I kissed Josh one more time then, exactly the way I wanted to, fully, turning my mind off and my body on. It was kind of mind-clearing—I stopped thinking of Logan, Coltrane, Seb, Dee, Sarah, Blythe, Claire, the past, the future, anything at all; just let the world go blank and quiet, like water, how it used to be. Warm and beautiful, before I was scared all the time. Everywhere I could hear and feel and see the rainbow-sparkle liquid heat of that kiss.
-15-
Sometimes, I know for a fact that I can’t imagine how Claire felt. But other times it seems to me like saying “I can’t imagine” is the worst thing you can do to anyone else. So I try as hard as I can to imagine, while also trying not to die of fear, either my own or someone else’s. Because maybe the whole point of being a good human being is trying to imagine—for real—what it feels like to be someone else. Maybe Claire was in an irrational amount of pain over Blythe, or her parents, or something complicated and private enough that there can be no record of it except the one her death created. Maybe she had what Monica Dancat calls “mental illness” but I think might just be regular human suffering.
When I can imagine, it’s bottomlessly terrible. So maybe she felt that way all the time, without the bolts of joy to balance it out—maybe she never got the feeling of the braille dots rising up to mean something, or the piano sounding good again, or sisters laughing at a stupid joke only the five of you can get. Maybe Blythe never skipped her own birthday and then suggested going to the city at the end of the summer for a day to celebrate both birthdays. Or maybe she did, and the feeling of it made Claire desperate instead of happy. Maybe she took drugs to feel the way she thought she should feel more often—fun, or happy, or numb, or safe—and then she went swimming. Either to feel brave or to see blue or to feel dangerously alive.
And maybe in that moment, after the drugs, during the water, it’s possible to think that you don’t care whether you die. If it is, that’s only because you don’t know what it means to be dead, inside forever in the dark. You can’t know about death until you’re dead, not even if you’re me. No one can see that forever, but we all know it’s coming. Death is both the only thing we can be certain of and the thing we know least about, so I guess it makes sense to find it terrifying.
Here’s what I think: Claire forgot for a second that she would be a million other Claires over the course of the rest of her life, and some of them would have been happy. Even though she once told Amanda Boughman that, so we all know she once got it. Or maybe, like so many of us, she got it about other girls, but couldn’t hold it in her mind about herself. So I can totally imagine how she felt. And maybe the truth about Claire is like most truths: hard for everyone to agree on, kind of liquid, changeable—a weird, inconsistent lake.
The last week of school, Elizabeth Tallentine invited me to her house for a sleepover, and I said yes right away, the way she did when I asked her to come to the Mayburg place for our first meeting in the fall. Even though that was a crazy, terrible invitation. I didn’t want to say anything that might make her think I didn’t want to come. Because I did. And I didn’t tell Logan. Maybe I was worried she’d make fun of it, or feel bad, or not care. Or maybe telling someone everything all the time isn’t necessarily the definition of a good friendship. I mean, I don’t know what Logan was up to that Saturday night, and it’s okay, I guess, if sometimes we do our own things. Elizabeth’s house smelled like my house, warm and busy. She has two brothers and the little one wanted to hang out with us and she said yes and I liked her for it. We stayed up really late talking about sex, even though neither of us has had it yet, and we’re not 100 percent sure we’ll ever find anyone who wants to and who we also want to do it with. We also talked about the world, because she wants to travel, which I think is brave and awesome. She wants to go to India someday, and Greece, and Latin America. I knew she had a big map in her mind, and it was fun to hear about it. She said she thinks I’d have an amazing time traveling the world, and maybe I could write a book on the way each country feels or smells or something, a totally original perspective with all my “colors” built in. I didn’t even really know that I had mentioned the way I see things to her, but I guess I had. And she pays close attention. She was nice about it, too; I mean, I didn’t feel like she was patronizing me or trying to make me feel better or anything—just like she thought it was a good idea.
