Girl Unmoored (23 page)

“I have to,” I said putting my backpack behind the counter, glancing around at all the new flowers Mike had brought in yesterday, still wrapped in newspaper. “Someone’s trying to kill him.”

“Then it’s a good thing I know
kar-ra-te!
” he said, slicing the air with his hands.

I looked down at Toby’s legs before I could tell myself not to, and then looked away before I could tell myself not to do that, either.

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” he said smiling up at me, “of what I can do.” And without any warning, he spun around on one wheel.

“Wow. How’d you do that?”

“Practice.”

I smiled, but then hesitated and pointed to the window. “Hey, Toby. They’re not going to fix it, are they?”

“Probably just get busted again if they did. That was the third time.”

“
What?
”

I didn’t want them to be gay anymore. I didn’t want people like Mrs. Perry to make a face and step away from them; I didn’t want Mike to shuffle his feet and clear frogs out of his throat whenever he talked to my dad; and I didn’t want Chad to go around making fun of himself so nobody else could. And most of all, I didn’t want them to have AIDS.

“Yup,” Toby sighed. He had curly dark stubble on his chin and extra dark brown eyes. And his teeth were as white as his shirt.

“Why don’t they ever do anything back? Like throw rocks at
them
?”

He frowned. “Those two?” I shook my head with him. Chad might act mad a lot, but he wasn’t the violent type, and Mike wouldn’t hurt a fly.

“Listen, little lady, the people who do this kind of thing think if we rub up against them, they’ll catch it. But there ain’t no catching what we got,” he smirked. It was the same thing Mike had said. “Either you
is
or you isn’t. And if you’re lucky, you
isn’t
.” Toby’s extra-brown eyes softened. “Life’s hard enough.”

He looked at me while I thought about this: Being gay wasn’t any different than having freckles. Either you had them, or you didn’t. And if you’re lucky, you didn’t.

“Well, I came out with
these
,” I said pointing to my cheeks.

Toby’s face broke into a smile wide enough for me to see every single one of his teeth.

“You’re all right,” he nodded.

“Thanks.”

“Come on, let’s get the show rolling. Mike says we gotta do exactly what you did yesterday. Said he made a bucket of dough in one afternoon.”

“Really?” It must have been true. There were only a few of my arrangements left.

“Yeah. Said some lady with a cat came in and
bought
the joint. Had a big bridge game or something.”

“Was the cat on a leash?” I asked looking down at Toby.

“Don’t know. Now the only thing you
ain’t
in charge of is the cash register, okay? That’s my gig.” I pretended to be mad. “Hey, man, better to be the beauty than the beast, trust me.”

I shrugged, but I knew he was just being nice. People with red hair and freckles never play the beauty.

“Do you know any Latin?” I asked him.

“Nope.”

“You’d be surprised,” I said, unzipping my backpack and handing him the dictionary, “of what you might know.”

And that was how we started: me at the sink, cutting and piling, and Toby in his wheelchair, reading Latin phrases and taking notes.

“Hey, how about this:
Amor Tussisque non celantur
?” I waited for him to tell me the translation, but when I looked at him, he just stared back at me.

“Toby, I’m not
fluent.
”

“Oh. Mike said you were, like, a genius.”

I told him my dad was, not me.

“
Love and a cough cannot be concealed
.”

I thought for a moment. “
Get Better Soon!
”

“Right on,” Toby smiled, writing it down.

And pretty soon we had a list of good ones, and a list of pretty good ones in case we got desperate. When we were done, I caught Toby staring at my hair. I put my hand up to brush down the frizz, but Toby said, “You know, I could layer it a bit, calm it down a little.” So I nodded and he smiled.

I sat on the coffee table while Toby got the scissors. Then he wheeled up to me and started snipping. Red commas fell around my feet, lying there like Ms. Frane’s corrections. When he was done, Toby pushed back and said, “Go see,” pointing to the bathroom for
Employees Only
.

I closed my eyes and turned on the light. Then I flipped open my eyes and sucked in a quick breath. I was still red and freckled with a Ping-Pong ball of a face, but I looked so much older—like my mom had died a long time ago now. I raised an eyebrow and watched it fall again. My mom was never going to see this new me. She was never going to see my shirt sprout, or my ears pierced, or even the braces that my dad said he would get me someday when he could swing it. I ran my fingers through my new hair and then I turned off the light and stepped outside.

By noon, when Chad and Mike walked in, the store was filled with bouquets.
We had already sold six, plus two people said they would be coming back later.

Mike held Chad by the arm when they walked in together, slowly. Chad was wearing dark sunglasses, but he still looked bad. He was so skinny now his pants were hanging off of him and the bones in his face made angles that weren’t supposed to be there. After Mike sat him down on the couch, Chad lay his head back and said, “Howdy, girlfriends, it looks fab,” without even taking his glasses off, or looking around. “In fact,” he said. “It’s the best I’ve ever seen it look in here. Except for last Christmas when we had the petal party, remember Mike?”

But Mike had gone back outside. “Mike?” he said again.

“He’s outside,” I told him.

Chad picked up his head. “What do you know about that? Well, anyway. Remember how we dumped petals everywhere to look like snow?”

“I do, man,” Toby said. “It was a white Christmas all right.”

“A white Christmas. Yep, it was.”

I kept hoping Chad would say something about my new hair. But he didn’t. Toby and I looked at each other for a second, thinking the same thing, that Chad’s voice was different—forced and too loud.

Chad looked down at his hands. I thought I saw a new black splotch on one of them before he stuffed them both down his pockets. I turned away and started sifting through some willows.

