Some of the Parts (18 page)

wednesday
10/8

A
ll I can think about is Amy's note, how much there was that I didn't know. That Nate hadn't told me.
How many other secrets did he keep from me? What did I keep from him?
I ask myself over and over on the walk to school, desperate to remember, to keep score.

“Who doesn't have secrets?” I say aloud.

“Who doesn't what?” Chase says from behind me.

I whip around. “Taking this Houdini thing a little far, aren't you? What's with the disappearing act this week?”

“I have bad news and good news.” He doesn't ask which I want first.

“Hit me,” I tell him.

“The bad news is that I am the worst hacker in history. I have obviously watched too many movies on the subject, and I grossly overestimated my skills.”

“What happened?”

“I got caught. Completely and totally busted. I'm probably grounded until after I graduate from college. My dad was so pissed that he wouldn't even let me come to school until today.”

“So what's the good news?” My ears wait for words I want to hear.
We found the rest of Nate. We know where he is.

“My dad is a lot smarter than I thought.”

“That's good news?”

Chase shrugs one shoulder. “If you need surgery when he's on call, yeah. Very good.”

I give him what feels like a grim look. “I hope never to be in that situation, thank you.”

He looks sheepish. “I confirmed that Dr. Fikri is doing a study with organ recipients. She meets with them every Monday at four o'clock. And I have her email address. Maybe you can interview her for your ‘article.' ” He puts heavy finger quotes around that last word. Which is only fair.

“Chase, I'm…” I'm a lot of things.
Sorry. Grateful. Furious. Confused.

He studies me for a long moment, and I wonder what he sees. The girl who caught his eye at the coffee shop? The girl who ambushed him with this whole crazy plan? Or something else? I can't read his face. He just looks like a picture of himself.

Finally, he pulls his phone out of his pocket. “I'm sending you her email,” he says.

“You still have your phone?” Mine is the first thing my parents take away when I'm being punished for anything. When I used to be punished for things.

“Just so he can check up on me. I'm not allowed to turn off my GPS. He claims to be checking on me at all times.”

“It's like you're some kind of supervillain,” I say.

He arches an eyebrow, smiles a little. “Maybe I can finally perfect the art of mind control and get him to give up on this. But until then, I better lay low.”

My phone pings and Chase's name flashes at me from the corner of the screen. “Thank you,” I tell him.

We let those thoroughly inadequate words hover between us for a moment.

“Could Houdini do mind control?” I ask.

“In a way,” Chase says. “He was very good at getting people to think what he wanted them to. But I think that alienated him from everyone, in the end.”

“Why?”

“Because when you know you're deceiving someone, you can't be happy when you're with them. Even if you don't feel guilty, there's part of you that knows it's all based on tricks and lies and it's not…it's not real. Too many secrets kill the joy, y'know?”

I do. Without knowing it, Chase has just articulated my current existence, and I suddenly feel unspeakably sad. And so, of course, I start crying.

I hate crying. I hate that it ever happens anywhere, but I especially hate when it happens in public, in front of other people. Real crying isn't pretty like gentle soap-opera tears with a soft-focus lens. Real crying is ugly, it's messy, it's your nose running and your eyes getting red and swelling up and your ragged voice choking you as you try uselessly to pull yourself together.

To his credit, Chase does not freak out or run away, even though by all appearances I have been reduced to a blubbering mess at the thought of Harry Houdini's loneliness.

“It's okay,” he tells me quietly. “He was happily married. He didn't die alone or anything.”

Clapping my hand over my mouth to silence myself, I nod and take a few deep breaths. I wipe my nose on my arm. I am neck-deep in humiliation, so what difference does a little sleeve-snot make?

“Okay?” Chase asks.

I nod again. “Sorry,” I manage to say. “I don't know what that was all about.”

“Yes, you do,” he replies. “But you don't have to tell me.”

“Another hole in the story,” I say.

He shrugs. “As long as I'm not going to fall into it.”

We're not supposed to have our phones out in class, and that rule I will follow because if mine gets confiscated, it goes straight to Principal Hunter. So I have to wait until after biology to write to Dr. Fikri. Then I decide I don't want her to see that I've sent the email from my phone, in case it makes me seem less serious as an aspiring journalist, so I decide to skip gym and use my school laptop. I sit at the same desk in the library where I told Chase the truth about Nate and hope it brings me luck again this time.
Best to keep it simple,
I think.
Don't jump the gun and sound desperate.

We were taught to pray when we were young, and taught to write business letters, and the two always seemed very much the same to me. Begin with a greeting, introduce yourself, state your problem and supporting arguments, sign off. Be polite. Be concise.

Dear Dr. Fikri,

My name is Taliesin McGovern. I am a high school student, and I am researching organ donation protocols for a newspaper article.

I pause, debating whether to use Dr. Abbott's name, then realize that I don't know his first name. But how many Dr. Abbotts can there be?