Elizabeth and I came up with a self-dare for me: to call Coltrane Winslow. She had this great idea, which is that if I want to dare myself to do stuff, it should at least be stuff I want to do anyway, not stupid, random things like jumping out of tree houses or sneaking out to the Mayburg place, which I told her about and she seemed to think was both amazing and also not that surprising. But once we thought of the Coltrane call, I couldn’t get out of it, and I was kind of glad. So maybe I’ll dare myself to kiss him, too, the way Josh kissed me.
Coltrane didn’t seem surprised to hear my voice on the phone; was just like, “Hey, Emma, what’s going on?” And I said, just like I’d practiced with Elizabeth at our sleepover and even recorded myself at home saying, “I was wondering if you wanted to meet up at Bridge sometime?” I had deleted all the extra words from my early versions—where I was like, “to talk about our meetings,” or “to talk about next year,” or anything that would sound like an excuse.
Coltrane said, “Sure. When were you thinking?”
I hadn’t planned this part. “Um, I don’t know, maybe this week?”
And he said, “Are you free after school tomorrow?”
I wasn’t; I had a piano lesson with Mr. Bender. “Yeah, totally,” I said, thinking I would call Mr. Bender and just tell the truth for once. Not skip without calling, not have Leah call and pretend to be my mom; just call and explain that this week, Tchaikovsky had to wait for my date with Coltrane Winslow. A date I had initiated!
But Coltrane paused for a minute, and I could feel my heart clench. Should I have been harder to get, even though I had called him and asked him to meet me? Should I have put it off? I hadn’t wanted to.
“So, um, I’ll come by your locker after sixth period and we can walk over together?”
It was the first time I’d ever heard Coltrane say “um.” Maybe he was nervous. I felt ecstatic. “Sounds good,” I said, and my voice was lavender and fluttery like Logan’s.
At Bridge, we each ordered a sparkling lemonade and we shared a blueberry muffin, which was his idea. We took turns taking little bits of the muffin, and our hands touched a few times while we talked about the year, Fincter, Spencer, Hawes’s class, swimming at Point Park Beach, and Mr. M. showing up at the vigil. Coltrane asked how I came up with the idea of all of us meeting at the Mayburg place, and I totally took credit, didn’t even mention Logan or Zach. We talked about Sauberg and America’s justice system and the Edna St. Vincent Millay poem about spring. I told him about Briarly, and how braille felt like piano, and then he asked if I have extra sensitivity in my hearing or touching.
“Depends what I’m touching,” I said. It’s hard to say which one of us this surprised more, but maybe him, because I think he was too shocked to respond. We were both quiet until I started laughing, and then he laughed, too.
When we stopped, he asked, “Um, so, can I walk you home?”
“Sure, thanks,” I said. We had finished our drinks and it was cooling off outside and there was no way to sit at Bridge anymore without it just being really weird. So I roused Spark, who was under the table, probably desperately bored. I felt bad for Spark as Coltrane and I walked out onto Lake Street. The walk was quiet, but it wasn’t awkward, for some reason.
“So, Emma, can I ask you something?” Coltrane asked when we were halfway home.
“Of course,” I said.
But then he waited kind of a long time, like whatever he was going to ask, he decided not to. He finally just said, “So, uh, are you coming to the Mayburg place Saturday?”
I said yeah,
even though I was curious what he had actually wanted to ask.
“I was thinking maybe we could walk over together,” he said, and my stomach fluttered.
“Sure, okay, yeah.”
We were at my house. I was thinking about what it would be like to kiss him, what he might taste like—lemonade, or vocabulary, or summer? I don’t know how to explain this, but he felt familiar to me: like love, or hard candy, or home—something I’d been waiting for. I could tell he wanted to kiss me but didn’t know how to go about it. I wondered if he’d get home later and wish he had, or think of clever things he might have said on our walk. I really liked him; I think I liked him even more because I could tell he was unsure, too. I wished I were brave enough to make it easy for both of us and just kiss him myself.
