For This Life Only (6 page)

Messed up. Heavy. Depressing. Awful. Any one of those words could apply. Zach had brought over all my books and assignments the week I got home from the hospital. That was before my parents had implemented their “act normal” strategy. So, at that point, my dad was basically living at the church office, burying himself in work; my mom was prone to crying silently outside Eli's door; my sister was mid-transformation to silent ghost; and I was a zombie, drugged up on pain meds, foggy and struggling to get a grip on what I'd caused.

It wasn't a whole lot better now, honestly.

“I wanted to come back, but your mom said I should wait until you were better. And you never texted me back . . .” Zach trailed off helplessly, running out of words.

“It's okay,” I said. “Not your fault. I was trying to figure
out some stuff.” Which was a lie. Made it sound like I'd actually gotten somewhere in the last few weeks. But maybe it was better to pretend. Maybe Mom and Dad were onto something.

Zach bobbed his head in acknowledgment, his shoulders losing tension and dropping to a more normal position.

But I sensed there was more, from the look he and Audrey exchanged with each other.

“About that night—” Zach began.

“—we're so sorry,” Audrey put in. “If we hadn't gotten in that stupid fight—”

“You were counting on me to be DD, man, and I shouldn't have—” Zach continued.

“It's all right,” I said. I didn't want them to go over it all again—didn't need them to. I'd done it a thousand times or more in my head. It wasn't their fault. It was mine.

The awkward silence returned for a long moment. Matt, Kylie, and the others behind me started a separate quiet conversation. And everyone else around us had gone back to whatever they were doing, but some of the closer ones were listening.

My gaze caught on a girl standing with a cluster of her friends. She was the only one facing me, and her cheeks were wet with tears that had cut tracks in her makeup. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen behind her thick-
framed glasses. Her sweatshirt said
BIG TALK, BIG WALK
in huge letters. Debate team.

I looked away from the girl.

“So, uh, let me see your schedule,” Zach said with forced cheer, drawing my attention to him. “I don't know where you're at this semester.”

Silently, I dug into my pocket for the crumpled sheet of paper and then handed it over.

Zach released Audrey's hand to take the page and unfolded it. “Government first hour? That blows.”

Audrey made a sympathetic noise, her anxious gaze bouncing between my face and Zach's.

“But I heard Mr. Peterson will give you extra credit if you—” Zach stopped and frowned at the paper. “Whoa, wait a minute. They messed this up. They took you out of lifting and put you in Pussy PE.” He looked up at me, confused.

Varsity athletes took weight lifting and training, so we could stay in shape in the off-season. No pathetic pickle ball, badminton, or bowling for us. “Pussy PE” is what everyone called the study hall for kids who were too messed up to handle even regular gym.

In other words, me now.

“Zach,” Audrey said through her teeth in protest. But it had no effect. He was staring at me, waiting for an answer.

“I can barely walk, dude,” I pointed out, trying to clamp down on my frustration at being forced to discuss the obvious. “Running and lifting are kind of out of my reach.”

I'd wanted to fight that change in my schedule, but what was I going to do? Sit on the bleachers for the next three months? Plus, I'd been overruled by my mom and Mrs. Schultz, the guidance counselor, who both thought the additional study time would be more valuable in helping me catch up so I could graduate on time.

“Yeah, but Coach is going to be pissed if you're not in shape for the season.” He paused, and I saw it click for him for the first time. His eyes widened. “You're not . . . wait, are you out for good?” He sounded horrified.

Yes, I was. Left-handed pitchers are prized beyond all measure, but once you shatter your elbow, you're damaged goods, a ticking time bomb waiting to land on the disabled list at the worst possible moment. No serious college team is going to take that chance, not when there are so many other players competing for the same spot. Coach and I had already had this conversation, when he'd come by the house a couple of weeks ago.

“I don't know. Maybe. It depends,” I hedged. I couldn't take his reaction to the truth.

