I don’t move. Something is wrong, something that goes beyond what happened with those thugs. “Talk to me.”
His lips press into a thin line. He looks away.
“Stanley.”
He closes his eyes. Several minutes pass, and I start to think he’s fallen asleep. Then he begins to speak, his voice quiet and strangely calm. “You’ve noticed, right? I mean . . . my eyes.”
“What about them.”
“I thought for sure you’d have figured it out by now,” he says. “You know so much about so many things. But then, it’s a pretty rare condition.”
“What is.”
“Osteogenesis imperfecta. Which is a fancy way of saying my bones break easily. I can do most things without trouble, but . . . let’s just say I didn’t play a whole lot of sports as a kid.”
I remember him talking about breaking his fibula, about how much he hated hospitals. I’m a klutz, he had said. “How many did you break.”
“Over my whole life? I don’t know. I lost count around fifty.”
“Fifty breaks.” My voice sounds odd. Distant.
“Most of those happened when I was a kid. Bones are more fragile when they’re growing. I missed a lot of school. Lots of surgeries. Sometimes I feel like Frankenstein’s monster, I’ve been cut apart and sewn back together so many times.” He chuckles. Like it’s a joke. “I set off metal detectors now, because I’ve got surgically implanted rods in both my femurs. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to walk without crutches. But I get around pretty well, all things considered. And I haven’t lost my hearing, which happens to a lot of people with OI. I’m lucky.” A brief pause. “Anyway, that’s my long-winded explanation for why I have these weird-looking eyeballs. Something to do with the collagen not forming correctly.”
There’s a pressure and tightness in my chest. It takes me a moment to identify it as guilt—though guilt about what, I’m not entirely sure. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. I’m okay with how I am. Sort of. But I know what it’s like, walking around with a diagnostic label hung around your neck, being told by the world that you have limitations, that there are certain things you’ll never be able to do.”
I sit motionless, arms crossed over my chest, knees locked together. Looking back, it seems so obvious—his cane, his eyes, the way he talked about breaking bones as if it was more or less routine. How did I not see? Did I not want to?
“My parents were always fighting,” he says. “Mostly about money, because there was never enough. It all went toward my medical bills. I was in the hospital so often, I got to know all the doctors and nurses by name. They liked me, because I smiled for them, and when they asked me how I was, I always said I was fine. I told them how lucky I felt to have so many people taking such good care of me. They all thought I was this brave little soldier. But it wasn’t like that. I mean, they were the ones cutting me open and filling me with pins and pushing the button that gave me my pain meds. I needed them to like me. It wasn’t bravery, it was survival.”
My hand drifts toward one braid and starts tugging.
“I was thinking about that last night,” he continues. “And I remembered that thing you said. About rabbit moms, how they reabsorb the baby if there’s something wrong with it.”
I draw in my breath sharply.
“It’s like you said. Love doesn’t pay the bills.”
No, no, no. I want to jump back in space-time and erase those words. “I wasn’t talking about you,” I whisper.
“I know. But this is going to be my life, Alvie. More breaking bones and more trips to the hospital and being stuck in a sling or on crutches for months on end and needing help with everything. And maybe someday I will go deaf, or end up in a wheelchair, or both. Am I supposed to pretend like that doesn’t matter? Like it’s not a big deal? How can I ask anyone—” His voice cracks.
I clutch my arm, fingers pressing into my own flesh with bruising force. “I’m broken, too.”
“No, you’re not. You should have seen yourself.” He smiles, his expression tight with pain. “You don’t need some white knight rushing in to save you. And even if you did, I can’t—” His voice splinters again. “I’m just a useless—”
I kiss him. I don’t even think about it; my body moves on its own.
I come in too fast. Our teeth knock together, and he gasps against my mouth. I pull back a little, then come in again, gentler, softer. His lips are warm, slightly rough and chapped against mine. I can’t tell if I’m doing this right. Maybe it doesn’t matter.
I pull back, and he looks up at me, eyes wide and dazed. “Why did you—?”
“Because I wanted to.”
