The Someday Suitcase

by Corey Ann Haydu

  “They told me I’m amazing,” Danny says, and he does a perfect backflip underwater.

  I know that’s not exactly what they said, but I don’t push it. I want to relax into the sunny day and my yellow bathing suit and the ridiculous noises Danny makes when he’s trying to swim extra fast across the pool.

  “Let’s list everything we’re going to do next summer,” Danny says, even though school just began and summer ended only a few weeks ago.

  “But—”

  “Make our own Popsicles.” Danny kicks his feet, and more water hits my face. It’s nice and cool and feels so good I almost want to jump in too. It feels like summer in Florida most of the time, but it almost never is.

  “Sure,” I say. I kick my feet around too. When Danny helps me swim, I hold on to him around his waist and I do the kicking and he does the paddling and we move like we’re one person and not two. But I don’t want to do that today. Mom told me not to. She said that might be too much strain for Danny after the week he’s had.

  “Disney World,” Danny says.

  “You know that won’t happen,” I say. Disney World isn’t so far away, but Dad says it’s very expensive so I don’t think we’ll ever be able to go back.

  “If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?” Danny asks. We know each other well enough that he should be flat out of questions, but he never is. It’s one more thing I love about Danny. That he is curious about me in an endless, infinite sort of way. That he is cataloging my answers and making me feel like a more legitimate person. If I can answer all his questions, maybe I’ll know exactly what kind of girl I am.

  I am a girl who is almost eleven and likes cats.

  I am a girl who eats hot soup on humid days and is a really good big sister.

  I am a girl who has three pairs of red sneakers and never throws away my science notebooks.

  I am a girl who is good at noticing things other people miss.

  I am a girl who Danny knows very, very well.

  “You know the answer,” I say, because whenever it’s extra hot and our air conditioner breaks, like it always seems to do on the hottest days, we talk about where we’d like to escape to. On those days, even Danny can’t make Florida seem magical.

  “Antarctica?” Danny asks.

  “Antarctica,” I say, picturing penguins and snowfall and the way I imagine my nose would feel in the freezing-cold air.

  “I don’t know if we’ll ever get there,” he says, and it’s strange because that’s never what Danny says. He looks sad for the length of one eye blink; then he fills his mouth with water, flips onto his back, and spurts the water up and out like a whale. I marvel at how Danny can stay on his back, floating like that, for hours. His legs never even sink and the sun in his eyes doesn’t bother him, and I guess the strange, chemical taste of the pool doesn’t either. “What’s the number one thing you wish your parents would let you do?” he asks then.

  “Like, stay up late?” I say.

  Danny rolls his eyes and kicks his legs in the water like he’s throwing a tantrum at my lack of imagination. He has lists of things he wants to do, but I like to make lists of what we’ve already done, our Perfect Days together. I like things the way they’ve been. I wish my dad didn’t have to go on long trips in his truck and I wish Jake could go to school with me and Danny instead of his special school and I wish my hair was as curly as Elsa’s and I wish my drawings were as good as Ms. Fitch’s, and I wish I lived in snowy mountains instead of in sticky Florida, but mostly I’m happy with how things are.

  Like today, all I really want to do is sit by the pool while Danny floats and chats away. And that’s exactly what we’re doing, so I’m pretty lucky. I don’t even want to go to Antarctica today. I want to be right here.

  “You didn’t finish the summer list,” I say because it’s my job to keep Danny on track and it’s his job to make sure we get a little off-track, sometimes.

  “We should hike,” he says. “And go to another pool. Some fancy pool somewhere. I’m sure we know someone with a fancy pool.”

  “Like, everyone at school,” I say. Danny and I are the least fancy people in a town with a lot of fancy people. Everyone we know has a pool.

  It’s okay. We have each other instead, and it’s way better.

  “I don’t even remember anyone at school,” Danny says. “It’s been too long. I’ve forgotten them all.”

  “Not funny.”

  “What’d I miss anyway? I can’t get behind on everything.”

