Counting Thyme (11 page)

In Emily's living room, things were different. There was music, and fancy people, and waiters in white shirts with little black bow ties. Most of the girls from school were there. Rebeccah was standing with an older redheaded girl who must have been her sister. They were both wearing black, like Emily. In fact, lots of people were wearing black. No one else was wearing a bright pink dress like mine.

Rebeccah walked up, and I plastered a smile on my face, but she just brushed past me to talk to Emily. An uneasy feeling washed over me as I stood there, wondering what to do next.

I turned around to go look at the Christmas tree and ran straight into a little blond boy no older than Val.

“Ow! Why'd you do that?” He scowled up at me.

I started to say I was sorry but I didn't get to finish because Lizzie rushed up to us, looking worried.

“There you are!” she said. “Mom said no running, Jamie.”

The little boy pointed at me. “She's mean! She stepped on my foot!”

I put my hands up. “I didn't mean to. I swear.”

Lizzie laughed. “I'm sure you didn't. My brother just likes to tell stories sometimes. Don't you, Jamie?”

Jamie stuck his tongue out at me, and Lizzie and I both laughed. Her dress was pale purple, which matched the frames of her glasses perfectly.

“I like your dress,” I said, and Lizzie said, “Really?”

I nodded. I was glad to see at least one other person wearing color.

“Mom! Over here!” Lizzie waved, and a woman hurried over to us with two little boys trailing after her. She was pretty, with Lizzie's same blond hair.

“Is everything okay over here?” she asked, crouching in front of Jamie. “Or has some great injustice befallen my littlest man?”

“Jamie ran off without hanging up his coat,” Lizzie said, while her brother gave me the stink eye. “This is Thyme.”

Her mother smiled and said that she'd heard so much about me from Lizzie. “You two look adorable,” she said as she wrestled Jamie out of his coat. “And here Lizzie was convinced she'd be the only girl wearing color!”

Lizzie flushed pink. “Want to go get some punch? It tastes just like Hi-C, but with
sparkle
.” She fanned her fingers out when she said the word.

“My mom says I shouldn't drink anything with food dyes in it,” I said, and immediately felt like a huge dork.

But Lizzie just laughed. “Food dyes? Really?”

“Yeah, sort of.” I couldn't explain that I knew all that stuff
because of Val. That because of Mom, I knew way too much about what was healthy and what wasn't.

Lizzie's mom asked if my parents were there. “It's always so hard when you're adjusting to a big move. I'd love to meet them.”

“They couldn't make it,” I said, and my neck got hot and my face, too. Then I started to feel like I couldn't breathe. I'd thought the party would be more fun on my own, but being there without my family just made me feel
more
alone.

Lizzie's mom was still holding Jamie's jacket.

“I can hang that up for you,” I said.

Her eyebrows rose in surprise. “You don't have to—”

“It's no problem,” I said. Then I grabbed the jacket and took off. When I got to the coat closet, the racks were all full. I tried to stuff Jamie's coat between two other jackets, but it wouldn't slide in, and when I pushed too hard, the rack almost fell over. Which made me want cry for some crazy reason.

“You've got problems with coats, huh?”

I jumped away from the coatrack and brushed the loose bangs out of my eyes.

Jake Reese was standing in the doorway to the closet, white earbuds in place, staring at me.

EMERGENCY

“I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED,” I SAID AS A WAITER
dabbed at a big, wet stain on my pretty pink dress. But the truth was, I knew exactly what had happened. Jake had caught me wrestling with the coatrack, and I was so embarrassed that I said something that made no sense and rushed past him, straight into a waiter carrying a tray full of champagne.

“Don't worry,” Lizzie said. “Soda will get it out for sure. The carbonation helps.”

Emily made a face. “Not always. If that dress was silk, it'd be ruined.”
If
the dress was silk. I wondered if she was mad at me for bugging her about their fight. She wasn't giving me the fake smile, though, so maybe she was trying to be helpful, in her own way.

I caught a glimpse of Jake's springy hair hovering behind them. He was wearing a dress shirt and a skinny black tie. I thought he'd never looked nicer, which made me feel even dumber about making a fool of myself. I wished he would just disappear. In fact, I wished they would all just
disappear. Leave it to me to find a way to look stupid at every opportunity.

Rebeccah came to my rescue by ignoring me entirely. “I asked Mr. Calhoun about the audition dates again,” she told Emily. “He said it looks like the day after we get back.”

Emily looked at Lizzie. “Plenty of time to practice. Or, you know, change your mind.”

Lizzie's cheeks pinked up. She turned to me. “Are you going out for a part?”

