And then I kissed him like I wanted to make both of our med sensors explode.
“Whoa,” Lane said after we pulled apart.
I smiled at him.
“We don’t have to stop,” I said.
“Um, we probably do.” He motioned toward his silicone bracelet. “I’m pretty sure any more of that would set off nuclear warheads.”
“Yoga breaths,” I told him. “Nice and slow. In and out.”
“Who knew Wellness would be good for something?” he joked.
“Shush, I’m trying to kiss you,” I complained.
And then my lips met his and we didn’t say anything at all.
FRIDAY WAS THE next collection, and of course Nick backed out at the last minute. Lane said he’d come with me, but I told him it was okay, I’d rather go on my own.
I hadn’t been in the woods since the night of the toga party. I’d been avoiding them, the way I’d avoided everyone. But Charlie wouldn’t have wanted to ruin the woods for me. So I squelched my nerves down into a tiny, manageable little ball, and set out that Friday night with my backpack and knit cap, walking the familiar path with my flashlight illuminating the trees. I was trying to make peace with the woods, and to say good-bye to them.
It was almost December, and a lot of the trees were skeletons now. It was easier to see the sky through the branches, and I could even make out some stars. I read once that we’re all just dead stars looking back up at the sky, because everything we’re made of, even the hemoglobin in our blood, comes from the moment before a star dies.
I don’t know why I was thinking about that, but it made a lot of sense right then that stars glow so brightly in their instant of death, and that Charlie’s music was him glowing, and that the stars in the sky would one day burn out and become atoms inside of people who were sick with diseases we couldn’t yet imagine.
Michael was waiting for me in the clearing, hunched inside a heavy coat, even though it wasn’t that cold out.
“Hey,” I said, waving my flashlight beam up and down in greeting.
He turned, and there was a strange expression on his face.
“Just you?” he asked.
“Nick is the worst business partner ever,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Which is particularly ironic, since he’ll probably wind up running a business.”
Michael coughed then, and it didn’t sound good.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Not really,” he said. “Sick.”
“Cold season, huh?” I asked.
He stared at me, and I realized that he didn’t have any bags with him. He hadn’t brought our stuff.
“TB, actually,” he said, with this unsettling half smile.
We stared at each other in the dark, and I didn’t know what he wanted. I didn’t know what to say. And I didn’t know why I felt so nervous all of a sudden.
“I’m sorry,” I offered.
“You’re sorry?” Michael laughed in a way that scared me. “Sorry? What does sorry do? Can it get my job back? Can it pay my rent? Or my child support?”
“No, I—” I broke off, unsure what I was going to say.
“What?” he said, raising his voice. “No what?”
“No, it can’t, but there’s a new medication,” I said.
“Oh, that’s right, the so-called protocillin. If that’s even real,” he spat, taking a step toward me. “But it doesn’t matter if the medicine is real or not. They’re not giving it to people like me for months. I have to sit and wait. I could die before they have enough.”
Michael was really frightening me. He didn’t look scared, he looked furious. And then he took another step toward me.
“You did this!” he accused. “You gave this to me! My life is over. I can’t see my kid. I lost my job. I’m not supposed to leave my house. And I’m going to die from this! I’m going to die alone!”
I stumbled back, trying to get away. But he lunged toward me, his fist connecting with my rib cage so hard that I couldn’t breathe, and everything seemed to shatter. I felt myself fly backward, and there was a sharp crack against the back of my head, and something sticky, like sap, but which probably wasn’t sap.
And then pain. So much pain. Everywhere, like, I was drowning in it. Like galaxies were collapsing inside of me, the stars burning out, even though they were already dead. I was filled with twice-dead stars, and everything began to go black around the edges, and I tried to say something, anything, but all I could do was curl up on my side and cough in violent, gut-wrenching spasms. I could hear Michael saying, “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” and the beep-beep-beep beeeeeep! of my med sensor on high alert, and then darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
LANE
SADIE SAID TO meet her in the gazebo after the collection, but it was getting late and she still wasn’t back. I waited, wondering where she was, and wishing we had cell phones, so I could have texted.
I didn’t know what would happen if she missed lights-out. She could probably figure out some excuse. I just hoped she was okay. She’d seemed more tired lately, and more pale than usual, but I was probably imagining things, because of Charlie.
I was scaring myself, because I was alone in the dark and it was late and starting to get cold. Sadie would be back any minute, with that silly red cap on her head, her backpack heavy with contraband, rolling her eyes over how that black market guy hadn’t shown up on time. And then she’d tuck her chin against my jacket and grin up at me, and we’d share a quick good-night kiss before dashing inside with barely enough time before the nurse check to climb under the covers still dressed.
I was listening to this playlist I’d made for her, headphones clamped over my ears. It was the story of us in music, except it wasn’t finished yet. I had this plan that I’d add a new song every month, so that the playlist would keep going as long as we did. It was sort of an electronic version of adopting a tree, which I’d done in the Carbon Footprint Awareness Club, but only because it had looked good, not because I’d actually wanted to. Keeping a playlist alive sounded much more me.
