Near the top, a thick branch led directly to the curtained window through which Emma-Jean had seen Colleen’s face. Emma-Jean straddled the branch and crossed her feet at the ankles for stability. She leaned forward and peered through the window. She was relieved to see that Colleen was not sprawled on the floor, senseless with pain. She was sitting on her bed. Her shoulders were slumped and her hair looked unclean. Other than that, she did not look physically impaired in any way.
Emma-Jean rapped on the window until Colleen looked in her direction.
Chapter 20
Colleen had spent most of the past two days staring at her walls, which were painted a soft pastel pink. When Colleen had picked out the wall color last year, it had reminded her of everything she loved most in the world: candy hearts and strawberry ice cream and the cutest little piglets.
Now the color made her feel like she was trapped inside an old dog’s ear. It made her sick, which is why she stared at it. She was glad to feel sick because then she didn’t have to lie to her mother. So far it was working. Her parents and the doctor believed she had some mysterious virus.
“It’s just not like Colleen,” her mother had told the doctor. “She’s always so agreeable. Now we can’t get her out of her room.”
“Is anything going on at school?” the doctor said, wrinkling her large forehead in concern. “Is something upsetting you, Colleen?”
“No, of course not,” her mother said. “Colleen is a straight-A student with dozens of friends.”
The doctor had looked at Colleen in a really sweet way, and Colleen wanted so much to tell her. But zombie Colleen didn’t go blabbing to nosy doctors.
The doctor had checked her throat and her ears. She pressed all around her stomach. “Can you tell me how you’re feeling, Colleen?” she’d asked.
“It hurts,” Colleen said. “Everywhere.”
Colleen and her mother were sent to a lab, where a young man with a shaved head and soft rubber gloves had poked a needle into Colleen’s arm and taken three vials of blood. Colleen had stared as the blood rushed through the skinny plastic tube into the glass vials. She wished the man would take all of her blood. Then she’d never have to go back to school. She’d never have to face Laura Gilroy again.
Colleen heard the knocking on her window and turned to see the pale face of Emma-Jean Lazarus staring at her from outside.
Now, officially, things could not get weirder.
Colleen had never hated anyone in her entire life. Not Laura Gilroy, who tried to steal her best friend. Not Brandon Mahoney, who had thrown a dead squirrel at her in kindergarten. And yet when she thought about Emma-Jean Lazarus, a sharp pain went through her stomach. She wasn’t sure if it was hate. But it was something dark and very bad, something that Father William might warn against in one of his sermons.
Emma-Jean Lazarus had forged a letter on school stationery to Laura Gilroy.
Emma-Jean Lazarus had let Laura Gilroy find out.
Emma-Jean Lazarus had ruined Colleen’s life.
But still, Colleen couldn’t bring herself to let Emma-Jean sit outside in the freezing cold high up on that tree.
Slowly, Colleen rose from her bed. She padded across the flowered rug, unlocked her window, and yanked it up so it was wide open. Emma-Jean climbed through the window. She brushed off her pants and rubbed her hands together.
“What are you doing here?” Colleen said in a raspy zombie voice.
“I came over to tell you that you should be avoiding dairy products,” Emma-Jean said. “They are most irritating to the digestive tract and should be avoided by a person in your condition.”
The normal Colleen would have smiled and nodded and pretended she knew exactly what Emma-Jean Lazarus was talking about. But Colleen wasn’t normal.
“Look,” zombie Colleen said. “You got me into big trouble. Laura Gilroy knows everything. She even has the note that I wrote you. She said you had it in a file in your room.”
“How could she know that?”
“Has Laura Gilroy been to your room?”
“Yes,” Emma-Jean said. “On Monday.”
“Did you happen to notice if she stole something?”
“I don’t think she would steal anything from my room,” Emma-Jean said. Surely even Laura Gilroy wouldn’t break the law.
“Of course she would! You have no idea, Emma-Jean! She has no morals at all! Were you with her the whole time?”
“She began to choke,” Emma-Jean said. “And she requested something to drink.”
“And?”
“I went downstairs to get her some grape juice.”
“And she was alone in your room?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Perhaps several minutes. I had no alternative. She was choking.”
“No she wasn’t! She wanted you to leave, so she could find some proof! She went into your desk and stole the file with my name on it. Why would you keep a file with my name on it!”
