Extraordinary Means (12 page)

I FELL ASLEEP
dreaming of Sadie every night that week.

Sometimes we were in the woods, and she was taking photos of a monster I couldn’t see. “No one will believe this,” she’d say, getting closer and closer while I shouted for her to run away with me to safety, even though she promised the monster wouldn’t hurt us.

And sometimes we were lying in a field surrounded by flowers, and she was holding my hand, which was covered with numbers. “Come on, Lane, let’s jump,” she’d beg, and suddenly we were at the edge of a steep cliff. I’d watch in horror as Sadie jumped off the cliff, giggling. But she’d float gently to the bottom, as though held aloft by an invisible parachute. And then I’d jump, trying to follow, and there wouldn’t be a parachute after all.

Each time, I woke up drenched in sweat, my body curled around the telephone. And each time, I looked around my
dorm room with relief, convinced I was waking from a nightmare.

ON THURSDAY AFTERNOON
, we were all in the library, using the router trick to get internet. Marina was at the computer, while Nick and Charlie were at the back tables.

Sadie and I had gone off together into the stacks and were sitting on the floor with our backs against the encyclopedias. Her hair was wet from the shower and knotted up in a bun. It smelled amazing, like mint and oranges and old books, although I guessed the last part was the library.

We both had our laptops out, the same MacBook everyone used. Hers was battered and dinged, like it had survived a war. I kept mine in a shell, with a silicone keyboard cover so it wouldn’t get scratched. When I’d taken it out, Sadie had laughed at me and asked why my computer was wearing a condom. Just hearing her use the word “condom” had sent my brain spiraling down all sorts of dirty alleyways, and I was having a hard time concentrating.

She was so close to me that occasionally, when she typed, her elbow brushed mine. I wanted to lean over and kiss her. I’d wanted to do that for a few days now, or maybe even longer, but I didn’t want to ruin things, and I didn’t know how to begin.

I glanced over at her screen, in case she’d found something interesting, but she was just scrolling through pictures of random pretty people posing in random pretty places
with balloons and cupcakes and stuff. I was on the Stanford website, clicking around.

Dr. Barons said my vitals looked better and that my new X-ray had shown some improvement, so it turned out that not doing homework and participating in naptime and getting nine hours of sleep a night was actually a solid game plan. But he still didn’t have an answer on when, or if, I’d be able to go home. All he’d say was “as soon as you’re better,” with that bullshitty grin, like he had no idea what I was so eager to get back to, and my AP assignments weren’t still locked away in some secret drawer in his office.

Stanford listed their admissions deadlines on the website. Early action was almost up, and I knew I’d miss that, but regular decision wasn’t due until January. I’d wanted to see if it was possible, and it looked like it might be. If I got out of Latham within three months, my application would just make it. Getting in, with my name and social security number registered in the national database of active TB cases, was a completely different story. I was pretty sure Stanford wouldn’t want to risk assigning me a roommate even if Dr. Barons certified that my TB was inactive, because there was always the chance that I’d relapse. I’d tried to ask Dr. Barons what most kids did about college once they left Latham, but he’d given me a stern look and told me to “focus on the now,” which made me want to strangle him with his stethoscope.

I
was
focusing on the now. But that didn’t mean
I couldn’t still wonder about what came after.

Sadie leaned over and asked what I was looking at, and I tilted the screen so she could see a picture of the campus.

“That’s pretty,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said wistfully, and then I clicked over to Facebook to make myself stop obsessing, which in retrospect might not have been the best idea.

The barrage of “get well soon” messages had stopped. Zero notifications. My account felt dead and forgotten, and I wondered how I’d missed the funeral. My high school’s homecoming dance had taken place over the weekend, and my feed was filled with pictures of it. Group photos in limos, everyone in suits and dresses, girls pointing their toes together to show off their brightly colored Converses.