I stared across the quad, at the clock tower. Five minutes until lights-out. And as much as I didn’t want to, I knew I should go inside. But I didn’t budge.
Come on, Sadie, I thought, fiddling with my iPod.
Sadie will be back before this song ends, I thought.
And then: Sadie will be back before this next one ends.
But she wasn’t.
The song was halfway through when the nurses came running out of the cottages. They raced toward the woods, their expressions grim. I glanced back at the dorms, at all the windows lit, with everyone watching. At the kids spilled out onto the porches in their pajamas.
And then I took off my headphones and heard that dark and terrible alarm.
Beep-beep-beep beeeeep! Beep-beep-beep beeeeep!
It was coming from the woods. And I knew, beyond a doubt, that it was coming from Sadie.
Everything stopped cold, except time somehow marched grimly forward, because my heart was hammering, and there was a pounding in my ears and my head, and I knew, I just knew, that something was deeply wrong with Sadie. Panic rolled over me, a dense fog of it, choking me, and blanketing everything.
I scrambled to my feet in the moonlight, desperate for that horrible beeping to stop, even though what I really wanted was for it never to have happened in the first place.
The nurses raced into the woods. Nurse Jim clicked on a flashlight, and I didn’t even think before I plunged in after them.
I didn’t have a compass, but I remembered the general direction, the clearing she’d pointing out to me. I didn’t know if she’d be there, but I had to try.
“Wait!” I called.
Nurse Jim turned.
“Lane, get back inside!” he said, as a tall, brunette nurse crashed into the woods behind me.
“I can’t get a read on this location,” she said, shaking her head. “Signal’s too weak out here.”
�
�None of us can,” Nurse Jim said. “We’ll have to spread out and hurry.”
He glared at me.
“Back inside, now!” he insisted.
“I know where she went!” I said desperately. “Please! I can show you.”
I didn’t want for them to say that I couldn’t. I just started running. My lungs burned, and my chest ached, and I didn’t realize how painful it would be until I’d already begun. I put my hand against a tree, catching myself, and taking a ragged breath.
“It’s this way,” I said, pushing forward and willing myself to keep going as I raced toward that terrible beeping.
I knew something was wrong. And I wanted to kick myself for not realizing it earlier. For not going with her. For not insisting. And God, I wanted to kill Nick.
“Sadie!” I called. “Sadie!”
But part of me knew she wouldn’t answer.
It was so dark in the woods, even with the thin, white beams of the nurses’ flashlights. I could hear other nurses shouting to each other about how they couldn’t get enough reception to track the signal as the nightmarish beeping continued, getting louder and louder until the woods were pulsing in alarm.
The clearing Sadie had told me about was just ahead, and I hurried toward it.
“Sadie?” I called again.
And then I saw her. She was curled on the ground at the base of a tree, an empty backpack next to her. At first I thought she was sleeping, but then the beam of Nurse Jim’s flashlight passed over her, and I saw that the back of her head was matted with blood. It wasn’t the bright red of arterial blood. This was a different kind, darker and more urgent.
“No,” I whispered, sinking to the ground next to her.
There was a deep gash on her scalp, like she’d been thrown against the tree, and she was so pale that her skin was almost translucent.
I cradled her in my arms. She was so cold, and her breathing was so shallow, but she was still alive.
“Sadie,” I said. “It’s me. Please. Sadie.”
I was gasping for breath, and my heart had never beat so fast or so loud or so close in my ears.
Softly, Sadie moaned.
“You have to step back,” one of the nurses said, but he couldn’t have meant me. And then his hands were on my shoulders, and he was lifting me away from her, and I was crying and screaming, and I couldn’t catch my breath, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered except Sadie being okay and not dead.
“What was she doing out here?” one of the nurses wondered.
Everything was starting to spin, and I leaned one hand against a tree and pressed the other against my hammering heart, struggling to breathe.
“Is she going to be okay?” I asked. “Please? Anyone?”
“You’ve got to calm down,” a nurse told me. “Here, this will help.”
I felt a puncture, and then the whole world melted away.
I WOKE IN a hospital room in Latham’s medical building. It was just after four in the morning and eerily quiet. Something itched at my noise, and I reached up and unclipped an oxygen tube.
I was still woozy from the sedative, and it took an embarrassing amount of effort to push myself out of bed and stand without swaying. My brain was so foggy that I couldn’t quite remember why I was there, or where there was. And then the fog cleared, and the events of that night hit me full force.
Sadie, lying on the ground in the woods. That gash on the back of her head. Her shallow breaths. The way the nurses had surrounded her like she wasn’t a girl anymore but an emergency.
I had to find her. I had to make sure she was okay.
I shuffled into the quiet hallway. The nurse’s station was at the far end, and a television played softly, flickering through the glass barrier.
I’d never been upstairs in the medical building before. It was a small ward, not a full hospital, and I found Sadie’s name scribbled on the door plaque two rooms down from mine.
