Butter (25 page)

“He's awake,” someone said.

The humming stopped. A hand touched my arm, then my head. I sensed movement around me, and my eyes finally focused. I had been so sure it was heaven, with the angelic music and Anna's beauty surrounded by all that white. But it turned out white was just your typical hospital palette. And I guess I'd never
really appreciated the beautiful sound my mom could make with that nervous humming. The Anna part I figured I imagined, because as I looked around the room, I saw only my parents and a swirl of brightly colored scrubs.

“Mom,” I said—or rather, I tried to say. I couldn't get the word out, because my mouth was full of cobwebs. My lips stuck together, and my jaw ached. Mom placed a hand on my cheek, and her familiar touch instantly soothed the pain.

“Shh. I'm here, baby. You don't have to talk.”

A doctor appeared at Mom's side and looked down at me.

“Welcome back.” He had a warm voice. “I just need you to nod that you understand me.”

I nodded.

“You know you're in a hospital.”

Nod.

“You're going to be fine.”

No nod. I wasn't sure of that at all. I had no idea how much trouble I was in, how the hell I got to the hospital, or what I was going to say to explain myself. At least I had permission to put that off for the moment. And even if I could get my mouth unstuck, I wouldn't be able to talk anyway, because my eyelids were falling closed again.

The doctor's warm voice washed over me. “It's okay if he sleeps. It's normal to be tired at first.”

I guessed he was talking to Mom, but I couldn't muster the energy to open my eyes and check. Whatever they said next escaped me, because I was already asleep.

• • •

I don't know how long it was before I woke again, but it felt like the same day. Nurses were on either side of my bed, pushing buttons on machines and filling bags of liquid hanging from metal racks. I felt like I'd been hit with a wrecking ball.

I struggled to sit up, and one of the nurses reacted instantly, propping a pillow behind me and placing a hand on my shoulder so I wouldn't move too fast.

“Morning, sugar,” she said, then checked her watch. “Or afternoon, as the case may be.”

“Hi,” I croaked back.

The friendly nurse picked at me for a few minutes, adjusting something clamped to my finger and wrapping my arm with a Velcro strap to test my blood pressure. As she worked, I scanned the room and noticed it was full of gifts. Every surface was covered. A card poking up from a bunch of flowers was signed: “With Love, Uncle Luis and Aunt Cindy.” Another card, dangling from a basket of fruit, read: “Get Well Soon, Your Friends at FitFab.”

The nurse adjusted a teddy bear and read the tag attached to its arm. “From, Morgan.” She smiled at me. “You sure got a lot of friends.”

“Yeah, friends,” I echoed. I stared at the stuffed bear—more than I deserved from a girl I'd lied to when she was just trying to help.

On a little square table right next to my bed, there was a stack of old vinyl records. My body creaked as I reached to pull the top record off the pile. Charlie Parker.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

It was a rhetorical question, but I got an answer anyway.

“Professor Dunn and Billy brought those by from the Brass Boys.” My mother strode into the room, pushed the album out of the way and grasped me in a hug, all in a single movement.

“I love you so much,” she whispered into my ear.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered back.

When she finally let go and perched on a chair next to my bed, there were tears in her eyes. She picked up the Charlie Parker album from where it had landed on my bed. “They brought you a record player too, but you can't have it yet.”

That seemed like a strange punishment.

“Why not?”

“No needles,” the nurse said, then disappeared from the room.

I raised an eyebrow at Mom, who cast her gaze down.

“You can't have anything sharp.”

It took me a moment to catch up. “Am I in the psych ward?”

“You're in the ICU,” Mom said. “It's the Intensive Care Un—”

“I know what it is.”

Curiosity burned inside me. I wanted to know exactly what had happened after I blacked out, who had found me. But I was too ashamed to ask Mom any questions. Seeing the hurt all over her face made me realize how selfish I'd been, and I didn't want to make her relive the hell she'd obviously just been through.