“I keep everything important in a file.”
“I can’t believe you did this, Emma-Jean! Why did you have to butt in? I didn’t ask you to!”
“Yes you did,” Emma-Jean said. “You said you wanted help.”
“I didn’t mean it! Why would I want help from YOU? Why are you even here?”
“I wanted to tell you to avoid dairy foods,” Emma-Jean said. “I wanted to help you—”
“What are you talking about? Just go, Emma-Jean! ” she wailed. “Just go away.”
Emma-Jean didn’t know what to do. Colleen was telling her to leave, and yet she was obviously in deep distress. Emma-Jean wanted to assist her, but Colleen didn’t seem to want her help.
Colleen threw herself onto her bed with such force that the cat-shaped clock on her night table crashed to the floor, its eyes frozen open in a deathly stare.
Colleen was crying loudly now, sobbing, sputtering, and gasping. The sound made Emma-Jean’s head ache. It was the worst sound Emma-Jean had ever heard. It was worse than slamming lockers or the screeching of car tires. This was the sound of misery. Of grief. Of things you couldn’t control. Emma-Jean had heard a sound like this once before in her life. When her father died, Emma-Jean herself had made this sound.
Emma-Jean rushed toward the window, away from Colleen and her sobs.
“Emma-Jean!” Colleen called.
Emma-Jean stepped up to the windowsill and climbed out onto the magnolia tree.
“Emma-Jean, no!” Colleen shouted.
Emma-Jean started climbing down, but in her haste her foot slipped. She fell back into the cold air—down, down, down. And then she was lying in the cold dirt, staring up at the bright winter sky.
Chapter 21
Emma-Jean lay on her back, her head turned so that her left ear was pressed to the ground. There was an entire world in the dirt, filled with dramatic scenes of birth, survival, and often violent death. When she was younger, before she began her close studies of her fellow students, she had spent most of her time studying the natural world around her. She would lie in the grass, often for hours at a time, studying ants and worms and bees and beetles, the movement of the blades of grass in the wind, the shadows cast by the robins and jays and doves that flew overhead. Every moment was unique, Emma-Jean discovered, and captivating. And yet it was true that most people, including her sensible mother, paid no attention to the natural world around them.
Yet her father had paid attention. Often he had joined her in the grass, lying next to her, very still, alert. Emma-Jean tried to conjure the presence of her father next to her, the warmth of his shoulder touching hers, the feeling of their fingers intertwined, the sound of his voice whispering, his low, rumbling laugh. But she couldn’t. Her father had slipped away from her.
“Emma-Jean! Are you okay? Oh gosh!”
Colleen Pomerantz.
Emma-Jean closed her eyes as Colleen knelt down next to her, so close that Emma-Jean felt warmed by Colleen’s body. She felt Colleen’s fingers softly brush against her hair. Colleen was sobbing still, but softer. “I’m so sorry!” she whispered. “I’m so sorry!”
A car pulled up. A door slammed and footsteps shook the ground.
“Oh my Lord! What’s happened!” yelled a loud, shrill voice. “Colleen! Who is that?”
“Mommy!” Colleen screamed. “She fell out of the tree! It’s Emma-Jean Lazarus! Emma-Jean Lazarus fell out of a tree!”
Chapter 22
Colleen wasn’t a zombie anymore.
She wanted to be a zombie. Because it was way easier being zombie Colleen than being nice, normal Colleen. Zombie Colleen didn’t care about anything or anyone. Nice, normal Colleen cared way too much about everything and everyone.
But it turned out that nice, normal Colleen was stronger than zombie Colleen. The sight of Emma-Jean Lazarus lying in the grass had caused nice, normal Colleen to leap out of zombie Colleen. There had been a showdown. Colleen had felt the two parts of her duking it out for control, like in a video game her mother wouldn’t let her play. Nice, normal Colleen had kicked zombie Colleen’s butt.
But now that Colleen was back to normal, she
really
couldn’t stop crying. Even after Emma-Jean opened her eyes and sat up. Even after Colleen’s mom helped Emma-Jean into the house. Even after Emma-Jean’s mother came, and took Emma-Jean to the doctor, and called Colleen’s mother to say Emma-Jean was okay.
Colleen just sobbed and sobbed.
