Alive (13 page)

“Great. Nice to meet you, Josh,” I say curtly. I press my lips together into a tight line and try sitting back up, but Josh pulls on my pant leg again and I’m forced to lean
forward, my eyes scouting the throngs of people, looking for Levi.

“Wanna dance?” asks my new friend, his breath rotten and sweet all at once, stinking of beer. I don’t want to dance. Considering he can barely stand up straight, he
shouldn’t want to dance either.

“Not this time,” I say, scooting an inch down the rail. I clutch my purse in my lap, tucking it close to my torso. He follows.

“Come on,” he insists. Tug, tug, tug on my jeans. I don’t like the sensation of his fingers pawing at my leg. They feel clumsy. “Just one…dance.”

“Maybe you should go find a glass of water.” I trust this guy as much I would a thin sheet of ice over a lake. I pull back my shoulders and try to look grown-up, self-assured. Only I
know that he must have chosen to pursue me the same way a lion chooses to pick off an injured gazelle from the herd. “Okay, seriously, dude. I’m good.”

“You’re really pretty.” His words feel grimy and mucus-coated. I slide out from underneath him, but he catches my wrist. “Come dance,” he repeats, tugging at my
sweater. “It’ll be fun.”

I shake my head, rigid, wishing he wouldn’t touch me.

“Come on,” Josh whines, but this time he yanks down on my hand and a rush of wind flies up in my face right before I hit the ground.

Pain drives up through my right knee like an iron rod. Blinding white pain. His lumpish fingers—fingers that could not be counted on to successfully drunk dial at this point—clasp at
my sweater and as he pulls at me, I crawl to a standing position. “Stop,” I yell, hoarse.

At this, other people around me finally take notice. I wedge my elbows between my torso and his. Onlookers crowd in on us. I’m surrounded. The crowd crushes in on me. My heartbeat
skyrockets and I start to gulp in air as if through a straw. People are shouting. The noise tickles my ears.

Somebody pushes me from behind and I lunge back into Josh, whose sour smell overwhelms me even more.

“What do you think you’re doing?” There’s a break in the mass of bodies. Levi shoves two cups into the hands of a stranger. He’s not talking to me. He’s
talking to Josh, who now appears to have the mobility of a slug.

“I didn’t do nothing, man,” Josh replies, all tongue.

“Bullshit, I saw you.”

I squirm backward, away from him. There’s a sickening
thwap
of skin on skin. Josh stumbles, clutching his jaw and crossing his feet one over the other in a wobbly grapevine.

“Dude!” Josh yells, bringing his fingertips away from his lip to reveal a bright patch of fresh, shiny blood. For a tense second, I think Josh is going to take a swing. Levi edges
around toward me and as he does, Josh apparently thinks better of it.

By the time Levi’s hand has found its way around my waist, Josh is already stumbling away.

Levi pulls me close to his side and guides us to a clear spot on the floor. He looks at me hungrily. “You okay?”

I swipe at my bottom lashes, praying I don’t have smudged eyeliner. “I’m fine.” My voice is high and squeaky and Levi chuckles. “Freak,” I mutter as anger
wells up inside me.

The ache in my chest subsides and my heart rate slows to a steady beat the longer Levi stays with his thumb latched onto my belt loop.

He stares over his shoulder in the direction that Josh went, hovering protectively over me before a visible quiver runs through him and he seems to shake something off. He returns his attention
to me.

“Do we need to go home?” Levi searches my face.

His concern wraps around me and I feel cared for, like something that’s precious and rare. An ostrich egg or Swarovski crystal. And my anger dissipates.

“No way,” I insist, though I can already feel the soreness creeping into my kneecap. “We’re here to see Action Hero Disco. Hello!” I put extra pep into my voice. I
don’t want to be the wimp who forced him to waste his money.

