by Nicola Yoon
He steps away from the wall and simply falls forward until he’s upside down on his hands. It’s such a graceful and effortless movement that I’m momentarily filled with envy. What’s it like to have such complete confidence in your body and what it will do?
“That’s amazing,” I whisper.
“We’re not in church,” he whisper-shouts back, voice slightly strained from being upside down.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It feels like I should be quiet.”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he closes his eyes, slowly removes his left hand from the floor, and holds it out to the side. He’s almost perfectly still. The quiet bubbling of the pond and his slightly heavier breathing are the only sounds in the room. His T-shirt falls up and I can see the hard muscles of his stomach. The skin is the same warm, golden tan. I pull my eyes away.
“OK,” I say, “you can stop now.”
He’s upright again before I can blink.
“What else can you do?”
He rubs his hands together and grins back at me.
One backflip later he sits back down against the wall and closes his eyes.
“So, why outer space first?” he asks.
I shrug. “I want to see the world, I guess.”
“Not what most people mean by that,” he says, smiling.
I nod and close my eyes as well. “Do you ever feel—” I begin, but then the door opens and Carla bustles in to rush him out.
“You didn’t touch, right?” she asks, arms akimbo.
We both open our eyes and stare at each other. All at once I’m hyperaware of his body and mine.
“There was no touching,” Olly confirms, his eyes never leaving my face. Something in his tone makes me blush hard, and heat travels a slow wave across my face and chest.
Spontaneous combustion is a real thing. I’m certain of it.
DIAGNOSIS
PERSPECTIVES
BEFORE CARLA ARRIVES the next morning I spend exactly thirteen minutes in bed convinced that I am getting sick. It takes her exactly six minutes to un-convince me. She takes my temperature, blood pressure, heart and pulse rates before declaring that I am simply lovesick.
“Classic symptoms,” she says.
“I’m not in love. I can’t be in love.”
“And why not?”
“What would be the point?” I say, throwing my hands up. “Me in love would be like being a food critic with no taste buds. It would be like being a color-blind painter. It would be like—”
“Like skinny-dipping by yourself.”
I have to laugh at that one. “Exactly,” I say. “Pointless.”
“Not pointless,” she says, and looks at me seriously. “Just because you can’t experience everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experience anything. Besides, doomed love is a part of life.”
“I’m not in love,” I say again.
“And you’re not sick,” she retorts. “So there’s nothing to worry about.”
*
For the rest of the morning I’m too distracted to read or do homework. Despite Carla’s reassurances that I’m not getting sick, I find myself paying too close attention to my body and how it feels. Are my fingertips tingling? Do they usually do that? Why can’t I seem to catch my breath? How many somersaults can a stomach do before becoming irreparably knotted? I ask Carla to do an extra check of my vitals, and the results are all normal.
By the afternoon I acknowledge in my head that Carla might be onto something. I might not be in love, but I’m in like. I’m in serious like. I wander the house aimlessly, seeing Olly everywhere. I see him in my kitchen making stacks of toast for dinner. I see him in my living room suffering though Pride and Prejudice with me. I see him in my bedroom, his black-clad body asleep on my white couch.
And it’s not just Olly that I see. I keep picturing myself floating high above the earth. From the edge of space I can see the whole world all at once. My eyes don’t have to stop at a wall or at a door. I can see the beginning and the end of time. I can see infinity from there.
For the first time in a long time, I want more than I have.
WONDERLAND
AND IT’S THE wanting that pulls me back down to earth hard. The wanting scares me. It’s like a weed that spreads slowly, just beneath your notice. Before you know it, it’s pitted your surfaces and darkened your windows.
I send Olly a single e-mail. I’m really busy this weekend, I say. I need to get some sleep, I say. I need to concentrate, I say. I shut down my computer, unplug it, and bury it under a stack of books. Carla raises a single questioning eyebrow at me. I lower two nonanswering eyebrows back at her.
I spend most of Saturday suffering through calculus. Math is my least favorite and worst subject. It’s possible that those two facts are related. By evening I move on to rereading the annotated and illustrated version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I barely notice Carla packing up to leave at the end of the day.
“Did you have an argument?” she asks, nodding at my laptop.
I shake my head no but don’t say anything more.
By Sunday the urge to check my e-mail is acute. I imagine my in-box overflowing with subject-less e-mails from Olly. Is he asking more Fast Five questions? Does he want some company, refuge from his family?
“You’re OK,” Carla says on her way out the door that evening. She kisses my forehead, and I’m a little girl again.
I take Alice to my white couch and settle in. Carla’s right of course. I am OK, but, like Alice, I’m just trying not to get lost. I keeping thinking about the summer I turned eight. I spent so many days with my forehead pressed against my glass window, bruising myself with my futile wanting. At first I just wanted to look out the window. But then I wanted to go outside. And then I wanted to play with the neighborhood kids, to play with all kids everywhere, to be normal for just an afternoon, a day, a lifetime.
So. I don’t check my e-mail. One thing I’m certain of: Wanting just leads to more wanting. There’s no end to desire.
