Wake (24 page)

Once again, I’m uncomfortably conscious of how much I stare at him—study him, really. I watch Jem’s hands for clues to what he’s thinking or feeling or craving to eat. I watch his face for signs of health and I could probably list the colors of the toques he’s worn over the past three school days. I know what and how much he eats during lunch, even on the days we don’t sit at the same table. On Friday I took one of his earphones out without asking, just because I wanted to see what he was listening to. It was “Friday I’m in Love” by the Cure and he got all embarrassed and changed the song. Next to Vivaldi, The Cure isn’t all that embarrassing as far as musical taste goes. But when I got home that night, I listened to the entire album and it reminded me of him.

I take far too much interest in Jem for his good or mine. I don’t get attached to people anymore. I don’t do intimacy in any form and haven’t for years. There is a big thick boundary line between my emotions and others’ and I have no intention of crossing it.

This has to stop. Precisely because I like it and I think about him far too much. Tessa always said that if something feels good it must be wrong, unless it’s so wrong it can only feel good. Of course, she meant that as encouragement—she wanted me to get out of my over-cautious rut and be bad for a change. The words also serve as a damn good warning: take a big leap back, Kirk, because you know Jem well enough to know that he’s not the right kind of guy to get close to. He gets attached, and you don’t. He’s manipulative and sneaky, too. Just look at the caller ID on your phone.

Speaking of my phone… I turn it off for the night instead of calling him back. That boy needs to learn that he doesn’t own me and has no right to boss me around.

Jem: April 9 to 13

Monday I text Willa when I get up—she still hasn’t gotten in touch with me—but she doesn’t answer that message, either. I wonder if something happened to her. Maybe she had an accident of some sort, or maybe she’s got troubles at home to keep her occupied.

I’m relieved when I see her car in the parking lot at school, but I don’t have time to seek her out before the start of first period—thank you, Elise, you lazy dawdler.

I don’t have a chance to see Willa until lunch. I get to the cafeteria and find her without trouble, like she’s a homing device sending out a signal. To my surprise, Elise is sitting with her and the usual group.

I slide into a nearby seat in time to hear Elise inviting her over this Friday.

“It’s a small birthday thing. Just a few friends.”

“I thought your birthday was a few weeks ago?”

“It was, but it was so close to the school dance and the weather was so crummy, I decided to put off a little celebration until things were calmer around here. And the sun will be out, of course—good weather gives a party atmosphere. It’s supposed to be nice this Friday.”

Willa agrees to attend and Elise gives her a quick hug before skipping away to her regular table to join her friends.

Paige draws Willa into conversation next, and I have no opportunity to get a word in edgewise, the way Paige babbles. As usual, everyone else at the table ignores me out of discomfort. Hannah takes pity on me by the end of the hour, though.

“So, did you have a good weekend?” she says shyly. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken two words to her before, but I know she’s a good person by what I’ve seen and heard.

“It was pretty quiet.” In other words, my only friend ditched me—twice—so I sat at home and moped over music. “You?”

“It was okay.” She doesn’t know what to say next, and I don’t know her well enough to know what else to ask about her weekend. So we drift off into awkward silence until the bell rings.

*

Willa is ignoring me. She’s about as unenthused about the Soc term project as I am, and yet here she is, too dedicated to the assignment to give me the time of day. Every time I try to start a conversation she answers me in clipped monosyl ables without looking away from her paper.

“Are you still mad at me? You got my message apologizing, right?”

“Harper,” she says, voice thick with irritation. It’s a
Screw off
in disguise.

I let her be. Maybe she’s just stressed about her half of the project (I should probably put some thought into the project too, come to that), and doesn’t really care about this weekend anymore.

“Everyone ready to discuss the term presentation rubric with your partner?” Mrs. Hudson asks the class. She takes the sound of shuffling papers for a yes and tells us to start brainstorming plans for our group presentations.

