Somebody Up There Hates You

by Hollis Seamon

  Three o’clock rolls around and Edward comes in. He bends over the bed and says, “You still with us, my man? I heard you had a rough morning.”

  I just sort of shrug under the sheet.

  He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Sulking, Richard? That’s not like you.”

  I roll over and glare into his round face. “I just wanted to eat, man,” I say. “I wanted to, you know, get stronger. And all it did was make me puke my guts out.”

  He nods. “Right. I get it. You want to eat, good. Just don’t be a total jerk about it. Think, man. You can’t just start scarfing down everything in sight, out of nowhere, after so long. Got to start small. Jell-O. Soup. Apple juice. Ginger ale.”

  I think about it. “Sylvie’s dad drank all the ginger ale. Every single can from the whole freaking fridge. Prick.”

  Edward laughs. “Richard, there is an endless and everlasting supply of ginger ale around here, trust me. So sit yourself up and I’ll bring you some.”

  I elbow my way into a sitting position. “The Big Nurse said I can’t get out of bed.”

  He packs pillows behind my back. “Mrs. Jacobs went home early,” he says, all low-key and no-blame. Then he whacks me upside the head. Gentle, but still, a substantial whack. “She’s a good nurse, Richard,” he says. “A really, really good nurse. And she’s had a rough time, and you go and remind her of it. Everybody’s got troubles, you know that? The world’s a universally sad and fucked-up place. People hurt, all of them. You beginning to get that? Or do you still think it’s just you, man? Only you that suffers? Like you’ve been singled out?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, just heads out the door. Then sticks his head back in. “I forgot. You got a visitor. Been waiting a while for you to wake up. You up to it?”

  I look up. “A visitor? Who?”

  He winks and waggles his eyebrows. “An interesting girl, young Richard. My, my, my. You are turning into quite the rock star.”

  I sit up straighter, and before I can think how to get out of the dorky gown—this one has cowboys on it, like it escaped from pediatrics—and into a T-shirt, this interesting girl sticks her head inside the room. She’s got black, black hair—like she dipped it in tar and spiked it up in points—and black eyeliner an inch thick. She’s wearing camouflage pants with a bright orange vest. It’s like she’s copied her outfit from Field & Stream. Like she’s just stopped by on her way to the woods, got her rifle in the pickup, got doe pee sprayed on her neck. I haven’t a clue who this is, but what the hey? I try to be charming anyway— because it is a female of the species, after all. “Hey,” I say. “Got your buck yet?”

  She blinks those black-lined eyes. “What?”

  I point toward her vest. “It’s deer season. Started yesterday. And you’re wearing . . .” I can see that she hasn’t got a clue what I’m talking about and she’s ready to back right out of the room, so I give up on being clever. “Never mind.”

  She hovers in the doorway and then holds out a shopping bag. “Your cape, Your Majesty, washed and all.” She makes a little awkward bow.

  I get it, finally. “Marie! You look so different. Hey, come on in.”

  She smiles then and walks over to the bed. She shakes the bag and out falls my starry night blanket.

  I sweep it up and try to cover up the fact that I’m ready to cry at the sight of it. I hold it to my nose. “Smells nice,” I say. It does—all clean and fresh. “Thanks.” I swing it up around my shoulders like a cape again. “Have a seat.” I wave, regally I hope, toward the chair next to my bed.

  “It was all crumpled up in the bar,” she says. “I had to look for a while. I took it to the Laundromat, used fabric softener and all.” She puts a hand on the bed rail. “Listen. I want to say I’m sorry. I kind of freaked, you know, when I heard you were sick. I thought—well, it doesn’t matter what. I’m sorry.”

  I take a minute to really look at her. Under the hostile hair and aggressive eyeliner, there’s a chubby, young, shy kind of face. And round blue eyes. Her fingernails are chewed to ragged stubs. I put my hand over hers. “You were great,” I say. “You were super.”

  Her face lights up. “Really? You’re not, like, mad? Or anything?”

  “Or nothing, Marie.”

  She leans forward. “My real name is Kelly,” she says. “Marie was just part of my costume. Marie was, like, you know, my alter ego? Like, I could be much braver, more, uh, bold as Marie than as me? Mostly, you know, I’m kind of, I don’t know, scared and not too smart. A real dim bulb, my brother says. Do you understand that, how a costume, you know, can make a huge difference?”