I tiptoed in, hoping desperately that I’d find her awake. I pictured her laughing at my terrible bedhead, then smiling sleepily and asking if I wanted to snuggle in with her until the nurses caught us.
But of course that didn’t happen.
She was asleep, or unconscious, I’m not sure which. She looked so small in the hospital bed, and so delicate, with a collection of wires and tubes disappearing under the blanket. She looked nothing at all like the red-lipped girl in the knit cap who’d tramped through the woods at night with a backpack full of contraband.
“Hi,” I whispered, but she didn’t respond.
I reached for her hand, wanting to hold at least that much of her. I remembered writing my phone number across the back of it, and feeling her fingers flutter across my jaw as we kissed in the woods. I remembered twisting around on the swing ride at the Fall Fest, reaching toward her as she held out her hand, daring me to grab it and get a medium-soda-sized wish.
I could have used that wish now. But something told me it wouldn’t have been big enough.
I don’t know how long I sat there before Sadie moaned softly and opened her eyes.
“Hey, you’re awake,” I said, squeezing her hand.
She winced, her face pale and drawn.
“Where am I?” she whispered.
“Medical building.”
She closed her eyes again.
“Everything hurts,” she whispered. “I think I’m actually made of pain.”
I looked around for something that would help, and then I spotted it.
“Morphine pump,” I said, guiding her hand over the button. “Nick would be so jealous.”
I waited for her to say something else, but a nurse came in. She was young and brunette and pretty, and she smiled when she saw that Sadie was awake.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” she said, and then she spotted me and frowned at my hospital gown.
“Out,” she insisted, daring me to argue. I staggered to my feet, still a bit unsteady from the sedative.
“I’ll be back,” I promised Sadie, glancing over my shoulder, but her eyes were closed again, and I couldn’t tell if she’d heard me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
SADIE
I WOKE TO beeping and pain and the smell of hospital. Lane was there, or maybe I just imagined him, telling me that I was in the medical building, that I was still at Latham. But it was the wrong part of Latham, the place you never wanted to wind up.
There was the pinch of an IV, and liquid flowing through it. It was all so hazy, so out of focus, a bad photograph of a blurry moment, and then darkness.
It felt like there were knives inside of me, straining to get out. My head throbbed as though something had punched a hole in it, and I imagined myself escaping through that hole, flying outside of the pain, and my body, and being done.
But I wasn’t done. I had so much left here. I had . . . something in my hand. A button. And the nurse was talking to me, saying . . . saying to push the button for morphine.
She explained as she helped me use it that it would take away the pain. But it wouldn’t, because I’d been at Latham long enough to know that pain can’t be taken away. It has to leave on its own. And I wasn’t sure mine was the type of pain that wanted to go away.
WHEN I WOKE again, it felt much later, but I wasn’t sure. I blinked up at the ceiling, trying not to cry from the horrible ache in my chest.
I groaned softly, and Lane was there again, bending over me with an anxious look in his eyes.
“Hi,” he said.
“You’re here,” I whispered.
“They tried to kick me out, but I put up a fight,” he said cheerfully, and then shrugged. “Not really. I’m two rooms down, I just snuck over.”
“Breaking the rules,” I murmured.
“Well, I learned from the best.”
Lane showed me how to raise my bed so I could sit up without actually sitting, and I realized he was wearing a hospital gown.
“You’re hurt,” I mumbled.
“Nah. They gave me a s
edative and brought me up here to sleep it off. I’m pretending it hasn’t worn off yet, so I get to stay,” he said with a lopsided grin.
I tried to smile back, but I probably just winced.
Lane held a cup of water to my lips, and I attempted to take a sip.
“Wow, hot,” he joked as it spilled, wetting the front of my hospital gown.
“Keep it in your pants. I mean, gown,” I said.
Lane chuckled, then suddenly went serious.
“Sadie, what happened last night?” he asked.
At first, I was confused. What had happened? I was in the woods—and then—and then—oh God.
“Michael,” I whispered, the horror of it flooding back until I was drowning in the memory of it.
I told Lane everything that I remembered: that I’d gone alone to meet Michael, and that he’d told me he had TB, and it was my fault.
“That’s bullshit,” Lane said. “Who knows where he caught it?”
“I know,” I said. “But it was—he wasn’t himself. He was in a rage. He attacked me.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Lane said, shaking his head.
“Marina was right,” I murmured, suddenly exhausted from so much talking. “People are afraid of us. We’re their monsters. Except they’re the ones who are afraid of what they don’t understand. They’re the ones who ruin everything.”
I started to drift back to sleep.
“Sadie?” Lane said.
“Wake me when the nightmare’s over,” I told him, and then I floated off on a sea of morphine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
LANE
I WANTED TO stay with Sadie, but Dr. Barons kicked me out, promising that her family would be there soon. When I’d asked him if she was going to be okay, he’d given me a patronizing smile and said that he sure hoped so.
It felt strange exiting the medical complex and walking through Latham’s quad and pathways on a Saturday afternoon, while everyone was lying in the grass with music and books and board games. I was out of sync with Latham House again, I realized. No longer a part of its rhythms.
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