“For what?”
The table is cleared, but I sort of keep wandering between the kitchen and the dining room anyway, traveling the same path even though there’s nothing at all for me to carry.
“I want you to be prepared for the possibility that Danny won’t be around as much. I want you to even try to be prepared for the possibility that Danny . . . that he won’t get better.”
She says it plain and simple. It’s not meant to be cruel, but it is.
Mom is saying impossible things in our dirty kitchen, and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to keep down my pasta.
She’s always talked to me this way. I remember when she first told me about Jake.
“Jake has a type of autism, and that’s going to be challenging sometimes.” I nodded. “I know that it’s easier if you and Jake have all the same rules and all the same punishments and if everything’s nice and even and fair. But that’s not how it’s going to be, because Jake’s going to need different things than you. You’re going to be mad about it sometimes, and that’s just fine. If you’re mad, you come tell me and Dad so you don’t take it out on Jake. But we’re going to ask you be to understanding even when he sometimes won’t understand.”
Back then, I liked the way Mom said things in nice clear words. I liked that she’d answer all the questions honestly, even when she knew I wouldn’t like the answers. I liked that she never pretended things were going to be easier than they were. It meant that on all the really great days with Jake, I could feel happy, and on the hard days I didn’t feel so disappointed.
But right now, I hate the clean, crisp words Mom’s using. They’re icy and awful.
“You’re wrong,” I say. I try to sound just as sure and clear and direct as she did. “I have a solution. We need to get to the Somerset Clinic in Vermont. And once we get to Vermont, everything will be fine. In Vermont they can tell Danny what is wrong, and they’ll find out how to fix it and everything will go back to exactly the way it’s always been.”
“Vermont?” Mom says. She has a sad look on her face, and I know it’s because she thinks I don’t understand, but it’s definitely Mom who doesn’t understand.
“The Somerset Clinic,” I say, making sure she hears every word and how beautiful it sounds. “It’s in Vermont, and I looked it up online and it’s perfect. Levi’s mom, Rachel, told me about it. It’s going to fix everything.”
Mom’s forehead wrinkles and her head cocks to the side.
“I don’t know what that is, honey.”
“I keep trying to tell you! And stop calling me honey!” I say, louder than I intended.
“Okay. Deep breaths,” Mom says. “Let’s take some nice deep breaths.”
Jake appears at the door to the kitchen. He doesn’t like yelling unless he’s the one doing it. Usually I would never yell when Jake’s around, but right now I’m unstoppable. I’m going to yell. I’m going to yell loud.
“You’re not listening! You need to help us get to Vermont! If we can get to Vermont, everything will be fine!”
Mom doesn’t reply.
I don’t know if she doesn’t believe me or doesn’t believe in the clinic or maybe just hates Vermont. But I do know that she’s already decided not to help.
“Danny’s parents are doing absolutely everything they can,” she says. “You have to trust that.”
But I don’t trust that. If they were doing everything they could, Danny would be in Vermont and not spending so much time in stupid hospital beds eating Jell-O and rubbery chicken and iceberg lettuce.
That’s when I know it for absolutely sure, even though I mostly knew it already: it’s up to me to get Danny better.
List of Cures Danny’s Doctors Have Tried
– Antibiotics
– Two hospital stays
– IVs full of things to make his blood better
– Antihistamines
– Steroids
– Injections that Danny says don’t hurt but I think must hurt
– Going to other doctors and seeing if they can fix him
– A wheelchair
16
The sound of Danny not breathing is awful and wakes me up in the middle of the night when I sleep over on Friday night. I haven’t told him my symbiosis hypothesis yet. I think it needs further testing, so I begged and pleaded to spend the night at Danny’s, even though Mom thinks I should be trying to “get a little distance.”
I promised her I’d invite Elsa over for a sleepover next weekend. She sighed and said okay and kissed my forehead to let me know it really was okay and she’s on my side, even when it seems like she’s not.
Danny and I helped Ross make pizzas and after we researched more about Vermont and the Somerset Clinic, and I convinced him to show me pictures of the grandfather who was once sick like Danny. He didn’t let me ask his parents all about the grandfather, so there are still gaps in my research, of course.
Ms. Mendez says an ideal experiment doesn’t have any gaps, but almost no experiments are ideal.
I’m not thinking of Ms. Mendez now, though. The sounds Danny’s making are so terrible they push all the dreams and thoughts and wonderings right out of my brain. There’s only room for fear.
It’s a sputtering, trying-too-hard noise. He’s in the room next door because Helen thought if we stayed in the same room Danny might not get his rest. Listening to Danny is like listening to a storm right on the other side of the wall, so I grab my notebook from under my pillow and rush to him before anyone else wakes up and gets there.
Even worse than the sound of his tortured breathing is the color of his face—a terrible almost-purple that looks even scarier in the orange light of his nightlight (the one he made me promise to never tell anyone about). The new shade makes me freeze in the doorway. I’m not sure I can be in the same space as someone with purple skin, someone making awful wheezing sounds. For an instant, I forget he’s Danny at all. He’s only a person I want to get away from.
Then I tell myself, That’s your best friend. Do something, and my body finally listens to my mind and I run to his side.
Danny splits in the middle, his head and neck and torso rocking toward his knees, like that might help the cough come out more easily. I guess I’m getting here just in time.
I tell the fear in me to quiet down and I put my hand on his back and wonder if he’s choking on something in particular or nothing at all. I like explanations, but with Danny it’s so hard to find them. I hear Ms. Mendez in my head, telling me explanations are there, whether I have them yet or not.
