Indigo (26 page)

“Baby,” he said. He moved forward to pull me toward him, but I backed away.

“I can’t.”

“Corrine.” And when I looked back up at him, I saw there were tears in his eyes too, his face, his beautiful face, a study in pain. “Baby, let me hold you.”

I shook my head.

“Okay,” he said, and settled on the couch. I sat down across from him on the loveseat. “You didn’t hurt Mrs. Abernathy.”

“It’s too risky. All of it.”

“Corrine, how can I make you see it like I see it?” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Listen, you know with auras? We’re not all one color, right?”

I nodded.

“There’re all kinds of colors in there. Some traits are positive, some negative. Some a mixture. But the overall auras themselves, they are just—”

“Beautiful.”

“No.” He shook his head. “No, they are
real
. They are life. Us. It’s all we got.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“None of us have total control of anything. Not you, not
me, not anybody. And we’re all taking risks, every day. Nothing’s promised.”

He came over to the loveseat then, sat down next to me. I let the tears fall down my cheeks, and I thought about what he said. He brushed his hand through my hair, and the hairs on the nape of my neck rose. It was like the first touch ever, so real to me, exaggerated for some reason.

“I’m taking a risk right now,” he said. “But it’s worth it.”

“The risk of being electrocuted?” I said.

“No, Corrine, the risk that you won’t love me back.”

My heart swelled at the word, and I turned to him, my eyes meeting his. His beautiful face, his gorgeous eyes, watching me, seeing me, only me, the real me, searching me for what? An answer to the unasked question?

I swallowed against the dryness in my throat. And then I answered him. “I will.” I wanted to sound brave, but it came out small.

He leaned forward, kissed my eyebrow, kissed away my tears, and then his lips were on mine, and we were kissing. His mouth against mine, our connection. Soft, gentle. Questioning. And I let it happen, and I wanted it, I wanted him.

“Touch me,” he whispered. “Put your hands on me, Corrine.”

“I can’t,” I said. And I pulled away, a promise unfulfilled. He sighed, raking his hand through his hair. After a few moments, he stood up; he left me something, a piece of paper, on the coffee table, but he left wordlessly.

It was more than just my heart knowing him. My heart loved him.

I took the paper upstairs to my room, unfolded it. It was a beautiful chalk drawing: an aura, a version of the one aura that had most populated his garage. His favorite subject. The colors were rich and jewel-toned, like the leaves of a Chicago autumn, maroon and orange, purple and gold, bright red and indigo. I flipped it over and he had signed it in bright blue ink.

My name and the date. I had been right. This was me.

My heart ached because I couldn’t agree with this rendering, this beauty. I felt weak and paralyzed with the complications of this touch. I was not worthy of this power. Of Rennick’s attention, his admiration. His love. He had used that word.
Love
.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I made myself really look. When would I quit hating myself?

When would it be enough?

I thought of Paganini’s
La Campanella
. The power of it. The strong start. Right from the first measure. So sure of itself. I thought of how Mrs. Smelser had first assigned me this piece on the violin back in sixth grade. As I had been waiting for the student ahead of me to finish, I sat down at the piano in the school hallway and began to play it, but different. Not allegro. I slowed it down. Ritard. Gave it more of a nocturne flair. Just playing around with it.

I had really lost myself in the playing of it. Transforming
it. And when I finally opened my eyes, I flushed at seeing Mrs. Smelser and her other student standing beside the piano. I had apologized, explaining to her that I knew that wasn’t how it went, that I was just messing around. I insisted on playing it for her on my violin. The correct way.

“Corrine, don’t forget this, though,” she told me afterward, sticking her pencil into her messy silver curls. “Music isn’t static. Don’t ever apologize for making something beautiful. Don’t be scared of what you alone can add.”

I left Rennick’s drawing on my desk and knelt down, looked under my bed, and took out my violin. I tuned each string, turning the knobs at the scroll just enough. I applied the rosin to my bow, tightened it to exactly the right amount of tension. I brought the violin to my chin, rested it in the familiar little nook of my collarbone.

I played
Canon in D
. My fingers remembered the notes, and my soul remembered the music. I played for a long time. Sousa. Mozart. Piece after piece. Not for any reason other than I needed to play. I needed to remember what it was like to be my real self.

