This Isn't What It Looks Like (23 page)

a wig

T
REAT YOURSELF
:

a melted ice-cream cone

a sat-upon sandwich

a ton of bricks

M
ax-Ernest had run all the way from the hospital, but he walked upstairs to Cass’s room as if his feet were dipped in concrete,
not even bothering to count the steps.
^*

Somewhere between the hospital and Cass’s house he had begun to lose faith. Perhaps he should have been excited—now that he
finally had in his possession the means of reading Cass’s mind. But that was the problem. He was afraid he didn’t have the
means, after all.

The monocle, which he’d looked through again and again, hadn’t helped him see into the minds of the healthy, walking, talking
people he’d passed on the street. How could he expect it to help him look inside the mind of someone in a coma?

The one clear image he’d seen through the monocle was one that, on balance, he’d rather not have seen: the image of his adult
self, chocolate-addicted and seemingly half mad.

It wouldn’t hurt to try talking once
, the older Max-Ernest had said.

The younger Max-Ernest assumed this meant he should talk to Cass. But was talking to her supposed to wake her up? That sounded
like exactly the sort of superstitious nonsense he couldn’t abide. He
was embarrassed that his adult self would recommend it.
^*

The door to Cass’s bedroom was wide open, but Max-Ernest stopped and stood in front of it for a full minute. It took all his
self-control not to turn around and flee.

The last time Max-Ernest had been in her bedroom was the day Cass had fallen into the coma. With the exception of the hospital
bed in the middle (and Max-Ernest couldn’t quite get himself to look at that yet), much of the room looked exactly the same
as it had looked then. Only sadder. In the past, Cass’s sock monsters—there were now quite a few of them—had always provided
a little levity.
^**
Cass had never been one to play much with dolls or stuffed animals, but she used to give each sock monster its own voice
and character; and the sock monsters would lecture Max-Ernest on the finer points of emergency communication and first aid.
Now the monsters just stood lifelessly on their shelf, a Greek chorus gone silent. Even Cass’s “Wall of Horrors” (as her mother
called it) wasn’t as entertaining as it had once been. All the pictures and articles that Cass had clipped and taped above
her bed—the imploding
mines and exploding volcanoes, the forest fires and the flooded towns—were grim reminders not only of disaster and destruction
but of the pointy-eared survivalist herself.

Given that they have to die (and despite what the Masters of the Midnight Sun would wish, everybody has to die sometime),
most people would prefer to die in bed at home, surrounded by loved ones. Yet Cass, Max-Ernest reflected morbidly, would have
preferred a much more dramatic demise—if not a shark attack or an avalanche, then at least a collapsed building or a plane
crash.

If he couldn’t save her life, could he at least improve her death? Would a real friend make sure she died not in her boring
old bed but in some spectacular disaster?

Briefly, he considered ways of ensuring a more exciting end to the story of Cass’s life. It was hard to think of one that
wouldn’t cause collateral damage. Years of friendship with Cass had trained Max-Ernest to think of worst-case scenarios:

• If he left Cass on the road, he was likely to cause a multi-car collision. The result might be even worse if he left her on
  a train track.
  

• If he threw Cass off a bridge, her body might never be recovered. He knew from watching television that an unrecovered body
  was never a good thing.
  

• If he set Cass’s house on fire, the house next door would very likely catch on fire as well. And where would Cass’s mother
  live afterward?
  

• As for natural disasters—earthquakes, hurricanes, killer viruses—you couldn’t exactly snap your fingers and make them appear.
  And even if you could, the rule of unintended consequences was certain to go into effect.
  

No, there didn’t seem to be a way to make Cass’s dying any more tolerable. He would just have to try again to bring her back
to life. No matter how long the odds.

Max-Ernest sat down on the corner of the hospital bed and, without fully intending to, started talking aloud to Cass. Fast.
And at great length. The way he used to.

