Wake (50 page)

“Al this on-again-off-again, fighting in public, making each other jealous, making out in the hall way…is she so back-and-forth and spitefull because she gave you something she wishes she hadn’t?”

Chris does one hell of a goldfish impersonation. “That’s, uh…private.” He hasn’t slept with her. Chris smiles awkwardly and gestures to the door. “I’ll leave you to it.” He heads back to the front counter. I almost wish Jem were here just so I could say,
See? I don’t need pepper spray to get Elwood to leave

me alone. A sharp tongue does the trick.

*

Mom calls that night under the pretense of catching up with me. I know she just wants to make sure I’m not causing more trouble. She keeps me on the phone for an hour, talking about work and the neighbors and Newfoundland weather. She asks me about school and work, and I give her the highlights. Mom surprises me by remembering most of my new friends’ names.

“What about Jem?” she asks. “You haven’t mentioned him yet.” I bet she was waiting for me to say something about Jem; to prove whether Frank was right or wrong about what a bad idea it is for me to hang out with him.

“We haven’t spoken much this week.”

“Why not?”

My first instinct is to lie, because that’s what I always do when uncomfortable questions arise, but this is my Mom. She already knows who I am at my worst.

“I told him about St. John’s.”

Mom is silent for three whole seconds. The tension is simply delicious.

“What exactly do you mean by that?” she asks slowly. She sounds like a counselor trying to talk someone down from their ledge.

“I told him about Tessa, and the psych detainment, and the group therapy. And about getting messed up on antidepressants and planning to kill myself. Not the whole story, exactly.”

“And why would you do a thing like that?”

“I don’t know. I trusted him.”

“You wanted a clean break,” she says. “You had one there. You haven’t known him that long and you trusted him with damaging information.”

“I’ll handle it.”

“Willa, you didn’t handle it well last time.”

“This is different.”

“How?”

I take a deep breath through my nose, but it does nothing to help my patience. “Shortage of tal buildings?”

“Put Frank on the phone.”

I hand the phone over to Frank and disappear to the second floor. I don’t want to hear what they have to say about me. As I sit there doing nothing my phone buzzes. Guess who has to make my bad day even worse?

Do you still have my Nightdodger CD?

You’re not getting that back.
I’ll keep it just to spite him.

Bring it to school tomorrow.

Make me.

I knew it was going to cost me to be Jem’s friend. Why shouldn’t I get a free CD out of the deal? In exchange for two paranoid parents, an overprotective brother, one dead heart, months of soup, my reputation and my sanity, of course.

You’re being a child,

You’re being a prick.

From what I can hear of Frank’s half of the phone conversation, he and Mom are getting upset. I turn on my iPod and crank the volume to block them out.

The first track is from
Spirited.
Stupid Shuffle.

Frank hangs up the phone with a slam and I cringe. He’s probably going to storm up here next and give me hell. I curl up on my side facing the wall and drop my pillow over my head. It’s cowardly, but I can’t deal with this crap right now.

My door opens without a warning knock and Frank steps in.

“You awake?” he barks at me.

“Maybe.”

“I’m going down to Doug’s. I’ll be back in an hour.” He says the last part with emphasis, like he’s warning me not to try anything because he’ll be back in time to catch me.

“Fine.”

I don’t breathe easy until he’s gone. Frank was a hell of a lot easier to live with before I knew Jem.

Sunday “Frank?” I knock on my brother’s bedroom door. He doesn’t answer, so I knock again. When I open his door I find his bed undisturbed. Upon inspection, his toothbrush is dry and his toiletries untouched. He didn’t come home last night.

I’m not exactly worried. Likely he had a beer at Doug’s, and then another, and then a few more, and decided to spend the night in Port Elmsley. Frank isn’t a heavy drinker, but when he’s stressed he’s been known to binge a little. He and I have that in common—must be in the Irish genes. I suppose I should feel guilty for being the cause of his stress, but apathy is about all I can manage right now.

When Frank does come home he’s going to be sore at me and hung over to boot. I decide having hangover-friendly food waiting for him might help my case. It’s time for an old stand-by: Oma’s chicken soup. Simple, easy, and comforting. The pot will need tending to over a period of hours, but for the most part it just has to sit and shiver. I set an alarm to remind me to add more water later, and go lay down on the couch. I turn the TV on, but that’s just for show. Soon I’m more asleep than awake.

