lot to my father, though. I only hope that the college I wind up liking is a place he thinks is good. Clare's college—a small, ruthlessly competitive place in Pennsylvania that made Da very proud of her—is not an option for me.
    "No one expects you to go there," Clare says.
    "Maybe no one expects it," I say. "But Da would love it if I got in."
    "I wouldn't love it," she says. "I was hideously miserable there."
    This is Clare's favorite thing to say about herself. Hideously miserable in college. Loved law school, but hideously miserable during her two years at the law firm. Madly in love with Elias (the
vile example of humanity
she lived with) until the last eight months of their relationship. Hideously miserable until Gyula found her. And, then,
Oh, joy.
    While
hideously miserable
is pretty easy to figure out, Clare means different things when she says
Oh, joy.
Ben, who spends just enough time with us to notice certain details, thinks it's always the opposite. That-Clare means
What misery.
But I think it's more along the lines of Janie's comment about being blonde: joy's not all it's cracked up to be.
    "How about a job?" Clare asks when I explain the trouble I'm having quitting the tech crew.
    She'd been in complete agreement with Raphael that it was the wrong time for me to work on this play.
    "A job," I say, trying to picture it. "I guess."
    "I mean a fun job. One you'd like instead of one that will look good."
    "What about Da?" I ask.
    "I don't think he knows a lot of fun jobs," Clare says. "God, one year, he got Rebecca and me jobs in the hospital's processing department. I've never willingly filed since."
    So it's lucky she has both a secretary and a research assistant.
    "No, what do I tell Da," I say. "About quitting."
    "You could
not
tell him," she says. "Although that might make it seem like we're hiding something."
    Clare taps her glasses with her pen, a habit that can make Gyula grab her wrist. He says her eyes are the best way he has of guessing her thoughts.
So, please, do not have the risk to poke them out.
    "Without your eyes," he said, "I will not know that you are happy to see me."
    Clare considered Gyula and I saw what he meant. Her face had a composed, neutral look, but there was, behind seemingly calm eyes, a building laugh.
    "You're always free to ask," Clare said.
    "She's happy," I said, before remembering that Raphael had called my sister's life with Gyula complicated. I should probably stay out of it.
    "Yes, it is so," Gyula said. "I know, but I like to see it."
    And then Clare did smile at him and I wondered why Rebecca hadn't liked him. Watching Clare and Gyula was like seeing a man who didn't know quite what to do with his most treasured possession. Together they reminded me of a chandelier. One where the crystals and