“What are you doing?”
I turned to see three boys watching me. They were coming up the block in a cloud of cigarette smoke. They looked around my age, maybe younger.
“Breaking and entering?” the boy in the center asked with a grin on his face.
“Not quite,” I said, realizing how it looked. “I’m just trying to see inside.” To see if the building is populated by Oompa Loompas, I thought.
“Need help?” the boy on the right asked. He wore a sleeveless shirt that framed his bulging arms, and he had a tattoo of a shamrock on his shoulder.
“Sure. Thanks.”
Two of them held the trash can in place while the third laced his fingers together so I could use his hands as a step and climb to the top. His arms shook as I put one foot in his hands and lifted myself onto the flat lid of the trash can. Once I was crouched on the lid, they pushed the trash bin closer to the window.
“Stand up slowly,” the first boy said. It was like they had done this before.
My arms reached out, my instincts telling me to hold on to something for balance. I wasn’t more than eight or nine feet from the ground, but I felt like an acrobat. I grabbed on to the window ledge, which wasn’t thick enough to give me any real support, but at least it helped me keep my body straight.
Once it felt safe to look up, my eyes went to the window, and for the first time, I had a view straight into the Cambridge Foods building.
The first thing I saw was a file cabinet. Then a small meeting table. Then I saw a man at a desk who, while small and round, was not an Oompa Loompa. He was just a guy in his fifties in an ordinary office who appeared to be checking over paperwork. He didn’t look like Charlie, either. Charlie Bucket would have aged better than this, I thought.
I was just about to sag with disappointment when I noticed that I also had a view straight into the plant through the window to my right. I could see the giant silver machines that must make the candy filling. They stretched from the floor to the ceiling and had big silver levers that flew up and down like a kick line. There was a border of colorful paint on the ceiling that looked like it was designed in the 1970s. Big yellow and purple swirls that looked like candy clouds.
This could be Kyle’s place of pure imagination.
Planting a hand farther down the brick exterior of the building, I reached back into my pocket to retrieve my phone. I turned on the camera one-handed and held up the lens, trying to get a clear view of the machines and the paint job so I could get the best shot.
“Almost done?” one of the boys yelled from below.
“Just another second,” I responded.
I leaned a bit farther to my right, trying to get a wider view of the room—and that’s when the ground disappeared beneath me.
First the lid folded and fell into the can, and then I fell with it, landing hard on my leg on the sidewalk.
“Holy shit, she’s down,” Shamrock Tattoo Guy yelled, which sent the other two running, scattering before they could be blamed for the accident. “I’m sorry,” Shamrock Guy said, shaking his head and then running after them.
My legs looked like bendy straws, and two of my fingers on my left hand felt twisted and broken, having taken most of my weight when I fell to the ground. I tried moving my legs and felt a sharp pain in my ankle.
Cursing, I used my right hand to push myself up so that I was seated. I crawled to my phone, which had fallen out of my hand, and called Bryan. It went to voicemail, so I left a message, saying that I had fallen in Central Square and to call me as soon as possible.
I had to find someone to come get me, and I knew that my dad was at Cindy and Pam’s for stargazing; I didn’t want to worry them or make him drive an hour back to rescue me.
Then I called Kyle. It felt wrong, because he wouldn’t have the option of ignoring me if I told him I was on the ground, in need of medical attention, but I didn’t care anymore. I just wanted him there, and I wanted to apologize. He didn’t pick up, but I left a message, figuring he was probably screening the call.
“Hey,” I said, my voice trembling as pain shot through my leg. “No big deal, but I sort of fell down by the chocolate factory, and I think I sprained something. It’s after midnight, and I’m alone out here. Um, if you’re there, can you give me a call?”
Kyle didn’t get the message fast enough, though. About two seconds after I hung up, the man who had been in the small office inside Cambridge Foods ran out the front door with a cell phone in his hand.
“Miss, what happened?” he asked, crouching to get a better look at me. “Were you mugged?”
“No, I fell,” I explained. “I might have broken something.”
He called 911 and then made me call my dad, saying that if his own daughter had fallen and needed medical attention, he’d want to be there, even if it meant driving more than an hour from Plymouth. Then the man rode with me to Mount Auburn Hospital, where I was diagnosed with broken ring and pinky fingers and a twisted ankle. They’d take an MRI of my knee next week just to be sure there wasn’t more damage.
My dad showed up two hours later, running to my emergency-room bed looking angry but relieved. It was the first time he’d yelled at me since my mom died.
“At this moment, I am the father of a person who was brought to the hospital because she was scaling a private building,” he said, his voice terse. “Who are you right now?” he asked, bewildered.
He barely spoke to me until about four thirty in the morning, when they let us go home. He mostly just leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes.
“Next time you want to go break into a candy factory, call me first and I’ll get a ladder,” he said as I crawled into bed, the painkillers in my system pushing me toward sleep.
24
I woke to a double knock on my bedroom door. “Are you decent?” my dad asked.