I was still playing when I heard my cell phone ring for the fifth time in a row. I gave up, put my violin down on the bed, and reached for the phone. Mrs. Rawlings’s phone number.

“Hello?”

“I’m at the hospital with Mia-Joy,” Sarah said calmly. “It is not an emergency, but please come. We will explain.”

She hung up. Obviously her phone call had been planned specifically so that I would not freak out, but what I was actually doing was freaking out. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” I repeated, pacing around my bedroom before I could make a cohesive plan. And, of course, in the back of my head I had more guilt. Hadn’t Rennick predicted this? The rip in her aura? And hadn’t I just let it all go?

I didn’t have a car. Mom and Dad turned off their cells at church. Biking out to the hospital would take at least an hour.

Rennick.

I called his cell and he answered on the first ring. He was in my driveway within ten minutes, and I was in his car, trying to explain the situation.

He clenched his jaw. “We’ll get there in time,” he said, driving faster than I’d ever seen. I knew what he meant. No matter what was going on, I could fix her. I could heal Mia-Joy.

My stomach clenched. How was I supposed to use this thing when I didn’t have control, really?

I tried to remind myself of the mouse, of how sure I had seemed after that. It didn’t help.

As soon as we walked into Mia-Joy’s hospital room, I knew that this was a different kind of situation than I had expected. Tenuous in a different way. She sat in her hospital bed, and her face was pinched and angry, defiant. That
famous Mia-Joy scowl. But if she looked scary, Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings looked downright terrifying.

“You want to tell your friend here? Or shall I?” Sarah barked at Mia-Joy.

Mia-Joy broke then. She looked out the window, and I saw the cover, the mask, dissolve for a second; I moved to go to her, but Mrs. Rawlings was already there, holding her in her arms. She pressed Mia-Joy to her ample bosom, rocked her back and forth. She whispered things to Mia-Joy, and I fought the tears back too. I had to look away because of what this did to me. It undid me. This show of kindness.

So powerful.

Mr. Rawlings got up and motioned for Rennick to leave with him. Rennick looked at me for the okay, and I nodded. Mrs. Rawlings finished comforting her daughter and turned toward me. “She wants to tell you about it herself.”

Was she pregnant? Oh Jesus. What could it be?

“Sit down, Corrine.”

“What is it, Mia-Joy?” I sat down in the chair across from the bed. She composed herself, applying some lip gloss and fixing her curls in her compact mirror before she began, all the while my heart thudding in my eardrums.

“I knew something was up,” I told her. “I knew I should’ve—”

“Shut up, Corrine,” she said. “This isn’t about you. And you don’t know anything. You’re not the only one who can have a crisis in this world.”

I sat back, wounded. But I deserved that, didn’t I?

“Oh, stop it,” Mia-Joy teased. “Just let me get it out, okay? It’s embarrassing. It’s … shitty, ya know?” She bit her lip for a second. “I work at it—seeming like I got my shit together. For you. For the kids at school. For everybody. But mostly for my own sorry self.”

I waited.

“I like seeming like I’m in control, working it, ya know?”

“You do have it all together, Mia-Joy,” I said. “I don’t understand.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay. Summer of seventh grade. It started then.”

I made a face at her. “Seventh grade?”

“Yep. Puberty.”

What did she mean? The year she got boobs? The year she became beautiful? “You handled that like nobody’s business, Mia-Joy. Ugly duckling to a swan. Although I don’t know if I’d go so far as ugly duck—”

“I spent half the year throwing up every meal I ate.”

“You did?” I was flabbergasted. Mia-Joy? Bulimic?

“You didn’t know about that, Corrine?”

“No. Jesus.” I was speechless. Dumbfounded. “So since then … 
now
?”

Mia-Joy blanched. “On and off.” She was embarrassed, wouldn’t meet my eyes. She knotted and unknotted a stray string from a curl of a blanket in her lap. She looked so small there, sitting in her mint-green hospital gown. It hurt her to
tell me this, to show me this weakness. “With my diabetes, it makes things worse. Messes with my pump, the insulin, if I’m screwing up like that. Mom caught me. That’s why I’m here. Last time, she told me she’d give me one more chance.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Mia-Joy, you’re too smart to—”

“Spare me the speech, Corrine, okay? I get it. I know. I know it doesn’t make sense. I know that. But I know I need help. People aren’t perfect.”

