Katie.
My mind never gets further than that. I feel it flex, like a fist trying to hold sand. My best friend.
A group of guys coming out of a strip club eye me. “Hey, cutie!” one of them yells. “Wanna ride?” He pumps his pelvis back and forth, and his buddies laugh.
I run on.
I pass the 7-Eleven, the Dollar Tree, a Wendy’s. I must have run about three miles. Only three miles! I’m not going to make it, I think. I’m not.
A war breaks out in my mind between the You-Need-to-Rests and the If-You-Stop-Now-You’ll-Never-Make-Its.
I have to keep going. Katie, Katie, Katie. I can’t stop. Can’t stop.
Another mile. Two.
Pain stabs into my side. I stumble, then run another five steps. Run on. Finally, the You-Need-to-Rests win.
Just a minute, I tell myself. Just a minute, then I’ll get up. I’ll get up and run the rest of the way.
Katie, Katie, Katie.
There’s a small patch of landscaping at the edge of a gas station. I sit down on a pile of freezing mulch and pull my Snuggie close around me. I rest there a moment, then lie back. There are no stars above me. Just glare from the gas station sign and darkness beyond. I’m tired. Bone tired.
I start to wonder if I’m going to make it. I’m not sure I can get back up.
Beep! Beep!
I hear a car roll up, and fear shoots through me because I figure it must be that group of drunken strip-club guys. But I’m out of strength. I can’t even sit up. Let me die comes into my mind, and it’s terrifying, because I’ve never had a thought like that before.
“Cuckoo!” someone shouts, and before I can process what’s happening, strong arms scoop beneath me and I smell Flatso’s familiar, flowery scent and hear her voice beside my ear.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” she whispers over and over as she carries me to Zitsy’s car.
Zitsy cranks up the heat in the car as Flatso gently fastens me into my seat belt. “We’re going to see her, Kooks,” she says. “We’re all going. We’ll take you. Don’t worry.” Her voice is both soothing and firm, the exact kind of voice you want to hear after running five miles through a scary part of town at midnight. It occurs to me that if Flatso were a guy instead of a girl, she’d likely be on the football team, and she would probably be one of the most popular guys in school.
But, instead, she’s a girl. The world doesn’t see her strength—they only see her weight. And instead of being popular, she’s one of my very best friends.
My best friends.
My best friend.
Katie, Katie, Katie.
And that’s the thought that wraps itself around me as Zitsy pulls out of the gas station and drives off down the black ribbon of road toward the hospital.
Chapter 53
I GUESS I’M NOT SO FINE
I reel a moment from the rush of relief I feel when I walk into the hospital. The bright lights, the warm air. I trip toward the desk and say Brainzilla’s name. “Katie,” I pant, “Katherine Sloane. We’re looking for her.”
The nurse shakes her head. “I’m sorry—visiting hours are from eight AM to ten PM,” she says.
“We can’t see her?” Zitsy wails. He looks devastated by this news.
“Can you at least tell us if she’s okay?” I ask.
The nurse’s warm brown eyes are sympathetic. “Are you a member of the immediate family?”
“Yes.” This doesn’t even feel like a lie.
“I’m sorry, but I’ll have to see some identification.”
I hesitate. “I’m not immediate family.”
The nurse sighs. “Look, I know it’s really hard to have to wait. But it’s important for our patients to get their rest. And I’m afraid the law forbids me from giving out any information about our patients.”
“We’re really worried,” I say, pressing my palms against the counter. “Please?” God, is she okay? What did she do? What did she do to herself? Will she live?
Will she be—the same?
All I want is for one answer—one answer to one question. Anything.
“We’re desperate,” Zitsy says. “We’re begging.”
“I really wish I could,” she says, and she sounds like she means it. But she doesn’t give us any information. I realize that she must see people like us all the time. Wow. I would break down in five seconds. I would tell all.
“Shit!” Flatso hisses at her phone. She’s texting with the speed of a concert pianist. “Aunt Joan can’t even tell us how Katie is because of HIPAA regs.”