I’d always skipped homecoming. It took place the weekend before the first big exams, and even if it hadn’t, I wouldn’t have had the nerve to ask anyone. Not when the first question they’d have would be whether my dad was one of the chaperones. I wouldn’t have known if they were turning me down, or turning down the idea of going with Mr. Rosen’s kid. It had seemed like a miracle when Hannah had been interested in me, Hannah who had transferred to our school in tenth grade, and had missed the memo that my dad sucked. Hannah who said yes to being my date that year, which was my last chance to participate in something along with everyone else.

But there weren’t any more homecoming dances. I’d
missed all of them. I hadn’t thought I’d care, but now that the opportunity was gone, I sort of did. Everyone looked so happy in the pictures, and if I could have done it over last year, I would have just asked someone to go with me. I scrolled a little farther, through pictures of everyone lined up in each other’s driveways and in the backseats of limos, and then I stopped cold.

It was a photo of Hannah and this guy Parker. Her hair was in fancy curls, and Parker was wearing sunglasses with his suit, even though it was clearly dark out. They were at the dance, with a butcher-paper banner and bleachers in the background.

But that wasn’t what I was staring at. It was the Facebook announcement above the picture: Hannah Chung is in a relationship with Parker Nguyen. It had so many likes. So many comments from kids I’d sat with at lunch or competed with in Model UN, proclaiming, “Finally!” and “You guys are everything!”

If they were everything, I guessed that made me nothing.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying not to let it get to me. What did I care if Hannah was dating Parker? I knew him a little from Model UN, and he was a bit douchey, but mostly okay. He always wore a black button-up shirt with a red tie to our conferences, because red was a power color. He was forever saying crap like that, about how using pen on a test makes you seem more sure of yourself, and traveling to colleges to interview on their campuses looked
more serious than taking a local interview.

“Hey,” Sadie said. “What’s up? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

More like I’ve just become one, I thought. We were all ghosts at Latham House, because we were all haunted by lives that were no longer ours. Only I didn’t say that. I just shrugged and tilted the screen so she could see the smiling photograph of the happy, perfect couple in the middle of their happy, perfect senior year.

“Wait,” she said, realizing. “Is that
Hannah
Hannah? Your ex?”

“The very same.”

I tried to tell myself that it didn’t matter. That high school had never mattered to me like that, that Hannah didn’t matter, that none of it was a part of me anymore. It was October, and I was at Latham, and the rest of my life didn’t have anything to do with my former classmates’ Facebook accounts.

I had more important things to worry about. Things you weren’t supposed to worry about at seventeen, like blood tests, and X-rays, and my parents’ health insurance premiums, and the DNR forms we’d signed in Dr. Barons’s office before I was given my med sensor and removed from everything that remotely resembled my past life. And now it was too late to do anything more than march grimly forward and hope.

“It’s fine,” I said, mostly to convince myself. “Hannah
can do what she wants. It’s just that I didn’t expect to be so easily deleted from my old life.”

I sighed, and Sadie put her hand on my shoulder.

“It wasn’t even that good of a life,” I went on. “I did nothing but study, and even when I had a girlfriend, we just went to Barnes and Noble to do our homework and hung out at Model UN conferences. I knew everyone else was going to these parties and dances and beach trips or whatever, but I thought it was stupid, because the moment we all got to college, high school would be erased. Except now it’s me. I’m the one erased. Or I guess I’m not even that, because the thing about being erased is that first you have to leave a mark.”

I stared miserably at the screen, and Sadie scooted up even closer and leaned her head on my shoulder.

“You’re not erased,” she said. “Erased means you disappear. It’s more like you’ve just been . . . forcibly evicted from your old life. You’re still leaving your mark, you’re just doing it somewhere else.”

“Forcibly evicted,” I echoed, testing it out.

“Exactly,” Sadie said. “And now you’re here, in the library, with me. That part’s pretty nice.”

It really was, and I tried to summon the nerve to tell her that.

While I was still summoning, Charlie wandered over to see what we were up to.

“Internet just cut out,” he said. “What’s with the cuddling?”

“We’re allowed to cuddle,” Sadie retorted.

“Yeah, but why do you look so unhappy about it?” he asked.

“Lane’s depressed about Facebook,” Sadie said.

“About my ex-girlfriend,” I clarified. “Not, like, the website in general.”

