“Well, there were Christmas trees, see, that’s the Christmas part. And then there were stars. But I turned them into, you know, Jewish stars. That’s the Hanukkah part.”
“Star of David. Gee, Delaney, I don’t know what to say. You shouldn’t have.”
I settled on the bed, farther away than I’d normally sit. “Just open it already.”
He peeled back a layer of defaced wrapping paper. “It’s a shirt,” I blurted out before he opened the box. “I know how you hate surprises.”
He smiled and unfolded the shirt. “Funny,” he said. It was from the specialty T-shirt shop in the mall, a store I had never set foot in before and probably never would again. The shirt was plain white except for a picture of an overflowing Italian sub with the word “Hero” in bright blue letters above it. He put it on over his sweatshirt.
Then he stood up and reached into his back pocket. “I didn’t know how to wrap this without you ripping them.” He handed me tickets. “Les Mis,” he said. “My mom read in the paper that they were performing in Bangor. She knew it was on our spring reading list.”
We both looked at the abandoned book on my desk. He gave me these tickets because he wasn’t going to read to me anymore. He wasn’t going to sit beside my bed with his feet up and flip pages while I stared at the planets circling my head.
“It’s tomorrow,” he said. “I checked with your parents a few days ago and they said it was okay. I can take you if you want, or you can take someone else.”
“Do you have time?”
“I have time,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at six.”
I smiled at his back as he left. We could go back. We’d done it before, we could do it again.
Troy’s car rumbled to a stop outside our house a little before three. He had dressed up. His hair was pushed out of his face. He wore a maroon long-sleeved shirt. Okay, he was still wearing jeans, but he was more dressed up than normal.
I saw him walk up the steps. I knew he was standing on the porch. But he didn’t ring the bell. I waited a few more seconds, but he still didn’t ring the bell. So I pulled the door open and found him turned around, one step off the front porch. “Where are you going?”
“I thought maybe I was too early.” It was 2:56.
“Come in. Dinner’s not ready yet, but there’s shrimp.”
We stood awkwardly around the cocktail sauce on the dining room table, dipping the shrimp and discarding the tails in a ceramic bowl. Mom came out with napkins.
“Oh, Troy! I didn’t hear you come in! What can I get for you? Apple cider? Soda? Oh, and I just whipped up some eggnog. Delaney says it’s gross, but she never liked it anyway.”
Troy frowned at Mom and looked back at the shrimp bowl. “Seriously,” I said. “It’s gross. Don’t let her bully you into trying it.”
Mom pretended to slap me on the back of the head. “Eggnog sounds perfect, actually,” he said.
Mom smiled and left to get his glass. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” I said. He smiled at me, but it was painful to watch. I didn’t ask if he was okay. Troy was not okay. He was with strangers on Christmas.
We ate ham and stuffing and banana bread and mashed potatoes and green beans. Troy said “please” and “thank you” and “please pass the salt” but not much else. My parents tried to engage him in conversation.
“Are you from around here, Troy?” Dad asked.
“No. I’m from San Diego, actually.”
“This weather must be a shock to your system then.”
“Delaney says you live with friends. Are they the reason you moved out here?” Mom asked. I could tell she was fishing for information on his living arrangements.
He grinned at me, sensing the lie. I felt myself blush, and he seamlessly continued. “I didn’t know them at first. They’re people I met at school.”
Mom considered this for a moment and seemed okay with it. “So what brought you out to our neck of the woods?”
“Well, after everything happened, I just wanted to get away. From the way everyone would look at me. This was about as far as I could go without a passport.” Mom looked at Troy in precisely the way he must’ve hated.
Dad cleared his throat. “Where do you work?”
“The assisted living facility in town. I’m studying for my nurse’s aide certification at night.”
“Good for you,” Dad said. “Takes a lot of drive to put yourself through school. Delaney’s mother did it herself, too.”
“Takes a special person to do a job like that,” Mom said, nodding. “How did you get into it?”
Troy moved the green beans around his plate. “I don’t like people suffering.”