He blinks a few times. His expression has gone blank, as if a tiny nuclear bomb has gone off in his cortex, obliterating his thoughts.
“You are someone who should exist, Stanley. I shouldn’t have said those things at Buster’s. I wasn’t thinking. I was upset because—” The words stop as if they’ve hit a wall in my throat. Somehow, this is very hard to admit. “—because I didn’t like seeing you with her.”
“I. Wait. Who?”
My face burns. “That girl. Dorothy.”
His jaw drops. “That’s what was bothering you?”
I want to crawl under the bed and hide.
“Alvie . . . I told you, Dorothy and I just sit next to each other in class. We’re not even friends.”
“She likes you,” I mutter.
“She likes to mother me. Girls tend to treat me that way, because I’m the quiet, nerdy guy with the cane. I’ve never been on their radar, not like that. That’s why I was so surprised when you asked me to . . .” A light flush rises into his cheeks. “You know.”
Of course—Stanley doesn’t see himself as attractive. He wouldn’t realize that woman was flirting with him if she flipped her skirt up and presented her rump like a bonobo in heat.
“Alvie. Look at me.”
I force myself to meet his gaze.
“I don’t want her. I want—I would like to be with—you.”
My insides are a confused muddle. If I were a better person, I would push Stanley right into Dorothy’s arms, because she can give him so many things that I can’t. But I can’t deny the stab of fierce animal joy I feel at those words. I want you.
He reaches up, cupping the back of my neck, and leans up, toward me.
The kiss is slower this time. Softer. He tastes faintly of cherries; he must have eaten some Jell-O in the hospital.
Before now, I never understood the appeal of this. I always thought it would be disgusting, sharing saliva with another person, but somehow it’s not. Maybe because it’s Stanley.
I pull back and lick my lips. “It’s very wet,” I say. “Kissing.”
“That’s kind of the idea.” His eyes search my face. “Do you want to keep going?”
“Keep going.”
His lips move against mine. His eyes open a crack, and he peeks out at me through his eyelashes. “Close your eyes,” he whispers.
I do, and I see immediately why. It’s more intense without the distraction of sight. The room suddenly feels a lot warmer; I’m dizzy, off-balance. Everything about this is dangerous. I am walking a tightrope over a bottomless abyss, and one wrong step will drag us both down into oblivion. But I don’t want to stop. I can’t.
When I finally pull back, he breathes a small, shivery sigh. His eyes slowly open, soft and unfocused.
He squirms, and I wonder if his arm is hurting him.
Then I notice something hard pressing against my thigh. “Oh,” I say.
He scoots his hips away from mine. His blush is visible even in the dim light. “Sorry.”
I remember that night in the motel room. The way his breathing quickened when he looked at me. His gentle, tentative caresses. The warmth of his hands.
Under the blanket, I lightly touch his thigh, and his muscles tense. I don’t plan the words, my next words; they just come out. “We could try again, if you
want.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.” My hand rests on his thigh.
He’s silent, unmoving, not even breathing.
“Stanley?” The end of his name curves up a little in a question.
He takes a slow, deep breath and lets it out through his nose. “You remember, before, I told you I felt like Frankenstein’s monster? It wasn’t really a joke.”
After more than fifty breaks, it would be surprising if he didn’t have a collection of scars. “So.”
“You haven’t seen me. Whatever you’re imagining, it’s worse.”
“They’re just scars.”
He swallows; I hear the click in his throat. Lightly he touches my shoulder. His hand slowly slides down my side, along the curve of my waist, to rest on my hip, a gentle, steady weight. I can feel the outline of his fingers, even through the thin denim of my jeans. I wait, holding my breath. A part of me wants to pull away, because even now, that simple contact is almost overwhelming. Waves of sensation pulse through my whole body, as if I were nothing but a collection of raw nerves. The instinctive fear of human touch is still there, pressing against the base of my throat. But there’s pleasure, too—a slowly undulating heat.
Then his hand slides away, leaving a cold spot on my hip. “I don’t know if this is the best time.” He gives me a small, apologetic smile.