Charlie shook his head.

“Delete,” he said. “I keep telling you.”

But I couldn’t. Even though I wasn’t sure what the point was anymore. No one kept in touch, they just kept up. And then, when they couldn’t keep up anymore, they forgot.

I wished I could take all of it back. The afternoons I’d sat home wondering what everyone was doing but not having the courage to ask. The countless nights I’d fallen asleep at my desk. The subdivision pool I’d walked past for years without ever stopping for a swim. The way I’d always driven straight home after taking classes at the community college, because it had never occurred to me to just drive around for a while and see where the night took me.

Maybe Sadie had it right, scrolling through fantasies of impossibly pretty people having picnics beneath the Eiffel Tower, instead of looking at a chronicle of everyone she used to know having fun without her. Or maybe I was just upset that my life back home had been so small and so pathetic. I wished I could take all of it back.

I realized then that I hadn’t had a life, I’d just had a life plan. And it wasn’t that I didn’t still want all those
things—Stanford, summer internships, graduate school—I just wasn’t sure I’d gone about achieving them the right way. If everyone at college shut themselves in their rooms and studied every night, what would any of us really get out of being there? It was like Latham: sometimes the point wasn’t being the best, because it didn’t mean you had the best life, or the best friends, or the best time.

I didn’t want to spend the next six years falling asleep at my desk with headphones on to block out the noise of everyone else having fun. I didn’t want to rush through all the moments that I wouldn’t know I wanted until they were gone. I could see my future narrowing, with options like football games and school dances being squeezed out, until trying not to die had become my main extracurricular activity. And if the road did stop narrowing, it would never be as wide as it had once been. I wasn’t going to get my life back, and even if I could, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I didn’t know what I wanted anymore, except to fall asleep every night to the sound of Sadie’s voice over the phone, at Latham house, and after we’d both gone home.

“
I HAVE AN
idea,” Sadie announced, putting down her sandwich. It was lunch on Friday, and we were all eating grilled cheese sandwiches, except for Nick, who had sawed his into strips and was arranging them into shapes on his plate.

“Someone already invented sarcasm, sorry,” Nick said,
smirking into his sandwich strips.

Sadie rolled her eyes at him, which was something I’d noticed between the two of them more and more these days. How Nick seemed upset all the time, at the two of us in particular.

“Whatever,” Sadie said. “I think we should go to movie night.”

Charlie was doodling in his notebook, and his head snapped up at this.

“We never go to movie night,” he said, sounding suspicious.

“I’m aware,” Sadie said.

“
Why
would we go to movie night?” Marina asked.

“Aha!” Sadie said. “See,
that
is the type of question the rest of you should be asking. Why would we go to a lame, chaperoned pajama party in the gym with healthy snacks and just about everyone we can’t stand?”

“You’re really selling this, by the way,” I said, stirring my soup. It was tomato, and awful, even with half a grilled cheese sandwich stuffed in. I had a suspicion that it was actually watered-down spaghetti sauce.

“It’s such an excellent plan that it sells itself,” Sadie promised. “Wait for it . . . instead of wearing our pajamas like everyone else, we’ll dress up fancy. I’m talking ties, boys.”

Sadie leaned back in her chair, a look of triumph on her face.

“Fancy?” Nick said, considering it. “Could there be booze?”

“If you have booze, there can be booze,” Sadie said.

“So it’s like Dapper Day,” I said, and everyone stared at me blankly.

“Seriously?” I said. “Am I the only one from SoCal? Once a year, there’s a day where people get dressed up and go to Disneyland. It’s a thing.”

Although I only knew it was a thing because I’d seen pictures of my classmates who had gone without me.

“That’s awesome,” Sadie said. “So, tonight is Dapper Day.”

“It can’t be day if it’s night,” Nick pointed out.

Sadie stuck out her tongue at him.

“A day is twenty-four hours, so yes it can,” she said. “Now shut up. We’re doing it.”

AFTER LUNCH, CHARLIE
insisted on holing up in his room, and when Nick and I tried to make him come out and do something, he said he was working on his music.