“Hi. I don’t know if you can hear me. Actually, I’m pretty sure you can’t. I know people always talk to plants and babies
and stuff, but it’s pretty silly, if
you ask me. You may as well just talk to yourself. Anyways, I’m talking to you now because, well, because I want to, I guess,
even though it doesn’t make any sense. And because, well, you never know, right? Maybe it
is
what will wake you up. I mean, just to get me to
stop
talking or something… By the way, speaking of babies, I’m going to have a baby brother. How ’bout that? My parents are being
pretty weird about it, well, not
weird
weird, more like just terrible, but I’m kind of excited anyway. I always wanted a brother. Just to get my parents off my
back. But now they’re off my back and I still want a brother. Kind of weird, huh? Why do I keep saying
weird
? I hate it when people use that word! I guess I want to have somebody to talk to and stuff. Not that I don’t have you, or
that you’re not going to be around to talk to anymore… Forget that—what I wanted to tell you was, no matter what happens,
you’ll… I’ll always think of you as my friend. My first friend. My best friend. But more than a friend. Not
more than a friend
more than a friend! More like a sister, I guess… Anyways, I keep thinking about all those times you pushed me in the water
even though I can’t swim. Like at the Midnight Sun Spa—remember when we had to get through that moat to save Benjamin Blake
and I didn’t want to go in the water? Or that time
you pushed me into the ocean off Dr. L’s boat? Sure, I might have drowned, and you should probably be arrested for attempted
murder, and at the time I totally wanted to kill you, but now that I think about it, I think you actually meant well. It was
probably good for me to jump in the water and to have to swim. Besides the fact that the Midnight Sun would have fed me to
sharks otherwise. I mean good like I learned a lesson. Not to be afraid of water or whatever. Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m still
afraid of water, but you know what I mean. And there was that time with the waterfall at Wild World… Anyways, I want you to
know, no matter what happens to you, I won’t stop doing the kind of stuff you make me do. Even if I wanted to stop I couldn’t
because whenever I want to run away from something, your voice is in my head telling me to turn around and jump in the water.
Like just now, when I wanted to run away from here… from you. No offense… Well, that’s what I wanted to say. Just in case
you were worried about me or anything… OK, I guess it’s time to try the monocle. All this talking is just stalling, isn’t
it…?”

Wiping his tears, Max-Ernest took the Double Monocle out of his pocket—then immediately put it back.

“Oh, I almost forgot, Yo-Yoji sent me something to play for you first. He thought maybe it would activate some part of your
brain or something. He says hi, by the way….”

Max-Ernest pulled his laptop computer from his backpack. He opened it on the bed next to Cass and then clicked on a sound
file on his desktop. A loud guitar chord suddenly issued forth from his computer. Followed by an extended riff in Yo-Yoji’s
unmistakable junior–Jimi Hendrix style.

“Cool, huh? And don’t tell me not to use the word
cool
—I know I’m using it right this time!”

After the guitar solo wound down, Max-Ernest closed the computer and put it back in his backpack.

At first he didn’t notice that the sounds persisted after they should have stopped—the reverberating guitar chords might almost
have been a lingering echo—but when the music started to grow louder again, he turned around in amazement.

Yo-Yoji was standing in the doorway of Cass’s room. In his hand was the guitar Max-Ernest remembered so well, the blue guitar
with the bright orange sticker for Yo-Yoji’s band, Alien Earache. Between his hair, which was now bright green, and his sneakers,
which were an even brighter yellow, Yo-Yoji looked like he had flown in from some psychedelic alien planet.

“Most definitely cool! I think you were using the word just right, yo,” said Yo-Yoji, grinning. “So. Aren’t you going to say
hey?”

“Hey,” said Max-Ernest, managing a small grin back—barely. “I thought you weren’t coming for another month.”

“I got my parents to send me back early. I’m staying with you, duh. My mom talked to your mom—didn’t she tell you?”

Max-Ernest shook his head. “I don’t know if she even remembers I exist these days.”

Yo-Yoji plugged his portable amplifier into an electrical socket, played one last deafeningly loud chord, then leaned his
guitar against Cass’s Wall of Horrors.

His face turned somber as he took in the scene in front of him. “Whoa. It’s like a full-on hospital in here. How’s she doing?”

“Um, she’s doing…,” Max-Ernest stammered, unable to finish the sentence.

“Not good, huh?”

Max-Ernest shook his head. “I was supposed to bring her back,” he said, his voice cracking. “It was my job.”

Yo-Yoji took a step toward Cass, then stepped back, visibly shaken. “Well, I know you’re doing your best. I know she knows
it, too. OK?”

“She doesn’t know anything,” said Max-Ernest, hiding his face in his shirtsleeve so Yo-Yoji wouldn’t see him crying. “She’s
in a coma.”

“You don’t know for sure. She might be listening to everything we’re saying right now, and thinking what a dork you are,”
said Yo-Yoji, trying hard to remain upbeat. “Hey, is that supposed to be doing that—?”

Max-Ernest looked over at the heart monitor and thought he felt his own heart stopping. The green line on the screen had gone
flat and the monitor was buzzing loudly.