I nod. I don’t leave the bed, though; I don’t want to.
Gradually his breathing slows. “Alvie?” His voice is drowsy, faraway.
“Yes.”
“Earlier, when we fought those guys, you were hissing and growling. And stomping your foot.”
“Rabbits will do that sometimes, when they’re threatened.”
“Oh.”
I expect him to ask more questions, but he just dozes off, as if that’s all the explanation he needs.
For a few minutes, I lie still, listening to him breathe. He’s very close and very warm. Though I’m feeling the physical symptoms of exhaustion—dry eyes, headache, a heaviness in my limbs—my mind is wide-awake. Maybe it’s the discomfort of being in a strange bed, the unfamiliar texture of the sheets, the scent of him clinging to the pillow. I turn my face and breathe it in deeply, holding it in my lungs. Particles of his, mingling with mine.
After a while, my bladder starts to ache. Carefully I slide out of the bed. Stanley stirs and murmurs something incoherent under his breath, but he doesn’t wake. Moonlight filters through the curtains, lighting the way as I tiptoe out of the room and down the hall.
On the way back from the bathroom, I pass a closed door and pause. Just a guest room, Stanley said.
I try the door. It creaks open, and I peek in.
The walls, the curtains, and the bedspread are patterned with bunches of pink roses. There are a few necklaces strewn on the dresser. A hairbrush. A stick of deodorant. A floral-patterned blouse hanging inside a half-open closet. And rows upon rows of porcelain figurines inside a huge glass cabinet—children, puppies, kittens, birds, all staring at me with their disproportionately large, inanimate eyes.
I take a few steps inside and touch the pillow. There’s a thin layer of dust that comes off on my hand. On the table next to the bed stands a picture—a blond woman and a tiny blond boy in a blue polo shirt, maybe five or six years old, smiling up at the camera. Stanley and his mother.
Her room. Her things. Left untouched all this time.
Outside the window, a cloud passes over the moon, and the shadows shift. For a moment, the covers on the bed seem to ripple, as if a breeze were blowing through the room, and the hairs on my neck stiffen. I retreat, easing the door shut behind me, then quietly slip back into bed with Stanley and curl against his side.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“You seem to be in good spirits today,” Dr. Bernhardt remarks.
I sit across from him in my living room. Today he has a clipboard and a thick folder. “I’m in a good mood.”
His eyebrows climb toward his receding hairline. “I can’t remember the last time you’ve said that.”
I shrug. It’s true. Over a week has passed since that night with Stanley, and the whole time, I’ve felt strangely light—euphoric, almost. But I’ve avoided mentioning that to Dr. Bernhardt. After our conversation outside the apartment—after he warned me that I was becoming codependent—Stanley is the last thing I want to discuss with him. “What’s in the folder?” I ask instead.
“Ah.” He consults his clipboard, then pulls out a stack of papers. “I just wanted to go over a few things. When you meet with Judge Gray, obviously, you’ll want to present yourself as professional and mature. She’ll probably ask a lot of questions about your job, your living situation, that sort of thing. Let’s do a practice run—I’ll pretend to be the judge, and you answer my questions. So, Alvie. How do you like living on your own?”
“Fine.”
“It says here that you work at a zoo. . . . Do you enjoy the work?”
“It’s fine.”
“You can’t answer every question with ‘fine.’ Elaborate a little. You like the animals, don’t you? Talk about that. It’s important to be professional, but you also want to come across as . . . warm. Human.”
“That I’m human should be obvious. Do you think she’ll assume that I’m an android. Or an alien.”
“You know what I mean. Make her sympathize with you. Make her like you.”
“She’s there to decide whether I’m fit to live on my own. It shouldn’t matter if she likes me or not.”
“You’re right. It shouldn’t. But it does.” He smiles, lips thin and tight. His gaze shifts away. “You know, a lot of people don’t like social workers. It’s a necessary job, but we’re seen as fussy, moral busybodies, telling others how to live their lives. And when people don’t like you, it makes things harder. It isn’t fair, but that’s how the world works.”