Mom opened her mouth to say something, but a movement at the door distracted her. Another ridiculous bouquet of flowers was marching into the room. People did realize I was a
guy
,
right? What did I want with a bunch of stinky pink and purple plants?

The face behind the flowers was hidden.

“Hi again,” a voice said to my mother. It was the same voice I'd heard when I first woke up in the hospital—the voice of an angel. “Where should I put these?”

“He's awake,” Mom replied, taking the flowers. The bouquet floated away to reveal Anna's face. Her eyes were wide open, her cheeks a little pink. That face, always so easy to read, told me she hadn't expected to see me up and alert.

“Happy New Year,” I said, forcing a smile.

Genius, really. Brilliant. I'm the king of appropriate greetings.

Anna's eyes darkened as she moved to sit in the chair next to my bed. “New Year's was yesterday.”

I gave my mom a sideways glance.

“You were out for two days.” She answered the question in my face.

I felt foolish, and I waited for Mom to slip out of the room before I said to Anna, “Well, I can still wish you a happy year.”

We were both quiet for a moment, and when we finally spoke, we tripped over each other.

“I'm sorry I tricked—”

“I shouldn't have said—”

“Go ahead.”

“No, you go first.”

“I was here when you woke up this morning,” Anna said.

“I know. I heard your voice.”

“The nurses kind of pushed me out, and one of them told
me to come back later, but I didn't know if you'd really be awake.”

“I still feel tired. Two days of sleeping, and I'm tired. What's that about?”

“Is it sleeping when you're in a coma?”

I blinked. That word sounded extreme, but I supposed Anna had heard it from the doctors themselves, and it was probably accurate. An overdose of insulin after days of not eating carbs or sugar can cause hypoglycemia—extremely low blood sugar that can kill a person … or put him in a coma. But I didn't want to think about the damage I'd done to my body. I was more interested in the damage I'd done to my life.

“What are people saying?” I asked.

I hadn't been awake long enough to process what I'd done, what I'd failed to do, or how I felt about either one. But suddenly I felt sort of … excited. I couldn't wait to hear how people were reacting to my big event.
Maybe I
should
be in the psych ward.

Anna shrugged. “I haven't seen anyone but Jeanie since the party.”

“But everyone knows? That I didn't—that it didn't work?”

“Yeah, that's kind of my fault. I mean, not fault, because I'm not sorry or anything, and really it wasn't even me—or any of us—because we didn't know where—”

“Wait, Anna, slow down. I don't understand.”

She took a deep breath. “I called the police.”

“You
what
?”

Slowly, Anna recounted what happened on New Year's Eve.
Apparently, Parker's bash had turned into a morbid viewing party. He hooked a sixty-inch plasma TV up to his computer, and everyone gathered around to watch the show. Instead of counting down to midnight, they counted down to my last meal. Then, one by one, they threw up or freaked out or, like Jeanie, passed out cold. Anna said she was the first to call 911—somewhere around the time I started choking on the strawberries—but soon they were all on their phones, probably driving dispatchers crazy with their slurring and sobbing. I would have liked to have heard those calls about a fat kid and the Internet and a last meal.

“But I'm still not sure how they found you,” Anna said.

“What do you mean?”

Anna stared at her lap. “None of us were really sure where you lived.”

So Mom was sort of right about that. What kind of friends never even come to your house?

“Oh,” I said.

“Someone else must have called too.”

I thought about Tucker and the girl from the soda machine. Had one of them cracked the password?

Anna said paramedics busted down my door and found me passed out in my big chair with a stick of butter melting in my hand.

“I wonder how many of them it took to carry me downstairs.” I laughed at my own expense, hoping Anna would join in, but she kept her eyes low.

“Six.”

“What?”

“They called for backup to get you on the stretcher, then six of them carried you out.” She twisted her hands. “Your live feed was still going and—and I guess we just couldn't look away.”

