He nodded. “Plus, I couldn’t let my kid sister know that I thought one of her little friends was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.”
He’d never told her any of this before. “That would have been uncool for sure.”
He grinned. “Then you three left middle school and came to Cummings High. Mom made me take charge of Holly that first day. I protested, but secretly, I wanted to be hanging around when she met up with her two best friends. I was grumbling at her about having sister-dork duty when you came through the door and … and I thought my heart would fall on the ground at your feet.”
Raina remembered every moment of that day, and how hunky she’d thought he was, and how much she’d fought to keep her opinion from Holly. Besides, by then she’d been burned by Tony and had sworn off boys. It had taken Hunter almost the entire school year to finally ask her out, and by then Holly thought it was okay for her best friend and her brother to date. They had been a couple ever since. “And so now it’s over,” Raina said, holding back tears.
“Not over,” Hunter said, clenching his hands into fists.
“You’re leaving. I’m staying. What would you call it?” She would break up with him first. Maybe it would hurt less.
“I’ll be home when the college semester’s over, and I’ll work here this summer.”
“And then you’ll leave again.”
“You’ll go away to college too.”
“Not for another year.”
Impasse. They sat side by side on the sofa facing forward, their shoulders barely touching. In the quiet of the great house, Raina heard the faint rumble of a movie playing in the theater room below. Her friends would be expecting a grand announcement about her and Hunter getting back together. They would be thinking that things were going well, that the two who were meant to be together were still together. Fresh tears filled her eyes. She would learn to live without him. She would have to.
Hunter broke the silence with “Can we stay together until I leave for college?”
She shrugged. “If you like.”
“I’m not giving up on us.”
“You’re the one who has to figure things out, Hunter. Not me.”
She heard him take a deep shuddering breath. “When I’m with you, I want you. I can’t think straight.”
She wanted him so badly that she ached. “We should go downstairs. They’ll want a full report.”
“What should we say?”
“That all’s well, I guess. For now. It’s what they want to hear. I don’t think I can say anything else … not tonight.”
“All right.” He reached behind a cushion on his end of the sofa, extracted a wrapped box and handed it to her. “It’s for your birthday.”
She’d forgotten it was still her birthday. The fact seemed inconsequential because she was losing the only thing she wanted, the one person she loved. She took the box, beautifully wrapped in silver paper and an explosion of ribbon.
“I had it wrapped at the store,” he said, as if apologizing. “I’m all thumbs with paper and tape.”
She sniffed, blinked back tears and tore the paper with trembling hands. The box itself was blue velvet, and inside, nestled in a bed of white satin, was an exquisite glass angel, about ten inches tall. “She’s gorgeous.” Raina lifted the clear figurine from the bed of satin. The angel wore a removable gold halo encircled with small, sparkling jewels.
“The woman at the store said this was numbered—only so many of them were made and then the mold was broken. Those are real Austrian crystals.”
“You shouldn’t have spent so much money on me.”
“I want her to watch over you while I’m gone.”
Raina couldn’t look at him because her throat ached from the strain of not crying and she was afraid she would lose all composure. She laid the angel back in the box. “Thank you.”
He stood and so did she, but before she could take a step, he asked, “Can I … would you mind if I held you?”
“I don’t mind.”
He put his arms around her, pulled her gently to his chest and rested his cheek against the top of her head. She buried her face in his sweatshirt, drawing the scent of him into her very pores. They stood that way for a long time and she wept. When she pulled away, she swiped underneath her eyes and finger-combed her hair. Hunter pulled up his shirt and blotted the moisture off her cheeks with the soft fabric. All she wanted to do was run her hands along his bare skin and make him kiss her until it hurt.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Sure.” She put on a happy face for their friends. She and Hunter would give them what they wanted—the two of them together again … at least for a few more weeks. She cradled the box with the glass angel, and Hunter laced his fingers through hers. As they walked, she thought about the news video she’d recently seen of coverage following a cataclysmic earthquake. Buildings had been reduced to a pile of rubble and cars had been crushed and turned over like toys.
The images had horrified her, but what she recalled now were the views of the great cracks in the earth around the site. As the world below the surface had shifted, the earth above had cracked apart, and where there had once been solid ground, the surfaces were separated by a chasm. No amount of soil would ever bring the broken halves together again.
Well, Raina’s world had shifted and broken apart too. And she could think of nothing that could put it back to the way it once had been.
eleven
“THEY COULD have told me. It’s not like I don’t live in the same house or anything!” Holly was mad and railing to Raina about Hunter’s leaving. A week had passed since Raina’s birthday and by now it was common knowledge that Hunter would be going off to college right after Christmas. “How can you act so calm about it?”
Raina had just picked up Holly on a cold Saturday morning and they were going to the hospital for an extra volunteer shift. Kathleen had not come with them. “I’m sad about it,” Raina said. “And I’m not calm. Whenever I think about it I want to cry, but if I start, I won’t stop.”
Holly slumped in the passenger seat, crossed her arms and looked sideways at Raina. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to go off on you. I should have kept my mouth shut. Dad’s always on my case about the way I spout off.”
