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Then I try to stand up, and pain shoots through my leg.
Hitching up my pajamas, I see a small spot of blood has seeped through the T-shirt Alex wrapped around my calf. I know I should wash it or change the bandage or do something, but I’m too scared to see how bad the damage is. The details from the party—of screaming and shoving and dogs and batons whirling through the air, deadly—come flooding back, and for a moment I’m sure I’m going to be sick. Then the dizziness subsides and I think of Hana.
Our phone is in the kitchen. My aunt is at the sink, washing dishes, and gives me a small look of surprise when I come downstairs. I catch a glimpse of myself in the hallway mirror. I look terrible—hair sticking up all over my head, big bags under my eyes—and it strikes me as unbelievable that anyone could ever find me pretty.
But someone does. Thinking of Alex makes a golden glow spread through me. you. ”
“Better hurry,” Carol says. “You’ll be late for work. I was just about to wake “I just have to call Hana,” I say. I snake the cord as far as it will go and back up into the pantry, so at least I’ll have some privacy.
I try Hana’s house first. One, two, three, four, five rings.
Then the answering machine clicks on. “You’ve reached the Tate residence. Please leave a message of no more than two minutes. . . . ”
I hang up quickly. My fingers have begun to tremble, and I have trouble punching in Hana’s cell phone number. Straight to voice mail.
Her greeting is exactly the same as it’s always been (“Hey, sorry I couldn’t get to the phone. Or maybe I’m not sorry I couldn’t get to the phone—it depends on who’s calling. ”), her voice coming in fuzzy, bubbling with suppressed laughter. Hearing it—the normalcy of it—after last night gives me a jolt, like suddenly dreaming yourself back into a place you haven’t thought about for a while. I remember the day she recorded it. It was after school and we were in her room, and she went through about a million greetings before she settled on that one. I was bored and kept whacking her with a pillow whenever she wanted to try just one more.
“Hana, you need to call me,” I say into the phone, keeping my voice as low as possible. I’m far too aware that my aunt is listening. “I’m working today. You can reach me at the store. ”
I hang up, feeling dissatisfied and guilty. While I was in the shed last night with Alex, she could have been hurt or in trouble; I should have done more to find her.
“Lena. ” My aunt calls me sharply back into the kitchen just as I’m headed upstairs to get ready.
“Yes?”
She comes forward a few steps. Something in her expression makes me anxious.
“Are you limping?”she asks. I’ve been trying as hard as possible to walk normally.
so. ”
I look away. It’s easier to lie when I’m not staring in her eyes. “I don’t think “Don’t lie to me. ” Her voice turns cold. “You think I don’t know what this is about, but I do. ” For one terrified second I think she’s going to ask me to roll up my pajama pants, or tell me she knows about the party. But then she says, “You’ve been running again, haven’t you? Even though I told you not to. ”
“Only once,” I blurt out, relieved. “I think I may have twisted my ankle. ”
Carol shakes her head and looks disappointed.
“Honestly, Lena. I don’t know when you started disobeying me. I thought that you of all people—” She breaks off. “Oh, well. Only five weeks to go, right? Then all of this will be worked out. ”
“Right. ” I force myself to smile.
All morning, I oscillate between worrying about Hana and thinking of Alex. I ring up the wrong charge for customers twice and have to call for Jed, my uncle’s general manager, to come override it. Then I knock down a whole shelf of frozen pasta dinners, and mislabel a dozen cartons of cottage cheese. Thank God my uncle’s not in the store today; he’s out doing deliveries, so it’s just Jed and me. And Jed hardly looks at me or speaks to me except in grunts, so I’m pretty sure he’s not going to notice that I’ve suddenly turned into a clumsy, incompetent mess.
I know part of the problem, of course. The disorientation, the distraction, the difficulty focusing— all classic Phase One signs of deliria. But I don’t care. If pneumonia felt this good I’d stand out in the snow in the winter with bare feet and no coat on, or march into the hospital and kiss pneumonia patients.
I’ve told Alex about my work schedule and we’ve agreed to meet up at Back Cove directly after my shift, at six o’clock. The minutes crawl toward noon. I swear I’ve never seen time go more slowly. It’s like every second needs encouragement just to click forward into the next. I keep willing the clock to go faster, but it seems to be resisting me deliberately. I see a customer picking her nose in the tiny aisle of (kind of) fresh produce; I look at the clock; look back at the customer; look back at the clock—and the second hand still hasn’t moved. I have this terrible fear that time will stop completely, while this woman has her pinkie finger buried up her right nostril, right in front of the tray of wilted lettuce.
At noon I get a fifteen-minute break, and I go outside and sit on the sidewalk and choke down a few bites of a sandwich, even though I’m not hungry. The anticipation of seeing Alex again is messing with my appetite big- time. Another sign of the deliria.
Bring it.