“Yeah,” I mumbled. My mouth was dry, and my fingers throbbed. I’d never broken a bone before. The athletes at my high school were always walking around with small casts and boots like it wasn’t a big deal, but in reality, the pain was intense, the agony validating my instinct that I was never meant to do sports. “I need more of the pills, like, now,” I whined at the door.
A minute later it opened, and Kyle entered the room with two small pills in his right hand.
“Your dad told me to bring these,” he said. I grabbed for my blanket and pulled it up to my neck to cover myself, forgetting that I was fully clothed.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to smooth my hair.
“You called me,” he said, pulling the white chair from my desk over to the bed and sitting backwards on it. “You called me last night saying that you had fallen down in Central Square. By the time I got the message, your phone was off. And then I spent the rest of the night worrying that you were dead in the street. I called Yael at, like, three in the morning. She found Bryan, who’d already spoken to your dad.”
“Oh, my god,” I said, my head starting to pound.
I grabbed the pills from Kyle’s hand and washed them down with a glass of water—now warm from sitting out all night—next to my bed.
“I’m so sorry, Kyle,” I said. “I called you, but then this guy from Cambridge Foods brought me to the hospital. I don’t even know what I did with my phone.”
He smiled, and I realized how long it had been since I had seen him look anything but uncomfortable around me. I wanted to freeze his face just like that.
“It’s okay. I mean . . . it’s not okay—I was a wreck. When I finally got ahold of your dad, he said your phone had died, but he said to come back at noon and we’d wake you up together.”
I took another sip of water and willed the pills to enter my bloodstream.
“You know, I did it for you,” I said, holding up my bandaged fingers so he could see. “This is a Wonka-related injury. I was trying to get a picture. I saw what it looks like inside.”
“That’s what your dad said,” Kyle s
aid. “So are you going to tell me what’s in there? Was it all that we dreamed of and more?”
“Sort of,” I said, leaning back onto my pillow. “It was sort of what we thought it would be.”
“Meaning . . .”
“Well, I counted only six Oompa Loompas, and the chocolate river was disappointingly small, but, you know, everyone has to downsize at some point.”
Kyle laughed, and I closed my eyes to enjoy the sound.
“I miss you,” I said, then yawned, my body aching for more rest.
“Good,” he whispered. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or relieved.
I had no memory of falling asleep again or seeing Kyle leave, but when I woke up hours later, I could hear Bryan downstairs in the kitchen. I forced myself out of bed, made a slow walk to the bathroom, where I brushed my teeth with one hand, and then walked slowly down the steps, a process that made me crave even more painkillers. Bryan, who was at the counter making pasta salad with my dad, began to hoot and applaud. I took a quick bow and joined them at the table.
There would be no more transcription, no more days at the lab. The doctor said I should take it easy before starting school. My dad had called Dr. Araghi, who said that Tish would mail my last paycheck.
Yael came over later that day and sat on my bed, promising we’d still have dinners once I got to campus, even though she’d always told me she despised undergraduates.
“You don’t count, little one,” she said. “Lucky for you, I’ll always think of you as a high school kid, so you’ll never really be an undergrad.”
She said she had to run to lab, but she paused at the door on her way out.
“So . . . you’re never going to tell me what you were doing down there, are you?” she asked.
“Down where?”
“Down in the basement,” Yael said, not making eye contact. “With Ann.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“I mean, part of me doesn’t even want to know,” she whispered.
“You know,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “I’m not sure whether anything really happened down there.” I found myself smiling, because it felt like the truth.
* * *
On the fourth day after the fall, I was desperate to leave the house. My broken fingers no longer looked like swollen breakfast sausages, and I could make it through the day on just a few painkillers.
Bryan had called that morning to inform me that the Junior Barders were having a pizza party to celebrate the end of the summer and to return their costumes. They did this every year as a last goodbye for the cast.
I decided to tag along because I knew my time with Bryan was so limited; in a few days he’d be leaving to start Syracuse, and I wouldn’t see him for three months.
Plus, Asher Forman might be there. It’s not as though I thought we were going to keep in touch—I was well aware that someone like Asher probably made out with a lot of girls and then never saw them again—but it was new for me, and I just wanted one last look at him.
Also, I was curious to know whether he had been cast in that play in New York. I found myself rooting for him.
“I’m not sure Asher Forman will be at the final pizza party,” Bryan said, reading my mind as we got off the T. “It’s really just for the high school kids, anyway. I doubt he wants to deal.”
But he was there, sitting at the long conference table in the Boston Shakespeare Project’s offices where they stored all the sets and props during the off-season.
I looked away, not ready to make eye contact. I didn’t know whether I was embarrassed, ashamed, or afraid of his reaction to my being there, but I found myself looking at everyone at the table but him, my neck itching like I could feel his phantom gnaws.
Most of the Junior Barders had already arrived and were focused on the greasy slices of pizza in front of them. Kimberly Katz, who was at the head of the table, spoke first.
“Oh, my god, Maya, what happened?” she asked, her face showing more disgust than concern.
