After Eli by Rebecca Rupp

Author:Rebecca Rupp [Rupp, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780763661946
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2012-11-05T13:00:00+00:00

Walter’s least favorite period of history is the Dark Ages, due to bubonic plague, lack of computers, general ignorance, and the divine right of kings.

Isabelle’s least favorite is the Victorian era, due to whalebone corsets, turgid novels, and the unavailability of birth control.

This last was why Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had nine kids. Queen Victoria lived to be eighty-one, but Prince Albert died of typhoid at the age of forty-two. The queen never got over his death. She wore nothing but black for the rest of her life. She even pretended that Albert was still around.

She ordered the maids to lay out fresh clothes for him every morning and to bring hot shaving water to his room. Visitors to the palace still had to sign Albert’s guest book as well as the queen’s, so he could see who had come to call. Everything was kept as if he was still alive and had maybe just gone out for a stroll around the garden before lunch. It was like the death version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” I mean, everybody knew Albert was dead as a doornail, but they pretended right along with the queen.

That’s what my mom did too, with Eli. Everything in his room was just the way he left it. All his clothes were still in his bureau drawers or on hangers in his closet, and his posters were still on the wall, along with the big tacked-up piece of brown paper that he used for writing down messages and phone numbers and important thoughts. His brown paper said things like “Jar Jar Binks Must Die!”

His clock radio was still set for his favorite station, though it never came on anymore, and all his books were still in his bookcase. Even the couple of books he’d had on his bedside table when he went off to war were still right where he’d left them, with the bookmarks stuck in them.

I didn’t go in there anymore, though, because once when I did, rummaging around for a pencil, my mom totally freaked. She came running down the hall with her bathrobe undone and her hair snarled up and witchy and her eyes all wild.

“What are you doing in here?” she said. Then she said it again, louder. “What are you doing in here?”

And then when she saw the open desk drawer, she yelled, “Don’t touch his things!”

“It’s just a pencil,” I said. “Eli wouldn’t care.”

“Leave it alone!” she said. “Get away from there, Danny! Don’t come in here!”

And her face got all red and splotchy, and she shoved me out of the room and slammed the door.

I used to wish that Eli would come back as a ghost. I figured I’d be the only one who could see him, because kids are sensitive to ghosts, like that kid in the movie Sixth Sense who could see dead people. I imagined him sitting at the end of my bed, maybe looking a little transparent and soap bubbly, the way ghosts

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