It’s almost eleven when I hear the back door open. Frank is home. I throw off my blanket and scramble to my feet, eager to make an impression of usefulness. If he catches me lazing around he’ll get on my case about depression again. I hurry into the kitchen to offer him a cup of soup.

It’s not Frank at the back door.

Jem stands there with his hands in his pockets, looking uncomfortable.

“I destroyed your CD. You can fuck off now.”

The corner of his mouth twitches. “That’s a shame. I was gonna let you keep it.” I suppose it’s good that I was lying, then.

“Um, can we talk?”

“I thought we’d already said it all.” I go over to the stove to stir the soup. Jem tells me it smells good, like trite compliments will make me more amenable to conversation. I ignore him, but he steps further into my house and touches the back of my sweatshirt.

“You don’t look well.”

“Neither do you.”

He drops his hand. I’ve hurt his feelings—again. I can’t justify why I still care about that. I look over my shoulder at him, with his pursed lips and slanted brows as he struggles to think of the right thing to say.

The blood vessels in the corners of his eyes are a little inflamed. How sad is it that I notice such a subtle difference?

“You need carrots. And protein. What the hell have you been doing with yourself?” I tiredly reach down a bowl from the cupboard and retrieve a ladle from the drawer. I give Jem a bowl of hot broth with as many carrots as I can scoop out.

“You don’t have to—”

“Eat,” I tell him. “I’m not giving it to you to be friendly, so don’t waste your time feeling guilty. Just eat it.”

“I want to talk to you.”

I hand Jem a spoon. “Talking doesn’t work out so hot for us. Just eat.” I gesture to the table and offer him a seat.

“I said stuff I shouldn’t have.”

“No shit. Let’s not beat a dead horse by discussing it, okay?”

“I came here to apologize. Some of those things I said…I really didn’t mean them.”

I drop the ladle into the sink with a clatter. “well that’s the kicker, isn’t it? Which words
did
you mean?”

Jem starts to squirm. “I was mad, okay?”

“Don’t get defensive. I know you were upset. There’s only one thing you said that I really care about anyway.”

That makes Jem distinctly nervous.

“You know the one.”

“Maybe I did mean it,” he says quietly. “I’m not sure.”

I point to the door. “Get out of my house.” He doesn’t move.

“I didn’t mean that you haven’t suffered,” he says quickly. “But…it’s different. You haven’t lived in fear for your own life. You wouldn’t think like that—you wouldn’t take your life so lightly—if you had, I mean…

uh…” He fiddles with the edge of his pocket. He does that when he’s flustered. Bites his nails, too.

“Is that what you came over here to say?”

“I came to say a lot of things.”

I point to the table yet again. “Eat first.” I turn to head down the hall and Jem calls me back.

“Willa?”

“I’m just going to get dressed. Eat your damn soup already.”

I would be irritated that Jem’s presence necessitates changing out of sweats, but I’ve been wearing these since yesterday so it’s a good idea to change, regardless.

When I come back downstairs Jem’s bowl is empty. I put on the kettle for mint tea, because if he ate that fast he probably didn’t chew properly. Jem still looks hungry—he’s eyeing the pot on the stove—so I fill his bowl up again and he smiles shyly.

“Thanks. I wasn’t sure if I should just take seconds without asking.”

I toss him a yogurt pop for dessert. It’s a simple gesture, but it gives him cause to stop and study me.

“Are we okay now?”

I sigh. “We’re talking again.”

Jem: May 3 to 7

Wednesday I march through the front hall , straight upstairs to my room. Mom hears me come home and calls out an offer for reheated soup. I decline, and the words come out sharper than I intended. I’m still on edge. I’m still pissed off. I still want to take Willa by the shoulders and shake some sense into her.

Knowing she’d come so close to throwing her life away over fixable problems makes me so deeply angry I don’t even know how to articulate it. Her problems had workable solutions—solutions that didn’t involve putting her body through hell on a gamble. She didn’t have to go up to the top floor of a building and jump.

