“We’re still waiting on the details,” my mom says as I occupy myself with the doughnut holes.
“I don’t understand how people our age end up in critical condition. Was it a car accident? Something with Ethan’s boat?” The jelly from the Munchkin explodes in my mouth in a way that’s sickening. “I need to know something.”
One of the doctors approaches and leads us into the small windowless room where Janet is already seated. “She was at home, sweetie, having her tennis lesson,” my mom whispers. “Come sit down; they’re going to tell us everything they know.”
I sit between Janet and my mom on the hard little bed, but the sheets feel weird and my face starts to get hot and my mouth waters again. The itchy feeling is moving into my brain, taking over my fingers, which now tap the bed in rounds of five. I shouldn’t have eaten those Munchkins. I shouldn’t have left for the weekend with Bugg. I shouldn’t have compared Sara to a sponge. Some sort of sickness is growing in my stomach now, and I have to get it out.
Not an option, I remind myself. But I have to say it a few more times before I believe it.
I look at the doctors and wipe my lips. Powdered sugar comes off on my hands, which is sort of a surprise. My theory is that I am dreaming this whole thing.
“Can you please tell me what happened to Sara?” I ask the female doctor. Maybe it’s not fair, but I suspect she’s more likely than the two male doctors to feel sorry for me and therefore answer my questions.
“Sara was rushed here this morning after collapsing on her tennis court at home,” one of the male doctors answers. “Her tennis coach called 9-1-1, but by the time the ambulance came, the complication with her heart had already rendered her unconscious. We tried surgery, but unfortunately it was ineffective. She passed about forty minutes ago.”
My mom lets out a soft cry and hugs me closer to her body. I think I feel her tears on my forehead, but it’s impossible to discern what’s happening.
“I don’t understand.” I look left and right between the doctors, hoping the motion will keep my brain in my head. “Sara is healthy and plays tennis all the time.”
“We’re not sure what brought it on. We’re assuming it was congenital, but we won’t know for a few more days,” the female doctor says.
At the moment, I don’t know what congenital means, which goes to show you what a terrible pre-med student I am or else how slow my brain is functioning. I sit on the bed like a cardboard version of myself.
“We are so sorry for your loss.”
I want to say something, but there’s so much saliva in my mouth I think my tongue might drown. Which I guess is for the better. There’s not a goddamn thing left in the world to say.
“Cal is on his way back from California now,” Janet says, but she sounds dead or something.
“We’ll stay until then,” my mom says. The hot itchiness is narrowing my vision, but at the same time it’s like I’m watching someone else with my hand reach for another Munchkin.
“No, let’s all go,” Janet says, her voice uncharacteristically calm. I wish she would sob uncontrollably, say something inappropriate, be just Janet. “There’s no reason to stay here.”
“But isn’t Sara still here?” I ask. It seems wrong to leave her alone. What if they’re taking her kidney out or something? Her new fake ID said she’s an organ donor, so her regular ID probably says it too. “We can’t leave her. We can’t go. I’m not leaving.” I feel the hysteria in my voice rising, snapping the last wire and shutting down my brain entirely.
“She’s gone, baby,” my mom whispers.
The word has an eerie thud to it. Gone. Like a metal pipe landing in a pit of dirt. No splash, no echo.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The hours afterward don’t pass so much as solidify around me like Jell-O, trapping me inside. I wake up at three in the afternoon wondering why, as a swear, fuck is so much worse than damn. You’d think damn would be worse, considering you’re sentencing someone to Hell for eternity, while fuck in the worst of scenarios is a stranger you’ll never see again. I drink two servings of NyQuil (calories unknown) and pass out again until a little after eight, when the sun is setting so brightly through my window I think it’s about to blow up. At least let me have some cereal first, I tell it, but when I go downstairs I can’t choose between the almond or the coconut milk. Why, if not for the love of cows, are there so many milk substitutes? Aren’t there any spare activists to save the soybeans? Of course there aren’t. Not even an edamame has an easy life. Every living thing senses its mortality.
