A Mess of Reason (29 page)

“Oh, my mama told me that even though I’m
burned, I’m beautiful, because that comes from the inside.” In a
quick jump, she pops up on her toes and taps the tip of my nose as
she says these words in her sing-song voice: “Did someone make you
feel ugly? ’Cause let me tell you, my mama says you can’t give them
that super power.”

Her words unravel me with their simple
clarity.

“You have to use your very own
super-duper-powers. It’s really easy—wanna know how?” She’s shaking
one finger at me in rhythm with her petite hips. I’m pretty sure
any second now Oprah’s gonna bust through the door to interview
her.

“Yes, please, I would love to know.” My
words come out in a hushed tone because I’m spending all my energy
on keeping the giant pools of tears in my eyes at bay. I plaster a
smile on my face and keep nodding, because not for a second can I
take my eyes off of this precious, perfect little being who feels
like a fortune cookie and soul whisperer at once.

“
Awesomeness
!” she cheers, while
swinging a perky kick in the air like a dance move she must have
invented because it’s adorable as all get-out. “First, you smile at
them as big as you can. Show me one…a big one!” she commands in a
booming voice, and of course I paste on a whopper.

“Next, be really friendly and ask them a
question. Something easy that they can’t miss on, like, ‘Hey,
what’s your name?’—you know like we did before—and then you ask
them to play with you.”

Her words are Jiminy Cricket cute and clear.
It feels like she’s giving me directions to the North Pole along
with my very own key.

“You know, like chase or pocket kitties.
Then pay attention! ’Cause stuff will change a little bit at a
time. It doesn’t always work…but mostly it can.”

Her nodding, bobble-like head has me
entranced. She owns me.

“Now remember, mama always says, they’re
just as afraid of you as you are of them. You have to show them how
brave you are, and then most of the time they’ll be copycats.
Easy-peasy!”

Her tongue juts out of the corner of her
mouth as she tries to snap three times with her right hand. At the
same time she makes a clucking sound in her mouth that has me
nearly falling off my chair.

I take her hand in mine as my heart races,
while my feet move in unison. We walk to where her mom is sitting,
reading her Kindle. “Your mama is one smart cookie. I want to meet
her.”

She skips the rest of the way to her mom’s
side.

“Hi, I’m Tess.” My eyes sting as I put out
my hand to shake hers. “You and your daughter just…well, I think
you just sort of changed my life, and I wanted to say thank you. I
mean, really, with all my heart…thank you.”

The smile on her face is all-knowing as she
swings one arm around Gigi’s waist and kisses her on the cheek.

“Oh, thank you, Tess—that’s so kind of you.
Gigi’s pretty darn awesome, isn’t she?” Her face and her voice are
the grown-up version of Gigi’s. Their eyes are identical, as is the
small dimple they both wear on their right cheeks. The only
noticeable difference is their skin, and with all honesty, once you
get drawn into Gigi’s magic, you barely notice that.

“I need to go now, but I want to give you
something, okay?” I tell Gigi, then look at her mom and nod to the
bubblegum machine.

“Hey, where you going, Tess?” Gigi asks.

“I’m going home…thanks to you. Come with me;
I want to give you something.” We walk hand-in-hand across the room
to the giant red bubblegum machine. I pop quarter after quarter
into the coin slot until a big baubly sparkler flies down the
shoot, riding in its plastic bubble.

“This is a promise ring. My best friend gave
me the one I’m wearing.” I show her my ring as I place hers on one
of her tiny fingers. “Let’s pinky swear and promise each other
we’ll always remember to be beautiful from the inside out and to
rock our super-duper-powers, okay?”

“Okay! Cool!” She jumps up and down in place
while wiggling around as we perform our pinky swear. And I know in
my heart of hearts, this is one promise I will never break.

By the time I get through explaining my
situation to the receptionist, then the nurse, and have filled out
about an IRS amount of paperwork, it’s eight p.m. I have no plan
for how I’m going to handle seeing Scout for the first time, nor
any idea about when I’ll be ready, but one thing I know for certain
is that the two of us need to figure out where we go from here.