  “Let’s see,” I say. “Everyone’s spending a lot of time making fun of the new guy, Garrett. And everyone’s obsessed with playing dodgeball at recess all of a sudden. It started Tuesday, and now it’s the only thing anyone wants to do. I’m bad at it. And it hurts. Why do people play dodgeball? Hm. What else? Elsa’s petitioning against casseroles at lunch. Or she’s planning to, I guess. The air conditioner broke during social studies on Friday, so we got to have class in the gym. It was echoey. I liked it. And I tried to fill in your outline in art class, but it mostly wasn’t very good.”

  Danny smiles like these are all magical bits of information, as if I’m describing a dream he once had. Or a foreign country. Something to be missed and imagined and pined for.

  I can’t believe it was ten days ago that he fainted. It feels like it’s been a year.

  “You’ll be back Monday, right? It’s not like you can go to the pool but not to classes.”

  “Probably,” Danny says. “They said it’s not contagious. And look at me, not coughing all day!”

  “So that’s it?” I ask. I hold on to that probably tight, like it’s a raft. “Everything’s back to normal now?”

  “Biking,” Danny says, and like that, we’re not talking about school anymore. “I think we should get really into biking next summer.”

  “Fun,” I say. But there’s no way we’ll do it. Once the temperature is over ninety, it’s hard to do anything but stay inside or take lickety-split trips to the pool. And the temperature is always over ninety in the summer.

  Danny nods, but his left leg starts to sink. Then his right.

  Danny is the best swimmer I know.

  I leap into the water, dive deep down under to lift him up from below.

  Danny is sinking.

  I’m not a good swimmer, but that doesn’t matter right now. I make my body move the way Danny’s does—strong and confident and not scared at all.

  I look over to the lifeguard, but he’s too busy looking at his biceps. I try to yell for him to help, but my voice won’t come. It’s hiding, in fear. I’m about to flap my arms and give my hidden voice a stern talking-to, but as suddenly as they sank, Danny’s legs lift up and out of my hands. He flips onto his stomach and sticks his tongue out at me.

  I hate Danny sometimes.

  I reach for the edge of the pool and pull myself up and out. Danny climbs out too, laughing in that sidesplitting way, water coming out of his mouth, eyes shut tight with glee.

  “What is wrong with you?” I yell. The very few people at the pool finally notice us. I’m always surprised anyone’s here at all, so I’d forgotten we aren’t alone. The lounge chairs don’t have cushions. There are always leaves caught in the filters. Even in the relentless Florida sun, the water manages to stay icy cold. The concrete burns the bottoms of your feet and the texture cuts them up.

  One older woman peers at Danny from over her sunglasses, and a boy a few years older than us turns up his headphones so loud that we can hear the shadow of his music.

  “The look on your face!” Danny says, laughing harder still.

  “I thought your legs had frozen or something. That you were paralyzed all of a sudden.” I can feel the shakiness that comes before tears. It’s in my voice and my hands.

  “All that splashing and waving your chicken arms! You would have made it even worse if something were actually wrong, Clover. You could have killed me, if I were actually drowning. Never be a lifeguard.” He pushes
his wet hair back and climbs out of the pool to sit next to me. He chuckles and his whole body shudders with the joke that doesn’t feel like a joke at all.

  “You scared me! It was like when you fainted! You were fine and then suddenly you weren’t! Why would you do that to me?”

  “It was a joke,” Danny says, throwing his skinny shoulders back and his nose up in the air.

  “Not to me.”

  “Good thing you have me around,” Danny says. “You’re not fun without me.” He somersaults in the water, but my heart won’t slow down.

  Maybe he’s right, but I think he’d be in trouble without me too.

  “Next summer I’ll teach you the backstroke,” he says when he’s finally ready to go home. “Everyone needs a great backstroke.”

  I try to think of something I can teach Danny next summer, so that we stay nice and even. But I’m having trouble thinking of anything aside from Danny’s sinking limbs and rocky cough and missed school days and the fact that he never actually answered any of my questions about what’s been wrong with him and I have no idea whether I can stop worrying about him yet.

