Painless (16 page)

Chapter 35

We’re heading down a two-lane road. Luna’s driving and trying to find a radio station to get a weather update. She turns off the radio. “You okay?”

“I’m tired,” I say. My hands are trembling. I’m scared for both of us. We’re heading to someplace known as Zombieville to look for somebody who probably isn’t there.

There’s a good chance we won’t make it back before Tuesday.

The sky is dark, and the wind and rain are unforgiving.

“You don’t have to come with me,” I say. “We’ll find a bus station.”

“No,” she says. “We’re together, remember?”

I think the worst thing in the world would be dying without having answers.

“I don’t know if it means anything to you or not, but none of what your mother or father did is your fault,” Luna says.

I flinch. “I completely blocked Rachel and Tyler from my mind. I created an imaginary friend and a video-game character to replace Tyler.”

“I think you were so sick a lot of times that you didn’t know what was going on.”

I’m speechless. My head is churning.

I had everything I wanted, and I believed what I was told—like I believed there was a Santa, an Easter Bunny, a tooth fairy, and a man in the moon, but don’t most kids believe?

I lean my head against the window. Rain pounds the windshield. Puddles of water drown the highway. Pine trees trapped in moss bend back and forth. I put my hand on my chest and feel how hard my heart’s hammering. I make a hurt animal noise.

“David?” Luna says. “What’s wrong?”

I glance at my watch. It’s 5:15 p.m. “I’m afraid we won’t make it back by Tuesday.”

“I think we will, but if we don’t, there’s always Wednesday,” Luna says. “Or Thursday or Friday. It’s not going to make a difference.”

Luna turns onto another two-lane road. “Why did your grandparents keep you inside most of the time?”

“There was a lady who used to come to the house, and she’d talk to me. Then she’d talk to my grandparents. She’d tell them I needed to be kept inside for safety reasons. I think my grandparents thought I’d hurt myself or somebody else. There really isn’t much information about lifestyles and adapting when you have CIPA, so my grandparents developed a plan.”

“It worked,” Luna says. “It kept you alive.”

“It did.”

“It wasn’t meant to be a life plan,” she says. “And it wasn’t as if you were a sociopath. You had to learn that others could feel pain. Evelyn said nice things about you, and Rachel was really happy to see you. Your doctor didn’t seem to think you were dangerous.”

“He said I was an introvert.”

“I think he’s right.”

I think I was avoiding getting laughed at. But I had a couple of friends.

Luna turns on the radio and finds a station. Music’s playing. “Things happen that we can’t control.”

Like the weather.

The landscape is flat, and the rain has almost stopped for now. From the looks of the dark sky, there’s more to come. We pass nothing but tall brown grass and empty fields. Thick patches of trees bend with the wind on the horizon. I look over at the temperature reading by the radio. It’s seventy-two degrees.

Luna glances at me and smiles. “No matter what happens, everything will be okay.”

She’s a pretty special person. “At least there’s no traffic,” I say.

The car hits a pothole. I wouldn’t want to have a flat tire or break down out here.

A sign on the roadside reads, “Welcome to Flake. Population three hundred fifty.”

In town there are five stores at the traffic light. All are boarded up and have closed signs except for a convenience store. “This place is dead,” I say.

“It’s the quiet before the storm,” Luna says. “We should fill up while we can.” She pulls into the convenience store.

I feel better. I feel like I have a part of me back. My dad probably died and I lived, and I can’t change what was, but I can change what will be.

I pump gas, and Luna hurries into the store. When I’m done, I slide into the driver’s seat.

Luna returns, quickly puts several bags in the backseat, and gets into the car. “I bought a bunch of supplies. Do you know why there’s no traffic? The area’s been evacuated. There’s major action headed this way. Roads are flooding. The clerk said we should get to a shelter immediately. He was closing the store so he could get out in time.”

Chapter 36

“We’re almost there,” I say.

Luna’s shaking her head. “The house is by the lake,” she says. “Have you ever been in a flood?”

“I’ve seen a couple on TV,” I say.

Luna shrugs. “We need to be prepared. The clerk said the hurricane will make landfall later tonight, and it’s likely to spawn tornadoes across the state.”

“How far are we from the coast?”

“About an hour.”

I thought we’d be far enough inland to miss most of the hurricane. I didn’t figure on tornadoes and flooding.

“We don’t know the condition of the cabin,” she says. “It definitely won’t have electricity. I bought batteries, flashlights, candles, and potato chips.”

