“Hey, you were pretty cute at thirteen,” he teased.
It wasn’t true, though. I’d been skinny and frizzy-haired at thirteen, with weird-shaped boobs, like cones. But it was still nice of him to say.
Our ciders had cooled down enough, so we sipped them, watching the sunset and listening to the terrible music that drifted from the bandstand.
“I bet they sell kettle corn,” I said.
“I bet you’re right,” Lane said.
“I’ll go get us some.”
Lane asked if I wanted him to come with me, but I shook my head. I didn’t want it to seem like I was forcing him to buy me kettle corn, too.
“I’ll be right back,” I promised.
And then I did something I hadn’t had the pleasure of doing in a long time. I disappeared into the crowd. I felt so free, even with the med sensor around my wrist, like I wasn’t making the best of Latham, but was actually doing something seventeen-year-olds did, for real.
I was on a date with a cute boy, and he’d bought me apple cider and told me an embarrassing story about when he was five, and afterward, maybe we’d make a detour in the woods so I could show off my seriously uncomfortable blue lace bra, and then we’d smooth down our hair and he’d walk me to my front porch and kiss me good night.
I found the kettle-corn lady and bought a bag. I couldn’t resist eating some on the way back. The kernels scratched at my throat, and I ducked into a little alleyway between two shops, trying not to cough on anyone.
I was just catching my breath when a side door opened and these three preppy-looking bros in ball caps and boat shoes staggered outside. It was the back door to a bar, I guessed, since it was dark inside, and I could hear a sports game playing on some television.
The guys were college aged, and they stared at me in this uncomfortable way that I thought was only reserved for girls in tight dresses, and not girls in jeans and striped shirts.
I was still coughing, and the blond one walked over, laughing.
“Hey, you okay?” he asked.
“Kettle corn,” I said, trying to catch my breath.
“You wanna come back inside? I’ll buy you a drink,” he said.
I realized he thought I’d been in the bar, which made sense, because I was standing right outside.
I shook my head.
“I have to meet someone,” I said.
“We’ll walk you,” the guy said, suddenly pushy. “Won’t we?”
His friends nodded and said that yeah, it was no trouble, they’d walk me.
“That’s okay.”
I started to edge away, and he sort of blocked me.
“What’s wrong?” the guy asked. “You don’t wanna talk to us anymore?”
I glanced toward the passage that led back onto the street.
“I told you, I’m meeting someone,” I said firmly, and then I walked away.
“Come on, beautiful, where are you going?” one of them shouted.
Without looking back, I knew they were following me. I could hear their footsteps behind me in the alley but forced myself not to turn around.
I could feel the panic rising in my throat as they followed me through the edge of the Fall Fest. I didn’t know how to make them leave me alone, and I didn’t want to get anyone else’s attention, because they might ask questions about me.
“C’mon, we’re really nice, just stop a second,” one of them said.
I whirled around.
“I told you no,” I said sharply. “Go away.”
They laughed. They were so close, and so much bigger than me, and they didn’t seem to comprehend how terrible they were acting.
“But we said we’d walk you,” the tallest one said. “And a gentleman never breaks his word.”
“Then be a gentleman and stop following me!” I insisted.
And then I started coughing. It was pretty bad, and I hadn’t been expecting it. The stupid kettle corn had been my worst idea ever.
When I caught my breath, the tallest one had taken a step back.
“Whoa, that sounds pretty serious,” he said.
“I have asthma,” I said defensively.
“Didn’t sound like asthma,” the blond one said, smiling like he enjoyed taunting me. “Sounded contagious. You’re not gonna give us the plague, are you, blondie?”
“Not if you leave me alone,” I said, whirling around.
But his hand shot out, and he grabbed my wrist. I twisted away, and my parka pulled back, revealing my med sensor and its blinking green light.
They all stared at it, and at me.
“Oh shit,” the blond one said. “She’s from that creepy hospital.”
“We could have fucking TB now,” his bearded friend said. “What the fuck?!”
“Wait, she said she was meeting someone. There’s more of them here,” the tall guy said.
My heart was hammering. I didn’t know what to do. If I went back to Lane, they’d follow me. And if I tried to get someone’s help, I’d be in an even bigger mess. I was Frankenstein’s monster. Typhoid Mary. The guy who kept sneezing really loudly on an airplane.
I stared at them in horror, and then I heard a boy’s voice.
“What the hell are you doing?”
It was Michael, with his work boots and tattoos, walking toward us. I’d never seen him look so angry, or so intimidating, as he frowned at the three drunken bros.
“I asked you a question,” he demanded.
“She’s one of those contagious kids from the TB place on the hill!” the blond guy said. “And there’s more of them here!”
I stared at Michael, pleading silently for him to vouch for me.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “This is my cousin.”
“Your cousin?” one of the guys asked, frowning.
“I’m Phillip’s little sister,” I lied.
They looked unsure.
“I’m fifteen,” I said, making my eyes wide and scared. That at least got through to them.
“Shit,” the bearded one muttered, believing me.
“Then what were you doing in a bar?” the tall one said.
Michael glared at me.
