Anything But Ordinary

by Lara Avery

  Bryce gave a small laugh, her eyelashes close enough that they brushed his cheek. She took in his handsome frame against the pinned-up sheets.

  “Who cares?” she said, and their mouths connected. It felt like the last kiss in a romantic movie, but their night had just begun.

  At the restaurant, Bryce tucked a napkin into the front of her strapless dress, and Carter ordered lobster for them to share.

  “Special occasion?” the gum-chewing waitress asked with a twang.

  “It’s my senior prom,” Bryce gushed loudly, and beamed at the other patrons, an elderly couple and a family with twins.

  Carter disguised his laughter with a cough.

  “Prom in August, huh?” the waitress said lazily, and then didn’t ask any more about it. They all turned back to their meals.

  After dinner, in the car, as Jeffrey ate their leftovers in the front, they popped open the bubbly. Carter dusted off two plastic champagne glasses he had put under the seat.

  “To us,” he said, topping the glasses with foamy white grape juice.

  Bryce cleared her throat. She had thought of something to say at this moment, something better than the things she felt usually came out of her mouth.

  She lifted her glass. “To a life worth reliving!” she said triumphantly, and Carter nodded.

  They were holding their full glasses to their lips, ready to take a sip, when the car lurched forward, splashing fake champagne all over Bryce’s dress and Carter’s suit. They froze for a moment, taking in the damage.

  “Sorry!” Jeffrey called back.

  “Send back some napkins!”

  Carter took a wad of napkins from Jeffrey’s disembodied hand. Bryce’s lap was soaked through and through. Carter started spreading the napkins on Bryce’s upper thighs like picnic blankets, pressing them down to soak up the moisture.

  Bryce started to giggle. “Could you stop pressing on my lady parts, please?”

  Carter shot up, banging his head on the roof of the car. “Ow!”

  Then they both started to laugh, Carter’s eyes tearing up from hitting his head. He collapsed in her lap and she ran her hands through his gelled hair, messing it back into his usual bed head.

  They were acting out the scene from Taxi Driver Bryce had showed him in the hospital, trying to see whose de Niro impression was better, when Jeffrey pulled up to a row of buildings.

  “This is it, right?” Jeffrey called back to Carter, his mouth full of dinner roll.

  “This is it,” Carter replied, and leaped around the car to open the door for Bryce.

  Bryce stepped out into a street she didn’t recognize. The buildings were a mixture of old storefronts and narrow houses with wide, white porches on both levels. She could see the skyline of downtown Nashville in the near distance. Carter led her to a door next to one of the old storefronts. It stood open under a humming neon sign reading THE JAZZ HOUSE. A few scattered beats from a drum set filtered down a set of wooden stairs.

  “Welcome to your prom,” Carter said, and took her hand.

  She squeezed his hand tight as he climbed in front of her. Up the stairs a stooped old man in a beret sat on a stool. Carter placed a ten-dollar bill in his hand and led Bryce to a small table in sight of a group of unmanned instruments glowing in stage light against the rest of the dark little club. In front of the band was a semicircle dance floor.

  The drummer lay down a few beats, bobbing his bald head to the rhythm. Bryce felt her mouth drop open in awe at his skill.

  She looked at Carter, who smiled back at her, amused by her amazement. “They’ll start in a few minutes.”

  One by one, the musicians took up their spots. A man with a big beard and gnarled hands at the piano, a tall woman all in black at the stand-up bass, a middle-aged man on trumpet. And finally the singer, a curvy girl not much older than Bryce in a tight, red dress, her hair styled in old-fashioned curls.

  The first strains of music began, and Bryce felt her body melt. Carter had picked the exact right band. The notes didn’t feel random like some jazz she’d heard; they came together in harmony and a familiar rhythm. The singer began, with a voice like warm maple syrup.

  Hold me close and hold me fast

  A couple moved to the dance floor, a woman in a sundress and her partner, a guy with dreadlocks. Carter looked at Bryce. They stood up together, moving around the table to find each other’s hands. She wrapped her arms around his neck as he placed his hands on her waist. They swayed through the second verse.

