So we are all moving forward in our own ways. And we are all keeping secrets, too.
When I get to school, Principal Hunter and Ms. Doberskiff are huddled in the foyer together, their faces masked in earnest concern. Hunter waves me over. They have been waiting for me. Mel quickly exits down a side hallway, in case she is in danger of being roped into whatever is about to happen.
“Can you come into my office for a minute, Tallie?” Hunter says. Ms. Doberskiff glares at him, a fleeting condemnation.
“Good morning,” she says to me pointedly. “Did you have a good weekend?”
The emotional minefield of my weekend—interring Nate’s ashes, facing Jason Rice, Dad’s parental intervention—would probably send her into a complete seizure of joy. I don’t think Ms. Doberskiff wishes our misfortunes upon us, but they keep her busy. And employed.
“Lovely,” I tell her.
“Shall we?” Hunter sweeps his hand toward his office like I’ve just won a prize on a game show. As he and Ms. Doberskiff move away from the Star Students display, something makes me turn my head, almost as if someone has put a hand to my face and moved it. And then I see what their bodies had concealed: that the Star Students are gone, that Nate’s picture has been replaced.
So. This remembrance has run its course. I am suddenly and strangely grateful that Chase has Nate in his binder—even if I think his mission is misguided and naive, it’s a relief to know that if mine doesn’t succeed, there’s a kind of consolation prize.
I follow Principal Hunter dutifully, and he takes his usual seat behind his desk. This leaves me and Ms. Doberskiff on the other side, sitting next to each other as if we’re some kind of team.
“I’ll get right to the point,” Hunter says. “I have had some troubling information from another student about some…erratic behavior from you, Tallie. Behavior that borders on harassment.”
“Who said that?” I thought I was keeping most of my erratic ways inside my own head, and I’ve hardly spoken to anyone other than Chase and Mel.
“Well, I’m not at liberty to—”
“You and Amy used to be such good friends,” Ms. Doberskiff chirps. “I’m sure I could help you work this out.”
Amy. I can’t blame her for not wanting to talk about Nate. I avoided it for months. But I didn’t think she’d go to Hunter, if only to avoid being seen entering or leaving his office and tagged as a suck-up.
He ignores Ms. Doberskiff. “An altercation at the carnival was mentioned, as well as a brief incident at the ice cream stand. We all understand what you’ve been through, of course, but it’s important that all students adhere to the school conduct code and respect one another’s boundaries.”
I guess sending her the playlist is out.
Ms. Doberskiff offers, “And you missed the Bridges meeting last week.”
This is a fact. I make no excuses.
Principal Hunter clears his throat. “You will remember, Tallie, that you and your parents and I spoke at the beginning of the year and agreed that attending Bridges was a pivotal part of the plan for your…” He pauses, searching for the perfect administrative term. “Reentry.”
“And your healing,” Ms. Doberskiff adds. Hunter nods reluctantly.
“To that end,” he says, “we wanted to catch you first thing this morning and make sure that you will be at today’s meeting.”
“I won’t be, actually.” I wasn’t aware that I had made this decision until I say it out loud. Ms. Doberskiff immediately starts stammering, “But—but…” Hunter simply raises one bushy eyebrow and then crosses his arms over his chest. Or tries to.
“I see,” he says. “And why is that?”
Yes, why is that? I ask myself. I could try to appeal to Hunter’s logical sensibilities, or Ms. Doberskiff’s hyperemotional ones, but the real answer is more straightforward. “Because I don’t want to,” I tell him.
I am testing the limits of their sympathy. I’ve been a fascination, a project for all of them, since the accident. My teachers, my parents, my former friends—they all think they know me better than I do. What happens when the project pushes back?
“You understand that I will have to inform your parents of your decision,” Principal Hunter says.
“I do,” I tell him. “I understand very well.” And then I stand up and ask if I can go to homeroom. Hunter nods. Ms. Doberskiff is apparently still reeling from my announcement.
“Don’t worry,” I assure her. “Something terrible will happen to someone else any day now.”
—
My heart has been beating more quickly all day, it feels like, since my meeting with Hunter and Ms. Doberskiff. I wonder how long Hunter waited before calling my parents, whether he called Mom or Dad, what they said. I wonder if I’ve just pushed myself a giant step closer to being sent on some kind of therapeutic wilderness retreat. I didn’t see Chase in school today, so I’m still stuck waiting for a verdict on the Great Hacking Project and whether it’s going to get us anywhere.
Mel has band practice after school—she was oddly thrilled when I gave her my playlist of songs for Scud to cover, which I titled “How to Be Unoriginal,” and it has had the added benefit of steering her away from everything I’m not telling her. I’m living dangerously. I’m tempting fate. Adrenaline and impatience are a nasty combination.
Red Circle Day glares at me from the calendar. Nine more days before the verdict is handed down. I duck into Dad’s study and use his computer to check the email account I set up in Mom’s name. Gerald has written back, finally. He gives no reason for not having replied more quickly, which seems a bit rude, but at least I know now that I didn’t scare him away. He shares that he lives in rural Pennsylvania, which is too far away for me to see him in person. But it tells me that at least one of Nate’s organs was flown out of Boston to another hospital. Probably more, based on what Dr. Abbott told me.
