Some of the Parts (24 page)

I
run until I am out of breath and my throat is raw with cold, and then I hide myself in a doorway and try to think. I do not remember which way I came to get here. I also do not remember turning my phone off but I must have done it. I'm tempted to leave it off, to hide that way, too, but I need to know how to find Jennifer, so I turn it back on. I watch it come back to life and wait to feel something. But I am feelingless. Again.

There are several missed calls from Chase. Seeing his name is mildly fascinating, and I almost want to call him back to see how he will explain his betrayal. But there is also one from a number I don't recognize and the trees remind me that there is work to be done. I dial into my voice mail and delete each of Chase's increasingly desperate-sounding messages, and I am scrolling through so quickly that I almost accidentally delete the one message that isn't his.

It's from earlier this afternoon.

A woman's voice.

“Hi,” she says. “This is Jennifer Martin. I got your message and I'm, well, I'm actually home today, so, I don't know, if you wanted to come by, I guess that'd be okay. Just, um, call me back? This is my home number.”

She doesn't sound very smart,
I think.
But beggars can't be choosers
.

She answers on the second ring.

“Hello?”

Her voice is reedy, weak-sounding. I wonder if she is shy. If she was shy before her transplant or if having part of someone else's—

“Hello?” she says again.

“Oh, s-s-sorry,” I stammer. “Hi. You called me. About getting together.”

“Is this Sarah McGovern?”

“Not exactly.”

“I don't understand.”

“Sorry,” I say again, and I try to sound jovial but I am still feeling pretty much entirely flat, so it comes out forced. “I think there's been a little mix-up. My name's Tallie, um, Nathaniel? I'm writing an article for my school paper. Sarah McGovern suggested I talk to you. She didn't tell you I'd be in touch?”

“No,” Jennifer says warily.

“Sorry!” I say brightly. “Do you have some time to talk to me today?”

“I'm really confused.” Jennifer pauses and I sink deeper into the shadow of the doorway while I wait for her, just in case Chase is walking around looking for me. Finally, she says, “You're not Sarah McGovern?”

“Nope,” I say. “But she told me all about you, and it sure would help me out to talk to you.” Then I add, “My editor thinks this story is going to be huge.” Now I definitely sound overeager. But she seems to accept it.

“Okay. I guess. I live in Back Bay, on Dartmouth Street. Do you know where that is?”

I don't, really, but I want to save my questions for the important stuff. “No problem. I'll be there in an hour.”

And before she can object to anything, I hang up and start walking.

It's only about a mile to Dartmouth Street, and I am still full from what I ate at the diner before things fell apart with Chase. I can think those words to myself and they don't even sound strange.
Things fell apart with Chase.

I am standing on the bridge in the Public Garden. I remember coming here with Mom and Dad and Nate when I was five, to ride the swan boats and see the statues of the ducklings, their heads polished bright by countless tiny hands. It was one of the memories I used to reach for when I did the rituals, the taste of the ice cream we bought from the truck at the corner outside the park, the feel of Nate's hand at the back of my head, giving me rabbit ears while my mother took our picture on a bench.

Now I look down, and next to my reflection I see a looser shape that darkens and then fades like a shadow on the water.

I see you,
I tell him.
I know you're here.

I stagger over to the other side of the bridge and follow the footpath out of the park. Jennifer's street is three blocks away. When I think I've gone far enough, I stop on a corner and try to focus my eyes on the street sign above me but the letters are swimming like alphabet soup.
Stop it,
I scold them, and just for a second, they fall into place.
DARTMOUTH
.

I giggle. What a weird word.

This is it.

I step onto the street and realize that I don't know what number Jennifer lives at. I fumble for my phone and turn it on to call her. But before I can dial, I hear a tiny voice coming out.
Nate is in my phone,
I think. And then I realize that it's Chase.

I put the phone to my ear.

“Tallie? Hello? Tallie, are you there?”

“I think so,” I say quietly.

“Oh my god, are you okay? Where are you? I'm coming to get you.”

“No, you're not,” I tell him, and I hope that my saying it makes it true.

“Tallie, listen, I called my father and…”

“Okay.”

“I didn't know what else to do. I'm in massive trouble and I didn't want to tell him anything, but you ran off—”

I hang up on him. He probably thinks that I'm angry, and normally I would be, but right now I can only deal with one ghost at a time and also there's a woman walking up to me. She walks slowly, uncertainly, as if she's old, but her face is young and I'm reasonably sure she's real and she says, “Tallie? I'm Jennifer.”

J
ennifer has an Elliott Smith poster in her living room. Well, her mother's living room. She has lived with her mother since the surgery, she tells me, and she is hoping to go back to work at some point but she's not really in any rush. She drops onto the couch as she says this, and though she doesn't look heavy, the cushion sinks low as if it's resigned to holding her. As if it's been expecting her.

Jennifer strikes me as someone who is not going to accomplish very much.

She starts to tell me about the record store she used to work at, how the manager was always hitting on her. I think briefly of Cranky Andy, grateful that he spared me that kind of attention.

“What about you?” Jennifer asks. “Got a boyfriend?”

I think we probably do not have much time, because Chase is, well, chasing me and I am really not feeling very well. So I ignore her question and stick to my own. Since I left my backpack in the diner with Chase, I had to borrow a pen and a pad of paper from Jennifer. She is still willing to believe I am a high school reporter, despite my unpreparedness and the fact that I am twitchy and exhausted. She must be really desperate for social interaction.

“How are you feeling?” I ask her.

“Good, really good,” she says.

Without looking up from my notes, I ask, “And your surgery was when?”

