Everything, Everything (18 page)

9:01 PM – Waits for Olly to appear at window.

9:05 PM – Is joyful. Pantomimes answers to questions.

10:01 PM – Despair, cont’d.

HIGHER EDUCATION

WITH OLLY BACK
in school, our IM sessions are even more limited. He IMs when he can—in between classes or, sometimes, right in the middle of one. During his first week back he does his best to make me feel as if I’m right there with him. He sends pictures of his locker (#23), his class schedule, the library and the librarian who looks exactly as I imagine a high school librarian would, which is to say bookish and wonderful. He sends pictures of math proofs from his AP math class, his AP English required reading list, pictures of beakers and petri dishes from his biology and chemistry classes.

I spend that first week—and it does feel like spending, like not seeing him is costing me something—doing all my normal things: reading, learning, not dying. I write alternate titles for the books on his reading list.
A Tale of Two Kisses. To Kiss a Mockingbird. As I Lay Kissing
. And so on.

Nurse Evil and I settle into a grudging routine where I pretend she doesn’t exist and she leaves ever more obnoxious sticky notes to let me know that she does.

But it’s not just about missing him. I’m also jealous of his life, of his world that expands beyond his front door.

He tells me that high school is no utopia, but I’m not convinced. What else would you call a place that exists solely to teach you about the world? What do you call a place with friends and teachers and libraries and book club and math club and debate club and any other kind of club and after school activities and endless possibilities?

By the third week it becomes harder to sustain our relationship in this new form. I miss
talking
to him. You can only pantomime so much. I miss being in the same room with him, his physical presence. I miss the way my body was always aware of his. I miss getting to know him. I miss getting to know the Maddy that I am when I’m with him.

We continue like this until, finally, the inevitable happens.

I’m standing at the window as his car pulls up. I wait for him to exit, to wave our customary wave, but he doesn’t get out first.

A girl that is not Kara emerges from the back of the car.

Maybe she’s a friend of Kara’s.

But then Kara slams out of the car and into the house, leaving Olly and Mystery Girl alone. Mystery Girl laughs at something Olly says. She turns, puts her hand on his shoulder, and smiles at him the way I’ve smiled at him.

I’m shocked at first, not quite believing what my eyes are seeing. Is she touching
my
Olly? My stomach clenches. I’m being squeezed around the middle by a giant hand. My organs are displaced until I feel
wrong
inside my own skin.

I let the curtain fall and duck away from the window. I feel like a Peeping Tom.

My mom’s words come back to me.
I don’t want you to have a broken heart.
She knew what would happen. There was always going to be someone else. Someone who isn’t sick. Someone who can leave her house. Someone he can talk to and touch and kiss and everything else.

I stifle the urge to go back to the window and assess my competition. But it’s not a competition if one person can’t even show up for the event. And it doesn’t matter what she looks like. It doesn’t matter if she’s long- or short-legged. It doesn’t matter if she’s pale or tanned, if her hair is black or brown or red or blond. It doesn’t matter if she’s pretty or not.

It matters that she feels the sun on her skin. She breathes unfiltered air. It matters that she lives in the same world that Olly does and I don’t. I never will.

I take another peek. Her hand is still on his shoulder and she’s still laughing. He’s frowning up at my window, but I’m sure he can’t see me. He waves anyway, but I duck down again, pretending to both of us that I’m not there.

ALOHA MEANS HELLO
AND GOOD-BYE, PART ONE

I’VE CANCELED YET
another mother-daughter night, so my mom stops by my room.

“So,” she says.

“I’m sorry I canceled, Mom. I’m just feeling out of sorts.”

She immediately presses the back of her hand to my forehead.

“Mentally, not physically,” I clarify. I can’t get the image of Mystery Girl’s hand on Olly’s shoulder out of my head.

She nods but doesn’t remove her palm until she’s satisfied that I’m not feverish.

“So,” I say, prompting her. I really do want to be alone.

“I was a teenager once. And an only child. I was very lonely. I found being a teenager to be very painful.”

This is why she’s here? Because she thinks I’m lonely? Because she thinks I’m having some sort of teenage
angst
?

“I am not lonely, Mom,” I snap. “I am alone. Those are different things.”

She flinches but doesn’t retreat. Instead, she lets go of whatever she is holding and caresses my cheek until I meet her eyes.

“I know, baby girl.” Her hands are behind her back again. “Maybe now is not a good time. Do you want me to go?”

She’s always so reasonable and understanding. It’s hard to be angry with her.

“No, it’s OK. I’m sorry. Stay.” I pull my legs up, making room for her. “What are you hiding?” I ask.

“I brought you a present. I thought it would make you feel less lonely, but now I’m not so sure.”

She pulls a framed photograph from behind her back. My heart squeezes inside my chest. It’s an old photograph of the four of us—me, my mom and dad and brother—standing on a beach, someplace tropical. The sun has set behind us and whoever took the picture used the flash and so our faces are bright, almost glowing, against the darkening sky.

