Many thanks,
Nicole and Max Van Horn
I’ll wash my hands once, he said to himself. Maybe twice. Because this letter is cruel and unfair, I’ll let myself wash them twice. I won’t check the faucet. I won’t need to, because Amy doesn’t agree with her parents. If she’s here with me now, it means she doesn’t agree with them. It means she doesn’t think I’m a dangerous person.
Maybe you are dangerous. Maybe they’re right.
For the first time in weeks, the voice was back.
No. I don’t believe that. The only danger for Amy tonight is from Sanjay and his stupid plan.
Sanjay is fine. Sarah likes Sanjay. Everyone likes Sanjay. You’re the problem.
He couldn’t leave the bathroom. Even if Amy needed him, he couldn’t leave yet. He was starting to sweat. His shirt was soaked through. He’d have to wash his arms if he ever wanted to get clean. Maybe his armpits, too.
The bathroom door opened. A boy he didn’t recognize walked in. “Are you okay, man?”
No, he tried to say, but nothing came out.
“You look a little sick.”
I am, he didn’t say.
“I could get you some water. You want some water?”
The boy was nice enough to leave, but then he didn’t come back. Matthew sat down on the bathroom floor because standing had started to make him dizzy. He’d never get clean now. There were floor germs and sink germs and shoe-bottom germs. He was probably sitting right now on dog shit from the bottom of someone’s shoe. Nicole was right: he couldn’t control this. He couldn’t control his pounding heart or his shaking hands. He couldn’t walk out of this bathroom. He couldn’t find Amy and tell her not to worry, that he’d be fine in a few hours.
What would Amy say anyway?
Hearing this surprised him. He knew what Amy would say. She’d said it many times. This feeling will pass. The fear is real but the danger is not. You don’t need to panic. Ride it out. He could almost hear her saying it. Like she was in the room with him. Like he’d brought her Pathway with him, though of course he hadn’t.
He took a deep breath and let his own brain conjure her words for himself. The fear is real, he made his brain tell itself. The danger is not.
After a while he looked around. He had no idea how long he’d been in there. When he finally came out, it felt like there were twice as many people in the hallway than before. Most of the boys had their jackets off and a few had loosened their ties as well. A couple was fighting near the doorway.
Matthew was better now. Calm enough to find Amy and apologize for leaving her. She wasn’t where he left her, which made him nervous. How long had he been gone? He opened the door to the ballroom, which was pitch-black inside except for a mirror ball flashing. He shut the door and went back up the hallway, where he saw a surprise, sitting on the carpeted floor: Sarah, wearing a magenta dress with a corsage pinned to her shoulder, crying like he’d seen her do once before, in eighth grade.
He went over and bent down beside her. “Are you okay?” he said softly.
She shook her head but didn’t answer.
“Technically I don’t think you’re supposed to start crying until after prom is over. You never know. You might still have fun.” He always surprised himself after a panic attack—how calm he felt. How reasonable. It was like all the adrenaline in his system had been used up and now he could sit here in peace.
“I hate Sanjay.”
“Oh right. I have to admit I don’t love the guy, either.”
“Why is he so obsessed with getting these cheerleaders and football players to pay attention to him? We’re never going to see them again, right?”
“Right. I mean, we can only hope.”
“He thinks this whole idea gives him power over them. I told him that’s not how it works. If you care what they think, they have all the power.”
“You’re probably right,” he said. The more he thought about it, the more right she was. Maybe it even applied to the note in his pocket. If you care what they think, they have all the power. Maybe he could just throw it away. Maybe he could just not care what Amy’s parents thought.
“Are they done with the booze?”
“No. It turns out two quarts goes a lot farther than you’d think. He’s going around offering it to people he’s never talked to before. They’re saying no thanks and he’s trying to talk them into it. Meanwhile, there’s other idiots who’ve gone back five times.”
He wondered if this was the explanation for the couple fighting in the hallway, for the girls with mascara running down their faces. Maybe those people were all drunk. He asked her if Amy was okay, which produced a fresh wave of tears. “I don’t even want him to drive me home. I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to look at him.”