  I see la vie en rose.

  “What’s la vie en rose?” Bryce asked Carter.

  “I think it’s just ‘life in pink,’” he replied, close to her ear. “The rosy life.”

  Bryce could feel everyone’s eyes on the two of them in their formal clothes, but for the first time, she wasn’t self-conscious. She knew she looked beautiful. Surrounded by these sounds, beside the candlelight flickering on the tables, everyone looked beautiful tonight.

  She met Carter’s eyes, which wrinkled at the corners as he smiled, looking her up and down. They drifted closer, and her head fell on his shoulder. She heard his voice near her ear again, his lips grazing her neck.

  “I’m crazy about you,” he whispered.

  In reply, Bryce lifted her head, holding up a hand to the music. “Hear that?” she asked him.

  When you press me to your heart

  I feel a world apart

  A world where roses bloom

  “That,” she said, and returned her head to rest on him.

  They stayed that way until the song ended, and quite a long time after.

  t Bryce’s insistence, Carter parked on a side street, far from the center of downtown, so that they could have a nice, long walk to Gabby and Greg’s rehearsal dinner.

  “It’s one of the last nights we can go outside before winter,” Bryce joked as she took his arm. He had been silent the whole car ride over, and Bryce was trying to lighten the mood. Winter did come in Nashville, and sometimes there was even snow, but it was the opposite of winter this evening in early September. The humidity was almost unbearable. They might as well have been walking through a jungle.

  “I guess so,” he said, his eyes ahead.

  Maybe he was tired. Today they had traipsed through the home section of Bloomingdale’s, looking for Gabby’s wedding gift. A skinny girl in a crocheted dress and huge glasses had scolded them for lying on the beds, and Bryce could have sworn she overcharged them for the oak tree–shaped bookends they finally picked off the registry.

  Then Carter had to put in hours at the hospital. He showed up at her door looking dashing in loafers and a sport coat with reinforced elbows.

  Bryce wore a dark blue, vintage-looking dress with a low neckline and a tapered waist, the skirt flaring out just above her knees. She was starting to recognize herself in the mirror, getting to know the shape of her curves and how to wear color. She liked who she saw in navy. It made her eyes stand out in fiery hazel. She had put up her waves in a loose bun on the top of her head, and slicked on some of Sydney’s cinnamon lip gloss.

  But Carter hardly looked at her.

  Bryce looked at his profile. He had known her so long, and she was just starting to know him. But it was more than the start of something. So many days he had just sat next to her when she was asleep, when she was awake. He was steady, balancing her out, anchoring the other side of an always-tipping scale. She couldn’t wait for the day when he needed her. She wanted to give back to him.

  “Carter,” she said, and stopped.

  He took longer to stop walking, and turned around a few feet in front of Bryce. I love you. She could say it now. She should say it.

  “Bryce,” he said, his tone even. She wrapped her arms around him. “Bryce,” he repeated, unhooking her arms, holding her hands.

  “What?” she finally replied. She sniffed, trying to smile. Had things changed? They couldn’t have. They were in love this afternoon, she knew they were.

  “There’s
something I need to tell you.” His jaw clenched.

  Bryce pulled her hands from his. He let them go.

  He crossed his arms, looking at the sidewalk. “This afternoon I sat down with Dr. Warren and reviewed what we were able to salvage from your CAT scan.” He took a breath. “There were too many neurons firing at once, Bryce. Every time these neurons erupt simultaneously, there is damage to the brain.”

  “So?” she said petulantly. She felt childish, but she couldn’t match the cold, flatness in his voice.

  He cleared his throat. “The more damage the brain receives, the more it swells. The skull restricts the brain from expanding, and this leads to a rise in pressure within the brain. This rise in pressure quickly equals the arterial pressure, limiting the blood flow to the brain.”

  “What does that mean, Carter?” Every time he avoided her eyes, her insides felt like they were being ripped out. “Can you speak English?”

  “I’m sorry, Bryce.” He put his hands up to his face. His voice shook. “Your brain won’t survive the lack of oxygen.”

