Satellite: The Satellite Trilogy, Part I (21 page)

“No bloody way! And I don’t care about your feelings. You need to get out of here!
Now!
” he adds when I don’t respond.

“Clara told me about your death. She said you had a difficult time forgetting your past, too.”

“Seriously, you’ve got to go!”

“Do you still have any of your memories?”

Liam looks around the room again in a panic and then huffs out a breath. At least his shoulders relax a little. “Just of my death,” he says quickly, looking away.

“Yeah?” I hope my tone is encouraging enough that he will continue.

“Can’t we discuss this later?”

“What’s wrong with now?”

“What’s wrong with now? Are you kidding me?” Liam barks.

“No.”

“If I talk, will you leave?” He soooo wants me to leave.

I pretend to consider and then barely nod.

Liam starts talking fast. “Jonathan thinks the Schedulers wanted me to hold on to the memory of my death for some reason.” His face still looks angry, but this time I have to wonder if his reason has to do with me. “I get to replay my son’s reaction over and over whenever I feel like reminiscing.”

“The Schedulers don’t seem to be going for any kindness awards, do they?”

“Nope. Now will you leave?

I look back at Tate and ignore his question. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful that I still remember, but I’m a mess. I mean, I should be with my Tragedy right now and all I can think about is her. I worry about her every minute I’m away.”

“She’s going to be fine. I’ve got this. You can go now.”

“Thanks.” I say this only to be nice, because no one will ever protect her better than I can.

“Who’s watching your Tragedy?” Liam’s clearly appalled by my reckless behavior.

“You’re right. I should get going,” I answer, avoiding the question.

“Please tell me I’m not going to see you here again.”

I grin.

“Seriously, man!”

I sober up when I look at Tate. “She means everything to me.”

Whether on purpose or not, Liam’s mood lightens. I can only guess this is because I’ve agreed to leave. “I’ll watch over her like she’s my own wife.”

My eyes narrow. “Don’t go
that
far.”

“Kidding, bloke. Relax!”

I try to laugh, but it doesn’t come out right.

I attend Ryder’s morning Geochemistry class and learn more about element partitioning than I ever cared to know, all the while worrying about Tate. Certainly Liam’s capable of protecting her or he wouldn’t be a Satellite, I assure myself.

After weighing the consequences and mulling over Ryder’s mood today, I decide I can safely leave him as long as he’s with Hannah. As soon as she arrives for lunch, I bolt for Tate’s.

When I walk through the kitchen wall, Tate’s high-pitched shriek raises bumps along every inch of my skin. In a blur, I follow her screams up the stairs and jump over Liam, who’s slumped over and trembling violently in the bathroom doorway.

My mind races, taking in Tate’s skeletal, naked body slowly being swallowed by pink water. I hone my energy around a towel on the floor and bring it to her wrist, applying as much pressure as I can. She moans and her eyes roll back in her head.

“Tate, stay with me! Stay with me,” I plead, leaning over the bathtub.

She looks at me—right at me—not like before. “I just want to be with you,” she whispers. Her eyes are so clear, so intense, that I drop the towel in shock and the pink water devours it. She moans again and her dad runs through my ghost body.

“Tate? Tate, what…oh God!”

The murky water swallows her when I step back. Mr. Jacoby pulls her limp body from the tub and wrestles a towel off the rod, haphazardly wrapping it around her. Tate sprawls across his lap on the small bathroom floor.

Please let her be OK,
I plead over and over in my head.

“Tate! Come on, baby, look at me! Mary! Mary, call 911!” Mr. Jacoby yells.

I hear footsteps on the stairs and bury my head into the shower curtain, helpless. When her mom screams, I focus on the floor. My tears evaporate before they hit the muted, checkered linoleum.

“I’m so sorry,” Tate says weakly.

“Mary, call 911! We need an ambulance!”

“Oh God,” Mrs. Jacoby moans as she runs down the hall.

“Hurry,” I plead. “Please hurry.”

“We can’t lose you, too, baby.” When I’m able to look again, Mr. Jacoby is holding Tate tighter, quivering while he rocks her.

The door clicks open downstairs. “Mom? Dad? I’m home!”

Oh, for the love! Throw me a bone!
In one bound, I’m down the steps.

“Haze!”

