Words and Their Meanings (11 page)

Daily Verse:

I wanted to take responsibility for my own actions.

25

T
he four days that followed ran together in a sea of blurry moments, all smeared between hospital and home. Time stops in waiting rooms, only restarting at dark, when visiting hours are over and I trudged back home. And every night, I pulled into my driveway to see Mateo sitting on my front porch. Sometimes, he rested his hand on mine. Mostly, we just sat without talking.

Last night, Mom caught me standing in the hospital's fifth-floor hallway staring into space like a ghost. Then she had a long, whispery talk with Liza and decided I need a normal routine. Which, I said, means hospital. home. eat. sleep. repeat. She does not agree.

“I am not going,” I say with such force my swollen eyes start burning again.

“Oh yes you are,” Mom snaps back. She's rifling through Bea's closet, pulling out pajamas and T-shirts and pants and underwear. Bea's already strapped in Dad's bucket seat. She went without a fight.

“Your sister is going with your father and you are going to work. I don't want to hear another word about it.”

“Well, you don't have to hear anything. You can watch me shake my head no.”

“Anna, I'm not doing this. For once, it is not about you. Go to work. I'm going to the hospital. Go. To. Work.”

“Not happening.”

I walk away.

She grabs my arm, right across the words I wrote this morning. It seems so long ago now.

“Go to work, or I put you in the car with your father and he drives you straight to BrightLight. I cannot—I cannot—worry about you. In fact—” She pauses and yells out Bea's open door for my dad. “In fact, your dad will drop you off at your job site. And pick you up.”

“Don't open your mouth to argue,” Dad says, thundering up the stairs. The two of them stand next to Bea's dresser, staring at me. I turn and sulk out of the room. My dad's voice follows, asking Mom if the suitcase is ready and if Bea still sleeps with Larry the one-eyed penguin. And then he pauses and asks if she remembers frantically packing the same suitcase in the middle of the night Joe's first weekend at college when he got caught drinking and proceeded to mouth off to campus security. How Mom brought four toothbrushes and no pants, and how she walked into the police station the next morning in her neon green pajama bottoms, which Joe claimed made his hangover worse.

Mom laughs a little. I shut the door to my room. I remember that weekend too. We woke to Gramps and his skyscraper plate of pancakes. Except he told us Dad and Mom went to parents' weekend. Joe never told me the truth.

Silence is beginning to say more than I ever imagined it could.

–––––

Nat's afraid to talk to me. She keeps staring and looking away when I catch her. Then she glances over and smiles, shy and nervous. She hasn't called once since she heard about Gramps. I'm her best friend, yet she has no clue how to deal with this because I'm that big of a freak. A freak who should wear a “Don't Get Too Close or You Might Die” sign around her neck.

But Gramps isn't dead. Not yet. They don't know what happened. Maybe a heart attack. Maybe a seizure. Maybe a stroke. Maybe a granddaughter who ditched out on lunch. Lots of tests. Medically induced coma. At least he was only in the water a minute, not twenty million. Someone fishing nearby watched the whole thing happen and pulled him out.

I shouldn't be here, shouldn't be working right now. I need to be at the hospital.

“How are you?”

I turn around and Mateo catches my elbow.

“I'm fine. I'm fine.”

He lets go and I move fast in the other direction. Do a lightning round of appetizer deliveries before Nat nearly bowls me over in an effort to get the empty tray from my hands.

“I'm sorry,” she blurts.

“I'm fine.”

“Oh my God, Anna. No you aren't. I'm just … I didn't know what to say.”

“I'm. Fine.”

“I should have called. I tried a ton of times but I kept hanging up and—”

I shove the tray at her, not sure why I'm so mad.

“Let it go, okay? I'm FINE.” I storm in the other direction, opening the first door I see and ducking inside.

This event space is a defunct restaurant that's now rented for weddings and reunions and company parties, like the one we're working tonight. I'm standing in a big closet, probably originally built for bulk dry goods like flour and napkins and straws. Now it's empty and dark. Not even a shelf left. I lean against the cold wall.

