This Raging Light (18 page)

I wake up like someone shook me.
It's Eden-blanket pink outside. Digby's legs are over mine, one arm slung across my back.

Things are a little blurry. Then I see.

Eden is in the room with us. Sitting on the bed at our feet, perched like she would be, chin on knees. Her head is cocked to the side. Watching. And she is smiling.

I close my eyes again, Digby's mouth on my neck.

“I'm going back to the hospital,” Janie says. She towers over Digby and me, fully dressed, hair pinned back, no more strays. She is holding a glass of water out to me, and a couple of white pills.

I am awake too fast, dizzy again. I smooth myself down, pull at my—Eden's—shirt. My throat hurts awful.

“Digby, there's a two-hour delay today again because of the snow, and I don't want anyone going anywhere until I get back. I have to go relieve John at the hospital, but there's plenty of food in the fridge and I've given Wren another dose of medication. Here's yours.” She thrusts the pills at me.

“Mom—” Digby tries.

“No,” she says. “I don't want to hear it right now. Later.”

Eden. My dream.

“Is Eden okay?” I ask.

“She's in a coma, Lucille,” she says. “No. She is not okay.” She flails her arms around. “None of this is okay.”

“Oh,” I say.

“You two had better start thinking about what is going on here. In the midst of a family crisis, Digby Riley Jones? Really? This cannot go on. As far as I can tell, everything has gone to hell in a handbasket.” When I've taken the pills, she puts a hand out for the water and I give it back to her. “How does your mother leave you like that? I mean, I have a child in the hospital and she doesn't even have the decency to take care of her own children. It's unbelievable, just unbelievable. And now the two of you. I don't have time for this!” Her voice is so close to hysterical that I only briefly stop to wonder how long she's known about Mom and how much she knows. “I have had enough.” Her voice breaks on the last word, and she walks out, just like that, half slams the door on her way.

“Damn,” Digby says. “Dammit.”

He plays basketball. Really. Once the pills kick in and I feel half normal again and my throat stops hurting so much, I look outside because I can't find him anywhere. He has cleared off just that one patch of the driveway and he is throwing the ball in the hoop. Black beanie on, sporty jacket and pants, tossing the ball over and over. Bounce, bounce. Through the window, his face scrunches like he's looking for something in that hoop, all surrounded by white. Black and white.

“Can I have some water?” Wren says. “And can you put on the Food Network?”

“Sure.” I feel awful and she looks a little worse than me, but I'm walking and not so delirious anymore. I hope I didn't infect Digby. After I get her all set up, I go outside with my jacket on over my sleeping clothes.

“Hey,” I say.

Digby stops for a second, then keeps going. Bouncing and running. He swishes by me, the sound of his pants rubbing together. The cold day is a relief.

“You should go back inside,” he says finally, dribbling the ball.

“I'm not going to, though,” I say.

He plays like I'm not there, and then he smashes the ball hard against the wall, close enough to me that I start. It bounces into the road. We both watch it until it rolls under Mom's car and into a tire.

“Did you know green eyes and red hair are the rarest combination of traits?” I say.

“Yeah,” he says. “You're pretty much the queen of non sequiturs, you know that?”

He comes a little closer.

“You're rare is what I mean,” I say.

“You are too.”

“Maybe,” I say. Then, “Digby, do you want to be with me?”

He dribbles the ball, not looking at me.

“Do you?” I say. “Because you can't have both. You can't have everything the way it was at the same time as you make something new. You can't,” I struggle, “touch me like that and then disappear. And if you can't stand by me, hold my hand, be proud to be with me, then you can't have the rest. It's not fair to anyone, not even you. So what do you want?”

He doesn't answer, just breathes fog in and out. The crack inside me turns to a fissure turns to a split. I will not think about his hands on me. It's done.

“I'm going home,” I say. “I know your mom is upset, but tell her we'll be okay. I'll get some medicine on my way.” I wrap myself tighter.

“The whole thing—”

“The whole thing is messed up. Messy. Unfixable.”

“It is?”

“Of course it is.” I breathe on my icy hand, think about what Eden said. “I have a lot of things I have to figure out right now, and I can't do it here. You have a lot too. Thanks for everything, okay? For helping with Wren and being there. You were beyond. But now you have to stay away. Say goodbye to me.”

“Come on, Lucille.”

“Say it.”

“You're being so . . .”

“I know, dramatic. This is high drama. But you have to say it anyway.” I'm nodding because with every second I'm surer that I'm doing something good, something necessary for everyone. “Because next time you see me, we have to be like we were before. There has to be an end. You see that, right?”

My teeth start to chatter and he goes to put an arm around me, but I move away.

“Nothing ever ends,” he says.

“Not true,” I say. “Everything does.”

“But what if it's you?” He pulls at his head. “What if I do the wrong thing?”

“Cut it out.” I want to say bitter things I can't take back, like to man up, but I force myself to my original thought. I love him too much. That's what's under everything. He makes me weak. I don't like weak. Eden said he is good. I want to be uncomplicated. Good, too. I want to be normal, clean, with two nice parents and a sweet boyfriend who doesn't have to sneak. “I'm not going to the hospital today since I'm sick,” I say, “but if I'm better, I'd like to go tomorrow after school. If that's okay.”

“So you don't want me to be there?” He looks small.

“I think it's better if you're not, but I will stay away if that's when you want to go.”

“It's down to this.” Shakes his head. “Unbelievable.”

“For a little while.” I pat him on his arm. “We'll be friends again someday, when all of this fades. Tell your mom thanks for last night.” I nod toward my car. “Better get your ball before I run it over. I'm going to get Wren.”

I look back one time before I go in the house. I'm hoping whatever he's doing, I can freeze it in my head so I'll always remember it. I know I'll see Digby again—a million times, probably—but it won't be like this. He's leaning against the post for the basketball hoop, doubled over, staring at his feet.