I pour Cheerios into a bowl, then get a spoon from the drawer. It’s cool in my palm. Sara and I used to put them on our noses to see who could keep them there the longest, I guess to see who had the better spoon nose. I try to eat my cereal, but the o’s are bloated with milk and float in the bowl like unclaimed life preservers.
And the rest of the night is like that: totally unremarkable. The world doesn’t even have the decency to blow up. I send Bugg a brief text finally responding to all her questions about what happened and explain that I can’t talk because I’m currently in outer space: Will text you when I return to my earthly body. Then I turn my cell phone off and put it in the kitchen drawer, mostly scared that I’ll forget and try to text Sara something stupid, like a cat meme. At one point my parents come home and the three of us huddle on the couch, even though it’s too warm for it. All night I sweat through my grief, staining every surface I touch, from the bedsheets to my sleeves.
I have no sense of time, but according to the clock, it’s been forty-seven hours since Sara died. My parents and I are on our way to Sara’s house, and I’m trying to prepare myself, but it’s not the sort of thing you can sharpen your pencils for.
When Janet and Cal open the door, my dad hugs Cal and it feels weird to see them a) hug and b) cry. Conventional standards of behavior are falling apart, and I don’t feel good about it. As we walk in, my dad puts his arm around me and whispers in my ear, “I’m so glad you’re safe.”
But safe is the last thing I feel. Honestly, it feels like I’m on the precipice of something very, very bad.
“Can I get you guys anything?” Janet asks as we take seats in the kitchen. The coffeepot is brewing but we shake our heads. She launches into it alarmingly fast. “Cal and I want to talk to you guys, mainly you, Danny, about what happened with Sara and the arrangements for the funeral.”
“Please let us know if we can help in any way,” my mom says, semi-interrupting her. When Janet thanks her, I wonder if she hates my mom because my mom still has a daughter, albeit a slightly fucked-up one, or if she feels jealous or if she feels anything at all.
“Two months ago, Cal was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy,” Janet begins.
Meanwhile, Cal stands with his back to us, getting out mugs and pouring coffee in them. The one he gives to Janet has a picture of her and Sara on it from one of those kiosks in the mall. If all that’s going to be left of Sara are things like Sara-inspired mugs, then I don’t want to have any part of her at all.
“He’d been having chest pain, so we finally got him to the doctor, and luckily they were able to detect it. In most cases it’s asymptomatic with a high rate of sudden death,” she says.
“We wanted Sara to get tested too,” Cal adds, stirring sugar into this coffee. “Because it’s genetic.”
It gets terribly quiet as all that sinks in.
“We tried to get her to go, but she didn’t want to get tested,” Janet says. “She didn’t want to risk slowing down her game or stopping altogether. You guys know she was cut from the team, but she thought that if she could prove herself, she could get her spot back.”
Well, actually, no, we did not know until Bugg accidentally said something about it, but I guess that’s all irrelevant now.
“And I tried, I really tried to get her to go but she’s an adult now, was an adult, and you guys know how it goes.” Janet’s voice starts to break and Cal puts his hand on her back
, but he’s staring into his cup.
“You can’t blame yourself,” my mom says. “It was a terrible accident.” My dad and I nod. My mom is very good at saying the right thing.
“It was sudden, very sudden,” Janet continues. “One minute she was playing, the next she was lying on the court. Her coach did everything she could and those surgeons were excellent, but—” She starts to cry again and Cal takes over.
“We don’t know how much of this, the background story, we’re going to tell everyone. We’d like to protect Sara’s and our privacy, but we wanted you guys to know the full story.”
Again we all nod, but it’s like they want us to keep their secrets, which I guess I should be fine with, but something about it feels slimy.
“We’re going to have a funeral and a private burial next week,” Janet says, again like this is some business proposition. “What we were hoping, Danny, is that you would write Sara’s eulogy. Sometimes it felt like you were closer to Sara than even Cal and I were. It would mean so much to us if you would write something in her honor.”
