Wake (27 page)

Again, who the
hell
taught her to do that?

The happy couple gives Elise a CD wrapped in yell ow paper. She opens it in front of them and seems genuinely excited about the gift. When she tilts the case I can see the cover art—it’s a Kimya Dawson CD.

“Just your taste,” I say. Elise looks over her shoulder and jumps a little when she sees how close I am. I know I’m thin, but for crying out loud, I’ve been standing right next to the stairs the whole time.

“You guys know my brother, right?” she says to them.

“Yeah, I know him. I’m Kipp—” I know who he is. He’s the dickhead who has possessed my little sister.

“—and this is Nina.” He nods to his girlfriend, the girl who probably exists in voodoo dol form up in Elise’s room.

I complete my half of the introductions and walk away to the kitchen. People part in front of me like the waters of the Red Sea; like I’m a leper and they’d better not get too close.

By the time I get to the kitchen I can’t remember why I wanted to come here. I clean a few empty cans off the counters and put more ice in the sink, but I’m just running on autopilot. There is no one here I want to talk to. No one here wants to talk to me. I wish they would all just leave. The sanctuary of my home, where no one stares anymore, has been ruined for tonight.

I’m considering going into the living room to try to talk to my sister’s friends from drama club when I hear Elise’s distinct chirp: “Willa! What took you so long?”

The universe narrows to a single fact: She’s here, in my house.

Then my focus broadens, and I remember that there are a lot of people in my house.

People to see how even she won’t give you the time of day anymore. To see you be well and truly

ignored in your own home.

And it’ll be okay for everyone else to do the same.

“Who’ve you brought with you?” Elise asks warmly. Oh God. Willa brought a
date?
I don’t even have to wonder who it is. I know.

I slip away from the kitchen, down the hall to the laundry room. It’s a cramped space, and all alone I wait and listen until I’m sure she’s well within the house. The sound of her voice follows Elise to the kitchen, chatting happily. It seems Willa brought food as a hostess gift, because Elise tells her that whatever she brought looks really good and does it need to warm up in the oven first?

I wonder if it’s something I can eat…

So not worth the humiliation to find out.

I wait until their voices fade to leave my hiding spot. I head upstairs to my room and close the door behind me.

You are such a coward.

It’s for the best. She probably doesn’t want to see you.

I fall face down on my bed like a starfish and groan. That girl has an almost supernatural ability to reduce me to my absolute worst without lifting a finger. You’d think she’d been doing it for years.

I’m gone for an hour before anyone notices. Elise knocks on my door and I tell her that I’m not feeling well.

“I could send them all home if you need to rest,” she offers. Because I want to ruin her birthday party on top of everything else I’ve cost her.

“No, don’t. Just let me stay up here awhile, and I’ll come down again later.”

“Okay.” She gives me a hug and a kiss and goes back down to her party. She looks so pretty tonight, dressed up and in her element, surrounded by people. What I’d give to keep her that way: small and happy and quirky as only Elise can be.

I will never be able to pay her back for what she’s given me. And she just keeps giving. No matter how bad it gets, or how much it costs her, she never hesitates, and no amount of red and yell ow M&Ms or stuffed owls will make up for her fearlessness and dedication.

That jackass better not break her heart. If he does it just proves what an asshole he is, because her heart is too big and too fierce to be broken easily.

I wonder if his left or right femur would snap more easily…

Decisions, decisions.

*

The first time my throat got too sore to even talk was during my initial rounds of radiation. Elise made me a chart with boxes to point to, each with a common phrase in it. She knew just what to put on it: the usual things, of course, like,
Drink please; Food please; I’d like to sit up; I’d like to lay down; I’m hot; I’m

cold;
etc
.
A box for each physical need
.
And right after that she put
I need a hug,
and
I need a kiss.
And most understandingly, the capped the list off with:
I need to be alone.

The stiff paper she wrote it on (and laminated, in case I puked or bled on it) is pretty worn around the edges now. It’s been folded and marked on and caught in the car door and tacked to the wall beside my bed a couple of times. I run my finger across the last option on the list.
I need to be alone.
I don’t think that one is necessary anymore. I can’t bear another day of isolation, of walking around like the ghost that everybody can see but pretends to not to notice.

