I stand by the door like a prisoner getting ready to be taken to the gallows. Only there’s this song in my head.
In 1955, a guy named Tom Lehrer recorded a song called “The Elements.” Basically, he sings the names of the elements from the periodic table beginning with antimony and ending with sodium. They aren’t sung in alphabetical order. Just the way that they fit best with the music.
When I was six, my dad thought it would be really funny if I learned it. I couldn’t sing then either, but it didn’t matter. My parents’ friends thought it was hysterical to hear a little boy listing the entire periodic table when none of them could have done it themselves.
For some reason, while I’m pacing a hole in the carpet waiting for Ally to pick me up, the only thing going through my mind is that damned song.
Somewhere around “potassium, plutonium,” Ally’s car pulls into the drive.
Potassium is a type of salt. If you don’t get enough of it, you develop all sorts of neurological problems. Plutonium blows shit up. It’s all kind of fitting.
Ally doesn’t get out of her car so I lock up the house and head out to meet her. I get in the passenger’s side and she doesn’t even look at me.
“Ally … ” I start, but she cuts me off.
“No. Just. Not yet.” She puts the car into gear and pulls out of the driveway. I’m dead, I think. And I totally deserve it. Why couldn’t I have just kept my shit together rather than having a total freak-out in school? I stay quiet and then it becomes clear that we’re heading to Central’s campus. As she winds through the maze-like streets, I can see the looming outfield towers in the Warrior’s outfield. She parks near the field and motions for me to get out, so I do. I’m pretty good at following orders anyhow, but my guilt and confusion are making it my only option. She could probably tell me to run laps and I would.
It’s only five thirty. The campus is alive with students rushing to and from dinner and classes and who knows what else, but the field is quiet. I look at her, puzzled.
“Road game,” she says in a monotone. She unlocks a side door that I wouldn’t have noticed. I wonder what the hell we’re doing here, but I’m relieved that if the team is playing an away game, her dad won’t be here to beat the shit out of me for pissing off his daughter.
Baseball stadiums have a certain smell. Concrete, mowed grass, sweat, hot dogs, the leather of the mitts; it all forms some sort of baseball perfume that wraps around me and for one glorious second it makes it hard for me to remember why we’re really here.
Ally leads me up to the upper deck, first row behind home plate. She has no way of knowing it, but these are my favorite seats in any stadium. She sits down and I follow her lead. And then, for the first time today, she looks straight at me. Her face is tired and beautiful, and Lizzie’s heart feels like it’s corralled in my too-small chest.
I think about what Spencer said about moving on and living. Maybe this is the first step. Maybe this is my one chance. I’m not sure I even deserve it, but it feels like my only opportunity to find out. I take a deep breath and lean over, gripping the railing and looking over the perfectly manicured field. I don’t really know where to start, but know I need to get it all out there. Every last thing. It doesn’t matter if she tells everyone in the school and they all think I’m a freak. I can’t stay stuck.
“Cal.” Something in the nervous way she says my name forces my hand.
I take a deep breath. “I’m sorry I missed lunch yesterday. I was in the hospital. I thought I was dying, I really did.” I can’t even bring myself to look at her so I just talk to the field. “I’ve been panicking a lot lately. I guess. See, I really, really like you. I mean, I more than like you. There’s never been another girl that I’ve liked before.” I know that I’m rambling, saying things that have nothing to do with each other, but I feel like I’ve opened a vein and my feelings are pouring out like blood and pooling at her feet. It doesn’t help that, out of everything I have to tell her, the fact that I thought I was dying is the easy stuff.
I glance at her and she’s chewing on her bottom lip. I’m glad she isn’t saying anything because if I don’t keep talking I’m going to freak out.
“Look, you’re going to think I’m crazy and maybe I am. But that’s okay. I still have to tell you this. I need you to know. I can hear her. Lizzie. I can feel her inside me and sometimes I hear her voice. She talks to me, Ally.”
