Chapter 30 Jill
Jill
Jill pulled on a sweater and went into the bathroom to brush her hair.
The girl in the mirror looked like any other thirteen-year-old. Except for the eyes. Those belonged to someone much older.
Someone who’d seen things.
Of course, no one believed Jill’s version of what happened that night in July. The only living person who could’ve backed
her story refused to talk about it.
Jill’s parents handled the tragedy by running away. They dropped the dogs at the kennel, packed up their kids, and drove a
rented RV to the Great Smoky Mountains.
While divers searched for bodies in Cold Harbor and families the Scotts had known for years planned funerals for their lost
loved ones, the Scotts went canoeing and toasted marshmallows. They stayed at the Jellystone campground for a week, hiking
and fishing and eating lots of hamburgers and hot dogs.
On the way home, Jill’s dad stopped at a pay phone and made a few calls. She overheard him tell her mother that the search
and rescue team had found what they could, but a dozen empty caskets would be lowered into the ground the following week.
Jill’s parents delayed their return by another three days.
The family visited museums in DC and the Philly Zoo. They stopped in New Jersey to see Lucy the Elephant and spent their last
day at Adventureland, riding the Frisbee and the Dragon Wagon roller coaster.
By the time they got home, Una had been laid to rest.
Twelve children and fourteen adults had died the night of Charles’s party. Because their bodies were either missing or any
recovered parts were, as officials stated, “mutilated by aquatic animals,” their deaths were blamed on the fire. Cited as
the responsible party, the yacht rental company would later file for bankruptcy.
July turned to August, and Jill’s parents whispered when they thought she was out of earshot. They talked about taking her
to the psychiatrist Charles was seeing or sending her to live with her grandparents until school started. They talked about
how the newspaper coverage made the Bernsteins out as villains for their extravagance, how the Pulaskis had dodged a bullet,
and how lucky they were to have survived without a scratch. They exchanged theories about how the fireworks had caught fire
and where Mrs. Smith had disappeared to.
“She’s not in the house,” Jill heard her mother say one night. “You can feel how empty it is. Her damned vines are still growing,
though. They’ve covered the McCreedys’ fence again.”
“The new owners will have to deal with them,” her dad replied. “I have a feeling you’re going to be too busy to do other people’s
yard work.”
His prediction was correct.
In September, J.J. was sent to boarding school in Connecticut and the Bernsteins moved to Great Neck.
When they hired Jill’s mom as their Realtor and she found them a house away from the water, the only thing the Bernsteins asked for was a thirty-day closing.
A Gold Coast sign went up in front of their Cold Harbor house in August. It finally sold in November for tens of thousands less than the asking price.
Natalie became the seller’s agent of choice for all the families moving out of the area. She had so many listings that she
had to share some of them with Gina. She put a vase of yellow roses in every kitchen. She had platters of Mrs. Pulaski’s cookies
at every open house.
Mrs. Pulaski wouldn’t drive to the end of the street anymore, so Jill’s mom had to get the cookies from her house. If Jill
was in the car, she’d be sent to the door to collect the cookies. Mrs. Pulaski would always invite her in. While she wrapped
the platters in tinfoil, she’d give Jill a special treat and talk about the baby she and her husband were adopting.
As more and more houses were put up for sale, Mrs. Pulaski’s cookies appeared in their kitchens. Buyers sampled them in Heather’s
house. In Coach Patrick’s house. And in Aaron’s house. By Christmas, Jill’s mom was the top agent at Gold Coast. She bought
herself a gold necklace and enrolled Justin and Jill in private school. They’d start in January.
At seven each morning, a bus would pick them up at the top of the driveway, and it would drop them off at three thirty every
afternoon. Jill would be in charge of Justin until one of her parents got home from work.
There would be no more babysitters.
There would be no more counseling sessions with the minister from their church. Jill’s mother had decided it was time for
Jill to move on.
It was a thirty-minute drive to her new school. The building was a converted mansion and looked nothing like Jill’s boxy brown
public school. The classes were small, there was a strict dress code, and lunch was served family style, with a teacher at
the head of every table.
Most of the kids in Jill’s class had known each other since nursery school. On her first day, they stared at her like she was a specimen in a museum. They were fascinated to be so close to someone who’d survived the Bar Mitzvah Tragedy. But they were also unnerved by her.
