One Last Song

by S. K. Falls

  “All right, I’m taking you home,” Drew said, hooking his arm around my shoulder. I tried to stand up, my legs weak and rubbery. I knew I couldn’t lean on him too much—he couldn’t handle my weight and his. But I let him think he was doing much of the work anyway.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, the veil of fever making my mortification just a little less mortifying.

  “Don’t worry, honey,” Lenore replied. “You just concentrate on feeling better.”

  “Yeah, seriously. I’ll text you later,” Zee said. “And take my car. I’m not going to be driving anywhere anytime soon. I’ll get it from you tomorrow.”

  I nodded and Drew and I shuffled out.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  We decided outside Zee’s car that of the two of us, Drew was probably better qualified to drive me home. “Muscle weakness” trumped “barely conscious,” and I was beginning to shiver in the cold, so he helped me get in the passenger seat. Closing the door, he went around to the driver’s side. When he was safely sitting, he draped his heavy jacket over me.

  I opened my mouth to say something teasing about his quaint chivalrous gesture, but nothing came out. I liked that he did that, that he was taking care of me, and I didn’t want to ruin it.

  “I don’t like this car,” he said, adjusting the seat so it was pushed as far back as it would go. “I swear they made it for elves.”

  “Hey,” I said, my voice thready and hoarse. “I like it.”

  “Exactly what I mean,” he muttered. “Now hold on. This may get a little bumpy. At least we don’t have that far to go.” And then we were off.

  I dozed while he drove, my body slamming hard against the seatbelt occasionally and jolting me awake. Every time, Drew’d mutter, “Sorry, so sorry,” and I’d drift off again. Finally, I felt his hand on my knee. The car was completely still and quiet underneath us. We were in my driveway.

  “Home sweet home.” He smiled at me.

  I smiled back, feeling a little goofy. Really well taken care of, soft and cozy in the way only guys you really like or your dad can make you feel. Not that I’d felt that way with my dad in a long time. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “Is your mom home? Maybe I should let her know you’re back so she can monitor your temperature. Just in case you need to go to the hospital.”

  “Bunco.”

  “What?”

  I pried my dry lips apart and forced my burning eyes to focus on him. “It’s Saturday. She has Bunco on Saturday nights. She won’t be back for a while.”

  “What the hell’s Bunco?” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s get you inside. I’ll stay till she gets home.”

  We hobbled indoors together, and I led Drew to my room, suddenly more aware and self-conscious. Had I left anything incriminating out? I felt my pocket—the syringe was safe in there. Mum had thrown away the rest of my things and I hadn’t replaced any of them yet, so I thought it would be okay.

  “Nice place,” he muttered as we passed a giant oil painting of a sea turtle at the head of the stairs.

  “Thanks. My room’s right here.” I went in and turned on the light.

  I felt sick enough to crawl to my bed, but I settled for limping instead. Drew was right behind me. He pulled the covers back—and froze.

  When I’d changed that morning, I’d flung my thong and pajamas on the bed and just pulled my covers over the top. I moved quicker than I’d moved in a long time. Snatching the offending undergarment in one hand and the pajamas in the other, I wheeled around and headed for the bathroom.

  “Um, be right back.” I tossed them into the hamper, closed the door, and sat on the bed.

  Drew smiled. “Ready to get in?”

  I kicked my boots off and lay down. “You don’t have to stay with me,” I said. “I’ll be fine.” My eyes were already slipping shut.

  “Thanks, but I’d rather make sure your fever goes down. And if you puke in your sleep, you’ll need someone to turn you over so you don’t choke.”

  “Ha ha,” I whispered, my pulse fluttering when he began to stroke my hair, his touch featherlight. “There are books in that bookcase over there. No CDs, sorry.”

  He chuckled. “I’m sure I can amuse myself.”

  I fell asleep midsentence.

  When I woke up, the room was almost pitch-black. I turned my head and saw Drew sitting in a chair by my bed, surfing his cell phone.

  “Hey.”

  He looked up, smiled. “Hey yourself. How are you?”

