Out of Order (6 page)

The renovations to the house meant the whole place was perpetually freezing. No wonder the cat took shelter under the sink. The hot water wasn’t disconnected, and she had a snug, warm place to wait out the scary sounds of power drills and handsaws and hammering.

“We’re not supposed to be here for the next couple of days,” Ricky shouted over one of the aforementioned scary sounds. (For a cat. I wasn’t scared of a saw or a drill.) “She can’t stay under there while we’re gone!”

“Hold your horses, I’ll get her out. Here, kitty,” I said, making smooching noises with my mouth. “Here, kitty, kitty.”

“I
tried
that!” Ricky said, exasperated. “I thought you were, like, the cat whisperer.”

“They just usually like me, that doesn’t make me Jennifer Love Hewitt,” I laughed, continuing to make ridiculous noises in the direction of the glowing yellow eyes. “Oh come on. Shake the treats.”

Ricky shook the box of treats, and we both held our breaths as it rattled. The cat blinked but didn’t move.

“The commercials
lied
,” Ricky whined. “Dumb commercials!” She shook the box again, harder. “Come on out and get your yum-yums!”

“It’s a commercial’s job to lie,” I said. I carefully ducked into the cavity beneath the sink, tipping my head forward to avoid hitting it on the pipes. “Why do you keep towels under here?”

“Storage,” Ricky replied, her voice sounding far away. “When Gran passed away we got a bunch of her stuff, mostly linens, and ran out of room to put them. Plus Dad figured if the sink ever started to leak, it wouldn’t rot the wood or make a mess or anything.”

“So you’d just get disgusting mildewy towels rotting away under here? Wonderful.” I tried to get my hands around the cat, but she shied away and back into the corner, which was outside the range of my arms. “It is actually pretty nice back here. I can see why you like it so much,” I told the cat.

“What?” Ricky yelled. “Speak up. You’re all muffled!”

“She doesn’t understand your need to protect yourself from all this madness, but I do. Believe me, if I had a warm place to curl up every time I was scared, I’d do it too. But it’s safe now, and we’re going to take you somewhere nice and quiet.”

“What are you
saying
?” Ricky sounded exasperated, but I didn’t bother yelling back.

“Ricky loves you and wants to protect you. Come here,” I could just barely reach the top of Mittens’ head with my arm outstretched. I scratched it gently. “See? I’m safe.”

The cat sniffed my fingers and then nuzzled into my scratching. Slowly I moved my hand back so that she would follow it, coming closer and closer to me. Once she was in range, I wrapped my arms around her through a towel and pulled her out. She was purring in my arms.

“Were you having a real conversation with my cat?” Ricky asked, looking shocked. “You really
are
the cat whisperer. She doesn’t purr like that for me!”

I passed the cat over to her and shrugged. “It’s a talent,” I said. “It’s all about playing into their instincts.” I missed the warmth of her almost immediately. I twisted my fingers into the thick fabric of the towel left in my arms.

“I am both envious and mildly terrified,” Ricky said, sounding serious but looking amused.

“Maybe you should be,” I laughed, skipping past her into the hallway, still carrying the towel. It held the residual warmth of her cat, which I found comfort in. I would have preferred a heartbeat.

M
Y
FINGERS
twisted in fabric, but it was thicker and coarser than Ricky’s grandmother’s towels. The blanket wrapped tightly around my shoulders was suddenly stifling. I was simultaneously too hot and too cold, my own breath hitting my face in warm gusts. The oxygen mask fogged and unfogged as I gasped, trying to twist out of the blanket, but I was tangled.

“Off, off,” I said, clawing at the blanket and trying to reach my face.

The male paramedic pulled the oxygen mask off easily, and the elastic snapped against my cheek. The sting of it helped to ground me, to calm my racing heart. The ambulance rocked again, a little more violently, and then the feel of it changed—almost as though we were slowly driving downhill into the depths of a cavernous maw. “We’re here. We’re at the hospital. Just breathe, Corinna,” he said, pushing my bangs off my forehead.

Just breathe. As though it were that easy. As though every breath wasn’t a knife in my freaking
chest
, scraping along my ribs with a terrifying rattle.

