Noggin

by John Corey Whaley

  “This is amazing,” I said.

  “Like us.”

  “I love it,” I said.

  “I love you,” she said. “I do. I’m stupid and I don’t like surprises and you caught me off guard. But there it is.”

  “Don’t say it just because you feel obligated, Cate.”

  “I only feel obligated because it’s the truth, Travis.”

  Cate Conroy was a good girlfriend who used to draw dragons on my arms in black Sharpie ink and send me messages of photos that I’d have to translate into words. And she made me laugh like no one else could, this hard laugh that shook my whole body and brought tears to my eyes. The best thing about it, though, was that she could be so funny, so incredibly ridiculous and goofy sometimes, but never at anyone else’s expense. For that, and for a lot of other reasons, I was better when she was around me. That’s how I knew I loved her so much, because not loving her didn’t make any sense once I’d known what it felt like.

  Before Cate I was just Travis. I was a quiet kid who would blush easily when he got too much attention and always walked with his head down and his hands in his pockets. Usually I was sitting in class thinking about something funny to say and never being brave enough to speak up and say it. In my mind I pretended I was too mature and intelligent to clown around with my classmates, but even I knew that wasn’t totally the case. I just wasn’t quite sure how to be one of them. Not until she helped me figure that out. Before she was there to be my audience, to pay me attention when everyone else had given up on it, I was quite sure I’d always sort of fade into the background.

  I remember the first real time we talked. It was in eighth-grade French class, and we were working on a group project. She’d been assigned to my group, along with Daniel Thompson and Marybeth Cutler. We had to choose a poem from a book the teacher had given us and then translate it into French.

  “I think we should do this one,” Daniel suggested, presenting us a four-line poem.

  “Too easy. I want a good grade,” Marybeth said, grabbing the book from him.

  “She said size didn’t matter,” Daniel added.

  To me, the moment was too funny to keep from laughing. I was turning red, I knew it, and I was trying my best to keep my mouth shut and sort of look away, like something else was on my mind. Then Cate leaned over and whispered into my ear.

  “Let’s hope size doesn’t matter, for Daniel’s sake.”

  And we both burst into laughter that was so loud the teacher walked over and gave us her death stare. But I couldn’t stop. And neither could she. After that it didn’t take us long to go from being Cate Conroy and Travis Coates to being just Cate and Travis. I’d be somewhere without her, and the first thing I’d get asked was “Where’s Cate?” She said it was the same exact case when she was without me.

  And now I just wanted to see her. I didn’t care if she looked different. I didn’t care if she had a fiancé and I didn’t care if she said she didn’t want to see me, because that’s bullshit. I was there first, and after seeing Kyle and Audrey and all those kids at school and all my old teachers and classrooms and hallways, all I could think about was seeing and hearing and touching the one person I’d promised to come back for. We had to finish what we started. We got to do that now. No one else could say that. Well, Lawrence Ramsey could but no one else. We had to go for it. I had to go for it. Just like those doctors had done with my head and Jeremy’s body, I had to take my old life and mash it together with this new one. That meant there’d probably have to be a few more scars.

  • • •

  She still lived in Kansas City, that much I knew. Kyle said she was working some temp job at a law firm and taking night classes to be a paralegal. All I heard, though, was that she wasn’t doing art. Something wasn’t right about that.

  “I need you to call her for me,” I said to Kyle on the phone the day after I started back at school.

  “Travis, I just think if she were ready, she’d have already contacted you.”

  “Kyle, please. I’m trying to be cool about this, but you know it’s weird that she hasn’t seen me yet. It has to happen.”

  “And then what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Then what happens? Do you just pretend you aren’t a teenager and run off with her and live happily ever after?”

  “No. I don’t see why we’d have to run off anywhere.”

  “Damn, Travis. Listen to yourself. I know it’s hard, but listen. We’re older now. It sucks, but it’s how it is. If you show up bringing back the saddest time in her life, what will that do to her?”

  “She just didn’t know, man. No one knew I’d come back. I get that. I didn’t know either. I thought if I woke up, it’d be so far in the future that you’d all be gone. I can’t make sense of it, really. And I never gave much thought to seeing any of you again, you know? I can’t just tell myself that it’s all okay. It’s not. I’m here. That’s got to mean something.”

  “It means a lot. It means you’re alive again and everyone in the world is happy about that. You’re a freakin’ miracle. But, for whatever reason, she’s avoiding you and you have to find a way to respect that until she’s ready. Okay? Don’t pretend you don’t see where I’m coming from here.”

  “No, we wouldn’t want to go pretending things would we?”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. Look, I’m sorry. Thanks. I’ll figure it out. Can you just, if you talk to her, can you just tell her I want to see her? Can you do that?”

  “Sure, Travis.”

  “Kyle?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Anything you want to tell me?”

  “No, Travis. I gotta run. Big test tomorrow.”

  “Good luck, then.”

  “Good-bye, Travis.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  GOOD-BYE, TRAVIS

  I know I’m not supposed to be talking about dying. That’s not what this is about. But, see, I sort of have to break my own rules for a bit so you’ll understand what I was missing when I got back.