“But you have to know how beautiful you are. Guys are like drooling—”

“I think …” Mia-Joy licked her lips and closed her eyes. This was hard for her to talk about. “I think I’ve learned that it’s how I keep control. I feel things getting crazy and I—”

“But you’re the one who always handles things so—”

“No. You can’t put me up on that pedestal, Corrine. Not me.” Then she eyed me, looked a little bit more like herself. “You can’t put anybody on that pedestal, yourself included.”

I nodded and stopped myself, realizing I was only going to sermonize. “So you’re staying here?”

“For a while. Then outpatient therapy.”

“You don’t think I could help with the touch or anything?” I was surprised when the offer came tumbling out of my mouth.

But Mia-Joy just gave me a look. “Girl.”

“I just thought maybe I could get you back to normal, back—”

“There is no normal!” she snapped.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Corrine, if I’ve learned one thing about trying to be perfect, it’s that it’s not attainable. Nobody’s normal. Nobody’s perfect. Not you, not me. And none of us has it all worked out. We don’t
get to perfect
and then that’s it, ya know? It’s about waking up each day and trying. Making better decisions.”

I sat in silence with her then, trying to digest this. How did I never know this about Mia-Joy? How had I been so oblivious? She had needed me, and I had never even known.

“Mia-Joy, you’re beautiful. Everyone thinks so. You can’t seriously think you are too—”

“Sometimes … sometimes …” I saw the mask lift from her face again. I got up, sat on the edge of her bed. I hugged her. “Sometimes I know,” she said quietly.

“Can I help?” I said. “Let me help somehow.”

But Mia-Joy had her own agenda. “Yes, you can. Let’s talk about you.”

“Mia-Joy, no, I didn’t come here to—”

“Corrine, you’re lost right now.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“No, listen. I know you. You miss how you used to be in Chicago. Confident. Things were all black-and-white, cut-and-dry.”

She was right. How could she know this? And why were we talking about me? “How do you—”

“You weren’t perfect there either, Corrine. You just like to think you were.”

“Mia-Joy, I—”

“That asshole, what was his name? The rich kid you brought down for Mardi Gras last year?”

“Cody?”

“Cody. Arrogant rich kid. What had he said about your violin playing?
Cute
.” She made a gagging sound at the thought.

“I can’t believe you are going to—”

“Believe it. I’m just trying to snap you back into reality, Corrine.”

“Consider myself snapped,” I retorted.

“He might hurt you,” she said.

“Cody?”

“No. Rennick.” She gave me her know-it-all look again, and I liked it, even though what she was saying was hitting a little too close to home. “He might hurt you. You might hurt him. But you have to let somebody in finally, don’t ya, Corrine? I mean, you need to live. Sophie would want that.”

“I am living.”

“No. Not really.” Mia-Joy rolled her eyes. “You hold everything and everyone at arm’s length if you can’t completely control it. People. The touch. Definitely that boy.”

Was I doing that? “Mia-Joy, I’m not—”

But she was still going. Really going now. “Truthfully, you are worse off than me. You should be sitting in this bed,
having all these old bald men asking you, ‘And how does that make you feeeeeel?’ ”

“Mia-Joy!”

“Just listen, Corrine. Life is messy. If it’s good, it’s really messy. I think you sometimes forget that. Life before Sophie. After Sophie. You idealize it all. And this touch, this blessing you have, it’s just making it worse. Nothing’s easy. Clean. Black-and-white. It doesn’t work that way.”

I pursed my lips, tried to blurt out some zingy comeback. But nothing came. Because she was right.

“Just give in to the flucking chaos that is life, Corrine,” Mia-Joy told me. She was really on her high horse. But I could see it there in her face that she was sincere too. “Have some fun.” She smirked now.

“Jesus, you’ve been spending too much time with the shrinks already.” I gave her a smirk right back.

And I hugged her, hugged her close to me, and she shuddered and let out a few tears, and it seemed so out of place, so un-Mia-Joy-like. I promised myself that I would be more present for her. I had been so stupid for never once thinking
she
might need
me
.