  “Who taught you how to swim?” Danny asks, at least the twentieth Danny question of the day.

  And I tell him, but he already knows the answer. He taught me how to swim, of course.

  5

  “What’s your favorite sea creature?” Danny asks in science class on Monday, putting his textbook up over his face so Ms. Mendez can’t see his lips move.

  I want to be listening to her descriptions of sea creatures with symbiotic relationships, but I’m so happy to have Danny back in school, I’ll answer any questions he asks. I’ve played six rounds of Snowman and missed probably twenty-seven interesting science facts.

  “Don’t say dolphin,” Danny says before I have a chance to answer. “Everyone says dolphin. You’re better than that.”

  “Sea horse,” I say. I don’t know anything about them, but I like their name and their tails and that they sound original enough to appease Danny. “You?”

  Danny gets a big goofy smile on his face. If Ms. Mendez asks him to lower his book, he won’t have time to get rid of the smile, that’s how big and wide it is. “Dolphins,” Danny says. “They’re amazing.”

  I roll my eyes and smile too, but I don’t have a book up, so I get a look from Ms. Mendez. I fold my lips in to show her how very quiet I can be. I kick Danny’s shins, and he coughs. I worry that I caused the coughing, that I made him sick again. I look his way, though, and he’s fine. His smile has shifted into a smirk, and he raises his hand.

  “Yes, Danny?” Ms. Mendez says. She hasn’t told him to put his book down, and I think she’s only pretending not to notice that he’s fidgety and chatty and not really paying attention. Maybe she’s happy to have him back, too.

  “May I go to the bathroom?”

  Ms. Mendez nods and writes a bathroom pass for him. “Try to gather yourself before you come back in, Danny.”

  He nods but his eyebrows wiggle too, and Ms. Mendez sighs but not in a very angry way. I know from experience—it’s not easy to stay mad at Danny.

  I look at the board. There are new science words up there that I don’t know, so I write them in my notebook with a promise to look them up on my own time. I also promise myself that starting tomorrow I’ll be back to my regular Clover self and make sure we don’t get too distracted by Danny’s games and jokes. We’ll go back to being Danny and Clover—Danny reminding me to have fun, me reminding Danny to focus. The week of doctors is over, and even Helen seemed calm on our ride to school this morning.

  “We’ll be taking a field trip to the aquarium to view some of these spectacular beings,” Ms. Mendez says. There’s a hooting and hollering epidemic. Everyone loves a field trip. I can’t wait to tell Danny when he comes back from the bathroom. He’ll pump his arm in the air and wiggle in his seat and ask a billion questions about what kind of trip it will be.

  I look at the door. He should be coming back any second.

  Ms. Mendez hands out permission slips and gives me an extra one for Danny without even explaining. Everyone knows that we’re a pair. She writes down page numbers to look at for homework and reminds us to start thinking about our science fair projects too.

  “We learn all these exciting scientific concepts that are in our world so that you see how far science reaches,” she says. “And your science fair project can be about anything. Any part of the whole wide world that interests you. Maybe it’s flowers or symbiosis or the sea, or maybe it’s something else entirely. Electricity. Technology. Anatomy. Chemical reactions. Solar power. Any question you have about the world that you can try to answer through science.”

  I write it all down—the homework and the field trip date in a few weeks and the science fair date. November 8. I’ll show Danny later. With me around, he won’t miss anything at all.

  I look at the door again. No one’s there.

  I watch Elsa pack up her books, and Levi cleans off his glasses, puts them back on, and straps his backpack over his shoulders. Elsa waves at me and tells me she likes my hair in a ponytail. I want to tell her I like her hair all the time, but I’m pretty sure that would sound stupid, so I say thank you instead.

  “Levi and I are getting ice cream after school,” she says. “You should come!” Elsa’s never asked me to hang out before, and a smile surprises my face. It is a good feeling.

