Amy Bright - Before We Go

Copyright 2012 Amy Bright

EPub edition copyright July 2012 Amy Bright

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Published by Red Deer PressA Fitzhenry & Whiteside Company195 Allstate Parkway, MarkhamON, L3R 4T8www.reddeerpress.com

Edited for the Press by Kathy Stinson

Cover and text design by Daniel Choi

Cover image courtesy Shutterstock

We acknowledge with thanks the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Bright, Amy

Before we go / Amy Bright.

ISBN 978-0-88995-471-7

eISBN 978-1-55244-305-7

I. Title.

PS8603.R542B43 2012 jC813>.6 C2012-901853-8

Publisher Cataloging-in-Publication Data (U.S)Bright, Amy.

Before we go / Amy Bright.

[240] p. : cm.

Summary: When 17-year-old Emily visits her dying grandmother in hospital, she meets teenaged Alex and his sister. The three kids are propelled toward a surprising future by family secrets that have spanned generations.

ISBN: 978-0-88995-471-7 (pbk.)

eISBN 978-1-55244-305-7

1. Teenagers and deathJuvenile fiction. I. Title.

[Fic] dc23 PZ7.B7548Be 2012

For my sister Erin

chapter one

Emily wondered when she would start feeling the way they told her she would. She was holding a binder full of papers open on her lap, pages typed up neatly by nurses and doctors that outlined acceptable reactions for everything. They had titles like, "How to Deal with the Death of a Loved One" and "Is There Life After Death?" They were a set of instructions for how she was supposed to react to the fact that her grandmother was dying.

Most of the papers were part of thick information packets, stapled neatly together at the top left corner. The others were as brief as a single page, a bulleted listing embellished by flowered borders and colorless clip-art. They were supposed to be a reminder of how to get from point A to point B, directions, because she wasn't supposed to know the way. But all of them, Emily noticed, were missing the information she wanted most: the way back, back to before brochures, waiting rooms, and tight, straightened smiles.

"Kate?"

Emily quickly shoved the binder, the papers furtively tucked inside, into her backpack.

"It's me, Grandma," she said. "Emily. Mom's not here."

"Did you just get here?" Emily's grandmother asked. There was a crease between her eyebrows that smoothed out when she smiled. She coughed a few times, and Emily waited until she had finished to answer.

"A little while ago," Emily said. She had taken the bus to the hospital just after dinner. She had been sitting beside the bed for fifteen minutes with the papers from Dr. Lanagan, waiting for her grandmother to wake up.

"It's New Year's Eve," her grandmother said.

"Yeah."

"Are you going out tonight?"

"I'm going to stay here with you. Remember?"

Emily stroked out a wrinkle that had built in the sheets. Her heart beat a circle in her chest and she tried to make it still.

"I don't want you staying here all night."

"But I want to."

What she meant was but I have to .

Her grandmother gave a small shake of her head, like a twitch, an involuntary movement. She held her hand to her chest and swallowed back a fit of coughing that Emily knew would escape again before long.

"I'm staying," Emily repeated.

The hospital room was so bare that Emily felt like she was sitting in little more than a boxed-off space. The time she had spent here over the past few weeks blurred from distinct days into indistinct hours, almost like it wasn't happening to her at all.

There was a square metal table beside the hospital bed, the legs ending in wheels. Emily looked at the picture balanced on top of the table. Three faces were tucked carefully inside a frame: Emily, her grandmother, and her grandfather. The photo had been taken in the backyard of her grandparent's house the year before. Her grandfather had propped up the camera on a tripod and set it on a self-timer. There was no one behind the camera. It was only the three of them.

And now, here in the small room at the Victoria General Hospital, there were only two of them, Emily and her grandmother.

"I didn't know you brought this with you," Emily said.

She touched the corner of the glass, where her face was, and covered it behind her thumb. Emily wondered what it would have been like if her mom hadn't sent her to live with her grandparents, if it had just been her grandmother and grandfather in that big house together. Emily wouldn't have taken the bedroom on the second floor, or claimed the long kitchen table for homework. She took her hand away from the picture frame, leaving behind a fingerprint on the glass. She cleaned it off with the sleeve of her sweater.

Footsteps sounded from down the hall and slid into the silence of the room. Angela, one of the nurses at the hospital, appeared at the door. Her clipboard knocked against the outside of her thigh.

"Hi Emily," Angela said.

"Hi," Emily said.

"How are you feeling today, Mrs. Henderson?"

Emily's grandmother gave the sort of shrug that left a wide gap between her collarbone and hospital gown.

Angela moved quickly around the room and Emily pushed her chair backwards and sideways to stay out of the way. When Angela was finished, she stood back from the bed. Her hands wrapped tightly around one another.

"Are you sure you don't want me to bring up a tv for tonight? See the ball drop in New York and everything?"

"No," Emily's grandmother said. "I'm fine."

Emily knew her grandmother didn't want a reminder of the New Year. That she was leaving behind one year for another didn't make her happy or excited. She didn't have a list of resolutions to scribble down on paper or a tremendous belief that this year would be different . The last day of the year was just another ending.

"Are you going out tonight?" Emily asked Angela.

Emily picked at the cuticle of her thumb with her index finger, carefully, so that it didn't tear open.

"Can't," Angela said, tapping her clipboard. "I'm working. Are you?"

"I'm staying here tonight," Emily said.

Angela looked at her curiously.

"Emily, I'm sorry. Visiting hours end at seven."