She and Emily both looked at me. Great. Exactly what I didn't want to get caught up in—the Spring Fling and their fight. I wished the stupid waiter would stop dabbing at my dress so I could get out of there. “Probably not.”

“Well, I think you should if you want to,” Lizzie said, which made Emily frown and Rebeccah roll her eyes. Of course they thought I couldn't sing or dance. I couldn't manage to walk through a room without wrecking my dress!

The waiter finally stood up. “That should do,” he said.

As soon as he moved out of the way, I shot out of my chair. I didn't even wait for Lizzie when she called after me. I'd thought the party would be fun, a way to pretend everything was fine for a night. But kids were so different here. More grown-up. They brought bento boxes with sushi for lunch and wore sparkly black dresses. Why couldn't just one thing feel normal?

Grandma Kay said there was no such thing as normal. She and Grandpa grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They got married there, but then they moved to San Diego for his job
with the navy. According to Grandma, she spent a lot of time eating canned tuna and waiting for life to go back to normal after they moved, and that's when she discovered that there was no normal—just normal for now. And normal for now meant that things were always changing. Cancer had changed everything: the things I ate, the place I lived . . . what kind of normal would we find when we got back to San Diego?

I ended up in front of a table packed with fancy treats: neat rows of salmon rolled up with cream cheese, asparagus spears, and, at the end, a fountain—a
chocolate
fountain. I stabbed a chunk of cake with a skewer, then thought better of dipping in the chocolate. The last thing I needed was a big brown stain next to the big wet stain on my dress.

I groaned and stuffed the plain piece of cake into my mouth.

“The food's pretty good, huh?” Jake stepped up to the table next to me. His arm brushed mine, and I felt weird, like I wanted to talk to him and run away from him at the same time.

I took a bite of a strawberry so I could unstick the cake that was glued to the roof of my mouth. Chewing frantically, I watched Jake coat a chunk of cake in chocolate and eat it without a drop of mess.

“Did you try the black stuff on those crackers down there?” he asked.

Finally, I swallowed my last lump of cake and managed to say no.

He leaned closer. “Don't. It's fish eggs.”

“Gross,” I said, giggling. “But I know what caviar is.” Of course he wouldn't think so. Seeing as I'd been nothing but stupid in front of him. The girl who didn't know prime numbers and dropped her books on the floor and wrestled with coats.

“Cool.” He stabbed a cube of cheddar cheese and offered it to me.

“No, thanks.” I could just imagine orange bits stuck between my teeth.

He popped the cheese into his mouth and chewed.

“What do you call cheese that's not yours?” he asked.

“Stolen?”

He grinned. “Nacho cheese.”

We laughed, and I tried not to stare at the way his springy hair bounced like it was full of laughter, too, or how he got a dimple next to his mouth when he smiled.

“What are you listening to?” I asked, pointing at his headphones.

He ducked his head and mumbled something, but I couldn't hear him.

“What?” I stepped closer. He smelled like coconuts.

“It's a song my dad wrote,” he said quietly. “He died last year. Heart attack.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, stunned by what he'd said. I didn't know what else to say, so I just put my hand on his sleeve. He peeked up at me, sheepish, and our noses got way too close, so close that I could see little bits of green mixed into his brown eyes.

Right then, a waiter cut between us to load more food onto the table.

Jake made a face behind his back and I laughed, but the way he smiled back made me feel totally inside out, like I needed to focus on my breathing again. That and the news about his father, which I hadn't expected. And yet here Jake was, alive and smiling. It was hard to imagine how that would be possible if anything ever happened to Val.

“I'd better get back,” I said, even though I'd much rather have stayed there talking to him instead of gossiping with the girls.

“Sorry about your dress,” he said. “It's a nice color. Everyone else is so boring.” Then he grinned and disappeared into the crowd, leaving me with a smile on my face.

When I got back to the corner with the chairs, the girls were circling like sharks, waiting for me.

“There you are,” Lizzie said. “I was looking all over for you.”

“You were?”

Emily stepped between us. “Thyme, you've got to come quick.”

She latched onto my arm and dragged me to the foyer with the gigantic Christmas tree. The other girls trailed us, talking in hushed voices, which freaked me out. When we got to the tree, Emily pointed. A man was standing next to the elevator in his fancy tuxedo. He had his back to us. Then he shifted, revealing the person he was talking to: my father.

“Your dad just showed up,” Emily said. “He said there was some kind of an emergency.”

My breath caught.

The only reason Dad would come early was if something was wrong with Val.

I pushed Emily's arm away.

