Everything, Everything

by Nicola Yoon

  We move the chairs so that we’re sitting right next to each other. He holds my hand in his lap or I hold his in mine. We look at each other and laugh for no reason. Or, not for no reason, but because the world just then seems extraordinary. For us to have met, to have fallen in love, to get to be together is beyond anything either of us had ever thought possible.

  Olly orders us a second helping of lobster pot stickers. “You make me very hungry,” he croons, eyebrows waggling. He touches my cheek and I blush into his hands. We eat this plate more slowly. It’s our last. Maybe if we just sit here, if we don’t acknowledge that time is passing, then this too-perfect day won’t have to end.

  As we leave, the waitress tells us to come back and visit again soon, and Olly promises that we will.

  We head away from the lights of the restaurant and toward the darkened beach. Above, the clouds have hidden the moon. We slip off our sandals, walk close to the water’s edge, and sink our toes into the cooling sand. Nighttime waves crash mightier and louder than daytime ones. The farther we walk, the fewer people we see, until it begins to feel as though we’ve left civilization behind. Olly steers us to dry sand and we find a place to sit.

  He takes my hand and kisses the palm. “My dad apologized to us after he hit her the first time.” He pushes the sentence out on a single breath. It takes me a second to realize what he’s talking about.

  “He was crying.”

  The night is so dark that I feel rather than see him shake his head.

  “They sat us down together and he said he was sorry. He said it would never happen again. I remember Kara was so angry she wouldn’t even look at him. She knew he was a liar, but I believed him. My mom did, too. She told us to forget all about it. She said, ‘Your father has been through a lot.’ She said that she forgave him and that we should, too.”

  He gives me my hand back. “He didn’t hit her again for another year. He drank too much. He yelled at her. He yelled at all of us. But he didn’t hit her again for a long time.”

  I hold my breath for a moment and ask the question I’ve been wanting to ask. “Why doesn’t she leave him?”

  He snorts and his tone turns hard. “Don’t think I haven’t asked her.” He lies back in the sand, links his hands behind his head. “I think that if he hit her more often, she would leave him. If he were just a little more of a bastard maybe we could finally go. But he’s always sorry, and she always believes him.”

  I put my hand on his stomach, needing the contact. I think maybe he needs it, too, but then he sits up, pulls his knees into his chest, and rests his elbows on them. His body forms a cage that I can’t get into.

  “What does she say when you ask her?”

  “Nothing. She won’t talk about it anymore. She used to say that we’d understand when we’re older and in our own relationships.”

  I’m surprised by the anger in his voice. I never guessed that he was angry at his mother. His father, yes, but not her.

  He snorts again. “She says love makes people crazy.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Yes. No. Maybe.”

  “You’re not supposed to use all the answers,” I say.

  He smiles in the dark. “Yes, I believe it.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m all the way here in Hawaii with you. It’s not easy for me to leave them alone with him.”

  I tamp down my guilt before it can rise.

  “Do you believe it?” he asks.

  “Yes. Definitely.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m all the way here in Hawaii with you,” I say, repeating his words. “I never would’ve left my house if it weren’t for you.”

  “So,” he says. He lowers his legs and takes my hand. “What do we do now?”

  I don’t know the answer to this question. The only thing I know for sure is that this—being here with Olly, being able to love him and be loved by him—is everything.

  “You should leave them,” I say. “It’s not safe for you there.” I say it because he doesn’t know it. He’s trapped by the same memory of love, of better times, that his mother is, and it isn’t enough.

  I rest my head on his shoulder and we watch the near-dark ocean together. We watch the way the water pulls back and turns over and beats against the sand, trying to wear the earth away. And even though it doesn’t succeed, it pulls back and pounds the shore again and again, as if there were no last time and there is no next time and this time is the time that counts.

  SPIRAL

  THE END

  SOMEONE HAS PUT me in a hot oven and locked the door.

  Someone has doused me in kerosene and lit a match.

  I come awake slowly with my body on fire, consumed in flames. The sheets are cold and damp. I’m drowning in sweat.

  What’s happening to me? It takes a moment before I realize that there are many, many things wrong.

  I’m shivering. I’m more than shivering. I’m shaking uncontrollably and my head hurts. My brain is being squeezed in a vise. Pain radiates out and crashes into the nerves behind my eyes.

  My body is a fresh bruise. Even my skin hurts.

  At first I think I must be dreaming, but my dreams are never this lucid. I try to sit up, to pull the blankets closer, but I can’t. Olly’s still asleep and lying on top of them.

  I try again to sit up, but pain buries itself deep in my bones.

  The vise around my brain tightens and now there’s an ice pick stabbing indiscriminately at the soft flesh.

  I try to cry out but my throat is raw, as if I’d been screaming for days and days.

  I’m sick.

  I’m more than sick. I’m dying.

  Oh, God. Olly.

  This is going to break his heart.

  He awakes as soon as I think it. “Mad?” he asks into the dark.

  He turns on the bedside lamp and my eyes burn. I squeeze them shut and try to turn away. I don’t want him to see me like this, but it’s too late. I watch his face go from confusion, to recognition, to disbelief. Then terror.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, or try to say, but I don’t think the words make it past my lips.

