Drew paused it after the second song ended. “So?”
“It was pretty good,” I said, nodding my head. “Not as ‘whiny white boy’ as I expected.”
Drew laughed. “Well, that’s a relief.”
I gestured to the guitar leaning against his wall. It was one of those sweet wooden affairs, sleek and glossy. “How long have you played?”
“Since I was a preteen. It was sort of my escape from the world.”
“So your childhood wasn’t idyllic.” I didn’t look at him when I said it, because I wanted it to seem like a nonchalant statement. The truth was I wanted to know all about him with an intensity that could be described as voracious, or if you were feeling uncharitable, stalker-ish. I don’t know why—if it was the FA, or the fact that someone with this degenerative, life-wrecking disease still had a whole other life outside of it. When it came to me, my disease and I were one. I had no hobbies, really, no memories, outside of it. But this man, apparently, did.
“You could say that.” He went and got the guitar, then came and sat beside me again. I watched as his fingers caressed the strings, coaxing out sounds that, in turn, caressed me. “My parents were junkies. They stayed together only because they wanted to get high together, and they were too stupid to use birth control.”
I watched his bent neck, the soft skin on the back of it like velvet. There was no indication of anger in his voice, in his posture. How could that be? “Wow. That’s awful.”
“Yep.” He kept strumming as he talked, the soft, tinkling music at complete odds with what he was telling me. “There were three of us, all boys. My brothers loved it. As far back as I can remember, they walked around with the same people my parents were, for lack of a better term, ‘friends’ with.”
“So you escaped.”
“‘Escaped’ makes me sound braver than I really am. I ran away. Had enough.”
I put my hand on his without even thinking, temporarily stopping the strumming. Sometimes people did things completely at odds with their personalities. That was one of my moments; definitely one of my better ones. “I’m glad you ran away.”
We stared at each other, and I felt the air around us tense up. It was a kiss-or-not moment. Drew took a deep breath, his shoulders and chest expanding until I felt utterly dwarfed. He touched my cheek with the tips of his fingers. “There’s something about you, Grayson,” he said.
When he didn’t finish his sentence, I pulled back a little. Laughed to show I wasn’t nervous or anything, just curious. “What about me?”
But he just shook his head, a smile in his eyes. “Want to listen to some more music?”
We listened to a lot more music. After about an hour, I got to my feet, a little unsteady from having been sitting for so long. Drew stood too, and when he saw me wobbling, reached out for me. But he didn’t have his cane. My lack of balance caused him to lose his balance, and we almost toppled to the floor. His cheeks flashed a deep crimson. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“It’s okay.” And then, just to change the topic, I grasped verbally on to the first thing I could think of. “Hey, if you need any help with that petition for the kid who wants euthanasia, I’m free. No homework.” I smiled to show I was poking fun at myself. As if that would alleviate his embarrassment at losing control of his own body.
But he seemed to be grateful for it. Or maybe he honestly did need my help. “Really?”
“Totally.”
“That’d actually be great,” he said, handing me my jacket from the sofa. “I was going to hit some of the stores downtown Saturday afternoon.”
“Okay.” I shrugged my jacket on and pulled Zee’s car keys from my pocket. Saturday was less than two days away, and Zee hadn’t seemed to be in any position to go jetting off anywhere between now and then.“If Zee doesn’t mind us hanging on to her car, I can pick you up. If you want.”
He smiled, blue eyes lighting up. “Sure. How about two o’clock?”
“Two o’clock it is.”
Chapter Fifteen
I insisted that he didn’t have to walk me to the car. Once I was back on the road, I reached my hand across my chest, palpating for the forming abscess. It was smaller than I remembered. I reached into my hoodie pocket and felt for the syringe. Still there. I’d have to remember to do it tonight before I went to bed. Inject early, inject often—that was my current slogan.
The streets were icy, and I didn’t so much drive as slide home. When I got inside the gates at The Mills, a quick look at Zee’s dashboard clock told me it was a little past midnight. Mum was asleep; the house plunged into darkness.
