Marcus would have loved it.
She burst into tears. Ryan grabbed a chair and helped her into it, while Trent knelt by her with a tissue. She hated making a scene, but she couldn’t keep it in.
“You need anything?”
With a hiccup, Fi swallowed the latest round of sobs and looked up at Jackson. He stood in front of her, looking annoyed, flustered, and exhausted all at once. She stood, too, wiping her cheeks with her palms. She would not have Jackson looking down on her. She would not be weak with him.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. They were still by the door—Fi hadn’t even made it four steps inside before breaking down.
He pointed over his shoulder to the back of the house. “There’s food and stuff back there.”
Food. This place never had normal food just sitting out, where Marcus might accidentally inhale dairy. “Okay.”
The two stared at each other, and Fi wasn’t sure what to do. Her mother broke the tension. “Jackson, I am so sorry for your loss,” she said, placing her hand on his arm.
Jackson looked at Mrs. Doyle’s hand on his arm and then at Mrs. Doyle. “Thanks.”
“Marcus was . . . well, he was wonderful, wasn’t he?”
Jackson stepped backward. “I should check in with my parents.”
Mrs. Doyle brought her hand away from Jackson, resting it on Fi’s back instead. “Of course,” her mom said.
“Still a charmer, isn’t he?” Trent muttered as Jackson walked away.
“Shush.” Gwen poked him in the side. “His brother just died.”
Trent shrugged, and Fi sank back into her chair. She wasn’t there long before Will the Cousin came looking for her. “Aunt Ellen and Uncle Peter wanted you to come back to the family room. Meet some of the family—if you’re up to it.”
“Of course,” she said, faking her mother’s calm.
The group of them walked through the house, Will fielding some pats on the shoulder as they went. In the family room, Fi stalled in front of the photos.
She’d always loved this room, how all four walls were covered in pictures—big ones, little ones, black-and-white, color—all hung with no particular pattern, just a chaos of family memories. Nearly all were from at least four years ago, when Marcus was still let out of the house.
“He was such a cute baby,” Mrs. King said, standing beside her.
Fi pointed to one of Marcus and Jackson together. Their arms were looped around each other’s shoulders, like they might choke each other with brotherly affection. “How old are they?”
“Six? Maybe that’s the zoo?” She tapped the frame, her finger lingering on the space over Marcus’s shoulder. “That looks like a cage, doesn’t it?” Shaking her head, she scanned the wall of photos. “There are so many here. It’s hard to remember each one.”
“They were adorable.”
Mrs. King nodded, smiling. “Couldn’t keep them apart.”
Fi looked over her shoulder to Jackson, who stood in a corner, his hand wrapped around the back of his neck as he stared out the window. “Will he be all right?”
Mrs. King followed Fi’s gaze and sighed. “I hope so.”
Fi felt the tears burning in her eyes, her throat. Even though meeting Marcus’s family would be the polite, proper thing—what her mother would do—Fi pointed to the sliding glass doors against the rear wall. “I might go get some air.”
“Take your time,” said Mrs. King. “Do you want to take some food out with you?”
Fi looked at the dining room table, loaded with hams and casseroles and brownies. “It’s so weird seeing all that out.”
“Believe me, it’s taking all my restraint not to throw it out the window and bleach the table.”
Despite everything, Fi laughed. Mrs. King did, too. It was only a second, though, before both petered out, like they simultaneously remembered there was nothing funny left, ever.
Fi pointed toward the sliding doors again. “I think I’ll just, you know, sit.”
Fi pushed and pulled at the door handle, trying to force the panels open. Jackson came over, finally, reached past her hand and flicked the lock. She nearly fell into him as the glass door suddenly slid open.
Blushing, Fi wiped her hands on her skirt and mumbled, “Thanks.”
He nodded and went back to his vigil at the window.