I take the long route out of the hospital
because I’m starved and much in need of some vending machine love.
After hours of leaving my phone resting idly in airplane mode, I
finally turn it back on. A string of texts instantly fills my
message box. The top three are from my dad, the third telling me I
need to get to him immediately as his cane has slid down the steps
in front of him while he’s stuck up stairs. For three years I’ve
been trying to convince him to sell his place and build a
ranch-style home. Based on this text, he’s been lying there for two
hours. I shoot him a quick text back telling him I’m on my way.

A Coke slides out of the vending machine as
I hear my name being called by a familiar voice.

“Tess? Is that you?”

“Sage? Oh my goodness, Sage, hey! What are
you doing here?” I haven’t seen Scout’s older sister in years, but
I’d know her anywhere. She’s the gorgeous female version of
him.

“I’m here for Scout—didn’t you hear?”

My heart drops to the bottom of my gut as
she says his name. “Hear what?”

“He was in a motorcycle accident last night.
Roxanne told me he was coming to find you.”

“Me? Wait…what…is he okay?” My insides twist
into knots as I picture the worst and fly into panic mode.

“He’s pretty banged up but he’s out of
intensive care. You want to see him?”

“Yeah, oh my God…” I start walking with her,
then realize my dad is stuck at the top of his steps waiting for
me, having likely pissed his pants by now. Fuck me!

“Sage, I need to get to my dad as well…he’s
stuck without his cane upstairs. But I need to see Scout.”

“Well, he might be sleeping—they have him on
hardcore painkillers that are keeping him practically
comatose.”

“Has he asked for me?” I can’t help myself.
I need to know.

“I’ve only seen him awake twice, and really
groggy at that, but your name was the first thing off his lips. So
are you two finally an item? Did you figure out that you were meant
to be together?”

Has it always that obvious to everyone
else?

“Um…well, sort of. We have some mending to
do.”

“Nothing like an accident to make things
clear, right?”

“Ahh…ha…yeah, weird.”

We walk into Scout’s dimly lit,
syrupy-smelling room. Everyone on the planet must know about his
accident based the funereal floral explosion surrounding him. The
sight of his still body makes me gasp. I kneel at his side, giving
in to a rainfall of tears. Wrapped in gauze, his head seems
gigantic. His eyelids are swollen like rotten plums, and his face
looks like he took on a tomcat and lost.

“Is anything broken?” I ask the nurse as she
grabs the chart at the end of his bed while eyeing me up over the
top of her readers.

“How are you related to Scout,
Miss…ah…?”

“I’m…I’m Tess. His girlfriend.”

“Ahh, well, I wondered when you were going
to show up.” She throws me a sideways smirk. “The only thing I can
tell that’s broken, if you really want to know, seems to be this
poor guy’s heart.” She gives me a disapproving cluck with her
tongue that pisses me off and makes me feel guilty that I’m the
reason he’s here.

“His…heart?”

“Yes. You’re the only person he’s been
asking for…mumbling each time he wakes up, ‘Tess. Make her stop.
Don’t let her do it…don’t let her go through with it.’ I think he
must think you’ve left him or are leaving him…something along those
lines.”

I’m frozen in place, knowing exactly what he
didn’t want me to do.

“Well, it’s over…it’s done with. He doesn’t
need to worry about that anymore.” The words fall out of me as I
stand up, stunned. “My dad…oh shit! I need to go to my dad. Sage, I
have to go. If Scout wakes up, tell him I was here. I’ll try to get
back soon.”

I run out of the room, realizing I’d never
even kissed him on the cheek or said “I love you” or even touched
his hand for that matter. Seeing him lying in that hospital bed,
all bandaged up, scared the crap out of me—not to mention what
Nurse Ratched said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

SCOUT

My head spins as I grip the bed rails,
feeling more drugged than a street junkie. Every inch of me aches.
I hear someone slowly explain my accident to me, as though I’m a
child.

“You flipped into the ditch…” The nurse’s
head is shaking as she waggles her eyebrows at me in disdain, as
though I’d meant to nearly kill myself. “Lucky you aren’t in fifty
pieces.”

“Did a—a woman…named Tess…did, uh, she come
by?” My voice comes out in patchy, barely-strung-together bits, my
throat feeling as if it had been coated in glass shards.

“Shhh…you’re better off not talking, Scout.
Your girlfriend stopped by.”

“Did she say anything…at all?”