  I reached over and turned on my tiny bedside lamp. “Better. I think my fever broke.”

  He came forward, limping, and felt my forehead. “You’re right.” Gesturing to my night table, he said, “I brought you some water and fruit from your kitchen downstairs. Hope it’s okay that I went in there.”

  I shrugged, even though my heart was beating hard. Had he seen Mum’s awful dollhouse stuff in her nook? I decided not to ask. “You can leave if you want, you know.”

  He gave me a smile, one corner of his mouth higher than the other. “Jeez, Grayson. If I didn’t have such a big ego I’d think you were trying to kick me out.”

  “No, it’s not that,” I insisted. “I just don’t want you to feel like you have to stay here with me. I’m sure there’s other stuff you could be doing right now.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah. But I like being here with you.”

  We looked at each other for a long time. I’d never done that before, just looked into a person’s eyes to try to see who they were, what they meant when they said something. It was like gazing skyward. I felt like I could look and look and still never be done looking. What was it about him?

  “What happened, earlier?” I heard myself ask. “With the CD player? It looked like it really upset you.”

  He blinked and looked away, the moment gone. And then he was back in the chair, the distance between us unbreachable.

  I tried to swallow past the lump in my throat. Why the hell had I asked that? Why couldn’t I have just enjoyed whatever was going on between us?

  But then he looked back at me. Sighed. A great big “weight of the world on my shoulders” sigh. “It’s another fucking symptom of my FA. It’s getting worse.”

  His words rushed at me, taking me by surprise. I had an inkling that’s what it was, but I hadn’t expected him to say it so plainly. Especially not after he’d try to play off his weakness that afternoon. I didn’t know what to say, couldn’t think of a single fucking thing.

  “FA’s a sneaky bastard,” he went on, oblivious to my awkward mental floundering. “It twines around your legs first, causing you to trip and fall like you’re a baby learning to walk. You think you’re being clumsy, maybe you didn’t get any sleep the night before, maybe you’re just tired. Then you get diagnosed, and your life tears down the seam right there.

  “You go on, waiting for the next symptom, but when it comes you hope it isn’t really what you think. It’s slight enough—a fumbling of the hands, a rogue twist of the wrist—that you can convince yourself to ignore it for a couple of months. But soon, soon you realize it’s not so slight anymore. You try to put a CD into the fucking CD player and can’t.” He looked at me, his eyes bright. “I’m losing my hand coordination. I guess that’s next.”

  I shook my head slowly. “I’m sorry.”

  “No point in you being sorry,” he said, grinning suddenly. It was the same painted-mask grin from the afternoon. “If anyone should be sorry, it should be the Big Man upstairs, right? He’s supposed to love me, or so the story goes.”

  “Do you believe that?” I asked softly. “In a god, I mean?”

  When I was really young, I loved going to Mass with my mother. The cathedral felt like this big, safe vault, where nothing I said or thought or did could ever leave and permeate the outside. It was as if time was suspended while I sat in there, inhaling incense and watching the candle flames dance.

  I loved the way Mum would go into a little box and come out looking so much ha
ppier and freer. I loved saying, Hail Mary, full of grace, over and over. It felt like a rhyme that’d keep the bad stuff away. When I was in the cathedral, I felt invincible, or damn near it. At some point, for unknown reasons, we stopped going.

  I didn’t know if I missed it because being in the cathedral was a way for me to connect with Mum, or if I actually missed having a spiritual outlet.

  Did I believe in an omniscient being? Not usually. To be honest, I didn’t spend a lot of my time even thinking about the possibility of him or her.

  “I don’t know if I believe in the Christian ideal.” Drew passed his cell phone from hand to hand as he talked. “When I lived in the apartment building with my parents in New York, we used to have these guys come around sometimes. They wore, you know, the button-down shirts and khaki pants, carried Bibles and handed them out. They always asked me if I wanted to be saved.” He stopped, a breath of a chuckle escaping his mouth. “Finally one day, I said yes. I mean, saved? Which sober person in that neighborhood would say no? So anyway, they took me along to this little church about a block away for a service one day, dunked me in a big pot of water.” He looks at me, an eyebrow slightly raised. “Did you know, Grayson, that that’s all it takes to be saved? A fucking bath.”

