9. Together Among the Ten Thousand Things

It ends up being weeks before Jameelah finally learns to make flower chains.

Uncle Clay has to stay in the hospital for a while. That bothers Jameelah a lot because she wants to see him, but the hospital won't let her because she isn't old enough.

She misses Uncle Clay all the time. Sometimes she has awful dreams where he dies, where he's bleeding and she throws her arms around his neck but then suddenly there's nothing there to hold onto. After she wakes up from those, she always misses him even more.

At first Jameelah doesn't really want to tell her parents about how scared she was or about how she still has bad dreams, because she's afraid of making them more sad. She knows that it hurts them to think about what happened and how they couldn't help her or protect her while she was gone, and she doesn't want to hurt them any more.

It's good to have the therapist lady to talk to, because while the therapist lady is really nice, she doesn't seem to get sad when Jameelah tells her about hiding in the bathroom and sleeping in the bathtub, or about waking up crying from dreams where Uncle Clay bleeds and then disappears. The therapist just listens and is very calm about everything, and she knows ways to help Jameelah feel better and less scared.

The therapist tells Jameelah that she thinks it's a good idea for her to tell her parents these things too, but only when she feels ready. Jameelah likes that, that it's her decision and nobody is making her say things she doesn't want to.

She stays home from school for a while, but she wants to see her friends and doesn't like missing so many classes, so she goes back the day before Uncle Clay comes home from the hospital.

It doesn't take long for Jameelah to realize that things at school have changed. She gets a lot of attention now. It isn't the good kind of attention, like when it's your birthday and everybody smiles at you and your friends give you little gifts. Instead, it feels like nobody knows what to say to her. Like they're all staring at her whenever she isn't looking at them. Like they expect her to be different now than she was before, and she doesn't want to be different. She just wants to be Jameelah, like she's always been.

She goes home and tells her parents that things went fine, because really they did. Nobody was mean to her or anything. People were almost too nice. She doesn't know why she wants to cry anyway.

The next day goes pretty much the same, except that her best friend gives her a new bracelet, and when she gets home from school, Uncle Clay is there at her house. That makes her feel better.

RJ moves into her room while Uncle Clay is there, and even though Jameelah sighs and rolls her eyes a little when they tell her about it, she doesn't actually mind. Some of her friends complain about their little brothers and sisters, but RJ loves Jameelah more than almost anything in the world, and he's mostly really sweet. He likes to cuddle and he doesn't kick in his sleep or anything. Somehow having him there seems to help Jameelah sleep better, with fewer bad dreams.

She makes herself keep going to school, and slowly things do get better, just like the therapist lady promised her they would. Everyone eventually seems to realize that Jameelah is still herself. After a few weeks, near the end of the semester, a fifth-grade boy's baby sister gets diagnosed with some sort of really bad cancer. The boy's name is Evan. Most of the other students are kind of sad and awkward around him, and it seems to distract them from being sad and awkward with Jameelah.

She doesn't know Evan very well, but she feels really bad for him. What happened to her and Uncle Clay wasn't good, but at least they both lived. She can't imagine how much worse she'd feel if RJ was sick, and she had to go around all day at school solving math problems and acting normal while being scared that he might die.

At lunch, she plops down right next to Evan and tries to talk to him normally, like he's still just himself. She talks about Minecraft (because he's wearing a shirt that has a creeper on it), and what classes he's in, and if they're hard. When they're mostly done eating, she gives Evan her cookie and tells him she hopes his sister will get better. His face scrunches up a little like he might cry, but then he just says real quiet, "Thank you."

After school lets out for the summer, Uncle Clay, who is feeling a lot better but still isn't quite ready to move back to his own apartment, brings up the flowers again.

"I know we missed Mother's Day," he says, "but we can still make up for it, right?"