She was crying so hard, he put his arms around her. “We can drive you home,” he said, surprising himself. Like driving wasn’t a problem for him. Like now that he’d done it with one girl in the car, he could do it with two, no problem.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DO YOU WANT TO try some?” Sanjay asked Amy after about thirty people had visited her walker. Though it was still half-full, the demand had died down. People were either starting to feel the effects, or not interested in kneeling next to Amy’s walker for a third or fourth time.
“WHY NOT?” Amy said.
As awkward as all the logistics had been, she liked the way a little vodka had made everyone more relaxed in her presence. She wasn’t the disabled girl anymore, or the superachiever from the newspaper article. She was someone they could joke with. Two people told her how pretty she looked. One boy said he’d be back to ask her to dance later. If booze could lower the walls that had existed between her and all these people for the last twelve years, why not try some of it herself?
Mixed with punch, it tasted terrible at first and then it didn’t taste like anything at all. Just a little sting in the back of her throat. And a warm feeling as it traveled down. She smiled, one of her crazy, open-mouth smiles. “SANKS,” she typed, though Sanjay didn’t seem to get the joke. “I SHOULD GO FIND MATTHEW.”
“Yeah, maybe you should. Last time I saw him, he was hitting on my date.”
Amy’s head lurched at this, though Sanjay didn’t seem to care. He was still scanning the crowd for popular faces he hadn’t approached yet. “Oh my God, she’s here!” he said, breaking into a huge smile. “Cindy Weintraub is here! I didn’t think she was coming!”
It didn’t occur to Sanjay that Amy might need help standing up. Or securing the spigot hose so she didn’t fall over. At least one person was kind enough to see her coming and hold open one of the double doors for her. As she plodded toward it, she intentionally tried to empty her walker of the last of the booze.
Then she saw, through the open door: Matthew sitting on the floor with his arms around Sarah, who was bent over with her face in his chest. He looked like he was kissing the top of her head. Kissing, and talking, and laying his cheek on her hair. Amy stopped walking. She felt as if something was squeezing her chest. As if she couldn’t breathe. Or move.
“Are you going out?” the boy holding the door said.
“NO!” she pressed, just as a song ended, so her computer shouted.
Everyone turned to look at her. Everyone except Matthew and Sarah.
She staggered back, afraid she might fall or something worse. She looked for Sanjay to help her back to her chair. Anyone. The room started to spin. She heard a voice near her. “Are you okay?”
She tried to press “NO,” but accidentally pressed “THANK YOU.” She got caught in the spinning strobe lights on the dance floor, which made her feel even dizzier. She stood for a while, on what must have been a corner of the dance floor, and waited for the crowd growing around her to move away.
Just as she
feared she was going to fall over, she felt hands on her waist and arms around her. “You’re okay,” a voice whispered. “I’ve got you.”
It’s Matthew, she thought, closing her eyes and falling back, grateful.
When did she realize that it wasn’t? That the panic, the crowd, the flashing lights had made her confuse one rented tuxedo jacket for another? She thought it was Matthew. She clung on tight, her cheek pressed to his shoulder. She cried, wetting his shoulder, as if it was him. She punched his back and growled and screamed into his chest and then, when it was all over, she realized: it wasn’t him.
It was Sanjay’s voice in her ear: “It’s okay, Aim. It’s okay.”
He walked her back over to the side of the room and a table full of her new, drunk fake-best-friends. They all clapped when she sat down like she was putting on a show and now it was over. “Just stay here,” Sanjay whispered in her ear. “I’m going to figure out what’s going on with those guys.” He left a drink in front of her with a straw she could reach without any help.
“Are you okay?” a boy named Andrew, sitting across the table, said. Amy had spent tenth grade watching him and, based on that year of observation, assumed he was gay. Now he had his arm around a girl who looked like she was falling asleep on his shoulder.
