Chocolate Horse (5 page)

Alex had been sick. He’d wanted something—her horse, her precious chocolate horse—and she hadn’t let him have it. She’d screamed at him. That was the last time she’d spoken to him.

The last time. The thought spun in her head.

“Stevie?” It was her father. He stood behind her and gave her a hug from behind. They both looked through the glass at Alex, who didn’t move. Plastic sacks of liquids hung upside down, dripping into tubes that went into a needle in his arm. They didn’t look like much—clear liquids, not much different from water. The tubes tangled, the bags dripped. Alex lay still.

“They’re doing everything they can,” her father said.

“We should have brought him sooner,” said Stevie.

“We didn’t know sooner,” her father said.

But Stevie thought she should have known, and she knew now that she never should have thought Alex had been faking. There had been so many signs. How could she have missed them?

These thoughts filled her mind, going nowhere, accomplishing nothing while she watched her brother.

“We’re going home now for a little while,” Mrs. Lake said. “We’ll have some dinner and then we’ll come back. The doctor said he’s okay for now. Nothing will happen for a while. He’s stable. That’s what the doctor said.”

Stevie couldn’t leave Alex. He was her twin—her other half. She couldn’t eat anything, anyway, so what difference would it make if she went home or not?

“I want to stay,” she said.

Mrs. Lake didn’t protest. She understood. This brother and sister had shared everything since before they’d been born. Although they fought like a lot of brothers and sisters, there had always been a special bond. Everyone in the family knew it and respected it. Now that Alex was sick, Mrs. Lake wasn’t surprised Stevie wanted to stay near him. Stevie sometimes had funny ways of showing her love for Alex, but it was always there.

“We’ll bring you back something to eat,” Mrs. Lake said. “Okay.”

Chad and Michael stood by their mother. They understood, too.

Mr. and Mrs. Lake and the boys left. Stevie was alone with her thoughts and her inert brother. Around her, visitors shuffled down the hall, nurses bustled around their station and in and out of the rooms, and doctors strode by, responding to the calls of the PA system that clicked on and off regularly. Stevie saw and heard none of this.

She sank down onto the sofa and lay back, closing her eyes.

Again and again she could see Alex in her room,
standing by the window, holding the chocolate horse. She could almost touch the memory of her own anger, and she was deeply ashamed of it. Her brother was sick, very sick, and she’d missed the chance to do something for him.

Alex had done so much for her. Stevie recalled a time when the two of them were about six and they’d decided to climb a tree their mother had told them to stay away from. Stevie had fallen out of the tree and scraped her knee. Alex took care of her. He’d washed the cut and bandaged it and even loaned her some of his jeans so she could keep wearing long pants until it healed. He’d never told anybody about it, either.

Once their older cousin from Toronto had come for a visit and had teased Stevie about being a tomboy with a tomboy’s name. Alex had punched him—just for her. And then there was the time Alex had invited a boy in their class over to play Nintendo because Stevie thought he was cute, even though Alex didn’t like him at all. When Stevie had changed her mind about the boy because he’d cheated at cards, Alex hadn’t even teased her about it very much.

Stevie remembered, too, hundreds of times when she’d forgotten her schoolbooks and Alex had shared, saving her from the wrath of dozens of teachers.

He’d done so many things for her and in return, what had she done for him? Stevie couldn’t think of a thing. Not one thing.

She wanted to make a difference to him. If she could love him enough, be the sister he’d always hoped he’d had, do things the right way instead of the funny or clever way. Maybe that would be enough. Maybe Alex would get better.

Stevie felt a new resolve coming to her. First of all, she wasn’t going to leave Alex—not for a minute if she didn’t have to. Sure, her parents would make her go to school, and she’d have to do some other things, but until Alex was better, she was going to spend every spare minute at the hospital. She’d give up riding, her friends, everything fun until he was well. She cared about Alex, and that was one way to show him. If she had strength and courage, she could share it with him. Those weren’t the same as antibiotics, but it was the best she could do, and she wanted to do it for Alex.

Next, she wasn’t going to be a nuisance anymore—not to anybody. She’d get her homework done; she’d stop getting C’s and only get A’s; she’d stop making wisecracks; no more practical jokes; no more rude retorts; no more thoughtless, careless, heartless Stevie. She had a new and wonderful person inside her, and
that person was going to be a loving, kind, supportive sister to her beloved twin brother. Alex would get better. He’d have to get better. And when he did that, he’d find that he had a better sister, too, and she would never, ever again have a fight with him.

As soon as the doctor said it was okay for her to be in Alex’s room, she’d be right by his bedside. She’d wipe his forehead with a cool cloth. She’d read to him. She’d make him his favorite marshmallow crunchies—the ones she never let him have any of when she made a batch with Lisa and Carole. Well, those days were gone. Alex was going to be her number-one concern from now on.

Stevie sat upright. She had work to do—homework. She remembered that her English assignment for tomorrow was to write a brief essay about metaphors. She couldn’t do her math assignment or study for her history test without the textbooks, but she could write the essay as long as she had some paper.

She fished in her pocket for some change and called home. Chad answered. She told him Alex was the same and asked if he would bring her school backpack to the hospital when he came after dinner. He agreed and promised they’d bring her a sandwich, too.

“Don’t bother. I really can’t eat,” she said. “I just need to work a little bit, though.”

Chad agreed, though he seemed a little confused, and Stevie wasn’t surprised. Usually, Stevie found the weakest possible excuses not to do her homework. Now that she actually had a real excuse, one that was a lot stronger than a recent one she’d used about having an ingrown toenail, she was choosing to work on her assignments.

