I shake my head and gather my sketchpad so that I’m mobile. “I made a promise to a friend.”
“I understand. But come back later.”
“Why?”
A line is forming, and Aimee looks overwhelmed. Arnold scowls at her and turns to me. “I have books for you to read.”
“I’m not really a reader, Arnold.”
He points at my sketchpad. “If you write stories, you read stories. Come back later.”
Agreeing is the only way he’ll leave me alone. When he’s gone, I steal a glance at Death and her companion. Death is laughing. I try to imagine their conversation, but for the life of me, I can’t think of what might make Death chuckle. The business of soul taking can’t be that amusing. I wonder if Death was late retrieving me because Cady told her something funny. Maybe I’m alive because my sister took too long to die. Cady was hilarious. For a six-year-old, she had a way with words. Like the time she told me, “I think it would be fun if we played checkers, but instead of checkers we use waffles, and instead of playing with them, we eat them.” Cady and I never got to play checkers with waffles. I would have liked to.
“Drew?” Emma snaps her fingers in front of my eyes, and I realize that not only am I staring at Death, but Death is staring back at me. I fake a yawn to cover.
“Hey, Emma,” I say, looking around for Steven and Jo. “Where’s the rest of the Scooby gang?”
“Gone home,” Emma says. Her eyes hang, and her smile is blurry. The night has not been kind to her. “Do you know that woman?”
“Sure, we go way back.”
Emma frowns. I sneak a glance at Death again, and she’s still staring at me.
I think about running. Taking off and spending the rest of the day in my dark hole with my lumpy mattress. I haven’t slept and I’m exhausted. Maybe I could rest up and shadow Death tomorrow. Except I promised Rusty, and if Death took him while I napped, I’d never forgive myself.
“About last night,” Emma says. “The little boy.”
I hold up my hand and cut her off. “Forget it.”
“No,” Emma says. “Steven should never have let you do that.”
“I twisted his arm,” I say, my tone more lighthearted than I feel. “I needed to know how to do it on a real person. I had a chance once and . . . I couldn’t do it. So . . .” I shrug and clear my throat. “I needed to do that last night.”
Emma takes studied measure of my words, as though she’s trying to determine whether I’m being honest. “You hungry?” she asks finally.
“I could eat.”
Emma and I pass through the line, filling our trays with dubious breakfast foods. I’m not particularly hungry, but eating with Emma gives me one more reason to stay in the caf watching Death. She’s no longer staring at me, which is a relief, but I’ll have to be more careful if I’m going to keep her away from Rusty and avoid being caught.
We sit a couple of tables away from Death and the doctor.
“Oh my God. Carbs!” Emma guides a hero’s forkful of hash browns into her mouth and groans with pleasure. It’s kind of obscene, but it makes me laugh. Until that moment, I didn’t know how badly I needed to laugh. She gulps her coffee while I nibble at my eggs.
“How can you drink that coffee?” I ask. “It smells like motor oil.”
Emma inhales the steam, closing her eyes as if this is some kind of ritual that must be observed in order to fully appreciate the exquisite aroma and taste. I know for a fact that Arnold pays pennies for the stuff, and it tastes like swill.
“One day, when you’re older, probably around college, you’ll discover the joys of coffee. It’s an elixir, Drew. Better than sex.”
I stare at Emma’s cup dubiously. “Nothing is better than sex.”
“You’re cute, Drew,” she says between mouthfuls of egg. “And you have so much to learn.”
“But sex—”
“Rocks,” Emma says. “It does. But there are so many things that are better.”
I had the sex talk with my parents when I was thirteen, so I know the ins and outs of it. Plus, you know, there’s porn on the Internet. And sex has been my holy grail practically since puberty, and here’s Emma telling me that it isn’t the apotheosis of the adolescent experience I’m expecting it to be.
“Like what?” I ask. “What’s better?” It’s a challenge.
Emma shrugs. “A fresh cup of gourmet coffee, for one. A bubble bath. Getting a foot massage while watching a new episode of Big Brother.”
My fork pauses halfway to my mouth when I realize that Death and her companion are no longer at their table. I glance around and spot Death getting a refill on her coffee.