Dr. Abbott kindly offered to put me in touch with you and suggested that your current research study might be of interest to my readership.

I have unintentionally lapsed into writing like my mother. Which is maybe not a bad thing, since my mother almost always gets people to do what she wants.

If you would be willing to answer a few questions, I would be deeply grateful. Please reply at your earliest convenience.

Yours sincerely,

Tallie

I end on a friendly, casual note to appeal to her humanity. I read it over, checking for mistakes but also because the pit of my stomach feels fluttery and weird, and I wonder if this entire thing is just completely hopeless. To make myself feel better, I pick a Kinks song—“Superman”—on Matty and listen with my eyes closed. And then a memory floats into focus, like the rituals reviving themselves.

Nate's basketball friends used to come over all the time after practice, and even though I was only a year younger than them, they would always treat me like a little kid. They liked to make me play a game called Doorknob. Whenever one of them yelled “Doorknob!” I had to run as fast as I could and touch a doorknob before they caught me. If I didn't make it, they all stood in line to punch me in the arm. Nate felt bad, I think, but he wanted his friends to keep coming over and I refused to let them see how much the punches hurt, so he probably thought it was no big deal. But then the game changed. They started yelling things like “Toilet,” and “Top step!” and chasing me all over the place.

One day Jason Rice yelled “Ceiling!” and I took off running as fast as I could, desperately trying to think of something I could climb to reach the ceiling, but there was nothing and they were getting closer and they were just about to catch me when Nate jumped in front of me in the hallway. I stopped cold and stood there, waiting to see what he was going to do. And just as Jason reached for me, just before his fingers latched on to whatever part of me he could grab first, Nate swung his hands out, caught me under the arms, and lifted me up as high as he could. And the sound of my hand smacking the ceiling was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard.

When I open my eyes, my stomach feels better. Everything feels better, even my head. No new mail in my account, so I check the one I set up for Mom.

There's a message from SparkleCat76.
Thank you, lucky desk.

But my elation withers as I read.

The main thing is that I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me, so make sure that whatever you write about me doesn't make me sound sad or pathetic or anything, okay? I'm also not really sure I want everyone to know that I have part of a guy now, so maybe you could leave that out. Anyway, all I know is that he was young—like, seventeen—and I feel shitty about that even though it wasn't my fault he died. He was in a car accident. Oh, and they told me his blood type. O-negative. They call that “the universal donor.” Isn't that cool?

No gratitude, none of Gerald's optimism or deference. The facts point to Nate as her donor, but I can see now how little of the story those facts actually tell. She doesn't understand how it happened, that someone else was in the car, that the roads were wet, that I bullied my way into the driver's seat. And it doesn't matter, because she can build any story onto those flimsy details, can tell herself anything at all, any version of Nate's death that will make her feel the most okay. They all can.

Heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, corneas.

There's more.

Do you ever come to Boston? We could talk or get coffee or something. I'm not really supposed to drink coffee anymore but sometimes I cheat. Here's my cell number.

The digits swim on the screen like tadpoles I can't catch. I hit reply, more out of habit than anything else, but I can't think and my fingers are shaking, so I save a draft. I'll send it from my phone later, I tell myself, after I calm down.

And then Amy walks into the library.

By the time she sees me, I've positioned myself between her and the door. Ms. Huff is tucked away behind the glass wall of her office—she's used to me being here and she leaves me alone. She thinks I won't cause trouble, but Amy obviously has a different expectation.

“I wasn't looking for you,” she says, as if I might just have the wrong idea.

“I wasn't looking for you either. But here we are.” My hands are steadier now, adrenaline pulsing through me. “And we have so much to talk about.”

Amy twirls her hair and tries to look unaffected. “No, we don't.”

“Okay,” I tell her. “Then I'll do the talking. I know you told Principal Hunter I was harassing you. I know you broke up with Nate. And I know you regret it because I saw you crying into your ice cream. Vanilla fudge dip.” Those three words have probably never been used as an accusation before, but I fire them at top speed. And wait for blood.

Instead, I get laughter.

“You don't know
anything.
” Amy's voice is shrill, like a bird out of tune. “Principal Hunter came to
me
because your father has been checking up on you and Hunter is helping him. And I wasn't crying because I miss your brother. I was crying because no one knows I broke up with him, and now I can't tell anyone without them thinking I'm a total bitch. And no one else will date me because I'm, like, socially mummified now. The dead kid's girlfriend.”

“The accident was my fault,” I say. “I was driving.”

Amy rolls her eyes. “So what? You were driving because he let you drive. That was his choice. So why don't you blame him?”

“Because…” It's always been so clear in my mind, but now it feels like I'm underwater and I can't quite make it out. “I talked him into it.”

“No. Because after someone dies, we can't blame them for anything anymore. You think you're remembering him as he was? You're not. He wasn't perfect. He could be a total jerk sometimes. He had terrible taste in music. He was smart, yes, and cute and fun. But he wasn't perfect.”