Waiting (16 page)

I used to
be alive too. Really alive.

We all did.

Thump thump thump
thump thump.

Thump thump thump thump thump.

Thump thump thump.

Thump thump thump.

Thump thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

I wake from
my own screaming.

Heart pounding.

Hands sweating.

“Zach!”

Daddy’s at my door before I can make my eyes open.

I’m crying.

Shaking.

Afraid.

Poisoned from the nightmare.

“You okay?” he says.

I nod.

Find my voice. “Yes.”

Let my eyes open just a bit.

Daddy stands there, one step away from being in my room. His hand rests on the wall, and he leans toward me. Doesn’t walk inside. “Well, all right then.”

I’m cold like snow.

I need him to hug me, but he doesn’t walk into the room.

Just stands there. Leaning. And lets me thaw on my own.

I lie back
down. Tuck myself in. Wrap my own arms around me in a hug from me.

When I look back toward my bedroom doorway, I see my daddy’s gone.

Without a word.

And I know then, I know, he blames me too.

At school the
whole world pretends I’m not there.

They look away when I’m near.

Walk around me like I’m a stone in a stream and they’re the water.

I’ve gotten pretty good at pretending too.

I only cry sometimes. Always in the bathroom.

I sit in the back of the classroom.

I look away.

But Jesse and Lili have changed this complete aloneness for me.

They smile, though Jesse doesn’t approach when he’s with Lauren. Just clasps her hand, lifts his chin to me.

Lili runs up, chattering like she hasn’t seen me in weeks instead of two classes.

And Taylor, he walks like he stands at the edge of a cloud, waiting for the fog to clear so he can get up close.

Today,

though, something
in me changes. Was it my dream?

My mother in my brother’s football hoodie? Daddy not quite coming into my room?

I feel the change as I dress.

Like I’m cracking apart.

As I eat breakfast alone.

Stretching in an uncomfortable way.

As I walk past my mom, who doesn’t even look up from her novel and coffee, the overhead light flicked on instead of the shades lifted and the curtains opened.

When I call Lili to say I have a ride, I feel sick to my stomach. What’s wrong with me? How can I even feel what I’m feeling? I wait outside in the morning sun, dew sparkling on the grass, and I feel the change and worry over it, like I’m working at a loose tooth.

(“I can pull that out,” Zach said, more than once. “We can share the money Mom gives you.”

He pulled out three of my baby teeth, both of us working at them, before Mom found out what was going on.

She laughed.

Can you believe it? Laughed! And said, “Zacheus, your sister needs her teeth to eat.”)

I haven’t been outside long before Taylor drives up. I grab my stuff. Hurry to the car, to him, throw the Toyota door open. Do I look as different as I feel?

“Ready?” he says, and I’m across the emergency brake, hand on his thigh, mouth on his mouth. He kisses me back, touching my arm, the car rolling forward until he puts the gear in park. My hands are on his face, pulling him close and closer.

He looks at me when I pull away.

“Good morning,” I say, and he gives me a raised eyebrow look.

“Hey.”

That feeling? That change? It’s there still. Heavy.

I put my hand on Taylor’s face. “School?” I say.

“Not so sure anymore,” he says, but he shifts the car and drives us to class.

“I’m trying to
get into choir,” Lili says when I see her in the hall. “What do you think, London?”

She’s in my space and it’s strange—comforting.

Like medicine for my illness. I want to hug her. Hear her tell me she loves me. Does she really?

Jesse glances at us over his shoulder as he stops at his locker. Sends me a smile.

Is he thinking of that kiss? Our kiss?

I am, and my face burns at the remembrance. Especially with Taylor at my side. Does he know? Can he read the look Jesse gives me? Am I making it up?

How does my new skin fit? Is it too tight or too loose?

“I think you should try out.” I say this having no idea if she can sing or not.

Does it even matter with our choir?

Can I even remember
listening
to our choir?

I think I was just the sister of the best tight end the

’Cudas had seen in several years.

I was a football sister. Not a choir listener.

Now who am I? An only child changing in the hallway at school.

More changes.

They are so different so different, the two of them.

How can I be interested in two people like this?

Because they are the same, too, in a simple way. In a tender, simple way.

I feel the
change as I walk into the building.

Feel the change at my locker.

As I grab the right books for my morning class.

As I watch Taylor walk away to his class.

As I see Jesse and Lauren together.

See Heather in the hall with another guy (who is that?).

Jesse’s in my head. All in my mind. Taking over.

I can’t push him out, or away, from my thoughts.

My insides shift too.

I feel . . .

Not so alien.

Still alone, yes, but not really, because I have three friends and they may not know everything but they know enough.

And they don’t care. Or maybe it’s that they
do
care.

My stomach is full of electricity. And sometimes I can’t quite see because of the jittery feeling. I sit through study hall and do nothing but shade a whole piece of paper gray with my mechanical pencil.

In calc I pretend to listen. But I can’t keep my mind on Ms. Stephan’s explanations.

I only think of kissing.

Of hands and tongues and things that would make my mother melt if she knew what was in my brain.

And I’m thinking it about two guys.

Two.

I can’t even look at Ms. Stephan.

I am far worse than my dead brother.

Zacheus doesn’t hold a candle to me.

What would it
be like to kiss them together both at once?

To have them touch me at the same time?

I am so sick.

Sick!

But I want
to see Jesse

Now

and I don’t know why the thoughts are here

Now

don’t know what I have done

Now.

In the movies, I’d snap the pencil I hold in my hands not tremble the way I do.

My thoughts are in control.

As a man thinketh . . . I can hear Daddy’s voice.

Oh yeah?

What about this, I’m a girl.

As a girl thinketh?

The metamorphosis rages
by the time I am out of my seat and into the hall between classes.

It takes over my feet. Makes me move toward Jesse when I see him alone after second period. He’s in the hall. I’ve sought him out, gone looking for him, something I would never do Before. I’m going to be late to class.

I see him through the crowd, see his look of surprise when he sees me, that slow smile of his.

Whoever I’m becoming makes me grab his hand when I get close to him and pull him away from his locker.

“What?” he says, letting out a bit of a laugh, trying to close his locker door before we get too far away, me dragging him along. “What is it, London?”

But I am too surprised to answer.

His eyes are dark, dark. And his face is so pretty. It looks like he didn’t shave today.