“I wasn’t in a bar, I was standing outside eating kettle corn, and they started harassing me,” I said.
“You’re drunk,” Michael told them, “and bothering underage girls. So you can stop lying about how and why that happened. Go home, sober up, and read Jezebel.”
Michael stalked off, and I followed him, gratefully.
“Thank you,” I said.
He whirled around, still upset.
“I didn’t do it for you, I did it for business,” he said.
“Yeah, okay.”
“You can’t keep doing this,” he said. “Those guys were about to turn this place upside down until they found your friends. You have to stop coming down here. You’re going to infect everyone!”
“We are not, we’re just sitting by the pumpkin patch,” I said.
The color drained from his face.
“My kid’s over there!” he said.
“You have a kid?” I asked.
“Yes, I have a kid,” Michael said angrily. “He’s two and a half, and if anything happens to him, I swear to God. If I see you in town again, I’ll turn you in myself. Now get your friends, and get the hell out of here.”
“Fine,” I said, stalking off. It wasn’t fair. Those beer-sloshing bros were the ones putting everyone in danger, not me. I wasn’t even doing anything. I wasn’t even near anyone. But I believed it then, what Amit had said about leaving Latham. There were people out there who panicked, and all it took was one to start a witch hunt.
Lane looked worried when I got back to the hay bales.
“That took a while,” he said. “Everything okay?”
I didn’t want Lane to freak out. He looked so hopeful, and so happy, that I couldn’t say anything and ruin our date. So I rolled my eyes and held up the kettle corn.
“The line took forever,” I said. “Ev
eryone had the same idea. We should probably head back, though, since it’s getting late.”
“Yeah, of course.”
And then he followed me back toward the old hiking path. I dug into my purse for my flashlight and compass and handed him the kettle corn.
We ate it as we walked back, not caring that it made us cough. And when we came to the rock in the woods, which almost looked like the one from camp, I was much calmer.
Nothing bad had really happened. It was just some drunk guys deciding that my walking around and being female was an invitation for creepery. That sort of thing went on all the time. And to be fair, it wasn’t like they were still afraid of me after the doctors said my TB was inactive. I was a pale, sick-looking stranger with a bad cough—of course they were on their guard. But it was over now, nothing to worry about. And I wasn’t going to let it ruin my first real date with a boy. A cute boy, who’d bought me cider and held my hand and been a complete gentleman.
Lane stared at the rock, and so did I.
“I bet you’ll never guess what color my bra is,” I said.
“Probably not,” he said. “But I know one way to find out.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LANE
MY FIRST MONTH at Latham House came to a close, although it seemed wrong to measure time like that, to consider the start of my days at Latham to be something that didn’t have to do with Sadie Bennett.
I talked to my parents on the phone every few nights, and when they asked me how was I sleeping, and how was I feeling, and what had I been up to, I actually answered them. I figured I owed them some assurance that I wasn’t lying on my deathbed four hundred miles away, trying to keep up with my AP Euro packet. And the weird thing was, they were enthusiastic when I said I’d made friends in my French class and that we played cards and traded books, and they didn’t seem to mind when I said I’d put aside my schoolwork to focus on getting better.
The longer I was away, the more my specific annoyances with them faded. Sure, they’d always been strict, but I’d never given any indication that I wasn’t happy with the way things were. I’d wanted to be the best as much as they’d wanted it for me.
I’d been the one who had decided to give up drama class to take AP Art History my freshman year. It wasn’t like I’d discussed it with them, or pleaded to keep taking drama; I’d been convinced it was a necessary sacrifice, and they’d praised me for “making a mature decision.”
Before I even knew what high school was, I’d already let my fear of not being the best at it make me miserable. And I was starting to think that if I hadn’t gotten sick, I would have done the same thing with college, rushing toward internships and grad school and a job. Somehow, without realizing, I’d made high school into a race toward the best college, as opposed to its own destination. It was only now that I hadn’t done the same thing at Latham that I could see it, and that I realized how unhappy it made me.
The last SAT date for early admission passed. I don’t know what I was doing that day. Lying in a field of overgrown grass, reading a Douglas Adams novel on my stomach. Pulling Sadie behind a building to kiss her on the way back from Wellness. Lounging in bed in the middle of the afternoon, listening to Charlie’s records through the open windows while the shadows of tree branches played across my wall.
Whatever I was doing that day, I wasn’t hunched over a too-small desk in a high school gym with a plastic bag of sharpened pencils, trying to raise my score another thirty points, even though it was already in the ninety-ninth percentile. I wasn’t terrified that if I screwed up a single question, my entire future might disappear. Probably, I was wondering if Sadie and I could slip off somewhere after dinner, and what else we’d slip off.
WE WERE IN French class when it happened.
Sadie was sitting under the window reading a John Green novel, and I’d slid her worksheet onto my desk and was busy filling it in with the most hilariously wrong answers I could think of, since I’d already finished mine.
It was almost lunch, and I was starving. I kept hoping my stomach wouldn’t growl and give me away.
Mr. Finnegan was at his desk for once when this kid Carlos pushed open the door. Carlos wasn’t in our class, and Finnegan looked up from his iPad with a frown.
