The Sweet Dead Life (20 page)

"Crap," I said out loud. "Stupid idiot."

"What?" Casey kept his gaze on the road, but Amber turned to look at me.

"Those free samples," I said. "It's got to be. Damn it, Casey. Those vitamins I give Mom every day? The ones we can't afford? Care of Dr. Renfroe? It's the only thing she puts in her body that you and I don't."

It was like lifting a curtain, only to realize that what was on the other side was the worst thing you could possibly imagine, too.

"Drive faster," I urged my brother. "Hurry."

Was I really as healthy as I'd felt these past couple of days? If Renfroe wasn't who he claimed to be, and also basically my only doctor, then there were no guarantees. Everything he'd told me replayed in my brain on fast-forward. I could be dying again. Granted, we were all basing this wild hypothesis on a random photo we'd found in the back of Mamaw Nell's Merc.

He could have been volunteering at the casino to make sure that none of the old fogeys keeled over and died. But, no: Something about him was off.

Somehow,

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for whatever reason, we'd been given a glimpse of the
real
Dr. Renfroe. Just like I'd glimpsed his chest hair when I woke up in the ER.

"Be careful," Amber said to Casey.

She didn't tell him to slow down.

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We debated how to dispose of the vitamins. First, we tucked some in a baggie so Amber could let her lab friend analyze them. Then we searched the house for vitamin bottles. Mom had one on her nightstand. I found another under her sink where she'd stored all those hair color products. A couple more sat on the top shelf of our mostly empty pantry.

"Flush 'em," my brother said.

"You can't," Amber told him. "You want whatever's in them to filter into the water supply?"

"Does everything you flush filter into the water supply?" Casey asked.

It was a reasonable question, but we had no time. "Just throw them all away," I said. I peeled off the latex gloves I'd worn while we searched.

Amber had given us each a pair from her EMT bag just in case. "There's all sorts of stuff in landfills. If we wrap the bottles, it'll be like a century before it seeps out, right?"

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Note to self: I needed to work on my ecological concerns
. Not that I'd ever call Al Gore about the ins-and-outs of letting evil vitamins into the environment. But this was Texas. We used to be our own country. We could handle it.

Talking to Mom would have to wait. She'd slept through our vitamin scavenger hunt, even through a haphazard sort of physical. (Amber had given her a quick once-over--or as best she could without removing the ever-present sweatpants and T-shirt--making sure Mom's condition hadn't deteriorated while we were gone.) By then it was two in the morning.

"You need to get some sleep," Casey said to me.

Instead, I flopped down on the floor outside Mom's bedroom. Casey sighed and joined me, leaning against the closed door. Amber sat cross-legged next to him.

"Not tired," I said, yawning. My eyes drooped closed.

WHEN I CAME to, Casey was still sitting with his back against Mom's door.

He appeared to be sleeping. From what I could see through the family room windows it was still dark outside, but getting lighter. Amber was gone.

I watched my brother sleep. He
did
look different. Not just the stuff I could see on the surface. Even passed out against the door, his expression hinted at something I couldn't quite place. Peace? A little. But there was a hint of something sad, too, which made him seem older. But most of all he looked strong. Especially his hands. They weren't lined or wrinkled or anything, but underneath that new bronzy sheen, they seemed sturdier. Like they could lift you right up.

Casey's eyes snapped open.

I flinched. It was like he'd been watching me with his eyes closed. "Um, morning," I said.

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"You need to get ready for school. I'm gonna wake up Mom in a minute.

Figure out what to tell her and ask her about Dr. Renfroe."

"You don't sleep anymore, do you?" I asked.

"Not really." He laughed and shook his head. "I can make myself doze off.

But it's not the same. It's not, um, involuntary?" His voice rose in a question like even he wasn't quite sure--not that he didn't have to sleep, but how it all worked.

"Did you sit here all night watching me?"

"Well, sort of. And thinking about stuff, you know."

At first I figured he meant Renfroe and all that was going on. But he blushed, just a little, and I guessed at what had really been on his mind.

"Lanie, huh?" It was the first time I'd ever said her name in the past year without wanting to scream or cackle or puke.

The blush deepened. He jumped to his feet, avoiding my eyes in the pre-dawn glow trickling through our filthy windows. "We'll see. It's weird, I know.

But I--I liked her so much, Jenna. I really did. I guess I never stopped. And I know you never did, but she's different now. Honestly, when I told her how sick you were--"

"How much
did
you tell her?" I interrupted.

"Nothing specific. Just that you and Mom had been sick. But the thing is, she never asked about either of y'all before. It's not just about me, is what I'm saying. So she wants to go on a date. She wants to make up for things. Does that make any sense?"

I rubbed my eyes. "I don't know," I said after a long minute. "I'm only in the eighth grade."

He laughed. "Good point. I'll keep it PG-13. It's only a date, Jenna. One date."

He was silent then. I waited with him through the quiet.

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I was going to leave it at that, actually. But my question bubbled up and out before I could stop it. "If we figure this all out, if we find Dad--will you be just gone?" This was bigger than Lanie Phelps. Bigger than any piece of all the craziness.

Casey looked surprised. Had he not thought about this?

