Never Enough (28 page)

“Oh. I was just coming to sit with you,” she said, her voice all sweet, like it had been in the Arts Club that day over a month ago. There was a demand in her eyes, like she was daring me to leave. I was her “in” at this table.

But I couldn’t do it. Not for Shayleen, who’d been so incredibly mean to me last year; not for Ron, who I couldn’t stand the sight of; not even for Ethan, because I hated guys who seemed deceptively nice, and I had a strong feeling his intentions weren’t pure, either.

Without a word, I darted to the side of Shayleen and made a beeline for the cafeteria doors. As soon as I pushed through them, there on the other side stood Marcus.

“I was just coming to find you,” he said, but I was willing to bet he had been at least five minutes from actually working up the nerve to open the doors.

Still, I was so happy to see him. And he was willing to miss out on sleep to make sure I was okay, which made me want to hug him and tell him how awesome he was. But I wasn’t about to get in the way of any more of his sleeping time. “Don’t worry,” I said, leading the way down the hall. “It sucks in there just as much as it did last year.”
Even more
, I added silently. “Come on. Let’s find you a place to get some rest.”

We ended up back in the school theater, but today, rather than wandering around
backstage, we headed for the cushy auditorium seats, with only twenty minutes left of the lunch period.

“Mrs. Andersen caught me nodding off during English,” he told me as we leaned back and put our feet up. Our only light was from the safety lights on the stage. “I’ve got to get some rest or they’re going to start calling my mom.”

“Are you sure that’s such a bad thing?”

He turned his head slightly away from me. He didn’t want to talk about it and I figured I should change the subject. I tried to think of a way to talk about what had happened in the cafeteria. I also wanted to tell Marcus about Josh, or at least give him some idea of what had happened, but when I started to say
something, his eyes were closed and his mouth hung half-open.

He needed the sleep, so I quieted myself and leaned my head back. Closing my eyes, I attempted to have my own little nap, if nothing else to avoid thinking about all the things that had gone wrong already this year.

The bell woke us both with a start. I could barely make it to class before the second bell at the best of times, but being groggy, both of us stumbled between the seats toward the doors.

When I rushed into art class, I told Mr. Dewdney that I’d return the developing chemicals tomorrow, when I got a ride from my mom. He didn’t seem worried. And he even remembered my name!

Actually, he seemed so relaxed this year that I suspected he’d had a really great summer. Or he had a new lady in his life. He’d even dropped a few pounds.

For nearly five minutes after the bell, Mr. Dewdney just gazed from the front with a smile as people got reacquainted after the summer. Since I didn’t want to talk to Ethan again—or the girls who had been at our lunch table—I took a seat near the door and flipped through the portfolio I’d started working on. So far it was just a book, really, with a few of my favorite photos laid out haphazardly on each page. Now that I was flipping through, I was amazed at how many of the photos were of Claire. She was just so photogenic.

“All right, class,” Mr. Dewdney finally said. Everyone
quieted down quickly, as if showing their gratitude for the catch-up time. “As you know, senior year will have more of a focus on preparing portfolios. With this in mind, you can expect the year to be less structured.”

Who was this man, and what had he done with my art teacher?

“We’re working on themes this year, people, and you may use any medium you like.”

My hand shot up.

Without looking over at me, he said, “Yes, Loann. You may work with photography.”

I grinned. Not only could I work on a portfolio to go with my college applications, I could use class hours and get teacher feedback on it.

I left class with an extra spring in my step. Marcus had three hours before his shift started, and I couldn’t wait to tell him all about my portfolio ideas. We were at the Arts Club before I realized I’d been doing all the talking and he hadn’t said a word. I quickly came to the grudging conclusion that hanging out was not what he needed most. I stopped and pointed him in the direction of his apartment.

“You need to get some sleep,” I told him.

He shook his head. “I’ve got calc homework. I can’t believe they assigned homework on the first day.” He sounded resigned. Like he expected to never sleep again.

I grabbed his backpack from his arm. He let it go without a fight. “Seriously, Marcus. Go home. I’ll figure something out for your homework.”

He didn’t argue, and a moment later I found myself in the café alone, having no idea why I offered to do his homework. Math wasn’t exactly my strong suit.
School
wasn’t exactly my strong suit. I’d taken precalc last year, and was able to take an extra year of Spanish instead of math this year, but Marcus, he was good with numbers. I flipped open his book, hoping some of it might be review from last year.

It wasn’t. I didn’t understand it at all.

By the time Armando returned to relieve me, I rushed home with an idea. Claire kept almost everything she’d ever owned. I wondered if she might have kept her school books, too.

As soon as I walked in the door, Mom caught me midstep between the foyer and the stairs. It was like she knew exactly what I had planned. And somehow I didn’t think she’d understand why doing Marcus’s homework for him was okay.

“What?” I asked, defensively.

“Claire comes into O’Hare Saturday,” she said, surprising me. “Want to ride in with me to pick her up?”

“Of course. Yeah,” I said, but part of me had trouble believing it. At first the weeks without her had seemed so long, and it felt like her absence might go on forever. But now, I don’t know, it seemed like too short a time for her to be
completely better. The clinic must know best, though, right?

As I headed for Claire’s room, I felt guilty about how much time I’d been spending in there. After that first time, it just got more and more comfortable. But would she even want me in there once she got back?

Sure enough, Claire still had her calculus binder in her closet, with all her other schoolbooks. She’d had the same teacher as Marcus, and apparently she’d used the same textbook.