Go watch TV. Go…

My mind is so anesthetized I hardly feel the voltage go through me.

“Block!”

“I’m gonna watch some TV,” Fischer yells up the steps.

“That sounds great, Fish,” Mr. Jacoby responds from upstairs, his voice cracking.

When I get back up to the bathroom, Mrs. Jacoby is wrapping a robe around Tate while Mr. Jacoby keeps pressure on the slices marring Tate’s wrist. I look with disdain at Liam’s broken body; he’s still cowering on the floor. He has the nerve to look up at me with wild, terror-filled eyes.

“I’ve got her, Mary. Go stay with Fish so he doesn’t see this,” Mr. Jacoby orders when the sirens are just a few blocks away.

“Fish,” Tate mumbles weakly.

Mr. Jacoby carries Tate past me and down the stairs, and I follow behind.

“What’s going on, Mom?” Fischer’s voice calls out.

Mr. Jacoby has to peel Mrs. Jacoby off Tate, which requires a difficult balancing act to maintain his hold on his daughter. “Mary, go!”

Mrs. Jacoby backs out of the foyer and does a decent job of faking strength. “Tate’s not feeling well, honey, that’s all. She’s going to be fine, though.”

I desperately want to believe her.

After Tate’s strapped into the gurney, I bolt up the steps and pull Liam up by his shirt. “Explain!” I spit, slamming him against the wall.

“Grant, I’m sorry,” he says through his shivering.

I slam him again.

“Grant, just listen! Please!” he begs.

“This had better be good,” I say through my teeth, my face a half inch from his. I unclench my fists, and he slides to the floor in a heap of worthlessness.

“I—I was respecting her privacy,” he stammers. “She was just going to take a bath. The next thing I know, she’s wailing and slicing herself up. I blocked her eight times to get her to drop the razor. I didn’t have anymore energy. I’m so sorry, mate.”

“I’m
not
your mate,” I say above him in a dead voice.

.

16. It won’t stop hurting

A nurse hooks Tate up to an IV as soon as we’re in the room and rattles off medical-history questions to Tate’s dad. He can’t answer half of them, while I can spew out every one. Another nurse is already at work cleaning Tate’s cuts, which are even deeper than I feared.

A female doctor comes into the room and checks the monitor. “How are you feeling?” she asks Tate.

“OK,” Tate utters in a dry, croaking voice.

“So, what’s been going on?” Ms. Doc slips the stethoscope ends into her ears so she can listen to Tate’s shallow breaths.

Tate shakes her head. “I lost my fiancé a few month ago…” She fidgets with a thread on her robe and swallows. Ms. Doc gives her a sympathetic look.

Tate turns angry then. The color in her face deepens to the shade of red that makes my heart stutter. She always flushed the same color during our make-out sessions, obviously for reasons other than anger.

“It wasn’t a
breakup
, it was cancer,” Tate growls, as if her clarification will wipe the look off Ms. Doc’s face. Instead, the pitying expression deepens.

“And our son just died.” Mr. Jacoby barely gets the words out, rubbing Tate’s arm and blinking tears away. “It’s been a rough few months.”

Ms. Doc nods as if she could possibly understand. “I’m sorry.” She takes the rest of Tate’s vitals in silence.

“You’re stable, but you’ve lost a lot of blood,” she says to Tate when she’s finished. Then she directs her attention to Mr. Jacoby. “I would like to discuss treatment options and admit Tate overnight for monitoring.”

Tate expels an over-the-top sigh.

Mr. Jacoby ignores his daughter’s nonverbal response. “My wife will be here soon. I’m sure she’ll have some questions.”

Ms. Doc nods. “I’ll come back in a few minutes.”

“We have a younger son. If you wouldn’t mention anything in front of him, that would be appreciated.”

“Certainly,” Ms. Doc agrees before leaving the room.

Tate runs her tongue over her top lip, but her colorless lip remains dull and cracked. “I’m not taking their drugs.”

“We’ll talk about it later.” I’m guessing this subject has already been exhausted. Her dad wraps his arm tighter around her. “We can’t lose you too, baby.”

I have to turn away when Tate starts crying, and my eyes squeeze closed even tighter when her sobs ramp up.

