Wake (62 page)

The sanctuary has emptied out. It’s just a long, tall hall way with colored patterns on the floor from the stained glass. I’m looking around for Frank when Willa suddenly grabs my elbow and pulls me through the door on our left.

The space beyond the door is dark and cramped. We’re in a confessional. Willa wraps her arms around my middle and squeezes, hard.

“Thanks for coming.”

I hug her back. The top of Willa’s head fits right under my chin.

“You’re welcome.” Her hair is so soft. “You had to pull me in here to tell me that?”

Willa shrugs. “I didn’t want Frank to catch me
touching
you, heaven forbid.”

I snort and point out that if her brother sees us leaving a confessional together, he’s probably going to think we were making out in here.

We could…

Because talking about her dead sister would definitely put her in the mood, idiot.

Willa lets go of the hug and steps out of the confessional. I follow her into the aisle to continue our search for Frank. He’s not in either of the side of the chancel or in the little side chapel dedicated to St.

Paul. We don’t find him until we pass by the parish office, and Willa spots him through the window in the door. He’s in conversation with the priest and looks very troubled.

“Shit,” Willa mutters. Her shoulders sink and she turns away. It doesn’t take much to figure out that she’s the cause of her brother’s worries.

Willa marches away from the office, out the nearest door that leads away from the parking lot. I’m not sure she wants company right now, but I follow her anyway. We’re barely ten feet beyond the side door when she stops dead and stares at the cemetery behind the church.

“I didn’t know they had a labyrinth.” She points to the center of the cemetery, to a paved space surrounded by shrubs and four benches. It looks like a place where people can congregate before and after burials.

“A what?”

Willa takes the gravel path up through the cemetery, right to the edge of the paved platform. It’s red paving stone inlaid with grey to form the shape of a circular line pattern with a flower in the center.

“They put a maze in a graveyard?”

“It’s not a maze, there’s only one path.” Willa points out the solitary route through the symbol. “You’re supposed to walk it and meditate.”

“You’ve done it?”

“I’ve seen it done. Discovery Channel.”

“You want to try it?”

Willa walks around the edge of the platform to the spot where the circle opens to let people in. She pauses at the entrance for a moment and then steps onto the platform. It’s by impulse that I reach out and grab her hand, and she doesn’t seem to register it—she just pulls me along with her, onto the narrow path that winds back and forth on itself. The path takes us around the center of the pattern, around the flower, back and forth, back and forth. The outside of the circle seems wide and remote, like we’re so far from the goal on the fringes of the path. I keep looking down, tracing how far we’ve come and how far we’re going. Willa doesn’t look the same way. Her head is bowed and her eyes unfocused, tracking the space immediately in front of her and nothing more. She doesn’t look at the distance, at the forward and backward motion of it all. Her pace slows to a crawl. I walk close behind her. Willa still has one of my hands in hers. I rest the other on her waist, moving forward with her.

Every step forward is a step back, the way the path winds back on itself over and over. It’s like walking through a mind full of indecision. When she stops, I don’t immediately realize why, and then I notice the scal oped tiles. We’re at the end, which isn’t really the end. The center of the circle is a spot big enough for three or more people to stand. The hand I rested on her hip slips around her front in a gentle hug. She lets me hold her, and it feels good.

“What now?”

Willa sighs. “We go back.” She turns to face me with a strange smile. “You lead.”

The fact that the returning path is the same but opposite throws me off the whole meditation thing. It’s harder to lead than it is to follow. I reach a hand back to where I can feel Willa walking behind me, but she doesn’t take it. She puts her little hands on my shoulder blades. It’s a gesture that’s both comforting and encouraging.

I feel her forehead come to rest against my back.

“Are you ever afraid to touch me?” I murmur. I know it’s not easy for her to look at me sometimes, even though she does it anyway. Her touch, though, makes her more unique than she must realize.

“Never.” I can’t feel her forehead against me anymore. Her hands move down from my shoulders, running slowly to the small of my back and returning to their original spot. Her fingers trace the backs of my shoulders, down my arms, and in between my fingers. We end the walk hand in hand.

