The One Thing (23 page)

Outside, a car door closed. Heavy footsteps clomped up the porch.

“It’s showtime,” Sophie said, and then she laughed, an uncertain invention that sounded more like a bark. I could feel the hairs on her arms brushing against mine as we sat
side by side on the couch and waited for her father to open the door. I tried to think of what to say, tried to dredge up one of the huddle speeches I’d given the team over the years. But my
past seemed irrelevant right now, and so I did the only thing I knew to do: I stayed beside her and reached for her hand.

Sophie’s father was drunk.

He hadn’t started out drunk. He’d breezed into the house, all briskness and aftershave, shot us a hasty greeting, and then immediately retired to his den. I’d felt Sophie
starting to have second thoughts, so I’d nudged her with my elbow. “You can do this,” I’d said, and she’d sighed resolutely and stood. And now, in the kitchen, her
mother speaking in a voice laced with the sort of hurt and disappointment that I knew was absolutely killing Sophie, and her father screaming—holy
crap
he was screaming—I was
beginning to wonder whether I’d given Sophie the wrong advice.

Sophie was crying.

Her mother was crying.

Her father was yelling horrible things. Sophie was a disappointment. A tramp. An embarrassment. A failure.

When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I lurched toward him. I didn’t know what I was going to do—take a swing at him, maybe?—but in the end it didn’t really matter,
because Sophie pulled me back, wordlessly reminding me that I was there for only moral support.

Her father paced in front of us, his shoes like gunshots firing off on the tile floor. And then he stopped. Everything went dead still. His voice suddenly disturbingly even, he told Sophie that
she wasn’t his daughter anymore. Told her to pack her things and get out.

Sophie said nothing.

Why the hell wasn’t she defending herself?

But as it happened, she didn’t have to, because her mother—loudly, clearly, fiercely—stepped in and screamed that if he was kicking their daughter out of the house, he’d
have to kick his wife out as well.

Nobody spoke. Nobody breathed. I could almost hear the walls lean in to hear her father’s reply: “Fine then. Go.”

And so it happened, that terrifying thing that Sophie had known was coming. Her dad stormed out of the room, slamming doors in his wake. Her mom called a relative in Ohio and asked if she and
Sophie could come stay. And as I stood there in the kitchen that night, arms wrapped around myself with Sophie’s silence ringing loudly in my ears, I knew with absolute certainty that
I’d just lost Sophie for good.

W
hat sort of feeling came over me when I heard Mom’s car pull up at Sophie’s instead of Gramps’s, I wasn’t sure. But
whatever it was, it warped my exhale into a long, quaking sigh. Stepping off Sophie’s porch, I walked across the driveway and fumbled to find the latch on Mom’s passenger-side door.
Collapsing into the seat, I asked, “What happened to Gramps?”

“Stuck at a poker tournament,” Mom said in the half-mocking, half-affectionate tone that she always used when she spoke about Gramps, an inflection that was as familiar to me as my
own hand. “I was surprised you were here. I didn’t know you and Sophie were hanging out again.”

I picked at the frayed hem on my shorts. I didn’t want to tell her about Sophie’s pregnancy or the confrontation with her parents or the way Sophie’s mom had stepped in to
support Sophie. I didn’t want to tell her that the scene in Sophie’s kitchen had made me wish like hell my own mother had come to my rescue when I’d needed her most.

“We aren’t really hanging out,” I said, swallowing over the clog in my throat.

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Are you?” I said, the words coming out so quickly that I hadn’t even had time to filter them. “I mean, I didn’t know you cared about my friendships.” I felt
a lone, fat tear fall down my face, and I turned away from her.

“Of course I do,” she said quietly. She paused. “Maggie? Are you okay?”

Still facing the window, I wiped my cheek with the heel of my palm. “I just wish,” I said slowly, thinking about my string of failed friendships, “that I’d done some
things differently, is all.” Ambiguous as they were, my words were imploring, reaching for her, invisible fingers trying to stretch across the gap between us.

“Don’t we all,” she said softly.

Though the moment was awkward, this was the closest we’d been since I’d lost my sight, so both of us latched on to it like it was a single life jacket that we’d each crammed
one arm into—it wasn’t enough to save either one of us, but it was enough to keep our heads above water for the time being.

For a few minutes, there were only familiar sounds. The way Mom’s car squeaked as it came to a stop. The tick of her blinker. Finally she cleared her throat and said, “Mind if I run
in to the dry cleaner’s to pick up Dad’s suit?”

“No,” I said, a little too loudly. And then I wiped my palms on my shorts. “No, go ahead.”

When she came to a stop in front of the dry cleaner’s, I stayed put, just shut my eyes and let my head fall back against the seat. It had felt odd, extending myself to my mother. All my
life, I’d always followed her lead: she was tough, and I was tough. She played soccer, and I played soccer.

She deserted me, and I deserted her.

A car horn blasted. Startled, I flinched and jerked open my eyes. Then I covered my mouth with my hand.

Because I could see again.

A woman was trudging in front of the car in a massive puddle of brilliant white light, so dazzling that the air itself almost sparkled around her, millions of tiny diamonds. It was in stark
contrast to her appearance. She was aggressively thin and wispy-looking, her bony shoulder blades jutting out beneath her blouse. Wrapped loosely around her head was a flowered scarf, which failed
to conceal a thin line of bald scalp above her forehead. There was a rustle of movement to my right, and I saw my mom walking toward her, smiling, saying something to the woman that I could not
hear. I sucked in my breath as I saw my mother for the first time in seven months.