“It hurts so bad, Dad. It won’t stop hurting. Elliott was the only one who understood,” her voice muffles. “I can feel Grant around me sometimes. It’s like he’s still here.”

I spin around, unable to hear what her dad’s saying because I’m shouting, “I’m here, Tate! I’m here!”

Her high-pitched shriek cuts us both off. She covers her ears, screaming and hurling herself under the bed, bringing the IV tree down with her and almost ripping the tubes from her arm. Two nurses fly through me and try to calm her down.

The overwhelming truth has my hands shaking even more than the rest of my body. Jonathan was right. My being here isn’t helping Tate.

It’s making her worse.

The sun is still bright when I get back to Ryder’s.

“Why are you being like this?” Hannah asks.

Even with his back to me, Ryder’s defensive stance beside the fridge screams that something’s wrong. My eyes jump from the wet stain on the yellow wall to the broken glass on the floor.

“Just get out!” he yells, seemingly at the countertop.

“I know you’re upset…” Hannah trails off and wraps herself around the back of him. “Just talk to me.”

He twists out of her grasp and she stumbles backward, looking wounded.

“I said, get out! And take
that
with you.” Ryder directs his dirtiest look at a pamphlet on the kitchen table. “Grieving” is the only word I see on the paper cover before Hannah snatches the pamphlet and slams the door behind her.

Ryder belts out a frustrated groan. I block him before he opens up on the drywall like before; then I focus my energy again. “Haze,” I order, projecting my thoughts for him to go after Hannah. When I break the connection, he grabs his keys.

I consider blocking him yet again so he’ll slow down the car, but I don’t. The faster he fixes this, the faster I can get back to Tate.

In Hannah’s driveway he slams the breaks, barely missing the back bumper of her compact red car. He rolls his window down. “Get in!” he yells to Hannah, who’s on the sidewalk digging through her purse.

Really, Ryder?
No girl in her right mind would respond to that.

They stare at each other for a full minute before she stalks around his car and yanks the passenger door open. My jaw snaps closed, and I jump awkwardly into the backseat before she sits on me.

Ryder’s tires squeal down the street while they both petulantly look straight ahead. He stops at a dead end and turns off the car. I finally get the nonsense expression my mom used about silence being deafening. I drum my fingers on the vinyl seat as the minutes tick by.

Ryder breaks first. “I’m sorry.”

Hannah drops her head. “I just thought it would help. You’ve been so distant lately.”

He has? I stare through the window at the now overcast sky, promising to pay closer attention…as long as he picks up his snail-like pace, that is.

“A self-help book isn’t going to do me any good.”

“It might,” Hannah says, hopeful.

“Unless it can bring my dad back, it won’t,” Ryder says firmly, and I can see the corners of his eyes begin to fill with tears. I decide against blocking him, with the goal that his emotional state will soften Hannah, or at least make her more tolerant of his foul mood.

They sit in silence for a while until Ryder finally talks. “I just need more time.”

“I’m sorry. I was only trying to help.”

“You’ve got to let me handle this in my own way.”

When she doesn’t respond, he grabs her hand and kisses it. “I am sorry,” he whispers.

When Hannah plants her mouth on his to accept his apology, I hurl myself out of the car and hang out on a stump in the snow-covered field. I’m so jealous I could scream! They’re making out like wild animals while I’m stuck being dead. Meanwhile, my fiancée has added self-mutilation to her list of hobbies.

The happy couple comes up for air an hour later. Instead of riding in the backseat, I fly behind the car to clear my head. Not in the least bit breathless from the flight, I kick the toe of my boot against the curb while Ryder walks Hannah to her door. They say goodnight with their tongues because, apparently, they haven’t gotten enough of each other yet.

Back at Ryder’s, I take my chances and leave him unprotected for the handful of minutes before break. I go straight to the hospital, where Liam sits rigid and pale in the chair beside Tate’s bed. Amidst the tubes and wires, Tate sleeps. The low murmurs of her parents talking with someone in the hallway compete with the beeping machine beside Tate’s bed.

In a blur, Liam’s across the room with his back pressed against the wall. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know—”

“Shut up.” I keep my eyes on Tate because I can’t stomach looking at him. Every cell in my body wants to lay into him for being a failure.

Liam clears his throat and then says, in almost a whisper, “She’s getting worse.”