Kiss her.

“How do you feel?” I look up to find Arthur sitting on one of the benches around the platform, watching us with a smile. “It’s very centering, isn’t it?”

How long has he been sitting there?

“Yeah,” Willa says. “It is.”

Arthur gives us this cheeky grin and says he should have known we’d walk it together. “Friendship is a blessing. A bond like yours is an uncommon gift from God. I’m glad you seem to treasure it.”

What are we supposed to say to that?

“I have to go find my brother.”

Monday

Four. Fucking four. Four fucking opportunities to kiss her this fucking weekend and I didn’t take a single fucking one. But why the fuck should I have?

No, I’m not stressed. Why do you ask?

“This is nice,” I tell her. “Uncomplicated.”

Willa throws a potato chip a few feet from the picnic table, just to see what happens. A seagull snaps it up and waddles off with the chip clasped in its beak.

Willa’s got her blank look on, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

“Yeah, uncomplicated…” She puts a chip in her mouth and chews slowly. “We should take bets on how soon karma is going to screw it all up again.”

I scowl. Pessimism is my job, damn it.

The bell rings and Willa stands up to go back inside for Social Studies. I don’t immediately follow, and she actually stands and waits.

“Dipshit,” she says when I take too long, “that was the bell.” I get up and we trudge back to the main building, taking our sweet time about it.

“What does your brother think of your filthy mouth?”

“Hates it.” Willa crumples her empty chip bag. “I had to watch my language around the Jesus freaks yesterday. It sucked.”

I tell her she can pay me back for having to endure that Group session this Thursday at five-thirty.

“Bring your album,” she says. “We can dissect your life this time.”

Hell no.

Tuesday

Fuck you, Oxy.

The hot water on my shoulders feels nice. It soothes the worst of the joint pain and relaxes me. I don’t want to get out of the shower. I know it will start to hurt again once the warmth is gone. I’m used to a dull ache, but weaning off the painkillers has just made me more aware of the soreness.

I come out of the bathroom to find a steaming mug of tea on my dresser. Thank you, Mom. I’m slowly getting dressed, muttering “fuck Oxy” under my breath at every painful step, when Dad knocks on my door and asks if I need help.

“A little stiffness is to be expected,” he says as he helps me on with my shirt. My shoulders are too stiff to lift my arms over my head.

“Don’t tell Lise and Eric, okay?”

He’s reluctant to agree, but he does promise not to say anything until I decide to tell them myself. I don’t want to worry them. They’ve gone through enough because of me.

Wednesday

I wish my sister was a lesbian. Maybe then I wouldn’t have to stand here and listen to this ignoramus talk about Radiohead like they’re the best band in the world. Eric is running late, and unfortunately he has the keys, so Elise and I are stuck waiting by the car for him. That’s when Mr. I-Have-A-Hard-On-For-

Radiohead came up and started talking to her. Apparently, Elise’s favorite band is suddenly Radiohead too. What a coincidence.

“I liked you better before you sold your soul for tail,” I tell her as we drive away. She turns around in the front seat and asks, “Have you kissed Willa again yet?” She smirks wickedly and I know she’s got some evil plan to use her il -gotten Polaroid against me. I give her the finger and Eric chimes in with surprise, “You kissed Willa?”

“On the porch,” Elise answers.

“Wow.” Eric shrugs with his eyebrows. “I thought she had standards.”

“Shut up.”

Thursday

I pick Willa up at five, as per our agreement. As we pull away from her house she reaches into the backseat and picks up my backpack.

“What are you doing?”

Willa unabashedly rifles through my stuff. “We need to make a quick stop first,” she announces.

“What?”

“You were supposed to bring the album, remember?” I was hoping she had forgotten about that.

“We don’t have time to go back to my house.”

“That’s okay,” she says. “Let me take your car after we get to the hospital. I’ll get the album from your house and come back to meet you.” Because I’m just going to let her poke around my bedroom when I’m not there. Even if Mom or Elise was with her, they would still give her too much information.

“Next time, okay?”

