by Cat Patrick
“Frankie, please!” Tess said, clearly so embarrassed. “You have to stop. Just pay attention to Colette.”
“Come on,” Colette said. “Look, do this.” She dropped her backpack on the floor and was standing with her hands out, palms turned up.
She looked so strange I forgot to be mad for a second. “Are you praying?” I asked. “You look really weird.”
Colette laughed. “It kinda looks like it,” she said. “But no, I’m turning my palms up. You should try it. When I’m upset, it always makes me feel better.”
“It looks stupid,” I said.
“Maybe, but it makes me feel better when the air hits my palms,” Colette said. “My mom told me to do it. She says it makes you feel more open to possibilities. I don’t know what that means, but I like the feel of it anyway.”
“You’re right,” Tess said, copying Colette’s palms-up position, “it does feel nice.”
“Now you both look stupid,” I said. I saw my teacher coming out of the classroom at the far end of the hall, walking purposefully toward us. She looked mad. Tess and Colette both turned around and saw her, too.
“Would you rather look stupid or go to the principal?” Colette asked hurriedly.
“I’d rather be a pig,” I said. But then I unballed my fists. I didn’t hold my arms up like Colette, but I flipped my hands over at my sides.
“I heard a ruckus out here,” my teacher said, frowning at me. “Aren’t you supposed to be at recess?”
“We’re on our way,” Tess said, smiling innocently.
“We were just checking to see who got roles in the play,” Colette said.
My teacher looked at me skeptically. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine,” Colette answered for me; Tess nodded in agreement. And actually, it was. I didn’t feel like kicking the wall anymore: the mad had passed.
When I tuned back in to the ICU, the tube was still in Colette’s mouth and the needle was still in her arm. Her eyes were still closed, and the machine was still beeping. But I had my palms up, and I felt calmer.
“Frankie?” Mom asked. “Did you hear me?”
“Huh?” I looked at her; she, Tess, and Colette’s mom were all looking at me.
“I said we’re going to try this again another day,” Mom said. “Tess is upset, and you clearly are, too.”
“No, I’m okay,” I said, glancing back at Colette. She may have done something really mean to me recently, but she’d done other nice things for me in my life. And she’d been playing dare-or-scare again. And right then, remembering the good things, I thought that maybe Tess was right: I thought Colette had been trying to apologize to me. “I want to try to talk to her.”
“You do?” Colette’s mom asked. She had tears coming down her freckled cheeks, but she looked happy. “Oh, Frankie, thank you so much.”
“If you’re staying, then I will, too,” Tess said.
“I want to do it alone,” I said. Tess frowned, so I added, “Then you can have a turn and I’ll wait outside.”
“Okay.” She didn’t look like she felt okay. I don’t know if she understood that me wanting to talk to Colette alone didn’t mean I didn’t want her support. I still did, I just didn’t want it right next to me.
A nurse came in to check Colette’s beeping monitors and then everyone started to leave. Tess was still sniffling, and I felt bad for her. I also felt bad in general because I wasn’t the type of person who cried immediately when they saw a hurt friend. I wished I were more like Tess.
“We’ll be sitting in those chairs we passed, right by the elevator, okay, Frankie?” Mom said.
“Okay,” I said, still standing in the exact spot I’d been in the whole time, at the foot of Colette’s bed.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
I thought of what Colette had told the teacher in the hall that day in third grade. “Everything’s fine.”
chapter 23
Fact: Swelling in the brain is one of the things that can cause a coma.
“I THINK YOU’VE been really different since Mia moved here,” I admitted to Colette. “And you were kind of a jerk that day when you were studying in Tess’s room. Not kind of. You were a huge jerk. I’ve been really mad at you since then.”
I knew I probably wouldn’t have had the guts to say all that stuff if she’d been awake. I shifted in the chair next to her bed, trying not to look at her face with the tube taped to her cheek.
“It’s hard to stay mad at someone when they’re hurt, so I’m probably not mad at you anymore, though.”
I thought about Colette telling everyone I take tests in a special room—when I don’t even do that all the time. I thought about her laughing when Mia had called me a tornado brain—making fun of me. I thought about how I’d never say something mean about her behind her back, or to her face.
But then, with a sinking feeling in my belly, I remembered that I had.
Colette’s parents were always planning day trips to Portland and Seattle and Olympia, dragging her to indie bookstores and tourist traps. Colette hated it because she was never allowed to bring any friends along. At the end of this past January, just a few weeks before she and Mia had teased me during their study group, Colette had gone on one of the day trips with her parents. The Monday afterward, Colette was standing at my locker when I got to school, excited-emoji face, a wrapped box in her hands.
“I got you a present this weekend!” she said, holding the box out in my direction. She had on a bright green sweater that reminded me of spring even though it was the middle of winter. “I found it in a dusty old bookstore. I had to buy it for you: it’s perfect! Open it!”