“I love potato chips,” I say. I can deal with anything. “But we can eat them at a shelter.”

Luna shakes her head. “I am a shelter expert, and we’re not going to one. Too many children crying and people farting,” she says and reaches into the backseat. She pulls out two flashlights and a package of batteries.

“Why’d you stay in a shelter?”

“High school social studies project,” she says, placing batteries in a flashlight.

“That was a shelter for homeless people. They’re different.”

“How would you know? Have you ever been homeless? Many are the same as us but with no address.”

I understand. People think I’m different. I’m the same but without the nerve endings.

For the next fifteen minutes we don’t see a single car on the road. The wind has picked up, and I can hear the moan and snap of trees. Black clouds roll across the sky.

At a pasture, I make a right onto a one-lane dirt road with foot-high grass in the middle, drive about two miles, and go through an open gate with a rotted picket fence. The words on a dangling sign hitting a post are faded. From what I can make out, the sign used to read Friendly Hill. There’s nothing friendly looking. There’s nothing but cut-down trees or houses under construction enveloped in weeds and vines. Limbs are blowing across the road.

At the end of the dirt road, a cabin sits in a thickly wooded area. “Too bad I forgot the weed whacker,” I say.

Luna snorts. “And the boat.”

I kill the motor, climb out, and get a lug wrench from the trunk. “We don’t have a key,” I tell Luna.

She hands me one of the flashlights.

We push through weeds and vines, and step onto a porch. We don’t need a key or lug wrench. Luna pushes
on the door, and it opens. She flips a light switch and nothing happens. “Just checking,” she says.

“Hello!” I call. “Hello…hello?” I yell in the living room. From the corner of my eye I see movement. I turn and jump, my heart going fast. I shine the flashlight on the wall and realize it’s only a mirror. I scared myself.

“It is abandoned,” Luna says.

The master bedroom isn’t anything special. The bed’s neatly made, cobwebs hang in the corners, and a man’s dusty clothes and shoes halfway fill the closet. Socks and underwear are in the dresser drawers. Somebody left a lot of clothes behind.

But if I was going to disappear, I’d take only what I could carry. I’d change my name.

I sit on the bed and gaze at the room. Then I lean over, open the bedside table, and see a bunch of pictures of my dad, my mom, and me. I get a lump in my throat. He didn’t forget me. He kept pictures.

I’ll take them with me when we go.

For right now I only want to sit here. It’s lucky I rarely have tears for anyone to see, but it’s funny how you could poke a finger in my eye, and it would feel like you were just touching me.

After a while, I stand and go into the two other bedrooms. They’re empty.

The water from the bathroom sink is rusty and smells like rotten eggs.

The empty refrigerator smells like a sewage treatment plant. A mountain of freeze-dried food sits in a cabinet.

I open the back door and step into the yard.

Trees surround me. The wind’s wailing. About fifty yards away and another fifty downhill, lake water sloshes on the bank. It’s beautiful here. Looking at the view makes me feel both free and like I’m part of the universe. Like I’m a small part of something becoming big and wonderful.

I love storms. Whenever there were hurricane alerts on TV, I’d watch the reporters standing on the beach and see how the wind and rain would knock them around. I’d wish I was there. Once I asked Nana if we could go see a hurricane. She said no.

I hear Luna calling my name and head back.

“What are you doing? Waiting for a tree to fall on you?”

That reminds me of Seth and the tree that hit his car.

We go inside to the kitchen. The room is dark now, and I can barely see Luna.

“You know, I sort of wish we’d met up with the surfers. It’s too late now, and by tomorrow the beach may no longer exist. But going swimming last night was great.”

“You’re not sorry you came?”

“No. I know my dad lived here for a while, and he went somewhere. I found pictures.”

“I’m glad we’re here now,” Luna says. “It’s soothing.”

“The storm’s soothing?”

“You are,” she says. “I can see why your father liked it here. It’s a good place to think. Let’s unload the car. I bought drinks and sandwiches too.”

We walk outside and get the sleeping bags, backpacks, my guitar, the lantern, and the supplies Luna bought.

Inside, Luna lights candles on the kitchen table. Then she puts sandwiches wrapped in plastic onto the table. “Egg salad, ham and cheese, and two hamburgers,” she says. “The store didn’t have many choices.”

I take one of the hamburgers.