At one o’clock Jed starts restocking the shelves, and I’m still stuck behind the counter. It’s wickedly hot, and there’s a fly trapped in the store that keeps buzzing around and bumping up against the overhanging shelf above my head, where we keep a few packs of cigarettes and bottles of Mylanta and things like that. The droning of the fly and the tiny fan whirring behind my back and the heat all make me want to sleep. If I could, I would rest my head on the counter and dream, and dream, and dream. I would dream I was back in the shed with Alex.
I would dream of the firmness of his chest pressed against mine and the strength of his hands and his voice saying, “Let me show you. ”
The bell above the door chimes once and I snap out of my reverie.
And there he is, walking through the door with his hands stuffed in the pockets of a pair of raggedy board shorts, and his hair sticking up all crazy around his head like it really is made out of leaves and twigs. Alex.
I nearly topple off my stool.
He shoots me a quick sideways grin and then starts walking the aisles lazily, picking up really random things—like a bag of pork skin cracklings and a can of really gross cauliflower soup—and making exaggerated noises of interest, like “This looks delicious,” so it’s all I can do to keep from cracking up laughing. He has to squeeze by Jed at one point—the aisles at the store are pretty narrow, and Jed’s not exactly a lightweight—and when Jed barely glances at him, a thrill shoots through me. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know that I can still taste Alex’s lips against mine, can still feel his hand sliding over my shoulders.
For the first time in my life I’ve done something for me and by choice and not because somebody told me it was good or bad. As Alex walks through the store, I think that there’s an invisible thread tethering us together, and somehow it makes me feel more powerful than ever before.
Finally Alex comes up to the counter with a pack of gum, a bag of chips, and a root beer.
“Will that be all?” I say, careful to keep my voice steady.
But I can feel the color rising to my cheeks. His eyes are amazing today, almost pure gold.
He nods. “That’s all. ”
I ring him up, my hands shaking, desperate to say something more to him but worried that Jed will hear.
At that moment another customer comes in, an older man who has the look of a regulator. So I count out Alex’s change as slowly and carefully as I can, trying to keep him standing in front of me for as long as possible.
But there are only so many ways you can count change for a five-dollar bill. Eventually I pass him his change
.
Our hands connect as I place the bills in his palm, and a shock of electricity goes through me. I want to grab him, pull him toward me, kiss him right there.
“Have a great day. ” My voice sounds high-pitched, strangled. I’m surprised I can even get the words out.
“Oh, I will. ” He shoots me his amazing, crooked smile as he backs up toward the door. “I’m going to the Cove. ”
And then he’s gone, pivoting out into the street. I try to watch him go, but the sun blinds me as soon as he’s out the door and he turns into a winking, blurry shadow, wavering and disappearing.
I can’t stand it. I hate thinking of him weaving through the streets, getting farther and farther away. And I have five more hours to get through before I’m supposed to meet him. I’ll never make it. Before I can think about what I’m doing, I duck around the counter, peeling off the apron I’ve been wearing since dealing with a leak in one of the freezer cases.
“Jed, grab the register for a second, okay?” I call. He blinks at me confusedly. “Where are you going?”
“Customer,” I say. “I gave him the wrong change. ”
“But—,” Jed starts to say. I don’t stop to hear his objections. I can imagine what they’ll be, anyway. But you counted his change for five minutes. Oh well. So Jed will think I’m stupid. I can live with it.
Down the street Alex is paused on the corner, waiting for a city truck to grumble past.
“Hey!” I shout out, and he turns. A woman pushing a stroller on the other side of the street stops, raises her hand to shield her eyes, and follows my progress down the street. I’m going as fast as I can, but the pain in my leg makes it difficult to do more than hobble along. I can feel the woman’s gaze pricking up and down my body like a series of needles.
“I gave you the wrong change,” I call out again, even though I’m close enough to him now to speak normally.
Hopefully it will get the woman off my back. But she keeps watching us.
“You shouldn’t have come,” I whisper, when I catch up to him. I pretend to press something into his hand. “I told you I’d meet you later. ”
He moves his hand easily to his pocket, picking up seamlessly on our little charade, and whispers back, “I couldn’t wait. ”
Alex waggles his hand in my face and looks stern, like he’s scolding me for being careless. But his voice is soft and sweet. Again I have the sensation that nothing else is real—not the sun, or the buildings, or the woman across the street, still staring at us.
“There’s a blue door around the corner, in the alley,” I say quietly as I back away, raising my hands like I’m apologizing. “Meet me there in five. Knock four times. ”
Then, more loudly, I say, “Listen, I’m really sorry. Like I said, it was an honest mistake. ”
Then I turn and limp back to the store. I can’t believe what I’ve just done. I can’t believe the risks I’m taking.
But I need to see him. I need to kiss him. I need it as much as I’ve ever needed anything. I have that same pressing feeling in my chest like when I’m at the very end of one of my sprints and I’m just dying, screaming to stop, to catch my breath.
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