I don’t have much time, so I cut to the chase.
“A bubble bath is better than sex?”
“God, yes.” Emma’s eyes glaze over and her shoulders slump, as if she wishes she were soaking in her tub right now. “Especially after a long day in the ER.” She smiles. “There are so many things that are better: chocolate cake, a shot of tequila, kissing—”
“No way is kissing better than sex. I know all about kissing. I’ve had a boyfriend.”
The thing I love about nurses is that nothing fazes them. Emma—sweet, sweet Emma—could go from discussing Shakespeare’s sonnets to describing a gnarly case of genital warts without so much as a hint of embarrassment. She could probably even draw you a picture of them. “Let me tell you about kissing, Drew. If you’re in a relationship and the kissing isn’t the best part, run.”
“But it’s just kissing,” I say.
Emma pushes her empty tray toward the center of the table and leans back in her chair. Her muscles unravel under her scrubs. It’s probably the first time she’s relaxed in nearly twelve hours. “People don’t talk about that one great orgasm they had on top of the Eiffel Tower. In movies, long-distance lovers don’t see each other across a crowded airport, run to each other, and start bumping uglies on the baggage conveyor belt. It’s all about the kiss, Drew. Sex is biological. Kissing is art.”
Death pays Aimee for the refill and heads toward the door. I tense up.
“Maybe you just haven’t been having good sex,” I say. I’m not looking at Emma anymore.
“True. But that’s not the point.” I catch Emma staring at me the way I’m staring at Death. “Why do you keep watching Miss Michelle?”
“Miss Michelle?”
“The social worker?” Emma’s looking at me like I’m crazy, and Death is getting away. “She does grief counseling and works with kids—oh, Drew, do you need to talk to her about last night?”
Miss Michelle may be her mask, but I know her true face. Her real name. Death wears stockings and a pencil skirt, but I see through to her cold, dead core.
“I have to go, Em. I’ll see you soon.” I don’t wait for her to reply, just gather up my sketchpad and escape as quickly as I can without resorting to a flat-out run.
Trailing Death isn’t easy. She weaves through the hospital like she’s wearing roller skates instead of high heels, barely pausing to take a breather or speak to anyone. The doctors and nurses we pass all seem to treat her with deference bordering on fear. Sure, maybe they know her as Miss Michelle, a woman who visits children, reassures parents, helps in the transition of grief, but they’ve got to notice that everywhere she goes, death follows.
And today, everywhere Death goes, I follow.
It doesn’t take long to figure out that we’re going to Peds. Dread parches my throat, and I wonder if Death is going to visit Trevor. I haven’t seen him since they put him on the respirator. The guilt is suffocating. I drag my feet as I walk, hoping Death will take a last-minute detour, but we arrive at Peds, with its blatant attempts to emulate real life, and Death immediately begins talking to Nurse Merchant. I duck into Lexi’s room.
Lexi is sitting on her bed with her knees pulled up to her chest, flipping through a stack of flash cards thicker than my arm. It’s cloudy outside, so only a few stray beams sneak through the dirty-cot
ton clouds and into the room.
Everything is neat and in its place, except for one noticeable thing: The wig has been flung across the back of the chair. It still looks like a taxidermist’s castoff.
“Hey, Lexi.” She’s glaring at me like I should feel ashamed—and I do.
“He got off the respirator this morning,” she says without a greeting. Every word is a bullet aimed somewhere especially painful: knees, stomach, groin.
I move into the room and lean against the wall so that I can keep one ear open for Death. She’s still outside gabbing with Nurse Merchant about color palettes for her new bathroom. Regardless of whether she’s here for a friendly visit or to take Trevor’s soul, I need to stay frosty.
“I was busy,” I tell Lexi. It sounds lame even to me.
Lexi grits her teeth and flips through her cards too fast to actually be studying them. “Do you think he’s going to die?”
“Yes.”
“Drew!”
“Eventually,” I say, but Lexi glares at me with more hatred in her eyes than I’ve ever seen before. I almost wish that I could bottle that hate and stuff it in Patient F. If he had hatred like that inside him, maybe he could move on from his pathetic beginnings.