“Okay . . . ,” I said, scrunching my eyebrows together, caught off guard by seeing Colette before school when I normally didn’t, by the wrong-season color of her sweater, by her giving me a present on a Monday morning. It was all unexpected. And the honest truth is that I was embarrassed to be receiving a gift in the hallway at school: it was making people look at us—at me—and I didn’t want to be looked at that day. “It’s not my birthday.”
“I know when your birthday is, silly.” Colette shrugged and shoved the box closer toward me. “I got it for you just because. Open it. I promise you’ll like it.”
I hate being called silly. It always translates into stupid in my head.
Mad, I said, “I’ll open it later.” I turned toward my locker, wanting to shove the box inside so people would stop looking at it as they walked by. I did the combination, but it didn’t work on the first try, probably because Colette was distracting me.
“Come on, Frankie, open it now,” she said, bouncing up and down. “And tell me about your weekend! Did you go to the—”
“I didn’t ask you to get me anything,” I interrupted, finally managing to open the locker and throwing the box inside. “And you didn’t have to bring it to school.”
My face was hot. Colette hadn’t known, but it’d been a bad morning. The medication I’d been taking was making me feel like my head was going to float off into the sky. I hadn’t felt like myself at all.
“Here, I’ll just tell you what it is,” Colette said. “It’s this old board game called Tornado Rex. You’re going to love it! You play as a hiker trying to get up a hill before a tornado knocks you—”
“Stop talking about it!” I snapped at her. The hallway was crowded and noisy, so not everyone heard me, but some nearby people did. Colette definitely did: she looked like I’d hit her. I should have stopped talking, but it wasn’t a day when I could control it. “You’re always telling me when to do things,” I said. “You think you control my schedule! Stop being so bossy!”
The bell rang; we were late for class. Colette’s smile had melted.
She looked at me without saying anything for a few seconds, then shook her head. “That’s okay, Fra
nkie, you can open it later.”
When I was feeling better after school—after the medication had worn off enough to make me feel like my head was reattached—I’d opened the game and tried it out. And Colette had been right: it was perfect. I loved it. I’d texted her: thank you and sorry in one. She’d said it was okay.
But a few weeks later she’d laughed when Mia had called me a name, so maybe it wasn’t.
“I guess we both made mistakes,” I said to Colette, glancing up at her face, then away again. “I’m sorry.” I said the hard word to my shoes. “And I’m sorry I was mean when you came to my room the other night.”
It hit me that Colette had probably just waited until I’d gone to do homework at my mom’s to come in and take Fred: I never lock my door. And then the whole thing made sense. I imagined it all happening like I was there with her.
Colette fought with her parents about moving.
She came to my room, wanting Fred. When I wouldn’t give him to her, she waited and took him anyway. Then she left and did the dune dare, but it was too cold, so she came back and asked Tess for a scarf. She knew she’d need it later.
Then she went to Marsh’s, but she ditched her dolphin sweatshirt and scarf for that video because it’s always so crazy hot in there. Knowing her next dare was outside, with it getting darker and windier, she borrowed Kai’s jacket to layer over her other clothes . . . without asking.
She went to the Sea Witch’s house. She went to the school. And then she went . . .
“That was a really stupid thing to do,” I said to my friend, filled with regret.
I wished I’d put it all together sooner. I wished I could have helped Colette in time. I tried to think of good memories, when we were younger and the dares and scares were just funny and didn’t put anyone in the hospital.
“Hey, remember that time that Tess tried to do that dare where we had to jump over the hurdle at the high school, but she just ran right into it?” I asked. “All three of us couldn’t stop laughing,” I said to Colette. “Remember?”
I pulled my legs up into the chair and crossed them like a pretzel.
“And remember that time when you rode Tess’s favorite horse, Prince, and got so mad because he rolled over to scratch on the sand? And your mom was really mad at you for abandoning the ride when she’d already paid for it?”
I drew a tornado swirl with my fingernail on my knee. “And guess what? You know how you did the ding-dong-ditch dare at the Sea Witch’s doorstep—and the kindness dare at the same time, which, by the way, was awesome—well, me and Tess went there, and the Sea Witch totally scared us!”
I laughed because it was more funny than scary now.
“And what about that time when . . .”
I went on and on because talking about dare-or-scare with Colette felt good. Talking with Colette about anything felt good, honestly. Even if I was really just talking to Colette.
Sometimes I glanced up at her face, only long enough to make sure she wasn’t staring at me. She never was—she didn’t open her eyes or move a muscle the whole time I was there. But I had a feeling that she could hear me anyway. I had a feeling that even though we’d both messed up, Colette and I were okay—that we were friends again. And I felt like maybe, in her deep, dark coma dreams, she was laughing with me.
* * *
—
AS I WALKED down the hall to tell Tess it was her turn, a flood of memories came back to me—tons of dares Colette, Tess, and I had done together. Eat a plate of spaghetti without a utensil. Strut down the hall at school like a model. Walk into a room of people and yell, “Merry Christmas!” when it’s the middle of summer.
I was in my own world—our world—and so distracted I was almost run over by two nurses rushing in the opposite direction.
I didn’t wonder where they were going then.