All I could think was that Jake had lost his father. Jake's father had
died
.

Dad saw me coming and reached his arms out.

I rushed into him, trying not to cry.

“It's all right,” he said softly. He rubbed a circle over my back. “Val just has a little fever. We have to stop by the hospital. I'm sorry you have to leave early.”

“It's okay,” I said. “Let's go.”

LUCK

AFTER THREE LONG HOURS AT THE HOSPITAL, WE GOT TO
bring Val home. His chest films had been clear, and his fever had broken with antibiotics. But even with that good news, the doctors were worried that he might be rejecting the 3F8. They wouldn't know until they got the results from Val's HAMA test, which we were still waiting on. There had been some trouble with his blood sample.

Val spent the weekend resting while we waited for Dr. Everett to call. He'd said we'd hear from him by Monday, December 24—otherwise known as Christmas Eve, in normal households. If Val was positive for HAMA, then he couldn't stay in the drug trial.

And if that happened . . . well, I didn't want to think about that. All weekend, I couldn't even look at the Thyme Jar, in case I jinxed Val by thinking the wrong thing. All I could do was cross my fingers and pray. I was skeptical that praying or crossing fingers did much but Grandma Kay believed in those things, so I crossed my fingers for good luck anyway.

Waiting was the worst. Mom spent Monday morning cleaning while Val watched videos on the couch and Dad used the living room floor to reorganize his record collection. Meanwhile, Cori holed up in our room, making T-shirts for her drama club. She'd spread newspapers over the floor and borrowed a set of Dad's super-thick paint pens, the ones that smelled so sharp, Mom made her crack the window even though it was freezing outside.

First, Cori traced the letters onto the shirts using a paper template. Then she colored each letter in carefully. I kept expecting her to kick me out of our room, but she didn't. Maybe she'd caught some kind of holiday spirit. Or maybe she was just being nice because we were all thinking about Val.

After her second shirt, she pulled her headphones loose and looked up. “Want to help?”

“Really?”

She nodded, so I sat next to her while she traced a set of letters onto an old yellow shirt of Dad's. The fabric was turned inside out, but I remembered it had a picture of a pyramid on the front with a rainbow coming out of the top. When I'd made fun of him for wearing a rainbow, he'd said that it was an album cover from the greatest band ever: Pink Floyd.

“Dad let you have this?”

Cori nodded. She was biting her lip from concentrating so hard.

“There,” she said, sitting back again. The shirt read:
ART IS LIFE
. It looked cool, but I didn't understand how she
could focus on her drama club with everything else that was going on.

“Do you really care about drama this much?”

She shrugged. “I don't know. I guess it's just fun to work on.”

“That's not what I mean. You never used to like clubs. You didn't even belong to one until Val got sick, and now it's all you do.”

“I guess I'd rather stay busy.”

Back home, she'd been so busy that I'd barely seen her for months—until she got in trouble. In October, she'd run a mannequin head up the flagpole to attract new members to the Green Team and had gotten suspended. Then I'd gotten to see her a lot.

“What happened that night Mom and Dad brought you home with Val?” I asked. “Did you get in trouble again?”

She grinned. “That was nothing. Mom was just mad that I skipped math with my friends.” Then she got more serious. “This is something I can do, T. Something I
can
change, you know?” She stared hard at me, like she really meant it, but it sounded like an excuse to me.

“Aren't you worried about Val?” I asked.

She put the cap on her marker and set it down very carefully next to the shirt. “Of course I am,” she said quietly. “It just helps to think about other things sometimes.”

“Or
all
the time.”

She made a face. “Think what you want, doofus. I've got a
buttload of T-shirts to make. Are you going to help me color this in or what?”

“Or what,” I said, and she groaned.

But I guess I'd caught the holiday spirit, too, because I picked up a paint pen and let Cori show me how to color in the letters. I had to start in the middle so the paint didn't bleed over the edges. But I'd never been very good at staying inside the lines. As I colored in the
A
from
ART IS LIFE
, the hole in the middle of the letter got smaller and smaller until you could barely see it.

“Sorry,” I said as Cori stared at the shirt. I thought for sure she would yell at me, and that all this “working together” stuff would vanish back to wherever it came from.

But she just took the pen and colored the
A
in the rest of the way.

“Whatever,” she said. “It looks better like this anyway.”

An hour later, the phone rang, and Cori and I waited while time stood still. After several seconds that felt like years, Mom walked into our room.

“It's for you, Thyme,” she said, handing me the phone. For me? Shani leapt into my mind. Had she found a way to call during her vacation after all?

“Hello?”