But I said, “So, um, I guess I’ll see you Saturday,” and I bounced up the porch steps with Spark—one, two, three, four, five—confident and fast, without teetering or anything. At the top, I turned and waved, smiling, because I could tell Coltrane was still there, watching me.
As soon as I was inside the door, I dialed Logan. “You are not going to believe what I said to Coltrane Winslow,” I said, and then I told her that I had asked him out and met him for coffee and said “depends what I’m touching,” and that he was walking me to the Mayburg place on Saturday. And even though I had chickened out and not kissed him, she screamed so loud throughout the entire description that my mom heard her through the phone and came into the living room to check on me.
“I’m fine, Mom,” I said, holding my hand over the mouthpiece.
“You’re totally going to lose it to Coltrane Winslow,” Logan was shrieking into the phone, loud enough for my mom to hear.
When we hung up, I went into the garage and felt around until I found my bike, still propped up against the wall where it had sat, untouched, for the last two years. I pulled it away from the wall and wiped the dusty seat with my hand, which I brushed off on my shorts. Then I climbed up and sat on my bike for what felt like hours but was probably ten minutes. Would it occur to me to ride it, and then would I force myself to open the garage door and careen forward into the driveway, across the sidewalk, into the street? How would I listen for cars if the breeze was fast or loud in my ears? Holding the handlebars, I thought of the eggs I’d thrown into the crosswalk with Dr. Sassoman. I put my right foot on the right pedal, and balanced my body by leaving my left foot on the ground. Then I focused as hard as I could on imagining what it would feel like to ride forward into the dark. Scary, and fast, and probably good, too.
Then I climbed off my bike slowly and carefully, and leaned it back against the wall. Maybe I’ll ask Sebastian to bring his bike over here someday and give me a courage transfusion. I wonder if Dee rides her bike, too; I’ve never asked her. I bet she does. Maybe even if they came over, it wouldn’t help, but I think I want to see them ride their bikes either way.
• • •
Baby Lily took her first steps the same week I turned sixteen. She was already one, and my dad had started worrying about the walking, even though Leah and Sarah and I agreed with Mom that she’d walk when she was ready. Why pressure even the tiniest person in our family to hurry up and achieve everything? It turns out we were right, because one afternoon we were sitting on the living room floor—my mom and Leah and me in a kind of triangle across from each other, encouraging Lily to toddle on her own—and then she did it. She stood up and walked from my mom to Leah and then from Leah to me. We were only two feet apart from each other, but still. Sarah took a bunch of pictures while we all clapped like Lily had just won an Olympic gold medal. Benj came down to see what the noise was about, and Lily was laughing and shouting like, Yeah, I told you so, and then she let go of my hands, probably so she could clap with us or race over to Benj, but in any case it made her fall over. And then she crawled across the room.
I wished so hard I thought I might black out: that she would be safe, that nothing like what happened to me or Claire would ever happen to her. And I knew, as the joy over her walking rose like a balloon, that there was still, in me and in all of us, the sinking, scary truth: we couldn’t be sure.
Logan was on her way to pick me up in her mom’s car. I climbed up onto the gold couch to wait for her by the window, listening to Benj singing “Oh, I Had a Little Chickie,” the warm-water, dancing, bang-bang version. Babiest Baby Lily was pulling herself up and standing at the edge of the couch, listening to Benj sing, then falling down, then pulling herself up again and falling again and screaming and pulling herself up again.
The doorbell rang and I got up to let Logan in.
“You ready?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I joked. “How good a driver are you?”
“Logan, be careful, please,” my mom said, coming to the door. “Emma, wear your seat belt and call me when you get there.”
Naomi’s voice was so small it sounded to me like it came from between the floorboards somewhere. “Emma? Can I come with you?”
I said yes fast, without asking Logan.
“She has to have a seat belt on in the backseat. Emma, make sure,” my mom said.
“Fine.”
Once we were all belted in like we were taking a trip to the moon, Logan backed out of the driveway so insanely slowly that I thought she might be kidding.
