He’s listing off body parts and treatments and tests, but what we need is a chart and an anatomy book and a plan. I look to the kitchen window, and Danny notices.
“It’s fine, Clo. I feel fine, I swear. You know my mom. She’s making a big deal out of nothing.”
“I have a doctor kit,” Jake says, finally deciding to look at Danny again. The Superman Band-Aid is clinging to his jeans, but just barely.
“I’ve had enough doctors,” Danny says. Jake huffs.
“Does your kit have a microscope?” I ask. Jake lies on his back and makes his whole body very stiff. Then he starts to roll, back and forth and back and forth, two and a half turns each way. We used to just roll like that down the hill behind Danny’s house, but lately Jake’s started doing it on flat surfaces too.
“I said no more doctors,” Danny says. “Let’s go in and watch a movie. Is your dad here? Maybe he’ll take us for ice cream.”
“Dad’s on the road this week, you know that,” I say. Danny always knows Dad’s schedule as well as I do.
“Doesn’t your mom have an ice-cream-making machine? Maybe she’ll let us use it.” Any other day this would be the best idea in the world. It’s sticky-hot out, and late Friday afternoons are the best times of the week to come up with new things to do. A whole weekend is stretching ahead of us, and we can fill it with anything we want. I think the Florida daily shower is coming in the next ten minutes, maybe less, so it’s time to move indoors.
But I don’t care about any of that. I want to know what Jake’s doctor kit has.
“I have a microscope, but we’re not allowed to use it without Dad,” Jake says. “That’s the rule.”
Jake loves rules.
I don’t usually mind, but today we can’t follow the rules.
“We need to use it,” I say. “We’ll look at Danny’s blood. Maybe we’ll see something.”
Jake stops his rolling.
“The rule is that Dad has to be here,” he says.
“Clover. There’s nothing to see. It’s blood. It’s gross,” Danny says. He leans back in the grass now too, so I guess he doesn’t feel the rain coming like I do. Usually, we feel it coming at the same time.
I’ll take a note about that, too. My science fair project is going to have so many notes I will have to pile them all into a bunch of different binders, all labeled and color-coded and scientific.
I know Danny better than any doctor ever could, and I feel so sure that if I could just see the blood they’re looking at, I’d know what’s happening with him. Ms. Mendez says that in science there’s the world we know and the world we don’t know. She says both worlds have explanations, but we just haven’t figured out the explanations for one of the worlds yet. She says science knows things we don’t.
Ms. Mendez says every creature has a job in the universe. My job is understanding Danny.
“I can see the rain coming,” Danny says. “It will be here in an hour.”
“Five minutes,” I say, lying next to him, watching gray invade the blue.
Jake plops himself in between us so that he can get a glimpse of the oncoming showers, too.
“How do you know when it’s coming?” he says, squinting, never quite understanding the game.
“We don’t, really,” I say.
We’re lined up nice and tight, and with our heads so close to each other, we can be sure we’re seeing the sky from the same angle. I like sharing that with them. I like knowing we’re all seeing the world the same way, for this one moment.
Then it starts to rain.
8
We have to wait for Jake to get to bed before we can use the microscope. He had a great afternoon and evening with Danny, and trying to get him to break the rules would have ruined that for him. There would have been a tantrum and Mom intervening and Dad getting an upset phone call from Mom while he’s on the road and the whole family having long talks about the way rules have to be flexible sometimes.
Instead we ate Mom’s summer pasta and made extra-sweet lemonade and played Monopoly for hours before bedtime. No one won, which is almost always true of our Monopoly games.
But as soon as Jake’s asleep, I beg Danny to go get the microscope with me.
It’s the only expensive toy we have, which is why Dad put such strict rules on it. It’s kept in the family room, in a cabinet, still nestled inside the box it came in. I’d forgotten all about it, but Jake never forgets about anything.