Amy nodded and tried to smile. Her Pathway had gotten loose and was dangling by one Velcro strap from her walker. Without it, she couldn’t answer him.
“Kind of a shitty night, right?” Andrew said. “A bunch of people are saying that.”
Amy looked around, confused. She assumed everyone else was having fun. She wished she could ask him what he meant, and then another boy appeared out of nowhere and leaned over Amy’s lap to grab a cup on the table. “This music is lame,” he said. “I asked the DJ where he was from and swear he said Suck City.” The whole table laughed and he noticed, for the first time, who he was leaning over. “You got anything more in your little contraption?” he said to Amy.
He didn’t wait for a response.
“Can I have some? Like, all of it?” The table laughed again as he opened the spigot and tilted her walker to drain the last of it into his plastic cup. “It won’t be enough to save this night, but thanks anyway.” When he put the walker back, her Pathway banged against the leg and spun helplessly from its Velcro tether. There was more laughter as the boy drank the whole cup in one swallow and walked away.
“That guy is a freakin’ animal,” Andrew said.
Amy tried to point with her good hand to her dangling computer. She was terrified it might have gotten vodka on it. Andrew didn’t understand. “Mostly he’s a nice guy. He doesn’t mean to seem like a dick. He just does sometimes.”
She pointed again. “Ma—ooo,” she said.
Andrew shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re saying.”
She saw the yellow battery light blinking. “Ooo-hhwah?”
“Are you okay?” He looked across the table at another couple Amy didn’t know. “Somebody should get that guy who brought her over here. I think she’s starting to freak out.”
She wasn’t freaking out. She was trying to get someone to rescue her Pathway so she could use it, but he would never understand. None of them would.
“What’s his name?” the girl sitting across from him said.
“I don’t know. The Indian guy. Or Spanish. Whatever he is.” Andrew came around the table to sit next to Amy. “Tell him we don’t know what to do—she’s spazzing out.”
Amy tried to keep her head still, and look less spazzy, but there wasn’t much she could do. Her bad arm shot out and hit him in the chest.
“Go!” he screamed at his date.
“Fine,” she said, and leaned over to whisper. “But what’s her name again?”
“It doesn’t matter. He’ll know who you’re talking about. Just go.”
Eventually Sanjay came back and the table emptied quickly. “Here’s what I found out,” he said. “Sarah wants to go home and Matthew wants to take her. I said fine, if he’s going to do that, why don’t I just take you home. He said that should be up to you.”
Amy felt sick to her stomach. She feared the vodka she’d drunk was about to come back up. Driving here she’d had the premonition that they should turn around and go back home, and obviously she was right. Matthew wasn’t having a panic attack this whole time. More like the opposite. He was having a burst of confidence and a breakthrough with Sarah. Now he was looking for an excuse not to have to bring her home. “TELL HIM IT’S FINE,” she typed after Sanjay returned her Pathfinder to its proper spot. “I’LL GO HOME WITH YOU.”
Surely Matthew would find her and say good-bye, she assumed. He’d feel bad about leaving with Sarah and want to apologize and Amy would say, No, don’t. It’s fine. I’m happy for you. Go have your night with the girl you’ve loved since ninth grade. She’d hate him and hate the fact that her mother had been right, but she’d get over it at some point.
But that never happened. She sat alone again for a long time. When Sanjay came back, he told her they were already gone. “Maybe we should just go, too,” he said.
They walked quietly out to the parking lot. In Sanjay’s car, she asked if Matthew said anything else before they left. “Look—as far as I’m concerned they can go fuck themselves. Who knows what they did? Sorry, Amy. I’m not supposed to swear around you. Did you know that was one of your mother’s rules? Please refrain from cursing around Amy. It’s funny. The minute someone says that, it actually makes you want to swear more.”
As they drove, she calmed down enough to type. “SORRY ABOUT MY MOTHER.”
“Fuck it. Don’t be. You’re mother’s all right. What do any of us know about having a kid like you? For years she doesn’t know whether you’ll live or die. Then it turns out you’re smart and she has to spend sixteen years proving that to a world full of people who don’t want to believe it. It must have been fucking hard. I don’t blame her.”