As soon as she hung up with Chad, Stevie went to the nurses’ station and asked if anybody had a pad of paper and a pencil she could borrow to do her homework. One of the nurses, a young woman whose name tag identified her as Beverly Earl, provided a yellow pad and a ballpoint pen.

“Will this do?” she asked. “There are only about three sheets left on the pad. I hope that’s enough.”

“Sure,” said Stevie. “I have to write an essay on everything I know about metaphors. Three sheets should do it.”

The nurse smiled at her. “A scratch pad would do it for me on that subject,” she joked.

Stevie smiled at her in recognition of a sort of common bond. That’s exactly what she might have said, too, before. Now she was sure she could come up with more than a scratch pad’s worth.

She returned to the bench outside Alex’s room,
peered in, assuring herself that he was still sleeping restfully, and sat down with determination.

She looked at the pad. She looked at the pen. This essay wasn’t going to write itself. She was going to have to do the work. She could do it.

Metaphors are the heart of all great literature
, she began.

A
T
THE
FIRST
sound of her alarm, Stevie was up and out of bed in the morning. She showered, dressed, packed up her books neatly, made her bed, and was downstairs even before her mother. She poured herself a bowl of cereal, added milk—no sugar—ate it, drank a glass of orange juice, rinsed the bowl, spoon, and glass, put them in the dishwasher, and left the house for school. She glanced at her watch. In earlier times she would have been giving the snooze button on her clock radio a third slap at this hour, rather than leaving the house. She smiled to herself, feeling good about what she was doing. It was working already. She
was
a better person. The walk to school was a short one, only about fifteen
minutes, but this morning it took longer because she ran into so many friends of hers and Alex’s. Everybody wanted to know how he was.

“He’s very sick,” she said. “He’s got meningitis, but the doctors are doing everything they can for him, and he’s going to get better. I just know it.”

A lot of the kids didn’t know much about meningitis, and Stevie was glad to tell them everything she knew. That included what the neurologist had said as well as what she’d looked up in the encyclopedia the night before. She explained about the difference between bacterial versus viral meningitis and how antibiotics were used to combat it and how they were testing to find exactly the right one, but in the meantime they were using everything. When she got to school, it seemed that the whole rest of her class was there, wanting information as well. Stevie stood on the steps of Fenton Hall, explaining everything all over again. The thing they mostly wanted to know was about Alex, though. How
was
he?

“He’s been sleeping,” Stevie said. “I guess it’s a coma. That’s what the doctor said. I think it’s like a deep sleep so that his body can work on fighting the infection without having to worry about anything else, like walking, sitting, or talking. That’s what I think, anyway.”

She glanced at her watch. It was just fifteen minutes
until the first bell rang, and there was so much to do. She had to go to her locker and then get to her homeroom. This was an activity that usually took her two minutes because that was as much time as she usually allowed for it. This morning, however, the new Stevie had other chores. She had some pencils to sharpen, too. “Got to get inside now,” she said. Her friends stepped aside and let her pass.

Inside, the teachers had all the same concerns that Stevie’s friends had. Even Miss Fenton, the headmistress, came to Stevie for information. Stevie was used to talking to Miss Fenton and explaining things to her, but those things were usually unexplainable—like how a wad of bubble gum got onto a teacher’s chair, or why Veronica diAngelo’s sneakers had turned green overnight. This time Miss Fenton was very gentle and caring and sympathetic.

“These are difficult times, Stevie,” she said. “You may find your attention wandering more than usual. If you need extra help, just let me or your teachers know. We’re here to help you, and we’ll be here to help Alex—when he gets better.”

Stevie thanked her. “I don’t think you’ll have to help me, though,” she said. “I’ll be doing fine, I’m sure, and as soon as Alex is a little better, I can tutor him and
help him to catch up on all the subjects, except maybe Spanish because he takes that and I take French.”

“That would be wonderful,” Miss Fenton said. “But sometimes things don’t work out exactly the way we expect them to, and you may find that sometimes school work seems less important than other things. We understand this, Stevie. Just let us know.”

“Thanks, but it won’t be necessary,” Stevie assured her again. Then she had to dash off to her homeroom. Now she had only eight minutes to sharpen those pencils. Miss Fenton had meant well, but she hadn’t understood. That was okay. Like everyone else, she would see the change in Stevie eventually. For now it was enough for Stevie to know about it.

It turned out that Stevie didn’t have any time at all to sharpen her pencils, because the minute she got to her classroom, Miss Fenton announced a schoolwide assembly. All students, faculty, and any parents who were at the school that morning were invited to come immediately.

As they entered the assembly hall, Stevie felt a lot of eyes on her. The looks were of concern, sympathy, and wonder. She realized that by now just about everyone knew that Alex was in the hospital and they were all curious. Some had other reactions, too.

It turned out that the assembly had to do with Alex.
Miss Fenton told everybody—as if they didn’t already know—about his meningitis. Then she explained what she knew about the disease. She also said that to the best of their knowledge nobody else at the school was infected, and it seemed very unlikely that they would be. It was a disease that was spread only by close contact, and since Alex had been out of school for a couple of days already, a doctor had assured her that he almost certainly wouldn’t have infected anyone at school. Then she explained that Alex’s family had been given vaccinations, so they wouldn’t infect anybody, either. What she was getting at was that school was going to continue as usual, and nobody should stay home just because Alex was sick.

Stevie looked straight forward, gazing firmly at Miss Fenton. She was very aware of the fact that almost everybody in the assembly hall was looking at her, and she could imagine what was going on in their minds. Some of them were feeling pity, most of the rest were wondering if she was carrying any germs they should be worried about.