  When we said good-bye in the hospital in Denver, Kyle had already been crying in private, so I could see the sadness in his eyes just as he grabbed my hand and pulled me toward him. I was probably just as nervous about what he would say to me as he was. I’m not a huge fan of sentimentality, and even in those last days I was finding it hard not to laugh at what others would consider very meaningful, emotional moments. I wasn’t coldhearted—I was exhausted and, unlike any of them, I was relieved.

  So I started laughing and crying pretty hard when he leaned down, with all seriousness, with those same sad eyes and years of shared memories floating heavy in the small space between us, and whispered: “Can I have your Xbox?”

  And it was perfect.

  When Kyle had left the room with me still laughing and Cate knew it was her turn, she walked in quietly and carefully slid herself into the bed with me. We just lay there for a while not saying anything. She looked up at me a few times and then closed her eyes again, tears squeezing their way out. But she knew time was running out because she suddenly popped her head up and looked at me with the most horrified expression I’d ever seen. I was about to remind her to keep breathing when she interrupted my thoughts.

  “Tell me you really think you’ll come back.”

  “I really think I’ll come back.”

  “Bullshit,” she said, almost smiling but still pale, still very careful with her motions.

  “It could happen,” I said. “Just as likely as anything, I’d say.”

  “What if I’m an old lady?”

  “Then things are going to get really creepy for me.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Just promise to eat right and do lots of cardio. Don’t go facelift, though. I want to see the wrinkles. I think you’d look good with wrinkles.”

  “Shit, Travis. This is too hard.”

  “Look,” I said. “Kiss me. Then turn around and walk out.”r />
  Being a tough guy didn’t work for me, and before I could spit out the words, I was using my one remaining molecule of strength to sit up and grab her around the shoulders. We cried and she said things about it not being fair and she got angry so fast that it turned to sadness before I could react to it. So instead of calling me an asshole, it came out more like “Ass love you,” which made us both pause for a few seconds in each other’s arms.

  “Yes, babe, ass love you too,” I said.

  “I mean, I love you.”

  “I know. And I love you, Cate Conroy. Can you do me a favor?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Keep my painting safe for me? Now that they’ve got the house to themselves, I don’t want my parents breaking it when they start partying it up every night.”

  “Done,” she said. “You’re stupid.”

  “Remember me this way,” I said. “And I promise, when I come back, that I’ll be just as stupid as ever.”

  “Deal.”

  A few minutes later she was gone. She didn’t turn around or anything—there was no dramatic movie moment where she ran back in and kissed me passionately and it started raining inside or anything. She hung her head low, and she beelined out and down the hallway. I was proud of her too. I couldn’t have done it that way. They would’ve had to pry me off her.

  We’d stayed up pretty late the night before, my parents and me, because they wanted the good-bye to be short and sweet. They didn’t want to upset me before my procedure, and they certainly didn’t want me to question their faith in all this Frankenstein madness. I knew, though. I knew they believed this would be it and it broke what was left of my heart when they walked in, together, and stood on either side of the bed after Cate had left.

  “How you feeling?” Dad asked.

  “Good. Ready, I think.”

  “You’re not scared, then?” Mom was choking up.

  “I’ve been scared a lot,” I said. “Through all of this, but not now, no. Not so much.”

  “We’re so proud of you, Travis. You’re so brave,” Dad said with tears and a scratchy, broken voice.

  “You guys have been better than you should’ve been,” I said. “Can you just know that? Can you just try not to forget how good you were at all of this?”

  “We haven’t been good at anything,” Mom said.

  “You took care of me,” I said. “Every second, my whole life.”

  I hugged them each good-bye, and they each kissed a cheek and left their faces next to mine for longer than I expected, long enough to feel like, in some cosmic world, we were sharing thoughts that way. We were shooting invisible little lines of sentiment and love and anguish. Then they stood there, holding hands, and they watched as my eyes began to close, as the chemicals began to tell my brain to go to sleep, to take the longest nap in history. And they told me they’d see me soon.

  See, I had all these people who had to watch me leave and pretend to hope that I could come back. It was all pretend—I was pretending and they were pretending because that’s what got us through it. We fake it sometimes, don’t we? We go along with impossible things because we have to survive when life starts getting too dark. And, well, usually we never have to deal with the too-good-to-be-true thing actually becoming true. But when it does, I can tell you that the pretending gets a lot harder. You can find ways to be okay with dying, but you can’t fake your way through living. You can’t be okay with not having anything you want when it’s staring you right in the face. And you can’t go to sleep at night knowing you have some poor kid’s body attached to you and feeling like you don’t have any damn good use for it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ANY DAMN GOOD USE FOR IT

  We met up with Dr. Saranson at the local hospital on the Wednesday after I started school. He flew in from Denver that morning just to examine me and make sure everything was still attached properly, I guess. He actually made that joke during the appointment, and I’m not ashamed to say I laughed pretty hard. I’m a big fan of bad jokes, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.

