Best Friends Through Eternity (12 page)

“Did you have them make you look exactly like me?” Me and yet somehow prettier. Or could I actually be that good-looking, too?

“You know what they say. All Asians look alike.”

“No, Kim. They don’t.”

“We always looked the same.”

I reach back in my mind for a visual memory. Seven years is such a long time ago. “Our moms used to dress us the same. People got us mixed up.”

“That’s right. You remember!”

There is something odd about that, but I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe it’s this whole experience, like a vivid nightmare. “What happened to Jasmine? Did I save her?”

“You didn’t even ask about her last time,” Kim scolds. “It was all about you.”

I think about that for a moment. “But she wasn’t with me on the train track!”

“Yes, but those girls were going to ambush her on the overpass and you weren’t there to help her.”

“Okay, you’re right. It was all about me last time. But I want to know about her today: Was she hurt?”

“Not last time. But today she’s dead.” She says it so matter-of-factly, I can’t believe it for a moment.

“No!” I tell her as though scolding a bad dog. “Why isn’t she here with us, then?”

“You’re not in the same category. You’re only mostly dead. Your mother still has to pull the plug.” She stares at me, her head tilted. I see that she can’t understand my disbelief. To her, being dead is everyday life.

I also see that she’s telling me the straight-up truth. “Kimmee!” I sink to my knees, the hot sand scorching them. “I can’t have killed her by going back!”

“No, you didn’t.” She smiles at me. “She made the choice to jump.”

“But it was all because of those stupid pictures.” I stare at the sun-bright diamonds of sand for a moment, then stagger
back up to my feet. “It didn’t happen when I walked around Body Worlds all by myself.”

“True.” Kim just looks at me, owl-like through my glasses.

I pull them off her and put them back on. “So I try to be a better person, and I end up making things worse?”

She shrugs. “These things never work out all that well.”

“Can I go back? I didn’t get a full week.”

“But you don’t know what the outcome will be this time, either.”

“She can’t die because of some stupid Facebook photos.” I grab Kim’s arms. “Get me back to Body Worlds. Only one extra day.”

Kim rolls her eyes, and it’s so eerie. I saw that exact facial expression in my mother’s dresser mirror when I rolled my own eyes at something she said. I can’t process how bizarre having a doppelgänger is just at that moment. I have to concentrate on saving Jazz. “Kim, please?”

“I’ll check.” She jogs into the water, deeper and deeper. When the waves reach her armpits, she throws her arms open into a breaststroke and disappears.

I stare after her for a moment, then down at my feet. This time there is no castle to build, no hole to dig or parents to search for at the other end of the hole. I lift my eyes again toward those waving palm trees. I breathe in the slightly off smell of the seaweed at the edge of the beach and watch two seagulls dip and dive into the ocean. They call to each other in a high worried pitch.

I look down to the point on the ocean where Kim disappeared.

Still no Kim.

It’s taking so much longer this time. All I really need to do is snatch Max’s phone from him at Body Worlds so he can’t take photos. It won’t even take the whole day. They can suck me right from the face of the planet after that moment. I wish I could tell them this myself.

What is taking Kim so long? She isn’t a great person to argue my case. She’s always been kind of an all-logic, no-emotion kid. Just like me.

Maybe that’s the way all babies left under lampposts grow up to be. But why does she look so much like me? Does your personality shape the way your cheeks and nose form? Or is that our Chinese heritage?

At last, I see the air sparkle as though diamonds of sand have been tossed into it. The sparkle turns into gold and finally Kim forms. She walks toward me.

“Okay,” she says tiredly. “You get to go back again.” She beckons with her hand, and I wade into the ocean to meet her. Then she grabs me and shoves my head under the water.

W
hen I surface, I’m strolling through Body Worlds with Max. We’re heading to the ape cadaver, and he reaches into his pocket.

“Don’t take a picture,” I say.