“She said it was done. And that she would
try to stop back again, but I haven’t seen her in the last few
days. I can ask the other nurses if you’d like.”

Her words knock the wind out of me.
Done?

“Are you sure?”

She comes around to the head of the bed and
pokes around at me a bit annoyingly. “Your sister might know. They
were talking that first night when she came by for a minute or
so.”

She says it all almost triumphantly as she
glares at me. I want to get up and run out of here, needing to hear
Tess’s words myself. I need to know…because if I’m the reason she
did go ahead with it, I’ll never be able forgive myself.

“A minute or so?” What have we come to, me
and Tess? My heart feels shredded. All I need is her and all, it
seems, she needs is something else.

“She was in a hurry.”

“Apparently so,” I say as feel myself
drifting into another drug-induced state of la la land.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

TESS

striker says he might be out today

I read Roxanne’s text with butterflies
swirling in my gut. She’s been keeping tabs on Scout’s release from
the hospital like a good little Femme Nikita

thnx!…keep me posted pls.

Another round of bile snakes its way up my
throat. That would be the 24/7 vomit train ramrodding its way
through my system, wearing out its welcome. I can’t eat, can’t
sleep. But one things for sure: I can cry. Oh, sister, can I. I can
also manage to walk in circles like I’m a dog trying to make its
bed. Questions come at me like blizzarding snowflakes, prickly,
icy-cold little son-of-a-bitches that they are. What if, when he
gets out of the hospital, he doesn’t want me? What if I see him,
and I can’t stand the sight of his face because his last words were
so cruel? He told me he’d had it. He’d told me to “enjoy all the
fucking space I needed.” I think those were his exact words, if my
playback button is functioning properly.

Four. That’s how many of those terrifying,
life-altering, time-bomb boxes I’d bought today. Plus two cans of
smoked oysters, though when I opened one can, I puked instantly
from the smell. Paranoid…you think so? Four boxes: is that
overkill? I dunno. I’m feeling all crazy as a cuckoo right now.
Four seems safe—hell, I almost bought six.

And…what if I am? Pregnant, that is. What if
I am and we can’t work things out? Square one.

Gigi…I channel my inner Gigi as I look at my
ring and remember my pinky swear. Gigi: beautiful, beautiful,
beautiful.
Inside
.

I want the fairy tale…I’ve bought in. But
right now I feel like I’m eating soup with a fork. What if he has
not bought in? Are we even living in the same storybook?

Gigi, Gigi, beautiful inside.

Do you like this, being inside the flow of
psychotic drivel running through my head? It’s just me and that
bitch, Mrs. Hormone. She’s Thelma, I’m Louise. I need some
forward-moving action today or I really will go over the cliff with
her. Something beyond polishing my floors via my bunny
slippers—which, on that note, now look like overgrown dust bunnies.
Settle the brain…settle it. Where to begin? What to do first? Wax
the ceiling? Give the cat a Mohawk? Mow the carpet? Pee in a cup?
Barf again? Choices, choices. I suck at choices lately. Hormones
can do this a girl.
Capiche?
Four boxes. Do the math…that’s
eight tests. I can pee, barf, and play house all afternoon if I
want to. Suddenly I’m feeling spoiled and wanting to bust out into
my best Annie and sing about the sun coming out. Blechhhhh…oh God,
round six!

He should be here for this. He should be the
one sticking the damn thing in the pee cup, then telling me if
those lines are there or not. Limbo… otherwise know as the edge of
hell. He said it was my call, but is it? Is our relationship
hanging in the balance waiting for my call?

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

SCOUT

“Tess, sweetheart, open the door. We need to
talk…now. Enough of this, please. I’m beggin’ you for some
conversation.” Why is it I always seem to be on this side of the
door with her? It’s like I’ve hit bottom and I just keep
digging.

“Open it…or do I need to deconstruct this
doorjamb as well? You know I will. I just want to sit, talk, and
hold your hand in mine. I need to be near you. I need you.”

My body aches like hell. I’m still pumping
major meds and I’m guessing this is going be an all-nighter, so I
slide down against the door, slumping my body onto the floor.

“I don’t give a fuck what you need right
now.”
Stubbornness
being one of Tess’s more prominent
personality traits…brightly shining.