Leaving the yellow car in our driveway, I let myself in the front door and crept into the kitchen in the darkness. I flipped on the lights over the sink and got myself a drink of water. I’d left puddles of water behind me from the melted snow. I wondered if Mum would ask me about them in the morning; if I’d tell her where I’d been and with whom. I couldn’t picture us having a normal mother-daughter conversation like that, though. Even my daydreams couldn’t conjure up something that farfetched.
My eyes roved over her crafting nook, and I saw that the minuscule planks of wood were gone. She must’ve finished the flooring. The roof was glazed; the window trim had been painted a bright yellow. Everything was perfect, just so, idyllic.
I set my glass down in the sink and walked over to the dollhouse, slipping the syringe out of my hoodie pocket as I went. There was a tiny queen-size bed in the master bedroom, made with precise hospital corners in a blue-and-gold duvet and matching shams. I moved it to the side so the new wooden flooring underneath was exposed. Using the sharp point of my syringe, I scored my initials into the floor. Then, very carefully, I replaced the bed exactly as it had been.
Once the lights were out, I made my way through the shadows and up the stairs to my own life-sized bedroom.
When I woke up Saturday, my first thought was—as it had been yesterday—about Drew, about how he’d almost kissed me when we’d hung out Thursday night. Which was an absurd first thought to have, because there were more important things going on.
For one, my abscess site felt swollen and hot. And for two, I was definitely running a fever. I sat up and opened the top button of my pajamas, peering down at my chest.
Yep, definitely getting to abscess status.
I pushed my knuckles into the tight, puffy skin for good measure, biting down on my lip so I wouldn’t cry out. I put a hand to my forehead—101 at least. I shivered as I made my way from the bed to the bathroom mirror, where I gleefully took note of my reddened cheeks and cracked, dry lips. After a quick teeth-brushing and hair-combing, I threw on some jeans and a pink sweater (it brought out the redness in my skin) and went downstairs to find Mum.
She was in the den, sipping tea and watching a show about antique shopping on TV. I sat next to her, laid my head on her shoulder. I felt her stiffen.
“I don’t feel so good, Mum.” The heat from my cheeks had to be blazing through to her skin.
“You’re running a fever. I can feel it through my clothes.”
“I can believe it. I feel like shit.” I coughed to underscore my point.
There was silence. Finally, she said my name in a tone that screamed, “Why are you such a fucking miserable piece of shit?”
“What.” Here it comes: the accusation.
“What did you do?”
I lifted my head and looked at her, but she wouldn’t look at me. She stared steadfastly at the TV. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Why are you running a fever?”
I forced myself to not touch the abscess. My sweater covered it, so there was no way she knew about it. One reason I was thankful to winter. “I don’t know. Christ. Did you think about the fact that maybe I’m just sick? How about some sympathy?”
“Watch your language.” She gulped down the rest of her tea and stood up. Abruptly, as if she was just learning to walk, she tottered into the coffee table. A metal vase went crashing to the floor. “
Shit.” She bent down and picked it up, set it back on the table. It fell over again.
Reaching to right the vase, I said, “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” But she wouldn’t look at me as she made her way to the kitchen.
She came back a minute later with some pills and a thermometer. I opened my mouth and she stuck it under my tongue. When it beeped, she took it back out and looked at it. “102. Do you want to go to the doctor?”
I shook my head, wincing at the pain deep inside. “Just give me some ibuprofen, please. And maybe a blanket and some warm milk?”
She handed me the pills and a glass of water, and watched as I took them. I’d been known to hide them in between the couch cushions in the past. When I was done, she went to the wicker basket at the side of the couch and retrieved a throw blanket for me. “Would you like a book?”
“Yes, please.”
