Day 13

Klára couldn’t sleep all night. She was too nervous. She lie still on the floor with a blanket pulled up to her chin and contemplated instead what her life would be like if she and Henry won fifty thousand dollars. After the show was over the night before Anne and Charlie had insisted that her brothers and sister accompany them back to their apartment for a little celebration of sorts. They had had dinner on the roof of the apartment building, with Jopie peering curiously over the edge until she thought she had to cough. She was scared of falling from how badly she shook when she coughed. Then when they tried to leave, again Anne worked her charm on Charlie and they all spent the night. It would be an important day, after all.

 

They had put Markus and Nik on the bed that pulled out from the couch, Jopie in the window seat, and Klára and Henry retreated to the floor. They could still see very clearly out the window at the sky, and stared outside, talking quietly about how the day had gone. Klára talked a bit about her life back in Prague, but not enough to make her sad like usual.

 

Henry stirred beside her, stretched, and accidentally grazed one of her flat breasts with his pale wrist. He jerked awake and let out a slow huff of air. “Sorry, sorry,” he muttered sleepily, and Klára couldn’t help laughing a little. He nudged her arm with his. “Y’think I’m funny, eh?”

 

“Maybe,” she whispered back, her voice slightly slurred. She must have been more tired than she thought. His face was blurry and soft in the half-light of the morning, his eyes only dark spots in his shadowed face. She wondered if he could see her face, everything that was going through her sleep-deprived brain. She turned carefully onto her side, still being cautious with her shoulder, but it didn’t hurt much anymore. He rolled to face her too, but she could tell he was falling back asleep. “Henry, stay awake!”

 

He snapped to attention again, and a small breathy laugh escaped her again. “Henry, I wanna ask you.” He leaned in closer to her, looking so different in a ratty t-shirt and sweatpants than when he wore faded denims and a thick coat on the sidewalk. She could smell his vague but sharp scent, not quite that of a man but no longer the smell of a boy. “You will really go away to university if we win?” she asked, feeling a stab of shame just for asking. She had no business making Henry feel guilty for achieving the dreams she never would.

 

His dark shadow of a mouth seemed to distort slightly as he thought. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I had been about to go before everything got messy, and I kept telling myself that I’d make another go at it once I got things back in order, so…so yeah. If I don’t do it now, I never will.”

 

He was right. Klára knew he was right, but that didn’t make her feel any less like crying. What would she do once he was gone? Where would she go? Surely with fifty thousand dollars to spend, Anne and Charlie would find a better place to live with a door that didn’t stick, and she would never find them again. She wondered if it wasn’t better that way. Falling in love with Henry and loving his family as dearly as she loved her own would only break her heart. It was either getting lighter or her eyes had adjusted to the dark, because she could see Henry’s eyes now; he was searching her face hungrily. “Klára? Klára what are you thinking of? You’re not mad at me, are you?”

 

Klára shook her head earnestly, and she really did mean it. But her mouth betrayed her, for when she opened it to tell him how happy for him she would be if he got the chance to go to school it refused to work. Her throat made a small, strangled sort of sound, and the next thing she knew Henry was hugging her and she was crying silent tears into his shoulder. No, stop being stupid, she told herself sternly and forcibly blinked away her tears and pushed off from Henry’s chest. “I am to miss you very much,” she said at last, trying to sound as nonchalant about the matter as possible, but her voice was weak and shook quite a lot. “But this…this university…it is very important, and so you go and it will be good.” She rolled onto her back again and stared straight up at the white bumpy ceiling.

 

“It would be good…if you came, too.” Henry’s hand grasped hers and squeezed.

 

Klára felt her heart would burst right out of her chest with mingled happiness and despair. She had never felt emotions conflict so strongly before in all her life. She squeezed his hand back so strongly that it hurt down to her bones. She had to take in a deep breath before speaking. “We will win, Henry. I feel it.”

 

***

 

Henry had to make himself sit on his hands in order to sit still at the award ceremony. He was stuck in his dad’s only suit, but the jacket was too slim and so he had only the pants, shirt, and vest on. He was sweating with nerves; Klára’s youngest brother had wandered off, she and Markus had had to chase after him, and she hadn’t yet shown up. This brother was apparently a fiend for running off.

 

After checking his watch for what had to be the dozenth time, Henry turned in his seat and found his parents sitting in the back with little Jopie, who grinned broadly and waved. The twelve-year-old had taken somewhat of a shine to him, constantly demanding (in both Czech and what little English she knew) that he sit beside her at all times and positively begging him to sing her a song. Only Klára’s interference kept the little girl from annoying Henry to the point of murder.