LIFE IS SHORT™
SPOILER REVIEWS BY MADELINE
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND BY LEWIS CARROLL
Spoiler alert: Beware the Queen of Hearts. She’ll have your head.
MAKES YOU STRONGER
THERE’S NO E-MAIL from Olly. Not one. I even check my spam folder. This shouldn’t bother me and it doesn’t. It doesn’t bother me a lot. In the interest of thoroughness, I refresh my e-mail three more times in about two seconds. Maybe it’s just hiding somewhere, stuck behind another one.
Carla walks in as I’m about to refresh again.
“I didn’t think you’d be able to unearth that thing,” she says.
“Good morning to you, too,” I say, squinting down at the screen.
She smiles and begins her daily unpacking-of-the-medical-bag ritual. Why she doesn’t leave it here overnight is a mystery.
“Why are you frowning? Another dead cat video?” Her smile is toothy and wide, very Cheshire Cat–like. Any minute now her body will disappear, leaving just a grinning floating head in its wake.
“Olly didn’t send me any e-mails.”
I believe nonplussed is the word for her expression.
“All weekend,” I say, by way of illumination.
“I see.” She puts the stethoscope in her ears and the thermometer under my tongue.
“Did you e-mail him?”
“Yesh.” I talk around the thermometer.
“Don’t talk, just nod.”
“Sawwy.”
She rolls her eyes and we wait for the beep.
“Ninety-nine point eight,” I say, handing the thermometer back to her. “I basically told him not to write. Am I being ridiculous?”
She motions for me to turn around so she can listen to my lungs but doesn’t respond.
“How ridiculous?” I prompt. “On a scale of one to ten, one being perfectly rational and reasonable and ten being absurd and certifiable.”
“About an
eight,” she says without hesitation.
I’d been expecting her to say twelve, so eight seems like a victory. I tell her so and she laughs at me.
“So you told him not to write to you and then he didn’t write to you. This is what you’re telling me?”
“Well, I didn’t say DON’T WRITE in big, bold letters or anything. I just said I was busy.” I think she’s going to make fun of me, but she doesn’t.
“Why didn’t you write to him?”
“Because of what we talked about. I like him, Carla. A lot. Too much.”
The look on her face says is that all? “Do you really want to lose the only friend you’ve ever had over a little bit of heartache?”
I’ve read many, many books involving heartache. Not one has ever described it as little. Soul-shattering and world-destroying, yes. Little, no.
She leans back against the couch. “You don’t know this yet, but this will pass. It’s just the newness and hormones.”
Maybe she’s right. I want her to be right so I can talk to him again.
She leans forward and winks at me. “That, and he’s cute.”
“He is pretty cute, right?” I giggle.
“Honey, I didn’t think they made them like that anymore!”
I’m laughing, too, and imagining a factory with little Ollys coming off an assembly line. How would they ever keep them still enough to package and mail?
“Go!” She slaps my knee. “You have enough things to be afraid of. Love can’t kill you.”
NO YES MAYBE
Monday, 8:09 P.M.
Madeline: Hi.
Olly: hey
Madeline: How are you? How was your weekend?
Olly: fine. good
Olly: yours?
Madeline: Good, but busy. I mostly did calculus homework.
Olly: ahh, calculus. the mathematics of change
Madeline: Wow. You really weren’t kidding about liking math?
Olly: no
Madeline: I’m sorry about my e-mail.
Olly: which part?
Madeline: All of it. Are you upset with me? No, yes, maybe?
Olly: no yes maybe
Madeline: I don’t think you’re supposed to use all the answers.
Olly: why’d you send it?
Madeline: I got scared.
Olly: of what?
Madeline: You.
Madeline: You didn’t write to me either.
Olly: you didn’t want me to
Madeline: …
Olly: does the ellipsis mean we’re having an awkward silence or that you’re thinking?
Madeline: Both.
Madeline: Why do you like math so much?
Olly: why do you like books so much?
Madeline: Those are not the same thing!
Olly: why not?
Madeline: You can find the meaning of life in a book.
Olly: life has meaning?
Madeline: You’re not serious.
Olly: it’s possible
Olly: what book can you find the meaning of life in?
Madeline: OK, maybe not just a single book, but if you read enough you’ll get there.
Olly: is that your plan?
Madeline: Well, I’ve got the time.
Madeline: …
Olly: thinking?
Madeline: Yes. I have a solution to our problem.
Olly: listening
Madeline: Let’s agree to just be friends, ok?
Olly: ok
Olly: but no more checking out my muscles
Madeline: Friends, Olly!
Olly: and my eyes
Madeline: No more talking about my freckles.
Madeline: And my hair.
Olly: and your lips
Madeline: And your dimple.
Olly: you like my dimple?
Madeline: Friends!
Olly: ok
TIME
CARLA MAKES US wait a week before we can see each other again. She wants to be absolutely sure that being in the same room with Olly didn’t activate any of my triggers. Even though I agree with her that we should wait just to be safe, the week seems interminable. I’m sort of convinced that time has literally, and not just metaphorically, slowed down, but that’s the kind of thing that would make headlines.