  I’d like to say that I’m paying full attention to these deeply insightful questions about issues of human identity and all—but, really, I am looking down her vest. See, she isn’t wearing a shirt under it, even. I mean, it’s just a shiny orange vest with a deep V open in front and kind of wide-open sides, and from any angle, there are big-time, fully visible breasts under there. Creamy plump round white breasts, rolling around free. And hazy memory or not, I can most definitely remember sliding between those breasts. I try to pry my eyes upward, focus on the girl’s face. But once I do, I see that she’s holding her bottom lip between her teeth. And I most surely do remember those lips, too. And I can feel myself making a tent pole beneath the sheets. “Yeah,” I say, brilliantly. “Well, nice to meet you, Kelly-Marie.”

  She giggles. “And, you, too, Richard Casey.” She leans even farther and the breasts press right up against the bed rail and kind of squoosh over the top. “See? I had to find out your real name, too. I kept asking around. Some people knew your uncle and some know your mom, too, and they told me the story about you—how you’ve been sick for a long time and how you were here and, well, I found you, didn’t I?”

  I’m resisting, just barely, the urge to grab her and haul her into the bed, when Edward comes in. He smiles this great big grin and nods at Kelly-Marie. “Hello,” he says. “Thought you guys might like something to drink.” And in his hands there are two cold cans of Coke. Not the hospice-size minicans. Not ginger ale. Real Cokes.

  And I know that he must have gone to one of the machines down on the first floor, by the ER, and actually bought these himself. Shelled out a buck fifty each. Sometimes, you know, human kindness just knocks you off your feet. “Thanks, man,” I say. I hope he can hear how I know what he did and how I really appreciate it.

  He waves a hand and takes off, swinging the door almost all the way closed on his way out.

  So that Kelly-Marie and I can sit there and drink our Cokes and talk and laugh and flirt. Just like any other teenagers, anywhere in the whole wide world.

  10

  IT’S GOING FINE—TURNS OUT Kelly-Marie is a freshman at Hudson High and she’s heard of me because I’m a senior—or I would be if I ever went to school. And I’m sort of famous, in a lousy way: the boy that’s always sick. She doesn’t say it, so I do: “Yep, that’s me. The Incredible Dying Boy.” And then I feel like a real jerk because her blue eyes get so sad. I laugh. “Not really,” I say, trying not to sound totally lame.

  She brightens up. “Really? You’re not?”

  I look at her and I say the stuff I usually say to my mom when she’s down. “Hell, no. Listen, right now, right this minute, there’s a whole bunch of science geeks, right? I mean, like, all of these super-smart research dudes, and they’re working away like madmen, day and night and fucking day again. I mean, these guys, they’re at Harvard and MIT and Columbia and shit. And they’re up to their asses in test tubes and gene therapies and all kinds of secret stuff. They’re on it, believe me. Coming up with the cure. I totally trust those guys. We expect a breakthrough any day now.” In my head, to myself, I go, Yeah, right. But she’s buying it, I can tell. Just like my mom does; people believe what they want to believe, I guess.

  Kelly-Marie is nodding, smiling. I’m feeling better that I made her feel better. Then the door swings open and there’s this skinny, fuzz-headed, brown-eyed girl standing there: Sylvie
. Wearing a black tank top and black—I don’t know what you call them, like leggings or tights or something, with her feet bare. She’s just, like, hovering there, all in black, like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, you know? She’s got this scary smile on her face, and I notice how she inherited her father’s sharp teeth. “Yeah,” she says, all cool and snarky. “Those science guys, they’re working on it, for sure. No doubt they’ll figure it all out, in, say, another couple of years. May be just a tad late for us, but what the hell. I’m sure somebody will be cured. That’s what counts. The good of the human race. Not some puny little individuals. Right, Richard?”

  Sylvie walks into the room—walks, mind you. And she’s pretty steady, too. She’s not even holding on to anything, that’s how determined—and mad, I think—she is. She goes right over to Kelly-Marie and looks her over, sort of like she’s a pile of dog shit someone left on the carpet. “Hey,” she says. She holds out a bony white hand. She’s completely elegant and looks like that actress in the old movies. Audrey Hepburn, that’s it, in the movie where she’s the princess trying to be normal. Except Sylvie’s totally in control, directing the whole scene. “I’m Sylvia,” she says. “Richard’s girlfriend.”