“Are you terrified or just protecting Naomi and me so my mom doesn’t kill you?” I asked her.
But she answered in her serious voice, “I’m just trying to be more careful, I guess. About everything.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “I’m trying to be less careful.”
“Well,” she said, “we should be good influences on each other, then.”
Then Naomi said from the backseat, “Do you guys know what puberty is?”
I could hear Logan stifling a laugh. “Um, yes, I think so.”
“Well,” Naomi said, “it’s disgusting.”
At that, Logan laughed out loud. Naomi was silent and we both wondered if she was offended. Logan said, “You should talk it over with Annabelle. Aren’t you guys the same age?”
“They are,” I said, and I thought about how much easier it would be for Naomi to be in middle school than it would be for Annabelle. It seemed really unfair.
As soon as we got to Annabelle’s and she came out, Spark went wild.
“Hi, Spark!” Annabelle said, dropping to her knees to smother him with kisses. “Hi, Emma.” Then she went back to Spark. “I missed you! I missed you,” she said, muffling the words into his neck.
“My friend Logan and my sister Naomi are with me, Annabelle,” I told her.
“Oh,” she said, not moving her face from Spark’s. “Okay. Hey, Naomi.” She didn’t say anything about Logan.
Her mom invited us in, and Logan and Naomi and I followed Annabelle toward her room, where she showed us all her stuff. Logan hung back a little bit.
“These are my robots,” she said, and I ran my hand along the surface of her desk, feeling a row of toys, lined up neatly. I picked one up, a square plastic robot whose head turned and who felt heavy, maybe battery-operated. “That one’s remote-control,” she said. “I can almost do it again, but not as good as before.”
“These are cool,” Naomi said shyly. And I thought again how different their lives were. And how unfair it was; Naomi could see all of Annabelle’s stuff, and Annabelle would never see her own toys or friends or her mom again, and she might lose her hearing, too. And why? I wanted so much to make it better for her.
“You have a great room,” Logan said.
“How’d you know which robot I was holding?” I asked Annabelle, impressed.
“I can hear which is which,” she said proudly. “And I memorized what order they’re in. Just like you told me! And look!” She pulled open a drawer in the dresser, and I reached my hand in and felt dozens of neatly labeled shir
ts.
“Damn!” I said, and she giggled, scandalized. “My mom and I labeled them,” she said.
I sat on her bed, and Annabelle must have heard the springs because she immediately said, “Spark can get on the bed if he wants.”
“Up, boy!” I told him, and he leapt gleefully onto the little bed, where Annabelle and I both sat for a minute quietly, petting him.
“I came because I wanted to talk with you about Spark,” I said.
“Is something wrong with him?” she asked, and her voice was so desperate I could hear every fiber of her fearful self in it.
“No, no! Not at all,” I said, putting my hand on her arm, feeling the soft, skinny shoulder, thinking how hard a time she had already had, and how hard it would still be for her. When she couldn’t hear anymore, what would colors be for her—music? touch? taste? I squeezed her shoulder a little. “My parents want me to go to guide dog school and get a trained guide dog at the end of the summer. And, well, Spark needs to be best friends with someone young and bouncy and playful. Someone who understands him as well as I do, and who can play with him more full-time than I can. Someone who really, really needs him.”
“Do you mean me?” Her voice had all the air squeezed out of it.
“I do mean you,” I said, and then the rest of the speech I had planned never happened, because Annabelle’s joyous screaming drowned me out and brought her mother running.
Obviously her mom had already told my mom it was okay, so it wasn’t like she was surprised, but she was weeping anyway. Naomi held my hand, shyly, or maybe proudly. She loved Spark, too, but she never showed a minute of jealously or unhappiness that I had decided to let Annabelle have him. Naomi is a good person.
“Emma,” Annabelle’s mom was saying, “it’s not possible for me to express how much it means for her—and us—to have a friend like you. It’s more than—”
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