The shock on Zach's face told me he'd never considered the possibility. Obviously Coach hadn't made the announcement to the whole team yet.

“It's okay,” I said again, feeling like that was all I could say these days. But it was always a lie.

Zach blinked at me, stunned into silence.

“Um, hi,” a new voice said, startling all of us.

The girl in the debate team sweatshirt had left her friends to hover near me, her hands tucked up inside her sleeves.

“I wanted to say, I'm so sorry about Eli.” Her voice cracked, and fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. “He was on the debate team with me, with us.” She gestured to her group of friends, who were now watching with damp-eyed gazes. “He was, like, really, really good.”

Zach and Audrey exchanged uncomfortable looks.

It took a second for my drilled-in manners to kick in. “Thanks,” I said, forcing a smile that felt more like baring my teeth.

“And he was so nice,” she continued, choking on a sob. “When we went to Springfield last year for tournament, I forgot to bring extra money for food. And I couldn't tell Mrs. Springer because she would have flipped out. But Eli . . .” She paused, her lower lip trembling. “He bought me cheeseburgers. Like every day for three days. He knew they were my favorite somehow.” She laughed through her tears. Then her face crumpled, and she was crying for real.

Oh, no.

I looked helplessly to Audrey and Zach for an assist, but they were both studying the ground like it held the answers to the next SAT prep test.

“Yeah,” I said finally. “Eli was like that.” And he was, always paying attention to everybody else around him, collecting details, trying to make people happy. Perfectly perfect, leaving me to be perfectly inadequate, which had been fine when he was here. But now what?

Not knowing what else to say, I reached out and patted the debate team girl's shoulder. It seemed like an Eli thing to do.

But my action only seemed to encourage her grief. She crashed into me, throwing her arms around me like I was the only piece of solid land for miles.

Anyone who'd stopped staring previously had now rejoined the fun, as I tried to keep my balance.

“I keep telling myself that it's okay, that he's, like, in a better place, right?” She looked up at me, desperation and misery written across her face. She wanted me to reassure her, to help her, even though I had no idea who she was.

It clicked then with a jolt that I felt through my whole body: I was her Eli stand-in. As difficult as it was for my family, Leah, and probably others to look at me and see Eli, this girl was the opposite. She was looking for me to
be
him, to say what he would have said.

“Right. Yes.” The words tasted like lies, but I forced
them out anyway. What was I supposed to do instead? Shove her off me and tell her I had no idea? That I got Eli killed and the darkness I'd experienced might mean there was no “better place”?

She nodded, and I could feel her trembling recede slightly.

The bell rang then, way too late to save me, and she released me, backing away with an embarrassed smile. “Thank you,” she said with a deep breath and a few remaining sniffles.

“Sure.” The tension in my jaw and neck tightened until it seemed like something in there might snap.

“You okay, man?” Zach asked uncertainly.

No. “Yeah. Let's get out of here,” I said, limping toward the doors.

•  •  •

The morning went downhill from there. In the back of my mind, I must have thought that the worst was over, but nope.

By the time I got to fourth hour, Pussy PE, my face hurt from maintaining a semblance of a polite smile, and my skin felt thin from too many people touching me, whether it was a reassuring thump on the back or more full-on, sneak-attack hugs that were an attempt to console or meant to be a sign of mutual grief. And the longer I was here, the more comfortable people seemed to be with approaching me.

I couldn't deal. My pain meds were wearing off, and the nurse's office seemed like an impossibly long hobble away from this end of the building.

Pussy PE was held in one of the smaller chemistry labs not in use this hour. I paused at the doorway to look for a place to sit and to catch my breath. Hauling myself up and down the hallways with the cast, as light as it was, was work. Even with physical therapy twice a week, I wasn't prepared.

Most of the seats were already filled. I recognized a few faces, mostly from the mocking they took when they showed up on the first day of gym with their schedule change to be initialed by Coach or Mrs. Lloyd.

