The Astonishing Color of After(45)

“My grandparents were killing me,” Caro was saying as we went down to her basement. “Half the time they sat in the lodge making out. And Mom kept trying to check out other girls for me, which was too weird. Plus, you know, unfair to Cheslin.”

I smiled.

“I’m pretty sure one girl heard her say, ‘What about that chick? Think she’s hot?’ It was mortifying. But other than that, it was really fun.”

“That’s awesome,” I said.

She tilted her head. “All right, out with it. What’s up?”

“What?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ve been listening to me, but you haven’t been a hundred percent present. Something’s up.” She glanced at Axel, who was sitting on a stool with his back to us, gazing at the wall of Caro’s photography. There was a question in the look she gave me.

“Well, we went through all those boxes in my basement.”

She didn’t question the we. She and I had still never discussed Axel, though I had a feeling she’d puzzled out a good amount.

“I knew it!” she said. “You found something.”

“A few somethings,” I told her. I showed her the bracelet and the Emily Dickinson book. I saved the photograph for last. “I was hoping you might be able to tell… something. Anything. Like how old it might be?”

She turned the picture in her hands, examining the edges and the back before taking a real look at the subject. “Who are they?”

“I have no idea. If I can figure a possible time period… maybe that’ll be a clue. Though Axel’s convinced that one of the girls is my grandmother.” I glanced at Axel’s back. He’d been weirdly quiet since we got to the Renards’. It occurred to me that he might, in fact, be feeling shy.

Caro shook her head. “I don’t know enough about the history of photography papers. I’d be able to give you a better idea if it were a carte de visite or like a cabinet card. All I can guess is… the oldest this could be is maybe like, early nineteen hundreds? But chances are it was made way after that.”

I tried not to look disappointed.

“What about the Emily Dickinson book?” said Caro. “What’s the copyright date on that?”

“It’s not dated,” said Axel as I opened the cover. “I already looked.”

I checked anyway. “What kind of book isn’t dated?”

“A super old one?” Caro suggested.

“So here we are,” said Axel. “An old bracelet. An old book of poetry. And an old photograph. Anyone else have any ideas?”

“We need brain food,” said Caro. “Then maybe we’ll have ideas. I vote Fudge Shack.”

“I’m allergic to fudge,” said Axel.

“Oh,” said Caro, clearly thrown off.

“He’s not allergic.” I rolled my eyes. “I once watched him eat six huge blocks of maple walnut fudge in one sitting. Paired with a liter of Diet Coke. At three in the morning.”

“Right, and then I puked in your bathtub. An allergic reaction.”

“We can go,” I said, ignoring him. “We just have to monitor his intake.”

“I’m not a babysitter, so I’m not monitoring anybody,” said Caro. “But know this: Puke in my bathtub, dude, and I will end you.”

Axel pounded a fist on his chest until a rough burp came out. “Acknowledged.”

I hid a smile. They were going to get along great.

While we waited in line at Fudge Shack I looked up Emily Dickinson on my phone. The depressing thing? She published hardly anything while she was still alive. Nobody had any clue who the hell she was. She was just there, writing poem after poem. It was only after her death that she became relevant.

But also, apparently Dickinson asked her sister to burn everything she wrote. I guess she never wanted to become relevant in the first place.

The burning, though… that’s what I didn’t understand. Even if you didn’t want to share your work with the world—even if you were private about it—wouldn’t you want to be remembered?





Dad was home in time for dinner, and he found me curled up on the couch, shading a drawing while I waited for Mom to call us into the dining room. He sat down on the piano bench, facing me. He wanted to have An Important Conversation; I braced myself for it.

“That’s interesting,” he said, eyeing my art pad. This was a large one—it took up my whole lap and stretched wide past my elbows. It was pretty obvious that this specific piece—a more fantastical work with a melting sun and fish swimming through a sky of asteroids—had taken me a long, long time.

Funny word choice, on his part. He did not actually sound interested. When he opened his mouth again, I knew that whatever came out was going to annoy me.

“Is that all you’ve been working on lately?”

“Oh, I actually spend most of my time at school, you see. And when I get home, I have this thing called homework that won’t do itself, despite modern-day technologies. So as much as I would prefer to not go to school and instead spend all my time drawing and sleeping, the answer is no, unfortunately. I’ve been working on life in general, lately.”

“I just think,” Dad said slowly, “that you’re so full of potential, Leigh. Don’t you see how this might not be the best use of your time? There are other things you could apply this energy to. Other things you could really excel at, that might help you figure out your path down the road.”