He gives me a long look but says nothing and instead smiles and helps me back to my perch. He grabs another two beers to make up for the ones we lost, and when he returns Action Hero Disco is
onstage and I can’t believe I’m breathing the same air. I don’t know how else to describe the fact that they are right there. I could walk up to the front and touch Jordan
Montegro’s shin. Sure, I might get tackled by security, but still, it could happen.

I try hard not to feel self-conscious. There’s the urge to hold this tiny space in time, to keep it for myself. And I can sense the hot flush of pleasure rising in my cheeks. I want to
pull back because it feels private.

For these moments, it’s as if the transplant never happened. I feel nothing but the vibration of the speakers that mixes with the beer, which is followed promptly by two more beers.
Together, they form a subtle buzz in the center of my skull. Without concentrating too hard, I can convince myself that I’m not sick. Never have been.

By the time they play “Pragmatic,” Levi and I are singing every word. My throat becomes woolen and stick-scratchy. I take swigs from my beer to soothe the burn. I don’t mention
to Levi that they’re my first. By the end of the night my insides are as warm and gooey as freshly baked cookies and my mind is tingling and I think that if this is my life now, it should
never have to end.

“I should probably go inside.” My arms are freezing, with puckered skin and little hairs that won’t lie down. The first hint that October will transition us
into the cool months of winter and summer has passed. We’re both sticky with sweat from the concert. I lean my head against the rest. The car engine’s off and there’s darkness
surrounding us, cut with shards of light from streetlamps. We’re both that kind of happy-exhausted that comes when every limb hangs loose from the socket and your entire body could melt into
whatever surface on which it’s currently located.

I smile deliriously up at the ceiling, so delightfully tired I feel silly. “That was by far the best concert I’ve ever been to.” I rub my throat. “I think I lost my
voice, though.”

“High praise,” Levi says. “What other concerts were we up against?”

I lower the direction of my gaze and nuzzle into the headrest. “Okay, so, that was my first. But don’t let that detract from the significance of my statement.” Before I got
sick, my parents would never have let me go out alone. I savor the leftover hum. The music had been so loud that it sent every particle in me vibrating in unison with a thousand other bodies.

Levi laughs. “Well you did say by far.”

“Does it crack your top five?” I ask.

He leans back. “By far the best. Of course the company may have given it a competitive edge.”

I look down at my lap, the corners of my mouth creeping up. Another moment passes. “I really should go inside.”

I let my head loll to the side. It’s then that I notice Levi’s eyes. I mean
really
notice them, because when I do, when I glance up to make eye contact, to say my best prim
and polite first-date good-byes, they glue me to my seat. They’re like two swirling planets and I’m a speck of dust pulled into their orbit. I feel myself leaning, being sucked into the
vortex.

We’re two magnets. I feel the instant pull at that moment we decide we’re going to kiss. And then Levi’s thumb is tracing the soft skin on my throat and sending a tickle down
through the arches of my feet and I’m squirming against the upholstery. And there is no nose bumping or teeth colliding. It’s the kind of kiss that I’ve seen in the movies. The
ones where music plays and credits scroll. He smells like salt water and tastes cold like the ocean spray.

Our lips still move together. The thumb at my throat slides down to my collarbone and rests over the thin skin that covers it. My heart pumps fistfuls of blood, which I can hear whooshing
through my ears as it makes its way to my fingers and toes and the backs of my knees. My whole body tingles.

The fingers on my collarbone flatten into a hand on my chest and slip an inch. Then another. My pulse quickens.

The urgency in Levi’s kisses increases, but all I can feel is the hand. It’s as if my entire consciousness is focused on that one particular spot on my body. He must catch the
pounding of my heart. How could he not?

Then, like his hand has a mind of its own, the fingertips steal into the V-neck of my sweater and I jerk back, alarmed. The connection snaps in half.

Levi’s eyes go wide. “Stella, I’m sorry, I just—” he stammers.

Oh my God. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. What did I just do? He thinks I’m pissed about the—about the—about the thing. I’m such a spaz. Worse. He must think I’m acting
like a twelve-year-old.