  Bryce’s angry heart stopped pumping. Her furious breaths were caught in her throat. The whole world was frozen.

  “What are you saying?” she said, her words almost a gasp.

  “You have less than a month to live.”

  Bryce closed her eyes. This wasn’t happening. Maybe none of this was happening. Maybe this was another one of her visions. Maybe she was actually somewhere else. Her mind went to the morning of the CAT scan. She wished she had gone calmly into the machine and lain there peacefully as she listened to the radio. She would emerge from the scan without ceremony. Everything would be normal.

  Bryce’s eyes opened. Carter was still standing in front of her. It was real.

  She had woken up a ghost of who she had been five years ago, and she was just starting to materialize now. She was just starting to live. How could she be dying?

  He brought his hands down. His face was red, streaked with tears. “I think you should come in. To the hospital.”

  Immediately Bryce shook her head, backing away. She wouldn’t go back there.

  “Maybe there’s something we can do. We can figure something out. We can study you. Bring in as many experts as it takes.”

  “Study me? Like one of your classes? No.” If she was going to die, she wasn’t going to do it between those walls. She would do it on her own terms.

  “Medical observation, Bryce.” He sounded aggravated, hurt.

  “Get away from me,” she said, and her breath came back. The beating heart came back, reminding her she was alive.

  Bryce turned from Carter and walked away, her hand on her chest. She felt the wild thumping of her heart, the warmth of her skin beneath her dress.

  “Bryce!”

  He started to follow her, but she whirled around and shouted, “I need to be alone!”

  His arm fell, his face fell.

  Bryce turned to the stretching sidewalk and strode as quickly as her legs would allow. Soon, she no longer felt him behind her.

  Good. She walked quicker. If all he was to her was a doctor, she didn’t need him anymore. He couldn’t save her. She thought about turning around, yelling that to his back, but what would be the point? She thought about yelling after him, telling him to come back. But he was gone.

  Die, die, die. The word took a different meaning now. I am going to die. Die was a place just as much as a verb. A place she was going to, no matter which direction she went.

  A wave of heat shot through her, pain coursing from her skull down her neck, her back, her spinal cord. The city turned on itself, the sidewalks rising before her.

  Tall green grasses.

  She was in her backyard. Her limbs came flopping out from under her, skinny and tanned. She was seven. Sydney came running up, her dark curls flying. “Got ya!” she shrieked, her fingers cocked in a gun. “Bang! Bang!” Instinctively Bryce’s hand went to her bony chest, and she fainted to the ground.

  She hit the ground, rolling around in the tall, sweet grass, letting the blades tickle her face.

  “I’m dead,” she said, and with a blink Bryce was back on the streets of downtown Nashville, her hand still on her chest. She lowered it, and her fingers touched cement. She was on her hands and knees again. Her head rebounded in pain with every heartbeat. She tried to take deep breaths, to calm herself, taking in the grainy sidewalk. A red spot landed on the rough gray. Another. She lifted her hand to her face. Blood was dripping from her nose.

  Just need to walk it off. She stood up and wiped her nostrils with a Kleenex from her purse.

  She looked up. The restaurant rose in front of her. She stuffed the tissue in her purse and opened the sleek glass doors to a warm room full of chattering people. They looked at her with smiles. A few said hello and waved at her to sit down next to them. She knew everybody, and everybody knew her.

  But as Bryce stood there, shivering, she had never felt more alone.

  ou’ve got to try this risotto, Bryce,” someone was saying. Bryce was vaguely aware of a fork floating in front of her. She took it and set it on her plate.

  “You’ve got to try it!” the voice said again. A perfumed head tilted in front of her. Zen.

  Candlelight sparkled off of her loose curls. “Lost in space?” she said.

  “Yeah,” Bryce replied.

  She popped the ricelike pasta in Bryce’s mouth, an explosion of taste. It was delicious. Overwhelming.