“It’s cold,” Luna says.

“I can’t tell the difference.”

“I forget sometimes.” Luna unwraps the egg salad. “Are you all right?”

I nod. “I am. You know, I never asked my grandmother much, but I don’t think she knew everything or she would’ve told me. It was a miracle Nana wanted me. I wouldn’t have survived anywhere else.” I tell her about having somebody watching me every second of the day, including when I was sleeping, until I turned fourteen. I talk about the tutors, the teams of doctors, the never giving up.

“Your grandmother was an amazing lady,” she says.

“She learned to manage me and took it to the next level.” I take a drink of Coke. “Managing was like a business to her. She used spreadsheets, graphs, and charts to keep up with everything. She’d say even if I ended up in a wheelchair, I’d be capable of doing whatever I wanted to do, but she mainly wanted me to try hard and be a good person.”

“Your dad has to have felt guilty.”

“Probably felt like a failure,” I say. “Did you hear about that ferry that sank and lots of kids died? The captain made it out, but then he killed himself.”

“I always felt like my older brother got all the attention. He made good grades and won every award possible in school. I never measured up to him. You know, the teachers called me ’Jonathan’s sister.’ They hardly ever called me Luna.”

She gets a small radio from one of the bags, puts in batteries, and turns it on. I hear loud static. “I picked this up at the convenience store.”

After a moment a voice comes on the radio, and we smile at each other.

“…be with you all night, soothing your soul with music and updating you with the latest weather conditions. Folks, get off the roads. Find shelter. This is an enormous storm.”

Chapter 37

I pile wood shelves from the bookcase into the fireplace. I use old newspapers to start a fire. This way we will have some light throughout the night. Then I go into the bathroom and splash water on myself. I’ll have to do this every couple of hours while the fire’s going. Luna says it’s in the high eighties inside, and the DJ says it’s seventy-three degrees outside.

The outside temperature has dropped because of the storm. My temperature is a hundred and one point two, but Luna needs me to help, so I can’t take a chance of my temperature getting too high. The first bad thing that happens before the last thing is the confusion. Seizures are next, followed by coma and death.

I text Joe.

We’ve stopped and found shelter. Bad wind and rain.

Good. How close?

Radio says enormous storm.

Okay. I can track you through your cell phone. I’ll be here. Keep me informed.

I will. We’re fine. Maybe call Luna’s parents if you don’t hear from me.

Okay.

Up until the past few days, I only had me to worry about. Nana was always there for me. Joe too.

“I sent Joe a message,” I tell Luna. “Maybe you should send your parents one too.” I take a deep breath. “So they know you’re okay.”

Luna nods and takes out her cell phone.

I can hear rain pounding the roof and the howls of wind as it comes and goes. “I’m going to sit on the porch for a while,” I say to Luna. “Temperature regulation, you know.” That’s always been my biggest physical struggle.

“I want to listen to the weather for a few minutes,” Luna says with concern. She has tears rolling down her face. “This is going to be worse than I imagined.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” she says and sticks her cell phone in her pocket.

“We’ll be all right,” I say. I’ve never been in a hurricane before, but years ago after a hurricane ripped its way across the south, it became a tropical storm and hit our house and blew trees onto our roof. Up until now, that was the worst storm I’ve been in. I sit leaning against the porch wall, the roof keeping some of the rain off me. In a way, I don’t ever want to leave here. The thought makes me smile. I can see why James liked it here. I think how he really hasn’t been my dad for years. My grandparents were my mother and father and everything to me.

“It’s a Category five,” Luna says, coming out the door. “But the winds are expected to slow to around a hundred and fifty when the hurricane makes landfall.” She sits next to me, and our shoulders and legs touch. She shivers. “Four hours from now.”

I’m wondering what the rest of the world is doing tonight when a sudden gust of wind blows the screen door away.

Luna and I hurry back inside. She lights a candle, and I grab the flashlight. I can hear snapping from outside. I go into the kitchen, struggle to open that door against the wind, and shine the light outside. Trees are on the ground, but I can’t see much more. I shut the door. Hearing and seeing the destruction makes me feel the horror. It’s like being on a railroad track with a train heading toward you, but your foot’s stuck under the track.

I meet Luna in the living room. She’s still shivering. I go over and put more wood on the fire. The DJ on the radio says winds are around sixty miles per hour. We have a way to go until the wind gets to a hundred and fifty, and already trees are falling.

