The End or Something Like That (15 page)

For forty-five minutes, the blond lady took names and address and swearing-people's complaints. She assured the crowd that Dr. Ted Farnsworth would answer all of them himself.

“He will get back to each an every one of ya,” she said.

I wanted to say no he won't but instead I stood against the wall and watched.

Waited.

I should've left.

I had two and a half hours until I had to meet Kim, which really wasn't that much time because it took forever to get home, and then I'd have to deal with my mom who was probably freaking out right now, and then I had to get out to Red Rock.

But still I waited.

I had to talk to him.

When the line had cleared out, and the lady started to walk away, I ran to catch her.

“Is he here?” I asked.

She turned and looked at me. Her face was older than it seemed from far away. Deep wrinkles and sagging lips. Lots and lots of makeup. She and Dr. Ted Farnsworth could be twins. Good from far away, old and messy up close.

“I'm sorry, honey. But he's not.” She started walking again.

I was right behind her. Her pants so tight you could see the dimples.

“Can I at least talk to him? Just for a second,” I said.

She waved her hand at me but didn't stop.

We rounded two corners and she was ignoring me even though there's no way she didn't know I was there.

Finally, I got in front of her and blocked her way. Tony's move.

“Just for a second,” I said.

She sighed. “You serious?”

“I'm serious.”

She blew out a big burst of air and then looked at her watch. Then she said, “Look, do yourself a favor and go on home. This is no place for kids. Forget you ever heard of Dr. Ted Farnsworth.”

Then she went around me and walked out the emergency exit.

I followed her.

The teacher drew a picture of a heart on the board.

It was seventh period and I sat in my desk and sat there.

I am a horrible person.

A horrible horrible person.

I had been ignoring her.

I had been avoiding her.

I had been trying to be nowhere.

Then an aide brought in a piece of paper for Mr. McDog.

McDog stopped talking about integers and studied it for three minutes. Three and a half minutes on the clock, all the while, I thought, I wonder if she's dead.

He cleared his throat. “Today at lunch, one of the students here had a medical issue. Kim Porter?” McDog's voice was nasally and when he said Kim's name it felt weird. Like he shouldn't say her name. He didn't know her.

He wrote the words on the board: CONGENITAL HEART DISEASE, and then he drew a picture of a heart on the board. A really bad picture that he was trying to copy from the handout.

He was not supposed to release medical information. I was going to tell him that and that my dad was going to sue him.

But then I just sat there.

“Here,” he said, pointing to a tube. “Here is the problem for Kim.”

I stared at the tube. The tube that had wreaked havoc. The tube that caused the puke and the hospital and the surgeries. The tube that was responsible for Dr. Ted Farnsworth and dead websites and books and books and books.

He started saying other things. Shunt. Blood vessels. Pressure and I thought, he has no idea what he's talking about.

“She is going to be okay,” Mr. McDog said, “but the principal felt we should all have a rap session about this.”

A rap session about heart disease.

Who does that? Who even says that?

“She's going to be okay,” McDog said again. “Does anyone have any questions?”

No one raised their hands.

I stared at my fingernails. Kim had helped me paint them green with purple dots for Easter.

Lafe Thompson said, “Is she going to be paralyzed or something?”

I looked up at McDog.

“I just said she's going to be okay, Lafe.”

Someone else asked, “Isn't it weird to be fourteen and have heart disease? Like doesn't that mean you're going to die young?”

My heart thumped.

McDog turned red. He read the piece of paper again and then he said, “We're really just supposed to talk about your feelings. How are all of you feeling?”

We sat.

And sat.

And sat.

Someone made a fart noise and then everyone started laughing.

The tour bus was in the parking garage again, but this time it was parked behind some Dumpsters.

I hid beside a Honda as the lady walked up to the bus, knocked on the door, and went inside.

Five minutes later she came out.

“You can't keep doing this, Gary. You just can't,” she said. Loud.

Gary? Who was Gary?

Someone said something back. She was yelling now, her voice echoing throughout the parking garage.

“We are running out of money.”

A response I couldn't hear.

Then she said, “I'm not doing this anymore. You think that was fun? You think this is funny? Screw you,” and then she slammed the door shut.

