Noggin (27 page)

“You told him?” I asked Hatton.

“He told me. Travis, what the hell are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking I want to ask my girlfriend to marry me. I don’t see what’s wrong with that.”

“Okay, well . . . for starters, she’s not your girlfriend. And also, she’s already getting married.”

“Minor technicalities.”

“You’ve completely lost it, you know that?” Kyle pulled into a supermarket parking lot.

“Really, Kyle? I think I’m holding it together pretty well, considering all that’s been going on.”

“Considering what?” He raised his voice, turning around in his seat to face me. Hatton was terrified and silent. “Oh man, your parents split up. Damn. And they get along so well they were able to pretend to still be married for three months, and you didn’t even have a clue! Oh, and you no longer have a body that’s literally deteriorating. That must really suck.”

“My parents won’t even talk. They use me as a carrier pigeon,” Hatton said.

“And you know what, Travis? You and Cate were great. You really were. And I wish more than anything that we could all go back to the way it was, that we were all sixteen again and you didn’t have to go away. But you know what else? I bet we could walk into that store right over there and ask any stranger we ran into if they wanted the same exact thing, and they’d say yes. Everyone wants to change the past, Travis. But they can’t. None of us can.”

“Just let me do this,” I said. “I know it’s crazy and I know I’ve been acting ridiculous, but I have to do this.”

“And then what? What’ll you do when she says no, Travis? What’ll you do?”

“She won’t. You know she won’t.”

“You’re full of shit, you know that?” Kyle practically shouted.

“I have to be back for something, Kyle!” I yelled. “I can’t
just be here like this for no reason. Don’t you see that?”

“Travis,” Kyle said, quietly this time. “If you’d just open your damn eyes for a minute, then maybe you’d see that Cate isn’t the only good thing in your life. Just open your eyes.”

I made the mistake of telling Kyle and Hatton about my phone calls with Lawrence Ramsey. They weren’t some dark secret or anything, but I knew it would be hard to explain to people what we talked about. When they found out, though, they made me promise to talk to him before Thursday afternoon, before I made my grand gesture to get Cate back. They had a good point. I wanted to know what he’d say too. Maybe he’d have a new perspective on the whole thing. Or maybe he’d tell me I was crazy like they had and I’d ignore him, too.

“Travis! I’m so glad you called.”

“Thanks, thanks. I should probably apologize for last time.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Hey, I have
got
to tell you something crazy. You won’t believe it.”

“Oh yeah? I’ve got something for you, too. You go first.”

“I talked to his family. It was so wild.”

“Whose family?”

“
His
, my body’s. Umm . . . my donor’s family.”

“No way.”

“Yeah. Last week I get this call from the Saranson Center, and they ask me if I’d give the family permission to contact me. I figured why not, so I said yeah and about two days later I get a phone call.”

“Who was it?” I was half-convinced he was making this all up.

“His wife. How weird is that? She told me all about him. He was a travel agent in Palm Springs. They used to fly around the world together.”

“Crazy.”

“Yeah. Then one day he has a brain aneurysm and dies. Just like that.”

“So she donated his body then?”

“Yeah. Her sister told her about the project in Denver. She’d read about it somewhere. His wife, her name’s Jackie, she said she knew immediately that she had to do it. Said he would’ve loved the idea of it.”

“Seems like a cool lady.”

“It was so unexpected. I didn’t know if I should thank her or what. I could hardly speak.”

He told me more about her and about Stanley Baker, the man who was now attached to him. I think Lawrence was having a hard time even talking about it. He might have even been crying a little because he kept pausing
midsentence and breathing in really deeply. It was heartbreaking but also sort of annoying because I’d called to talk about proposing to Cate. I’d called to talk about the future, and all he wanted to do was make me think about the past.

“Look, Travis. You have to meet the family. Or at least talk to them. It made me feel so . . . I don’t know . . . just so much better about everything. I don’t feel as lost.”

“Are you gonna talk to them again?”

“Hell yeah, I am. I’m thinking of flying out to California really soon so I can meet them. He had two kids, Travis. I just don’t see how I can’t go tell them how grateful I am in person.”