“Bye, Lucille Bennett,” he says as I close the door.

A
ratatatatat
sound wakes me up, climbs the stairs, and breaks through my NyQuil fuzz. Wren doesn't budge next to me. I'm so disoriented, I have to hold on to the wall on my way down. I don't have much time to think about who it might be. Dad? No. Mom? No. Maybe Digby or Janie?

Seriously, in all my wildest imaginings, Elaine is the very, very last person I expect when I open the door. But there she is. Her little olive face is wrecked, puffy and . . .

“What time is it?” I say.

She swipes at her eyes. “Were you asleep?”

“I'm sick.”

She steps back a little, stands up straighter.

“At least he wasn't lying about something,” she mutters.

And then I know. It comes into focus. “Do you want to come in?” I say.

“No!” She folds her arms over her navy blue cashmere sweater. “Maybe.” She looks around. “It's cold.”

She glances around. I am not going to think about what her privileged eyes are seeing. I'm just not. “It's only nine o'clock. I'm sorry if I woke you.”

“You're apologizing to me?”

“Right? Right.” She reaches into her purse for a tissue.

And then she's in my house.

“I want to yell at you,” she says in a shaky voice.

“Go ahead,” I say. “You can yell at me if you want to.”

The tears spill over her bottom lids then and rush down her cheeks.

My head and chest pound.

“Are you sleeping with him?”

“No,” I say.
Worse,
I think.

She paces around a second, touches the wall, the molding, then meets my eyes. There's something tough in there.

“Well, that's good I guess.” She faces me like a mirror. “I decided a few minutes ago that you're a really unhappy person. I mean, I had already decided. Digby told me, you know. He told me everything. About how your mom left for no reason, and I knew about your dad.”

Betrayal. I handed him a knife and he stabbed me with it.

“He said that he felt sorry for you, that he wanted to help you. I let him. I trusted him.”

“Ha.” I taste metal. “Me too.”

“Yeah, well, you're not in a relationship with him, Lucille. He doesn't owe you anything.”

Stab. Stab. Double stab. “There's nothing going on anymore,” I say. “Okay?”

She's not listening to me. “We're going to school together next year. Penn State, if everything goes according to plan. And”—her voice gives a little, and then she swallows it down—“we've been talking about getting married for two years now. I mean, when we're graduated from college and everything. And then it's like you come out of nowhere. You're all forlorn and vulnerable and you make him—you're confusing him and it's not fair. He thinks he has all these feelings, but you know what? I'm betting it has nothing to do with you at all. I think Digby would have been sucked into anyone he cared about who was in this much trouble. He gets to play savior for a minute, feel special. He just wants that good stuff you're feeding him. Makes him feel big.” She fingers the gold heart at her throat. Did Digby give it to her? “And then on top of everything you had to go and pull his sister out of the river.”

I can barely stand. She backs me against the door. I don't know why I can't say anything.

“I think you suck,” she says. “I felt bad for you. I was happy to let him have a friend who's a girl, even a close one. You took advantage of that. You both did. You're just a sad person trying to take another person down with you, and he's such a boy that he fell for it.” She's a couple inches shorter than I am, but she seems like a towering Amazon warrior brandishing a bow and arrow inches from my face. “So you look at me and tell me that what's between you is real. Tell me that Digby would have all these
feelings
for you if you were a normal person.”

I struggle to find words, but I'm frozen.

“You have nothing to say to me?”

“You're right,” I manage. “I'm sorry. It's done now, okay?”

Something in my stomach is ripping away, and I don't want her to see it.

She softens. “The two of you, it's a fantasy. Not real. Nothing even close to real.”

This I can't let her get away with. “It felt real,” I say. “It felt like the only real thing. But I am sorry, so sorry, I fell in love with your boyfriend.” If I am trying to tell the truth, that is what I have.

“You hurt me. Maybe you don't care about that, maybe I don't mean anything to you, but you know, you hurt him too.” She pulls her keys from her purse. “Don't do it again.”

I pick myself up the next morning
and I go to school. Wren seems to be better too, so I coax her into the car with promises of shopping after. I can't stand to see her in her ratty clothes that don't fit anymore. I have to start somewhere. When you are at your weakest, when everything is a mess, cleanup has to start from the bottom. What would Eden do if we met at the rock right now? Besides tell me really smart things, she would make a list, start with reality as it is.

If I don't pull it together, my grades are going to slip, and I won't be able to stop the disaster train from driving all over me again. I slurp on a to-go cup of coffee and I assess the damage.

The facts are these:

• Fred knows.
  

• Janie knows something.
  

• Digby knows.
  

• Elaine knows, so her friends probably do too.
  

• Eden knows, but she's laid out, so that's not an immediate threat.
  

The facts are also these:

• I have lost Digby.
  

• My best friend is in a coma.
  

• My dad is a selfish shell.
  

• My mom is a wandering lost person.
  

But . . .

• I have this house.
  

• Someone is watching over me.
  

• I have a job.
  

• I have a sister.
  

• My grades are all but destroyed, but I can fix that.
  

• I pulled Eden out of the river. I can do this. I can.
  

School is a land mine. Here, at the locker next to mine, the surreal Eden shrine. And after months of me never seeing her, Elaine is literally around every corner, giving me evil ice glares. I duck into the bathroom, trying to figure how I went so long like we were in some parallel universe. Now it's like she's been cloned and Multi-Elaine is out to get me.

I sit outside at lunch. Listen in class. Actually pay attention.

Get through it. Just get through this day. Worry about the other ones later.

I have other things to take care of.

First things first. My sister. After I buy her an outfit, I'm going to take her to see Dad.