She walked past me, muttering and swearing, stopped for a second to pick up something off the ground, and then went back into the casino.

I took a breath.

Please. Please. Please. I could do this. I could.

I stood up and made sure I was alone which I was. I could do this. I could do this. Then I walked up to the bus, opened the door, and went inside to talk to Dr. Ted Farnsworth.

Or Gary.

Or whoever he was.

Dr. Ted was sitting there, in his massage chair, a mess of skin and hair and beer cans. A baseball game was blaring on the TV.

“Darla,” he said. “Go away.”

He hadn't even bothered to look at me.

“I'm not Darla,” I said.

He glanced my way. Then looked back at the game.

“Dr. Farnsworth?” I said.

He waved at me. “I'm sick,” he said. “Go away.”

And he looked sick. He looked like death.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I just wanted to ask you something.”

He rubbed his forehead. “You want your money back? You gonna sue me or something? Because I don't have any money. I have no money.”

“I don't want your money.”

He laughed at that. Like it was funny. Really, really funny. “You don't want my money? Where you from? Mars?”

“No,” I said. “I'm from Summerlin.”

He looked at me. “Summerlin?”

“Summerlin.”

He shrugged. “Never heard of it.”

I sat down on the couch. The couch that I had remembered being plush and expensive but now looked threadbare and cheap. Everything looked cheap.

“You told me I could talk to my friend after she died. You told me it would work.”

“That's what I tell everyone,” he said.

My blood ran cold.

“That's what you tell everyone?”

He started yelling at the TV. “Hit the ball! Hit the ball, you moron!”

The man at bat didn't hit the ball.

“What about those testimonials?” I said.

He glanced at me. “What?”

“All those people said it worked.”

He sighed. “People believe it because they want to believe it. Because they're desperate. No one wants to die.”

I tried to breathe. I tried to control my breathing.

He picked up another beer and drank some.

“So you lied.”

He looked at me. “I lie all the time. Don't you lie? Everyone lies.”

I stared at him.

Lied. Lie. Don't I lie? It felt like the walls were caving in.

I did lie.

Lying to my mom. Lying to my dad. Lying to Skeeter. Lying to Kim. Lying to Gabby. Gabby screaming that I lied. Lied. Lied.

I wiped my forehead. “So you're saying that you can't talk to dead people.”

“What does it matter?”

I felt tears start to fill my eyes. It was all too much. Everything.

“I've talked to dead people,” I said.

He burped. Then he said, “Maybe you have. Maybe you haven't. Maybe you wanted to so much you made it up in your head and thought you did.”

Suddenly I felt anger. I felt it bubble up hard and fast.

“No. I didn't make it up in my head,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. I didn't want him to see me cry. “I didn't do that,” I said. “I talked to dead people I didn't want to talk to.”

He shrugged. “Then I guess you got the gift.”

It got quiet except for the noise of the game. The Giants were up by two. It was a rebroadcast. I'd watched this with my dad months before. Nothing here was real.

Then Dr. Ted Farnsworth said something, he said, “You came with that skinny girl. The dark one, right?”

Now the tears were running down my face.

“She didn't make it, did she?”

I didn't say anything but I guess I didn't need to.

He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair

“You knew she had heart disease,” I whispered. “You knew. She trusted you because you knew.”

He sighed. “It was a gamble,” he said. “If they come in young, odds are it's either the heart or cancer. Cancer is chemo. Your friend had hair so I guessed heart.”

Now I was completely empty.

Then he said something. He said, “This life is a hole,” he said. “It's so not worth it.”

My heart thumped.

This life is a hole. It's so not worth it.

It's so not worth it.

It's so not worth it.

It's so not worth it.

Was he right?

Was it a hole?

I thought about Ms. Homeyer and Ed and how they danced and got married and she wore a mermaid dress. I thought about Baylor and the panther doing the robot and how he looked for me, how he thought I was different and how he only died because of an asthma attack. I thought about Kim. Kim who wanted to live and should have lived but then didn't live. Kim who was my best friend and made everything around her better.

Everything.

He was wrong.

He was wrong.

I had seen dead people.

I had talked to them.

And it was worth it.

He was wrong.