It has been hard to restrain myself from just asking straight out whether Gerald knows where the other recipients are. I thought my question about finding a “community” was pretty subtle, but his response makes it clear that he has seen right through it.
Sarah, he writes. We are on a first-name basis now.
Naturally, you must be curious about the other fortunate recipients of your son’s gift. As I’m sure you can understand, there are many levels of confidentiality in place to prevent any breach of protocol.
If only he knew that our entire correspondence is based on such a breach.
We are ostensibly prevented from knowing whether any of us share the same donor, but from time to time, our thirst for knowledge exceeds our respect. We do compare notes. Many of us have written to the families of our donors. If you might be willing to share with me the sources of any other letters you have received, I could confirm whether they were sent by anyone of my acquaintance.
But I don’t have any other letters. Which means that Gerald’s buddies have written to other families. Which means that none of the people the good professor is talking about have Nate’s parts. Or they do, but they’re not interested in finding out who he was.
Dammit.
The sensible, logical thing to do would be to send letters through the agency to the other recipients, right? But it could take weeks or even months for those people to write back, if they decided to at all, and I do not have that kind of time. And I would have to forge every word.
Plus, every day feels like a new chance to get caught. If my mother gets tired of waiting for a letter and calls Life Choice, or my father quits waiting for Red Circle Day and makes a preemptive declaration that we are moving, my chance to track down the recipients will vanish. This whole time, ever since the end of before, their parental instincts to nurture and protect and be responsible have been doing battle with their misery. Grief has made them selfish, weary. Complacent. But the clouds are parting, the lights are coming on again, and pretty soon my freedom will be crushed under the weight of their good intentions.
I am not the
same. And I will not be cured of this, because if I am, Nate will disappear all over again.
Just when I’m nearly overtaken by the urge to hurl the computer out the window of Dad’s study, I have a thought. I hit reply.
Gerald,
You are very perceptive. But I fear that my hopes of learning more about the destiny of my son’s earthly body may come to nothing. I have not received any correspondence from Life Choice except for yours. I can tell you, however, that Nathaniel was airlifted to Boston after his accident, and it is likely that a few of his recipients reside there. If you could perhaps explore this possibility in your interactions with other transplant patients, I would be eternally in your debt.
Sincerely,
Sarah
I read it over. I think it hits the right tone, deferential but not too desperate. If he only knew.
Maybe someday I will get the chance to confess my sins. I will drive the many hours to Pennsylvania when I am old enough, and am not afraid. I will knock on Professor Gerald Rackham’s door and tell him only what is true. I will apologize for misleading him and explain why I needed to do so.
I will know what to say by then.
I will speak in my own voice.
And he will forgive me everything.
The house is too quiet, pressing its silence against me, wrapping around me like a straitjacket. No one knows I came home, no one will know if I leave again, so I throw myself back outside and get on my bike and start pedaling. Without choosing a direction or a destination. I just go.
The air is edged with cold and the cloudless sky arcs above me. The sound of the leaves crunching under my wheels is like hands crushing paper, and after a few minutes I stop to pull Matty out of my back pocket and use him to drown out the noise. My earbuds won’t stay in my ears if I put him back in my jeans and I don’t have any pockets in the sweater I’m wearing, so I tuck him into my bra, next to my heart, to keep him safe.
I ride as the crisp leaves flee their branches and the blue sky swallows the world. I ride and I ride and then I stop, because without knowing where I wanted to go, I found it.
The doors to St. Anne’s are like the doors to every church, heavy and carved, with enormous handles that make my hands look impossibly small and fragile. Oversized things are inconsiderate this way, shrinking us with their power. This is why, I think, little kids like dollhouses so much. They get to feel huge for once. Not like I do when I walk into the church and am overtaken by dark wood and the height of pillars, and the light through the stained glass somehow seems brighter than the sun outside. I take my earbuds out, wind the cord into a nest, and tuck it into my shirt before I get all the way inside. Another secret to carry.
The church is almost empty, except for a few small old ladies who appear to be as permanently fixed in their places as the pews or the pillars. They run their rosary beads through their fingers, their whispers echoing through the dusty air. I almost want to touch one to make sure they’re real, but I’m afraid I’ll find they are ghosts, that none of this is real. I lower myself into one of the pews at the side of the church, far away from where we sit every Sunday. The wood warms immediately underneath my body.
“Tallie?”
The hairs rise up on the back of my neck when I hear my name. It’s Father Paul.
“It’s very nice to see you, Father.” My voice, the words are mechanical. What my mother would say.
“And you, my child.” He is gripping the back of the pew in front of me, and the wiry black hairs on his knuckles look like hundreds of spider legs. “What brings you here this afternoon? Not our busiest day, you can see.”
I may not be exactly devoted to the church, but I can’t quite bring myself to lie to a priest. Or look him in the eye. I raise my face and stare at a spot just to the side of his head, hoping the shadows will help hide my evasion. “Nothing in particular, Father. I just…I miss the windows.”