“How did you know what I was going to do?” Max asks.

“Well, I didn’t think you needed to make a phone call.” I put my hand on his wrist.

His skin flushes. He smiles at me. “Fine, I won’t take a photo. I would have sent you a copy.”

“My mother gave me some extra money. Why don’t we just go to the souvenir shop? Maybe we can buy a plastic kidney or something instead.”

“Sure.” He slips his wrist from under my hand and grabs mine. Something really strange happens then. He leans over and kisses me. Not on the cheek, either. It isn’t a long, passionate, tonsil-hockey kind of smooch. His lips
touch mine so quickly that I can almost swear it never happened.

My second kiss from a boy, both from him. He’s just a friend, a fairly dorky-looking one at that. But he makes me want to live longer so that I can experience the real thing someday.

He doesn’t say anything, just tugs me along to the next exhibit. Everything else pretty much happens the same way, except that, after the washroom break, we head for the gift shop and I buy a couple of postcards for us. I keep the one of the horseback rider. The other, a shot of the ape cadaver, I give to him. Nobody would bother to Photoshop Jazz’s or Cameron’s head onto either one.

That afternoon, on the walk home from school, I feel just as tense as if I had read a Facebook plan to beat us up at the overpass. Events keep shifting. The last time, the volleyball team ambushed us three days early; maybe it would be four this time.

Jazz and I have the conversation about organ donation with me checking over my shoulder. I walk more slowly despite the cold.

“Jazz, have you ever talked to your mother about guys?”

“Gawd no. As it is, my grandfather will be sending photos of suitable boys.”

“Don’t you wonder if your mom fell in love? I mean, do you think your dad was her choice? Or was she forced into marrying him?”

“I try never to think about my parents in that way at all.”

“You mean as real people?” I turn to look at her. I try to lead her very carefully. I want her to tell her mother about Cameron. Replaying today may only put off her leap in front of a train to a later moment.

She raises her eyebrows at me and screws up her mouth.

“Well, just think about it. If you talk to her about what you want to do with your life—say, going to university, seeing boys you like along the way—maybe, depending on how she sees her own life, she’ll be willing to compromise.”

“Yeah, but what about Dad?”

“I don’t know, Jazz. My mom’s definitely the boss of my father.”

“I just don’t want to be shipped off any earlier than this summer.”

“Talk to your mother. You know you’re taking a chance, anyway. Lying and hiding this thing with Cameron. It’s only a matter of time.”

“You don’t want to cover for me anymore,” Jazz says sadly.

“No! I mean, that’s not it.” I take her hands in mine. “You’re my best friend, and I don’t want you to be forced into any kind of marriage, ever.”

We make it safely by the overpass to our corner. “Be careful, Jazz. Hurry home. Message me when you get there!” I walk the rest of the way to my house alone. Then I go on the computer, but of course Max hasn’t put any
photos on Facebook this time. Instead, I get a message from him.

My heart does a quick hip-hop. I know this doesn’t mean “go out” as in go to a movie or a restaurant or anything at all right this minute. He means, as in see each other as boyfriend and girlfriend, officially.

If I say no, it may cause the end of our friendship. If I say yes, I will be going out with the geek of the century. Me, Paige Barta, second-biggest geek of the century. I smile. He’ll be good-looking someday, but I can’t wait. I type him a one-word message. Yes.

That means, for the rest of my four-day life, I will be in a relationship with Max. Better than being all alone.

Dad comes home, and this time I tell him straight out that I want my organs donated should anything ever happen to me.

He can’t even talk after that so I just stand beside him, handing him the chili powder, cumin and cinnamon before he asks for it. Technically this should cause Kim’s elders to zap me back to the beach, but I don’t care. At least I did what I could to save Jasmine from jumping in front of that train.

When Mom comes home, I don’t have to ask her about why Kim’s parents wanted donations to the Kidney Foundation. Instead, I follow her to her bedroom.