I didn’t really read the book she handed me. Instead, I reveled in the feeling of the fever burning inside me, inflaming tissue and muscle. I cherished the feeling of my mother sitting at my feet, casting worried glances my way every few minutes. She thought I didn’t see her, but I did. I always did.
I’d fallen asleep when my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. Pulling it out, I glanced at the screen.
Zee’s cool with us hanging on to the car. Still on for the petition thing at 2? -Drew
I texted back: Yes. Pick you up at 1:45.
Mum looked up, and I took it as a small sign of her interest in my life.
“It’s a text from a friend I met at the hospital. He wants to know if I’m volunteering again this afternoon.”
She nodded, took a sip of tea. I waited for a question, a quiver of her eyebrow, a twitch of her lip. Anything that would show me that she wanted to know more. But her face was a wax mask, as always.
When I went to Catholic mass with my grandma and mum as a little girl, the services always fascinated me. What I found especially spellbinding was the changing of the bread and wine (or grape juice) to the supposed actual flesh and blood of Christ. My grandma said it was a mystery, that no one knew how it made that magical transformation. When I got older, I learned the official word for the process: Transubstantiation.
I wasn’t even remotely a Catholic anymore, if I’d ever been one at all. But I still believed in transubstantiation. I believed in my mother’s ability to reverse-transubstantiate, to change from one substance to another; her flesh and blood to smoke and shadows when I was near.
I left for Drew’s house close to one-thirty p.m. The ibuprofen had, unfortunately, reduced my fever, so I’d managed to eat a few bites of lunch. I was counting on walking around downtown with Drew to bring it raging back.
Mum had disappeared into the bowels of the house, so she didn’t see me getting into Zee’s car and driving off. I wondered what she’d think if she knew her forbidding me to drive a car didn’t curtail my freedom to drive one after all. Would she feel impotent anger like a normal parent would? I’d learned it was nearly impossible to predict my mother’s feelings or behaviors, but it never prevented me from trying. She was my Everest.
Chapter Sixteen
Drew came out of his apartment the moment I pulled into his parking spot, like he’d been waiting for me at his window. He started toward me with a wave, gingerly treading the grayish slush on the ground. His boots occasionally slid instead of stepping firmly, and I watched as he clutched his cane tighter, his long body listing like a boat in high winds. By the time he opened the door and got in, concentration had etched deep worry lines beside his eyes and mouth.
“I fucking hate this weather. Makes me feel like I’m going to face-plant with every step.”
“Mm.” I stared at him for a long moment, wondering if I should say what had been hovering in my mind while I watched him walking toward me. The intricacies, the customs and courtesies, of Drew’s world baffled me. And yet, I was supposed to be a part of it. I was supposed to know how to broach delicate subjects.
When he felt my eyes on him, he turned. I looked away quickly, but it was too late—he’d seen me. “What?”
I shook my head, but knew he wouldn’t let it go. “Nothing. It’s just... Have you considered getting a wheelchair?”
He had a look on his face I couldn’t decipher. It wasn’t anger or the look of someone who’d taken offense at what I’d said. “Not until I absolutely fucking have to, Grayson. Not until it’s either the chair or army crawling everywhere. Those have to be my choices before I choose the fucking chair.”
He said “the chair” like he was talking about the electric chair and going to his death. And that’s when I realized what that expression was on his face: resolve. It was completely and utterly foreign to me, this determination to stay mobile for as long as possible. I’d give just about anything to be in a wheelchair, to be the very symbol of handicap. People holding open doors for you, peeking glances at you when they thought you weren’t looking—those were the things my dreams were made of.
I began to back out of the parking space that Drew’d never use. “So, where are we headed first?”
I pulled into a centrally-located parking garage so we could walk up and down the streets that had the most shops. Downtown Ridgeland had a more liberal culture than the rest of the city, and Drew felt it would be our best bet to get the signatures. Most of the store owners were youngish and well-educated, their principles in direct opposition to the crowd that owned the mini-mansions in the outer boroughs of the city, like my parents did.