  Kelly-Marie kind of slumps. Suddenly, she’s just plain Kelly, a fat freshman girl in a weird outfit, trying way too hard to look cool. She stands up and takes hold of Sylvie’s hand for one millisecond. “Hey,” she says. “I—um—just came over to return Richard’s blanket.” She gestures toward my starry cape. “I’m going now.” And she scoots out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

  Sylvie stands there with her hands on her hips, glaring first at the door, then at me. “So. How’d you misplace your precious blankie, Richard? Would you care to explain that to me?”

  “Not sure,” I say. And, really, I’m not sure, right? I mean, there are a few possibilities, like when Kelly-Marie was touching me or when . . . I think it wisest not to mention the possibilities. “Sometime Halloween night.”

  “You were with that girl Halloween night? That stupid fat, trashy, pathetic wannabe Goth?”

  I should defend Kelly-Marie. I really should. Because she’s a nice girl, kind and generous. With great breasts. But I’m withering under the heat of Sylvie’s eyes. “I wasn’t with her with her. Just a girl I met at a bar.” That sounds, I have to admit, sort of cool actually, so I take it one bit further. “She was dressed as Marie Antoinette. Really creative costume. Carrying her head.”

  “Uh-huh. I’m sure her costume was an absolute scream.” Sylvie presses the button to slide my bed rails down and then she slithers in next to me. She throws one leg over my hips and moves one hand across my belly. She whispers into my ear, lips touching my skin. “Carrying her head, huh? And giving head, too, I imagine. Right?”

  “Um. I really can’t reveal—”

  “Bullshit,” she says. Those cool, thin fingers reach my crotch and her tongue circles my ear. “You know what? There’s something very attractive about a sexually experienced man, Richard. Very much a turn-on. And, as it happens, my mom and the boys went home early this afternoon; one of the twins is sick. And my dad’s coming in late. So. . . .” Her fingers start to stroke.

  I think I might die right then and there, happy, with her hand moving on me. I think I might skip right over death and go straight to heaven. The hand moves faster, and Sylvie’s teeth close on my earlobe. And then, sooner than I’d like to admit, I do go to heaven, or something like it, right there in my cowboy nightgown. Yippee ki o, ki ay.

  For the first time in my life, I get to experience afterglow. Sylvie’s all curled up and I’m rubbing her back, slipping my hand under her shirt, pulling it up around her neck and cupping her breasts in my hands. Her butt is pressed right up against me. I got to say that I’m feeling so tired that it’s hard to just be there, in the moment, you know? Like, I want so much to be here, knowing that I’ve got my hands on a girl’s breasts, like this is something I have to take in, just totally absorb, so it’ll be a sweet memory forever. But I’m fading. In and out. And I think Sylvie is, too, she’s so quiet. But her breathing, it’s raspy and quick. I can feel every breath she takes, her little ribs like sticks under my fingers, barely moving up and down. I can feel every bone in her back, too, sharp against my chest. I tuck my head over hers and feel myself letting go, sliding into sleep. But she turns over all of a sudden and jostles me awake. She lies on her side and scoots up on the pillows so we’re eye to eye. I notice that her eyelashes and eyebrows are just starting to come back, soft black bits of haze. Her eyes are really bright.

  “Are you scared, Richard?” she asks.

  I want to look away. I feel my eyes move away from hers. “Of your dad? Shit, yes.”

  She grabs my face with both hands. “Look at me,” she says, her voice rough. “And don’t be an ass. I asked you a real question and I want a real answer. Are you afraid, Richard?”

  I look into her eyes. They look hot, like two coals. Maybe she’s got a fever. More like she is a fever. “Okay, yeah,” I say. “I’m scared to death.” I try to chuckle on the last word, show her it’s a kind of sick joke, but I can’t. I feel my own eyes get wet. Serious she wants, serious she gets. “Yes, Sylvia,” I say. “I am most definitely scared.”