Willa ignores me, which hardly seems possible given that we’re working on a joint assignment. She just reads over Mrs. Hudson’s guidelines and says, “I think we can just wing this.” Apparently that’s the end of the discussion. For the rest of the period she barely talks to me, and only when I talk to her first and ask point-blank questions, which she answers as curtly as possible. She won’t look at me, either, and that unsettles me more.

“Look at me.”

Willa lifts her head and looks over at me with a tightly control ed expression. Her face doesn’t offer softness or compassion or any other inviting emotion.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You told me to look at you.”

“Not like that.”

She turns away with a huff. “Make up your mind.”

Something happened this weekend. Maybe my rudeness was just the cherry on a shit sundae, but I thought I had fixed this with an apology. I guess not. After an unbearably silent Soc period—Willa doesn’t look at me again—I spend most of my English class writing her a proper apology note. Maybe my phone message didn’t cut it. I fold the note and slip it under her windshield wiper before the end of the day. I’ll cal her again tonight.

*

Willa doesn’t answer her phone. I call every hour and it consistently goes to voicemail. I try her house line and Frank says that she’s busy.

“Oh. Is she volunteering tonight?”

He hesitates just slightly. “Yeah. She’s at the hospital.”

She’s at home, dodging my call s.

Tuesday Willa manages to look right past me as she asks what she should get Elise for her birthday. Her face is turned in my general direction, but the focus of her gaze is somewhere over my left shoulder, looking out the window. I lean over to be in her line of sight and she looks down at her book instead.

“Anything Harry Potter-related would be a hit.”

Willa hums in mild agreement.

“Mom will be happy to see you. She was asking last night why you haven’t been around lately.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Been working on the next project report?”

“Ugh, don’t remind me.” Willa folds her arms on the lab table and lays her head on them, shutting herself away.

“Are you not feeling well ?” I put a hand on her back and she flinches away. She really looks at me for the first time in days—to glare at me. I take my hand off her and murmur ‘sorry.’ We don’t talk for the rest of the period.

*

Elise makes me a milkshake without me having to ask.

“Bad day?” Dad asks when he sees me nursing the milkshake and watching
Harry Potter
with Elise.

Dad’s not great with the emotional stuff. That’s more Mom’s area of expertise. Dad is good for injuries, business advice, and grand philosophical questions about the nature of the universe. If I told him that my only friend, who, coincidentally, is also the girl I’m crushing on, is mad at me and has been for days, he’d stare at me like I’d ceased to speak English and maybe tell me to keep my chin up. So I change the subject.

“I need to refil my prednisone prescription soon.”

Dad nods. “I’ll pick it up tomorrow after work. How’s your pain management working out?”

“Fine.”

“Keep trying to follow the dietician’s plan, okay?”

“Sure.” I might glance at it, later. Dad asks Elise and I if we want pancakes. We both say no but Eric shouts a resounding “YES!” from the second floor. I think that boy eats his own bodyweight in food every day.

“Cheer up,” Elise says as Dad walks away to make pancakes. She tugs on my ear and I tell her to knock it off.

“Not until you smile.” She tugs on my earlobe again with a smirk. When she was a baby she had this weird thing about sucking on my ears—just mine, Eric’s wouldn’t do. She wouldn’t take a soother, but she’d willingly follow me around, arms locked around my head, gumming my ears. I was so young myself that I just took her abuse as normal.

“well cheer me up, then,” I complain. I pull my hat down over my ears to keep her from teasing them.

“Want to tell me what happened at school today?” Elise tactfully mutes the movie, which is a big deal for her because she’s usually incapable of turning her attention away from the screen for even a nanosecond while this is on.

“No.”

“Was it Willa?”

I suck back more milkshake instead of answering and Elise sits up so fast she almost falls off the couch. “She’s still coming on Friday, right?”

“Yeah, she asked me what to get you for your birthday.”

“That was sweet of her. So come on, did you guys fight or something? Or was it a stupid spat like the Uncle Fester thing?”

“She just hasn’t been in a talking mood lately.”