Even though it was hot, Fi was glad for the fresh air, for the white noise of traffic rather than the droning sadness inside. There were a few chairs and a wrought-iron table in the center of the deck, but Fi walked to the steps and sat down. She and Marcus had never spent much time in the backyard. His mother was paranoid that a vicious strain of attack pollen would do him in.
He’d even said that exact thing a few months ago, when the trees had started to bloom and Fi was itching to get out of his stuffy house. She’d laughed at the joke.
Joke was on her.
It was a good backyard, too, with a huge magnolia right in the center—the best kind of climbing tree. Fi wished she didn’t have a skirt on, that there weren’t all these people here. She’d climb it right now and maybe never come down.
She heard the door slide open. Jackson crossed the deck and sat down on the steps like her. He sat a good foot away, his elbow resting on his knees, and stared at the yard like she’d been doing. “I fell out of that tree in second grade,” he said. “Broke my arm.”
Fi looked back to the tree. “I was just thinking it looked like a good climbing tree.”
“Mom got spooked after that,” he said. “Freaked out when I went up too far. Marcus and I would play under it a lot, though.”
She smiled. “Play what?”
“I don’t know, kid stuff.”
They sat quietly after that, in each other’s presence but not really. More like two bodies sharing the same space through a fragile truce.
She wasn’t sure when this truce started, really. Ever since prom, when Fi was let in on the secret, Jackson had backed off. Maybe it was because she’d become as paranoid as he was—no need to remind her about hand washing, anymore.
Or maybe, it was because Marcus looked so horrible, Jackson didn’t have the energy to care about Fi one way or the other.
Marcus was a big fat liar. He didn’t get better. He didn’t even make it out of the hospital. Well, she supposed he did, at the end. But hospice didn’t count.
After those first tests on Marcus’s white blood cells came back, everyone, including Marcus, notched up their tension level. There were additional bags clipped to his IV pole, more tests run. Each one came back worse and worse. The IV pole got an extendable arm to handle the growing medications. Marcus got hooked up to even more machines.
Instead of filling him up, all those IV bags just sucked him dry. He disappeared, piece by piece, before her eyes. Her sweet, skinny Marcus got skinnier and skinnier, paler and paler, sleepier and sleepier. His room started looking more like an apartment than a hospital room. There were plants in the windowsill, cards, and a few crayon drawings from some younger cousins taped to the wall. An additional table was brought in so the Kings could eat dinner together.
She came over after school, spent as much of the weekend as was allowed. Five days after Hospital Prom, she’d gotten a reply from that email she’d sent to the Northwestern coach, the one meant to humor Marcus. Truly, she hadn’t thought anything would come from it.
She’d been sitting by his bed, flipping through the emails on her phone, when she saw the NU address. She showed it to Marcus right after she read it—So glad to hear from you Fi, yes, we actually might have a spot, last-minute injury from another recruit, why don’t you come to the camp this summer, we’ll discuss it then. It was the first time he’d smiled—really, really smiled—in days.
She slid the phone back in her purse. “How much do you think she’ll hate me when I cancel on her again?”
“Why would you cancel on her?”
Fi looked at him like the crazy person he was. “Marcus, don’t be ridiculous. I�
��m not going away when you’re like this.”
He clenched his jaw, like he always did when he got annoyed. But now the bones in his face were so prominent, he looked almost skeletal.
In the end, she made a deal with him she’d have been happy to keep. She’d go to camp if he got better.
She didn’t study for exams. She walked through graduation like a zombie. Her parents took Ryan, Fi, Gwen, and Trent out to a depressing dinner where no one talked about Marcus, but everyone was thinking about it.
The Kings had a little cake—gluten-, egg-, and dairy-free—for her at the hospital. No one ate much of it. It was pretty awful.
Her graduation day was the same day the doctors brought up hospice.
Fi wasn’t sure what it meant at first—she figured it was yet another experimental treatment. Even after she heard the doctors say to the Kings, “We want to make sure he’s comfortable” and to Marcus, “Have you given any thoughts to what arrangements you’d like?” she still didn’t get it.