“I told Sarah that already. End of May.”

“But the exact date was…?”

“Why do you need to know that?”

I glance at her. I am having trouble not staring at her, searching for some sign of Nate, but I force myself to look away. “For my timeline,” I tell her. “I need to be precise. Journalistic accuracy.”

“Oh,” she says. “The twenty-sixth.”

That lines up nicely, doesn't it? Within twenty-four hours of the accident
.

“And what kind of transplant was it?” I ask. And then I brace myself because though I think I know already that she doesn't have his heart, maybe I misunderstood her before, and maybe she does, and the idea of
this
woman having it…

“Liver,” she replies.

Relief and disappointment tumble all over me.

“Do you know whose…I mean, do you ever think about the person whose liver you got?” I ask her.

She nods. “Of course I do,” she says. “Like, I wonder exactly how he died, like, if he was a bad driver or if his accident was somebody else's fault.”

Something swells up in me then, but I push it down, reach for another thought. I wonder why Jennifer needed a liver transplant in the first place. She's not that old. Maybe she drank too much in college.

“Does it matter?” I ask.

Jennifer shrugs. “I guess not. But it would sort of be better if it was something tragic, y'know? Like, it would be a better story.”

I could answer all of her questions. I could satisfy her curiosity, give her all the gory details, the sound of the car hitting the tree, the feeling of being pulled from the car, of seeing my brother taken away. Except I don't actually remember those things, and even if I did, I wouldn't give them to her.

I cough, dislodge the words I
really
want to say. “Okay, next question: If the donor's family wanted to meet you, would you be open to it?”

She looks confused. “Why would they want to meet me?”

“Well,” I say, “part of their, um, loved one has become a part of you.”

“So?”

“You don't think that's important?”

She takes a long sip from her can of diet soda. Is she supposed to be drinking that? “Of course I think it's important. I'm alive, aren't I? But I don't see what his family would get out of seeing me. I mean, it's not like I got the
face
of their loved one. I got the liver. You can't see the liver.”

“That's true,” I tell her. “But it might help the family cope with their loss to see how the donor's contribution has changed your life. It has, hasn't it?”

She stares at me. “Of course it has. I'm not dead.”

I feel my optimism draining away, emptying all of the moisture from my body. Specifically, my mouth. “Can I have a glass of water?”

“Sure.” Jennifer stands up and walks into the kitchen. I seize her absence to push my sleeve up, trace Nate's faded name with Jennifer's pen, watch the ink feather into the tiny channels on my skin. When she comes back from the kitchen and hands me the water, I quickly pull my sleeve back down and say, “I see you have an Elliott Smith poster.”

Jennifer looks over her shoulder as if she'd forgotten the poster was there. “Oh, yeah,” she says. “I love him.”

“It was so sad when he died,” I say.

“I know,” she says. “He was really cute.” Then she adds, “But no one ever knowing exactly what happened?
That's
pretty hardcore.”

I ask her what her favorite song was.

“Oh, you know,” says Jennifer, “the one about the little house and the mayor named Fear? I can't remember what it was called. I used to listen to it all the time.”

“Memory Lane,”
I think. It's on Matty. But I won't answer that for her either.

“Okay, well, I guess that'll do it,” I tell her. After an awkward handshake, I remind her I have her email address in case I want to follow up, even though I would rather eat glass than have another conversation with this girl. Virtual or otherwise. Also, she looks extremely relieved that I am leaving her apartment. Her mother's apartment.

She closes the door behind me but I don't leave. I sit on the top step in the stairwell and look at all the other steps below me, all the dependable straight lines and perfect right angles.

Nate loved that song and he can't listen to it anymore. She can listen to it whenever she wants but she can't even remember what it's called.

Now what?
I ask myself. My fake interview with Jennifer didn't tell me anything. She may or may not have Nate's liver. I almost hope she doesn't, because knowing that part of him will be trapped in that apartment for all time makes me furious. Or it will, when I no longer feel like I'm wrapped in emotional insulation.

Just then the door flies open and Jennifer is standing there, pointing at me. “You're his
sister,
” she spits.

“What?” The step I'm sitting on suddenly feels a lot less dependable, like the stairs have turned into an escalator.

“Some kid named Chase just emailed me,” she hisses. “He says you're hunting down your brother's organs.”

“I'm not ‘hunting' anyone,” I say, and then I stop because I've just confirmed her suspicions and, in the same moment, realized how he did it. My laptop. It was in my backpack, in the diner.

He got into my email because I was stupid enough to choose a password he gave me.
Rosabelle.

Jennifer crosses her arms and sighs dramatically. “I'm not happy that you lied to me.”

I don't care about your happiness.
Oh, I want so much to say it.

“How old are you, anyway? Do your parents know what you're up to?”

“What do you care?”

She tilts her head. “Well, I don't, really. But it seemed like the responsible thing to ask.”

I let myself stare at her then—her smug expression, her ratty cardigan, the shadowed circles under her eyes—and I hate her for being the one who lived. One of many who lived. Just like me.

“I have to go,” I tell her, and I follow the unsteady lines of the stairs.

She calls after me, “Wait! Tell me about your brother! Tell me the story!” All the way down she calls after me, her voice echoing through the stairwell, and I can still hear her as I walk outside.

I look at my phone. More missed calls from Chase. I delete the notifications and check the time.

It's almost four o'clock.

It's Monday.

I throw my arm in the air, like Mom does, and a white car with red writing on it comes whipping around the corner like a dog running to its owner.

“Brigham and Women's,” I tell the driver.