Everything, Everything (26 page)

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.

I answer my own question by crying some more.

“How’s your mama?” she asks when I finally stop.

“She doesn’t hate me.”

“Mamas don’t know how to hate their babies. They love them too much.”

“But she should. I’m a terrible daughter. I did a terrible thing.”

More tears leak out, but Carla wipes them away with the side of her hand.

“And your Olly?”

I shake my head at her. I would tell Carla anything, but not this. My heart is too bruised and I want to keep the pain as a reminder. I don’t want sunlight on it. I don’t want it to heal. Because if it does, I might be tempted to use it again.

We settle back into our normal routine. Each day is like the one before and not much different from the next.
Madam, I’m Adam
. I’m working on a model of a library with an Escher-like interior of staircases that end midstep and go nowhere. From Outside, I hear a rumble and then a beeping. This time I immediately know what it is.

At first I don’t go to the window. But Carla does and narrates what she sees. It’s a moving van—Two Brothers Moving. The brothers get out of the van and unload dollies and empty boxes and packing tape. They talk to Olly’s mom. Kara and Olly are there. There’s no dad in sight, she says.