Away We Go (14 page)

 
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At least once a day, think of a happy memory. If no such memory comes to mind, make one up. Failing that, turn to immortal uplifting words of Nietzsche: “The thought of suicide is a great consolation; in this way one can get through many a bad night.”

 
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When a relationship doesn't work out, remember, it's not you, it's them. All sixteen of them. Seventeen including your mother, whose last words to you were, “I hate your face.”

 
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Most of all, make an effort to see the humor in all things. Stage III cancer is serious business, but your radiologist's handlebar mustache doesn't have to be.

THE POSSIBILITY OF OKAY

We played ring-around-the-rosie together, and now he was ignoring me.

The new year unfolded into days of fresh snow, long blue skies. I read Marty's play over and over again, went on a couple lunch dates with Alice. In mid-January, Polo Club walked Melanie to her appointment on the third floor of the Westing Wellness Center. I should've been thinking about Melanie, but I kept glancing at Zach.

“I hate days like this,” Melanie said. She paused briefly at a window by reception before signing herself in. It was late afternoon, and the cars in the parking lot had begun their steady stream out the main gate.

“What's the world's
problem
?” Nigel asked, sipping a root beer that I was pretty sure was diluted with something extra, because he wobbled his way to the waiting room. “I mean, sometimes I wanna slap the shit out of it.”

“Honey,” Grace said, leaning into Nigel's ear. “I love you, but shut those pretty lips.”

Melanie settled in a corner of the waiting room and proceeded to study her hands. Zach sat down next to her, whispering into her ear, prompting frequent eye-rolls as well as an occasional smile. Melanie looked up in surprise as Marty and I sat down on her free side.

“It's not right,” Marty said, barely audible. “Them making you, I mean.”

“It's not like I'd even want it,” Melanie said, and cleared her throat. “I don't want it. I'm glad, actually.”

Marty opened his mouth but nothing came out, so I jumped in.

“You don't have to want it to want a choice,” I said.

Zach scratched his nose very solemnly.

“I don't know why you're all talking in whispers,” she said, and stared at me, daring me to deny it. “You, too,” she said, turning on Zach. “I'm not
fragile.
I don't need you to handle me with kiddy gloves. I don't even need you here. I'm happy to be here.”

“We're here because we like you,” I said, trying to lighten the situation, but she rolled her eyes and said, “
Ugh.
That's something
he
would say,” she said, nodding at Zach.

A nurse with a clipboard peeked into the waiting room. “Melanie Wong?”

Melanie stood, hesitated at the threshold. “You don't have to wait for me.”

“We will, though,” Zach said. When she'd gone, he turned to Marty and me. “That was nice of you. I was—in a state of oscillation. As an elected officer, there is always the dilemma about how to best represent your constituents.” Zach hesitated briefly. “Noah, at the last Polo meeting. Your square knots were magnificent, I must say. I don't think I ever properly commended you. I wanted to commend you.”

I smiled stupidly, because everything was going to be okay, but Marty spoiled it by breaking off from his blank gaze long enough to confide in me that he had “rarely seen better.”

“Seriously, bro,” Nigel said, from across the waiting room. “You put us to shame, man. To
shame
—” He had spilled some root beer on his shorts.

“You guys are haters,” I said, but it felt wrong, to joke, to love, while Melanie was in another room, preparing to have the contents of her uterus gently suctioned out, emptied out—this was how a brochure on a nearby table described the procedure.

Aspiration.

“I've failed you guys,” Zach said, scratching sheepishly at his head. “But I think I know how to make everything right.” He motioned to Grace and Nigel, who gathered round.

“Our phones,” he said, keeping his voice low. There were a couple other girls in the waiting room. “If we snuck them out, when they come to take us away—it's not like they're going to strip-search us when we're lying there dying, right?”

“Bro, what you even talking about?” Nigel said, and burped.

“Our phones,” Zach repeated, slow. “We know we can only call Westing numbers. We don't know we can't call Westing numbers from
outside
Westing. It wouldn't even need to be a call. Just one text. We could text each other what's it like. Where the sick kids go when they go away. The tertiary centers.” He had a hint of a smile on his face. “God, it's so simple.”