I don't know how long I'm hiding before the door opens. I squint. The door shuts. Someone else is breathing.

“I saw you come in, and I thought maybe you needed a minute. But … you've been in here a while.”

“Why are you so nice to me? What is it about me—me out of all these flirty, happy, bouncy, beautiful girls out there—that's so interesting?”

Mateo is quiet.

He moves closer without making a sound. Presses his body to mine, trapping me against the wall. I tense. He's warm. I shiver.

Our lips are almost touching. He smells like garlic and basil and something I can't quite place. Sorrow, squeezed like lemons? I hold my breath, afraid to move.

He still doesn't answer. I close my eyes, let the dark get darker. Let this boy I don't want to want but want all the same set his lips against mine. They rest there, a question, waiting. I press back.

When I pause and bring an inch of space between us, Mateo slides his hand behind my neck. His breath hitches with want, with the pull we both feel.

Then his mouth meets mine again and everything gets very fuzzy and exploding and wonderful for a minute.

Until the door flies open, a pair of hands reaching into the closet, dragging us into the light.

“You,” the head chef snaps, her gray ponytail swinging as she whips away, and back to, Mateo, “are fired. Get. Out. Now.”

We both stand there, assimilating into undarkness. A body, electrified, sends every bit of oxygen to lungs and limbs, like trying not to drown. Words stop making sense because no neurons are firing to help process them.

Mateo comes around first.

“Please. Nancy—please. They could take away my spot for this—”

“Out.”

“I'm sorry,” he pleads.

I am rooted beside him, willing my particles to rearrange themselves into part of the wall.

“For what?” Nancy says, flicking her hand in my direction. “Getting to know the anatomy of a girl you shouldn't be messing with? I told you already there's a line of kids waiting to take your place. I don't do second chances, no matter who you are.”

“Please—”

“Out.”

Without so much as an exhale, Mateo pulls off his apron and pushes out the restaurant's back door into the light of early evening. I watch his back from the slit window.

“Forty-five applicants for a student chef position, and the one I pick, the one with the most promise, ends up trying to get in a waitress's pants, and burns an entire batch of tortes in the process. He doesn't deserve to be—” Nancy pauses, as if just remembering I'm still standing here. She lets out a disgusted snort. “Get to work. You aren't my problem.”

For a minute I stay cemented to the tile floor.

Mateo is already out of sight. The window is empty. Its view shows only brown, weedy grass and the corner of a green Dumpster.

I want to go after him, but I don't move. His Jeep roars to life. Tires burn against pavement as it squeals away.

Like I said, there should be a sign around my neck:
Stay Away. Life Wrecker.

I don't care about what will happen to me anymore. I walk up to the head of the wait staff, an always bubbling college-age girl named Mary. I tap her on the back, and announce without second thought
: Hi, Mary. Sorry, but I quit.

Outside, while I wait for Dad to get me, I think about Mateo's lips against mine. I've never been very good at letting go.

Daily Verse:

I'm not hung up on anybody's idea of who I should be.

26

W
e are sitting at Sabroso, a Mexican restaurant in Old Town. It's near the hospital. Rays of sunlight filter through windows hazy with soap residue. The teal vinyl booth in the front is faded in crooked streaks. I pick at the corner. There is a knife-like slit with foam pushing out of it. A plate of nachos quite possibly twice the size of my head and towering with a questionable meat substance sits on the table. Are cats supposed to be used in place of chicken in Mexican or Chinese restaurants?

“You can't call emergency intervention because my grandpa is currently a vegetable and I am now using this as a diversionary tactic.”

Nat's eyes go wide and her mouth hangs half-open even though some semi-chewed nacho chips are still in it. She swallows with exaggerated effort.

“Awful. Seriously. That was cross-the-line awful. You are sitting here refusing to talk about anything but an accelerated plan to find Joe's secret girlfriend—”

“Not girlfriend,” I say, pointing a fork at Nat's face.