I shift in my chair, not sure how to respond. He doesn’t usually talk about himself like this. I don’t exactly like Dr. Bernhardt, myself. But then, I don’t like very many people. And I must admit—with the exception of our last encounter, he has generally been one of the more tolerable adults in my life. “I don’t dislike you,” I say.
“Well, I’m pleased to hear that,” he says. “It’s hard to tell, sometimes.”
It never occurred to me that Dr. Bernhardt might care about whether I liked him.
“How are things going with your friend?” he asks. “Stanley, was it?”
I freeze. Now that he’s asked me directly, I can’t avoid the subject—not without lying. So I give him my usual response: “Fine.”
“You’re still seeing him, then?”
When I’m silent, he averts his gaze. “I realize that I expressed some reservations about your friendship with him. But I might have spoken out of turn. I meant what I said—it’s your decision. I won’t try to interfere.”
Is it possible? Did I misunderstand him, before? Maybe he wasn’t threatening me—maybe my state of mind affected my perceptions. I want to believe him, but I’ve been betrayed in the past.
I decide, on impulse, to take him at his word. “Good. Because Stanley is my friend, and that’s not going to change, regardless of what you think about it.”
He looks me in the eye. “Maybe it’s none of my business, but . . . is he just a friend?”
Even if I wanted to answer that question, I wouldn’t know how. The truth is, I’m still not sure what kind of relationship Stanley and I have. We haven’t kissed since the night he broke his arm. We haven’t talked about it, and he hasn’t tried to do it again. Maybe he’s waiting for me to take the initiative. Given my boundary issues, that makes sense. I keep thinking about it, replaying the moment in my head. A part of me wants to try it again. But a vague anxiety always stops me, a whisper of warning from inside the Vault.
“We’re friends. That’s all.” It’s starting to feel like a mantra. “I would prefer not to discuss him.”
He lets out a small sigh and glances
down at the clipboard. “All right. Let’s continue.”
As we go over the questions, his words echo in my head: When people don’t like you, it makes things harder. Judge Gray, based on my limited memories of her, is a severe, no-nonsense woman. A bit like Ms. Nell, but without the eye-abrading fashion sense. And I am not the sort of person who easily inspires sympathy in others.
If Dr. Bernhardt is correct—if the judge’s decision will be based on whether she finds me likable—I’m in big trouble.
“So this is Chance,” Stanley remarks.
I nod.
Chance preens his wing and shifts his weight, claws flexing and clenching on the branch.
“He’s beautiful,” Stanley says. “You said you feed him by hand?”
“Yes. He’s grown more comfortable around me. I still have to be careful, though.”
“Is he dangerous?”
“Only to those who don’t respect him. I’m the only one he’ll tolerate inside his cage, but I don’t have any special secret. It’s just a matter of moving slowly and being patient.” Common sense. But many people don’t seem to have that kind of patience.
Stanley glances at me, blue sclerae flashing. They’re especially striking in the sunlight, as if the vivid azure of his irises has seeped into the whites. I wait for him to ask what happened to Chance’s amputated wing—everyone seems to ask that—but he doesn’t.
I start to walk. “This way. I’ll show you the other animals.”
We follow the curving path past the hyenas, the river otters, and the pair of gibbons. Buttercup, the lone cougar, is curled in the sun, her head resting on paws the size of dinner plates.
I glance over at Stanley, my gaze focusing briefly on his lips. With an effort, I look away.
Since the night we kissed, it feels as if we’ve stalled; as though neither one of us is quite sure where to go or what to do next. It has occurred to me that maybe I should invite him to my apartment—but I haven’t, and he hasn’t brought it up. Perhaps he senses my reluctance.
It’s not that I don’t trust him. True, the idea of allowing someone else into my space is uncomfortably intimate, but the larger reason is more straightforward: my apartment is objectively disgusting. I’ve grown accustomed to it out of necessity, but I don’t see any reason to subject him to the oppressive cheesy smell or the earwigs lurking in the bathroom.
When My Heart Joins the Thousand Page 13