Elise shrugs at that. “Give her space. She’ll be fine.” And I would give her space, but I’m paranoid. By the time I retreat to my room to escape the smell of burnt pancakes (way to go, Dad), I’m thinking about this weekend. Willa has been hanging out a lot with other friends lately. Maybe she was distancing herself before I even knew it.

It’s physically painful to think that she might be giving into peer pressure and permanently ditching me.

She might be consciously and deliberately cutting me out of her life, and not bit-by-bit so I have time to land on my feet, but all at once—cold turkey with no notice.

I get up and turn on my laptop and speakers. I play the angriest music I own at top volume. It doesn’t help. I try to vent into my cell o, which usually cures all, but it hurts my hands too much and I have to stop.

The piano is no better.
Everything
reminds me of Willa. She’s in every room of this house—in my very own bed, where she comforted me; at my piano where we played Bach; in the kitchen where she neatly insinuated herself into the fold of my mother’s society and Elise’s confidence; in the library where she gushed over Chaucer. There is absolutely nothing I can do and
not
think of her.

I fucking hate her. And I want to fall on my knees and beg her to keep me around.

At six I have to head over to the Dialysis Clinic for my weekly appointment. I bring a book for the long wait, but I don’t feel much like reading. I just sit there and stare at the page and wonder what Willa is doing right now. I think about calling or texting her, but the nurses are Nazis about cell phone use in the hospital. Maybe I’ll get lucky and Willa will be volunteering tonight. Or maybe that’s no luck at all —maybe she won’t look at me even if we do bump into each other. She could pretend not to know me, like I’m just another patient. Or, worst of all, seeing me hooked up to a machine might remind her of why she’s dodging me to begin with.

If I met myself, I wouldn’t be friends with me. I’m a drag to be around, always tired or sick or cranky.

Whoever I hang out with will get stared at because I’m with them. People feel the need to watch what they say around me, like the casual hyperbole ‘It was so funny I almost died’ might offend. Willa isn’t one of those people—or at least she wasn’t. Keeping her other friends is probably more important to her than keeping my pathetic ass around, and it’s no secret that the other kids in her clique don’t like me.

I can’t control how people see me, but I can control what they think of me as a person by being friendly, and I don’t even do that well. That’s why Willa’s friends can’t get over the fact that I look diseased: I’m too standoffish. But with Willa I figured things were different, because nastiness was the status quo and she said it screwed up the whole dynamic of the friendship when I was nice. I took that as license to unload who I really was instead of hiding behind a veneer of false happiness. I could be myself around her.

But that gets old. She’s done with me. She’s moving on to normal friends.

I lay my book on my lap and hang my head in my hands. This shouldn’t hurt so much. I got along just fine without her for seven months. I was doing okay before she showed up. The fact that I’m addicted to her company is embarrassing.

Could she really never look at me again?

It’s not like she even likes you back. Parting is easy for her. She barely knows you.

Do you really know her?

She was only hanging out with you because she felt sorry for you. Pity only goes so far.

And you are pitiful.

Seriously, what did you think you had to offer that would tempt her to put up with your sorry ass?

By the time I get home my stomach is twisted into painful knots. Figures, my body can’t even get heartache right. I call Willa again but she doesn’t answer.

Elise tries to comfort me, but I’m not in the mood. So she just returns my headphones and two CDs—

al taken without permission—and leaves me to myself. I take a hefty dose of Benadryl to crash; awful, I know, considering I just came back from getting my blood cleansed of toxins. It knocks me out, and the deep sleep after dialysis takes me too far under to even dream.

*

The Benadryl only keeps me under until three o’clock in the morning, and I wake up feeling hot and groggy with a hand down my pants. The migration of said hand is a matter of course, really, but whatever I don’t remember dreaming about seems to have been a turn-on.

I don’t even bother to get out of bed. The simple act of roll ing over to grab the Kleenex box is a difficult one to wrap my head around as I push my sweatpants down. I’m still dozy from the Benadryl and the vague promise of pleasure is the only conscious thought I am capable of.