 

Just as the MC from the night before mounted the stage to announce the winners, a side-door opened and in stumbled Klára with her two brothers, ashen-faced and gasping for air from running. Henry tried to catch her eye but she was too busy trying to find a place to sit without drawing attention to herself, scolding Nikolas under her breath the whole time. Henry fought a smile and looked up at where the MC was waiting for attention. Cameras flashed, and news crews all around the room pointed at the man who had obviously gone to great pains to make himself look good.

 

Without much ado, he grabbed the microphone in his hand and started talking as if in the middle of a sentence, shaken by the sight of the cameras. Henry didn’t even have enough time to get more nervous. “All of the winners were chosen by a panel of unbiased judges. The second runner-up and winner of twenty thousand dollars is Bonnie Marshall, for her, ah, ‘rhythmic dancing’.” The little baton-twirler girl ran onto the stage, accepted her check, and ran off again without even taking a bow, while the audience of families clapped politely for her.

 

Henry’s stomach twisted as he instantly began bargaining for anything, a voice in the back of his mind whispering something sounding off with the prize money. He would settle for second place. He didn’t need the whole fifty thousand. He and Klára could get by perfectly happy with ten thousand dollars each. He looked back at his parents and Jopie (who waved) again; his mom seemed to be barely breathing and his dad had his head in his hands. Jopie was completely unconcerned, as far as he could tell. He looked in the other direction to find Klára, and barely found her among all the families. She and her brothers’ hands were laced together tightly between them, and they all had their eyes tightly shut as if they were praying.

 

“The first runner-up and winner of fifty thousand dollars is…aw, jeez…No-bu-yu-ki Yo-na-mu-ra, for playing violin.” There were a few awkward laughs at the MC’s ruffled and sour look while a tiny Japanese boy ran up, took his check, grinned and waved down at his parents, and then walked off.

 

Now he was really going to be sick. Henry clamped his jaw shut and squeezed the underside of his thighs so tightly he just knew he would bruise, not even registering the amount of money the MC said. He couldn’t take it, he really couldn’t. He started breathing heavy and fast and put his head between his knees to keep from passing out. What if they lost it all? Or what if they won it all? Oh, god, they had a chance and they had no chance. Simultaneously. Then all the blood rushed to his head and he couldn’t hear if the MC was talking or not, so he had to sit up.

 

“Would the first place winners and their families please step onstage when their names are called. The first place winners of one hundred thousand dollars are Henry D�"”

 

Henry’s mind went numb as he heard his parents scream, and his eyes instantly went to Klára. Her face was in her hands and her shoulders were heaving as her brothers shouted on either side of her, bouncing her between them like a tennis ball in their excitement. His head darted around like a chicken’s until finally the old man who had played the flute and was sitting beside him punched him on the shoulder. “Get up there, kid!”

 

He shot to his feet, looked back at his hysterical family (and Jopie, who was jumping up and down in place so much that she had to sit down again she was coughing so much) and shouted “MOM, I NEED YOU!” His parents started fighting their way through the audience as he looked at Klára. She was looking around for him. He started waving his arms around like a goon until she saw him, and then grandly pointed toward the stage. She dragged her brothers up to the front of the room, released them, and ran at Henry like a madwoman on the floor in front of the stage. She grabbed his face tightly between her hands, and for a moment he thought she would kiss him.

 

“Did you hear him?!” she sobbed. “One hundred thousand dollars, Henry!” Then she closed her arms around his neck like a vice, wailing openly into his neck with happiness.

 

There were four small thumps as his parents and her brothers crashed into them, laughing and crying and cheering at the tops of their voices, and finally they wrestled their way onstage in one mass of flesh and bodily fluids. The whole room was on its feet when Henry took the check (not of any fantastic size, just an ordinary check made out for 100-grand; aw, who was he kidding? It was the most amazing check on the planet!) and trapped the MC in a hug. The man flailed uselessly for a moment before giving his back an awkward little pat and squirming free. He shook Klára’s hand (she kissed his); still with tears streaming from her eyes and sobs wracking her whole tiny body. Then he murmured something to Henry’s parents and walked offstage without even a glance back.

 

Henry couldn’t care less as he wrapped his arms around Klára, lifted her into the air, and swung her around. She clung to him and cried so much that his shirt was partially saturated within moments. He put her back on the ground and took her face in his hands and god; he wished she would randomly decide to give him kissing-permission.

 

Instead he hugged her again, and they remained in the building celebrating long after the other performers and their families and the audience and Bob Dylan and Prince had gone.