Still, it’s not something I want to tell Chase. Could that explain the distance I feel growing between us?
Chase and I text at night-he’s positive Rita isn’t the murderer. I think he’s wrong, but I don’t want to fight him. I’m pretty sure neither of us wants to risk arguing. So we guard our words. We’re careful with each other. If I’ve moved away from Chase, he’s moved away from me, too. Maybe it’s just that we both know the trial is almost over and things will never be the same.
More than anything, I want to talk to Jeremy. I want to tell him about my father, about what I remember. I want to talk to Jer about Coach. My brother lost his father, and he’s had to grieve all by himself.
The night before Raymond’s closing, I can’t sleep. As I pace the living room, an August moon pushes its way inside the house so I don’t need to turn on lights. I miss Jeremy so much that it hurts my chest, my arms, my throat. I didn’t know missing could do that.
I wander into Jeremy’s room. The moonlight is even brighter here when I open the curtains all the way. I gaze around the room. This is the room of a little boy-baseball curtains, comic books, and his jars. The only poster is pinned to his door, one he made himself. It says: BEYOND HERE, THERE BE DRAGONS. Jeremy told me that’s what mapmakers used to write on unknown spaces on maps so travelers would know where they shouldn’t go.
Jeremy has been gone from this room for so long, but it still smells like him, like late-season grass and cherry Kool-Aid. I crumple to the floor, then lie on my back and peer up at his shelves of jars. Tomorrow that jury may decide whether or not my brother will ever come home. I want to pray. I know that’s what Jeremy’s doing. Only he never calls it praying. He just talks to God in his head. He doesn’t have to write. Maybe that makes it easier for him to talk to God than to talk to people.
It’s not that easy for me, but I close my eyes and try:
Dear God, this is me, Hope, talking to you in my head like Jeremy does. I guess I’ve clammed up on you like Jer has with the rest of us. Maybe we both got slapped somewhere along the way. You know he didn’t do this. You must have seen who actually did. If it’s Rita, then I don’t know what to say about that. Look, I know Jeremy hears you-you loaned him your song that once. I’m not asking for a whole song-but maybe just a note or two would be good. Thank you. Love, Hope.
Feeling a little better, I sit up too fast and bang my head on Jeremy’s bottom shelf. I spin around in time to see Jeremy’s glass jars wobble. One jar tips in slow motion and topples off the shelf before I can catch it.
Crash! The jar shatters into pieces that skid across the wood floor. I’m horrified. Jeremy would freak out if he saw this.
I drop to all fours and scramble to pick up the lid. It’s rimmed with broken glass, and my finger slices across it, mingling blood with jagged shards. The bottom of the jar lies upside down at my feet. I can make out writing there, something scrawled on the glass in black marker. Carefully, I examine the bottom of the jar. It says: 9:23 a.m., May 4. The date is there too, faded and harder to read. But I make it out-it’s three years ago, about the time Rita moved us to Ohio.
I’m stumped. Was Jeremy dating the time he got his jars? I guess it makes as much sense as anything else in this room. I think I may have seen him scribbling on the bottom of a jar a couple of times. Since he’s always been so private about his collection, I never paid much attention.
I start to clean up the mess when I see a piece of paper wedged underneath the lid of the broken jar. I pull it out and unfold it, careful not to drip blood from my cut finger onto the paper. The writing is Jeremy’s tight, controlled calligraphy, the only thing controlled in his life. I hold the slip of paper up to the moonlight. It says: Air on the day Rita smiled and Yellow Cat purred.
Yellow Cat. The old yellow cat that was living in this house before we rented it, the cat Rita made us turn over to the animal control people.
Why would Jeremy write that?
I pick up another jar, a tall, skinny one that once held olives for Rita’s martinis. I remember the night-about a year ago?-when Rita caught Jeremy dumping out an almost full jar of olives. He needed a jar, and we were all out of empties. If Rita hadn’t been so drunk, I think she would have killed him. I hid him under my bed until she got over it.
My mind is already flashing images at the speed of light. Jeremy, his arms raised above his head, like thin branches against a black sky. While his bony fingers clasp a lid in one hand, an empty jar in the other, he sweeps the sky like he’s catching fireflies… or maybe stars. Then, with angel eyes and a devilish grin, he twists the lid on tight, like the earth might stop spinning if he didn’t do it right.
On the bottom of this olive jar is a date, close to a year and a half ago, and the time: 10:22 p.m. I open the jar and turn over the lid. I knew it. There’s a piece of paper stuck there, under the lid. I can’t unfold it fast enough. It reads: Air on a perfect starry night, sprinkled with Hope’s laughter.
Air? That’s it. Air. My brother didn’t collect empty jars. He collected air. Did this jar contain the air from one of our stargazing nights a year and a half ago? Had Jeremy trapped that night in an olive jar, saved that moment? I can almost feel a chill in the air and those stars loosed in his room, mingling with atoms of Kool-Aid and grass.
I look around at the dozens and dozens and dozens of glass jars filled with Jeremy’s collectible moments. Air. My mind is a slide show on speed: Jeremy, his jar sweeping air above his head as he rides that pinto around the pasture; air captured as the church choir sings “Amazing Grace”; air gathered from the top of a slide when I took him to the park. Jeremy taking a canning jar from a store in Salina, Kansas, and running straight to the middle of a wheat field. Did he capture the scent of grain and the feel of dust and sunshine? In Chicago, Jeremy grabbing jars from the fridge and dumping their contents on the floor… to fill the jars with memories.
How long has he been collecting air? When did he start? I try to remember.
There’s a system to the jars. If I know my brother at all, he’s ordered this world of glass and air. Where I’m standing, the jars are three years old. I want to know when he started. I follow the shelf all the way back to the door. First shelf, first jar, a peanut butter jar. I turn it over and check the bottom. It’s hard to make out, but I can read the month, February, and the year-a decade ago, the year my brother stopped talking. I remember we came home to our shack in Minneapolis, and Jeremy scooped out the last drop of peanut butter, eating it right from the jar and not giving me any. I thought he was mad on account of Rita hitting him for no reason.
I know I shouldn’t open this jar. I have no right. Jeremy has saved the air of that day for over ten years. He wouldn’t want that day to show up in his room now. But I can’t help myself. I can’t keep my fingers from turning the lid, from lifting it off, from stripping the yellowed paper away from the lid, from unfolding the secret message: Air from the day Jeremy Long stopped talking.
“Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy.” I hug the jar and slide to the floor, where I rock back and forth. Tears blur the air swirling in Jeremy’s bedroom. How could I have missed it? I should have known the jars meant more than empty glass.
I survey the walls of shelves, all full except for one, the bottom shelf across the room, where half a dozen jars have started a new row. The last row? My heart speeds up. Jeremy was collecting jars, collecting air, right up to the day of the murder. He always had his pack with him and empty jars in the pack. Did he collect air that morning?