“It’s all right.”
“Hunter’s already packing up and he and Mom are buying stuff for his dorm room. Dad’s going to take off work and drive him up. Of course, I’ll get his clunker of a car. Not that I can drive it until I turn sixteen in May—” She clamped her hand over her mouth. “I’m doing it again. Sorry.”
“It’s all right.” Only her mother had known the depth of Raina’s brokenheartedness. Vicki was amazingly sympathetic; more sympathetic than Raina had ever expected. “I’m so sorry, honey,” Vicki had told Raina. “I know it hurts.”
Vicki hadn’t offered unwanted advice in an attempt to make Raina feel better. Nor had she said dumb mother things like “You’re young. There’ll be others,” or “This will pass. One day you’ll look back on this and wonder what the fuss was all about.” The only thing she’d said that even hinted of adult-slanted wisdom was “No one knows why, but sometimes you meet the right person at the wrong time. And sometimes you meet the wrong person at a right time. The trick in life is meeting the right person at the right time and being able to know the difference.”
If that was true, Raina knew she’d met the right person for herself. She loved Hunter and always would.
“I know Hunter loves you, Raina,” Holly said, as if reading Raina’s mind.
Raina stared straight ahead, concentrating on her driving. “Sometimes love isn’t enough,” she said. Holly fell silent, apparently all out of comebacks. If there had been another girl, Raina would have fought like a wildcat to keep Hunter. But how did a person compete with God?
Raina and Holly signed in at the Pink Angels station and made plans to meet for lunch in the cafeteria. Holly zoomed away, eager to get to her little charges on the pediat
ric oncology floor, but as Raina was attaching her pager to her belt, Sierra stepped into the room. “Oh, good, you’re here today. I wasn’t sure if you’d come. I have a message for you.”
“What’s up?”
Sierra handed Raina a piece of pink paper. “A Mr. Charles wants to see you down in Hematology. He left the message late last night. Said he’d be there all day today and then again on Monday. He said it was important.”
Raina didn’t know Mr. Charles, but the hospital was so big, she wasn’t surprised. “I’ll check it out.”
The blood unit was on the second floor, and on Saturday the area wasn’t crowded. She quickly found Mr. Charles sitting behind a desk. When she introduced herself, his face broke into a smile. “Ah, Miss St. James … nice to meet you. Edward Charles, chief lab tech.”
“Raina. Everybody calls me Raina.”
He shuffled papers and found a file folder. “We received a call from Alexandria, Virginia, last night, Sacred Heart Hospital. It appears that you’re a possible bone marrow match for one of their patients, a twenty-six-year-old woman with leukemia.”
Raina felt confused. “Me? But how—?” Then she remembered that the summer before, Holly had insisted that Raina and Kathleen donate a blood sample to the National Bone Marrow Donor Program because of her favorite patient at the time, Ben Keller. The registry, linked nationally via computers, routinely searched for compatible bone marrow donors and matched them to cancer patients who needed healthy marrow to fight their disease. The odds of being matched were low, but still the registry was a lifesaving tool for patients out of other options.
The man glanced again at the file. “It’s your name, all right.”
“I—I can’t believe it.” Holly would have a fit! “What do I have to do?”
“What else? More testing,” he said with a grin. “I’ll have to draw more blood. You see, we have to look for certain markers in your blood and DNA. The more of these factors that match between a donor and recipient, the better the chances that the transplant will take hold. This first hit alerts the registry that you have the potential to be a donor for this particular person. Now we have to match you two more closely and send in the results.”
“How many factors have to match?”
“Statistically, unrelated donors have a one in ten chance of having enough matching factors in their blood … maybe one in eight on the DNA.”
The odds didn’t sound all that good to Raina, but still she said, “Well, maybe we’ll get lucky. When will I know something?”
“The compatibility testing takes three or four weeks.” He studied Raina’s paperwork. “First we have to get permission from your parents for me to draw more blood, because you’re still a minor.”
“Mom will agree. She’s a nurse. And she was happy to sign the first form.”
“Can you call her? Let me speak to her?”
Raina tracked Vicki down on her cell phone and told her the news. “Amazing,” Vicki said. “I’m in a dressing room at a department store at the moment, but I can be over there in half an hour. Just tell Mr. Charles he can draw more blood.” Raina handed the lab tech the phone and he chatted briefly with Vicki.
“All set?” he asked after disconnecting.
“Let’s go.” She followed him into the lab eagerly.
“I wish every healthy person in the country would sign up for the registry. So many people need bone marrow transplants and without enough donors—well, you know what I’m saying.”
“Will I know who she is?”
“There are strict rules about unrelated donors and recipients having contact. You’d have to wait at least a year for a face-to-face meeting, and then only if both parties are willing to meet. It’s for the best, you realize. Many things can go awry, and donors feel bad when a recipient dies, so it’s best to stay anonymous for a time. Donors do receive a six-week report on the recipient’s condition, however.”