“I’m sorry, Lexi. He’s supposed to be dead already. That’s why the other day was all balloons and decorations and scary wigs.”
She turns from me.
I should’ve lied to her, told her that Trevor was going to be fine. People tell harmless lies all the time. If I’d lied to Lexi, I wouldn’t have to see that look on her face now. The one that says I’ve destroyed her.
Lexi’s mother saves me by storming into the room like a mad cow. “Drew Brawley? How the hell are you?”
Mrs. Kripke is a faded beauty queen. Literally. She was Spring Queen or Summer Cream Corn Queen or something like that when she was Lexi’s age, and her entire life since has revolved around that one glorious moment. She wakes up every day and dresses like she’s on her way to a pageant. She has the smoky eyes and bloodred lips, as well as a bosom squeezed so tightly that her breasts look like they’re trying to escape, and she’s clearly never met a bottle of hairspray she doesn’t want to make sweet, sweet love to.
“I’m well, Mrs. Kripke,” I tell her.
Lexi cringes like she wants to crawl under the covers and hide. I step away from the wall and wedge myself between Lexi and her mother, but Mrs. Kripke pats my cheek and shoves me out of the way. She starts toward Lexi but then detours, grabs the wig off the back of the chair, and begins brushing it out with her manicured fingernails.
“Alexis, sweetheart, you have to take proper care of this.” Mrs. Kripke is all smiles as she sits down, pulls an industrial-size hairbrush out of her bottomless purse, and brushes out the wig in earnest. “Bald girls don’t win beauty pageants.”
“Did you bring the books I asked for, Mom?” Lexi redirects her annoyance with me to her mom, and I have to admit I’m grateful for that.
“Forget about your books, darling. We need to work on your look. Get you out of this dreadful hospital gown.” Mrs. Kripke sighs, and it sounds like the air hissing from a bike tire. “The only good thing to come out of this cancer is that we finally got your weight under control.”
Normally I’d agree with anyone who says that Lexi spends too much time studying, but Mrs. Kripke grates on my last nerve. Add that to the fact that I feel guilty as hell for what I said earlier about Trevor dying. “I think bald is kind of hot. And smart girls are totally in right now.”
Lexi slides me a smile on the down-low, and I rest assured that all is forgiven. Mrs. Kripke, on the other hand, wrinkles her nose and says, “Honey, no offense intended, but that is why you are a queer and I’m a former Miss Winter Garden Orange Grove Queen.”
“Mom!” Lexi launches into a lecture about the appropriateness of words like “queer,” but I’m not listening, because Death is on the move. If she goes into Trevor’s room, all may be lost. Just because I think that he’s going to die soon doesn’t mean I want him to, and it doesn’t mean that I won’t try to stop it from happening by any means necessary.
I’m holding my breath as Death walks toward Trevor’s room. At the last minute, she ducks into the room next to his, and I heave a sigh of relief. That room belongs to a ten-year-old boy named Jesse who has a shattered femur. I wasn’t in the ER when Jesse came in, but Jo told me that boys don’t get breaks like that falling out of trees.
“I have to go,” I say to the Kripke ladies, and dash out the door before either can protest. Nurse Merchant waves as I beeline for Trevor’s room. She’s on the phone, so she doesn’t say hello, but I know she’d make me stop if Trevor wasn’t well enough for visitors.
The blinds in Trevor’s room are closed, and it feels like Death has been here. Trevor is sunk deep into the bed, clutching the TV remote, flipping through channels. A picture of me framed by “Have you seen this person?” sails past, but Trevor doesn’t even notice. He looks pale and broken. Nurse Merchant said that the respirator was supposed to help Trevor breathe so he could save his strength, but he looks weaker than ever.
“Miss me, Droopy?” Trevor asks when he notices me. His voice is harsh, like he swallowed a bucketful of drywall screws and chased it with a bottle of Tabasco.
“No way. This is totally a pity visit.” Trevor and I bump knuckles. I hold back for fear of breaking him. “I had to escape from Lexi’s room.”
Trevor tries to laugh, but it’s all breath and no sound. “She badgering you about proper grammar in your comic book again?”