Mom put her fork down. “Troy, you have this number, right? I want you to call me if you need anything. Anything at all. You understand?”
He looked up at her, his eyes an unreadable depth. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And no more of this ma’am thing. My name is Joanne. That’s what Delaney’s friends call me. Now, Ron, clean this up. The pies are just about ready, and the Martins will be here soon.” Ugh, the Martins. Dad’s secretary and her family. Chatty fourteen-year-old twins, little replicas of their mother wearing too much makeup.
Dad cleared the table and Troy stared at the white tablecloth. Then he abruptly pushed back his chair and paced the room. “Mrs. . . . Joanne? I’m sorry, but I have to leave. My roommates are running that potluck I told you about. I promised I’d stop by for dessert.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “No problem. Merry Christmas.” And then she pulled him into her and wrapped her arms around him because no matter what I thought of my mother, sometimes she knew exactly the right thing to do, and this was one of those times.
Troy didn’t look at me when he left. Just picked up his jacket and rushed out the front door, letting in a gust of cold that shocked me to the core. I went to the front window and saw him sitting in the front seat, head back, watching his breaths form into undefined clouds as they escaped his mouth. I thought about all those people he helped when they were suffering. I grabbed my coat and boots.
“Delaney, let him be,” Mom said.
I ran into the kitchen, grabbed one of the pies, wrapped it in foil because it burned my fingers, and barreled through the living room. “He shouldn’t suffer either,” I said. “Especially not today.” Mom stepped forward, but Dad put his hand on her shoulder and they let me go.
“Well?” I said after I let myself into his car. “What are you waiting for? The pie is getting cold.”
Troy opened his mouth and stared at me. Then he grinned and started the car.
We ate the pie standing up in his sorry excuse for a kitchen. Correction: I ate. He watched me. And then I got self-conscious and stopped eating. “You can have it tomorrow if you’re full now,” I said. “Just reheat at 350.”
“I know how to cook,” he said.
“Oh.” I found a dishrag hanging over the faucet in the sink and started scrubbing at imaginary spots on the laminate counters. I could feel him right behind me, so I started scrubbing harder. Then I wondered if Mom scrubbed and rescrubbed the counters because she wasn’t sure what to do next.
“I think they’re clean now,” he said, putting a hand over mine.
I pulled my hand back gently and found somewhere else to scrub. “Almost,” I said. I knew he was looking at me and I knew my face was all sorts of red and I knew he must’ve been able to hear the beating of my heart in the silent apartment. Because that’s where we were. Alone in his apartment.
“I don’t know whether you’re acting like this because you know I’m going to kiss you and you’re nervous or you know I’m going to kiss you and you don’t want me to.”
I laughed nervously at the counter. “You’re going to kiss me?”
“Obviously. You know I like you. You know I want you.”
I spun around but kept my back pressed against the counter. “You want me?” Troy was so to the point. Decker and I circled each other,
never saying what we meant. Not that it mattered anymore.
“You act like it’s such an absurd idea.”
I shook my head and looked at the floor. “You only want me because we’re alike.” I pointed at my head, indicating what exactly was alike about us.
“Partly,” he said. He hadn’t come any closer, but he hadn’t backed away, either. “And partly because you’re beautiful. And partly because you brought me pie. And partly because you wanted to save that man in the fire. But mostly because you see the good in me.”
Everything stopped. The way my brain was supposed to work and reason things out, the way I had been fidgeting with the dishrag, the way I made decisions. I felt warm from my toes to my fingers, and he wasn’t even touching me.
“So, I don’t know which it is—that you want me to or you don’t want me to.” Troy was nothing like Decker. Decker always gave me time to think and respond. Troy kept talking and filling the silence so I couldn’t keep up or make a decision, and it was too late to say anything anyway because he was kissing me already.
His hands were on my hips, and his mouth was parted directly over mine. And it didn’t feel casual and safe like with Carson. It felt like anything could happen and everything was only just starting and I had no idea what would happen ten seconds from now. He moved his hands under my sweater, up my back, warm hands on my bare skin. I arched into him and he walked us out of the kitchen, never breaking apart.