“Can’t she give us a hint?” I ask. “What did she do? God—what if Katie’s dying?” I sound hysterical, and I know it, but I can’t stop the thoughts: What if she blew off part of her face with a gun? What if she took a bottle of pills and gave herself brain damage? What if she jumped—
“I feel sick,” Zitsy says.
“She could lose her job,” Flatso says apologetically.
Screw her job! I want to scream, to grab Aunt Joan and force the information out of her. Screw her job! Screw this hospital! Instead, I slide down the nurses’ station and lie on the green-and-navy patterned carpet. It’s got an intricate, mazelike design, and makes me dizzy when I look at it too closely. I shut my eyes.
I’m not doing too well.
Zitsy sits beside me and picks up my hand. “It’s okay,” he says. “She’ll be okay.”
I take a breath. Then another. It’s all I can manage. I try to pretend that I’m Eggy—someone who never cries. It would be great to have her here right now, but Zitsy and Flatso couldn’t get hold of her.
Without her, I’m just too exhausted to fight the tears anymore.
Chapter 54
IMMOVABLE OBJECT
Mom, I just want to—Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.” Zitsy rolls his eyes and shakes his head at me. “Mom. Mom. Can I just say one thing? Mom. Mom.” He holds the phone away from his ear, and I can hear his mother’s tinny voice freaking out from across the room. “I’d better get home,” Zitsy says. “I don’t want my mom to hemorrhage something.”
“Let’s go, Kooks,” Flatso says.
“I’m not leaving.”
“Come on, Kooks,” Zitsy says. “Sitting here isn’t going to help anything.” He looks around the slightly seedy waiting area. Orange foam is coming out of one of the chairs. Most of the magazines are torn and smeary looking. An old and slightly busted television blares in the corner.
“You guys have moms who will freak out if you don’t come home. I don’t.”
I didn’t mean for that to come out at all, but once the words are out of my mouth, I realize that they sound kind of pathetic. It’s like, Cue the violin music, people! Ugh.
Flatso chews her lower lip, like she’s stopping herself from saying something. She and Zitsy look at each other for a long time, apparently having some kind of ESP chat.
After about two minutes of meaningful glances, Flatso says, “Okay, Kooks. We’ll be back first thing.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Zitsy asks.
“I’m fine,” I say, trying hard to look spunky and not tragic. I lean back in my chair and look up at the television dangling in the corner. “I have my Snuggie on. I’m cozy.”
Flatso gives me a hug and a quick kiss near the ear. Then she and Zitsy head out into the parking lot. As I watch them through the window, I have to fight the urge to run after them. But what good would it do? There’s no point in going home. I’ll just stay here… with Katie, even though she doesn’t know it.
A cell phone rings, and I look around in confusion because I’m the only person in the waiting area. Until I remember that I have a cell phone—one of those cheap in-case-of-emergency things that Mrs. Morris insisted I keep with me. I’ve never actually used it before.
When I pull it out of my pocket, I see that it’s Mrs. Morris’s number, the only one I put in the contacts. I choke on my panic, and press the talk button to say, “Oh, I’m sorry! I’m sorry for worr
ying you! I’ll come home right away!” But before I say anything, I remember she’s dead.
My mind is still reeling as I press the phone to my ear. “Cuckoo?” Marjorie is saying. “Kooks? Are you there?”
“Marjorie?” My voice is a hoarse whisper, scratchy as sandpaper.
“Oh, I’m so glad I reached you! Are you okay? Are you coming home?”
“I’m at the hospital in Tuality—”
“The hospital?”
There’s fear in her voice, and it leaves me weak with surprise. I hadn’t realized that she cared about me—that she would want to know where I was and whether I was all right. I hadn’t thought of her at all. But she saw me rush out of the house in the middle of the night—she must have been worried.
“I’m okay, I’m okay. It’s Katie. She’s—hurt. And they won’t let me see her and…” My voice starts to quaver, and I have to count ceiling tiles until I feel somewhat normal again. “Anyway, I don’t think I can leave. I don’t want to leave until I know she’s okay.”