  I adjusted myself against my pillows. “So what happened? Did you stay? With the church, I mean.”

  “Sure. I went back a few times for services. Sometimes it helped, mostly because I loved the idea of my parents going to a hell where they cooked rotisserie-style all day long.”

  I wondered if it hurt him to talk about them like that, in spite of the nonchalant bravado he portrayed. What must it have been like, to have parents who were nothing but rats in a cage, repeatedly hitting the lever for another hit of crank or ice or whatever? “So why’d you stop believing in the Christian ideal?”

  “Because the pastor OD’d. A lot of hypocrisy in the church system, apparently.”

  We talked for a long time before I noticed Drew began to droop. His head hung low, like his neck wasn’t strong enough to hold it up anymore. His face was wan.

  “Hey.” I struggled to sit up. “You look exhausted. Want me to call you a cab?”

  He looked toward my door. “Your mom’s not home yet. I don’t want to leave you alone.”

  I pulled aside one corner of my comforter, my heart beating ridiculously fast, my brain screeching warnings at me. Warnings I chose to ignore. “Well, then come sit in bed with me at least.”

  He stared at me, and I felt my cheeks warm. “Are you sure? I mean… I know you need your space and—”

  I scooted closer to the wall so there was more space for him. “I’m sure.”

  He got up and limped forward, kicked off his shoes, and got in beside me. His long legs hung off the end. I was hyperaware of everywhere we were touching; his arm, thigh, and leg nestled against mine. He put his arm around my shoulders, pulled me in close to his chest.

  I closed my eyes, tears suddenly threatening to fall. I couldn’t explain it, but the feeling of security and warmth that enveloped me was almost overwhelming. I was suddenly so aware of how safe and wanted he made me feel. When I was with him, I wasn’t a fuckup. I was just Saylor Grayson, a girl he liked and was getting to know.

  “Hey.” I opened my eyes to see his head dipped down toward mine. “You okay?”

  I blinked fast. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  “We’re in this together, Grayson,” he said, kissing my forehead gently.

  We’re in this together. I hadn’t ever heard words more beautiful.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  When my alarm went off Monday morning, my chest felt achy and hot. I sat up, pulled my nightshirt down and saw that the abscesses were fully formed. I had a valid medical reason to go to the doctor.

  I swung my legs out of bed, humming under my breath. I swore I could still smell Drew in the room two days after he’d been here, a mixture of the faded round notes of cologne and the beach. Trailing my hand along the back of the chair he’d sat on, I smiled at the memory of him kissing me. We hadn’t gone much further than that, both of us exhausted and sick. But I felt like something had happened that night. Something big.

  We’d been texting on and off since then, apparently unable to stop thinking of and talking to each other. As if on cue, my cell phone beeped.

  Want to meet up today? :)

  Smiling, I typed back,

  Wish I could. Dr appts, though.

  I guess I’ll just have to be happy thinking about you.

  Oh yeah? What about me? I stared at the text for a moment before I got up the nerve to hit send. Was I really flirting this brazenly?

  Take your pick. Hair like midnight. Fragrance like honeysuckle and rain. Lips soft as rose petals.

  I blushed in spite of myself, in spite of thinking I wasn’t the type of girl to fall for poetry. Flattery will get you everywhere.

  That’s what I’m hoping.

  Smiling to myself, I changed, brushed my teeth and hair, and went downstairs. Mum was eating breakfast, a small dollop of cottage cheese and fruit, along with her ubiquitous cup of tea.

  “You’re up early,” she remarked, turning a page of the newspaper.

  “I have an appointment with Dr. Stone this morning.” I decided not to tell her about the abscesses yet. I wanted some time in secret, to just enjoy the feeling of their heavy weight, their hot agony. And just briefly, I wondered at the duplicitous masks I wore—the coy girl who flirted with Drew on one side, and the girl nurturing disease in secret glee on the other.

