How to Save a Life (24 page)

I worried that when I saw him, I’d get nervous, freak out about yesterday, start crying again, or want to turn around and run. But when I walk in and spot him already at a table, what I feel is relief. Nearly joy. I want to blurt out,
Thank you for being my friend
, which would be so awkward and crazy and not me. When I get to the table, there’s a weird second where he stands and it’s like, should we hug? Then we don’t, and sit down. Ravi is suitless again, in jeans and a sweater with a moth hole near the collar, so real, normal, nineteen. Tonight he’s even wearing his glasses, like he has on in his senior yearbook portrait.

I watch him as he opens what he calls the “Mandy dossier” and flips through it with elegant hands.
Let’s not talk about Mandy
, I want to say.
Let’s talk about tennis club and Otis Redding and movies and books. Let’s walk in the snow, sink up to our knees in it, get cold and come back for hot coffee
. That’s the kind of stuff you do with new friends you want to know better. I’m remembering how this works. How life doesn’t have to be only anxiety about what’s gone wrong or could go wrong, and complaints about the world around you. How a person you’re excited about can remind you there’s stuff going on beyond routine oil changes and homework. Stuff that matters. Stuff to look forward to.

So I say, “Whatcha got?”

“Based on what you’ve told me, I’ve identified a number of red flags.”

Red flags. The opposite of stuff to look forward to. “Like what kinds of red flags?”

“This is a start based on generalities. Every red flag could be explained away, potentially. We’re looking at a set of circumstances. Simply… laying out information.”

“Right.”

Ravi sips his Americano and glances up from the dossier to catch my eye. “Like I said, all of this could be nothing.”

“Okay. Just tell me.”

“You said that Mandy lied about her due date?” he asks.

“The baby is due later than she originally told my mom. But my mom thinks that’s just because Mandy had a bad doctor.”

Ravi taps his pen against the folder. “You also said it all happened fast, back at the beginning of the year. Like, instant match.”

“Yeah. Mandy saw my mom’s post on some weirdly unofficial adoption board and e-mailed her, basically saying, ‘Hey, you’re perfect, you can have my baby.’ That’s weird, right? For such a big decision?”

He makes an “mmm” noise and a noncommittal shoulder move.

“You don’t think that’s totally nuts?”

Ravi runs his hand over his notes. His fingers are long and graceful, gentle-looking, trustworthy. “Haven’t you ever had a gut feeling about something? Like your mom did about Mandy? Something you categorically
know
, whether or not it makes rational sense?”

No
, I think. Normally my mother is the one who does things by impulse and gut feeling. Normally I’m in total control of my actions and emotions. “Not really,” I say, even though I might be starting to understand it.

His cell phone beeps, and I nearly jump out of my skin. He checks it, oblivious to my reaction, and texts something before putting it back in his jacket pocket. “So let’s say, for the sake of argument, that both Mandy and your mom experienced this gut knowledge, this sense of destiny about the baby.”

“Okay. But what about money? When my dad died, my mom got a pretty big insurance settlement. Could Mandy have found out about that?”

“Possibly. Does she ask for money?”

“I don’t know. I have this feeling there’s a lot my mom doesn’t tell me. And my mom is so…” I almost say “dumb,” but my mom is not dumb. That’s not it.
Trusting
is what she is. And somehow I’ve come to see trusting as dumb. “I mean, I’m sure all the doctor’s visits cost a fortune, and my mom is paying out of pocket for Mandy’s baby stuff. And the other day she gave her AmEx to Mandy and left her alone at the mall for like three hours. We had a big fight about it.”

I don’t even know if I was mad about that. I think I kind of wished it could have been me shopping with my mom.

Ravi takes notes. “And what happened? Did Mandy use it for something she wasn’t supposed to?”

“No. I mean, maybe? She got a bunch of clothes, but my mom made it sound like it was all her idea, not Mandy’s. Like she had to practically force Mandy to get even that much. But who knows? I doubt my mom even checked her statement afterward.”

“See if you can find that out.” He looks at his watch and closes the dossier. “Of course, what’s most problematic is what you told me about Mandy not wanting any lawyers or social workers or agencies involved. That right there is your biggest flag.”

Is he getting ready to leave already? “And biggest potential disaster.”

“No legal recourse for your mom if Mandy decides to take off.”

“I know. That’s my nightmare.”

His phone beeps again. Somehow I know it’s Annalee. He ignores it this time. “Do you think I could meet Mandy? Talk to her? Subtly, I mean. Without her knowing I’m trying to find stuff out.”

“Oh. You could, I don’t know, come over to my house for dinner or something?” In the far, far reaches of my memory, I must have, at some point, known how to invite friends over.

He gets up, gathers his stuff. “Better if I can meet her in a more neutral environment, kind of incidentally.”

“Yeah.” I point to his cup. “You didn’t finish.”

Ravi looks down at me with that half-smile. He nudges my shoulder with his elbow. “Next time we’ll stay longer.”

Something inside me opens further. Another door. A window. I can almost hear the creaking hinges. I blink back tears. “Without your suit you could almost be a normal nineteen-year-old.”