A girl in a wheelchair with a cannula running from her nose sat next to a chick in a back brace. Then there was a dude who appeared to have something wrong with his hands; they were too thin and curved in oddly toward his chest. Another kid had no fewer than three asthma inhalers laid out precisely on the table in front of him, like surgical instruments.

It was a room full of broken and damaged people. The dent-and-scratch section of the school, like the aisle of the appliance store where my parents used to get all of our refrigerators, washers, and dryers before they had the money to buy better.

And I was now one of them.

With a barely repressed sigh, I limped into the room.

Everyone stared, but by this point, I was too tired to care. The only empty seat was next to Chad Hardwick—a tall, superskinny guy rumored to have hemophilia—in the third row on the left side.

As I approached, a girl in the second row glanced up at me, shoving her dark and crazy curly hair out of her face. Then she froze, her mouth open.

Surprised recognition pinged through me.
Thera Catoulus.

Of course she'd be in here. Last year, she'd claimed that Doug and Aaron had cornered her in the gym on their way from the lifting room. The principal probably didn't want to give her an opportunity to make more accusations of harassment. Putting her in Pussy PE would keep her under closer supervision and out of the way.

Thera's face, already so white that her eyebrows were like dark slashes, paled further, and her throat worked in a hard swallow as she stared at me. She half rose from her seat and then stopped, confusion and a horrible flash of hope crossing her face.

Oh, shit. She thought I was Eli.

Eli had always collected people; I'd just never realized how many until today. I'd never realized Thera was among them, either. My dad would have been pissed if he knew.

As kids, that had been one of the earliest warnings Eli
and I had been given at the church: stay away from across the street. My parents hadn't even called it Psychic Mary's, probably for fear that we'd be more interested. Her services were, according to my dad, “not something you want to mess with,” and then there was what it would've looked like if we were caught over there. Even in the yard.

I waited with dread for the burst of tears when Thera realized who I was. Or rather, who I wasn't. It had been happening off and on all day.

But instead, the moment it clicked, Thera recoiled, jerking back as if she'd smelled something bad, her lip curling in disgust as she dropped into her seat.

Whatever. I kept moving toward the third row. I needed to sit down before I fell down.

“Hey, man,” I said to Chad. “This seat taken?”

He shook his head, but scooted over to the far edge of the table, as if I might shove him there anyway.

I dropped into the plastic chair, shrugged my backpack off to the floor, where it landed with a resounding thud, and stretched my leg out in front of me, swallowing a groan of relief.

Ahead of me, Thera had frozen in a rigid posture, her shoulders squared as though I might chuck a book or a throwing star or something at her from behind.

“Greetings, children,” Mr. Sloane said with a wave of his coffee mug, his MacBook tucked under his arm. He
was the drama teacher and had been supposedly working on a screenplay on the side for, like, the last ten years.

He nodded at me, an acknowledgment of my addition to the class, and then moved a red-and-blue molecular model of something out of the way and set down his laptop. Within seconds, he was engrossed in whatever was on his screen.

•  •  •

The hour passed slowly, each minute ticking loudly on the ancient analog clock that hung crookedly on the opposite wall.

It was so quiet I could hear the asthmatic kid breathing, and so hot I could feel sweat trickling down my spine. I didn't belong here.

After a while, the words on the page in front of me—
The Great Gatsby
for English—began to blur together. With only a few minutes left in the period—how was I going to get through this every day?—I gave up and leaned back in my chair to massage the overworked muscles in my right leg. My gaze landed on Thera. She was practically invisible behind her long hair, her head down as she scrawled in her notebook.

When the bell rang, she jolted at the sound and stood quickly to stuff her notebook and books into a ragged canvas bag covered with a weird mix of patches, including some I recognized from a brief stint in the Boy Scouts.

She was tall, probably only a few inches shorter than me. I'd never been close enough to her before to notice. Her clompy black combat boots and tight dark jeans, almost as black as her hoodie and her hair, made her look even taller. The jeans also drew attention to a rather spectacular ass, which I felt vaguely guilty for noticing.