  The restaurant was painted in a warm red-orange color, filled with candles and mirrors and dark wood. In the light, everyone—Zen, Mary, the brunettes, Greg’s parents, Gabby’s mother—looked like they were blushing. All the tables in the tiny restaurant, except for the booths by the wall, were combined in a long line where the wedding party sat.

  Greg’s parents, Jim and Lisa, were to the right of Gabby, next to their sons. Greg sat there, folding and refolding his cloth napkin into different shapes, seemingly oblivious to everyone around him.

  Next to Greg was the broad-shouldered line of his fraternity brothers, including the tousle-haired Tom. He had given her a small wave when she walked in.

  On the left side was Gabby’s mother, then her grandparents, speaking mostly Spanish, and the bridesmaids. Gabby was radiant at the head of the table.

  This morning at the rehearsal she wore her pearl-colored heels with a pair of jeans and a loose linen tank, hands shaking as she held a practice bouquet of prairie flowers that Mary picked from the church landscaping. Greg stood across from her, hair still bed-messed, and they muttered back and forth, quick, repeating, stumbling over the words like they were back in elementary school giving a book report.

  Tomorrow the bridesmaids would meet early at the stone-carved church, to help Gabby get ready. The ceremony would start at 4 p.m., and after it was over, the hundred guests would go in caravan back to one of the lavish conference rooms at the Opryland Hotel. They had invited mostly family and friends from Nashville. Only a few other Stanford people were flying or driving in. The reception lasted from “6 p.m. till ?” the invitation had said, like it could go on forever if they wanted it to.

  As she thought of the invitation’s question mark now, Bryce imagined it like the birth and death dates for famous figures from history or civics class. Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865). Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968). Occasionally, you would look up someone who was still alive, and the dates were open-ended (1950–?).

  Bryce’s dates ended in a question mark, too. But not for long.

  She wondered with a funny pang if Dr. Warren knew the approximate date of her death. Why stop at a wedding rehearsal? They could have a funeral rehearsal, too. She would test out the coffin, hear everyone say nice things, make sure they picked the right music. She laughed to herself at the thought, though it made her stomach turn.

  Just the other day she was standing in the Saks dressing room with Gabby, trying on her bridesmaid dress and dreaming about her own wedding. And now…Bryce couldn’t help i
t. More tears gathered in her eyes.

  One of the brunettes leaned in, her manicured hand holding bread dipped in olive oil. “Save your tears for the toast, honey. A crying maid of honor always kills it.”

  No one had told her she had to make a toast. Maybe Gabby would let her off the hook because she knew how bad Bryce was at public speaking.

  Elena, Gabby’s mother, excused herself from a conversation with Greg’s parents and approached their end of the table.

  “Bryce, darling,” she said, squatting down, her dark eyes shining. “How are you?”

  “I’m good,” Bryce said, composing herself.

  The clinking of crystal sounded over the din. Gabby stood up, a glass of red wine in her hand. Elena smiled apologetically at Bryce and retook her seat.

  As everyone brought their conversations to a close, Bryce glanced in front of her and realized her wineglass had been removed. That was thoughtful of them. But at this very moment, she wished they hadn’t been quite so thoughtful.

  “Mary, pour me a glass of wine, okay?” Bryce whispered as Gabby began speaking, telling the story of her and Greg’s first date.

  “But I thought—” she whispered back.

  “One glass isn’t going to kill me,” Bryce said, pursing her lips.

  “Are you sure?”

  Zen, trying to listen to Gabby’s speech, snatched the bottle, filled a generous glass, and placed it in front of Bryce. Mary shrugged and went back to listening.

  “—and then, it was just like a movie. We had climbed down this cliff to an empty beach, and I didn’t care that we were lost, or even that my pants were dirty.”

  The table tittered, the women among them wiped their eyes. Gabby had them in the palm of her hand. Bryce pushed out a real smile for her friend. Her lovely, entrancing friend.

  “All I could see was Greg. And it’s been the same ever since. To my darling husband-to-be, and to all of you!” Gabby finished, raising her glass. Bryce followed the rest of the table and raised her own, taking a sip. Her first glass of wine. It tasted like spicy, sour juice. She took another sip.