  She nods and lets go of my face. “I thought so.” She scootches back a bit and turns on her back, putting her hands under her head. “Well, I’m not.”

  I lean up on an elbow, looking down at her. “No? Really? Come on, you got to be serious, too, Sylvia. I was.”

  She smiles. “It’s true. I’m not scared, Richard. Because it’s not going to happen, not yet. I’m going to get better.” She closes her eyes and her voice gets sleepy, but she keeps going. “Not because of some scientific miracle, either. Just because I will not allow it. It is not acceptable.” There’s a long sigh, and then she’s sound asleep.

  For a while, I stay there, just looking at her face. With her eyes closed, all the life goes out of it. All the fierceness disappears, and what’s left is the tiniest, most fragile little face you ever saw. You can see the skull under her skin, her jawbone and the dips of her temples, deep blue. Her skin is dry, like thin paper. She hasn’t got the strength, I think. She’s just too little. I put both my arms around her and wrap her up in my legs. I try to make a cave for her, like I can keep her totally protected somehow. I pull her in and fall asleep.

  ***

  Sometime, who knows how long later, the lights in the room blast on and grab me out of sleep. I look up, all blind and confused. And Br’er Bertrand steps in. “Richard,” he booms, in his heartiest Br’er voice, “I’ve got something for you.”

  Now, I’d like to say, for the record, that Sylvie is so tiny that she could have simply remained still and silent under the sheet and probably been invisible. She really could have. We could have gotten away with it, totally. But you got to know by now that discretion is not one of Sylvie’s strong points. No indeed. Sylvie is what my grandma calls a pisser. So the girl sits straight up, tosses off the sheet and stretches her arms over her head, letting her naked breasts point toward the sky. Between them, there’s that huge railroad track scar, all exposed, red and shiny in the bright light. And she does not seem to give a shit. Slowly, she pulls her tank top into place and then, slowly, slowly, slowly, swings her legs over the side of the bed. She smiles at the Br’er and says, “Good evening. Richard and I were just celebrating evensong. We like to join in prayer, every evening. Really, really join. The couple that prays together, stays together.” She walks out of the room like a tiny queen, hips swinging.

  To say that the good Br’er is speechless is like saying the Grand Canyon is a hole in the ground. The man’s jaw actually falls to his chest, and he sits down, hard, on the bedside chair.

  I sit up, tuck my rumpled and still-damp cowboy gown neatly under the sheet and pull my blanket around my shoulders. “What have you got for me that’s so important you woke me up in the middle of the night?” I say.

 
His red hair is greasy, and his black shirt has mustard—or something yellow—dripped down the front. He shakes his head. “Richard,” he says. “I cannot condone—”

  I lean forward and push the call button on my bed. Then I point a finger in his fat face. “Who asked you? Who asked you to condone anything? I want you out of my room, now.” I’m yelling and losing my breath, but I keep on yelling. “Whatever happened to privacy, man? That’s a basic human right, and you violate it every time you come in here, don’t even knock, and start preaching your crap. I have rights, man. I do not have to be subjected to this—”

  “Richard, what is it?” Jeannette is in the doorway.

  “It’s him,” I yell. “He comes in here, without even knocking, and he forces me to listen to his bullshit. Make him get out. I want to be left alone.”

  Br’er Bertrand stands up. He’s shaking, and if anyone ever wanted to smack a sick kid, it’s him. His face is purple. “You were hardly alone, were you?” Spit flies in my direction. He flings himself around, spitting toward Jeannette. “She was naked!” he says. “In this boy’s bed!”

  Jeannette comes in and puts a hand on the Br’er’s chest. “Just leave,” she says. “You’re upsetting my patient.”

  The man sort of deflates, then he points at a big envelope that he dropped on the floor. “I was simply delivering this,” he says. “A package from the boy’s uncle. That is all. And this is the thanks I get.” And he turns and walks out, his butt held so tight that even his pants are clenched.

  Jeannette puts her hands over her face and rubs, hard. “She was naked?” she says. “Let me get this straight. You had a naked girl in your bed with you? Now I wonder. Who might that little Lady Godiva be?” She comes over and lifts my hand, feeling my pulse. “God, boy, you’re going to have a heart attack. Lean back, now. You got to relax, Richard. Calm down, now. Breathe.”