I watched from the corners of my eye as Drew hobbled alongside me, slowing down so people could pass him on either side when the sidewalk narrowed. I wondered how long he’d last before I’d have to go get the car and take him home. Would it be a blow to his manly ego? Would I have to step in and ask him to stop, insist that it was time to go home, or would that be offensive? Did people with major illnesses have that kind of authority with one another that outsiders would never be permitted? There were so many ways in which I could go wrong. I forced myself to take a few deep breaths and keep calm, see how this would play out. For now, I wanted to just enjoy being out here with Drew.
“Ah,” he said, stopping under the green and white-striped awning of a store. The smell of coffee was hot and strong in my nostrils. “First stop, French Press.”
A bell on the door jingled when we went in and the young, cute male barista looked up at us and smiled. “Hey guys. Welcome to French Press.”
“Thanks,” I said.
But he only had eyes for Drew. “What can I get you today?”
“I’ll have a macchiato, please,” I replied.
He glanced at me, nodded, and then looked back at Drew with a coy smile, waiting for a response.
“I’m actually good on coffee,” Drew said, pulling out papers from his messenger bag. I couldn’t tell if he got that the barista had the hots for him. He was as calm and collected as usual. “But I do have something I’d like you to take a look at, if you have a minute.”
“Okay,” the guy said, eying us warily now. He probably thought we were here to sell him something.
Drew handed him the papers. “That’s a petition for Jack Phillips, a twenty-four-year-old man with end-stage lung cancer. The cancer has most recently caused a brain infection amongst other issues, and Jack has virtually no quality of life left. His dying wish is to have a physician prescribe him a lethal cocktail, which will end his life mercifully, at home, on his own terms. But New Hampshire currently doesn’t recognize physician assisted suicide as a legal medical option. This petition could change that.”
The barista was reading the papers with interest now, his eyes eating up the words. “Physician assisted suicide. That’s like what they have over in Switzerland, right?”
“Yes, exactly,” Drew replied, his grip on his cane relaxed. I felt more nervous than he looked.
“I watched a YouTube video about this American dude who went to Switzerland to die. He, like, had this awful disease and he cou
ld barely breathe, but they wouldn’t grant him permission either.”
“Right to Die,” Drew said. “That’s a powerful movie.”
“It totally is,” the barista said, smiling again. “This is such an awesome thing for you to do.”
“It’s close to my heart,” Drew said simply. He didn’t explain that he had FA, that he was maybe fighting for his own right to die one day.
The barista signed the paper with a flourish and handed it back, his fingers touching Drew’s. “I hope you get what you want,” he said.
“Thanks.”
When we were back outside a few moments later, I realized I’d never gotten my macchiato.
“Nice work,” I said as we began to walk to the next store. “That was fast.”
Drew stopped and took a mock bow, holding his hands out grandly. “Thank you, thank you. I’m glad you noticed. I just have that magic touch.”
We began to walk again, and I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, well, you know, it helps when the person you’re trying to sell on an idea has a ginormous crush on you.”
A jogger jostled Drew as he ran by, and I grabbed his arm. When he’d recovered his balance, he said, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Oh, come on.” I raised an eyebrow at his baffled expression. “You seriously didn’t notice that dude smiling at you like you were the Mother Teresa to his orphan child?”
“Emphatically no,” Drew said. “But tell me one thing.” I looked at him, but he was staring straight ahead as we walked. “Do you smile a lot when you have a crush on someone?”
My cheeks felt hot, but I didn’t think it was the fever coming back yet. Was Drew flirting? “Like, me specifically?”
“Yeah, you specifically.”
“I...honestly don’t know the answer to that question.” I tried to laugh, but it just sounded squeaky, like I was gasping for air. “I don’t think I flirt. At least, I don’t know how to flirt. I’m not generally the flirty type.” I knew I was babbling, but I couldn’t stop myself. This was the closest to girly I’d ever been. I didn’t care for it too much.
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