“This is stupid,” Danny says. I promised his mom we’d go to bed early since he’s supposed to be getting his rest, but he seems perfectly fine, so I push away the little bit of guilt I feel about it. We set the microscope up on the living room floor.
“I’ll feel better if I can see what they’re seeing,” I say.
“There’s nothing to see,” Danny says. “Look how well I’m doing.” He does ten jumping jacks, and I worry that the noise will wake everyone up. Danny is not good at staying quiet.
“They saw something.” Since Danny won’t answer my questions, I’m going to start making statements instead.
Danny doesn’t disagree. He does stop doing jumping jacks, though.
“We just need a drop of blood. We’ll put it in between these two slides, and we’ll be able to see some stuff. It won’t be perfect, but it’ll have to do.” I know that in science you’re supposed to do everything perfectly, but we don’t have all the tools that doctors have, so a messy blood sample will have to do. I remember Dad teaching us how to use the microscope two years ago—we looked at pieces of grass and moldy bread and some of Danny’s hair.
I know enough to know how to do this.
“You want me to give you blood?” He says it in a vampire voice—breathy and replacing want with vant and singing the words a little.
“One drop,” I say.
“Seriously, Clo?” I guess Danny thought this was all some big joke, but I’m so super serious. I’ve never been so serious. I stole a needle from Mom’s sewing kit, and I washed the slides to make sure they are shiny and clear for the sample. I washed my hands, too.
Danny looks pale, and I can’t stop thinking of all the days of school he’s missed. No one misses that much school if they’re not really sick. Danny keeps saying he’s fine, but it’s a lie, because if he was fine, he’d be in school, and I’m smart enough to know that.
“I need to see,” I say. “You have to let me see.” I don’t mean to cry, but I start to anyway.
Danny can’t stand it when I cry.
I hand him the needle.
“You have to stop crying first,” he says. He holds it between two fingers, and I can tell he’s really starting to hate needles. I look at his exposed elbow again, at the yellow-and-blue bruises from where they took blood, at the tender way he bends the joint, like it hurts whenever he moves.
It makes me cry more.
“Clover. You have to stop,” Danny says. “Think about penguins on motorcycles and cats in top hats.” He knows I love animals pretending to be humans. The tears dry right up. I can’t help but laugh.
Danny pricks his finger. He doesn’t make a noise, but his face sort of hiccups. I capture one perfect red drop on the glass slide.
That’s when I remember I hate blood. I almost drop the whole thing. There’s a little bubble of blood on Danny’s finger still, and he covers it up with a tissue.
It all makes me queasy.
Ms. Mendez says science isn’t always pretty. She says it isn’t all neat and clean.
“Science is for the brave,” she says.
I hate blood, but this is important. It’s for science. It’s for Danny.
I press a second slide on top and put the little blood sandwich under the microscope like they do on TV. Already I feel like a real scientist. I play with the focus and try to use the microscope the way Dad taught us: with my eye open, not scrunched against the lens.
At first all I see is a blurry mess. But I breathe and relax and move the focus very, very slowly. I’m p
atient.
“What are you even looking for?” Danny says. He’s fidgety, and he keeps hopping from one foot to the other. There’s a whine in his voice, which comes whenever he’s sleepy.
Then I see it: dozens of little pink circles, all the same size. They look like jellyfish floating in the water. They look as slow and sleepy as Danny did right after he fainted. They’re transparent, like the shiny, soapy bubbles we blow in the backyard. I smile. I’m the only person who knows that Danny loves blowing bubbles. Jake loves it too, and Danny always offers to do it with him.
I push Danny to the microscope to show him the beauty of what’s going on inside him. He stops breathing as he peers down through the glass.
“It’s pretty. It’s like a whole universe in that one drop,” I say, already eager to see more.
“Yeah.”
“Everything’s okay,” I say.
“I don’t really see anything, Clover,” Danny says. “I’m not sure you did it right.” He moves away from the microscope and flops onto the couch, and I think he’s about to pass out there. When Danny’s tired, he falls asleep quickly. We can be mid-conversation or in a car or at the pool, and he’s all of a sudden sleeping, with no warning at all.