“A friend of mine said—” Grace hesitated, adjusting her Westing Rugby sweater. “She said she thinks they take us straight to a crematorium.” Grace seemed as surprised as us, like she hadn't meant to voice the thought.

I thought of Alex, how he said it would be better if the world were simply rid of us, so we wouldn't be a burden on anyone anymore, not on our parents, nor the taxpayers.

“I wouldn't be surprised,” Marty said somberly. “I mean, look what they're doing to Melanie. I mean, I
get
the baby wouldn't, the baby probably wouldn't, I know that—”

“I can still make everything right,” Zach said, finally, and our eyes met. My stomach did one of its usual Zach-flips.

“Man, I read the other day on AwayWeKnow, some dude with a prosthetic leg punched a shark in the face,” Nigel said. “World makes
no
fucking sense, am I right?” He had finished off his root beer concoction, was now playing with the empty bottle, trying to screw on the cap, failing. “Punching a shark in the face. What have
you
done in your life?”

Grace shrugged, and emphasized what we should take away from Nigel's spiel: “He was reading.”

“So we have to wait until one of us gets sick,” I said. “Before we know where the sick kids go.”

Zach nodded. “Only way I can think of.”

Outside on the Galloway lawn, a handful of students were having a snowball fight. The sun receded and my stomach grumbled, the sky turning a bruised color, the last of the teachers' cars gone, and after a little while of this, I offered to go grab some dinner for us all. Zach said he'd join me, so we set off in the cold together; it was the first time we'd been alone since New Year's.

Our boots pressed softly into the snow. The cafeteria loomed large before us. We stole glances at each other while pretending we weren't stealing glances at each other. At the cafeteria steps, he pressed a hand into my shoulder.

“Noah.” He bit his lip. “I'm going to tell you something that's going to make you hate me, but I think you need to hear it, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, and there was a man inside my chest, doing a drum solo on my heart.

“Last night, I was sitting there and I imagined I was talking to you, kid. The whole back and forth. I say ra ra ra and you bring your hand to your ear, pretend you don't hear and then I say it again. The whole shebang. And I could
see everything. I could see your expression, I could hear the way you'd say things, I knew what you'd say, and I'm sitting there thinking about all this and I realize I love you.”

I blinked stupidly at him, my mind drawing a total blank.

“But I think,” he said, as students shouldered past us, “it's platonic.”

I slumped down onto the steps, holding the railing for support.

“When I met you, I was confused, and I think you were confused, too, because you're one of my favorite people, kid, you really are. One of my favorite people
ever.
”

I didn't answer.

There were too many words, and I was trying to order them, make sense out of them.

He loved me.

“I'm sorry, that was a bit of a twist ending there. I'm sorry, Noah.”

Snow from the steps seeped into my jeans. “I don't understand.” We had played ring-around-the-rosie together and raced through the rain. We had our ra ra ras. He loved me, but he didn't want to be with me, because my skin was peeling. Because I was not beautiful.

“Noah, it's not fair to you, I know, I know. It took me a while to figure out. I'm just—not that way, I don't think. If you don't want to see me again . . .”

“You push me away a lot. Are you pushing me away?”

He shook his head. “I don't think that's it, kid. It's not fair to you, I know. If you don't want to see me again . . .”

“Stop saying that,
please
.”

I wanted to tell him it didn't matter. If he loved me, why should anything else matter? But it wasn't just one man
playing my heart like the drums. It was an entire percussion-only orchestra, and they were playing faster and faster, rising toward a crescendo. I wanted to tell him we could love each other without me ever touching him, that we couldn't touch each other anyway, metaphysically, electrons repelling and all that, he could sleep with anyone he wanted to, as many girls as he wanted to, Addie or no Addie, I didn't care, things could be okay, even if Zach didn't love me, sitting there with the snow soaking into my jeans I needed to believe in the possibility of okay, I needed to believe in a story that ended with “And then they lived happily ever after,” but Zach was bending over me, he was saying something I couldn't hear or didn't want to, I had heard enough, so I heaved myself up and began to run in the direction of the frozen lake. I made it a dozen steps before I slipped, nearly fell, caught myself with one hand against the ground, began to run again, because I needed to be someplace other than where I was, someone other than who I was, I needed to feel the ache in my body to remind myself that I was real.