She’d never seen this side of Sanjay. She wished the kids at that table had been nicer about him. Or at least remembered his name. He wasn’t a bad guy; he just tried to too hard with people who were never going to be impressed by someone like him. He turned on the radio, and drummed on the steering wheel as he drove. “The stupid thing is, I like Sarah. I do. Maybe I’m even scared of how much I like her.”
Amy had so wanted to say this tonight that she went ahead and told Sanjay: “I LOVE MATTHEW.”
He turned and looked at her. “No shit, really?”
“I THINK MAYBE I’VE LOVED HIM ALL YEAR.”
“Wow. I had no idea.”
It was only eleven twenty when they got home, which meant her parents were still up and sitting in the living room. They looked confused at first and then—Amy could tell with one glance—relieved that it was Sanjay bringing her home. It meant her mother was right: Matthew had lived up to her expectations of failure. Amy was grateful for this much: her mother didn’t ask where Matthew was or what had happened. Instead they greeted Sanjay as a hero and offered him a glass of champagne from a bottle they had opened to celebrate the night. “Here’s to prom!” her mother said. “May we let the whole business rest in peace, now.”
“Here, here,” Sanjay said, lifting his glass, a slow smile spreading across his face. For the first time, Amy wondered how much he’d had to drink tonight. He seemed fine at prom as she watched him fill cups for other people; now she tried to guess how many of those he’d had himself. Not that he seemed drunk, only that he seemed bolder. “Amy was beautiful tonight,” he told her parents. “I wish you could have seen her. The belle of the ball.”
Nicole took a sip and put her glass down. “Really? Is that true, Aim?”
“NOT REALLY.”
“It is true. Everyone came up and talked to her tonight. I’m not kidding. I have pictures.”
Nicole’s eyebrows went up in surprise. Amy tilted her head in Sanjay’s direction. He was already holding up his phone to show them pictures. “Right here,” he s
aid, smiling and shaking his head. “Here’s Amy and Brian Campbell, quarterback of the football team, having a nice chat.”
He held out the phone. Amy squinted and saw the blurry proof—yes, it was Brian half kneeling beside her. Her mother clapped a flat hand on her chest. “Oh, Amy, look! You did talk to him.”
Sanjay thumbed to the next picture. “Amy and Andy Robbins. Vice president of the class. Headed to Northwestern.”
“I remember Andy! You were in elementary school with him.”
Sanjay kept going. Amy with Willa Samuels, Amy with Dorie Rogers, Amy with Tyrone Michaels, the basketball star who was so tall his head didn’t fit in the picture frame.
“They were all so happy that Amy was there. They wanted to come over and congratulate her on Stanford and tell her how much it meant getting to know her this year.”
Nicole blinked back tears. “Oh, Amy, this is so wonderful!”
Why is it wonderful, Mom? she wanted to ask. Why is it wonderful that I’ve come home with a different boy than I left with? Why is it better to have had meaningless conversations with people I’ll never see again than to have had a decent good-bye with the boy I love? She couldn’t say any of that, of course. Or let herself think about it too much.
They kept talking for a while. No one mentioned Matthew or wondered why none of Sanjay’s pictures included him.
“This makes me so happy, Sanjay. I can’t tell you how nervous we’ve been all night.”
“I’ll bet.” He smiled one of his big, million-teeth smiles. “But we were all there together. Matthew, Sarah. All of us. We were looking after each other.” As he said this, he surprised Amy. He reached over and squeezed her bad hand. No one ever touched that hand—not even Matthew, who’d gotten over his fear of touching other parts of her body, like her feet and her back. Sanjay slid two fingers into her curled fist, loosening it a little so he could rub the back of her hand with his thumb.
Nicole looked down and smiled. “We should leave you two alone,” she said, clapping her hands together once. “Max, what are we thinking, staying up this late when it’s still their big night?”
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