by Shari Arnold
“I’ve never tried that before,” he says with a boyish grin. “It was nice though, right?”
I fight back a smile of my own, but it’s too difficult. “It was nice.” I glance away, not wanting him to read more into this than he should, but who am I kidding, with my pink cheeks and my downcast eyes, it’s pretty damn obvious how I really feel. “I think… I think I’d still prefer it, if that’s okay with you.”
“Prefer what?”
I glare up at him, hating that he’s playing dumb, but my glare has no effect on his playful grin. If anything it widens it.
“I’d feel safer if we, you know.”
“If we what, Livy?”
Damn him. Damn his beautiful smile, and all of him, actually.
“If we…” I sigh loudly and throw my hands into the air. “I’d prefer if we, that is, if it’s okay with you…” I tug him toward me, and his lashes lower, darkening his eyes. “Held onto each other again. Like we did before?”
“It’s okay with me.”
I nod my head, staring down at his chest, waiting for the moment when he takes hold of me and we leave the ground. But it doesn’t come. We stand like this a moment longer, neither of us speaking, until, finally, I raise my eyes to his.
“Are you ready for this, Livy?” The laughter I expected to find isn’t there. Instead he looks quite serious.
“Yes,” I whisper, feeling sure that it’s the truth.
“It’s in your hands, you know. All of this.”
“You mean—”
“How far. How high. You call the shots.” When I remain silent he says, “I just thought you should know.”
He reaches for me, wrapping his arms around my waist, and I settle against his chest.
“Ready?” he asks me.
“Yes.”
Meyer wastes no time. We lift off the ground with a subtle jump. You’d think to get two people in the air it would take more work than this, but Meyer makes it look so easy. We’re only in the air a moment when we touch down again.
“Let’s try something different.” He lets go of me, only keeping hold of my hand. My eyes spring open. “We’re going to run and jump,” he says.
“What?”
He’s already poised and ready.
“Are you sure about this?” I say a bit panicky.
Meyer stops and leans close. His hand reaches up and touches the side of my face. And just like that I stop freaking out. His touch soothes me. “I want you to trust me. Do you trust me, Livy?”
“No. Definitely not.” I shake my head, and try to pull away, but he won’t let go.
“I think you do,” he whispers in my ear, and just like that I have goosebumps.
“On three. Ready?”
“Wait! Just give me a second…”
“One.”
“Meyer! I don’t think I can do this! Maybe if you just hold onto me again.”
“Two.”
“But I don’t know how to fly! I can’t—”
“Three!”
Suddenly we’re running. He’s gripping my hand so tight I have no choice but to run alongside of him.
“This. Is. Crazy!” I scream.
“Jump!” he yells.
And I jump.
My feet lift off the ground and I know I’m coming down right in the space between the two buildings. Right where the grass is muddy and wet, fifty feet or so beneath me. But I’m wrong. Instead I launch into the air with Meyer at my side and when my feet hit solid ground it isn’t with a tumble and a mess of broken bones, but rather lightly atop another roof just over from where we started.
“See!” Meyer shouts. “I told you it was easy!” His smile lights up the sky and I’m so happy to be alive that I smile back. He whoops into the air and then picks me up, spinning us so quickly I squeal and shut my eyes.
“Let’s try it again,” he says, once I’m back on the ground. “Come on!”
He tugs on my hand and even though my legs are shaking I start running.
Soon I’m soaring through the air again, touching down on rooftops, and the boy at my side is laughing. His face is breathtaking under the night sky. His hair is whipped back, his eyes clear. He is beautiful.
“You’re flying, Livy! You’re flying!”
Over and over again we jump, flinging our bodies into the night like we’re invincible, the air catching us and lifting us ever so gently to the next building. Up ahead I can see the Space Needle, its lights a blurry mix of white and red as the fog rolls in from the Sound, shrouding my favorite landmark in mystery. But I see it. It stands where it always does, making me want to get closer.
“Over there!” I point and Meyer squeezes my hand in agreement.
As we head toward the Space Needle the buildings get shorter, and the rooftops further away. We’re riding a roller coaster of our own making. I lose count of how many times I catch my breath, occasionally needing Meyer to remind me not to close my eyes, while one word continues to flutter across my thoughts. How. How are we doing this?
We touch down on the roof of the large apartment building he’d pointed out to me earlier, just shy of the Seattle Center.
“Let’s stop here,” he says.
He still has hold of my hand as he leads me to the edge of the roof, the side facing the Sound. We stay like this, together yet separate, gazing over the water as the fog continues to roll in. All around us people are safe behind their windows and doors, their nights centered around the television or a good book, while here I stand on the roof, holding the hand of a boy who can fly. I can see them, these people, secure in their nighttime worlds, but they don’t see me. No one is looking outside their window. And even if they did see us, would they really see us, two roof jumpers out for a bit of an adventure? Or would they see our shadows and mistake us for birds soaring over the city.
Either way it doesn’t matter because I know the truth. And, wow, do I like it.
“How can you do this?” I ask Meyer. “How can you fly?”