I tried to focus on my breathing, the in and out of it, forcing myself through it like we had with Ricky during her asthma attacks—in through the nose, out through the mouth—my eyes closed and my throat filling with bile at the thought of Ricky’s lungs, quiet of their usual whistle and rasp.

I was poked and prodded, lights shined in my eyes and blood pressure cuffs numbing my thin arms. I went through the motions of it, the rest of me numbing too, repeating my age and my name and spelling it over and over—“Nguyen. N-g-u-y-e-n. Corinna. No, with a C and two Ns. N-g-u-y-e-n. I’m
fine
.”

Agitated, I was struggling with a nurse who was trying to run me an IV when I saw my mother, wearing her pajama bottoms with a winter jacket thrown over top—the woman who was never seen around town outside of a tasteful pantsuit, never a hair out of place or a button undone.

“Mom,” I said, practically shoving the poor nurse in an effort to reach my mother.

She rushed to me, petting my hair and cooing like she hadn’t since I was a small child. The nurse tried again to give me an IV, which I jerked away from before the needle came anywhere near the tender crook of my elbow.

“I’m fine! I don’t need an IV!” I said again, clutching at my mother’s jacket like a toddler. She pulled away and glanced at the nurse, her eyes narrowed.

“Are you refusing medical treatment?” she asked me without looking at me, still staring down the nurse.

“I am refusing medical treatment,” I parroted, relaxing for the first time since I’d gotten into the hospital. “I’m
fine
.”

“My daughter is consciously refusing medical treatment. If you so much as give her an Advil, I will sue this hospital for all it’s worth,” my mother said slowly, sounding much more like the hotshot lawyer I knew and loved. Her voice still had an edge to it, rough from sleep and worry.

The nurse nodded quickly and scuttled away from my bed, a timid mouse fleeing a cat.

My mother turned back to me, her eyes softening. In moments like this, I could see a bit of myself in her, even behind the blue eyes and red hair that threw so many people for a loop. The curve of her mouth in a worried frown, the heart-shaped face that creased between her brows when she was on the verge of exhaustion—those were things I shared with my no-nonsense mother.

We had very little else in common.

“I
CAN
’
T
do this. I can’t do this.”

We’d spent weeks preparing for this moment, and one misstep had ruined it all.

“You
can
do this,” Kate yelled over the running water and the
slap!
of heavy, wet fabric being moved about roughly. She turned off the water and continued making the slapping noises, which echoed obscenely around the empty bathroom.

“I
can’t
. This is a
sign
!” I kicked at the stall door so hard that it made a sharp
bang!
and then continued to vibrate in place for a long moment. One corner of the poster taped to the inside let go and began to flop around. I carefully smoothed the corner back into place, looking at the blown-up picture of myself on it with growing nausea.

“I’m dropping out. I can’t stand it. I don’t care if my mother disowns me, I can’t go out there.”

The phrase CORINNA FOR THE NGUYEN in bright purple bubble letters seemed to laugh at me. All the time my mother had put into designing those posters and the money she’d put to having them professionally printed was going to be a huge waste. I wasn’t going out there.

“My catchphrase is a stupid pun, and no one will even get it,” I had complained privately to Ricky after the posters had been printed and it was too late to change them. “This election is going to ruin my life.”

“As soon as Jessa and Ricky get back with clothes, you are going to go out there and make us all proud. And jealous! Jessa will be so jealous if you win,” Kate said, bringing me back to the humiliating present situation. “Man, this blood just won’t come out!”

Standing in my bra and panties in the bathroom stall, I shivered violently. “Sorry,” I said, feeling even more horrified. I’d begged Kate to borrow one of her dresses to wear for my speech so that I could look more put together than I did in my usual jeans-and-T-shirt combo, and then I had to go and ruin it.

“It’s not your fault,” Kate repeated, having said it a half dozen times since we’d holed up in the bathroom together. “I don’t even care about the dress, okay? How’s your nose?”

I tapped the bridge of my nose with one finger carefully. “It doesn’t really hurt anymore. Is the stain looking
any
better?”