“Of course,” I say because I’m not going to say no. The problem is public speaking gives me hives, and the tone of her voice and the expressionless stare of her red-rimmed eyes are giving me a cold-fish feeling in my stomach.
The coffeepot makes a final, exhausted cough and I hold my breath, hoping the silence will break quickly. It doesn’t, and realizing there’s nothing left to say, we all shuffle outside together for one final round of good-byes.
As soon as we’re safely in the car, my mom goes off. “I can’t believe they didn’t make her get tested. What sort of parents—”
“Enough,” my dad interrupts her, gripping the steering wheel like it holds the last of his sanity. “It’s not going to bring her back.”
“All I’m saying is you can’t trust a kid to make decisions like that even if they are an adult. Look what we did when we found out about Danny: met with her dean, got her the help she needed. We were involved. It’s called responsible parenting. She hated us at first, but you’ve gotten over that now, haven’t you, Danny?”
“I never hated you,” I say miserably. At least never as much as I hated myself for not being more discreet about everything. Still, at least Sara’s parents had the decency to leave her alone.
“Kids may only be kids, but they have to work out their own problems.”
I roll my eyes at my dad’s hypocrisy.
“No, kids need protection.” My mom turns to me. “We should work on the eulogy tonight,” she adds, as if this is some sort of group project.
“I don’t know what to say.” Not in the eulogy, not about anything at all.
My dad gets off the highway and I look out the window at the most unfortunate moment because something big is lying in the road. At first I don’t think it’s dead, or I wish it weren’t, but then we get closer. There’s no blood, no tire marks, no disruption in the feather stuff, but the goose is certainly dead. Her head hangs from her neck at a ninety-degree angle, which feels like a bad omen or something.
“Why is everything dead today?” I ask as I look back at its contorted shape on the side of the road. You’re still alive, I tell it. It doesn’t move.
“It’s a Branta canadensis occidentalis,” my dad says, never one to miss a chance to remind us that he’s a bird professor.
“Was a Branta canadensis whatever.”
Because Janet made some Facebook status, I don’t have to tell Kate or Liz or any of Sara’s friends that Sara is, you know, what Sara is. I decide to deactivate all forms of social media because there’s something very creepy about finding out about death on the same platform where you get live updates about people’s cats. Besides, people are posting all these hokey statuses and sad pictures, and I don’t have that sort of public display in me.
I retrieve my cell phone from the drawer and discover a million missed calls and unread texts, but Bugg is the only person I want to talk to. She picks up on the first ring.
“I’ve been so worried. Are you okay?” she asks. “God, that’s such a stupid thing to say.”
“No, can you come over?”
“Be right there.”
I hear my mom let Bugg in, and when she comes into my room I’m tucked into bed with my dear friends: peanut butter, M&M’s, and pepperoni. I haven’t had this mutant snack concoction in too long, and my life has been severely lackluster because of it.
“Wouldn’t this be an awesome-sounding name for a rap group?” I ask, pointing to my goods. “Especially if you abbreviated peanut butter to ‘PB.’”
“You could be their manager,” Bugg agrees, sitting on the bed next to me. We smile for a moment but as soon as she kisses my forehead I burst into slobbery tears.
“What happened, Danny?” she asks, and I’m glad she’s whispering. It’s the sort of thing you can’t talk about, but if you have to talk about it, a whisper is all that feels right.
I try to say something but it gets lost in a great series of hiccups, so she pats my hair and waits for me to catch my breath. When I can finally breathe without gasping these weird seal gasps, I tell her everything Janet and Cal and the doctors told us.