Then my brain caught up and thought we could only be walking to one of two places. The couch or the bedroom. And I was scared because it turns out I wasn’t actually scared of the idea while his mouth was on mine and his hands were on my back.
So I pushed away, gasping for air. “It’s Christmas,” I said, hoping that answered everything. “I have to go home.”
Troy said, “All right,” but he didn’t move his hands from my back. He didn’t drop his arms until I stepped away.
I couldn’t look at him the whole way home. And when he dropped me off he said, “Bye, Delaney,” with this ridiculous smile, and I turned away so he wouldn’t see that I had the same ridiculous smile. Nothing could stop me from smiling. Not even the fact that the Martins were still here. Nothing, that is, until I saw Tara’s inappropriate-for-snow, little red sports car parked in Decker’s driveway.
Chapter 11
Mom had scheduled a doctor’s appointment for Monday morning without telling me. We didn’t get as far as the hospital. Instead, we ended at Dr. Logan’s private practice a few miles outside of town. When we pulled into the packed lot, I didn’t follow Mom out of the car.
“Let’s go. We’re going to be late.” She frowned.
“I really don’t need to see the doctor. I feel fine,” I said, which was actually a lie. I felt the pull, strong and forceful, leading me to Dr. Logan’s office. Someone was very sick. Someone was going to die. I didn’t want to see them, not by myself, not without Troy to whisper in my ear and hold my hand and act like it was just a natural part of life.
Mom hitched her purse onto her shoulder and stabbed her finger in the direction of the building. “Now,” she said, barely moving her lips.
I kept my eyes on the maroon carpeting when we walked in. I stood in front of a large fish tank near the reception desk and felt the pull. Only it wasn’t from one person. It was coming from everywhere behind me, in a giant semicircle. Faint tugging from every angle, stronger in some directions, just like at the hospital. And in the back corner, something stronger than all the rest.
I scanned the room when Mom and I went to get a seat. People old and young were clustered on the cushioned benches along the walls. There was a wrongness about them. A boy, younger than me, with panicked, fidgeting eyes, breathed through his mouth and followed ghosts darting across the room. An ancient woman clasped her hands together in her lap, trying to control the relentless shaking of her limbs. A woman about my mother’s age lacked any movement in half her face. When the receptionist called her forward, half her mouth turned up in a smile while the other half hung down with gravity, a sideways “S.”
The wrongness made them seem not quite human. Even the fish knew it. They hid inside rock caves and studied the pebbles like they held the meaning of life. They wouldn’t look at us.
Against my better judgment, I took a philosophy elective my sophomore year. It was Decker’s idea. He thought it’d be fun to have a class together. It wasn’t. It was infuriating. There were no finite answers. No timelines or equations or conjugations. Just thoughts and conjectures and debates. Decker thought and conjectured and debated. I took vigorous notes, trying to discern the underlying pattern. I drew arrows and connected dots. I got an A because I memorized everything anyone said in class. I rarely contributed myself.
They spoke at length about what it means to be human—the human condition, they said. The capacity for good and evil, that we are rational beings, that we have free will. No, no, no. I shook my head and finally raised my hand. I read them my list: twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, bipedal, four-chambered heart.
But then Justin Baxter bared his teeth and said his uncle had Down’s syndrome and was missing a chromosome, and he was most decidedly still human. And Tara Spano, who had it out for me even then, said, “Well, what about people who lost a leg?” And Decker smirked at me. I pressed my lips together and never contributed to a philosophy discussion again.
I wanted to go back to my philosophy class and amend my answer. The brain made us human. The undamaged, grayscale imaged, correctly wired brain.
I studied the person in the back corner, where the pull was the strongest. He wasn’t elderly, like I expected. He was barely older than me. A woman in floral scrubs sat next to him, staring off into space. He was rocking back and forth and humming one note repeatedly, pausing only to take a breath. His skin was gray. His eyes were hollow. I would’ve known he was sick even without the freaky brain rewiring.
