27. Noodle
“I can’t believe this is really real.”
Chloe sits on the front steps of the library, her skirt tucked around her legs as she flips through the pages of Wuthering Heights. Even though her voice sounds as calm as usual, her eyes are wide and her hands shake as she makes her way through.
She glances up at me—well, probably at Zach, but since we’re standing next to each other, it’s basically the same thing.
“There’s writing on almost every page,” she says. She stabs her finger at a line in the second half. “Look. This is the part where Heathcliff and Catherine are sitting up in a tree together. ‘He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle, and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half-alive, and he said mine would be drunk; I said I should fall asleep in his, and he said he could not breathe in mine.’”
Next to me, Zach doesn’t move. He’s been acting kind of funny ever since I showed him the book, but not in a way that makes sense to me. He’s not mad—that much I know for sure—but I don’t think he’s happy, either. In fact, the more I think about it, the more he seems like Chloe around Christmastime. She’s really good at helping us make decorations for the tree and baking cookies and stuff, but I know she feels bad about how many presents there are. Or aren’t.
“What does she have to say about that?” he asks. “Our Catherine?”
I don’t think Chloe has noticed how weird Zach is yet. We pulled her out of work on her lunch break, so she’s probably busy thinking about book catalogs and story time.
“She says, ‘Isn’t it funny how unoriginal we are as human beings? A hundred and seventy-five years later, and here we are, living the same lives and making the same mistakes. You’re up in the tree, watching the clouds and breathing the air, and all I want is to run away to the next field over. At the very least, I could have been the Heathcliff in our relationship. That would have been a fun switch.’” Chloe lifts the book so we can see.
“I don’t understand any of it,” she says before we can read it for ourselves. “Catherine obviously wrote in this book as a kind of farewell to Jasper. She meant for him to read it after she was gone. But why did she leave? And why does Jasper think she died?”
I’m happy to have at least one of those answers. It’s not very often that I know something Chloe doesn’t.
“Jasper said they were going to have a baby together. He was so upset when she wouldn’t marry him that he hit a guy.” I pause, remembering his words, and add, “He also said violence is never the answer, and that it’s not okay to hurt other people just because you hurt, too.”
Chloe’s head swivels toward Zach. I get the feeling she didn’t really hear that second part.
“Is that true?” she asks. “He proposed and Catherine said no? She was pregnant? And you didn’t tell me?”
Zach looks as uncomfortable as I feel whenever I have to be polite to grown-ups I don’t like.
“In my defense, I meant to,” he says. “I was going to tell you the next time we hung out, but you’ve been so busy with your mom that I haven’t had a chance.”
Instead of saying something soothing, like she usually does, Chloe narrows her eyes. “You couldn’t text?”
“And say what? That Jasper laid his deepest, darkest secret at my feet?”
“Well, yeah, actually. You know how invested I am in this.”
Zach’s voice gets quiet. “You’ve got a lot on your plate right now. I didn’t want to overload it.”
That’s when Chloe does a thing I’ve never seen her do before. She gets mad. Like, really mad—the kind that makes your skin turn red and your face get ugly, though I don’t think Chloe could ever be that. She also jumps to her feet so fast that her bag spills all over the steps.
“You think Jasper’s illegitimate love child is the thing that’s going to break me?” she says, and in a voice that’s so loud it counts as yelling. “Of all the things I’ve done in my life—the jobs I’ve slogged through, the plans I’ve given up, the mother currently sitting in my living room acting as though she isn’t responsible for every last bit of it—you think finally solving the riddle to this book saga is one thing I can’t handle?”
Zach doesn’t even flinch. He starts picking up Chloe’s spilled notebooks and ChapStick instead. “I said I was sorry.”
“Don’t do that,” Chloe says as she snatches the purse away from him. She shovels the rest of her stuff in. “I’ll clean up the mess. It’s the one thing I’m halfway good at.”
Zach steps back, looking a lot like he wants the world to open up and swallow him whole—either that, or to run away from these library steps and never come back again. I’m so afraid for this second one that I speak up before Chloe can start yelling again.
“Are you going to show the book to Jasper?” I ask. “Or did you want me to sneak it back on the shelf? I can, if you want me to. As soon as my leg’s better, he said I can visit the cabin whenever I want. He’ll never know I took it.”
Chloe hesitates, and when she looks at Zach, I can tell that she’s not as upset anymore. “It’s not the worst idea in the world. If he really thinks Catherine’s dead and gone—”
“He does,” Zach says grimly.
Chloe continues as if he hasn’t spoken. “And if he purposely avoided this book because it was too painful—” She waits for another interruption, but Zach stays quiet. She shrugs to match him. “Then maybe the kindest thing we can do is let the broken pieces lie. Take it from one who knows. Sometimes, it’s better if the past stays where it belongs. Because once you let it back into your house again…”
Her voice trails off, and I can tell she’s talking about Mom. I hang my head.
“I never should’ve called her, should I?” I ask guiltily. “I’m sorry. I thought she might help, but she’s only making stuff harder for you. Theo and Trixie are gone. You and Zach are fighting. I ruined things. I always ruin things.”
“No. No!” All of a sudden, Chloe is crouched down in front of me. She wants to hug me, I can tell, but she clasps her hands in front of her instead. “Noodle, this isn’t your fault, okay? None of this is your fault. You just got caught up in a lot of adult nonsense that never should’ve been yours to worry about in the first place.”
I look to Zach, glad to find him nodding and smiling again. “Your sister is right, Aloysius. I shouldn’t have let you get dragged into all this. When I came here, I never thought… That is, I didn’t plan—”
For the first time since Zach first came dashing to my rescue, it seems as if he has no idea what to do. I don’t like it.
And neither, I think, does Chloe. She reaches out and touches his arm.
“Hey,” she says. “That goes for you, too. None of this mess is your fault, and I wouldn’t blame you if you disappeared into the woods and as far away from my family as you can get. I know I warned you that we were a package deal, but what I failed to mention is that the package is busted all to hell. Most people would take one look at us and throw it out.”
He touches her hand super quick before hopping down a few steps and putting a huge gap between them. That’s my first clue that something bad is about to happen. The second is when he takes a big long breath.
I know what that big long breath means. I’ve heard it so many times in my life that I sometimes think everyone around me has lungs the size of the sky.
“I’d have preferred to save this conversation for a different setting—and a different time—but I don’t see any way around it,” he says, and so seriously that it makes me feel itchy all over. “I’m afraid we can’t put that book back in Jasper’s cabin.”
My sister blinks. “Why not? Did you already show it to him? Because—”
Zach holds up a hand to stop her from saying more. “No, I haven’t shown it to him. I probably should have, but I wanted to get my grandmother’s take on it first. That was…a mistake.”
Chloe’s brows snap together. “What are you talking about? What does your grandmother have to do with anything?”
My heart thuds when I see Zach frown.
“I hoped maybe it was all a misunderstanding, but I was wrong,” he says.
I’m not sure what this means, but Chloe does. Her face goes white and she drops her purse all over again.
“You have to understand,” he adds in a funny voice. I want to ask what’s going on, but I don’t think either one of them remembers I’m here. “She never really talked about him. She never really talked about any of it. That’s why I moved here in the first place. Unfortunately, as soon as I told her about you and your literary scavenger hunt, she booked a flight out here. I’m supposed to pick her up from the airport tomorrow.”
“It can’t be,” Chloe says, her words so quiet they’re carried away by the air. “You aren’t his—”
“It very much is,” Zach says with a grimace. “And I’m afraid I very much am.”