“So how you feelin’, guy?” Toby asked in a softer voice, wheeling closer to Chad.

“Pretty good for a dead guy,” Chad said, smiling with half his mouth and shrugging.

Toby snuck a quick look at me, then leaned in closer to Chad and put his hand on his knee. “How was Mexico, man? You get what you need?” Toby said this very quietly, but I could still hear it.

Chad nodded. “Proud new member of the Hemlock Society,” he said, all the meanness gone now. “Yeah.”

Toby looked down and no one looked at me, still poking at those willows, twisting them in between my finger and thumb, anything to look busy. I couldn’t imagine Chad being a member of any society, at least not like the ones Mrs. Perry was in.

“When are you going to let me turn you into that blond sun-kissed surfer boy?” Toby asked Chad, trying to lighten the mood. “Today? I got time right now.”

Chad dropped his head back against the couch. You could see his adam’s apple pop out, except it looked like a tennis ball. “I have three pieces of hair left, Toby, which one do you want blond?”

Toby’s shoulders slackened and I picked up the bucket of willows and moved it to the other side of the table for no reason.

“All right then,” Toby said loudly this time. “I’m off. I have bangs to pay and people to trim.”

“Thanks, Tobes,” Chad mumbled, sinking down deeper into the couch.

“No problemo. That kid’s a great boss. She understands the little people.”

I smiled at Toby, thinking about Grandma Bramhall’s little people.

Toby winked at me and I waved, then he rolled himself out the door. I wished he didn’t have to leave and I wished Mike would come back. It seemed like all Chad wanted to do was sleep right there in the flower store, not exactly good for business.

I walked back behind the counter as quietly as I could and started writing out more Latin phrases on tags. Every time I looked up at Chad, he was sitting there, breathing quietly. Someone opened the door, and I started to say hello in a semi-whisper so they wouldn’t wake Chad, but when I looked up it was Mike, holding a bag from Portland Bagels, that lobster claw pinching the bagel.

Mike looked over at Chad and then stopped.

“Chad?” he said, a little panicked, dropping down next to him. “You okay? Want some bagel?”

Chad groaned and sat up. “No,” he said. “Do I have to?”

“One bite.”

Mike fished around in the paper bag for the bagel and I walked toward them with some of the new tags. Maybe, if Chad was sitting up and eating, he might want me to read a few of them. I sat down on the coffee table, waiting. Mike winked at me and broke off a tiny piece of bagel and put it in Chad’s open triangle mouth, just another mother bird feeding her baby.

“Good Chad,” Mike said. “Eat slow.” Which was exactly what Chad was doing, chewing so slowly it looked like he might fall asleep in between each one. Chad should have had an IV, I realized. But an IV cost a lot more than a bagel.

Mike dug his hand in the bag for more, but Chad pushed it away. “No more,” he said.

Mike sighed. “All right, but later.” Then he turned toward me, putting a smile on. “How’d it go this morning?”

“What?” Chad said before I could answer. “Was I not
there
with you, all morning? Was I not
there
with you and the
vajos
?”

Mike turned back to Chad. “I was talking to Apron, Chad,” he said softly.

“She’s gone,” Chad said looking right at me.

My skin stung. Something wrong was in the air.

Chad kept looking straight at me. Then he pushed his sunglasses on top of his head and blinked. I looked at Mike and then back at Chad, waiting to see if I should say anything.

“Apron?” Chad said.

Mike nodded at me slightly.

“Yeah?” My tongue was bark.

“Oh,” Chad said squeezing his eyes tight and opening them wide again. “There you are. I didn’t see you before.”

Mike stood and Chad put his sunglasses back on. “Let’s get you to bed, Chad,” Mike said, scooping him up like a new bride.

“Bye, Apron,” Chad said, waving to the corner of the table.

“Bye, Chad,” I said. But I didn’t stand up. I stayed there sipping in that wrong air, until it filled my lungs with knowing that something bad was about to happen.

“He’s going blind,” Mike explained when he came downstairs, after the old man wearing red Nantucket pants like Mr. Perry’s had walked out the door with his new bouquet of loose French tulips and a tag that read,
Qui me amat, amat et canem muem
–
Love me, Love my Dog.

“Blind?” I asked. “
Blind
blind, like you can’t see blind?”

“Yes,” Mike said, dinging open the cash register and pulling out some money. “It’s what happens in the final stages.”

I stared at Mike. Then handed him the eighteen dollars the old man had just given me. “Thanks,” Mike said.

“How long?” I asked quietly.

“A few weeks,” Mike said, looking down, counting out money.

“A few weeks? He’s only got a few
weeks
?”

“Oh,” Mike said looking up at me. “To
see
. I thought you meant how long does he have left to see.”

I kept staring at Mike, trying not to say it.

“To live?” he asked, reading my mind. “Nobody knows. Sometimes people can live like this for months.”

“Months?”

“Not years,” he said, taking my hand and folding some money into it.

I kept my hand out, exactly where he had left it. “But what are you supposed to do now? I mean, how are you supposed to act normal?”

Mike looked at me, his blueberry eyes searching. “I don’t know, Apron,” he said. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

And then, just like that, I understood what my real job was this summer, and it had nothing to do with flowers.

Walking down our dirt road, the evening fog had already rolled in and the only thing making any noise was Mr. Orso’s lawn mower and a few of his barks when the mower turned off.
I waved to him, and he waved back. I tried not to think about how Chad couldn’t see me doing that now. Helen Keller said that when you lose one sense, another one grows stronger. But by the time Chad learned how to hear me waving, it would be too late.