“Mom, do we have any pictures of me and Kim together? I seem to remember you always taking them.”

She gives me one of her electric glances, sharp and questioning. “Sure, hon. Just let me get changed.”

I watch as she puts her Mother’s Day handprint T-shirt on. The lime color has faded. I wish I’d given her another top in these last three years. Maybe I could have tie-dyed one. My hands are so much bigger now. Then she goes into her closet and reaches up high for a heart-shaped box.

She hands it to me and I sit down on the edge of the bed, her heart on my lap. I lift the lid and pull out a book with a large square photo in the center of the cover. A serious-looking toddler with a pouty mouth and dark brown saucer eyes.
Paige’s Book,
the words across it read.

“There are lots more on the CDs in Dad’s boxes. Those are just the best ones I put together to have something instant to look at. A memory book.”

“But then you hid it away.” I flip the cover. There is one of Kim and me, each holding a silver, mouse-shaped balloon by a string in one hand. Our other hands are joined. “Second Gotcha Day,” the caption reads. There are some of us at Disney World and Canada’s Wonderland. “Vacation.”

“We found the memories too painful. We thought they would be for you, too.”

In another photo, Kim and I sit poring over a picture book. In the next photo, we must have been about five years old, hand in hand, wearing kilts and red sweaters.
“After-kindergarten playdate,” it reads. We lived on opposite sides of Burlington, so unfortunately didn’t go to the same school.

The shot of us both in our ladybug bathing suits sucks the breath out of my body. We aren’t toddlers in it; we must have been close to seven years old then.

“Mom, we look so much alike.”

“Yes.” Mom isn’t looking at me when she answers. Something is wrong.

Next shot Kim and I are sitting on a beach digging a hole for China, hoping to find our “real” parents. “Mom, we aren’t just a couple of babies that happen to look alike. We look exactly the same.”

“The similarity is uncanny.” She nods. “Beverly Ellis and I met at a Red Thread gathering. You and Kim found each other immediately and started playing together.”

“Red Thread,” I repeat. But I already know this part of the story.

“It was the support group for Chinese adoption families. Once we found Bev and Kim, we didn’t need anyone else. We dropped out.” Mom smiles.

“And we even came from the same orphanage and everything.” Something is nagging at me, a detail I need to fully form in my brain.

Mom nods. “We only realized that after we met.”

I frown and look at the other photographs.

In the last one, we wear party hats and blow at seven
candles on a cake. “Happy seventh Gotcha Day,” it reads.

Only it can’t have been happy because Kim became infected with
E. coli
at that celebration. The detail finally shapes itself in my thoughts.

“Mom, we’re sisters, aren’t we?”

“Yes.” She turns to me, her eyes shining. “Neither family knew that when we adopted you.”

“But even sisters don’t look that much alike.” I pause, rubbing at my eyes. “We’re identical.”

Mom stays quiet for a few more heartbeats. “We had your DNA tested.”

“Kim and I are twins?” I ask it as a question, but in my heart I know the answer.

Mom nods. “But we didn’t realize that till after we met at the Red Thread meeting. You two were given to us independently. Had they kept you together as twins, neither of us would have qualified to adopt you.”

“But you never told us.”

“Because we couldn’t raise you as sisters. We did the next best thing.”

“Vacations and playdates together.” I shake my head, feeling cheated. “Mom, why wouldn’t you let me visit my own sister in the hospital?”

“I … we couldn’t.” Mom brushes her fingers down my hair.

“Why not?” I can feel a fist squeezing my heart. I just know the answer will be really hard to take.

“Because … because Bev wanted to try for a kidney transplant.”

I drop my head to my hands. “And I would have been the perfect match.”

“Yes.” Mom circles me with her arms, and we stay that way for a few minutes while I cry. She cries, too, but finally she pulls away and speaks. “She was so weak. Giving up one of your kidneys might not have saved Kim.”