But he was more than sick. That itch began in the center of my brain, just the hint of it, just a hum really, a low vibration. But it had begun. He was going to die. Like the person in the hospital, like Mrs. Merkowitz, like that man in the fire, like the woman in the church, he’d be dead soon. Very soon.
So when we were finally called back, I didn’t want to talk about myself.
“Your mother says you had another hallucination.” Dr. Logan settled onto a stool and scooted toward the exam table.
“I don’t think I did,” I said, bouncing my right leg and staring at the door.
“Why don’t you explain the situation,” Dr. Logan said to Mom.
She opened her mouth to speak, then seemed to realize that if she told the doctor what she really thought, she’d be claiming I was a murderer. Or a manslaughterer. Or a reckless endangerer. “Well, it was the first night back. On second thought, she may have been sleepwalking. Now she takes her sleeping pills and it hasn’t happened since.”
“Those people out there are pretty sick,” I said. “Don’t you think?”
Dr. Logan followed my gaze to the closed door and looked down at the folder in his lap. “I really can’t discuss my other patients with you.”
“That man—that boy,” I said, pointing toward the hall, “with the nurse. He seems really, really sick.”
“Let’s talk about you, Delaney.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Delaney,” Mom said. “That’s none of your business.” She cast an apologetic look toward Dr. Logan, but the corners of her eyes were tight, so I knew she was annoyed with me.
I stood up and walked to the door, smacking my hand against it. “Are you listening to me? He’s sick.”
I pictured myself standing there, breathing heavy, and I knew I must’ve looked crazy, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
Dr. Logan closed his eyes and broke a rule of doctor-patient confidentiality. “He looks worse than he is. I promise.”
I removed my hand, but there was a print on the door, a watermark from my palm, fading
from the outside in. “No, I think you need to check him again. I think you need to help him.” The itch was growing, little by little. It hadn’t started spreading, my hands weren’t shaking, but it wouldn’t be long now. I felt beads of sweat form at my hairline.
Dr. Logan looked at Mom. “I don’t think bringing her here was the best idea. You say she’s been better at home?”
“She has,” Mom said, looking rather proud of herself.
“She had a traumatic awakening at the hospital.” He smoothed the arms of his white coat, as if remembering where I had clawed at him. “I think being there, and being here, is too stressful.”
I was breathing heavy with frustration. They weren’t listening to me. “Doctor. He’s dying, for Christ’s sake. Do something!”
Mom put her hands on my shoulders and started to shush me, but I swatted her hands off. Dr. Logan took out his prescription pad. “For the stress,” he said to Mom. “I think you’d better go.”
Mom pulled my arm and practically yanked me out of the room. Public mortification was a top-five sin in our household. Higher even than tardiness. She grabbed the paper from the doctor, pulled me out into the waiting room, and dragged me toward the door. I turned toward where the boy sat with his nurse. “Hey!” The nurse looked up. So did everyone else. Everyone with and without the wrongness. “He’s dying! You have to do something!”
The nurse’s lips quivered and she grabbed the boy’s wrist. His humming grew louder, higher pitched, and the rest of the room fell away. Then the receptionist was in my face, moving her mouth, but all I could hear was the humming, and all I could see were his eyes, looking right at me, registering nothing. And all I could feel was the itch in my brain, growing with the boy’s humming, spreading with the rising pitch, like it was somehow his fault.
I clamped my hands over my ears and screamed, “Stop it!” but I could still hear him. So I started humming to myself with my hands still pressed over my ears, until I couldn’t hear his voice. But the itch remained. And then two nurses and a man in a suit dragged me backward out the front door, and they helped Mom strap me in the car, and Mom pressed the lock down hard before slamming the door. The tires squealed as Mom pulled the car out and the man and the nurses stood on the sidewalk watching us go. I stopped humming, mortified by their expressions. But nothing was as bad as seeing Mom’s face. Her hands trembled on the steering wheel. And she gulped in air like she was sobbing, but there were no tears.
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