“She covered half of the pages I gave her to read with red ink,” I say. “But it’s worse than that: Her mother’s here.”
“Yikes.” Trevor grimaces. Last time Mrs. Kripke visited, she tried to dress him in these baby-blue capri pants.
I plop down in the chair, prop my feet up, and try to pick out Death’s voice next door. Jesse’s squeaky treble soars and dips, while Death’s syrupy tones provide a deep undercurrent to the conversation—not unlike the sound of waves crashing on the beach.
It’s a thought that I hate myself for having, but I’m glad that Death is in Jesse’s room and not here. I don’t know Jesse like I know Trevor. I’d rather Death took no one at all, but if I have to choose, Trevor is my boy.
“Drew?”
“Sorry,” I say. “I was thinking about how Lexi’s mom kept trying to force her into that wig.”
Trevor laughs and coughs and laughs again. Every time he coughs, it sounds like he’s tearing long strips of construction paper. “I bet her mom has a matching one.” Trevor primps his invisible hair and says, in a scratchy falsetto, “Oh, look at me. I’m Mrs. Kripke, and I wear a rat on my head.”
“Would you like some cheese?” I say, joining in. “Mmmmm. Cheese.”
“I was Miss Creamed Corn USA when I was only one year old, and I can still fit into that swimsuit.” Trevor throws back his shoulders and tosses his head, striking an awkward pose that’s one part Mrs. Kripke, two parts praying mantis. And I can’t help laughing. I cover my mouth with my arm to keep from losing it, but I nearly fall out of the chair, which makes Trevor laugh too. We laugh so hard that I’m the one who can’t breathe, and Trevor offers me a cup of water.
“You know,” Trevor says, once I manage to stop laughing for half a second, “they make wigs for girls to wear down there.”
I sip at the lukewarm water. “You mean, like, down there?”
Death and Jesse aren’t talking anymore, but she hasn’t left his room yet.
Trevor nods. “They’re called merkins.”
“You made that up. Who would want extra crotch hair?”
“Maybe bald girls.” Trevor is avoiding my eyes and fidgeting. “Do you think Lexi’s bald down there, too?”
I smack Trevor’s leg and regret it when the pain crosses his face—pain he won’t complain about because he doesn’t want me to think he’s weak. I could straddle him and beat the crap out of him, and he wouldn’t make a peep
. “I don’t know, dude. Go ask her.”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
“Well, she definitely won’t tell me,” I say.
“Come on. Having a gay dude for a friend has got to have some perks.”
Death’s high heels click-clack in the hallway, and I know that my time is limited. I hate leaving Trevor like this, but I’m still on a mission. “You really like Lexi, don’t you?” I flick my eyes to the doorway. Death has stopped to chat with Nurse Merchant again.
“Don’t.”
“Trevor.”
“I said don’t.” Trevor stares at the windows. The blinds block everything out, but it’s like he’s got x-ray vision and can see through them, the same way Lexi can see the ocean even though it’s out of sight. “You know how Lexi is always looking out the windows or sitting near them?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“It’s because she doesn’t belong here. She’s got worlds inside her, and being sick is just holding her back. She’s gonna beat it, dude. She’s gonna beat it and grow back her hair and laugh at that fucking wig one day. She’s gonna get out from behind these walls and crack the goddamn world wide open.”
Trevor grapples with his breath for every word, and I’m smart enough not to interrupt him.
“But I’m dead. They’re trying some experimental shit on me, but I’m not stupid. I’m good as gone.”
“Dude—”
“Don’t bullshit me,” Trevor says. His eyes are flat, cold. “Before I came back in here, I found this bill in my mom’s office for a burial plot. A grave, Droopy. My grave. Even my folks know the truth, and my only goal right now is to keep breathing long enough to see that girl escape this hospital.”
I don’t know what to say. Trevor is proof that you don’t need superpowers to be a hero.
Death heads for the exit, and I hesitate. Trevor’s spears me with those empty eyes of his, but I don’t have a choice. I really have to go.
“You’re not going to die,” I tell him from the doorway. “I won’t let you.” I leave before he can argue.
• • •