The Donor (2 page)

CaseyWilliams[10:07pm]:
I’ll be fine.

JonahBlack[10:08pm]:
I could send you some warmer clothes if you don’t have any.

JonahBlack[10:08pm]:
A coat. Boots.

CaseyWilliams[10:09pm]:
Boots?

JonahBlack[10:09pm]:
We got two feet of snow last week.

I shook my head like he could see me through the screen. Then I felt stupid and started typing.

CaseyWilliams[10:11pm]:
It’s weird taking clothes from you.

JonahBlack[10:11pm]:
I could send you money instead.

JonahBlack[10:11pm]:
That way you can pick clothes you like.

I shook my head again. I wasn’t sure if he was kidding or trying to show off. I already knew he had money. Most of the guys on MyTrueMatch did—or at least they pretended to if anything. Jonah had already bought my ticket, s I knew he wasn’t bluffing. Somehow, I felt wrong taking it from him like this, before we even met. We weren’t soul mates, or even really close friends yet; it was stupid, but I didn’t want to jump into things like that so soon.

CaseyWilliams[10:13pm]:
I have a job.

CaseyWilliams[10:13pm]:
I’ll get a coat and boots before I come to see you.

***

“No boots,” he comments when we’re seated in his car.

The silver letters near the heating vent tell me it’s a Cadillac. It’s shiny and grey on the outside and the inside is already warm when we get in. The tan leather smells new and like car freshener. It’s an improvement over the beat up, white rusted ’95 Ford Explorer that Mom, Dad, and I share. Although lately, I haven’t been driving it much.

I brush some snow from the top of my flat onto the back of my calf. I hadn’t noticed it until we were right outside of the exit, the florescent lights from inside only showing the breath from our mouths and the slush around the edges of the sidewalk and street. I wrap my coat around myself tighter. I had to buy it at a thrift shop for thirty bucks, and the insulation’s thin. The stupid dress I chose to wear only makes matters worse.

“Well it was either look nice or wear boots,” I say, pretending I’m more interested in the carpet beneath my freezing feet.

“You do look nice,” he says.

I finally face him so I can smile. “Thanks.”

He smiles too and moves the shifter between us with his right hand so we can head to his place.

***

I first heard about MyTrueMatch at work. It had to be at least a year ago, after I graduated high school and started working in the office full time instead of just on weekends or during summer break. The plan was to save up enough money for a few semesters at community college. I was going to be a marine biologist; I just had to pay for it first.  That was the plan.

I was making copies one day when I overheard my manager, Emily, who hated me, and Gina, the receptionist who hated me less, talking.

“No,” Gina said. “It’s not like eHarmony or OkCupid.”

I only needed one copy of the document, but I hit the start button again.

“Most of these guys are
loaded
,” Gina continued.

They both started giggling like school children, two women who were in their thirties. “How do you know?” Emily asked in a hushed tone.

I pretended to look over the two copies I had just made, decided they were too dark, crumpled them up and threw them out.  They both glanced at me, and I politely smiled as I fiddled with more buttons on the machine. They started talking again, but they walked out of the room first.

***

We drove for about a half an hour out of the city and were mostly quiet. He asked me about my first experience on a plane and what I thought, and then we didn’t say much else. It wasn’t an awkward silence, just one that two people share when they aren’t sure what to say. When we turn off at an exit, I start to get anxious.

I can’t really tell what kind of an area he lives in because it’s so dark. I only get glimpses of mailboxes and snowy front lawns once every so often, when a streetlight pops up. I really like the snow. It’s old. Dirty. Packed down. But I’ve never seen snow before, so I’ll take what I can get.

“The houses are so far apart,” I say when the street is plunged in darkness again after we pass a porch light. There’s another one a mile or so away, the orange glow promising another house and more snow.

“Do you think so?” he asks, shifting the car again. “The houses where you live are closer?”

I don’t really know what shifting does other than make the car sound slightly different, but it gives his hand an excuse to be closer to my knee, which I’m not sure I should be comfortable with.

“Yeah,” I answer.

***

We had to move into the trailer park after Dad got hurt.  He was in construction and he was hammering something on a roof when he slipped. Over ten years building houses and he trips over his shoelace and falls from a two story building, breaking his back in two places. We were grateful that he wasn’t paralyzed, but Mom couldn’t afford the mortgage, even with her two jobs as a cashier at Wal-Mart and the local grocery store. I gave them most of my paychecks, and all of Dad’s disability and unemployment went to doctors’ bills.

It was around this time—a few months ago—that I started to become better friends with Gina at work.

***

I expected his house to be bigger, more obvious. But it’s almost similar to the house we lived in before we had to move. Two stories, but medium sized. White siding that reflects back at us as we pull into the driveway. He tells me to wait in the car after he cuts the engine. He walks around to the trunk, his shoes crunching snow as he retrieves my suitcase. I stare at the house, wondering if I made some horrible mistake, but the trunk closes, causing the car to shake slightly, and soon, he’s opened my door.

“Ready?” he asks.

***

“I’m telling you, Casey,” Gina said one day. “This site is amazing.”