I swiped the whole binder and tiptoed back to my room with it. When I was done with Marcus’s homework I shoved Claire’s notes under my bed, just in case I needed to help him out again.

*   *   *

The next morning, Mom drove me to school with the darkroom solutions. Two senior guys I didn’t even know followed me down the hall, and I felt defenseless with my arms full.

“Look, what do you guys want?” I finally spun and confronted the two guys who were right on my heels. “Contrary to what you may have heard, I’m not looking for a date.”

The guys looked at each other, then back at me, and my face heated to three hundred degrees. I totally had it wrong. They burst out laughing and walked right on by me.

There weren’t too many people within earshot, but unfortunately Shayleen was one of them. She whisked past me going the opposite direction.

“You really screwed things up, you know.” She said it without even looking at me. “You were at
their
table. You could have been someone.”

I watched her walk down the hall, wondering if I was supposed to feel some regret from her words. Instead I just felt sad for her.

I ended up bringing Claire’s binder to school, since Marcus couldn’t keep up with anything for the rest of the week. He napped while I worked on homework—his and mine—through the lunch hours. We barely spoke during the day.

“You can’t keep this up, Marcus. Seriously,” I said on Friday.

“It’s the weekend,” he said, like that made it all better. “And I have Sunday off.”

It didn’t excite me at all that he had a day off like I thought it would. He would have to spend the whole day sleeping. He had no choice.

“Well I can’t keep doing your homework for you. I really think you’d get better marks, at least in English, by yourself, even if you are tired.” I said it as a joke, but he didn’t take it that way.

“I never asked you to do my homework, Loann.” He sounded grumpy, and I took immediate offense.

“I can’t believe you! Fine, do it yourself, then.” I knew he had to go straight to work, so I spun toward the Arts Club. When I got through the doors, I glanced out the window and he was still standing in the place where I’d left him, his backpack
at his feet. I could tell he was sorry, but he didn’t even seem to have the energy to come in and say it.

As much as I wanted to run back out and forgive him, I felt terribly conflicted. He couldn’t go on like this, and if his mom wasn’t going to think about what was best for him, someone had to.

Something needed to change with him. And soon.

*   *   *

Saturday morning on the three-hour drive to Chicago, Mom drove and I stared out the window, first at the miles of lonely, grassy farmland, and later at the complicated highway over-passes and crammed-in buildings of the city. I had to admit, something about the big city attracted me. Growing up, I had always assumed I would go to a small Wisconsin college, but my mind started to veer as we made our way from one highway interchange to the next. Chicago looked, well, exciting. I thought about Marcus. I’d miss him if I went off to college, but what difference did it make? I missed him now.

We waited in the arrivals terminal for half an hour before we saw Claire. Or should I say, before we
recognized
Claire. I wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there by the time we noticed her and her extra twenty-five pounds. I didn’t remember ever seeing her face so filled out. Mom had warned me repeatedly that the counselors instructed us not to make her feel self-conscious. I didn’t know where to look—not at
her face, not at her body. Discreet wasn’t exactly my middle name, so I zoomed in on her bag.

“Wow, Claire, did you get a new suitcase? This is
really
nice!”

“Loey!” She threw her arms around me and gave me a big bear hug. It felt good to hug her now, not so bony. Just comfortable. Just Claire.

Before we could ask her any questions, she picked up her bags and started chattering, leading the way to the parking garage. “The campus . . .” she described in no fewer than five hundred words, then a full outline of the beaches, the ocean, and her new friends. I had to wonder why she bothered coming home.

Even though I felt a little hurt, I couldn’t help smiling. It was great to have her home and, more important, back to her cheery, confident self.

“It was kind of like one big slumber party,” she went on. “The girls and I, we’d tell our secrets until late at night. And the food, it really wasn’t that bad. Lots of fresh veggies. They keep a hired chef and everything.”

Mom and I had yet to add a word to anything she said. Claire kept interjecting with the phrase “I’m okay now” every couple of sentences, and if it wasn’t for that, I might have actually believed that she was.

She brought back booklets galore with lists of foods and their caloric equivalents, macronutrient pyramids, and the healthy diet plan that she was supposed to adhere to. Mom
went nuts in the kitchen. We ate so much chicken, I thought I might hatch something.

“Your sister has some permanent liver damage,” Mom told me one morning in the kitchen before Claire was up. “She’ll have to be on a special diet for the rest of her life. We’ll have to be careful with what kinds of foods we give her.”

I hadn’t realized the extent of how much her life would be different. How much
our
lives would be different. I guess I thought she’d just come home and eat normally again.

Something else irked me about Mom’s statement, though. Not because I didn’t care about my sister, but because of all she’d kept hidden from us before. What foods we “gave her” didn’t seem to have much bearing on what she had eaten before. One thing had changed since she left: I didn’t trust my sister anymore.

Claire went to regular doctor’s appointments because of her liver damage, and everyone was glad for that. I should have had confidence, like my parents, that with a doctor keeping up on her, Claire wouldn’t starve herself into oblivion again.

But I just didn’t completely believe it.

One afternoon I sat in the kitchen and watched her slice carrots into slats the width of paper. As she sheared, she told me more of her stories about her new friends, whom she kept up with through G-chat.

“Some of the girls have their own websites. And the chat
rooms are really fun. Kind of like we never left.”

As glad as I was to see Claire happy, her enthusiasm seemed a bit much. “So why did you?” I murmured under my breath.

“Did you know, since I’m over eighteen, I’m legally an adult. Mom and Dad can’t tell me what to do, pry into my private stuff. You know, like medical records and stuff.”