I want one more glance at the drop of blood. I want to see again, with my own eyes, that everything’s okay.
I lean over the eyepiece, like my dad taught me to. I focus. I blink and relax. I smile at how every single thing in the world is made up of millions of other, smaller things. I don’t care that Danny said he couldn’t see anything. I see what I need to see.
Each circle is the same size and shape. Perfect pink bubbles.
Except for one.
I didn’t see it at first, or maybe it simply hadn’t bobbed into view, but there is one circle that is a little bigger and a little more square-looking. I focus the lens. I squint.
It’s all wrong, that one cell in the midst of all those perfect Danny cells.
I jump away from the microscope like if I stop looking at it, it will disappear.
I don’t want to tell Danny, but when I try to sleep, all I can think about are all those pretty pink bubbles and that one not-quite-right cell that doesn’t fit in and shouldn’t be there. I toss and turn and try to imagine unicorns and rainbows and sheep jumping over walls, but nothing works.
Danny snores on the floor next to me, bundled in a sleeping bag. He likes sleeping on the floor better than in his own bed, he says.
I wake him up when I can’t take the not-sleeping for a minute longer.
“You fell asleep,” I say.
“You woke me up,” he says.
We both laugh a little. Everything’s sort of funny after midnight.
“I saw something scary in the microscope,” I say.
Danny moves to sitting up and looks at me very seriously.
“You’re not a doctor, Clo,” he says. “And that microscope isn’t the fancy kind they had at the hospital. I don’t think you really saw anything, okay?”
I think about Danny’s words and the thing I saw. Everything was a little blurry and fuzzy and indistinct. He could be right. I might have seen nothing at all. Maybe everyone has some sort of square cells in their blood.
Ms. Mendez says that a good scientist listens to other scientists. A good scientist doesn’t get distracted by their own feelings. I try, try, try not to get distracted by all my fear. I know Danny is at least a little bit right.
“They’re not fixing you fast enough,” I whisper. It’s the real, true thing. More true than whatever I saw or didn’t see under the microscope.
“Mmmm,” Danny says, already drifting off, too tired to tell me that they will fix him, of course they will.
So I stay awake and take notes on everything I know about Danny and science and mysteries and hope.
I’m up all night.
List of Danny’s Symptoms
– Fainting
– Weak arms
– Weak toes
– Stuffed-up ears
– Runny nose
– Nightmares about fish
– Nightmares about aliens
– Nightmares about the way we all feel lost in the dark
– Sweating
– Aching
– The color of his face turning from wheat to white to a terrifying almost-blue
– A cough that sounds like a garbage truck
– A cough that sounds like the wind
– A cough that sounds like he is trying not to cough
9
Dad forgets towels when he brings Jake and me to the pool on Sunday.
“I’m out of practice,” he says with a Dad grin. I have missed Dad grins and Dad laughs and Dad burgers and Dad talks. He’s been gone for two weeks this time, since the day after our last cookout, and I’d forgotten the shade of his skin (mostly burned pink) and how exactly we talk to each other. I feel nervous around Dad whenever he gets home from his long trips, and desperate to tell him everything I can possibly think of, to make sure I get it all in before he leaves again.
“That’s okay! We can rent towels!” I say, a little too excited, and wrapping my arm around Dad’s arm like a vine. Jake’s having a don’t touch me day, so he walks ahead of us but stops in his tracks when he hears we’ll be renting towels.
“Those towels are dirty,” Jake says. “We can’t use those.”
“They’re fine,” I say. “They clean them with all kinds of chemicals, I bet. Right, Dad?” I stare up at my father. The sun hits his blond hair and turns it to gold.
“Sounds right to me, smarty-pants,” he says.
“Fine. We can rent them when we get my floaties,” Jake says.
Shoot. Dad won’t like that.