The Dialysis Clinic is on the second floor of the hospital, next to the fracture clinic. Willa keeps her hood up as we walk to the elevators, trying not to be seen and roped into volunteering by any of the people in green vests. She relaxes when we get in the elevator, but hunches up again as we cross the second floor to the clinic.

“Hey,” Willa says. She gently tugs the side of my jacket to get my attention. “I’m gonna go to the washroom first. I’ll meet you in there.”

“Sure.”

It’s not until I’m taking my jacket off for treatment that I realize it doesn’t feel right. One of the pockets is empty. Willa stole my keys.

She’s gone for thirty minutes; long enough that I’m already hooked up to the dialyzer and mad as hell when she gets back. And she doesn’t just have the photo album with her. She’s got the album, a shoebox, and a black note-calendar in her backpack.

“Did you raid my entire room?”

“Yeah. Jeez, you keep a lot of porn,” she says. I do not, and her sarcasm isn’t improving my mood. I hold out my hand for the keys and she drops them in my palm without apology.

“I could have reported the car stolen, you know.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“You’re in enough trouble.”

“How kind of you.” She smirks. “On to business.” Willa unlocks the brakes on the side table and brings it in front of my recliner. She pulls her chair up to the other side, like she’s a cop about to interrogate a suspect. Her evidence comes out piece by piece: the album, the calendar, and the shoebox. The opens the book covers first.

“Help me understand this timeline,” she says. “The calendar doesn’t start until your first round of chemo. When were you diagnosed?”

“July second.” Barely a week after we moved here. Mom took me to the doctor to get antibiotics for a persistent, fatiguing bug, but things didn’t go as planned.

Willa skims Mom’s medical notes on each page of the calendar. She knows what most of them mean, which is sort of sad, but it’s also nice because it means she has fewer questions. Most of them revolve around the calendar and the album together. If there is a significant event on the calendar but no corresponding photos in the album, she questions it relentlessly. When did I become unable to digest solid foods? Was I able to go to school in between treatments, or was I kept in isolation because of flu season?

“Why do you want to know all this?” It’s moot to tell her these inconsequential details. It has no bearing on the here and now.

“I’m trying to figure it out,” she says.

“Figure what out?”

She lifts her gaze from the calendar and looks me straight in the eye. “At what point you died.” She’s good at that—at knocking the breath out of me with five little words.

“Something in you
did
die,” she insists. Willa takes a Polaroid from the first page of the album out of its sleeve and sets it on the table, and then places a much later photo beside it.

“It’s not even the same person.” She points between the two photos. In one I still look human, sitting for my first treatment and masking my fear with anger. In the other I’m stripped apart and I don’t have the energy to be angry anymore. I’m just weak and vulnerable and alien.

Willa puts the photos back in their places. “I’ll probably kill you, you know.” Is there anything left to kill ?

Or is she hoping I’ll ask her to hand over an entire bottle of pill s?

Willa closes the books and turns to the shoebox. Why did she have to bring that?

“I found this on your shelf,” she says. Willa sets aside the lid and peers at the contents. It’s just a collection of junk—old hospital bracelets and a broken keychain and some stray photos from before.

Willa picks up one of the bracelets and smiles.

“We have the same blood type.”

“Fascinating.” She rolls her eyes at my sarcasm.

“How could your parents give you such a normal middle name after
Jeremiah
?”

“Shut up.”

She smiles at me and taps the yell ow strip on the bracelet. “You were a fall risk?”

“I was weak.”

She puts the bracelet aside and starts flipping through the loose photos. They’re pictures that have been given to me from friends over the years. Willa stops on the one that Emily took last June, right before I moved away and my biggest problem was that I was pissed off about moving to middle-of-

nowhere Smiths Falls. The piano and my cell o had already been moved to the new house along with most of the furniture, so my usual method of venting frustration was out. Elise got tired of me moping around and bugged me to take her to the beach at Gatineau Park. A few friends came along. In the photo I’m giving Elise a piggyback ride and she’s got her hand stretched out to pass a water bottle to Morgan.