I tell her about Lizzie’s locker and how it made me feel like I was dying to watch the inside of it being painted over, and how I couldn’t get Lizzie to stop wailing in my head. I have no idea if she understands why that meant I couldn’t come meet her. Why it meant that I couldn’t do anything besides go out to the field and beat the crap out of bats and cry. But there’s more to come.
I pause, steeling myself. Ally is watching me with a blank paralyzed look on her face. I have absolutely no idea what she’s thinking, which is scaring me more than it would if she were yelling or telling me she thinks I’m crazy and never wants to see me again. And somehow, I know that I have to take that blankness away and make her feel something. If I’m ever going to be able to move forward, I need to lay myself out in front of her and hope she accepts it.
“And, there’s something else. Before you and I were talking, before we were at the field that first day … ” Ally cocks her head and waits. “Lizzie … I … ” I don’t know how to say it so I force myself to say each word staccato-like, like a machine gun. “We. Kissed. Spencer. It was Lizzie. I didn’t lie to you. The rumors really aren’t true. This was just … I don’t know. I just felt like I needed to tell you.”
I finally breathe again and wait for her response. My body is humming. I feel like I’ve just stepped off a cliff. All I can hear is the blood racing in my ears. I wait as long as I can and then have to break the heavy silence that hangs between us.
“Ally, say something,” I beg.
She looks at me and before she speaks, I know that I’ve ruined any chance I had with her.
“I can’t do this. Us,” she says. “I thought I could, but I can’t. I mean, it isn’t like I’m your girlfriend or anything, right?”
“Well, I thought … I mean, I was hoping … ” I shut up because there is nothing I can say. We haven’t named our relationship. I did think and hope that maybe we were becoming something, but like I’ve been about so many other things, I’m obviously wrong about that. I get it, though. I knew before I confessed that she might not be able to handle what happened with Spencer, but I had to come clean.
We sit there for a few minutes and then I follow her silently to her car. Neither of us says anything on the way back. She snuffles like she’s trying to hold in tears. When we pull up in front of my house, I try one last time. “Ally, it will never happen again. I promise. Lizzie … ”
Ally puts her hands up and stops me. “I … it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry. I just can’t.”
She stares straight ahead until I get out of the car and stand, dazed, on the curb, watching her drive off.
Twenty-Six
I avoid everyone at school the next day. After the initial concern over my physical health died down yesterday, fear over my mental health kicked in and everyone is avoiding me anyhow. The one exception is Spencer, who finally tracks me down as I’m standing in front of the locker that used to be Lizzie’s.
“It’s not hers anymore,” he says, coming up behind me.
I turn and lean my head against the cool metal. “It’s like she’s slipping away.”
Spencer pauses before he says, “She’s already gone. You just need to realize that.”
My first reaction is anger. I turn around and say, “Don’t we owe her more than that?”
“You owe yourself something too,” he says, turning and leaning back on the locker next to me. “What happened with you and Ally?”
“There is no me and Ally.”
The words feel horrible coming out of my mouth. But I spent the night coming to some sort of resignation with the fact that losing Ally somehow makes karmic sense in light of what I did to Lizzie. I’m numb from all this resignation. I will, as Spencer said, live. I want to. And I’m not going to waste Lizzie’s sacrifice. But for the first time, something about this loss makes sense.
Spencer turns his head and gives me a look I’ve only seen him use onstage. “If you’ve ever trusted me about anything, trust me about this. You need to talk to her.”
Behind my back, my hand finds the combination lock and squeezes hard enough to leave a mark. I didn’t think it was possible to overdose on pain, but I’ve reached the point where I’m not sure that I can take on any more. “I told her about … ” I start to say Lizzie, but even in my haze I care about Spencer too much to burden him with that. “I told her about what happened in The Cave. She bolted.”