The line is quiet, and in the space of the silence, I realize something. Even though I’ve been living with Marjorie, I’ve been treating her the way you treat a wobbly desk. Like something that isn’t ideal, but is okay for now. But Marjorie isn’t a desk; she’s a person. She’s Mrs. Morris’s daughter.
I feel bad for treating her like furniture.
“I understand,” Marjorie says finally. And it really sounds like she does.
Marjorie may be a flake, but she’s a flake who seems to actually get me. I don’t know what that means, but it’s true.
Chapter 55
AFTER MIDNIGHT
I’m staring blankly at the television screen in the hospital waiting room when I hear someone sit down beside me.
“He isn’t guilty,” Marjorie whispers, jutting her chin at the TV. “It’s the blond prep-school teen who witnessed the crime.”
I click off the television. We’re the only two people in the waiting room, so nobody protests. In the sudden quiet, I hear the walls humming around me, full of the sounds of machines and people breathing in rooms beyond.
“Are you here to keep me company?” I ask. “Or to take me home?”
“I’m here to convince you that you need a hamburger,” she says. Marjorie spreads the fabric of her Indian skirt over the torn chair cushion, hiding its orange foam guts.
“I don’t want to leave.”
“I know, but you can’t get in to see her until eight, anyway. We’ll just hit the drive-through and come right back.” Marjorie sees me hesitate, and adds, “You have to come with me! I’m starving, but those drive-through intercoms freak me out. Don’t make me go alone. Please?”
Then she gently takes my hand and tugs on it until I follow her to the door. I’m too numb to put up much of a fight.
Marjorie’s car is a vintage Buick and smells like an old man. But it’s still warm from her trip out to find me, and it’s snug as we drive around looking for burger places. I tuck the Snuggie I’m wearing under my thighs.
“I always love driving around at night, don’t you?” Marjorie says. We pass a streetlight, and it illuminates her face, then plunges her into darkness again.
“I don’t really do it much.” A country-western song mumbles from the radio. I can’t make out the words to the song, but it’s comforting, somehow.
“Mom and I used to drive at night all the time. Especially in the winter. We’d head out and look at people’s Christmas lights. In summer, we’d drive around with the windows open, let the breeze blow over us.” Marjorie is smiling as she says this. It’s sweet to imagine her and Mrs. Morris out for a drive.
“She always supported me,” Marjorie says. “Even when I wasn’t a very good daughter, she always acted like I put the stars in the sky. I was so lucky.”
“You were,” I agree. We both were.
“She never told me to get a real job or to give up on my screenplay,” Marjorie goes on. “She believed in me. Even when I had doubts, she always believed.”
Marjorie is humming to herself as she drives, and I realize that she’s not just a crazy flake. She’s a person following her dream. When you look at it in a certain light, she’s incredibly brave.
I lean my head against the glass and look out the window. We’re passing a strip mall, like a million others, but the lights look pretty to me, glowing in the darkness like that. It’s a strange, beautiful world, but I don’t think I understand it very well.
Katie seemed perfect.
Marjorie seemed flaky.
I’m starting to think I’m not such a good judge of whether or not people have it together.
Chapter 56
BEST FRIENDS
Kooks.” Marjorie shakes my shoulder gently. “Kooks, wake up.”
“Ohmygod—what time is it?” After a late-night burger and fries, I’ve fallen asleep in the waiting room. Damned cozy Snuggie! Damned comfy chair!
“Seven fifty-five. Visiting hours start at eight. I knew you didn’t want to be late.”
I catch sight of our shadowy reflections in the long windows across the room. Marjorie’s hair is as wild as usual, and mine is sticking up straight on one side and plastered to my head on the other. That, combined with my bright red Snuggie (matted with wood chips and sporting a mustard stain from my midnight burger), makes me look like something you’d find in a Dumpster the day after Christmas. I try to fluff/smooth my hair, but give up after a few seconds. Katie isn’t going to notice. She cares about her own clothes, but not anyone else’s.