Raina watched Edward Charles set up the vials and syringes as he talked. Perhaps her marrow could save another’s life. Questions swirled through her head, but there was no use in asking any yet. Maybe she was a match. It could be a month or more before she knew anything definite.
Kathleen wished she’d never come to the party with Carson. She had wanted to spend New Year’s Eve with him alone, but he’d insisted that they hit a huge party at a friend’s beach house. The place was crawling with kids from Bryce Academy, and except for Carson, she didn’t know a soul. Nor did she want to. Most of the kids were either drunk or well on the way to becoming drunk. Even Carson was drinking beer and feeling little pain. “Are you sure you don’t want a beer?” he asked. “Half a beer?”
“I’m the only sober one here, Carson.”
“All the more reason.”
“No,” she said.
He put his arm around her. “You’re a girl of principle, Kathleen.” He raised his beer can to toast her.
Although he didn’t sound as if he was making fun of her, she wasn’t sure. “I just don’t like the taste of the stuff.”
“Never apologize for being a person of principle. Too few of you left in the world.” He kissed her.
She tasted the yeasty coolness of alcohol from his tongue and pulled away. “How long are we staying?”
“Aw, come on, honey. It’s a party. I don’t want to leave until after midnight.” He nuzzled her neck. “And I’m going to want to kiss you when that ball drops in Times Square.”
She wished she hadn’t told him already that her mother had extended her curfew until one a.m. Mary Ellen was assuming that Kathleen and Carson would be at his place, but they weren’t, and Kathleen was feeling deceitful, something Carson wouldn’t grasp even if she’d told him.
“Hey, there’s my buddy, Todd.” Carson gestured toward a boy in a blue sweater with his arm around a cute girl in a pink sweater.
“They look adorable.” Kathleen’s stab at sarcasm seemed lost on Carson. “Listen, I need to use the bathroom,” she told him. “I’ll be back.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
There was a line at the bathroom door, so Kathleen peeled off and headed outside. She didn’t have to use the toilet; she’d only said it so that she could think more clearly. Chilly night air slapped her in the face and she took a deep breath. She heard waves sloshing ashore, driven by a light wind. She squinted at the outlines of mounds atop the sand and realized they were couples stretched out on blankets and covered with more blankets.
Kathleen glanced at her cell phone inside the tiny purse on her shoulder, almost willing her mother to call. However, Mary Ellen rarely called these days because since her surgery, she was feeling much better. She had joined an MS support group and even went bowling once a week! The group met regularly, ate out at restaurants, did holiday projects together. In fact, it seemed to Kathleen that her mother had more of a social life than she did. Carson was Kathleen’s main diversion, and then only when they both had time between school and her work as a Pink Angel.
Kathleen sighed, zipped her purse and was about to return to the smoke and noise inside the house when she overheard two girls talking near her on the porch. One of them used Carson’s name: “… don’t know why he bothers with her,” the girl was saying.
“He could do so much better,” said the other.
Kathleen hunched over, wanting to listen but not wanting to be noticed.
“Like you, for instance,” said the first.
“And why not? I’m prettier than she is.”
“Maybe she puts out,” mused the first.
“So do I,” the second girl said.
Both girls laughed as if they’d made a sidesplitting joke. Kathleen felt her face turning red and her temper rising. How dare they talk about her! The girls moved and Kathleen could no longer hear their snide remarks. She waited until they were long gone before stepping back inside the house. She was determined to find Carson and insist they leave. She’d tell him she had a headache. And why not? The two unknown girls were
total pains.
The party had grown louder. More people had arrived and the room looked overstuffed. A giant-screen television in one corner of the living room was tuned to the channel showing Times Square, where thousands waited for the dropping of the ball that would usher in the new year. The house reeked of beer and cigarettes. Kathleen shoved her way toward the kitchen, where she’d left Carson and Todd. In the hallway, people milled, waiting in line to reach the beer keg. She elbowed her way past several people, then stopped in her tracks and stared at a couple pressed against the wall in a passionate kiss. Her blood ran cold as she recognized Stephanie and Carson.
twelve
“THANKS FOR picking me up.” Kathleen blew her nose and grabbed another tissue from the box stashed in Raina’s car.
“I was glad to do it,” Raina said. “Sitting home alone on New Year’s Eve and missing Hunter is the pits.” Two days before, he had left for college with his father, driving a loaded SUV. “You want to tell me what happened? You were babbling wildly on the phone.”
“He was kissing her, Raina. Carson was kissing Stephanie. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”
Raina didn’t act shocked or even perturbed. “Did you tell him you were leaving?”
“He didn’t exactly look like he was thinking about me.”
“He might be looking for you.”
“I don’t care! He’s a jerk!”
Raina sent her a sidelong glance. “There might be an explanation.”
“Are you defending him? You used to hate him.”
“I never hated him and I’m not defending him, girlfriend. I just think you should have pried them apart and demanded an explanation on the spot. You’ve been dating him for months. And he obviously likes you. I don’t see why this can’t be worked out—”
Kathleen looked at Raina as if she’d lost her mind. “He was kissing another girl.”