The Tragedy Paper (18 page)

“Please,” she said in a raspy voice that I couldn’t refuse.

“Okay,” I said, coming into her tiny room.

As soon as we were in far enough, she closed the door. That was when the horrible smell hit me. Even when I told myself that whatever I was smelling came from her, it didn’t help. I crinkled my nose, then I tried to tuck it into my shirt, then I just put my hand up to cover it completely and tried to breathe through my mouth.

“Whoa, what’s the stench?” Patrick asked.

Vanessa had already gotten back into bed, her head on a flowered pillowcase that looked old and I would have bet came from her childhood bedroom. I saw the stuffed monkey thrown off to the side of her pillow. She was breathing heavily and groaning a little.

“Here,” I said, pushing the cup of ice toward her. She reached out weakly and took it but let it rest on the bed next to her. I was fairly sure she was dehydrated. I moved toward
her with the intention of helping her eat some, and that was when I saw where the smell was coming from. She had moved her bright green plastic trash can over to her bed, and it was almost full of vomit. I had to look away for a minute, feeling the urge to retch myself. Patrick saw my reaction and had the same one, but he wasn’t subtle about it. He made a huge gagging sound and started to back toward the door.

“I’m sorry you’re so sick,” he said, his hand on the doorknob. “I think Tim was right, we should let you rest.”

“Wait,” I said, and reached toward him for the crackers and the soda. He gave them up happily, taking the rest of the invitations from me, and opened the door. The fresh air from the hall was the best air I ever smelled. He walked into the hall and waited for me. But I didn’t follow.

“You got this?” he finally whispered, having gotten himself under control but not willing to risk coming back in.

“Sure,” I said, seething because he was going to leave her when she needed him and yet she wasn’t willing to leave him. “She looks like she could use some help.”

He hesitated then, I could see it. Vanessa’s eyes were closed. I wasn’t even sure if she was awake. Maybe he could leave and she would never know. Maybe she was so out of it she wouldn’t remember our coming in the first place. Maybe this was how he got through life—lucky omissions.

He took a step toward us again, but was immediately repelled by the vomit. He might be the better-looking guy, he might be the more popular guy—on a basketball court, he’d
probably crush me—but in this arena of vomit, I was the stronger man and I wanted to see if it counted for anything. Also, I could never leave her there like that. I just couldn’t do it.

Patrick didn’t say anything else. He left and I went into action. The first thing I did was open the window. At that point I considered dumping the vomit out the window, but it only opened so far and that would have been incredibly messy. So I picked up the trash can, holding my breath, and carried it out the door and to the girls’ bathroom. I was relieved to find it empty.

I dumped the vomit in the toilet and immediately flushed. Then I took the trash can to the shower, poured in some shampoo that had been left behind, and cleaned it. When I got back to her room, the door was still open. I shut it and waited to be hit again with the wave of stench, but it wasn’t so bad this time. Vanessa’s eyes were still closed. I sat next to her on the bed. Then I pressed the wet towels I had in my hand softly to her forehead.

She stirred and slowly opened her eyes. I reached for an ice chip and tried to ease it into her mouth. At first she kept her lips shut and weakly shook her head, but then she accepted it and I waited. I don’t mean to draw this out, but you have to understand that I like to relive this; being there with her that night was like nothing I had ever experienced. I could have sat there forever, to be perfectly honest. The smell was gone. I was in Vanessa’s room. She was in bed. I was
sorry she was sick, of course, but I couldn’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else. It was four-forty-five in the morning and I knew there would be no sleep for me that night, but I stopped caring about that. Then she moaned again, and I picked up another ice chip to give her. I noticed that her lips were dry, so I brushed the ice around a bit and let it melt first. I did that for a long time.

When I looked at the clock again, it was seven-thirty. I had fallen asleep next to her. The cup had dropped from my hand and there was a wet puddle on the floor, reminding me of the melted snowballs.

When I turned to look at her, she was looking back at me. And then she smiled.

“Can you give me a bit of that ginger ale?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said, jumping up and getting it. It wasn’t cold anymore, but that was probably better for her anyway.

“Wow, I feel so much better,” she said, drinking from the small bottle.

“Not so fast,” I said just as there was a knock on the door.

“Vanessa?” a girl’s voice called.

“Hi, Julia,” she called weakly. “I’m still in bed but feeling better. Will you let Mrs. Reilly know I’m going to skip breakfast but try to go to class?”

“Sure thing,” the girl called through the door. “Do you need anything?”

Vanessa looked at me and smiled.

“No, I’m good,” she said.

Vanessa put her head back and closed her eyes. She wiggled a bit in bed, trying to get more comfortable.

“How am I going to get out of here?” I asked. “Not only am I nowhere to be found on my hall, but there are so many people out there. I’m screwed.”

“I can’t believe what you did for me,” she said, ignoring my question. “You actually dumped my throw-up?”

“Someone had to do it.”

“Not really,” she said. “And you rehydrated me. I was going to die in here.”

“Not literally,” I said. “You would have been okay.”

“Well, I felt like I was going to die.”

“For the record, I’m glad you didn’t,” I said. “Now, can you help me? Do you have any ideas?”

“Can we just sit a little?” she asked. “I’m still really dizzy.”

How could I deny that request?

“So, I think this might go down as my most embarrassing moment,” she said after we were quiet for a minute.

“If that’s the case, then you’re doing pretty well. This wasn’t so bad,” I said, meaning it.

“What’s your most embarrassing moment?” she asked. I should have expected it: the admission of an embarrassing moment is usually followed by that question. And yet, I was completely thrown off-kilter. Did I tell her? Did I make one up? Did I pretend I didn’t have any? Or I could have just
said the obvious—that my life was a string of embarrassing moments.