“That’s gonna be so tough, don’t you think?”

“I’m sure it’ll be tough for all of us. But good for us too, I think. They reached out to me because they wanted me to know what kind of a man he was, and I can’t tell you how much of a difference it’s made.”

He was happier than I’d ever heard him—excited, I’d say. About everything. About the next day and the next week and the week after that. He was ready to fall back in love with life, he said.

And I was jealous of him. Because even though I was about to do this incredibly romantic and drastic and insane thing, I wasn’t so much excited as I was completely and devastatingly terrified. But Lawrence, he had been enlightened. The nerve endings and veins and arteries carefully attaching his head to his body were firing and
pulsating and pumping with a renewed sense of opportunity and fervor. He had found his answers, and they all added up to one ultimate mission. He just had to keep living.

“So what did you want to tell me, Travis?” Lawrence asked.

“Oh. It’s nothing.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, Lawrence. I’ll talk to you soon.”

•  •  •

Hatton and I sat in my mom’s car around the corner from the Grindhouse and let the heat blasting from the dashboard vents make its way onto our faces in silence. I was passing the little felt ring box from one hand to the other, and Hatton was looking over at me from the corner of his eye. I think Kyle had said everything that needed to be said, so Hatton was just going to let this all play out without trying too hard to stop me.

“You’re asking her in there?”

“I might. Depends on what happens.”

“In front of
him
?”

“I think it would be romantic, maybe.”

“Yeah. Or a total train wreck.”

“It’s almost time. My hands are sweating.”

“You don’t have to do this, Travis.”

“I do, though. Thanks for bringing me.”

“I’ll be waiting right here, man.”

My walk down the sidewalk felt more like a funeral march. Then when I walked inside and saw them sitting in the back corner, I almost turned around. Cate raised one hand up to get my attention, and Turner, who had his back to the door, turned around and smiled. He had sloppy brown hair combed to one side, and his forehead was large and shiny. He had a good smile, an honest one, I think, and it seemed like he probably got a lot of compliments on his teeth. When he stood to shake my hand, I was noticeably taller and it was hard not to show how great this made me feel. Thank you, Jeremy.

“Travis. Nice to meet you, man.”

“You too.”

He sat down beside Cate, leaving one side of the booth empty for me. I took a seat and nervously looked up at her and smiled.

“So this is nice, huh?” Turner began.

“Yeah,” Cate agreed. “How was school?”

“It was fine,” I said. “Same as every day, I guess.”

“And what grade are you in again, Travis?” Turner asked. I could see how this was going to go down.

“Tenth. Supposed to be a junior, but I didn’t have the credits from before.”

“Travis missed a lot of class when he was sick,” Cate added.

“Oh. Man, that’s really too bad,” he said with surprising sincerity. “I bet it’s weird being back there, huh? After so long?”

“Turner,” Cate said. “I told you, for Travis it’s not been long at all.”

“Oh, right. Right. That’s confusing for everyone, I bet.”

“It is,” I said. “It’s confusing for me sometimes too.”

“Turner here went to Prentice Academy.”

“Oh geez,” I said before thinking.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing. Just used to know a few guys from there.”

“Yeah. It can be a pretty lame place sometimes. But I liked it there. I mostly kept to myself, though. I had some trouble fitting in when I was a freshman.”

“Fitting in?” I asked.

“You know, those kinds of guys like I’m sure you’re talking about. They didn’t like the chubby kid with the wiry hair and glasses.”

“You’d think bullies would eventually evolve past that, right?” Cate said.

“Seriously,” I agreed.

I looked over at Turner and was really impressed by how he talked about the past, even painful things, with confidence and not an ounce of shame. He was older, sure, but even my parents had trouble bringing up past embarrassments. He seemed so levelheaded and calm. It was as intimidating as it was surprising.

“I need a refill. Travis, you want something, man?” Turner shotgunned the rest of his coffee and went to stand up.

“I’m okay, thanks.”

“Babe? Refill?”