Luna curls up on the sofa. The room smells like smoke. The sounds from the wind and rain haven’t let up.

“I guess I should go sleep in another room,” I say.

“Sleep? You’re going to sleep?”

“I thought you’d want to sleep.”

“We stay together, okay?”

The radio’s still on, and the disc jockey is taking requests. We can either call in or send a text message.

I call the number and request “We’ll Sing in the Sunshine.”

“That’s an oldie. Any special reason why you chose that song?” the DJ asks.

“Because it’s raining,” I say.

When I was a kid, my grandfather would play the guitar and sing the song with Nana.

“How is the weather there?” the DJ says.

“My friend and I are staying in a cabin at Friendly Hill. It’s storming pretty bad. Trees are falling.” I give him the address. When tomorrow comes, I want somebody to remember that we were here.

The DJ thanks me for calling and asks me to call tomorrow and tell him how we’re doing.

Luna’s scrunched up on the sofa like she knows why I was talking so much to somebody I don’t know. “We’re safe here,” I tell her, and I hear a crash.

I get up and tell Luna to stay where she is, but she stands and reminds me that we stay together no matter what.

We walk through the house. She’s holding on to the flashlight with one hand and my arm with the other. I don’t mind, but I should be braver. I’m no hero. I’m too scared.

Luna shines the light into the bedroom and moans.

A tree went through the roof and landed in the bedroom, the limbs stretched out across the bed, rain dripping from the hole in the roof. I could’ve been lying under that tree. This is where I was headed a few minutes ago.

Luna folds her arms across her chest. “We’re not going to make it back before Tuesday,” she murmurs.

It’s Sunday night. “I’ll do everything possible to make sure you’re back. Okay?”

“I know you will,” she says in a shaky voice.

She’s trembling. I follow her into the living room. She lies on the sofa, and I cover her with a blanket. Before I can turn around, Luna lunges off the sofa and hurries to the bathroom. I hear heaving, and then I hear flushing.

I sit on the sofa and lean forward crossing my arms. I won’t bother Luna. When I’m sick, I want to be alone. My brain’s jumping around with thoughts. What if she has something serious like appendicitis? The hurricane’s only hours away. People die from appendicitis. Maybe she’s having a panic attack. I’m terrified.

I text Joe.

Screen door blew away. Tree on house. Luna sick.

Okay. I’m here. Will be here all night.

I get up, walk to the bathroom, and knock on the door. “I can drive you to the hospital,” I say. “Before the weather worsens.” I hear the toilet flush again.

“I’m feeling better,” she says, opening the door a couple of inches. “Go away, okay?”

I go back to the couch. “We’ll Sing in the Sunshine” comes on the radio. It’s about a couple who will sing and laugh in the sunshine, but the girl plans to leave after a year because the cost of love is too high.

I think maybe my dad felt like the cost of love was too high.

I start singing. It’s kind of a happy and sad song. I know I’m weird. I know I’m a freak. It doesn’t matter anymore. When it’s life or death, you do whatever you can to make the bad go away. Singing works.

I hear footsteps and look up. Luna’s walking into the room. “Don’t stop,” she says and plops on the sofa.

We sing together.

Next a woman asks the disc jockey if I’m dating anyone, and the DJ laughs. He says for me to call him back. The woman dedicates “Smile” to me.

The song comes on, and we sing to it. I don’t feel self-conscious. I feel like I do when I’m playing my guitar or the piano, or when I’m singing in the shower or in my room. I forget about the world.

“Folks,” the DJ says, “the hurricane will impact communication. We can’t take any more calls. I’ve been informed that the cell phone system could become overloaded with calls and interfere with emergency calls. Because of the high winds, there is also a good possibility that the towers will sustain damage. If you have an emergency, you can use a landline or a pay phone, if you know where one is.”

I kind of laugh. “Ever see a pay phone?” I ask her.

“I have a few times. I’ve never used one.”

“I’ve never seen one,” I say. “My grandmother kept our landline, but I don’t know anybody else who has one.” I don’t know why I’m talking about phones. “We’re going to ride out the hurricane, and then everything will be fine. This house is actually pretty nice, and I wouldn’t mind staying here a while.”

“You don’t understand, David. I have to go as soon as we can.”

I turn my head toward her. “You don’t have to do anything.”

“You’re a dreamer,” she says. “I am a realist.”

“Realists don’t crash a wedding reception or sleep on a beach.”