And now that zombie Colleen was gone, Colleen couldn’t lie to her mother anymore. She couldn’t pretend to be sick. She told her mother everything, from the beginning: how Laura had tried to steal Kaitlin, how Emma-Jean had tried to help, even though Colleen hadn’t asked her to, not on purpose anyway. Emma-Jean had gotten the wrong idea, and written this letter to Laura, and Laura had figured it all out and blamed Colleen, and then . . .
“I was so horrible!” Colleen wailed.
"It’s okay,” her mother kept saying. “Everything’s fine now.”
“No!” Colleen screamed. “It’s not fine! I said so many horrible things to Emma-Jean! It will never be okay!”
“Please,” her mother said. “You must calm down. It was an accident! Nobody is mad at you. Oh Colleen, why do you always take everything so hard?”
Colleen just shook her head.
“I don’t know what to do for you,” her mother said.
Colleen knew what her mother could do. Her mom could get up out of her chair and come close to Colleen. Her mom could kneel down on the floor and wipe away Colleen’s tears with her bare hands, and kiss her right in the middle of the forehead. Her mom could hug her and whisper, “Colleen! I understand! I’m right here! I love you no matter what!”
Maybe then Colleen would stop crying.
But her mother wasn’t the touchy, huggy, lovey type. She just wasn’t.
Her mother did look worried. And once she patted Colleen’s hand. But that wasn’t enough. Colleen kept crying. She felt as if all the sadness she’d ever felt—all the sadness in the world—was pouring down her face.
Chapter 23
Emma-Jean and her mother had gone directly to the hospital. They waited for two hours for a doctor to examine Emma-Jean, and another hour for an X-ray to confirm what the doctor suspected: Emma-Jean had a cracked rib.
“You are a lucky person,” said the young and competent doctor. He was about the same age as Vikram, and had a similarly soothing tone of voice. “A fall like that, I don’t want to scare you, but I’d say you’ve got someone looking out for you.”
Emma-Jean didn’t tell the doctor or her mother what she almost remembered, and almost believed: that the branches of the magnolia tree had reached out to slow her fall. She recognized the absurdity of this notion, that she was likely feeling the clouding effects of the medication she’d been given for pain. But this dreamlike memory stayed with her, and she made no effort to clear it from her mind.
“I promise you’ll heal quickly,” the doctor said, looking Emma-Jean in the eye. “You’ll be back to your old self in no time.”
“Yes,” Emma-Jean said, as this was exactly her intention: to return to her old self, the person she was before she met Colleen Pomerantz in the girls’ room, before she developed the regrettable notion that she should get involved with her peers.
She had not solved Colleen’s problem. On the contrary, she had created a new problem, a problem so large that it now seemed to occupy a separate universe, governed by mysterious laws and powerful forces. Emma-Jean couldn’t begin to understand this problem. Even Poincaré, she suspected, would throw up his hands in confusion.
All Emma-Jean knew was this: Some irrational, emotional force had compelled her to enter the chaotic world of her peers, where the rules of logic did not apply.
She would not allow this to happen again. In fact, Emma-Jean decided then and there that she would not return to William Gladstone Middle School at all. She would resume her studies on her own, without the distraction of her peers and their problems.
Emma-Jean and her mother came home after eleven o’clock. The house was dark and silent and the floors creaked as they walked to the kitchen. Her mother helped Emma-Jean off with her coat and into a chair. Emma-Jean watched her mother prepare a can of tomato soup. Her mother seemed to intuit that Emma-Jean did not wish to further discuss the day’s dramatic events. She had told her mother only the basic facts—that she had gone to Colleen’s house after school, and she had fallen from the magnolia tree.
Her mother sat quietly while Emma-Jean ate her soup. She rose several times to get Emma-Jean a glass of juice, and to cut her up an apple, which Emma-Jean did not touch. When Emma-Jean was ready, her mother led her up the stairs. “Should we go to my room?” her mother asked.
Emma-Jean shook her head. “I am very tired,” she said.
Her mother helped her undress and kissed her good night. Emma-Jean got into bed and closed her eyes. Her chest throbbed and her legs ached and her mind felt dim, as though it had been drained of power. She closed her eyes and was nearly asleep when she suddenly sat up. She struggled to get out of bed. Moving very slowly, she stood up and walked to Henri’s cage. The bird had been locked up all day. How could she have forgotten him?