Mom’s normally cherubic curls were unkempt, bordering on frizzy. She had lines all over her face—creases wedged around her eyes and furrows pitting the corners of her lips—all
pointing in the wrong direction. She looked defeated, from the slope of her shoulders to the way her mouth turned downward as she spoke. Her eyes flickered toward me and I looked away guiltily. By
the time I turned back, the woman had walked away, taking her impossibly bright light with her, and my mother was starting toward the car, disappearing into my non-eyesight before she opened the
door.

“Were you talking to someone?” I asked as Mom started the car.

Mom sighed, a sound that stole the oxygen from my lungs. “Yes. I was talking to Kelly Downs. The mother of one of the girls on my team? She has breast cancer. She’s been sick. Real
sick. And—”

“And what?” I said. They were only two words, but they barely worked their way past my throat.

“Well, she’s dying, you know? And her doctors can’t do anything about it.”

For a moment everything went perfectly still and I heard the world around me with flawless precision: the sharp click of heels hustling down the sidewalk, the sleepy jazz music drifting out of a
passing car, the sound of a loose wheel on a shopping cart rattling through the parking lot. But mostly, I heard the one word that had jogged loose from my mother’s sentence, tumbling around
some cog in my brain.

Dying

dying

dying

Awareness started filtering through me, ice slipping through my veins. I was shaking. Had to be. My knees were rattling against each other. I’d been denying it all along, of course.
I’d denied it every time I’d hung out with Ben. I’d denied it when I’d seen that old man in the China Bistro. I’d denied it when I’d had that dream. Everything
had pointed to it, but I’d been looking in another direction, terrified. But now I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t run or hide. Now I knew, with absolute chilling certainty, why I
was seeing Ben Milton.

He was dying.

I
fell into bed that night with my clothes on, praying for sleep that took forever to come. And when it did, I dreamed in random, sharply colored
images. They flashed through my mind like jagged pieces of a stained glass window that were too splintered and confusing to assemble: a burgundy sunrise, a bright yellow rose, tired hazel eyes, a
dove taking flight into a cerulean sky, jade sand slipping through an hourglass.

I woke up early, even before my parents left for work, and sat on the edge of my bed, trying to figure out what to do to help Ben, trying to figure out how to
find
Ben.

I swallowed. What if I was too late? What if the Miltons were gone because Ben had already di—

My trembling hand covered my mouth. I couldn’t even think it. Not that. Not about Ben.

I stayed in my room until late that morning, when I walked purposefully to the kitchen and did the only thing that made sense: I made lasagna. Lasagna-making was a skill I’d learned from
my mother. Fantastic lasagna snob that she was, she refused to buy the pasta frozen or use ready-made ingredients. She made the whole dish from scratch. It was a long, drawn-out affair, a ritual of
sorts, in which the majority of the day was spent leaning over simmering pots of pureed tomatoes, garlic, and spices. For whatever reason the process seemed to set things straight in my head, so I
padded through the empty house and got started.

It took me longer than expected. Back when I could see, I had the system down perfectly: run the tomatoes through the food processor, simmer the onions and garlic, slowly add the spices, et
cetera. But now I had to cook with my fingers, my nose, my ears. And even though our kitchen had been organized to the point of nausea, every move I made had to be slow, deliberate, and then
checked and double-checked. Had I turned on the correct burner? Was this tomato bruised or just overripe? Where the hell was the oregano?

By late afternoon I knew what to do: I had to call Mason. Sure, the two of us had a checkered past, but he loved his brother and he was a man of action. He would know what to do.

I dialed Clarissa’s number, speaking right over her hello. “Clarissa, it’s Maggie. Sorry to interrupt, but it’s sort of an emergency. Any chance you could ask that friend
of yours for Mason Milton’s cell phone number? I need to get in touch with him.”

Thirty minutes later, I had Mason’s number punched into my phone. The line was ringing. And panic was settling in. What the hell was I going to say? My thumb was hovering over the END
button when a hello finally boomed over the line. It wasn’t Mason, though. It was Mrs. Milton.

I held the phone to my ear with an unsteady hand and said, “Hi! It’s Maggie!” Was I yelling? I was yelling. I sucked in a breath and exhaled slowly. Like a human person, I went
on. “I was calling for Mason. I thought this was his number?”

“Hello, love,” Mrs. Milton breathed into the receiver. “Actually, this
is
his number. I’m just playing secretary for him right now while he takes a turn
driving.” When I failed to reply, she went on to explain. “We’re on our way home from my sister’s house in Georgia. We go there every year for the first week of July.
Anyway, we should be home in about an hour?”

I staggered into the wall. They were on vacation. That was all. Ben was okay. I said, “Could you have Mason call me back when you guys get home, please? At this number?”

“Sure,” she chirped.

“And Mrs. Milton?”

“Yes?”

“Tell him it’s important.”

An hour later, Gramps came banging into the kitchen. My arms were elbow-deep in the soapy waters of the sink, and the lasagna was doing something magical in the oven.

“What smells in here?” Gramps asked.

“Lasagna,” I said, rinsing the last of the pots and pans.

“Heh,” he said, and I heard him clomping to the oven. “You gonna eat all that yourself, kid?”

“Nope.
We
are.”