Spencer’s eyes widen. I can see the flash of surprise in them, followed by disbelief. “I honestly don’t think that Ally would care if you French-kissed a wombat.”
I don’t think there’s any laughter left inside me, but this at least makes me smile.
“I’ve always thought of you as more of a koala,” I say in a lame attempt at a joke. “It doesn’t matter. This way I can’t hurt her too. And I trust you, but she said she doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
On the other side of me, someone coughs. “I didn’t say I didn’t want anything to do with you. I said I couldn’t.”
I don’t know if Ally came to find me or if it’s a bad coincidence that we’re all standing in the hall together.
“I’m just going to … ” Spencer points down the hall. I have the urge to grab his arm and keep him here in the hope that he can make sense of what’s happening. He seems to be able to read Ally better than I can. Something in his eyes tells me to fight for the future. I want to; it’s just that standing against Lizzie’s locker with Ally looking like she hadn’t slept since yesterday makes it hard to believe that I can have a future. Or at least one where I can get close to someone without hurting them.
“Can we go outside?” Ally asks.
I follow her out to the field. Somehow Ally and I always end up on a baseball diamond. I sit on the visitor’s bench but she stays standing, nervously dragging one foot through the dirt.
“I’m sorry about how I acted yesterday. I’m sorry I freaked out,” she says.
“No. I get it. I do.” She’d already admitted to hearing all the rumors about us. No surprise she freaked when I confirmed that at least some of them were true.
She runs a hand through her hair. “I keep thinking that I’m over it. You know? For years after Grandma died, I wouldn’t even let Dad go out in the evenings. I’d just cry and cry.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
She puts her arms around herself and says, “When we started working with the team, you were running and everything. I mean, I knew what you’d been through. But you seemed fine. And then when you didn’t show up for lunch the other day, I went to look for you. And all I heard was that you’d been taken to the hospital. That it was your heart. Justin even told me that he heard you’d died.”
She looks like she might cry and that’s the only thing that keeps me from finding Justin Dillard and killing him.
“But I’m fine. I am fine. Ally, what’s this about?” I take her hand and pull her back down to the bench next to me.
“I can’t stand to lose one more person,” she says in an eerie echo of my own thoughts. “I’m seventeen. I can’t spend every day worrying that my boyfriend is going to die.”
Boyfriend? “I thought you said we weren’t … ” I stop mid-sentence because suddenly the word “die” rings even louder in my ears. “I’m not dying, Ally. I might be a panicky freak with his best friend’s heart. But I’m not going anywhere.”
To prove my point I fall on the ground and do ten pushups. Then I race to the pitcher’s mound and back. When I pick her up and start spinning around, she actually starts to laugh.
She links her arms around my neck. Somewhere in my head I hear Live, Live, Live only I’m not sure if it’s Lizzie’s voice or my own or even Spencer’s.
“You can’t promise me that,” she whispers with the same lost expression she had on her face when she was over at my house and told me about her mom and her grandmother and her aunt, and it all becomes clear.
I put her down so that she’s standing on home plate, my heart racing and my head a jumble of sound. “No, I can’t promise. No one can. But I don’t think I’m dying faster than anyone else.” If I’m surprised by my own words, I hope it doesn’t show.
“I’m sorry that I’m scared,” she says.
“I’m sorry that I am too,” I admit. “Not about being sick, just … I don’t want to lose you.”
She squeezes my hand and doesn’t let go. “Maybe we can just slow down and see how it goes, together?”
I take a deep breath and enjoy the strong beat of Lizzie’s heart. “So you aren’t freaked out by the fact that I’m responsible for what happened to Lizzie?”
“You’re a bonehead, Ryan. Seriously,” she says and it puzzles me because despite the words she’s using, her voice is soft and sweet. “Spencer told me how you spent your entire life making sure that Lizzie stayed safe. How you never let yourself not be there for her. Man, you wouldn’t even talk to me because of it.”