Jake knows how to swim just fine, but it started making him nervous, so Mom put floaties on his arms and promised him a scoop of ice cream for every half hour he stayed in the pool.
I know she hasn’t told Dad yet. There are some things we don’t tell Dad. “Because it’s easier,” Mom says, which I think means that she’s sad he’s not here more often.
Jake and I have never been allowed to use floaties. Dad says the only way to learn how to swim is to jump in and trust that you’ll float. I wanted the floaties. It’s part of why I never learned how to swim well. Danny acted as my floaties, and that’s still how I like to swim best.
But Mom lets Jake break the no-floaties rule.
“It’s different for Jake,” Mom says, and I guess I know that it is, but it bothers me sometimes anyway. It’s hard to always stay smiley about things that feel unfair.
“You don’t use floaties, Jake,” Dad says, heading up to the rental stand.
“Yes, I do,” Jake says. I want to fade away. I hate these moments—when I have to explain something to Dad about the new way our family works when he’s gone. It makes me miss him even more. I stay quiet.
“You absolutely do not, Jakey,” Dad says. “It’s okay to be scared, but you’re a good swimmer. You can trust your own arms to hold you up.”
“First we put on sunblock, then we rent floaties, then we get in the water, and after half an hour I get a scoop of ice cream,” Jake says. He doesn’t sound upset, just matter-of-fact, like he’s reading a grocery list. Dad looks to me.
“Clo?”
“I’m not using floaties,” I say.
“What about Jake?” Dad scratches behind his ear like a dog. It’s something he does when he’s getting upset but doesn’t want to show it. I do the same thing when I’m trying not to show my feelings.
I wish Mom had remembered to tell Dad about Jake and the floaties before we got here. I don’t want Dad to be upset on one of his few days with us. Mom says when Dad’s home we have to work to make memories that he can carry with him in his pocket on the road. I’m worried that if today goes badly, Dad will leave again in a few days with empty pockets.
“Jake’s been using them some,” I say, because there’s no way to lie with Jake around. “He likes them. I’m
sure Mom meant to tell you. Or probably she was going to get him to stop doing it after a few days.” My voice is shaking, and Dad hears it too. He softens.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s all right. I missed a little change in the routine. That’s okay. We’ll get Jake some floaties. I’ll remember for next time. But make sure you two don’t stop liking ice cream or burgers or singing show tunes in my truck, okay?” Dad ruffles my hair and I nod big and hard so he knows how much I mean it.
Dad gets towels and floaties and we set ourselves up in old plastic chairs a little bit out of the sun. The chairs squeak and settle and the umbrella has a hole in it, but I like how familiar it all is. Jake jumps into the water, floaties and all, and I have a minute alone with Dad. He looks over at me and smiles.
“How’s it been, Clo? Catch me up.” The sun is so hot my knees and back are already slippery with sweat. The smell of chlorine is a nose-wrinkling level of strong, but this is the best part of my time with Dad. I take a deep breath, like I always do when he says this to me.
“I grew half an inch in the last month,” I say. It’s one of the things I’ve been waiting to tell Dad. I have a whole list in my head. I gather up bits and pieces from each day and store them to tell Dad all about later. I’m doing it for Danny now too, with school. My brain is working hard, trying to remember enough for me, Dad, and Danny. “And there were three days last week where it didn’t rain at all, and I knew it wasn’t going to rain because my ankles didn’t get that achy feeling, so now I’m sure that definitely works. And we’re learning about symbiosis in science class, and I think it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. And I started working on my science fair project. I think it’s going to be—it’s a big project.”
Dad looks at me like I’m a constellation he’s still trying to place in the sky. I glow from how special he thinks I am.
“What else?” Dad says. He sneaks a peek at Jake, who’s twirling in circles in the pool.
He sounds so curious, so serious, when he asks that I say the words I’ve been holding in and swallowing down and trying to make leave my mind.
The Someday Suitcase Page 5