I call Emily. Bizarre impulse, I know, but I’m lonely and she knew me before I was hol owed out by disease. The phone rings three times before her mom answers, and when I ask for Emily I’m told she’s out with friends from school.

“Okay. Thanks anyway.”

“Shal I tell her you call ed?”

“No, it’s okay. Don’t bother.” I say goodbye and toss the phone on my nightstand. It’s childish and ridiculous, but it feels like Emily abandoned me. I waste half an hour being mad at her, because it feels slightly more productive than being mad at myself, before I pick up the phone again and try my other friends. Morgan is grounded and can’t come to the phone. Ava is out with Emily tonight, according to her brother, and when I try her cell she doesn’t answer. She probably lost it again. Ava is perpetually losing small objects. Caitlin actually answers her phone, but all I can hear is shitty techno playing in the background at top volume. She’s out clubbing tonight.

“Can you hear me?” She can’t, so I ditch the effort and hang up. The only good friend left to try is Kyle, but he’s unreachable at the best of times. He doesn’t have a cell phone because ‘their radiation kill s bees’ and his house line is sketchy because his grandma forgets to pay the bil sometimes. Even if I can get through, I’d have to talk to Grandma May for twenty minutes first while she confuses me with her long-

lost fuck up of a son, Richard.

With nothing to do and no one to do it with, I just lay back across the foot of my bed and stare at the ceiling. Music and the noise of the party come through the walls, invading my bubble of privacy. I know this song. I know Willa knows this song.

I dare you to go a whole minute without thinking about her.

Fine. I can do that. Easy.

My stomach growls in hunger.

I wonder what Willa brought…

Damn it!

That wasn’t even ten seconds.

Shut up.

Make me.

I don’t want to go downstairs to find food. I’m not that hungry; just peckish. I lay there at the foot of the bed, listening and brooding and wishing that one of my friends had answered my call . I’ve passed out of their lives completely—I’m no longer around, and no longer worrying them with my illness. No need to spare any thought for Jem anymore.

I’m still mad about it when I drift off to sleep in the wee hours of the morning. I don’t sleep long before Elise wakes me up with a hand on my cheek.

“W’time is it?” I try to stretch and then think better of it. My joints ache.

“Almost three.” She slips my hat off and sets it aside. I seem to be wrapped up in a blanket. I didn’t fal asleep that way. “You never came down,” she says sadly.

“Stomachache.” Elise nods acceptingly and gives me a hug.

“Sorry you had to miss it.”

“Did you have a good time?”

Elise grins. She pulls her hands in toward her chest and spins on one foot. It’s such a romantically giddy move. “When he said happy birthday he gave me a hug and he smells so…ugh. If only they bottled that smell .”

“Gross, Lise.”

She blows a raspberry at me.

“Tell Carey about that shit, not me.”

“I’m going to bed.” She pulls her beret off and stifles a yawn. “Goodnight.” Elise bends over to give me a kiss on the cheek.

“Thanks for the blanket.”

“You already had it on.”

“Oh.”

Elise shrugs in a dismissive sort of way. She calls goodnight over her shoulder as she leaves, shutting the door behind her.

Did Willa…?

Don’t even think it.

But—

Don’t. Hell would freeze over.

I find myself sniffing the corner of the blanket for traces of her scent, to prove that it’s not just wishful thinking. Maybe she came up here looking for me. Maybe she wanted to talk—shit, and I missed her.

Do I have to
explain
the concept of hell freezing over?

Shut up.

Quit sniffing the blanket, you’re not a friggin’ dog.

She’s starting to come around.

Yes, joy—she took thirty seconds away from her time with baby-face to bundle you up like an

invalid.

Eric passes my door on his way to bed. He belches loudly and all at once I feel like an idiot. He probably covered me up. He must have come looking for me, wondering where the other ‘supervisor’ of this party was, and found me asleep.