My jaw tightens and I fight to keep my voice level. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Nothing.”

I force my eyes off Tate. “No, not nothing! What?”

Liam’s chest muscles become defined under his thin shirt as he pushes himself harder against the wall. “You shouldn’t be here. Your presence…this isn’t the way things work around here.”

Even through my anger, his worried expression makes me feel uneasy, like his reasoning goes beyond my breaking the rules. My presence is making her worse. Is that what he was going to say?

My calimeter buzzes, and the hospital room becomes so silent that it feels like it was screaming five seconds ago. Liam apologizes again and displaces, leaving Tate and I alone in the quiet, dark room. I brush my lips against hers, but her lack of breath makes me anxious.

“I love you,” I whisper, trying to ignore the smell of blood and antiseptic. Frozen, Tate appears so peaceful. Certainly me being here couldn’t have attributed to her suicide attempt. Could it?

I consider coding during break when I displace back to my room, but my mind is too jacked up. I couldn’t relax if I tried. Instead, I make coffee and spend the time on the sofa, staring at the shelves of picture frames and thinking about Tate. If she wasn’t as frozen as Ryder right now, I could be with her. I hate the Schedulers for what they have done to her and her family.

When my calimeter finally buzzes, my mind is made up. Ryder was doing homework when I left him before break, so I should have at least an hour of him being preoccupied.

The hospital is further away than Tate’s house, but by air I cover the distance in mere minutes. I ignore Liam when he moves to the far side of the stale room and I sit beside Tate on the mechanical bed. She’s so thin that I almost have the whole uncomfortable thing to myself. I adjust my position so Tate’s body is curled toward my chest and I watch as she scribbles on a music sheet.

Liam proves hard to ignore as he goes from pacing, to pulling at his hair, and then back to pacing. He stops mid-stride and shocks me by yelling, “Get out of here!”

I stare dumbly back at him. Does he seriously have the nerve to yell at
me
?

“Don’t you realize how much trouble we could be in for this?” he says angrily. “Her book—” he begins, but then he stops himself and the worry on his face scares me.

Before I can respond, Tate chucks her pencil across the room, destroys the music sheet, and sits up so fast the tubes almost rip from her frail arms. She reaches for her purse on the bedside table and digs until she finds what she’s looking for. Using the compact mirror, she ruins both eyes with more black makeup. She should have at least wiped off the remnants of the last layer. The black smudges under her eyes—upside down triangles—make her look like the most depressed circus clown in the world. After she returns the mirror and makeup to her purse, she digs for something else and pulls it out.
What’s she doing carrying that around?

“What’s that?” Liam asks tensely.

“I bought that for her at the Arch. Just before my treatments made me too sick to leave the house,” I say, more to myself, watching her turn the object over in her hands.

“Does she make a habit of carrying around snow globes?” Liam asks, which is a good question.

Tate holds the globe in front of her face, and the silver glitter swirls through the water around the tiny replica of the Saint Louis Arch. She juggles the globe in her left hand, tosses it to her right hand, and then launches it at the wooden closet door across the hospital room.

“Haze! Block!” Liam yells.

My vision goes black and a freezing chill courses through my veins. In panic, my breath quickens for the five seconds until I can see again. When my vision returns, Tate’s sitting cross-legged and sobbing into her hands.

“This is what I’m talking about. She’s off her bloody trolley. Sorry about the snow globe, but you need to get out of here!”

I take a steadying breath to decrease my adrenaline flow. Something feels wrong. I get up from the bed and walk across the room to study the mess that has Liam’s attention. “What did you say?” I ask, staring at the tiny metal city in a puddle of water and broken glass on the floor.

“You need to go.”

The sound of running feet in the hall coming toward us makes me talk faster. “No. Before that.”

“Sorry she trashed your gift?” he says as a question.

I focus my energy and run my finger along the silver arch and mini buildings, confused. “I don’t know what this is.”

“Whatever,” Liam sneers when two nurses push into the room. My guess is the women are looking through me right now, seeing the fragments on the floor, but I don’t look up to confirm this.

Liam, now standing over me, looks confused. “You just told me about it.”

I suddenly feel panicked. “What did I tell you?”

“Huh?”

“What did I tell you?” I ask again, more irritated because I have no idea what he’s talking about. “Liam!” I demand.