He smiles. I can see it in my peripheral vision. “You always did love the windows, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“We’ve been praying for you, Tallie, and for your parents.”
“Thank you, Father.”
“Perhaps coming here today could be a kind of first step for you? A step toward coming back to our flock?”
My hand hurts all of a sudden, and when I look down at my lap, I see that I’ve been digging my fingernails into my palm. Tiny red crescents are lined up like angry smiles.
Father Paul takes my silence as a chance to keep talking. “Sometimes, when something very difficult happens, we find ourselves resisting God and his work in our lives. It’s important, Tallie, that you remain open to the message that God is sending you. He has great plans for you.”
Between the words he is saying, I can hear something else. Almost like when my father is tuning his ancient radio and the needle falls between stations and two different voices overlap in the static. Father Paul’s words are doing that, separating, and the echoing whispers of the old women are smoothing the edges but I can hear something anyway. Both of my hands are clenched into fists now, the points of pain from my nails waking me up, tuning me in like the radio needle.
“It does us no good to be angry at God, Tallie,” Father Paul says. And beneath his words, I hear:
good Tallie
“We cannot wait for life to become what we expect.”
wait
“We will all find peace in our own time, but we must be patient and listen.”
find time
listen
“Tallie? Are you all right?” Father Paul’s voice has changed. He sounds alarmed, and it is only then that I realize I have closed my eyes, squeezed them shut with the effort of listening to the words I am hearing.
I clear my throat. “Fine, Father. I have to go. Thank you.”
I don’t even feel the stone floor under my shoes as I walk back outside.
Nine days is an eternity. I see it now. Anything can happen in nine days. But that could help me, or hurt me. Nine days is long enough for a breakthrough, for finding a whole new set of clues, but it’s also plenty of time for my father to convince my mother to sell our house, pack our things, flee the scene of the crime, and start over.
Nine days can change everything.
Just look at how much happened in a few minutes in May.
And the words I heard in the in-between of Father Paul’s advice—good, wait, listen—are the words I’ve been hearing all along from well-meaning adults like Principal Hunter and Ms. Doberskiff. Be good. It will get better, just wait. Listen to us, we know what’s best for you.
I’m done listening. I’m done being good.
I’ve been chanting Get back to normal all this time, like a litany, like a mantra. But maybe there’s no going back. Maybe there’s just pushing forward.
When I get home, the house is still empty. I go upstairs, into Nate’s room, and I take a ballpoint pen from the cup on his desk. Pull up my sleeve and write on the inside of my arm, just above the crook of my elbow: Nate.
tuesday 10/7
Chase is absent again.
I manage to avoid both Principal Hunter and Ms. Doberskiff by hiding in the library for most of the day. I’ve convinced my teachers to give me independent assignments for the rest of the semester, playing the I’m-just-a-little-overwhelmed card. I think they were relieved to send me off on my own, given that the alternative was an in-class meltdown that would probably involve a lot of administrative paperwork. My self-imposed social separation meant that I was one of the last people to hear the news that Jackson’s mother died over the weekend.
At first I felt relieved to have been replaced as the object of everyone’s pitying glances. Then I realized that this could mean an expiration date on the preferential treatment I’ve been getting.
I’m not proud of either response.
I make a mental note to compile Jackson’s favorite movie themes into a playlist for him, and then I check my mother’s dummy email account. Gerald is waiti
ng in the in-box.
It must be so difficult, the desire to know where every part of Nathaniel now resides. I wish I could do more. Perhaps we could arrange to meet? Perhaps seeing me in person—seeing the effect of his gifts—would put your heart at ease.
Those words—his gifts—bring a wave of heat across my neck. As if Nate took his organs out himself, wrapped them like Christmas presents, and gave them to other people.
I write back to Gerald quickly, a terse note. It is too soon, I tell him. It would be too much right now. I need more time. I will write again when I am stronger.
I feel a little cruel, having encouraged him to write to me and used him for information, but also relieved because now I will not have to explain to him why I am not my mother.
I close the email and go back to the in-box. There’s a new message from someone called SparkleCat76. At first I think it’s spam because the subject line just says Hello, but I open it anyway and then I see that it’s from someone named Jennifer. She’s writing because Sandra Goldman told her that I’m looking for transplant patients in the Boston area.
Sandra is kind of pushy, IMO, but she kind of made me promise to write to you because she thinks I need to talk to someone other than her about myself. IDK, maybe she’s just sick of me calling her. Anyway. I had my surgery at the end of May and I’m doing pretty well. I’m tired a lot. I had to quit my job at the record store, which sucks, but I’m all caught up on every season of Breaking Bad so I’ve got that going for me. ☺
I’m torn between excitement at potentially having a new lead and disappointment that whatever part of Nate may have ended up in this woman missed its chance to spend all day in a record store. He would have loved that. I skim the rest of her email for anything that might be a clue about whether that is the case, but there’s nothing but inane clichés, references to second chances and gratitude.
Some of the Parts Page 15