“I don’t know. I’ve always been able to,” he tells me again as though this is his standard answer, his rehearsed reply.
The word always gets stuck in my head. Always. Like I’ve always had hazel eyes or I’ve always been able to hold my breath underwater longer than anyone else.
“I just wanted you to feel it, you know?”
“Feel what exactly?” I say.
Meyer tilts his head as if he’s not sure why this would be a question. “How it feels to be free.”
“Oh,” I say, realizing he’s right. I did feel free. I still do. Everything below me weighs me down; the buildings, the streets, the people. Up here none of that can touch me. I am free of gravity.
“That feeling of being free. There’s not much else to get excited about in this world of yours, is there, Livy?”
“World of mine?” The words snag my attention as though they are the missing piece to the puzzle that is Meyer. “As opposed to your world?” I laugh out loud, making it clear that I get the joke. You know, in case it is one.
Meyer smiles at something off in the distance, but he doesn’t say anything more.
“You should know it’s all going to be okay,” he tells me. “You will get through this, Livy.” He turns toward me, his eyes dark. “Do you believe me?”
“I want to,” I whisper. There is a goodbye hidden in these words of his. I know it and I hate it.
“I wanted you to feel something,” he says. “You deserve to feel something.” He pauses a second, and I hold my breath. “I just…”
“What?” I ask him when he doesn’t continue.
He’s silent a moment, just studying me. “I just didn’t expect to feel it too.”
He gives me one of those smiles that is more mysterious than anything else and then we’re moving, dropping toward the ground like two people standing in an elevator, except we’re not in an elevator, we are simply drifting with nothing but air all around us.
“That’s enough flying for one even
ing,” Meyer says once my shoes sink into the grass. “Come on, I’ll get you home.”
We walk in silence all the way back to my apartment. I keep remembering how the air smelled while we were above the ground, salty and yet clean, and how it tasted fresh with a spicy hint like my mom’s favorite tea, which doesn’t make any sense at all, now that I think about it. But there it is. And how being out in the crisp night air should have made me feel cold, but instead it made me feel like I was lit from within.
“I have so many questions,” I tell Meyer once we’re standing in front of my apartment, but he just nods. He must expect that by now.
My smile is wide. I can’t stop grinning. “Can we do that again?” I ask and then it hits me. This is it. This is the last time I’ll see him.
“I promise I’ll say goodbye,” he tells me, once again reading my mind.
“How soon?” I ask, staring down at the ground.
“Soon,” he answers.
Even though he’s made a promise to say goodbye when it’s time for him to go, tonight he leaves me without one. He leaps into the air and flies away, leaving me on the ground feeling more alone than ever.
PART TWO
They flew away to the Neverland, where the lost children are.
-— J.M. Barrie
Peter and Wendy
CHAPTER NINETEEN
One week later
“Are you ready for this?” my mother asks. She’s sitting across from me while we wait for Dr. Lerner. He should be here any minute.
“I’m ready,” I say, giving her a smile that is meant to show her how ready I am. I’m so nervous though I doubt I pull it off.
She opens her mouth to speak and I know what she wants to say, how I can still change my mind, how it’s not too late, or perhaps, let’s just walk away now, but she doesn’t say any of that. Not this time. She’s asked enough these last few weeks to know what the answer would be.
I’m doing this.
I’ve endured countless tests and exams and I’ve made too many promises to back out now. Today is the day I’m giving Jilly some of my bone marrow and after today she will be on her way to good health and birthday number seven and I will be slightly uncomfortable for a couple of weeks — at least that’s what they tell me. And it will be worth it.
Jilly will get better.
It’s cold in this room. I can’t stop shivering. I pull the blue and white striped hospital gown around me. Not only is it thin, it barely covers my body. It’s doing nothing to keep me warm.
“You know,” my mother says from her metal folding chair across the room, “I waited until Jenna was three before I gave her peanut butter.”
And just like always, the sound of my sister’s name on her lips gets my attention.
“The doctor said two was fine but because of her allergy to strawberries I wanted to be safe.” She smiles but I don’t smile back. I’m too stiff and cold to smile. “I never let you eat grapes or hot dogs. Either of you. I figured I would wait until you were older.”
She slides her hands down the sides of her wrinkle-free black pants, and I recognize this nervous habit because it’s mine. It’s the thing I do when I don’t know how else to fix something. I grip my fingers together, refusing to let them mirror my mother’s anxiety and watch as her hands find their way back into her lap. She is nervous, just like me. I know it. I can feel it. But you’d never know to look at her. Her hair is perfect, Her clothes are pressed. She’s even wearing jewelry. Who thinks to wear jewelry to the hospital? Or to paint their nails to match their outfit? Apparently my mother does.
“Jenna never did try a hot dog,” she continues. “Not once.”
“Well she didn’t miss much,” I say, even though it’s not true. I’m quite partial to turkey dogs with a thin strip of mustard on top. But my mother doesn’t need to know this.