She didn’t talk much. She rarely smiled. When a teacher called on her, her answers were mumbled. When she gazed at her classmates,
she seemed to be looking right through them. They had no idea that she saw ghosts at every empty desk.
At home, she struggled with her homework. Every subject was ten times harder than it had been at her previous school. Her
papers bled from all the red ink her teachers used when correcting her work. Her grades plummeted.
In early February, Jill had to use another study hall period to seek extra help in math. When she got to the classroom, her
teacher was packing her bag.
“Sorry, Jill, but I’m leaving early today.” She touched the soft mound of her belly. “We have a doctor’s appointment. I know
the word problems are giving you trouble, but I see how hard you’re working. Why don’t you stop by before homeroom tomorrow?
We’ll tackle those problems then.”
Jill nodded and her teacher left the room. From down the hall, someone shouted, “It’s snowing!”
Moving to the window, Jill put a hand on the cold glass and stared out at the snowflakes spiraling through the gray sky. The
math classroom overlooked the garden. The spindly bushes and brittle grass were already dusted with snow.
“Hello,” said a voice from the doorway.
Jill turned to see her English teacher, Mr. Tippy, smiling at her.
“Hi.”
Joining her at the window, he peered down at the garden. His smile widened, and Jill noticed that his eyes were the same color as the sky. Tapping lightly on the glass, he said, “This reminds me of a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Have you heard of him?”
Jill shook her head.
“It goes:
‘Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven. . .’”
They stood in comfortable silence for a moment. Then Mr. Tippy said, “I get the feeling you like words more than numbers.”
Jill laughed softly. The noise sounded foreign to her own ears. “Yeah.”
“Your writing is a bit like this snow. It’s a little hesitant. It drifts here and there. But I can tell you have a gift. A
special spark. Do you want to do more writing? Outside of class?”
“Like, for extra credit?”
Mr. Tippy shrugged. “Sure. But also because I think you have lots of stories in you. Stories that other people will want to
read. Some folks are born storytellers. I have a feeling you’re one of them.”
Jill’s calcified heart cracked a little. A flicker of warmth stirred in her chest.
“What’s the last thing you wrote about that wasn’t for school?”
The word slipped out before Jill could stop it. “Monsters.” She swallowed hard, forcing the memories that threatened to pour
out of her throat. “It was a story about monsters. But I didn’t keep it, and I don’t want to write that kind of stuff anymore.”
Still looking out the window, Mr. Tippy stroked the stubble on his chin. “Have you ever written about yourself as a monster?”
Seeing that Jill was thrown by the question, he added, “It’s easy to paint ourselves as the hero of a story. Who doesn’t love
a hero? But I think the villains are interesting, too. Why are they so angry? Why do they want to hurt those around them?
What’s the story behind those emotions? That would be my first challenge for you. Write a poem—a short one—from the monster’s
point of view.”
“I’ll try.”
Jill didn’t return to study hall. She closed the door and pulled a desk up to the window. As she watched the falling snow,
she thought about her typewriter—the blue one she’d gotten for her birthday and had never used.
She touched the keys sometimes, when she felt grief roll over her like a boulder. She’d gently push the U, then the N, then the A keys. She’d do this over and over, letting the tears fall.
Her parents said to put the past behind her.
Her minister said to trust in God’s plan.
For months, no one said anything that resonated with her.
Until now.
Jill could already see herself feeding a piece of paper, white and unblemished as the snow, into her typewriter.
She could hear the click click of the keys as her words marched across the paper like a line of ants.
She would accept Mr. Tippy’s challenge.
She would use her writing to grieve the loss of Una. Of her friends. She would use it to keep them alive, too. To memorialize
them on paper.
She would write to make it easier to endure the sight of the harbor. And Mrs. Smith’s house.
She would write to think about something other than that terrible face that had risen out of the water. The face that haunted Jill’s dreams, night after night.
Jill’s voice had been silent for months, but she was ready to use it again.
Tomorrow, when the storm hardened the water into stone and the harbor was completely frozen over, when all the boats were
hidden under a thick layer of snow, Jill Scott would go to her room, sit down in front of her typewriter, and become a monster.
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