“When I was little,” I said, looking around her room—we were safe and alone; I felt like I could say anything—“I thought that my being an albino was a superpower.”

I waited but she didn’t move, didn’t flinch away.

“I’ve always loved superheroes, even now, which might be considered embarrassing because I’m so old, but I figured, many of them were mutants, right? It made perfect sense to me that my affliction was really something good. I spent so much time trying to figure out what my power was, but nothing ever revealed itself. So one day, I told this kid in the cafeteria—I was in first grade, about seven, I think—not to mess with me because I had superpowers, and he said, very loud, ‘Yeah, your power is being the ugliest kid in the school.’ Looking back, that may have done more damage than the reality of how I look. Needless to say, I do not have a superpower, and this, my skin and lack of pigment, is nothing good, only bad.”

She turned to face me, and this is what she said: “I disagree with that, and I am not so sure you don’t have superpowers.”

We both looked at the clock at the same time.

I was so torn—not wanting this moment to ever end and at the same time feeling like I was about to be caught. How in the world was I going to get out of this one? Part
of me didn’t care. Short of not graduating, what were they going to take away from me? My social life? Not much to miss there. But still.

“Well, since I can’t scale buildings and I can’t make myself invisible, what is your suggestion for how I should leave your room without being seen?” I asked. What I really wanted to say was
Can I stay here forever?

She pushed the covers off and eased herself up.

“Look in my closet,” she said, pointing. “There’s a pink-checked hooded sweatshirt that says ‘Spread the love’ in embroidered letters. It’s really big. I think it will fit you.”

I looked at her like she was crazy, but I forced myself up and walked to her closet. I was bombarded with a palette of the brightest colors I had ever seen all in one place. I smiled. The closet was full, packed. There wasn’t room for one more thing, and I certainly wasn’t going to be able to find a sweatshirt in that mess. But I tried. I looked through the hangers, and combed through the shelves.

“It’s on a hook, to the right,” she said.

Sure enough, it was there. A pink gingham sweatshirt that looked big enough to fit two of her inside. I held it up so she could see.

“That’s it. Now put it on,” she said.

“What? Are you kidding?”

She quickly looked at the clock. “In about seven minutes, this hall will be quiet. Everyone will be at breakfast—believe me, I know. I will bet money that you won’t run into
anyone. But just in case, put that on, pull the hood up, and go the back way, toward the fire stairs. Before you get to your hall, take it off and leave it there. I’ll come get it later. You’ll be home free.”

I considered her plan. It was a good one. And I had nothing to lose. Now I had about five minutes.

“Do you really think you’ll be able to go to class?” I asked. I wanted to go back and sit on her bed, but somehow standing up and devising our plan made me feel like I couldn’t do that anymore.

“Those first pages of the Tragedy Paper are due, and you know how Mr. Simon is,” she said. “I think I’ll feel better after a shower.”

“Good, I hope so,” I said. Now we had three and a half minutes.

“Did you finish the pages?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I still need some time to work. I’m going to talk to Mr. Simon before class.”

“Do you want help?”

I wanted to accept her offer without hesitation. “Maybe,” I said. “I’ll let you know if it doesn’t go well.”

“Okay,” she said. “I owe you one.”

We were down to two minutes. There was almost no noise in the hall anymore. I could still hear a few stragglers, but the rush was over.

“Put on the sweatshirt,” she said. “And when I say go, go.”

“You sound like you’ve done this before,” I said.

Vanessa looked down.

“Get ready,” she said, almost whispering.

I pulled the sweatshirt on and zipped it up. I pulled the hood up. We had less than a minute left together.

“Stand by the door,” she said.

I did as she said, as much as I didn’t want to. There was no noise at all now; it was as quiet as it had been at four in the morning.

“Now,” she said. “Go.”

I wanted to go over and hug her. But I turned the doorknob and, without looking back, headed out of her room, turned right, and walked fast. A part of me hoped I would be stopped, that I would be questioned and that we might get into trouble together. But there wasn’t a single person in the hall, and my path to the boys’ hall was clear. When I got to the tiny space that was neutral territory—not the girls’ hall and not the boys’—I took off the sweatshirt. I thought about dropping it and just leaving it there as she’d told me to do. But I couldn’t. Instead, I folded the sweatshirt in half and tucked it under my arm. I glanced down my empty hall and walked unnoticed to my room.

Duncan liked that idea, using a big hoodie sweatshirt for a getaway. Maybe he could try it to escape from Daisy’s room one morning. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? It was so obvious and yet so brilliant at the same time. He realized then that Tim wasn’t saying anything, so he glanced at his computer. There was a pop-up message warning him that there was no battery power left. He must have forgotten to plug his computer in after he rushed back to start listening. He leaned over, straightened the cord a bit, and stuck it into the socket. Immediately his screen brightened. He sat down on his bed with his back against the wall and waited for Tim to start talking again.

I stayed in my room for about ten minutes. I couldn’t decide what to do first or what would seem the most normal—if anyone was paying attention. I was missing breakfast, but that was okay—I did that sometimes when Mr. Simon brought me something to eat. The only problem would be if Mr. Simon noticed I was missing on a day when he didn’t bring me something. But that was unlikely, especially on this day when all the seniors had a Tragedy Paper deadline. He lived for that kind of stuff. He was probably already in his office, waiting.

There it was, I had my answer. I would get myself together and go talk to Mr. Simon about an extension. If I seemed frenzied or off-kilter, he would hopefully just attribute that to my concern over missing the deadline. In fact, all of this could work in my favor.