“Hey! It's Emily.”

“Oh. Hey.” I wondered if she was calling to ask why I'd run out of her party like my hair was on fire. But I couldn't
explain about Val. And I couldn't make up some other excuse with Mom listening in. “Hold on.” I clapped my hand over the phone. Cori and Mom both looked at me. “It's my friend from school. She needs to talk for a minute.”

“Well, I'm busy in here,” Cori said, hunching over a T-shirt like it would take a bulldozer to make her move. So much for being buddies.

“Then I'll use the hall.”

Mom frowned. “Well . . . just come right back if you get another call, okay?” She didn't sound mad at all. She even smiled at me a little bit, like she understood.

In the hall, I pressed the phone to my ear. “Hey, Emily.”

“I wasn't sure you were coming back,” she said.

“Sorry, I was just changing rooms. How'd you get my number, anyway?”

“From the school directory. Is that a problem?”

“No. No problem,” I said, because she was starting to sound irritated. “Things have just been crazy at home.”

“Is that why you had to leave early? Your dad looked worried.” Of course he had, with Val running a fever. And Emily had noticed.

“We just had to take care of something. But everything's fine now. I think.” I winced at my own stupid words. I felt like I was back in her room, saying all the wrong things again and sounding like a total dork. Hopefully she wouldn't ask me to explain.

After a short silence, Emily said, “Well, if you're not busy,
I was wondering if you wanted to go to
The Nutcracker
with me this afternoon?”

“What?” The last thing I had expected was an invitation.

She laughed. “You know, the famous ballet? It's about a girl who's dreaming of Christmas morning. They have a Christmas tree that grows as high as the ceiling, right in front of you. It's kind of goofy but I go every year, only my cousin caught the barf bug, so she can't go with me. I have an extra ticket, with backstage passes and everything.”

“Wow. That sounds fun—I mean the show, not the barf bug.”

“So you'll come? I mean, I know it's short notice but I can give you a ride if that helps.”

I cracked the apartment door and peeked inside. Val was on the couch, eating crackers in a nest of stuffed animals. His cheeks were still flushed, his body limp with exhaustion. On the way home from the hospital Friday night, he'd slept with his head in my lap. Part of me wanted to go see the show, but I knew I couldn't leave him while he was still feeling so bad—or before we got his test results.

“I don't think I can go,” I said, and there was an awkward silence. “I want to. It's just, well, it's Christmas Eve.”

“Oh. Totally. I understand.” Emily didn't sound snappy at all, just let down. I wondered if she'd asked Lizzie. Maybe not, if they were still fighting.

“What about Rebeccah?” I said.

“She's out of town. Anyway, I just thought you might appreciate it. It's a New York tradition.”

“I'm really sorry,” I said, more to myself than to Emily. I felt kind of let down, too. Cori had her shirts. Dad had his records. Mom had Val. What did I have? Not much. Not even Shani. She was on vacation. She wasn't going to call.

“It's fine,” Emily said. The chirp was back in her voice. “I'll see you at school—don't forget, Spring Fling tryouts! I'm so excited.”

“Me too,” I said automatically, although I didn't feel excited at all.

When I went back inside, Dad had pushed his records to the side. There was a stack of board games on the rug instead. “I thought maybe we could use a Champions Tournament before we do lunch. Ready to go down in flames?” he asked, and all my bad feelings took a step back.

We had invented the Champions Tournament the first time Val was in the hospital. Dad brought stacks of games to the waiting room, and he and I played mancala and Jenga and checkers until one of us won three different games. Which was usually me.

I sat on the rug while Dad set up the mancala board. The
clink clink
sound was nice to hear, though at home we would have played on our screened porch instead of right in the middle of the living room. This time, Dad won. Then we set up checkers. Halfway through our match, Mom signaled Dad from the couch, where she was sitting with Val.

“Can you call Dr. Everett again?” she asked.

“We're almost done,” he answered as I hopped one of his
black checkers with my red one. I added another chip on top of mine to make it a king, and he groaned.

“Honey.” There was an edge to Mom's voice. “He said to call back if we didn't hear from the lab within an hour.”

“I thought they said to call by noon.”

“They said they
close
at noon,” Mom said, clearly irritated now.

“Right.” Dad ruffled my hair. “I'll be right back.”

He left to call the lab, and I forced myself to study the board. I could win, as long as Dad took the bait and jumped my checker. Then I'd scoop up his last two players with my new king. I rehearsed the moves in my head, but it was hard to concentrate with Dad making such an important call. I listened for his voice over the blare of the TV, but Val had the volume cranked way up.