“How much time does he have? Really?” Jackson asked.
Mrs. King grimaced at the question—but leaned forward to hear the answer all the same.
One of the doctors cleared his throat. Putting a hand on Marcus’s skinny, skinny shoulder, he spoke right to him. “It’s hard to say, of course. It depends on what you decide to do about medication. But the end could come soon—within the week.”
All the air left the room. Fi’s heart shriveled in the vacuum.
Marcus had left the hospital the day after the discussion, insisting he wanted to die in his own home. His parents moved a bed downstairs, into the same dining room now covered in inappropriate meats, breads, and casseroles. Two days later, he died in his sleep.
Fi had been with him the evening before it happened. She talked to him, looking into his eyes—but she couldn’t be sure that he heard or saw her. By then, he was in so much pain—and on so many drugs—that it was hard to know if he registered her voice or her fingers intertwined with his. If he felt her tears drop onto his cheeks. She told him she needed him, she loved him, she didn’t know what to do without him. He kept mumbling something that sounded like “soft with rot” over and over.
Now, Fi inhaled the scent of magnolia blossoms and grass, and the cedar of this hard deck. Her butt was sore, the pollen made her sniffle, little beads of sweat trickled down her back. Still, this self-imposed exile was better than the air-conditioned pleasantries of the reception. Even if she had to share it with Jackson.
More to herself than anyone, Fi spoke out loud. “I don’t know what to do now.”
Jackson looked toward her, the top of his head dangling between his arms, his chin resting on his shoulder.
“I mean,” she hesitated, not sure how to explain it. Not sure why she felt compelled to tell Jackson of all people. “I don’t know who I am now.”
He just nodded.
“Before I met him, all I cared about was lacrosse. Then, I don’t know, all I cared about was him.” She glanced at the date square on her watch. “There’s a camp at Northwestern in a few weeks—Marcus wanted me to go, but I just can’t. It’s like, none of it matters at all.”
She’d emailed the coach the day after Marcus died. In a long, rambling message, she explained about the broken ankle–coffee shop coincidence that brought her and Marcus together, how wonderful a human being he was, so full of big ideas and dreams that would never get to come true, how he had just died and left her alone, and how could anything really matter after that, she was sorry she wasted the coach’s time but she wouldn’t be coming to the camp.
Fi got a reply the next day—a concise two lines to Fi’s fifty.
Fi, I am so sorry for your loss. He sounds like a wonderful person. I wish you the best in whatever you choose to do. Candace Starnes.
Jackson kept looking loosely at Fi—kind of at her, kind of not really. Eventually, he said, “It’s like Picasso. Cubism.”
Fi wrinkled her brow at this subject change but nodded at him to go on.
“That’s what it feels like. Someone took reality, pulled it in all directions, cut the stretched out bits into pieces, and then glued everything back together in all the wrong places.”
Fi had never heard so many normal, nonvenomous words come out of Jackson’s mouth. “Why do you hate me?” she asked.
“You took my brother,” he answered simply. He sounded numb.
Fi recognized the tone—it’s how she sounded, too. “He was with you more than me.”
“He was dying.” Jackson looked away from Fi, to the tree he didn’t climb. “I didn’t want to share.”
That she understood in the deepest part of her soul.
Fi studied him in profile. The past month hadn’t been kind to Jackson. He was a thinner, paler version of himself. He looked a little more like Marcus this way. “Why are you talking to me now, then?”
“No reason not to. Marcus isn’t here to fight over.” He looked back at her, resting his head against his upper arm, as he’d done before. “And you’re the only one who misses him almost as much as I do.”
COLLEGE—FRESHMAN YEAR
SEPTEMBER
FIONA
“You look great. Don’t worry.” Her dad placed his hands on her shoulders, equal weight on each, and turned her away from the mirror she’d been obsessing in front of. “It’s remarkable, the difference.”
She gave her best I’m fixed now smile, though moving into the dorm today, and officially becoming College Fiona, brought back some of the old nerves.