That night, my phone went off at two in the morning.

A group message from Melanie.

emergency. meet at greenhouse.

I groped in the dark for my clothes, pulled them on.

“Marty,” I hissed. “
Marty
.”

He grumbled in his bed, stirred.

His phone lay on his nightstand, buzzing. He fumbled for it, missed. It clattered to the floor.

“Ugh,” he said.

I shook his shoulder gently.

“Come on,” I said.

“Whuzgoinon,” he mumbled, reaching for his glasses.

“Something's wrong with Melanie.” I shoved my phone in his face, and he squinted at the bright of the screen. But it got him moving, good old Martin. He stumbled out of bed and toward the dresser, wrestled with his clothes.

“Nightvision'snogood,” he mumbled as he turned a shirt this way and that.

I hit the lights.

We both winced, but he said “Thanks,” and threw me a lopsided smile while I called Melanie.

No answer.

I found Zach in my contacts, my thumb wavering over the Call button.

I flipped my phone shut.

The corridor outside our room was dimly lit. I headed for a fire exit, taking the stairs two at once, Marty right behind, pushed through the heavy metal door at the rear of Clover and into falling snow.

“Is she okay?” he asked.

“She's not answering,” I said.

We began to run toward the greenhouse, but Marty couldn't keep up. I hesitated, listening to his heavy breathing, his footsteps on the path behind me, the air between us filled with floating orange specks lit by nearby lampposts.

“Go on,” he gasped.

So I did.

I ran as fast as I could. I ran behind Galloway, along the forest path, the trees high and dark and casting shadows in the night, my feet pounding, the snow heavy now, the air so full of it, the wind nearly strong enough to blow me off my feet, so caught up in the moment, in the joy of being alone and young and fast, the joy of stars in the winter, I actually
laughed
. The
walls in the distance, lit by lamps and moonlight, bobbed with every step I took, until I slowed up to the greenhouse, the shed by the greenhouse, the figures by the shed. I could barely make them out—they were shadows—but I made out their voices.

Zach and Melanie, arguing.

“You're not thinking clearly,” he was saying, his tone desperate.

She pushed him in the shoulder. “Did you bring it or not?”

I drew up a few feet away.

Zach glanced pleadingly at me. “She wants to make a run for it.”

“That's what we're here for, right? Polo Club,” she said. “Or was that a bunch of bullshit? Just a stupid little game. Did you even bring it?

“I brought it,” Zach said, quiet.

“Or was this all just an excuse for you two lover boys to gaze dreamily into each other's eyes?”

“Maybe we should think about this,” I said.

“I'm done thinking,” Melanie said. “I'm done with these walls and these people.” She softened briefly. “If I think about it, I'll never do it.”

Zach reached out to touch her, but she brushed him off, lunged for his pocket. They struggled and I watched them struggle. All that talk about saving people, about having a fail-safe. Why not? Why not do it now? Except we were sick. More children might end up behind walls, because of us.

“It was a game,” I said. “It was never real, Melanie. It was just fun. Just a little harmless fun.”

They turned to me with surprise.

“Noah,” Zach said slowly. “You're—you're mad.”

“I am,” I admitted. I was sleepy and hurt and felt like
someone had made me up on a whim, without much care or forethought.

“Great,” Melanie said, and let out a harsh laugh. “Great time for a lovers' spat, guys.”

“We're not—” Zach said. “Melanie,
please.
I thought we were friends.”

“Do you have the key or not?” she said.

Steps crunched from behind. I turned. Several figures were scurrying toward us.

“So what's the emergency, my peeps?” Nigel called out, but for once, his levity sounded forced. The figures materialized into Nigel, Marty, and Grace. Marty was breathing hard; he looked like he might collapse from the exertion.

“I'm getting out of here,” Melanie declared. “Zach was about to unlock the shed for me, weren't you, Zach?”

“If you run now,” Zach said slowly, “the rest of us, we might not get another chance.”

“Come with me,” she said to all of us, pressing a glove to her face. “Or was this just a game for you guys? A fun little diversion. Like Board Game Club. Was this Board Game Club?”