"I don't know," he said. But he didn't sound afraid, just matter-of-fact. "Amber won't tell me. Maybe she doesn't know, either. I'm getting the impression they don't trust her much up there."

So he had asked. It was also good to know that "they" (whoever "they" might be) were suspicious of her, too. Not in the big ways, obviously. But she clearly still had a lot of explaining to do, and not just to us.

"Where
is
she, anyway? Amber the annoying?"

"Ha! Don't call her that to her face. She'll be back. Not sure when. Soon, though."

"Whatever." I was suddenly cranky and my back felt stiff from sleeping on the floor. The nausea that I'd had for so long was mostly gone, but it still lingered in the back of my throat. I hoisted myself up and stretched.

"You're still taking your Cipro, right?" Casey asked. "Maybe you need another IV." He studied me like he could assess this from looking. "Just not from Renfroe."

Without warning, he pulled me into a hug. My face mashed against his shoulder. I blinked, unable to do anything but smell that nice smell of his.

"Did dying hurt?" I asked against his shirt, my heart thumping. "Were you scared?"

Casey was quiet so long I wondered if he'd heard me.

"Yeah," he said. "It did. Yeah, I was. But not for long," he added. "I came back quick, Jenna. I came back for you."

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My eyes started leaking as I remembered looking over at Casey in the car.

"I'll stay as long as I can," he whispered. "I promise. I won't leave y'all if I can help it." He let go and ruffled my hair in a big brotherly way that he'd never done before. "Who else could put up with all your crap?"

Before I could think of a suitable insult, he knocked on Mom's door and opened it. She stirred and sat up in bed. She stared at us for a long while.

Then she managed a weak smile. "Since when did you start holding your sister's hand?"

What Casey Told Mom:

Your vitamins have been recalled. Nothing to worry about, just the
Number 40 red dye was defective. Best not to take anything for a few
days
.

If any new bottles appear, don't take any of those, either. The vitamin
company has no idea how many batches were messed up. Better safe
than sorry
.

QUESTIONING HER ABOUT Dr. Chest Hair was trickier. She remembered (mostly) that he had helped me at the hospital. She said--definitely--that he came to visit every couple weeks. That was all we knew for sure. Her memory was like a knotted shoelace that you end up throwing away because you don't have the patience to untangle it.

I thought about how nice Renfroe had been to me, how gentle and concerned.

"When he was here," I asked Mom, "what did y'all talk about?"

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Casey sighed. We'd asked Mom this every which way we could think of. She hadn't come up with any answer.

"Work, maybe?" I persisted. "They must really miss you at Oak View."

I figured it was a nice thing to say. I'd never had a job, but Mom had loved hers. It was one of the things that kept her from falling apart in that first year after Dad disappeared. The patients she worked with needed her, just like we did. Dr. Renfroe needed her, for God's sake.

My chest tightened. Had Renfroe been faking how he felt about Mom? How could we have been so wrong? When she first started getting too depressed and nervous to go out, she worried about this sort of thing: how the Doc and all those patients would get by without her.

I watched Mom's face. Maybe it was my imagination, but something flickered there. One thing triggered something else and the wheels started cranking like the swirly dash display in our poor deceased Prius.

"People were dying, you know," my mother said. She winced, as if shocked the words had come out of her mouth.

"What?" Casey asked, now riveted.

Mom's eyes started to glaze over and then snapped back in focus. I turned away, an old habit. It hurt too much. Would she ever get well from whatever was gnawing at her system? I pictured it inside her like one of those disgusting nutria that swam in the pond near our house. Wharf rats, people called them. Big ugly rodents the size of beavers, chewing on Mom's brain.

I'd only been sick for a couple months. She'd been like this for years. What if the damage was permanent?

"Dying," my mother said. "Dale Horowitz. Jennie Buck. Hal Klein. Of course they were all really sick. I told Stuart I was concerned. He said it was just a coincidence. 'Holly,' he said.

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'Don't you worry about it. You did the best you could. Things happen.' So I tried. But I should have been there. You know people need something to live for. If they think it's hopeless, they just give up. That's why I worked my patients so hard. When you get back language, you feel empowered, you know."

I glanced at Casey, who shrugged and shook his head.

"Go on, Mom," he urged.

Mom pursed her lips. "I told your father that, too. Before the day he didn't come back. You know what he asked me? Did I trust Dr. Renfroe? I told him of course I did." She paused. Then she said, "I don't think your dad did, though. But then he was gone."

Her tone was so vacant, so detached. Could we buy any of this? She wasn't really Mom yet. The real Mom would be riled up that she hadn't pursued my

father's hunch. At least that's what I hoped. Suddenly I thought back to that piece of sports column I'd kept. Of course Dad would have been suspicious.

It was like what he'd said about baseball: If you were watching, you'd catch those tells. Those little signs.

He'd seen something in Renfroe. And so had we.

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When Amber arrived, Casey called me in absent from school. Then Amber pretended to be Mom and did the same for him.

In between the calls, Amber gave me a "lying is justified because there's a greater good involved" speech. The A-world continued to have a lot of gray areas, which was fine by me. I had never taken to the idea that Heaven was a bunch of folks who all thought the same way, sitting around, patting each other on the wings about their good fortune. On the other hand, it appeared even the more liberal angels weren't thrilled about my brother's inability to shake his marijuana habit.