I had forgotten about the bruises. Even though my fingers felt a little better and my knees and ankles no longer ached as I walked, I still had bruises on my arms and the scrapes across the side of my cheek. In fact, my face looked worse than it had right after the fall. There were now scabs where there had been scratches, and the original black bruises had deepened to a royal purple.
“I fell,” I said, shrugging. “I was just trying to reach for something high and fell down. Just a stupid accident.”
“It looks terrible,” Kimberly said as she reached for the smallest slice of pizza from the open box.
I took an empty seat at the table and joined them. There was an adult sitting cross-legged at the back of the room, collecting costumes. “Reagan O’Connell?” he shouted, prompting a girl at the table to look up from her paper plate.
“Yes,” she said, her voice small.
“We’re missing your belt. Did you return the dress with the belt?”
“I might have left the belt in my dad’s car,” she replied.
“Have him drop it by tomorrow, please,” the man muttered as Bryan handed him his own costume. “People, you must return these costumes with all accessories. We can’t be running around buying replacement belts. We’re a nonprofit here.”
“Sorry, Mr. Andrews,” Reagan O’Connell said, her face turning red.
I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. Since middle school, it seemed that Bryan was always on the hunt, in his house or mine, for some lost cummerbund or vest that he owed to an angry director. Only in the last year had he learned to keep track of his costumes and their many little pieces.
“So,” Kimberly Katz said, turning to Asher, “you didn’t finish telling us the details. Where will you live?”
“They’ll put me up in housing, and then I’ll probably just stay down there. I’m looking for my own place. I don’t see myself moving back to Los Angeles—I think I’m more of a New York person,” he said. “I might try to find a recording studio, just to cut some demos once I get settled. At the end of the day, I’m still focused on the music.”
“He’s been cast in a play,” Kimberly Katz said, turning to me to explain. “Off-Broadway. It’s a big deal.”
I couldn’t help myself from making eye contact then. He was already looking at me, his mouth curled into a proud smile.
“You got the part. I knew it,” I said without thinking.
He winked.
Kimberly Katz glared at me then, which made me smile as I grabbed for a piece of pizza.
Asher talked about the play, inviting everyone down to see the show when it opened later in the fall, and then the Barders went around the table, each one giving a short speech about what they’d be doing next year. About a half dozen of them were going off to college in a week. Bryan was the only graduate of the group who planned to major in theater. The others said they’d continue doing shows maybe as hobby. Kimberly Katz said she was going to study communications. The guy who played the clown was going to travel for a year before starting at UMass.
It might have been the painkillers or the last bit of serum filtering out of my system, but I was so proud of Bryan—so overcome by the idea that he had the courage to pursue what he loved—that I had to hold back tears. Like if he did anything besides perform, it would be dishonest. When the conversation devolved and the younger kids in the group started singing songs from musicals loud enough to make my head start hurting again, Bryan gave me the nod and we got up to leave. He hugged Kimberly Katz goodbye, and that’s when I got a closer look at her. Bryan’s embrace had pushed her T-shirt out of line, which revealed a massive trail of popped blood vessels along her neck. It was like a choker of hickeys, left by the only person I could think of who would want to give them. She straightened her shirt as Bryan pulled away, hiding the evidence.
I waved to the group, and Asher gave me a big smile. He winked and said, “Good luck at Princeton,” which was not where I was going to school,
but he looked sincere, so I just said, “Thanks.”
I thought he might follow us out to say a better goodbye, but he didn’t. Before I shut the door behind us, I glanced back to take one last look at him before he disappeared forever, back into the internet, where he probably belonged.
25
I kept having the same dream, that Bryan was about to die in a hospital bed just like my mom, and that I had one hour to come up with a cure to save him. I’d run into the lab and grab beakers and chemicals and would stir some sort of potion, hoping I had found a magic cure. The dream always ended the same way. I poured the contents of the beaker into Bryan’s mouth and waited, staring at the monitor with the squiggly lines, hoping for signs of life. I always woke up before I found out whether my antidote had worked. It had been three nights in a row.
“I don’t think it requires much interpretation,” Bryan told me as we walked from my house to his so that I could say a final goodbye. “It’s basically the most literal dream that’s ever been dreamt.”
“Sorry,” I said, kicking a rock in front of me, my pace slow.
“Come on,” Bryan said, pulling my hand. “We can’t delay this any longer.”
His parents were waiting for us, already outside by their car when we got there. It was odd to see them side by side, looking like two parents who were about to take their kid to college, because they hadn’t been those people. It was like Bryan had hired some random adults to pretend to be his guardians and drive him to Syracuse.
They had packed up the car that morning and were all set to go, but Bryan told them he had to run over for one last goodbye. My dad had taken pictures of the two of us, and then Bryan had asked to take a few of me and my dad, saying he wanted a real family portrait. Then, after we left, he showed me the shots. They were all of my father, with my body just out of the frame.
“You’re gross,” I told him. “Delete those pictures.”
“Never,” he said, holding the phone to his heart. “Now, before I go, are you ready for something amazing? Because I have something to show you.”
Chemistry Lessons Page 20