“That’s not … ” I start, but she puts a finger to my lips and I shut up. I can feel her breath on my face and it sends shivers up my back.
“You didn’t kill her, Cal. You’re fighting like hell to keep her alive inside you.”
Is that what this is? Could it really be so simple? Before I ask Ally, she answers my questions.
“I don’t think you’re crazy. I think it must be wonderful to hear her voice and feel her with you. It must make missing her a hell of a lot easier.”
I sink like a perfectly thrown pitch and Ally kneels down next to me. How it is possible that she’s managed to make sense of everything when I couldn’t? When not even Spencer or Dr. Reynolds could?
“But you need to let her go just a little because I don’t think I want to walk away from this … from you … without a fight. I’m already fighting myself. I don’t want to fight Lizzie too.” Ally smiles. “She could probably wipe the floor with me. There has to be room for both of us in there.”
She puts her hand, palm flat, onto my chest. I can feel Lizzie’s heart beating against it.
Without thinking I start to lean in to kiss her and then pull back. “Wait. So does that mean you aren’t upset about me and Spencer either?”
Her face is unreadable and for a minute I think that I should have kept my mouth shut. Maybe she’d even forgotten what I told her. But I see a little smile play across the corners of her mouth.
“Nah, that’s actually kinda hot.” I know that I’m standing there with my mouth open like an idiot. “But it’s just us from now on, right?”
I nod again. I wonder if I’m ever going to be able to get to the point where she doesn’t surprise me at every turn. I wonder if I’d ever want to.
Twenty-Seven
I drive the safe, reliable, boring-as-crap Volvo my parents got me to my next meeting with Dr. Reynolds. I’m still shaky behind the wheel, but he was right when he said that driving would get easier every time. And since I’m driving and he seems to think I’m getting a grip on things, I’m not going to meet with him for a few weeks and see how that goes.
But this time I share my list. Not the one about Ally, which now runs onto multiple pages, because that one is just for me, but the list about Lizzie.
I don’t really have anything written down to show him but, for the first time, I’m able to talk about it and once I start, just like driving, it gets easier.
Dr. Reynolds list
ens and doesn’t tell me I’m crazy either. In fact, he says he thinks that my hearing her voice and feeling like she’s with me makes sense. His theory is that since she was such a big part of my life, it’s to be expected, given everything, given that I have part of her inside me, that my brain would try to find a way to keep her with me. He says that so long as she isn’t telling me to jump off of bridges or anything that he isn’t worried.
He tells me that Ally sounds wonderful and I agree. We talk a little about Ally’s issues. And we decide that I’m going to ask her to come with me the next time I go to see Dr. Collins so that he can explain my prognosis to her.
I talk about how Ally and I have been hanging out with Spencer some and it’s strange. I mean, there was a certain dynamic with me, Lizzie, and Spencer that I’d been used to for so long. And this is completely different. Not bad—there is definitely nothing bad about it—but it’s strangely easy. It’s like Spencer and I were always trying to keep the teeter-totter that was Lizzie perfectly level. It was a lot of work, and both of us were always trying to make sure things didn’t tip too far in one direction or another, that she didn’t fall off and take us down with her. With Ally, it’s like everything is just even to begin with. We can let our guards down and know that everything will be okay.
I thought I’d crossed Reynolds’ last hurdle with the list thing, but no. There’s one more thing he wants me to do and it won’t be easy. In fact, it might be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, including telling Ally about what happened in The Cave that night.
I tell him that I’ll think about it, but really, I’m not ready to go to the cemetery yet. In fact, I don’t know that I’ll ever be ready, even though Spencer and Ally have made it clear that they agree with Dr. Reynolds in thinking it might help. Even though they’re going tomorrow. Even though they want me to come with them.
The whole next day in school I try to think about something else, baseball or Ally, but Lizzie’s laughter fills the hallway and I hear, Not my combination, Cal. I don’t even have a locker anymore.
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