Jameelah suddenly realizes she isn't sure she even wants to learn anymore. Every time she thinks about the flowers, she just gets a sick feeling in her stomach. It feels all tangled up with the bad things that happened, and she doesn't know how to untangle it.

"I think maybe I'll just figure out a different present for Mama, if that's okay," she finally replies in a small voice, looking down at her hands twisted together in her lap.

"Of course it's okay, if that's what you want." Uncle Clay's voice is very gentle. "But if you decide you still want to learn, I'll be happy to teach you. Everybody wants to come along this time, your dad and Uncle Jason and Trent and Brock and Sonny. Your mom will have so many flower crowns by the time we're done."

Jameelah hesitates, because she kind of does want that. She wants to spend a day with her uncles making flower crowns, but part of her is still scared too, like she thinks something will go wrong even with all of them there.

Uncle Clay gives her a hug. He says softly, "When I was little, quite a bit younger than you are right now, I used to make daisy chains for my mom. She was... really sick, and for some reason I thought it might make her better." He smiles, but it's a sad smile, not a happy one. "Guess that was pretty dumb of me."

Jameelah's throat hurts and she doesn't even know why. "I don't think you were dumb," she tells him fiercely.

He looks at her, his eyes all shiny and bright. "Thanks, kiddo." He clears his throat. "Anyway, my mom didn't ever get better, and for a while I didn't even like to think about the flowers. They just made me sad. But when I moved to Africa to live with my grandparents, I made a lot of new friends there, and it turned out that they liked having crowns made out of flowers and vines, so I started doing it again. And those are good memories, mostly."

He pauses for a minute before continuing, "I guess what I'm trying to say is, all of us have bad things in our lives. Hard things we don't necessarily like to remember. But there are a lot of good things too, and I think it's important, if we can, to try not to let the hard times ruin those or take them away from us. Do you know what I mean?"

Jameelah thinks about that. "I think so," she says.

"Okay. Good." Carefully, with a little wince, he reaches out and ruffles her hair. "It's your call, Jammie Dodger. What do you want to do?"

Jameelah takes a deep breath and chooses to be brave.

She broke out of that basement and saved Uncle Clay's life. She's a frickin' hero. She can do this. It will be easy.

"Okay," she says. "Let's do it."

It turns out that Uncle Eric knows someone nearby who owns a lot of land, so that's where they go. They end up in a field full of black-eyed Susans and white clover and tiny daisies, with some pretty red columbine growing near a stream at the edge of the field.

Uncle Clay can walk by himself just fine now, but he is still very careful in the way that he moves. "Stop hovering," he tells Uncle Trent, who says "I'm not hovering" while hovering right beside Uncle Clay with his hands halfway out to catch him if he should trip and fall.

They pick a spot to sit in the grass, and then Uncle Sonny and Uncle Brock get chosen to go gather some of each kind of flower for everyone. Uncle Sonny complains, but Uncle Brock just smiles and takes off, Cerberus right at his heels.

Once the flowers are all ready, Uncle Clay starts showing everybody how to make the braided crowns. He is very patient, especially with Jameelah. Uncle Sonny teases him a lot about knowing how to do this, and Uncle Clay just smiles nicely at him and promises to braid many flowers into his beard the next time he falls asleep. Finally, Uncle Sonny rolls his eyes, says, "Oh, what the hell," and sits down and joins in. He's not very good at it, but he tries.

When Jameelah finally manages to make a perfect crown, something pretty and spiky that looks like a fairy warrior queen would wear it, her whole chest feels warm from the inside. She looks around at her dad and all her big, tough uncles, every one of them focused on the piles of flowers in their laps. She looks past them at Cerberus, who is rolling wildly in the grass with his tongue hanging out and all four paws in the air.

Jameelah holds her ring of flowers up to the sky so that it crowns the sun, and she smiles.

Well, we've finally come to the end of what is officially the longest fic I've ever written! Many thanks for all the support and kindness, and I wish a happy holiday season to all who celebrate.