“No!” I blurt out. “I mean, no, it’s not that. It’s—” I take a deep breath. If I tell him, will he see me as a sick girl too? I don’t want him to
like me because he feels sorry for me. But if I don’t tell him, what will he think then? “It’s my scar.”

Levi cocks his head and I tug down the neck of my sweater. It’s the first time I’ve shown anyone but my mom and dad. The thick scar tissue—tight, shiny, and ruler
straight—runs from the middle of my belly up the length of my chest. It’s the sort of scar to cause a stranger in the supermarket to stare. And one of the first things I thought about
when I first saw it: how could anyone ever be attracted to
this
?

Levi stares at the point on my chest while I try to force myself to sit still.

“I had a heart transplant,” I explain, my words spilling out too fast. “I was going to die, see, but I got off the waiting list. I got a heart and it saved my life,
but…now…now I’m stuck with this.”

His brown eyes lift up to mine and I see them gleaming in the dark. There’s a slight wrinkle in his forehead. “Seems like a small price to pay then…for your life?”

A lump rises in my throat. “Sure, I guess.” The strength of my words is slighter than a sheet of paper.

Gently, he touches the angry welt. I try not to wonder too hard what he’s thinking, whether he thinks I’m a freak or disfigured or just plain unsexy. I’d never thought of
myself as sexy before, but the scar, it has definitely made me think of myself as
un
.

“I know it’s not, um…the prettiest thing in the world.”

His thumb runs over the hump of scar tissue and my skin erupts with a shudder of electricity, every atom in me connecting and exploding in my chest.

“It’s…” he starts then trails off and I hold my breath. “It’s not ugly, Stella.” I experience a small dip of disappointment when he doesn’t call
me by my last name.

Sometimes I see the scar when I’m getting out of the shower or pulling on my polo for school and I think I look like a murder victim, a corpse on a cold, metal table. I imagine myself,
purple lips and pale white cheeks, black hair that’s as brittle as straw.

He retrieves his hand slowly and returns it to his lap.

I give a dismissive roll of my eyes. “It is and it’s fine. Like you said, it’s a small price to pay or whatever.”

A corner of his mouth turns up. “Seriously. It’s unique,” he says. “Some people get tattoos to remind themselves of what they’ve been through. You”—he
shrugs—“have this.”

I’d never thought of it that way. I try it on, this new point of view. It feels nice. Even if it is a lie.

“I thought I was going to die,” I tell him, surprising myself.

Strange as it seems, I’ve never talked about this before. I’m not sure why I suddenly want to, except for maybe the beers or the fact that someone else has seen my scar. The
confession just spills out of me, as though Levi had pulled at the tip of a buried object and in doing so had managed unwittingly to unearth the whole thing.

Our faces are so close I can sense the coolness of his skin. “How does it feel?” he asks.

“How does what feel?” The trees rustle in the quiet driveway, mimicking the sound of our whispers.

“Thinking that you’re going to die.” His dark skin is dewy in the soft light. This, I realize, is how it feels to share secrets.

“It’s…terrifying. Like time is working against you. Like there’s a literal hourglass that contains the minutes of your life.” How funny that I’ve never said
that out loud even though I’ve thought it a million times. That feeling, of the ticking countdown, still clings to me. I haven’t been able to shake it. Not yet, not completely, at
least. I can’t comprehend the vast expanse of time that’s in front of me now. Years upon years upon years that stack up in short, time-capsuled columns stretching farther than I can
see.

“Why, though? Why was it terrifying?”

“Because I hadn’t lived long enough. What if I missed something? What if I missed everything? What about my parents?”

“Sometimes,” he says, glancing down at the space between us and then up at me, “I think about dying.” Almost like a declaration of guilt.

My breath hitches. “Why?” Before my illness, I’d never once thought about dying. I drove around on highways, got on planes, ate questionably cooked chicken served by my mother,
but never once did I think about what it might be like to die.