Fiona’s right hand went to the bottom edge of the single fine scar line, the boundary between what was hers and what was borrowed. It was strange, how the pain had faded—from the old scar, from the surgery. No feeling at all replaced it.
Only when following doctor’s orders did she let her fingers creep over the line into “foreign territory.” He’d told her to apply some creams and to test for the return of sensation. Fiona wanted to correct him on this last bit. Sensation would never return—not unless the original owner came back from the dead and took this missing piece back.
She didn’t like to touch it, but she had no trouble staring. All her life, she’d ducked past mirrors. Now she sought them out. In just four months—all her doctors commented on the speed of her recovery—her face had transitioned from an unsettling raw look to the deceptively clear skin she had now. The faint oval outline that would likely stay with her forever—the New Fiona/Old Fiona border—had become less purple, less “angry.” The surgeon said in a few years it would barely be noticeable, especially around the hairline.
The scar didn’t bother her, anyway. Ryan said it added character. “Tell people you used to be a pirate,” Lucy had offered.
Her dad was still looking at her, shaking his watery-eyed head.
She patted his shoulder. “Okay. Deep breath. We need to go.”
“This isn’t natural,” he said, picking up her bags. “Having two children start college in the same year.”
Fiona snorted. “That’s what happens when you have kids ten months apart.”
He winked at her. “Caroline, I’m checking out,” he called toward the closed bathroom door. “Come down when you’re ready.”
Fiona leaned over to pick up a bag. “Nothing over ten pounds,” he snapped.
“I know,” she groaned. Only two weeks left of Healing Period Restrictions. She’d take the drugs forever, but she would be glad to be done with the weight limits and the creams.
She was ready to start.
Plus, she hated feeling useless. When they moved Ryan into his dorm six weeks ago, all she could do was sit on his unmade dorm bed and text updates to Gwen. He & his roommate are picking desks and beds. He’s putting shirts in the dresser. Mom’s teaching him the right way to fold.
She slid her laptop bag over her shoulder—three-point-one pounds, she’d weighed it—and her mom emerged from the bathroom. “Fiona, it’s cold outside,” her mom said, looking her usual, perfect sel
f. “Put something else on.”
Weather appropriate gear—her mother’s new obsession. Yesterday she’d ransacked Michigan Avenue, bringing back bags full of gloves, scarves, coats, and pullovers. Picking through it—how had her mother managed to find frilly fleece?—Fiona had said she’d packed Ryan’s old coat.
“You can’t walk around campus in that old thing,” her mom had said. “How would that look?”
As Fiona had learned since the surgery, this brand-new, high-end cheek had not lessened her mom’s quest to make her suitable—i.e., better.
“I’m fine, Mom,” she said now.
In the elevator, Mrs. Doyle looked at Fiona through the mirror. “How lucky you healed so quickly. No one would ever know.”
We’ll keep it our dirty little secret, Mom.
“Are you okay? Nervous?” her mom asked. “It’s a long way from home.”
“I’ll be back in three months,” she said, desperately hoping to avoid a heart-to-heart in the Holiday Inn Express elevator.
“You’ve never been gone so long before.”
Fiona had never been gone at all. The longest time away had been the nights she slept over at Lucy’s.
Who was she kidding, that she could do this? Start a new life, as New Fiona? Make new friends? Compete with some of the smartest kids in the country?
The elevator doors opened to the lobby. “Mom,” Fiona said, faking calm and gesturing for her mother to go first. “What could possibly happen in three months?”
It turned out she had nothing to be nervous about. Fiona loved college.
Loved it.
Even though she’d lucked into a single, she shared a suite and bathroom with six other girls, whom she liked. The first night, Lexie From Des Moines commanded they all bond over popcorn and pictures. The girls cooed over Ryan. Lexie called David her HTH—hometown honey. No one asked about the scars, because Fiona had passed around pictures she wasn’t in.
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