The Shape of Things (Continued)
by Ellen Steiber
That evening Nonie shows up at my house, carrying a cardboard box she can barely lift. I see her struggling with it as she comes up the walk. She has to set it down to ring the doorbell.
By this time, I'm downstairs, opening the door. "What is that?"
"I told you," she says. "My journals."
She opens the lid and sure enough, the entire box is filled with spiral–bound notebooks. She looks around nervously. "Are you the only one home?"
"Yeah, my folks are at that town meeting, and Patrick's over at Billy Hunter's, taking apart his car." I stare at the box. "You actually filled all these notebooks?"
She grins at me. One of her front teeth is a little longer than the others. It gives her this slightly crooked grin. "Socorro always told me I was wordy. Guess she was right."
I look through the box. On the cover of each notebook Nonie's written her name, the word Journal, and the dates she started and ended her entries. The earliest one goes back to second grade.
"Nonie, if you don't want your mom to read these things, why don't you just burn 'em? That way they'll be safe forever."
She smiles when I say that. "That's a good way to think of it," she tells me.
"What?"
"Death. I'll be safe forever."
All this talk of her imminent demise is starting to creep me out. Partly 'cause she's so sure, partly 'cause she's so calm, and partly 'cause I seem to have a role to play in it.
"You're right," she says. "We should burn 'em." She gives me that loopy grin. "Think your dad will mind if we make a bonfire in your front yard?"
"You know he'd have a cardiac if he came home and saw a fire blazing away on our lawn." My father is a fire fighter. "Besides. . " Somehow I can't bear the idea of Nonie being gone and me having burned all her journals.
So we push the box up the stairs, and I'm just grateful I'm the only one home and don't have to explain this to anyone.
Nonie seems satisfied when we get the box under my desk. "Remember," she tells me. "No matter what my mother says, or how pathetic she seems, don't let her see these."
"I won't," I say.
"You've got to swear."
"Nonie, you're scaring me," I tell her.
"Swear it!"
So I swear to keep the journals away from her mom in the event of her death. And I make her promise to take the damn things back if she lives to be seventeen.
* * * * *
For a few weeks nothing calamitous or dramatic happens. Nonie and I go to school, cut as many classes as we can get away with, smoke cigarettes on the hill. She doesn't say anything more about dying, and I'm figuring it's lung cancer that will probably get us both. I also figure we still got some time on that one. I notice, though, that whenever we hang out Nonie starts humming this little tune. It's not something that you hear on the radio or in music videos.
"What is that?" I finally ask. I can't tell if it's familiar to me because I've heard her hum it so many times or because it's something I should recognize. She sings it quiet, but it's got this relentless beat, like it's pushing something along.
"Don't know," she tells me. "But I started hearing it in my mind right around the time I realized I was going to die. So I figure it's the death song calling me."
"That's it!" I tell her. "You are giving me the willies! I don't want to hear any more about your premonitions or death chants —"
"Death song," she corrects me.
"Whatever. I don't want to hear about it."
She takes a last drag on her cigarette and crushes it beneath her boot. "Fair enough," she says. "I won't talk about it anymore. Talking can't change anything anyway. But I figured you knew. I figured you saw the change."
My heart is hammering now, and the hair on the back of my neck is standing straight up. "What change?"
"In my aura," she says. "There always used to be this fine blue light around me. And bit by bit, it's getting darker. Won't be long now before it goes black."
I look at her. She's got her back to the setting sun, so there's kind of a red glow in the sky behind her.
Her voice sounds surprised when she says, "You don't see it, do you?"
I shake my head. "I never could. I don't even know if all these auras you're always seeing are real."
"They're real, all right," she says so soft I can barely hear.
"So this death of yours," I try to keep my voice steady, "do you see a shape for it?" I'm imagining auto accidents, drive–by shootings, fires, movie–of–the–week hospital diseases.
She smiles. "That's the weird thing," she says. "I do. I mean, I have for a while, and it's shaped like a big cat."
That actually calms me down. There aren't any big cats in this part of the state. We don't even have a zoo. I figure for Nonie to get eaten by a big cat, she'd have to hop a plane to Central America.
She kicks at a piece of broken beer bottle on the ground. "I got a secret," she says. "For a few weeks now. Want to hear it?"
I am wondering how I ever wound up with someone who's so completely exasperating for a friend.
"I am not going to pry it out of you," I say. "Tell me if you want, or don't."
Nonie starts to laugh. "I got a boyfriend," she says, "a real, honest–to–goodness boyfriend."