I know now.
chapter 24
Myth: You should take shelter under a bridge during a tornado.
“SEE YOU NEXT time,” Gabe said, smiling, holding his acoustic guitar. He’d played it during our session, which I didn’t hate. Another thing I didn’t hate? Having sessions with Gabe again. Even when they were weird Sunday sessions like today because my mom was worried about me since they’d buried my best friend the day before.
Outside, my mom waited in her car. She was making me go with her to the outlet mall in Seaside to get summer clothes. I think she just wanted to keep an eye on me, like I was going to freak out or something. Tess was in the back seat with earphones on and a sketchbook on her lap, staring out the window of the car with puffy red eyes.
“How did it go?” Mom asked when I was buckled in, pulling out of the parking space. Someone was waiting to pull in.
“Fine,” I said. I opened one of the granola bars Mom keeps in the glove box for me and took a huge bite. “Where’s Charles? I thought he was coming with us.”
“Tyler called in sick, so Charles had to work the front desk,” Mom said, sounding irritated. “What did you and Gabe talk about?”
“Isn’t that supposed to be private?” I asked back, my mouth full. I accidentally bit the inside of my cheek.
“Sorry,” Mom said. “I just meant . . .”
She didn’t finish her sentence, and I didn’t ask her to. That wasn’t what I wanted to talk about.
“When are the police going to give us back Lemonade?” I asked instead, touching the bite mark on the inside of my cheek with my tongue.
“The bike?” Mom glanced at me with a surprised look, then turned back to the road. “I don’t think they will,” she said. “I mean, I think it’ll go to the dump. It’s . . . broken.”
“I want it back.” I took another bite of granola bar, carefully chewing on the unbitten side, then looked over my shoulder at Tess, who was still staring out the window instead of drawing or talking to us. “I want it back and I want Charles to fix it. I want it to be my bike, not the inn’s.”
Mom turned the car left at the gas station, toward Highway 101; the outlet mall was a whole state away, in Oregon. It’d take us fifty minutes to get there but I was looking forward to driving over the Astoria Bridge, which is really, really long and very cool. It’s a flat, floating bridge for part and then it climbs high into the sky so ships can go under it. I was thinking about the bridge when Mom finally answered me.
“Frankie, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be riding around on the bike that . . .”
Sort of killed my friend? I thought, but didn’t say, because Gabe was helping me remember to keep my filter on, and that would probably be upsetting to Tess and Mom even though it was the truth.
“It is a good idea,” I said firmly.
“Why?”
“Because it’s a connection to Colette,” I said. I looked over at my mom; she had tears in her eyes.
“I guess I can understand that,” she said, wiping them away. “You’re a wonderful girl, do you know that?”
I wasn’t sure why she’d said that, and it made me feel weird, so I ignored it. “So can I have the bike?”
“I can’t guarantee anything, but I’ll ask the police,” Mom said. “Should we turn on some music?”
I found a station I liked and reclined my seat a little, watching the landscape go by. There was a long stretch of thick forest like what Colette had ridden through, as we wound our way toward the bottom of Washington. Then the forest opened up and there was the ocean, blue and beautiful and stretching on forever.
As we crossed the bridge, looking out at the sun reflecting off the teal water, I thought of a conversation I’d had earlier with Gabe. I’d told him that everyone had cried at Colette’s funeral yesterday, including the preacher, who was probably pretty used to funerals. The kids from school cried. Tess cried the hardest—just like she’d done every day since Colette had died. But I hadn’t cried at all. And i
t had bothered me, until Gabe said something kind of simple: Everyone grieves differently.
In most things in life, I’m the outsider. I’m the different one. Or at least it feels that way. But Gabe had said, “Death is the deal breaker. There is no normal when it comes to grief.”
There is no normal. Which means there is no abnormal either.
Today, I grieved by being thankful for cool bridges and that I only had a month left of school, instead of thinking about Colette, because today, thinking about her felt shocking and raw and awful.
Other times I thought of her, though, with her huge smile and sometimes-too-loud laugh; of her model poses in pictures; of the way she’d hurt me; of the way I’d hurt her; of the way she’d accidentally died. And I talked to her. Sometimes I grieved by reading Fred and purposely remembering all the times that Colette and I had shared. All the dares. All the birthdays. All the embarrassing moments. All the everything.
My grieving wasn’t the same every day. And it wasn’t the same as anyone else’s way of handling it. It wasn’t wrong or right. It wasn’t abnormal or normal.
It just was.
chapter 25
Fact: It can take years to recover from a tornado.
THE FIRST WEEK in June, the night before the last day of seventh grade, I climbed into bed with my phone, then checked the TwisterLvr feed for recent tornado activity. It’d been what I’d done every night before bed for forever, up until Colette had gone missing. I wanted to get my routine back.
“There was an EF2 near Colorado Springs, Colorado,” I said out loud. “It was only on the ground for a few minutes, though.”
“Huh,” Tess said from her bedroom. Our doors were open, so I heard her pencil clink against the others in the box when she set it down.
“What are you drawing?” I asked.