  He touches my face, my neck, my forehead.

  “Jesus,” he says, over and over again. “Jesus.”

  He pulls the blanket off and I’m colder than I’d ever thought possible.

  “Jesus, Maddy, you’re burning up.”

  “Cold,” I croak, and he looks even more terrified.

  He covers me and cradles my head, kisses my wet brow, lips.

  “You’re fine,” he says. “You’re going to be fine.”

  I’m not, but it’s nice of him to say so. My body pulses with pain and my throat feels like it’s swelling shut. I can’t get enough air.

  “I need an ambulance,” I hear him say.

  I roll my head around. When did he get to that side of the room? Where are we? He’s on the phone. He’s talking about someone. Someone sick. Someone is sick. Dying. Emergency. Pills not working.

  He’s talking about me.

  He’s crying. Don’t cry. Kara will be fine. Your mom will be fine. You will be fine.

  The bed sinks. I’m in quicksand. Someone’s trying to pull me out. His hands are hot. Why are they so hot?

  Something glows in his other hand. It’s his cell phone. He’s saying something, but the words won’t come clear. Something. Mom. Your mom.

  Yes. Mom. I need my mom. She’s already on her way. I hope she’s close.

  I close my eyes and squeeze his fingers.

  I’m out of time.

  My.

  Heart.

  Stops.

  And

  starts

  again.

  RELEASED, PART ONE

  RESURRECTED

  I DON’T REMEMBER much, just a jumbled mix of images. The ambulance. Being stabbed in the leg once. Then twice. Adrenaline shots to restart my heart. Sirens wailing from far away, and then much too close. A TV flickering blue and white hig
h in a corner of the room. Machines beeping and blinking all day and all night keeping vigil. Women and men in white uniforms. Stethoscopes and needles and antiseptics.

  Then that smell of jet fuel, that smell that welcomed me before, and leis and the scratchy blanket wrapped twice around me, and why does the window seat matter when the shades are drawn closed?

  I remember my mother’s face and how her tears could make a sea.

  I remember Olly’s blue eyes gone black. I closed mine against the sorrow and relief and love I saw there.

  I’m on my way home. I’ll remain trapped there forever.

  I’m alive and don’t want to be.

  READMITTED

  MY MOM HAS transformed my bedroom into a hospital ward. I’m propped up by pillows in my bed and attached to an IV. I’m surrounded by monitoring equipment. I eat nothing but Jell-O.

  Each time I awake, she’s by my side. She touches my forehead and speaks to me. Sometimes I try to focus, to understand what she’s saying, but the sound is just out of my reach.

  I wake again sometime (hours? days?) later to find her standing over me, frowning at her clipboard. I close my eyes and take inventory of my body. Nothing hurts or, more accurately, nothing hurts too badly. I check in on my head, my throat, my legs. They’re all fine. I open my eyes again to find her about to put me back to sleep.

  “No!” I sit up much too quickly. I’m dizzy and nauseous at once. I mean to say I’m OK, but no sound comes out.

  I clear my throat and try again. “Please don’t make me sleep anymore.” I at least need to be awake if I’m going to be alive. “Am I OK?” I ask.

  “You’re OK. You’re going to be OK,” she says. Her voice trembles until it breaks.

  I pull myself to seated and look at her. Her skin is pale, almost translucent, and it’s stretched too tight across her face. A painful-looking blue vein stretches down from her hairline to her eyelid. I can see other blue veins just under the skin of her forearms and wrists. She has the frightened, disbelieving eyes of someone who witnessed something horrible and is waiting for more horrors to come.

  “How could you do this to yourself? You could’ve died,” she whispers.

  She steps closer, hugs a clipboard to her chest. “How could you do this to me? After everything?”

  I want to say something. I open my mouth to say it, but nothing comes out.

  My guilt is an ocean for me to drown in.

  I remain in bed after she leaves. I don’t get up to stretch my body. I turn my face away from the window. What do I regret? That I went outside in the first place. That I saw and fell in love with the world. That I fell in love with Olly. How can I live the rest of my life in this bubble now that I know all that I’m missing?

  I close my eyes and try to sleep. But the sight of my mom’s face earlier, all the desperate love in her eyes, won’t leave me. I decide then that love is a terrible, terrible thing. Loving someone as fiercely as my mom loves me must be like wearing your heart outside of your body with no skin, no bones, no nothing to protect it.

  Love is a terrible thing and its loss is even worse.

  Love is a terrible thing and I want nothing to do with it.

  RELEASED, PART TWO

  Wednesday, 6:56 P.M.

  Olly: jesus, where have you been?

  Olly: are you ok?

  Madeline: Yes.

  Olly: what does your mom say?

  Olly: are you going to be ok?

  Madeline: I’m OK, Olly.

  Olly: i tried to visit you but your mom wouldn’t let me

  Madeline: She’s protecting me.

  Olly: i know

  Madeline: Thanks for saving my life.

  Madeline: I’m sorry I put you through all that.

  Olly: you don’t have to thank me

  Madeline: Thank you anyway.

  Olly: are you sure you’re OK?