“I used to wash her hands every time we came home from the store. I used to carry around those bottles of anti-bacterial lotion. She hated it, always complained it hurt her hands.”
“I remember.”
“But I was militant,” she continues. “Used to buy them in bulk.”
“You can’t wash away cancer,” I tell her. I don’t like where this is headed. I don’t like the expression on her face. Her eyes are focused on the clock behind my head and even though she’s talking to only me, not once has she really looked at me, just around me, as if I’m not really here.
“What I’m trying to tell you, Livy,” she says, and then she stops and doesn’t say anything more until the silence fills the corners of the room, making every sound out in the hallway seem loud in comparison.
I wrap my arms around myself. It’s so cold in here! Why is it so damn cold?
My mother’s shoulders flatten back against her chair as if there’s a ribbon attached to the top of her head and someone is pulling it straight to the ceiling. She keeps taking these short breaths of air. It sounds like she’s choking.
“You couldn’t save her,” I whisper into the cold room. “No one could.”
“And yet you keep trying.” Finally she looks at me, pinning me to my spot on the exam table. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To save her?”
“I’m here for Jilly,” I say though tight lips. “Jenna’s dead.” Dead. Dead. Dead. The word weighs me down, tugging on my shoulders until I fold into myself.
“Well I hope you don’t have a difficult time of it,” she says with a clearing of her throat. “The recovery, I mean.” She pulls out her iPhone and begins scrolling through it. “There are only two weeks left before Election Day,” she tells me, as if I’m not already aware of this. As if I don’t walk past the gigantic calendar hanging on the kitchen wall where every number is circled in red, leading up to that magic day when the country comes together to determine the fate of our world. And my mother’s sanity.
“I won’t need your help,” I tell her. “I have Sheila.” Sheila has already vowed to be at my side through all of this. She’s even promised to stay the night if I need her to.
My mother’s eyes lift off her iPhone just long enough to spill annoyance in my direction.
“I’m not saying I can’t help you, Livy. I’m just saying—”
“You’re busy. I know. I get it.” I play with the loose string hanging from the bottom of my hospital gown. I’m afraid to tug on it. It might just unravel on me, and I have very little fabric covering my body as it is.
“If I could go back,” my mother says, and I look up. “If I could go back—”
But she never gets the chance to finish her sentence. Dr. Lerner comes through the door with his nurse right behind him and then they’re using words like, it’s time and we’re ready for you, and then I’m hugging my mother — who doesn’t let go of me until I tell her to, and even after her arms drop from my shoulders she holds onto me with her eyes until that very last moment when she’s forced to walk one way, and I another. Right before I turn the corner and she disappears behind a door, I call out, “Bye, Mom. See you soon.”
What I actually wanted to do was ask her to finish her thought. What would she do if she could go back? How does that sentence end? I wish she’d tell me, because it feels really important right now. If I could go back has plagued my mind for months. I used to sit up at night thinking about the things I would have done with Jenna, the places we should have gone, the things I should have shared with her. I’ve strung together those should-have memories so often they’re like cobwebs clouding up my mind. Sometimes I confuse them with the real memories and I have to remind myself how I never took her to that new park they were building just before she died. How she never got to play on it even though she watched it grow day by day.
“What would you have done?” I want to ask, but I don’t say the words. They’re too personal for a hallway. Too dramatic for this pre-surgery moment. Instead I lift my hand and wave. She waves back, and then she’s gone. The door closes behind her with a click and that click echoes down the hallway and was
hes over me.
“Are you ready, Livy?” Dr. Lerner asks. I’ve answered this question so many times, in so many ways. This time I simply nod.
CHAPTER TWENTY
They lead me into an operating room that is bright and sterile and even colder than the waiting room.
“Lie down here,” the nurse tells me and then covers my body with these white scratchy blankets that aren’t the slightest bit comfortable, but I like how heavy they feel upon my skin.
“This will pinch a little,” the nurse says, right before she sticks the IV into the top of my hand. It does pinch, but it’s not that bad. I jump anyway.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I’m just nervous.”
She squeezes my shoulder. “You’re doing fine, Olivia.”
“Livy,” I correct her.
“Livy,” she says with a smile. “You’re doing just fine.”
I decide I like her. She’s nice. I feel safe here. But I still can’t stop shaking.
“Relax and lie back,” she tells me, even though I’m already lying down. “When you wake up you’ll be in a different room. Your mother will be waiting there.”
“Will you be there?” I ask.
Again she smiles. “Yes, Livy. I’ll be there.”
Dr. Lerner is moving about the room. He seems busy so I try not to pay too much attention to him. But then he turns, comes right up to me, and I realize this is it. This is the moment when everything will start to happen.
“How are you today, Livy?” he asks me.
“Good. Ready.” Didn’t he already ask me this?
“Great,” he says.
“You’re going to start to feel yourself relax,” a new voice tells me. It’s over to my right and it sounds deep and male, but I don’t feel like turning my head to find him, so I close my eyes. The lights are so bright in here.
“Just relax,” someone says and I nod my head. My movements are jerky and stiff as if someone else is controlling me.