Waiting for Unicorns (18 page)

I RAN ALL THE WAY,
and Dad caught up to me by car. I could tell he was upset with me for taking off, but he didn't say anything. He just drew his lips together in a straight line and sighed, running a hand through his hair. Together we walked into the hospital.

A nurse led us to the Birdman's room, but I hesitated. My legs had quit working. I was still out of breath from running, and now I was shaking, too, nervous and scared. I fell into a chair just outside his room. I needed to make my stomach settle down and my heart return to its proper place in my chest before I went in. I leaned over with my elbows on my knees, and propped my face in my hands, examining the linoleum—diamonds and squares marching down the hall.

I knew it was the Birdman on the other side of the wall, but it wasn't him that I kept seeing in my head. It was Mom. And for that reason I couldn't move an inch. So I sat there, staring at the floor until Dad sat down beside me.

“You all right?” he asked.

I nodded, but I didn't look at him. I couldn't. I didn't want him to see how scared I was. So we just sat there, me and Dad. It had been a while since either of us had been inside a hospital. He seemed uncomfortable, too, and I watched him tap his feet against the linoleum.
Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.
Just like my heartbeat.

Eventually, he patted my knee and stood up.

“You don't have to come in, Talia,” Dad said gently. “He'll understand.”

“I'll be there in a minute,” I said. And I meant it.

Dad nodded, and without another word, knocked softly on the Birdman's door. He was welcomed by a warm “c'mon in” from the other side.

Dad disappeared, but I stayed out in the hall, pulling the fractured bits of myself together.

It wasn't that I hated hospitals. I knew that lots of good things happened in them, too. People got better, babies were born—good things. This was a place of
healing.

It wasn't even that I was afraid of what the Birdman might look like. Even if it was horrible, I'd heard his voice. He'd welcomed my dad just as he always did. And he sounded the same as he always had, bear mauling or not. He'd be out of the hospital soon.

So what was I afraid of?

I leaned back in my chair. Mom's words washed over me.

I guess when it came right down to it, I was terrified by how uncontrollable things could be, and of how terribly small I was, right in the middle of them.

I had no way to steady my heart against cancer, or shifting ice floes, or bear attacks. I wasn't big enough or brave enough to never be hurt, or broken.

It didn't matter how tightly I clutched my fingers around whatever liferope I could find. There was just no way I'd be able to save myself, or the people I loved best, from getting shaken up and tossed around by things we had no power to change, or predict.

But I wanted to try. I wanted to be there for the people I loved. So I took a deep breath and laid my hand on the doorknob. I could do this.

I don't know how long I stood there, listening to the voices on the other side. I kept trying to turn that doorknob. I kept trying to make my feet move, and make my heart quit racing.

But somewhere between loving the people on the other side of that hospital door, and desperately needing to keep my heart from breaking into any more pieces, I couldn't do it. I couldn't go in. I just wasn't big enough.

I turned around slowly and followed the diamonds and squares of linoleum back down the hall, one foot in each square. And then I was skipping squares. Faster and faster. Until I was running. Past the nurses' station, past the waiting room and the front desk, straight through the double doors and into the arctic sunshine. And I didn't stop.

I ran back toward the blue house on the edge of town, and past it, down the road that ran along the water until I could go no farther.

Standing at the very edge of Hudson Bay, I made another wish and wrote it on a tiny slip of paper in my mind.

I wish I could fly.

Waves lapped over the toes of my shoes and I fixed my eyes on that point of the horizon where the water meets the sky.

As I stood there alone, I let myself wonder,
How far would I have to go to get away from the things that scared me?

THE BIRDMAN WAS IN THE
hospital for three weeks. He had two broken ribs, a broken collarbone, puncture wounds to the chest, a collapsed lung, and forty-five stitches just above his right ear.

Simon took the bear attack hard, maybe even harder than the Birdman himself. I understood why, though—everything had been just fine until suddenly it wasn't, and it's scary to think of how quickly things can change.

Sura and Dad insisted Simon stay with us while the Birdman was in the hospital. And on the outside, I was glad. But secretly I was afraid to see him. I had been a horrible friend. I hadn't been able to make myself go into that hospital room. Instead, I'd run away.

Simon had been there for me right from the very beginning, when I had almost nothing but my loneliness to keep me company. I was sad, but he had stayed anyway. He'd done everything he could to try to make me feel better.

When he climbed up the porch steps the following afternoon, I wanted to be there for him, but I didn't really know what to do. So when he hugged me tight, I just hugged him back.

“Are you okay?” I asked tentatively.

He nodded, but an unfamiliar frown creased his forehead.

“I'm all right,” he said. “Or I will be as soon as he gets out of the hospital.”

Simon seemed different. Older maybe. Like the weight of what that bear had done had stacked a few extra years on top of Simon's fourteen.

Simon slept on the couch in the front room, his small brown duffel bag on the floor in the corner, and his guitar propped against it. Seeing it gathering dust in the corner bothered me almost as much as my missing unicorn whales.

I didn't know what to do with this version of my friend. The boy with the songs and stories, with the quick, easy smile, the way he could hug the breath right out of me, or how I would catch him staring at me sometimes—
that
boy I knew what to do with. I knew how to be his friend. It was as easy as breathing.