I saw him then. A big bag of bones. Scamming people. Sitting in this stupid bus. With nothing. He had nothing.

Just then the door to the bus opened.

It was the man with the flat top and he said, “You still want to go, Gary?”

Dr. Ted sighed. Put down his beer and looked at his watch.

“I guess so,” he said. Then he looked at me. “You need a lift somewhere?”

I wiped my eyes. “What?”

He said, “I have an appointment I need to get to,” which didn't make sense because he was supposed to be leading a seminar. He kept going. “We can drop you off if you have someplace you want to go.”

I nodded. I did need a ride. “Sure,” I said. “There is someplace I want to go.”

And so then Dr. Ted Farnsworth, or Gary, and his flat-top friend gave me a ride home in his big-faced TALKING BEYOND!! bus.

After school Gabby was waiting for me.

“Did you know?”

I stood in the hall with my backpack. “Know what?”

“That she was sick.”

It never occurred to me that Gabby wouldn't know. That Kim didn't tell her.

I didn't want to deal with it.

I started to walk toward the door. “I think you knew,” she said, following me.

I kept walking.

“Did you know, Emmy?”

It seemed an impossible question. Kim's heart disease had been a part of my whole life. Every day. Every hour. Every minute.

I focused on the doors. I just had to get to the doors.

“Did you know?”

I kept walking.

“Emmy! Did you know?” her voice echoed through the hall and I couldn't do it anymore. “Yes. Of course.” I turned to face her. “Of course I knew. Why wouldn't I know?” Almost screaming.

“You should have warned me.”

She shoved me against the wall so hard it knocked the breath out of me.

“Why didn't she tell me?

“Why didn't you tell me?”

Tears were pouring down her cheeks, and I was trying to breathe and then she was gone, the doors banging against the wall as she left.

•

The thing is, Kim wasn't usually sick.

She was usually normal and beautiful and fast and funny and no one would know that she was going to die.

That any second her heart could blow up.

We pulled up at 4:42 p.m.

The bus was as long as our house.

Mom was on the front porch.

Dad was, too.

Joe.

And Gabby?

“Looks like you have an entourage,” Dr. Ted Farnsworth said.

I nodded. “Yeah. I guess.”

I walked to the door “Thanks for the ride.”

“Don't sue me.”

“I might,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. And that was it.

I got off the bus just in time to see Gabby jog across the street to her house.

Mom rushed over to me. “Where have you been?”

The bus started to pull away and Dad yelled, “Wait! Emmy, what is going on? Why were you on that thing?” and then he was chasing after it and huffing, and Joe started running, too, and what were they going to do? Grab onto the back? James Bond it inside? Beat him up? Get some advice about the afterlife?

“Dad,” I yelled, “it's okay.”

Mom had her arms around me. “Did he assault you?”

“No, Mom. Ewww. No.”

Joe and Dad kept running until they couldn't anymore, both of them bent over in the middle of the street. Dr. Ted Farnsworth's face on the back of the bus got smaller and smaller and smaller and eventually disappeared.

Mom said, “We've been trying to get a hold of you all day. Gabby told me she saw you leave, and I told her you were at the library and then we went to check.”

“Who went to check?”

“Me and Gabby.”

“Gabby?”

“She was worried about you, so she came over.”

“Oh,” I said.

I took a deep breath.

“We went to check and you weren't at the main library, so then we checked some other places, but we couldn't find you. And your phone was turned off.”

Joe and Dad were back now. “What happened? Who was that guy?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I met him with Kim once. He's okay.”

“He's okay?” Dad said. “He's okay?”

“Calm down,” Mom said.

“I will not calm down,” Dad said.

Joe said, “Yeah. That was weird. I wouldn't calm down if I were Dad. The guy looked like a total creeper.”

“He's not as bad as he looks,” I said, which maybe wasn't true.

I glanced at my watch. I had forty-five minutes.

Mom sighed. “Let's get something to eat. It's been a long day.”

“I can't,” I said.

Mom looked at me.

“I mean, not right now. I have one more place I have to go.”

“Hell,” Dad said.

“I'm sorry. This is the last time. The very last time. I promise.”

“Where do you have to go?” Mom asked.

I looked at Joe. And then I said, “I have to go out to Red Rock.”