Tuck Sinn

10

When he opened the big creaky door, walking into the house, he saw Aunt Polly in the kitchen, mixing together spices and vegetables for supper. The clanking pans and pots were a gentle noise, and it made his shoulders loosen and drop; the noise made him breathe in, breathe out, and resume. The house felt very still and calm. Different compared to everything else today.

Tom walked up the stairs, hearing the noise in how his weight bent down each wood plank. The sound of it all let him breathe in deeper, slowing down. His despair was still there, but he was up the stairs now, and heading towards his room.

His door was ajar, and so was Sid's.

The calm feeling went away as Tom walked closer. The day just never ended.

He could hear pages flipping from past his own door. Tom reached his doorframe and stood by it. Sid, with his still and short frame, was looking through Tom's bookshelves. He couldn't see Sid's face, for his brown hair was dripping over the edges of his face, hiding it from view. Tom could still see, though, that he was looking at a journal of some kind.

An anger came. A sickness of everything. He just wanted to be left alone.

"What are you doing?" Tom asked. Sid looked up at the noise, his body moving in a shocking motion, all of it twitching. As he did so, his nose flared and eyes widened and he took a step as he usually did when he was caught in Tom's room. He stood, frozen, staring.

"Well? Get out!" Tom said.

Sid had just been standing there motionless for seconds, just staring back. "Go, you trespasser! Why, I aughta go through your things when you're out of the house." Tom said, stamping heavily over to his brother. He moved to swat or snap at Sid, who suddenly regained his motion.

Sid didn't reply to any of what Tom had said, just shoved the book back into a spot and hastened out with quick steps. He didn't even close Tom's door as he scuffled away, but when he got to the hallway, the footsteps stopped.

Tom could hear Sid intake a large breath. Knowing what was about to happen, Tom closed his eyes and a mixed, churning clouded feeling pulled through him. The same one that had been with him the whole day, shadowing and deepening and cutting, like a digging pit. Nothing was right.

"Aunt Polly!" Sid's voice was like a whine. The same as it had been for years. "Aunt Polly, Tom hit me!" Sid said. He huffed, waiting for a response. But Aunt Polly was still moving around in the kitchen, and with her hearing having gotten worse over the years, she likely couldn't hear Sid. He sighed, scoffed, stood in the hallway for another minute before going back to his room, his door closing with a harsh slide and a thump.

Tom exhaled quickly with a huff. He ran a hand through his hair. He walked messily through his room, pushing his door closed.

He didn't understand why it was like this-- why Sid did whatever he pleased. Why things were right but then it all stopped and went sour. But it didn't matter if he didn't understand or not-- it would just keep happening.

The grey burning feeling, the anger, the despair, stayed in him as he walked tiredly back to the bookshelf, looking at the book Sid had gone through.

Tom pulled it out and flipped it over, feeling the worn cover slide against his fingers.

A thin brown journal from years ago. Tom opened it to one of the first pages.

His feelings mixed with remembrance, moving his thoughts in different streams of anger and of recollection. The handwriting on one of the pages was so bad he could hardly read it, but still he felt the emotion behind the scribbles. He saw the importance of keeping it.

Tom sat down on the ground, looking through more pages, trying to read them. His feelings left him with the focus on now, on the old journal.

Sentence fragments were written, pulled across the sides of a page, tilted towards the corners. More pages, hardly staying together, barely making sense. And on one page he flipped to, a drawing came out.

It slid down the page of the journal and down into Tom's lap. The sound of the flutter, of its rough slide, encompassed all of the silence around him.

He picked it up gingerly.

The paper was hardly the size of his hand. It was tattered and worn and folded at the edges. It was blank on that side. He turned it over in his hands. He looked at the small, thin paper for a moment, and then his stomach skipped with his heart.

A rendering of Huckleberry Finn was on the paper.

Some lines were smudges, some were tiny streaks and scratches, and others were thick and lacked detail. But he could see it in the eyes, in the mouth, in the shape of the face. It was Huckleberry Finn.

Tom remembered the day it was drawn:

Out in the forest, Joe, Huck, and Tom had all been playing. The thought brought an ache and an acidic swirl to his stomach. So long ago, they were all together. Joe had drawn it with the remaining paper from a test handed back, and a pencil that was worn down and short. For such a small child, it had been skillfully done.

Tom had wanted it to be him who was drawn, but Huck pushed and said it could be Tom right after. Tom had conceded. But they went walking through the woods instead, and they never got to doing it. The day had been hot, and it was all blurred in Tom's head, and all he could recall was that they had left their stuff by a stump.

Joe had been called back home early, and Huck didn't want the small drawing anymore. Tom went home with it, so many years ago.

He hadn't thought of Huck in years. He hardly had remembered his face, Tom realized.

And it left him with a tone of sadness. His best friend, pushed to the back of his mind all these years. Tom's hair fell into his bright eyes as he stared down at the drawing.

It had been so long.

There was a blankness in him that had suddenly filled up. The loss of all those memories blanketed him under his skin. The past few years, he had just been continuing. Not even thinking of Huck. Today, he had forgotten everything good that had happened, replacing it with a longing and a tiredness and a despair. He didn't want that feeling-- he wanted the good he had had.

Tom couldn't give up on Becky like he had on the memory of Huck. He couldn't just let go of her because of a misunderstanding. He didn't like Amy, anyway. He liked Becky, and Becky liked him—or... at least Tom hoped she still did.

He just needed to talk to Amy. He needed to figure this out. But first... Tom sighed.

He put the drawing back into the journal, slowly, carefully. Put it back into a spot in the bookshelf. Away for another time he needed the memory-- Away for another time to remember his best friend.

Even if it felt like it didn't matter, like he didn't care at all about anything but getting Becky back... Tom had to do his homework.