Being around this version of Simon was much harder, and I felt myself wanting to run away at times. I was afraid of his sadness, his strange new quietness. I was afraid it would change him forever, slowly turn him into someone else—the way it had done to me—until I couldn't recognize him at all.

One afternoon, a few days later, Dad was at the CSNC, and Sura, Simon, and I were having lunch. Simon was particularly quiet and I couldn't stand it anymore. As soon as I finished eating, I got up and left him to finish alone. I didn't even answer him when he looked up from his half-eaten sandwich, startled by my abruptness, and asked me where I was going.

Sura found me later, curled on my bed upstairs, trying to read a book.

“Can I come in?” she asked, knocking on my door and opening it a crack.

I closed my book and nodded, nervous.

“Did you and Simon have an argument?” Her voice was quiet, and she studied the lyrics to “Baby Blue” pinned on my corkboard, written out in Simon's slanted handwriting.

“No,” I said, surprised. “Did he say we did?”

Sura shook her head. “He didn't say anything. You just seem a little at odds with each other.”

I shrugged. “He's just kind of hard to be around lately.”

She nodded and sat down on the end of my bed, wrapping her sweater around her.

“Yes. Well, sad people can be a bit hard to be around at times.” She ran her hand over the stitching on the quilt across my bed.

I knew Sura was right. I drew my knees up to my chest. “I'm hard to be around, too, sometimes,” I said. We both knew it wasn't a question. It was true.

“People are usually sad for a reason, Tal. But you don't have to be sad, too, in order to care for them. You don't even have to completely understand.”

I watched her long brown fingers trace patterns on my quilt. “In fact, when you do care about someone,” she continued, “it doesn't matter if you understand or not. Loving someone means that sometimes you have to risk getting messy. It's not always very fun, but it's always better than being alone, or watching someone you love hurt alone.”

Suddenly I wasn't sure if she was talking about Simon, or me.

“Simon doesn't need you to be
happy
for him, he just needs you to be
there
for him. Does that make sense?”

“I think so,” I said, trying to process what she was saying—about Simon, and about me. Sura smiled and patted my knee before getting up and going back downstairs, closing my door behind her.

I sat on my bed for a while after that, thinking about what to do. Try to be a better friend, for sure. But I'd known that when I left Simon at the table.

What I really needed to do was tell him I was sorry. Sorry for being selfish and for thinking there was no one else in the world with feelings as messy as mine. Sorry for believing I was the only person who understood what it felt like to be sad or upset about things. Sorry for not choosing to be brave.

Simon was a good friend. And now it was my turn to be there for him.

I found Simon out on the front porch, leaning against the rail and staring out at the bay.

“Hey,” I said, leaning beside him.

“Hey.”

“I'm sorry.”

Simon frowned, confused. “For—?”

“For being a lousy friend.”

“You're not a—” he started to protest, but I cut him off.

“Just stop talking for a second, okay?”

He grinned, folding his arms across his chest, and waited for me to continue.

“I'm sorry I didn't come to see your grandfather or you when Dad and I got back.”

Simon shrugged. “It's not a big deal, Tal.”

But I shook my head. “No. It
is
a big deal. You've really been there for me. All summer you've been there and I should have done the same thing. But instead I ran away.”

Simon's eyes widened. “You ran away?”

I nodded. “I did come to the hospital. I came and sat in the hall, just outside the door. But I couldn't go in. I—I was
scared,
I guess. And it was selfish. I'm really sorry.”

“It's okay,” Simon said. “Some people have a hard time with hospitals.”

But I shook my head, knowing he didn't quite understand. I was going to have to explain about Mom.

“It isn't the hospital, exactly,” I said. “I have
lots
of experience with hospitals. That's part of the problem. My mom died of cancer last year, and Dad and I practically lived at the hospital while she was sick.”

Without looking at him I took a deep breath and continued in a rush. “I just kept thinking about her—losing her—and I couldn't go in because I didn't want to see one more bad thing happen to someone I care about. I hate watching pain mess everything up—break everything.” I glanced up.

He didn't look at me and he didn't say anything right away. Maybe I'd said too much.

“I know about your mom, Tal,” he said quietly. “I've known since that day we visited Miss Piggy. Sura told me. I'm really sorry she died, Talia.”

I could have been upset with Sura for telling him, but I wasn't. Not even a little. It was freeing, like a secret I didn't have to keep anymore.

“Thanks,” I said quietly. “So, you're not mad at me? For running away?”

He shook his head and stuffed his hands into his pockets and studied the tip of his shoe. “It's hard to know what I'm feeling exactly, but I'm not mad at you. I'm just . . .”

“Sad,” I finished for him.

He nodded. “Yeah. And sort of scared, too, I guess.”

I understood exactly.

“It's okay, you know,” I said. “To feel that way. It just means you love your grandfather. I think there'd probably be something wrong with you if you weren't feeling kind of shook up about everything.”

“Yeah, I guess you're right.”

“Also,” I said, reaching out and taking his hand. “You don't have to be shaken up by yourself.”

“I don't?” he asked, holding my hand, tight.

“No.”

My stomach was jumping around like I'd swallowed a hummingbird.

“Good,” he said. “Because everything is a little better when you're around.”

And for a minute, I was pretty sure I could fly.