My brother is holding on to my dad with one hand and clutching a small brown stuffed bunny rabbit with the other. For the most part he’s a miniature version of my mom with her same straight black hair and dark eyes. Really the only difference is that he has my dad’s darker skin. My dad’s wearing a matching Aloha-print shirt and shorts.
Goofy
is the only word I can think of to describe him. Still, he’s so handsome. His arm is wrapped around my mom’s shoulder and he seems to be pulling her closer. He’s staring straight into the camera. If ever there was someone who had everything he wanted, my dad was him.

Mom is wearing a red, strapless, flower-patterned sundress. Her damp hair curls around her face. She’s not wearing makeup or jewelry. Really, she looks like an alternate universe version of the mom sitting next to me now. She seems to belong on that beach with those people more than she belongs stuck here in this room with me. She’s holding me in her arms, and she’s the only one not staring into the camera. Instead, she’s laughing at me. I’m grinning that silly, gummy smile that only babies can smile.

I’ve never seen a photo of myself Outside before. I didn’t know such a thing existed.

“Where’s this?” I ask.

“Hawaii. Maui was your dad’s favorite place.”

Her voice is almost a whisper now. “You were just four months old, before we knew why you were always sick. A month before the accident.”

I clutch the photo to my chest. My mom’s eyes fill with tears that don’t fall.

“I love you,” she says. “More than you know.”

But I do know. I’ve always felt her heart reaching out to protect mine. I hear lullabies in her voice. I can still feel arms rocking me to sleep and her kisses on my cheeks in the morning. And I love her right back. I can’t imagine the world she’s given up for me.

I don’t know what to say, so I tell I love her, too. It’s not enough, but it’ll have to do.

After she leaves I stand in front of the mirror holding the photograph next to my face. I look from the me in the photo to the me in the mirror and back again.

A photograph is a kind of time machine. My room fades away, and I’m on that beach surrounded by love and salt air and the fading warmth and lengthening shadows of sunset.

I fill my tiny lungs with as much air as they can take and I hold my breath. I’ve been holding it ever since.

LATER, 9:08 P.M.

OLLY’S ALREADY WAITING
for me when I go to the window. In big, bold letters he writes:

I pantomime my complete and utter lack of jealousy.

MADAM, I’M ADAM

SOMETIMES I REREAD
my favorite books from back to front. I start with the last chapter and read backward until I get to the beginning. When you read this way, characters go from hope to despair, from self-knowledge to doubt. In love stories, couples start out as lovers and end as strangers. Coming-of-age books become stories of losing your way. Your favorite characters come back to life.

If my life were a book and you read it backward, nothing would change. Today is the same as yesterday. Tomorrow will be the same as today. In the
Book of Maddy
, all the chapters are the same.

Until Olly.

Before him my life was a palindrome—the same forward and backward, like “A man, a plan, a canal. Panama,” or “Madam, I’m Adam.” But Olly’s like a random letter, the big bold
X
thrown in the middle of the word or phrase that ruins the sequence.

And now my life doesn’t make sense anymore. I almost wish I hadn’t met him. How am I supposed to go back to my old life, my days stretching out before me with unending and brutal sameness? How am I supposed to go back to being The Girl Who Reads? Not that I begrudge my life in books. All I know about the world I’ve learned from them. But a description of a tree is not a tree, and a thousand paper kisses will never equal the feel of Olly’s lips against mine.

THE GLASS WALL

A WEEK LATER,
something startles me awake. I sit up. My head is foggy with sleep but my heart is awake and racing. It knows something that my head doesn’t yet know.

I glance at the clock. 3:01
A.M.
My curtains are closed, but I can see a glow from Olly’s room. I drag myself over to the window and push aside the curtains. His entire house is ablaze with lights. Even the porch light is on. My hearts speeds up even more.

Oh, no. Are they fighting again?

A door slams. The sound is faint but unmistakable. I gather the curtains in my fist and wait, willing Olly to show himself. I don’t wait for long because just then he stumbles onto the porch as if he’s been pushed.

The urge to go to him fills me up like it did the last time. I want to go to him. I
need
to go to him, to comfort him, to protect him.

He regains his balance with his usual speed and spins to face the door with fists clenched. I brace along with him for an attack that doesn’t come. He remains in fighter stance, facing the door, for a full minute. I’ve never seen him so still.

Another minute passes and then his mom joins him on the porch. She tries to touch his arm but he jerks away and doesn’t even look at her. Eventually she gives up. As soon as she’s gone, all the tension leaves his body. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and his shoulders begin to shake. He looks up to my window. I wave, but he doesn’t respond. I realize he can’t see me because my lights are off. I run to the switch. But by the time I return to the window, he’s gone.

I press my forehead, my palms, my forearms against the glass.

I’ve never wanted out of my skin more.

THE HIDDEN WORLD

SOMETIMES THE WORLD
reveals itself to you. I’m alone in the darkening sunroom. Late-afternoon sun cuts a trapezoid of light through the glass window. I look up and see particles of dust drifting, crystal white and luminous, in the suspension of light.

There are entire worlds that exist just beneath our notice of them.

HALF-LIFE