She looks pained, and pushes the utensil back to the table.

“Here's the thing, Anna. You don't have a dash between your born date and death date, but everything you are doing right now—obsessing over this thing with Joe, quitting your job, practically living at the hospital—it's flashing warning signs. You can't go there again. You can't do this to your family.”

“My family. Right, Nat. Let's review what I've already done to my family: one member is dead. One is dying. Plus, there's one divorce in progress. I can trace all of those things back to me. So thanks, but I don't need you telling me what I can and can't do.”

Gramps can't open his eyes, can't squeeze Mom's hand. Things keep shutting down and nobody has an answer. Life support is beginning to feel like death avoidance. It's only been a year and some change since Joe. And now, here I am again, waiting, trying to stop hoping. And drowning in what I could have done to save someone I love.

Nat and I glare at each other until the short waitress who isn't a ton older than us comes up and pours water in our empty glasses.

“
Mucho gracias
,” I say.

“Um, you're welcome.”

A fly lands on Nacho Mountain and I think about Bea and our dead dog and insect barf. My fork twirls in my fingers. Nat is frustrated. She pushes back against the booth and crosses her arms.

“Let's try again. It's good that your mom said you can watch Bea for the rest of your ‘summer job' so long as you agree to relocate from the waiting room to home. So, no crazy Bible camp. That's a positive thing.” She's letting me know we can drop the subject.

Nat stirs her ice water with a spoon. She tucks hair behind her ears. Glancing around the near-empty restaurant, she tries to come up with more common ground.

“Maybe you should add Laura to the list,” she says in this resigned tone.

I ought to be glad she's trying to help, but come on. I mean, Laura and Sameera are practically sisters. That goes well beyond everyone being shocked Joe and the mystery girl were together. A Laura + Joe combination would be more like a mushroom cloud of destruction.

I may not have known Joe's every secret, but I do know it isn't her.

“Seriously? I am not wasting my time there.”

“All right. Whatever. Just trying to make conversation. What are you going to do about Mateo? He hasn't tried calling?”

I rip the paper napkin on my lap and roll the pieces back and forth. I stare at the clock on the wall. It's one of those generic office-looking ones, black rimmed with a
grease-spattered plastic half-bubble covering the numbers and sharp, spiked hands.

“At least answer me.”

I sigh. She's not going to give it up.

“No. I haven't heard from him. I got him fired, Nat. Fired from a job that he needed to keep in order to stay in good standing for the culinary program he's supposed to attend this fall. The program he's supposed to attend in order to be basically guaranteed a spot in a top culinary institute or restaurant, post graduation.”

“You have to stop doing this,” Nat says, sitting up straight. “You have to stop blaming yourself for everything bad that happens. He kissed you. Not the other way around. What happened after wasn't your fault.”

I stab the center of the nacho pile. My fork stands up all by itself. Nat groans.

“I wish I'd paid more attention in statistics and probabilities class so I could give you some hard and fast truths about how this last year has been a huge, random accident,” she says.

“Joe's death—the odds were 1,728,234 to one.”

Nat stares at me.

“But that's not taking into account the Anna factor,” I add. “I'm sure if we add what I did to Joe, or how I cancelled plans with Gramps, or how I kissed Mateo back, the formula's results for odds of trouble when spending time with Anna O'Mally would be more like a three to one ratio.”

The way Nat twists her mouth makes me wonder if she's calculating the risks of being my friend. It's like playing with matches in the middle of a gas station, and we both know it. I pull money from my pocket and motion for the bill.

“No worries, Nat. It's all good. I'm on a mission right now that doesn't require backup. I'll get lunch. You go ahead and get out of here.”

She doesn't argue. I can see her pause when she's outside, though, digging in her enormous red purse until she finally produces her phone. It's decorated with gold star stickers. When she starts walking again, it's three huge steps in my direction, until she's standing on the other side of the dirty window, knocking on the glass. Holding up the phone, she points and smiles.

The screen says, “Mateo.”