“That was my alter ego,” she says.

I force a smile. “I am a dreamer. You’re meant for bigger things. You need to keep going to college and graduate. You’ll do something great one day.” I look down. Probably I’d die of loneliness if I stayed here. Probably by tomorrow everything that’s happened will seem like a dream. Probably Joe will invite me to dine with him on Thanksgiving and Christmas. He’ll probably give me a sweater or tie. I’ll wait for Spencer to come home on break from college. I’ll probably keep my dreams.

“There’s something I should’ve told you right away,” Luna says.

I stare at the fire, the wooden shelves becoming ashes. “I have bad breath?”

“I have regrets.”

I look over at her. “So, you’re afraid of the storm, and you’re afraid you’ll die having regrets?”

“It’s more than that.”

People who say I don’t understand pain are wrong. It’s written all over Luna’s face, the way she grimaces and shudders, the way she squeezes her eyes shut.

No. No. No.

“Tuesday morning I’m supposed to board a plane bound for Houston. When I arrive, I’ll be meeting my parents. They’ll drive me to the hospital. I’ll be admitted, and then I’ll start chemo.”

I think I have pain written across my heart. I think it’s stopped beating. “You have cancer?”

“I was in remission from leukemia. I’m not anymore. I suspected it the night the guy at the party grabbed my arm and left it bruised.” She pulls up her sleeve.

I see a black and blue lump the size of a walnut I hadn’t noticed before. “I’ll get you back in time.” I look down. “You shouldn’t have waited.”

“I wanted to dress up and pretend I was a princess. I wanted to do something illegal and sleep under the stars. I wanted to come with you.”

“I’ll go with you to Houston,” I say.

“I’ll go alone,” she says.

A few hours later I awaken, still sitting on the sofa. Rain hammers the roof, and the wind shrieks. The room’s dark, but I can see Luna at the end of the sofa holding the flashlight as she pulls things out of her backpack.

“Luna?” I say. “Did you lose something?”

“I need something for pain,” she says. “But I forgot
the pills.”

“I may have something. You relax.”

“Relax?” she says. “Relax? How can I relax?”

“Try to calm down. It’ll help ease the pain.”

“What the hell do you know about pain?”

“Nothing. I don’t know anything about pain.”

I think God was teaching me a lesson when he made me painless.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes.” I head for the kitchen.

I get my backpack and shine the light inside.

I have a first aid kit. It contains Band-Aids, antibiotic ointment, Tylenol in case my temperature starts going up, and some Robitussin with codeine I got months ago when I had a bad cough and my throat itched so bad I couldn’t stop scratching. I had gone to the doctor. He did an x-ray, and I had a broken rib I didn’t even know about. He said it could have broken when I was coughing.

I hold the bottle of Robitussin up to the candlelight. It’s expired. The Tylenol is okay, but I don’t think it will help severe pain.

Then I pull out the bottle of Nana’s pain pills.

I don’t know what made me grab them when I was packing. I put them in my backpack to make sure Ruby didn’t dispute the officer’s claim and say Veronica lied and could’ve placed any pills in a bottle.

Ruby truly believes I should be punished over and
over again.

I take the flashlight into the bathroom to see what else I can find. The bathroom stinks, and my shoes stick to floor. I could step on a nail and not know it, but I can feel sticky and itchy. I fan the air with my hand and then sling open the door to the medicine cabinet. I should have taken her to the hospital before it was too late. She should’ve told me she was sick. I hate freakin’ secrets.

There’s nothing there. At home I have dozens of bottles of pills for just about anything.

I guess if it’s needed, expired Robitussin with codeine is better than Tylenol, and the next choice would be Nana’s pain pills, but I won’t give her one unless I don’t have a choice.

I return to the kitchen and get a cup of water.

Back in the living room, Luna moans a couple of times. She’s shivering. I don’t think it’s cold in here. She’s probably got a fever. I kneel next to her and open the Tylenol. “Here,” I say.

She takes the Tylenol with a sip of water.

“Can you drink it all?” I say. “It will help lower your fever, and if your fever goes down, you’ll be more comfortable.”

She drinks the water.

“If that doesn’t help in about a half hour, you should take a tepid bath.”

I show her the Robitussin with codeine and tell her it’s expired. “I’m not sure if it should be taken with the Tylenol,” I say.

“It’s fine. Thank you,” she says.

Then I sit on the sofa and massage her feet.