  “Travis,” he said. “You couldn’t be in better health. I’ll admit I was a little worried that Jeremy’s body would be weak after all he went through, but you seem to have been the right cure for that. Your head, anyway. How’s your appetite?”

  “He can’t eat enough. We’re keeping Whole Foods in business,” Mom said.

  “That’s good. Very good. And how’s school?”

  “It’s okay. Weird but okay.”

  “He’s already made a new friend,” Dad said.

  “Hey there. That was quick. No surprise, though. Just be careful they’re not in it for your fame.” He chuckled to himself, staring down at his clipboard.

  He eventually asked my parents to give us a few minutes, and we talked about Jeremy Pratt a little more. He said that, like me, Jeremy wasn’t too scared to die when the time finally came. To me, the saddest part about Jeremy’s story wasn’t how he died but how he found out he was sick in the first place. Apparently, he wanted to be a professional skateboarder. So he was skateboarding with his friends one day and he kept falling down, kept losing his balance on the simplest tricks, ones he’d been doing for years. Then it was the headaches, then mood changes, and eventually nausea and vomiting. They say there’s a very good chance of surviving a brain tumor if it can be removed. If it can’t, you’ll probably end up like Jeremy Pratt. Well, except you won’t be attached to me afterward.

  Dr. Saranson had a flight to catch, so we parted ways with one of his long handshakes. He was so glad I’d talked to Lawrence, but he didn’t ask for too many details. I liked that about him, that he knew it wasn’t his place and that he probably wouldn’t be able to understand Lawrence and me anyway. He knew that no one—except his future patients, maybe—would ever understand us.

  I started thinking about Jeremy a lot more after that day. It was hard not to, I guess. Just when I’d realize I hadn’t thought about my situation for a while, something would happen and I’d suddenly look down at my knees or the tops of my now size twelve shoes and be thrown off course all over again. But still, it felt so right. It was so comfortable to just be moving and breathing and able to sit up and bend and jump and stand on one leg. Jeremy Pratt’s body was now doing all these things that my old body had stopped doing for me, things that everyone takes for granted until they aren’t there anymore. Hell, I was even impressed with my new ability to fart with such ease and so very little pain. You know things are weird when you start appreciating your farts.

  “Do you skateboard?” Hatton asked at lunch after I’d told him Jeremy’s story. It was my fourth day back at school, a Thursday.

  “Never was any good at it.”

  “You should try it now.”

  “You think so?”

  “Hell yeah. Muscle memory. You’d probably be awesome.”

  “I don’t think that’s how it works. But do you have a board?”

  “No. But my little brother does.”

  “You have a little brother?”

  “Yeah. Skylar. Bane of my existence.”

  After Hatton and I made a plan to test out my skateboarding skills that afternoon and sat through another excruciating chemistry slide show, I went to my favorite class of the day, which was study hall. This was usually reserved for seniors only, but they made an exception for me since I started school in October and because, well, they were probably scared if they gave me a full class load, then I’d want to die all over again.

  But on that fourth day back, just as I was closing up my geometry book and prepping for my afternoon nap, the school secretary’s voice blasted out over the intercom.

  “Mrs. Huxley,” she said. “Please send Travis Coates to the counselor’s office.”

  “Travis,” Mrs. Huxley said, never looking up from her computer. I wasn’t sure she was even a real person. I’d never seen her move from that spot.

  I got my stuff together and walked out. There was always something sort of creepy about wal
king around the halls of Springside High when everyone else was in class. You’d see a few kids here and there, but mostly you’d notice the way the floor glowed with thick coats of wax and how, no matter what part of the building you were in, it smelled like someone was popping popcorn. I think teachers survive mostly on popcorn and Diet Coke.

  I waited outside the counselor’s office and leafed through a few pamphlets tossed onto an old coffee table in front of me. I thought maybe if I kept looking, I might find one titled “So You’ve Just Come Out of Cryosleep to Find That Your Girlfriend Is Engaged and Your Best Friend Is Trapped in the Closet?” But, alas, I didn’t have any luck. I did learn how to talk to my parents about STDs, though. So at least there’s that. I actually hadn’t seen Mrs. Taft, the counselor, since I’d been back. I hadn’t spent too much time around her, but I always thought she was nice.

  “Travis, you ready?” a surprisingly young guy in slacks and a skinny tie said, standing right in the doorway of the office. This was not Mrs. Taft.

  “Uhh. Yes, sir.”

  I followed him into the tiny room and took a seat across from his desk. An engraved gold nameplate told me he was Philip Franklin, and I wondered if he had had a hard time growing up with two first names.

  “Sorry to pull you out of class like that,” he said. “I’m Philip.” He extended his hand to shake mine.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said.

  “Likewise. So how’s everything going?”

  “It’s okay, I guess.”

  “Yeah? Not too overwhelmed by your classes yet?”

  “Study hall helps,” I said. “I should be fine.”

  “Good, good. So I know I wasn’t here before. How do I say this . . . when you were here?”