Unless she was lying, and it really was the meds acting for her. I wouldn’t put it past Willa to lie about that; she doesn’t like to feel weak or out of control. I end up Googling her list of drugs. I almost feel guilty about doing it, but then I think of how she’s probably running a search on AML, and decide
Fuck it
.

Looking at the info for her latest drug, Elavil, I wonder if she lied about being med-free, too. Apparently it can cause irritability, hostility, and impulsivity. Sounds like someone I know.

I need to get out of here. Maybe ‘here’ isn’t really a place; maybe it’s my own head I need to get out of, but I go downstairs and ask to borrow the car anyway.

“Where are you going?”

I have absolutely no idea. But I can’t tell Mom that. “I want to see if the clinic can take a walk-in; get my treatment over this week.” It’s a good enough reason for her, so she lets me take the car.

I have every intention of trying to find a calming place—maybe the park?—or perhaps just a place where I can vent and rage without being heard. But I don’t end up anywhere near the park. I miss the turnoff and end up near the hospital, even though it was supposed to be a cover story. Maybe I should see if the clinic can take a walk-in. But then I think of having to sit still for three hours at a time like this, and I know I wouldn’t be able to stand it.

I’m about to pass the hospital entrance when I spot a car parked in the north corner of the lot. It’s a lime green Volkswagen beetle—it stands out without trying. The sight of it brings nothing but dread. I pull in and park the car.

*

The nurse at triage in Pediatrics is Laura. She smiles when she sees me and even remembers my name, even though I haven’t been here in a few months.

“I thought I told you not to come back here?” she jokes.

“Just visiting.” Laura gives me the clipboard to sign in as a visitor and gives me one of the guest badges. She asks me who I’m here to see. “Meira.”

“Room 303.” Is it by nostalgia or chance that she’s still in the same room?

The door of room 303 is ajar when I approach. I poke my head in and smell the stale odors of sanitizer and vomit. She’s back for more napalm.

“Can I come in?”

“Whatever.” She’s got the curtain drawn around the bed. I step over to her side of it and try not to look surprised that she’s much worse than I anticipated. Meira was never a sizable person in the time I knew her. She was already on the ward when I got here, and she left just before I went into isolation. Last fal she was small and thin, but now she’s absolutely emaciated. Her skin is faintly yell ow and her eyes are bloodshot.

“Take that off,” she says, and reaches a boney arm up to snatch my hat. “It’s like wearing a burqa in a strip club.” Meira isn’t the vain type. She wears her scars with a sense of morbid pride.

“What happened to never coming back here?” I pull up the visitor’s chair and sit beside her.

“I’d be home if I could be.”

“Same diagnosis?” Last time Meira graced this ward with her scathing presence, she was being treated for masses in her upper intestine and stomach. Meira starts to shake her head and then thinks better of it. She must be fresh off a treatment.

“Stomach’s clear. It’s just my liver and pancreas that are boned.” She says it so casual y. I can feel my face go pale. She’s got a double-stamped death warrant.

“Are you here for maintenance chemo?” The likelihood of surviving either of those cancers, never mind both, is slim. Chances are she’s here to keep the problem from growing too big too fast, and thereby buy herself a little time.

“What are you here for?”

“To visit you.”

“That’s sweet.” She says it with a wry smile. Meira doesn’t do ‘sweet.’ Her pretty face and short stature belie an acerbic wit and cruel sense of justice. Meira doesn’t take anybody’s bullshit, a trait that has made her infamous on the ward.

She and I used to hang out with the other teens in the common lounge at the end of the hall . It’s a room with couches, tables, a TV and glass walls all around. Through the one wallwe could see into the pediatric psychiatry department, right next to the ward specifically for kids with eating disorders. I don’t know why they thought putting the cancer kids and the anorexics together was a good idea, but we were stuck with them. We all hated them, but Meira took it more personally than most.

Our lounge shared a corner with their therapy room. Every day we would see the counselors file in the patients, and they would sit around the table before perfectly measured, nutritionist-designed meals. And they wouldn’t eat. They’d sit there as a group and read the ingredients on every fucking item out loud, going through little mantras about how it was good for them to consume X amount of vitamin C and so many grams of carbohydrates, while ten feet away, a dozen or more of us were willing but unable to eat the same things.