“No, thanks—I’m good.” Cate took a sip from her mug of tea, the little white string hanging down and hitting her hand.

I could see this guy’s charm, and it wasn’t making me feel any better about things. I’d wanted to hate him, to be repulsed by him. I’d wanted him to be an asshole and threaten me in front of her and make her realize that she was about to ruin her life by spending it with him. So far he was such a disappointment.

“He’s nice, right?” she asked me after he’d walked away.

“He is.”

“Thank you for doing this.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Are you okay?”

I decided to do it right then, just grab her hand and fall to the floor and take out the ring and re-create every television and movie scene I’d ever watched that played out in that exact same way.

“I need to ask you something,” I said. I took the ring box out of my jacket pocket and set it on the table.

“Oh, Travis. What . . . what is that?”

“Cate, I think you know how I feel about you and—”

“No, Travis, you have to stop right now—”

“And I think you feel the same way because all this time we’ve spent together and the phone calls and the trips to the park. And I thought maybe you hadn’t waited on me, but now I realize that you did—you just didn’t
know it, I think. And I have to do this now so you’ll know we can work. We can do this. It doesn’t matter how crazy it is or how—”

“So that barista guy just asked me if you’re that head kid from TV,” Turner interrupted, walking up behind me.

“Jesus,” Cate said.

“What’s happening?” Turner looked at Cate’s face, then the ring box.

“Nothing, we were just playing around.” Cate snatched the ring off the table and threw it into the seat beside her.

“Look, Turner, you seem like a nice guy. And I’m sure you are. But I just proposed to Cate, and I think she and I both know it’s the right thing to do. It’s supposed to happen this way.”

He laughed. Turner laughed and sat down, looking behind him to see if anyone else was listening.

“Just now? You just proposed to my fiancée in the Grindhouse Coffee Shop while I was standing ten feet away?”

“Well, I wasn’t done. You kind of interrupted us. But yeah.”

“Let’s see the ring, Cate.”

He gestured over toward the seat. She placed the little gray box in the center of the table and when she did, I saw the ring he’d given her months before right there on her finger, and I briefly thought about standing up on the table and leaping through the window. That ring had never looked bigger or shinier than right then.

“What’d you say?” he asked Cate. He opened the box and examined the ring. I’d say he had a slightly amused expression on his face. Not anger. Not yet.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Well, you should answer him, Cate. You can’t do that to him.”

Cate cut Turner a sharp look, one I was all too familiar with, as if to say,
You’re being a complete ass right now.
Then she turned back to face me and sighed.

“Travis, I . . . you know that we . . . I can’t . . .”

“Hey, everybody!” The voice sounded loudly from speakers all over the room. We turned to see one of the baristas in black skinny jeans and a red T-shirt standing on a tiny stage. He was adjusting the microphone on its stand as he spoke.

“It’s Thursday, and you know what that means—open mic night here at the Grindhouse.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said under my breath. Turner was laughing. Cate looked like she’d just witnessed someone being bludgeoned to death. In a sense, she had. It was me . . . I had been bludgeoned to death by this moment.

“Can you even legally get married?” Turner leaned in and whispered.

“Turner, stop,” Cate said.

“My birth certificate says I’m twenty-one years old,” I whispered back, looking right into his eyes.

“Our first performance tonight is by one of your favorites. Let’s give it up for Rodrigo.”

Then the room started clapping as Turner and I had sort of a stare-down and Cate looked on in horror. Onstage an overweight blond guy with dreadlocks approached the microphone. He held a single maraca in his hand. He was wearing a poncho.

“Hey, everybody,” he began in a nasally voice. “I call this one ‘Man.’ ”

“Do you think we can speak alone, Cate?” I leaned down and asked her.

“Are you crazy?” Turner said.

“Man,” Rodrigo said in a monotone from the stage.

“I’m not crazy. I love her. I loved her before you even knew her.”

“Man.” Rodrigo used a high-pitched tone this time. I was afraid of where this was going.

“You know, Travis, I’m trying to be nice here, but you aren’t making it very easy.”

“I think we should go. Maybe we should go.” Cate stared blankly down at the table.