  Madeline: Please don’t ask me that anymore.

  Olly: sorry

  Madeline: Don’t be.

  Later, 9:33 P.M.

  Olly: it’s nice being able to IM you again

  Olly: you were a terrible mime

  Olly: say something

  Olly: I know you’re disappointed Mad but at least you’re alive

  Olly: we’ll talk to your mom once you’re better again. maybe i can visit

  Olly: I know it’s not everything Mad but it’s better than nothing

  Later, 12:05 A.M.

  Madeline: It’s not better than nothing. It’s absolutely worse than nothing.

  Olly: what?

  Madeline: Do you think we can go back to the way it was before?

  Madeline: You want to go back to decontamination, and short visits, and no touching and no kissing and no future?

  Madeline: You’re saying that’s enough for you?

  Olly: it’s better than nothing

  Madeline: No it’s not. Stop saying that.

  Later, 2:33 A.M.

  Olly: what about the pills?

  Madeline: What about them?

  Olly: they worked for a couple of days. maybe they’ll get them right eventually

  Olly: maddy?

  Madeline: There were no pills.

  Olly: what do you mean?

  Madeline: There were never any pills. I told you that so that you would go with me.

  Olly: you lied to me?

  Olly: but you could’ve died and it would’ve been my fault

  Madeline: I’m not your responsibility.

  Later, 3:42 A.M.

  Madeline: I wanted everything, Olly. I wanted you and the whole wide world. I wanted everything.

  Madeline: I can’t do this anymore.

  Olly: can’t do what?

  Madeline: No more IM. No more e-mail. It’s too hard. I can’t go back. My mom was right. Life was better before.

  Olly: better for who?

  Olly: don’t do this Maddy

  Olly: my life is better with you in it

  Madeline: but mine isn’t

 

  LIFE IS SHORT™

  SPOILER REVIEWS BY MADELINE

  INVISIBLE MAN BY RALPH ELLISON

  Spoiler alert: You don’t exist if no one can see you.

  GEOGRAPHY

  I’M IN AN endless field filled with red poppies. The poppies reach waist-high on single green stalks and are so red they seem to bleed color. In the distance I see one Olly, and then two, and then multiple Ollys marching toward me. They’re wearing gas masks and holding handcuffs and crushing the poppies under black-booted feet as they march toward me, silent and determined.

  The dream doesn’t leave me. I drift through the day awake but dreaming, trying not to think of Olly. I try not to think of seeing him for the first time. How he seemed like he was from another planet. I try not to think about Bundt cakes and headstands and kisses and velvet sand. How second and third and fourth kisses are just as amazing as first ones. I try not to think about him moving inside me and us moving together. I try not to think of him because if I do, I’ll have to think about how connected to him and the world I was just a few days go.

  I’ll have to think of all the hope I had. Of how I fooled myself into thinking that I was a miracle. Of how the world I wanted to be a part of so badly didn’t want me back.

  I have to let Olly go. I’ve learned my lesson. Love can kill you and I’d rather be alive than out there living.

  I once told Olly that I knew my own heart better than I knew anything else, and it’s still true. I know the places in my heart, but the names have all changed.

  MAP OF DESPAIR

  LIFE IS SHORT™

  SPOILER REVIEWS BY MADELINE

  THE STRANGER BY ALBERT CAMUS

  WAITING FOR GODOT BY SAMUEL BECKETT

  NAUSEA BY JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

  Spoiler alert: Everything is nothing.

  SELECT ALL, DELETE

  PRETENDING

  I’M STRONGER WITH each passing day. Nothing hurts except my heart, but
I’m trying not to use it. I keep the blinds closed. I read my books. Existential or nihilist ones. I have no patience for books that pretend life has meaning. I have no patience for happy endings.

  I don’t think about Olly. He sends me e-mails that I trash without reading.

  After two weeks I’m strong enough to resume some classes. Another two weeks and I’m able to resume all of them.

  I don’t think about Olly. I trash still more of his e-mails.

  My mom is still trying to fix me. She hovers. And worries and fusses and administers. Now that I’m stronger she coaxes me back into our mother-daughter nights. Like Olly, she wants our lives to go back to the way they were before. I don’t enjoy our nights together—I don’t really enjoy anything—but I do it for her. She’s lost even more weight. I’m alarmed and don’t know how to fix her, so I play Fonetik Skrabbl and Honor Pictionary and watch movies and pretend.

  Olly’s e-mails stop.

  “I’ve asked Carla to come back,” she says one night after dinner.

  “I thought you didn’t trust her anymore.”

  “But I trust you. You learned your lesson the hard way. Some things you just have to experience for yourself.”

  REUNION

  THE NEXT DAY, Carla bustles in. Her bustle is even bustlier than normal, and she pretends no time has passed at all.

  She gathers me up immediately. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s all my fault.”

  I hold myself stiff against her, not wanting to dissolve. If I cry, everything will be real. I really will have to live this life. I really will never see Olly again.

  I try to hold out but I can’t. She’s the soft pillow you’re supposed to cry into. Once I start, I don’t stop for an hour. She’s soaked and I don’t have any tears left. Can you reach the end of tears? I wonder.