“I am a normal nineteen-year-old.”

“So you claim.”

He laughs, a lilting laugh. “See you later, Jill.”

“Bye, Ravi.”

I watch him head outside; snow floats and swirls in the lamplight as he dashes to his car. For long minutes after he pulls away I stare at the spot where his car was parked, probing and poking at this feeling, at once familiar and foreign. Expectant, hopeful. After I’ve successfully slashed and burned a huge swath of acreage around me, just in case anyone tried to come near, Ravi has forged across, and I let him.
How did he do it?
I wonder.
How did I?

Mandy

When Jill gets home after school on Friday, the first thing I hear after the door closing is her calling my name. Usually I’m right there in the living room. Today I feel sad, the kind of sad that makes me want to be alone. To hide. Until now I haven’t spent much time in this room, my room, other than when I’m sleeping. It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s classic and comfortable, like the rest of the house. The walls are painted light orange—the color of summer sunsets on postcards—with cream trim and the same dark hardwood floor Robin has through most of the house. There’s a rug made of different blocks of color and everything on the bed is bright white. I’ve never slept on a bed this comfortable. The first night, I tried to get under this thick cover, and Robin said no, it’s a featherbed; you sleep on top of it, not under it.

Cheerful. The whole room is cheerful.

What I feel is that I don’t belong in it. When I’m here, it feels too much like home, and I don’t mean like home felt back in Council Bluffs, at Kent’s. I mean
home
home. An idea of home you carry with you your whole life, only you don’t know it until you’re there. I know I can’t stay, and that’s why I don’t like to spend too much time in here, feeling home the way I’m learning it’s supposed to be felt. Every day I feel it more, and every day the sadness of knowing that it will end gets worse and today it’s the worst so far.

“Mandy?” Jill is outside my door now. Usually when she says my name, it’s with a combination of question mark and exclamation point and is followed by a complaint or request. Like: “Mandy! Can you not use my blow-dryer without asking?” “Mandy! Did you put the peanut butter back in the fridge? It goes in the fridge, you know. It’s not the kind filled with all that sugar and trans-fat crap.”

She really is attached to her peanut butter.

This time she’s saying my name in an almost friendly way, with a gentle kind of question mark.

It takes me a while to get to the door; by the time I open it, I half expect her to have given up. She’s still there, as close to smiling at me as I’ve ever seen. “Hi.”

“Hey. Are you doing anything right now?”

Maybe she’s going to ask me for a favor or tell me I did something wrong and I need to fix it. “Kind of.”

She looks past me into the room. “Really? What?”

“I’m supposed to rest.”

There’s a long pause. Jill puts her hands into her sweatshirt pockets and nods slowly, then takes a deep breath. “I’m off work tonight. It’s Friday. Mom is at a meeting and Dylan has stupid band practice, which is a joke, since he doesn’t play an instrument or sing, but anyway I figured you must be going slightly crazy around here and might want to get out for some coffee.”

It feels like a trick. Why would she suddenly want to spend time with me? “I’m not supposed to drink coffee.”

“You can get decaf. Or herb tea, or a steamer.”

“What’s a steamer?”

“It’s—Mandy, okay.” She starts to laugh, shaking her head like she can’t believe I asked that, and takes her hands from her pockets to hold them up and make air quotes. “ ‘Going out to coffee’ doesn’t necessarily literally involve drinking a hot caffeinated beverage. It’s just something to do. You can have water. You can have a soda. You can get a brownie or a bagel or a muffin or a sandwich or a pretzel or a piece of cake. Whatever.”

Maybe Robin talked to her and told her she has to be nice to me. “You don’t have to,” I say. “I know you don’t really want me here. It’s not for that much longer. You don’t have to be nice.”

A certain expression lands on her face. One I’ve never seen before other than maybe a little bit yesterday when we got home and found her crying, but she had on sunglasses then so it was hard to tell. The expression is not hard, not trying to show that she doesn’t care or is separate from me and Robin. I think what I’m seeing is the real Jill.

“My mom doesn’t even know about this,” she says, and I believe her. Then her expression changes back to the usual. “It’s totally my idea. I mean, you’ve been here almost three weeks, and you and me barely know each other. Come on.”

I wouldn’t mind going out to be distracted from sadness awhile. “Can I go dressed like this? Is it nice enough?” I have on my new black maternity leggings and a sort of half dress, half sweater.

“This is Denver,” Jill says. “You can wear your good Wranglers to the opera.”

“I didn’t do my hair or makeup.”

“You look gorgeous.”

I touch my hair. My mother would never leave the house like this. “Are you just saying that?”

Jill puts her one hand on each of my shoulders and stares me in the face. It’s a little scary. “You’re beautiful, okay? I promise.”

At the coffee shop, Jill orders herself a latte and a caramel steamer for me, after she explains what it is, and also buys us a big piece of chocolate cake to share. “I won’t tell my mom about all the sugar,” she says. “Anyway, it’s Friday. Fridays don’t count.”