  * * *

  The drive to Dr. Stone’s office was a quiet one. I kept pressing my fingers to the abscesses, to make them flare up in pain.

  It seemed to me that pain was the truest of feelings by far. It didn’t matter if you were giddy and high on life or so depressed you wanted to die. One single caress from your hot curling iron, one moment of that scorching heat seizing your fingers, and you stopped living, stopped being. Your thoughts turned entirely inward, and your only goal in life was to get away from the agony. There was a reason torture was so effective; even the toughest, meanest trained killing machines could only stand so much pain.

  I wanted to befriend pain. I wanted to dance cheek to cheek with it, to use its hand to pillow my head as I slept. I refused to be afraid of it.

  Mum pulled into an empty parking space and remained staring straight ahead, the windshield wipers hissing as they tried to wipe the snow from the glass. “I’ll be back in an hour,” she said.

  I pulled the hood of my winter jacket over my head and got out of the car.

  The receptionist was on the phone when I entered the office, and she motioned with her free hand to Dr. Stone’s open door. I walked up to it warily. Dr. Stone looked up from a book he was reading, and, taking his glasses off, smiled at me. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he wasn’t much older than me. There was just something about his face, his eyes, that seemed ridiculously young.

  “Hey, Saylor.”

  “Hi.” I walked in, past the picture of the man on the side table, and stood there awkwardly with my hands in my pockets. I was starting to sweat in my down jacket.

  “Close the door and take off your coat. Get comfortable.” He set his book on the table and crossed his legs, still smiling, as if he was getting ready for a good, cozy chat with a friend. Shrinks were so weird.

  I unzipped my jacket, hung it up, and stamped the snow from my boots before crossing the room to sit on the couch. I inhaled deeply, loving the fragrance of winter and expensive candles.

  “So, how have things been?”

  My mind flashed to Drew and Zee, Pierce and Carson and Jack. The TIDD group. The abscesses forming on my chest. My lies. “Fine.”

  Dr. Stone waited for me to say something else, but I remained quiet, staring at the pattern on the floor. “How is your volunteer work going?”

  I felt a spasm of nerves, a hitching in my diaphragm. I thought of the untruths I’d stitched into this big dar
k cloak I wore everywhere, a cloak that gave me a new identity and a new life. I met Dr. Stone’s eye, for just a moment, and then looked away.

  “Fine.” I pressed my palms together; they were starting to get damp.

  Dr. Stone crossed his legs and sat back. “What do they have you doing?”

  “Setting up and breaking down for the support groups.” I felt a tremor beneath the surface of my words, like the ground feels before an earthquake rips through it. I felt the impending doom of revelation. What would Dr. Stone do if he found out? What would he say when he realized this was all a big lie, that I’d gone into a place, sought out its most vulnerable citizens, and then decided to infiltrate as one of them?

  “Saylor.” The way he said my name got my attention: His voice wasn’t harsh, exactly, but it had a thread of steel running through it. I looked up, surprised. “You’re hiding something.”

  I stared at him, motionless. Afraid, so afraid. My heart wanted to rip through my clothes and jump out of my chest. Was this it? Would he call the hospital, insist that they look into things?

  “I’m not a cop. I’m not here to catch you out, to make you confess.” He smiled a little, but I couldn’t bring myself to return it. “I just want you to know you can trust me. I get the feeling there aren’t a lot of people you trust in your life. But this is your safe place.”

  Sure it was. If he knew exactly what I’d done, he wouldn’t be saying that. But I appreciated the sentiment. Perhaps it worked for other people, people not as fucked up as me. I shrugged, picked at a hangnail, and watched a small bead of blood swell. “Thanks.” Under my hoodie, the abscesses throbbed.

  After my session, I headed downstairs to Mum’s car. My cell phone vibrated. I pulled it out, my pulse rocketing at the thought of another flirty text from Drew. But it wasn’t him.

  How are you feeling? –Zee

  I texted her back as I rode down in the elevator.

  Better, but have to go to the doctor for an abscess. I’d decided it was time to let Mum in on what I’d done.

  Ouch. Is that an MS thing?

  I think so.