MIRROR, MIRROR
AFTER AN EPOCH, the week finally ends. I’m giddy and trying not to be. This is more difficult than you’d imagine. Trying not to smile only makes you smile more.
Carla watches me struggle to choose what to wear. It’s not something I’ve ever given much thought to. Really, I’ve never given any thought to it. My closet consists entirely of white T-shirts and blue jeans. The jeans are arranged by type—straight, skinny, boot cut, wide leg, the ridiculously named “boyfriend.” My shoes—all Keds, all white—are piled in a heap in the back corner. I almost never wear shoes around the house and now I’m not sure that I can find a pair that will fit. Rummaging through the pile, I find a left and right one of the same size. They fit, but just barely. I stand in front of the mirror. Is your shirt supposed to match your shoes or is that your purse? Is white the best color for my chestnut complexion? I make a mental note to do some shopping later. I’ll buy a T-shirt in every color until I find the one that suits me best.
For the fifth time I ask Carla if my mom has already left.
“You know your mother,” she says. “Has she ever been late a day in her life?”
My mother believes in punctuality the way other people believe in God. Time is precious, she says, and it’s rude to waste someone else’s. I’m not even allowed to be late for Friday Night Dinners.
I look at myself in the mirror, change the V-necked white T-shirt for a scoop-neck white T-shirt for no reason at all. Or not for no reason. But to have something to do while waiting for Olly.
I wish again that I could talk to my mom about this. I want to ask her why I get breathless when I think of him. I want to share my giddiness with her. I want to tell her all the funny things Olly says. I want to tell her how I can’t make myself stop thinking about him even though I try. I want to ask her if this is the way she felt about Dad at the beginning.
I tell myself it’s OK. I didn’t get sick after the last time I saw him, and he knows the rules—no touching, full decontamination treatment, no visit if he even suspects he could get sick in the next few days.
I tell myself there’s no harm in lying to my mom. I tell myself I won’t get sick. I tell myself there’s no harm in friendship.
That Carla is right, and love can’t kill me.
FORECAST
OLLY’S ON THE wall again when I enter the room. This time he’s climbed all the way to the top.
“Don’t your fingertips ever get tired?” I ask.
“I’ve got them on a strict workout regimen,” he says, grinning at me. My stomach does a little flip thing that I’m really going to have to get used to, since it seems to be a side effect of seeing him.
I was in this room to do my homework yesterday. I know it’s exactly the same as I left it, but it looks and feels different. The room is so much more alive with Olly in it. If all the fake plants and trees swayed to life right now, I wouldn’t be surprised.
I walk to the couch and settle into the corner farthest away from him.
Down from the wall, he sits cross-legged and leans his back against it.
I tuck my legs beneath me, adjust my mass of hair, hug my waist. What is it about being in the same room with him that makes me so conscious of my body and all its parts? He even makes me aware of my skin.
“You’re wearing shoes today,” he says, notices. He’s definitely a noticer, the kind of boy who would know if you’d rearranged a painting or added a new vase to a room.
I look down at my shoes. “I have nine pairs of these exact same shoes.”
“And you complain about my wardrobe choices?”
“You only wear black! It makes you look sepulchral.”
“I need a dictionary
to talk to you.”
“Of or relating to a sepulcher.”
“Not that helpful a definition.”
“Basically you’re the angel of death.”
He grins at me. “The scythe gave me away, didn’t it? I thought I hid it so well.”
He changes positions. Now he’s lying flat on his back, knees bent, hands laced behind his head.
I shift my body again for no reason, pulling my legs into my chest and wrapping my arms around them. Our bodies are having their own conversation separate and apart from us. Is this the difference between friendship and something else? This awareness that I have of him?
The air filters cycle on, making a low hum beneath the sound of the fan.
“How does that work?” His eyes are scanning the ceiling.
“It’s industrial. The windows are sealed so air only comes in through the filters on the roof. Nothing over 0.3 microns gets in. Also, the circulation system completely changes all the air in the house every four hours.”
“Wow.” He turns his head to look at me and I can see him trying to come to terms with just how sick I am.
I look away. “The settlement paid for it.” Before he can ask I add: “The trucker who killed my dad and brother fell asleep behind the wheel. He’d been working three shifts in a row. They settled with my mom.”
He turns his head back toward the ceiling. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s strange because I don’t really remember them. Meaning I don’t remember them at all.” I try to ignore the feelings that surface when I think about them. There’s sadness that’s not quite sadness, and then guilt. “It’s weird to miss something you’ve never had—or don’t remember having, anyway.”
“Not so weird,” he says. We’re both quiet and he closes his eyes.
“Do you ever wonder what your life would be like if you could just change one thing?” he asks.
Not usually, but I’m starting to. What if I weren’t sick? What if my dad and brother hadn’t died? Not wondering about impossible things is how I’ve managed to be relatively Zen.
“Everyone thinks they’re special,” he says. “Everyone’s a snowflake, right? We’re all unique and complicated. We can never know the human heart, and all that?”