“No. Come out and let me take a look at your nose.”

I shyly opened the stall door and peeked around it, keeping the rest of myself stubbornly hidden. “I’m not coming out. I’m half-naked, and this is a public restroom.”

“Everyone’s in the auditorium already!” Kate protested, but she nevertheless wet a paper towel and began cleaning away the rest of the dried blood from around my nostrils. “I hope Rick and Jessa get back soon. You can’t be late for your onstage debut!”

“I already told you: I’m not doing it!”

Just when Kate was starting to get anxious about the time, Jessa and Ricky burst into the bathroom carrying bundles of clothes.

“We brought
options
!” Ricky said excitedly. “We would’ve been faster, but Jessa wouldn’t break the speed limit!”

Jessa pushed open the door to my stall, taking no notice of my near-nudity, and began holding up outfit after outfit to my body while Erica supplied her with the clothes. “This will fit you, but we wouldn’t want to wash you out… no, no, not black on black, Erica!”

After a moment of fighting the flurry of fabric in my face, I gave up.

Minutes later I was dressed in a navy button-up blouse that didn’t quite fit me in the shoulders, a pencil skirt that was a little loose at my hips, and a heather-gray blazer I couldn’t remember either of the girls ever having worn before. The end result was a very put-together outfit—if my nose hadn’t been blossoming a worrisome purple and my face hadn’t been pale from blood loss and nausea.

“You know, this would be an easier fix if you wore makeup,” Jessa said after a moment contemplating my bruises.

“She looks fine,” Kate countered. The look on her face was ferocious, like a mother bear protecting her cubs. “Don’t worry about it, Corey.”

“I’m not going out there,” I said again, crossing my arms. The jacket pulled tight around my shoulders, clearly meant for someone a size smaller than I was. It had to have come from Ricky’s closet, then, but I couldn’t for the life of me imagine her wearing it. Maybe it had belonged to her mother.

“You have to!” Ricky said earnestly. “Your mom’s in the audience!”

Another wave of nausea passed over me. “What?” I asked faintly. “She can’t be. She’s prosecuting a petty theft case this afternoon.”

“We passed her when we were pulling into the parking lot,” Jessa said apologetically, knowing the feeling of overbearing parents all too well. She often bragged about how wonderful it was to be the daughter of the owner of a chain of drugstores, but being groomed to take over for her father as CEO left her feeling boxed-in more often than not. “Your dad was with her too.”

“Oh no.” I needed to sit down, but neither the floor nor the toilets were viable options, for obvious health concerns. “I’m going to be sick. I can’t do this! I don’t even have a speech anymore!”

Kate pulled my cue cards from the back pocket of her jeans and offered them to me. She smiled softly. “You can still read them through the blood.”

I took the blood-speckled cue cards from her with shaky hands. There was no way out of this now, not with my parents in the audience. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself, but it wasn’t working.

“You guys go take your seats. I’m going to give her a pep talk, and she’ll be onstage momentarily,” I heard Kate say, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Don’t be too late,” Jessa said. “She may be last
alphabetically, but we’re cutting it close as it is.”

Jessa and Ricky collected their clothes from the floor and took them out of the bathroom, glancing back at me with worried faces. Kate waited until they were definitely out of earshot before she started talking.

“You can do this, okay? You have to. Not for your mom, but for you. You deserve this, Corey. You work so hard to make this school a better place. With the Gay-Straight Alliance and the prefect stuff, the antibullying campaign, and all your hard work doing fund-raisers last year—you deserve to be class
president
for all that, not just valedictorian!”

“I don’t do that stuff for recognition,” I sighed, waving my cue cards through the air as though the blood might dry and flake off, leaving clean white cardstock behind.

Kate grabbed me by the shoulders and forced me to look her in the face. “Exactly. You do it because you’re selfless and
good
, and you are the perfect person to represent our graduating class. You work hard to get good grades and do good at this school while you’re at it. Do you really think there’d be a GSA at this hick school without you? A dozen queer kids at this school owe you their safety. They’ll be voting for
you
out there.”

“But what if I lose?” I whispered. I bit my lip and averted my eyes.