“Do you want me to stay?” Marjorie asks. “I can wait for you.”
I give her a little hug, and she pats my back with her small, nervous hands. “Zitsy will take me home,” I tell her. “You go get some sleep. It’s almost your bedtime, anyway.”
Marjorie’s mouth twitches a half laugh, and she rakes her long, elegant fingers through her bird’s-nest hair. “If you need me, call me. I’ll keep the phone by my pillow.”
There’s a new nurse on duty, and she looks up Brainzilla’s room number, then directs me to the elevator. I’m so impatient that I try to calm myself by counting. I do that sometimes. It’s kind of Zen. Anyway, I’m muttering “one hundred and forty-four” by the time I finally find Brainzilla’s room. She’s mostly asleep when I tiptoe in. She looks pale and drained under the bright hospital lights.
I’m so relieved to see her that my eyes start leaking like mad, just pouring water down my face. I don’t make any noise, though. I don’t want to completely wake her up.
There’s a hideous pink chair beside her bed, and I sit in it and watch her sleep. Her face isn’t blown off. No limbs seem to be missing—no bruises at the neck, no slashes on the arms. She must have taken pills. I sit there, staring and thinking, for seventeen minutes before her breath catches and her eyes snap open. She sits straight up.
She looks around the room frantically, as if she has no idea where she is. Then her eyes land on me.
“Hi, Katie,” I say softly.
And then her face sort of collapses on itself and she falls back against the rumpled pillow.
Brainzilla is silent a long time, staring up at the ceiling. “I’m in a hospital,” she says.
“Yes.”
“And my mother isn’t here.”
Beyond the door, the floor is waking up. An orderly passes by with a cart. Two doctors are chatting at the nurses’ station. “She was here when they admitted you. Visiting hours just started. I’m sure she’ll be here soon.”
My best friend doesn’t look at me. She just keeps her eyes trained on the ceiling tiles. “Dad is probably just getting home from his shift. Mom will have to open the day care in a few minutes. She can’t close down—the parents are counting on her. If they don’t have day care, they can’t work, and if they can’t work, they get fired.” Machinery hums all around us. “I’m sure she’ll come by afterward.”
“Your mom loves you.”
“I know that. It’s just life, you
know? If she shuts the day care—even for a day—the families will go somewhere else. Then we’ll all suffer. I don’t even know how she’s going to pay for this.” She gestures to the hideous hospital room. “God, I wish I’d thought of that.”
“The government—”
“They still make you pay part of it.” Katie wraps the white sheet around her hand. “The Yale lady saw what they wrote, Kooks.”
“But it wasn’t true.”
“She doesn’t know that.” Her blue eyes lock on mine.
“Katie, the world won’t end if you don’t get into Yale.”
“I don’t want my parents’ life.”
“There are a thousand ways to have a different life. A million! Yale is just one. Just one.”
Brainzilla looks out the window. She’s in a semiprivate room, but there’s nobody in the other bed, so she has it all to herself. Outside, the sky is pale blue, and the sun shines on the icy white below, making the trees sparkle.
“I love you, Kooks,” she says. “I even love that you’re wearing the Snuggie I gave you.”
I reach for her hand. Her elegant manicured fingers intertwine with my ragged ones. “I love you, too,” I tell her.
Then we settle into the kind of silence that you can only share with a best friend.
Chapter 57
SICKOS
Flatso pokes her head in, takes one look at me and Brainzilla, and yells, “She’s sitting up!” over her shoulder.
“She is?” Eggy asks, pushing her way through the doorframe. Her cheeks are pink from the cold, and she beams when she sees Brainzilla. “You’re alive!”
Flatso, Zitsy, and Eggy pile onto Katie’s bed, hugging her and laughing. Tebow hovers awkwardly nearby, his eyes closed and his hand over his heart. I wonder if he’s praying, giving a little shout-out to the Lord or Baby Jesus for taking care of Brainzilla. It occurs to me that maybe I should say thank you, too.