“She knew she could have had it.” I can hear how angry I sound. “She knew it and she didn’t want it to ruin her chances of trying to get back on the team, which she told everyone about except for me. And on top of that she knew it could kill her because Cal got tested or whatever, and she never did anything. It was so fucking selfish.” I dig the spoon into the peanut butter jar and watch the soupy crushed peanuts inch back to their source. “I fucking hate this peanut butter,” I add because natural peanut butter is the grossest kind of peanut butter. “And I don’t mean that, about Sara. If she knew, really knew that it were possible to die, she would’ve stopped playing. I know she would have. She never wanted to be a tennis martyr or something. She wouldn’t have left me.” I stop stabbing the peanut butter swamp and look at Bugg. Tears are rolling down her cheeks. “She was wrong, but I can’t blame her for that. No one actually thinks it’s possible to die.”
“God, I can’t believe it. It’s so chilling.” There are bags under her eyes, and it looks like she hasn’t slept in a few nights. “Can I have a bite of that?”
I pass her the spoon. “I can’t believe she didn’t tell me,” I say.
“Is it really that surprising, though? She was keeping her medical shit to herself,” Bugg points out, “just like you were keeping your St. John’s shit to yourself.” I want to snatch my precious peanut butter from her, then dump it on her head.
“But I didn’t tell her because that was private. And so embarrassing.”
“Maybe it was embarrassing for her too,” Bugg says quietly.
“But mine was way worse, way harder to talk about. She at least had something physical, something concrete to deal with. Mental illness is like trying to follow along with a Houdini act.”
I take Sara’s tiny pink helicopter from the nightstand and stuff it into a drawer. Bugg bites her lip. “Yeah, but you both held each other to such an impossible standard that it seems reasonable to have a hard time telling each other about your quote unquote failures.”
“Then why did you keep trying to get me to tell Sara the truth? As if I was the only one not holding up my end of the friendship bargain?” I can’t even believe we’re having a semi-fight at a time like this.
“I told her to tell you the truth too!” Bugg says.
For some reason that makes me feel more betrayed. “I thought you were with me. I didn’t think you were playing both sides. You and Sara were hardly even friends.”
“Come on, Danny,” she says gently. “I wasn’t trying to play anybody. Before I knew that you were Danny, Sara said she was going through a weird time with her best friend, so I offered to help.”
“Well, yeah, friendship is like a river,” I say angrily. “Sometimes it dries up a little, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a river anymore.” I wipe my eyes. �
�And I hate this organic fucking peanut butter.”
“Yeah, it’s bad.” She clicks her tongue on the roof of her mouth. “Really sticks to the back of your throat, doesn’t it?”
“That’s what she said.”
Bugg laughs and so do I, which feels good. It feels terrible too, guilt-laden and inappropriate, but I guess so does being alive.
“I didn’t mean that, about her being selfish or you playing sides. It’s just so weird. I feel like I’m looking through a kaleidoscope, but it’s not fun or colorful. It’s dark and disturbed. Contorted, like. I don’t know what anything means, so I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Bugg says. I lean in closer to her and get a little lost in her cinnamon and cigarettes smell.
“I have to write Sara’s eulogy within the next week. Maybe you could read it over for me before I go word-vomit on however many hundreds of people are going to be there on Wednesday.”
“You’re not going to word-vomit. You’re going to be great.” She kisses me on the lips this time. “I’m supposed to help Cynthia out tonight, but I can cancel if you want to, like, do a weed run or crash a house party,” she offers.
“No, no, it’s okay. Faux-friendship duties call, meaning I should go see Liz and Kate. Besides, I think Sara’s parents are having people over. My mom said something about bringing a tuna casserole, but you’d think that’d make everyone more depressed.”
Bugg’s face wrinkles. “Gross. Why do adults insist on eating the worst food?”
“Because they suck.”
“Well, let me know when you’re done and we’ll work on the eulogy. You’re also always welcome to sleep over,” she says, which makes me want to cancel my whole life and move to Mars with her. Since there are no space shuttles in the vicinity, once she leaves I prepare myself for all the ensuing grief-stricken socializing in the best way I know how: by consuming about three thousand more calories.
Love & Other Carnivorous Plants Page 12