  “That sounds fun!” I say, thinking of raspberry chocolate chip and vanilla with sprinkles and this weird basil ice cream that my mom likes. I’m about to tell Elsa about basil ice cream and how it sounds gross but it’s actually sort of good, but then I remember Danny and that he still isn’t here. Elsa says something else, but I don’t hear her. I nod anyway.

  Brandy puts on her cat-eared hoodie. I stay seated. I don’t want to pack up without Danny. My book bag is always bigger than his, so I take more books and he takes the heavier ones, and it works out perfectly every time.

  I stay seated even though no one else is.

  A girl with black hair and big ears, a few years younger than us, comes to the door instead of Danny. She says something to Ms. Mendez that makes Ms. Mendez motion at me with a come here finger. I leave my books and my backpack and my favorite green pen and head to the front of the room.

  Ms. Mendez puts a hand on my shoulder. “Clover, Danny’s at the nurse’s office and he’s asking for you. I’ll write you a note. Who’s your primary teacher? Mr. Yetur? I’ll let him know. It sounds like it’d be a good idea for you to be with Danny.”

  I nod.

  “You can leave your things here and get them later.”

  I nod.

  “I’m sure he’s fine, but you’re a good friend for being there for him.”

  I nod and nod and nod. But I don’t understand anything at all.

  Danny’s on his back on a cot in the nurse’s office. Mr. Purvis is mostly good for Band-Aids and temperature taking, but this time he’s got his stethoscope out and is listening to Danny’s heart. They both startle when I come in the door, like they were listening very, very closely to hear it beat.

  “I didn’t faint,” Danny says.

  “He lost his breath,” Mr. Purvis says. “On his way back from the bathroom.”

  Danny wheezes, like he has to prove it to me. It’s a sound that doesn’t sound human. It sounds like when the washing machine is broken or Dad’s blowing up an air mattress for when Danny sleeps over.

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Does Danny have asthma?” Mr. Purvis asks me, like I’m Danny’s mother or doctor or something.

  “I told him I don’t,” Danny says. He tries to get up on his elbows, but it makes him wheeze more. He leans back down.

  “I thought maybe Danny might have forgotten. I’ll talk to his parents about it.”

  “Are Helen and Ross coming to get him?” I ask, already picturing another lonely lunch by myself and a depressing art class with no one to color me in.

&nb
sp; “His mom’s on her way.”

  “I’m right here. Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Danny says, before the coughing starts.

  I move closer to him and he sits up so that I can rub his back, which my mom does for me when I have a bad cough or any sort of ache or pain. The coughing gets worse for a moment, then subsides. He takes a few deep breaths. There’s a wheeze, and another, before his breath sounds clear again.

  I’m starting to really hate the sound of Danny’s cough.

  “Does he have bronchitis?” I ask. Danny tenses up. “He’s had a cough for a while. He went to some doctors. Jake had bronchitis last year. It was mostly coughing and sleeping.”

  “You’re talking about me like I’m not here again!”

  “I’m sorry. Danny, do you think you might have bronchitis? Is that what it feels like?” I try to think about what Ms. Mendez says scientists do: they look at concrete facts and from those concrete facts come up with theories.

  “Maybe,” Danny says, but Ms. Mendez would say that maybe is never enough to prove a theory. “My stomach hurts. And my ears feel kind of clogged up.”

  I add clogged ears and stomachache to the list of Danny’s symptoms in my head.

  “Maybe you should go to my doctor,” I say. “She’s nice. She always asks what I want to be when I grow up, and she figured out Jake’s bronchitis really easily.”

  “Keep rubbing my back,” Danny says. “I can breathe when you do that.”

  I stop talking and rub his back. We stay like that for a while, Mr. Purvis taking Danny’s temperature and blood pressure and writing down the results. I sneak a peek. I know what the temperature means—100 degrees is a little high—but I don’t know what the blood pressure numbers mean. I’ll have to look it up.

  “Clover, you can go back to class. Danny and I can wait for his mom together,” Mr. Purvis says when Danny’s breaths get deeper and clearer.

  “No!” Danny says. He has a twinkle in his eye that Mr. Purvis is too blind to see.