“Six, huh?” I kept my voice light. “I bet they looked like pallbearers at a funeral.”

My attempt at humor was not pulling Anna out of her gloom, so I came at her from another angle. “And it sounds like it would have been my funeral, if it weren't for you and—and everyone who called police.”

She looked up finally. “But isn't that what you wanted?”

No
, I thought.
This is what I wanted—this moment right now, this real conversation in real life with my virtual girl. This is all I
ever
wanted.

“It's complicated,” I said. “But I'm glad I'm still here.”

I paused. That felt true—the bit about still wanting to be here, to be alive. For the first time since I'd woken up, I felt the gravity of what I'd almost done. A flood of feelings washed over me—relief, remorse, fear. I nearly drowned in that flood, it was so overwhelming, but a tiny cough from Anna, prompting me to go on, helped keep my head above water.

“Anna,” I said. “I'm really sor—”

“Wait. There's something I have to say before I lose my nerve.”

“You can say anything to me.”

She shook her head. “That's just it. I don't feel that way. I look at you and I see—”

“I know what you see.”

Anna picked at a loose string on one of my blankets. “That's fair. But you're no better.” She rushed on before I could reply. “You don't like that people size you up from the outside. But that's exactly what you did to me. You didn't even know me when you found me online. You only knew what I looked like, and you already liked me, based on nothing else.”

“But I
did
get to know you.”

“You think so?” Anna's eyes were sharp, but her mouth turned down in a soft frown. “Because I feel like the person I got to know doesn't exist at all. There's a reason I don't put pictures on the Internet. When J.P. found me and liked me without a photo—well, I thought he was taking a chance on me as much as I was taking a chance on him.”

“I get it,” I said softly. “But what if there really was a J.P. and he looked like me? Would you still have given him a chance?”

Anna went back to fidgeting with the blanket. “What I was going to say before is, when I look at you, I see someone I just met. I don't know you well enough to trust you yet, so I don't feel like I can confide in you.” She slumped back in the chair. “Sometimes I feel like J.P. is the
only
person I can really talk to. And today, before I came here, I sat in front of my computer for an hour waiting for him to come online.”

“I don't understand. You didn't believe me?”

She shook her head, and the movement knocked a tiny tear out of her eye and down her cheek. “I didn't
want
to believe you.”

I felt like crying myself. I had done so much more damage to Anna than I ever intended.

She cleared her throat and wiped away the tear. “Finally I figured out, if I wanted to talk to J.P., I'd have to come here and talk to him to his face.”

“And what do you want to say to him?”

“That I hate him, that I'll never forgive him, that he doesn't deserve me.”

I braced myself for the pain those words should have caused, but the hurt didn't come. It felt like we were talking about someone I didn't even know.

“But now,” Anna went on, “I think all I really want to say … is good-bye.”

That was the word. It shot through my body with all the pain of a thousand other things Anna could have said. It knocked the wind out of me.

“Awake! Welcome back, my friend!” Doc Bean burst into my hospital room with so much energy, Anna actually jumped out of her chair.

The doc stretched his arms out as if reaching for a hug, but when he got to my bed, he only spread them wider, gesturing at me from head to toe.

“All in one piece. And how do we feel?”

“Fine, Doc. Listen, I was just talking to—”

“A lady!” Doc Bean spun toward Anna, dropped one of his outstretched arms, and extended the other to shake her hand.

“I was just leaving,” she said.

My heart sunk. All I wanted from Anna now was a chance to apologize, to clear my conscience, and I wasn't going to get to do it.

“Wait,” I called. But she was already disappearing out the door.

“Ooh, your lady friend is angry with you for what you did.” I said nothing.

I couldn't breathe, and I didn't want to cry in front of the doc.

“And I am angry with you too,” he said.

It just wasn't possible for Doc Bean to sound pissed with that funny accent, but he did a good job of showing the anger on his face. His smile evaporated, and his thick eyebrows knitted together so tight, they became one.