I didn’t think my night could get any worse, but it has. False hope stings. Sleep is a long time coming.

Willa: April 11 to 17

Wednesday

I park myself in front of the TV after school and don’t budge for hours. It’s up to Frank to make dinner tonight, so it’s frozen pierogies and bacon. My phone rings “pick up, it’s me” while I’m watching TV. Jem is beginning to rival Chris Elwood for persistence. I don’t answer the call . I can’t deal with him right now.

He complains that I won’t look at him, as if he truly wants to be seen. I have my doubts about that. And he rarely pauses to consider what it might cost me to look at him; that it might invite things I don’t want or am not ready for, or it might remind me of watching my sister’s descent into illness. That day in the shed when he asked me about suicide… That hurt more than he knew, because part of it was true.

Pills were Jem’s first choice, too—or they would have been, if he had ever come to that. Pills don’t require elaborate planning, see, and complex plans are difficult for a seriously il person. Al one needs is a room with a lock—most bathrooms have one—and a bottle of pill s. Swallow, lie down on the floor to avoid alerting others with the sound of a crash, and wait for the bright light at the end of the tunnel. And he had access to sleeping pill s; little chance of vomiting, like he would with Oxy, just a guarantee of respiratory and cardiac arrest as the depressant flowed through him.

Not that he would have done it.

I’m scheduled to volunteer tonight, and though I’d rather just stay in and be by myself, I can’t shirk a commitment like that. It’s nice to feel needed, even though I just hand out magazines and read to kids. It keeps me together. Sort of.

Volunteer work is a chal enge today. The coordinator puts me in the oncology ward, handing out chewing gum and magazines. This ward feels bizarrely familiar, with its sounds and smell s, and brings back memories I’d rather not revisit too frequently. I half-expect to see the people I met while Tessa was in treatment. Some of those people are probably dead now. It’s almost surprising how little that idea bothers me, but I’ve worked so hard to numb those memories that it’s no great wonder.

The one person I do consider with genuine curiosity, though, is the guy Tessa briefly shared a room with. He was only seventeen, just barely old enough for a bed on the adult ward, and dying slowly. He had a rare disorder that caused tumors to grow indiscriminately all over his body. They pushed on his organs and nerves, causing pain and interrupting normal function. The first time I saw him he completely freaked me out. Luckily he was asleep at the time, so he didn’t witness my poor reaction. The whole left side of his face and eyelid were swollen with a massive tumor. He looked like something out of a horror movie. I avoided looking at him whenever I went to visit Tessa, because I didn’t think I could control my expression enough not to offend him.

I remember very clearly the first time I ever spoke to him, because I was terrified to do it. I was sitting by Tessa while she slept, reading a book. School was out and I had no homework left to keep me occupied. The curtains around both beds were closed, but in the silence I heard a plop and a splash, followed by a quiet, “Damn.” I peeked under the curtains and saw a juice box on the floor on its side, leaking slowly. I wasn’t sure if I should pick it up. I went out to the orderlies’ station first and grabbed a juice box off the tray to replace the dropped one. By the time I got back to the room I was antsy with nerves.

I ‘knocked’ before stepping around the curtain. That sort of threw him. He was so used to being in hospitals with no privacy and bustling nurses who had no time to knock.

“I, uh, brought you a new one.” I held up the juice box lamely.

“Thanks.” I threw the old box in the garbage and cracked open the new one for him. His hands creeped me out more than his face—they were covered with little bumps that were tumors under the skin, and he was missing two fingers that had been removed along with more troublesome growths. I tried not to flinch when I realized he needed help holding the juice box. His hands were next to useless from nerve damage.

I couldn’t help staring at him while he drank. The unusual swell of his face looked so painful, and his left eye was nearly swollen shut. His healthy eye stared right back at me.

“Your eyes are really pretty.” I turned beet red the second after I blurted that out. I wasn’t lying—he had gorgeous blue eyes with long dark lashes—only I was worried that he would take my remark the wrong way. But he just said ‘thank you’ after a moment and told me that he liked my hair. I don’t think a stranger had ever said he looked nice before.