We were in the break room. Gina and I had started taking our breaks together. I took a lot of breaks. To be honest, my head couldn’t withstand making copies or stapling and un-stapling papers for more than a few hours at a time without causing major migraines, so I didn’t feel too guilty.

The headaches weren’t anything new. They started during my junior year of high school. The fact that they had gotten worse, sometimes accompanied by nosebleeds had me worried, though. We didn’t have enough money for me to worry about going to the doctor, too, so I dealt with it. If Dad could survive with a broken back, I could do this.

“What’s it called again?” I asked Gina.

“Oh.” She took a sip of her coffee and left a red stain of lipstick around the rim of the mug. “I can’t tell you that.”

I snorted. “Why not?”

“It’s
exclusive
. Invite only.” She adjusted her turtleneck sweater under her chin. I almost started sweating watching her do it. It was eighty degrees that day. “You need to be
invited
to get access.”

“Okay,” I said. “So why not just invite me then?”

She rolled her eyes. “Are you joking, Casey?” she asked. “It’s not that easy.”

“Uh,” I said. “Okay.” For something that was so secretive, she sure talked about it a crap-ton.

She looked me over. “You should give me a picture of yourself,” she said. “And your email.”

“Why?”

“I’ll send it to the admin. If they like you enough, they’ll probably give you an invite.”

Our conversation reminded me of  high school and how the cool kids never let me sit at their lunch table. If she only wanted to brag about the website and not let me in on it, I didn’t need to press the issue. I excused myself, making something up about having work to get finished.

I got a nosebleed in the bathroom later that day at work. It was the fourth one I got that week. I was sent home early with toilet paper pressed under my upper lip and a headache the whole ride home, but as soon as I got in my room, I emailed Gina my picture and contact information.

***

Jonah leads me into the house, shutting the door behind us and flipping on lights ahead of me. The inside is just as unassuming as the outside. No crystal vase on the dining room table. Just hardwood floors.  No plasma screen in the living room. No original artwork. Just plain, white couches, a coffee table, and a desk. The only thing that hints at his wealth is the huge fish tank across from the sofa. I’m not aware that I’m moving toward it until my hand presses against the glass. Bright purple and orange coral sits on the bottom, two large black and yellow striped fish slowly swim past my face. I spot three brown seahorses hanging behind a rock, bobbing with the current the filter is creating.

“Do you like them?” he asks from directly behind me. His coat is off, sitting alongside my suitcase on an arm chair. He’s also rolled up the sleeves of his light grey pressed shirt.

“Yeah,” I say, turning back to the tank. “Not everyone can keep seahorses alive.”

He lets me stare a while longer before he says, “Would you like to sit down?”

I turn around, slightly self-conscious that I went all gaga over something he probably never thinks twice about. If one died, he could drop another two hundred dollars and get a new one over-nighted without much thought.

I slip off my backpack and sit down on the couch across from the seahorses. I take off my coat too, and give it to Jonah when he holds out his hand. After he’s placed it next to his, he sits down next to me.

When neither of us says anything, I say, “I like your house.”

He rests his hands on his thighs. “Thank you.”

Then silence again. He smiles. I smile. I adjust the hem of my dress over my knees.

“So did you bring the paperwork?” he asks.

***

In the weeks after I sent Gina my picture, my work life went on the same as usual. Eventually, she stopped talking about MyTrueMatch altogether and I started doubting she really sent them my photo.

I was a little preoccupied by then anyway so I didn’t really care. All of my time was spent on trying to pick up extra hours to help pay for a surgery Dad had to get in order for one of his slipped discs to stop pressing on a nerve. There was also the small matter of gathering enough money for my own doctor’s appointment that was weighing on my mind. The headaches were getting worse. The nosebleeds were getting more frequent. Blurred vision was now added to my list of symptoms.

Then one day, Gina stopped by my desk.

“Hey,” she said, stepping into my cubicle.

I was distracted, looking through my desk drawers for any aspirin bottle that wasn’t empty. I finally found a single pill, slightly covered in lint, at the bottom of my purse. I sighed in relief, took it with cold coffee, and turned toward her.

“Sorry,” I said. “Hi.”

“Just wanted to drop this off,” she said, handing over some manila envelopes I was supposed to file away.

“Oh.” I took them and set them down next to my keyboard. The pounding behind my right eyeball was becoming more like a screwdriver being driven directly into my brain, so the idea of reading anything was enough to make me nauseous.

“Still getting those headaches, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“You get them checked out?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and shut my eyes for a second. “Working on it.”

“Well,” she said, already backing out of my space. “Feel better, okay?”

For the hell of it, I checked my email once she was gone. I was officially invited to sit at the cool kids’ table.

***

He takes the papers from me that I produce from my back pack. Then he opens a drawer in the coffee table to retrieve a black folder and a blue ballpoint pen. He crosses one of his legs over the other as he smoothes out the paper I folded in half and places it inside the folder resting on his lap.

He uncaps the pen. “I just have to ask a few questions.”

I feel a faint sharp pain in my temple, but it goes away before I give it a second thought. “Okay.”

“How old are you?”

I clear my throat. “Eighteen.”

Jonah looks at the paper I’ve just handed him—a copy of my birth certificate—and marks something off on his own paper.

“When is your birthday?”