“Everyone’s supposed to go to the gym immediately,” Carlos said.
The whole class looked around, confused. It was Tuesday morning, and as far as I could tell, it was a pretty unusual request.
“The gym?” Mr. Finnegan repeated.
“Immediately,” Carlos said.
Our teacher thanked the kid, who disappeared out into the hallway. And then Finnegan shrugged and told us to stop working.
“Are we coming back?” Nick asked, but Finnegan didn’t know, so some of us took our bags, and most of us left our books open on our desks.
Everyone was in the gym, spread thinly across the rows of bleachers, which were meant for far more than 150 of us. I remember Sadie making some joke about it being a terrible time for a pep rally, and Nick chiming in about how come nobody told him we had a basketball team.
I was too nervous, and too confused, to say anything. I didn’t know what was going on, and I hated that. There were adults I’d never seen standing around the edges of the gym, teachers and nurses, which felt ominous, like whatever was going to happen was so bad that they thought we might try to escape.
Dr. Barons and this administrative lady Mrs. Kleefeld, who’d given my parents my admission forms, were discussing something behind an ancient wheeled lectern.
“What’s going on?” Sadie whispered, and I shrugged.
Some young tech-looking guy was helping to set up, and the microphone came to life with a squeal and then static. Everyone clapped their hands over their ears, making a much bigger deal of it than it actually was. Latham had never felt so much like a high school as it did then. Except for the small fact that most high schools have a survival rate higher than 80 percent.
Mrs. Kleefeld angled the microphone down and smiled tensely at us. Her pearl necklace was so tight that it almost looked like it was choking her.
“Good afternoon, children,” she said, which seemed like the wrong word to use, although I didn’t know what might have been the right one. She paused, as though waiting for us all to chant “Good afternoon, Mrs. Kleefeld!” back at her, but we didn’t. I glanced at the clock on the wall, which read 11:23. Not afternoon, but still morning.
“As you know,” Mrs. Kleefeld continued, “being at Latham House is a special privilege. The data that your medical sensors collect has helped scientists to understand so much about your illness. And these scientists have been working day and night to make advances in the treatment of total-drug-resistant tuberculosis. We thought it best to gather everyone here as quickly as possible to avoid the spread of rumors and false information. I suppose I should let Dr. Barons explain.”
Everyone else looked as confused as I felt. And then Dr. Barons stepped behind the podium. He wasn’t wearing his white coat, just a fleece jacket a lot like mine, and it was strange seeing him in a high school gym and not a medical building. The only thing we’d done so far in here was to watch movies, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t announcing a surprise screening of The Goonies.
“Thank you, Mrs. Kleefeld,” he began, and then cleared his throat nervously. “There has been news this morning that the FDA has classified a serum called protocillin as a first-line treatment for total-drug-resistant tuberculosis. The protocillin has been approved for clinical testing and is moving forward into production.”
The gymnasium was silent, hanging on his every word. He couldn’t be saying what I thought he was saying.
“And as of thirty minutes ago, it has been confirmed that the first doses of protocillin will be ready in six weeks, and that Latham House will be participating in the initial trial.” He paused and beamed at us. “What this means is that in six weeks’ time, the TDR strain of tuberculosis will be curable.”
There was a
moment of stunned silence, and then the gym erupted in whoops and cheers. All around me, people were laughing and hugging and crying. Genevieve and her crowd were on their knees, thanking God for inventing science, I guessed.
I couldn’t believe I’d been so wrong about why they’d gathered us in the gym. It wasn’t something bad at all. It was something incredible.
“Sadie,” I said, turning toward her.
“Oh my God,” she said, fighting back tears.
We hugged each other close, and she sniffled into my shoulder as I struggled to wrap my head around the idea that we were going to be cured. All of us. Not temporarily stable but having to take it easy to avoid a relapse. Cured. Forever. In no time at all I’d be transported back to my former life, and Latham would melt away like a bad dream.
Except it wasn’t a bad dream. It was card games in the grass, and stolen internet, and Sadie in that green dress, and Charlie’s records, and subtitled Japanese movies, and Marina doing an impression of Nick eating scrambled eggs. It wasn’t the life I’d wanted, but it was the life I had, and I was finally starting to accept that.
“If I can have everyone’s attention,” Dr. Barons said, and the gym gradually quieted. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions, and I’m going to attempt to answer some of them now. Your parents will be notified over the next few hours by our medical staff. Protocillin will be administered by daily injection over the course of eight weeks. For the first four weeks, you will stay here so that any side effects and symptoms can be monitored and recorded. After that time, arrangements will be made with hospitals in your area so you can continue receiving daily, observed treatment at home for the rest of the course. Your hall nurses will be distributing more information to you and to your parents as soon as it becomes available. And we’ll be temporarily suspending phone and internet access until everyone’s parents have been contacted by our staff.”
Dr. Barons went on, thanking us all for listening and saying what an honor it was to share this news with us.
“Look at Finnegan,” Sadie whispered.
I glanced over. Finnegan and his wife, who was wearing scrubs, were holding each other so tightly that it looked painful. I’d never seen him so happy.