It calms me down. A little. I focus on the science and research and my method. I am testing to see if my symbiosis theory is right. Maybe I can be the one who fixes Danny.
I think I should also make a special section in my research notebook about other people who have had weird symptoms for no reason. Historical context, Ms. Mendez called it. Precedent. I have so much more work to do, if I want to do this well. When we get to the clinic, I think I’ll meet a lot of people with mysterious illnesses, and if I can learn about them, it will help me learn about Danny.
I wish we were at the clinic right now, getting answers, instead of here in Danny’s bedroom, getting more questions.
Jake likes me to rub his back at night sometimes too. It calms him down when he’s having nightmares or tantrums or a hard time sleeping. I wish I were good at more things than back rubbing and knowing what Danny and Jake need, but at least there’s a cricket buzz outside the window and the perfect slant of moonlight coming through.
Maybe this is who I’m meant to be—a person who makes other people feel better.
In the ecosystem, every creature has a role, and I think this might be mine. It makes me a little sad—I wish my role were something more exciting, like discovering a second moon or saving whales from extinction, but I try to remember that every single role in the ecosystem matters, even if the job is small and silly-seeming.
I bet the shrimp in the eel’s mouth doe
sn’t think it has the most exciting job, either.
Danny’s breath gets clearer, crisper. It starts to sound less like a grumbling monster and more like a person.
His face returns to a color that isn’t that terrible purple, and the wildness that’s in his eyes whenever the illness reaches some terrifying height is gone too. He’s Danny again.
“You saved me,” he says.
“Did you swallow something? Were you eating in bed? Was there something in your throat? Are you allergic to something?” I ask. I still want reasons, even if I know they’re not always there.
“I couldn’t breathe,” Danny says. There’s a crease in his forehead where wonder lives. It deepens when we see bright rainbows from our lawns or elephants at the zoo. He is full of it now, the wonder, but I can’t imagine why. I’m the only thing he can see.
“That was like magic,” Danny says.
My palms are wet and my heart is loud.
I write magic? in the margin of my notebook, and I know it’s the moment I’m supposed to tell Danny what I realized at the aquarium, what I think I just proved right this second, that our symbiosis is so much bigger than the statue game and the fact that I like pizza crusts and he likes pizza toppings. But I’m not ready. I need more time to be regular Clover before I become Possibly Lifesaving Clover.
“You’re okay,” I say, instead of telling him all the things I should be telling him. “You’re going to be okay. We’ll tell the people in the clinic all about your cough.”
Danny puts his hand on his chest and his mouth turns down. He’s tearing up. It’s probably because things seem sadder at night than they do during the day. But still, Danny doesn’t usually cry.
“We need to get there soon,” he says, and I think about what Mom said the other day—that Danny might not get better. I take his temperature and wish I could look at his X-rays and his bloodwork and his grandfather’s medical records and make sense of it all. I wish I knew more about symbiosis and immunodeficiencies, which is a word I have heard Helen and Ross mutter, and it took me three times to write it down correctly. I wish I knew how lungs work and what things someone needs in their blood to make their blood perfect.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Danny says when he’s drifting back off to sleep.
“I’m glad I’m here too,” I say, meaning something entirely different.
I flip though the notebook in my lap while Danny starts to snore. I know about correlation and causation from Ms. Mendez. Just because Danny feels better when I’m around doesn’t mean I’m making him better. For a hypothesis to be good, it has to show causation. Maybe there is no causation. Maybe my hypothesis is all kinds of wrong. Maybe this is all random, a faulty experiment. Danny and I spend a lot of time together, so statistically speaking it would make sense that his good days are with me. He’s had bad days with me too. When he first fainted, I was right next to him.
I lean to his chest. His heart is powerful. His breathing is clear. His skin is rosy and sweet-smelling, a fact I’m a little embarrassed to know. I rest my hand on his forehead. It’s cool and dry and exactly like mine.
“Good scientists follow their instincts,” Ms. Mendez says, and I know what my instincts say.
I am saving Danny.
But now that Danny feels better, I’m the one who’s unsteady.
I think it might be happening. The thing Ms. Mendez talked about. The unexpected; the unlikely; the startling.
17
We sit on opposite sides of the table and pick at what we call the Menagerie of Awful, which is a collection of everything the food court has to offer: plasticky pizza, Chinese food so salty the taste makes us groan and stick our tongues out, McDonald’s fries, chicken fingers, cinnamon-sugar pretzels, an enormous vanilla milk shake, and a bacon-bacon-bacon burger with a side of guacamole. These are the only foods Danny claims aren’t upsetting his stomach today.
Helen and Ross never found out about Danny’s coughing fit last night or the way he soaked through his sheets with sweat before I showed up. That’s the only reason they’ve let us come to the mall.
“This tastes awesome,” Danny says, licking ketchup off his hand and moaning at the goodness of milk shakes. “I think it’s finally over. I think I got better all on my own. I was scared for a second there, Clo. I didn’t want to tell you, but I really was scared.”
I have to tell him.
I push fries and chicken fingers closer to him. I think he’ll need fries and chicken fingers for this.
“I found a pattern,” I say. “I found what helps you feel better.”
“I am better,” Danny says. “You don’t need to do research on me anymore, because I’m not sick anymore. My cough went away and my throat doesn’t hurt, and my ears and nose are all clear and my stomach doesn’t ache, and I bet if they took blood again, they’d see that there’s nothing to worry about. I can tell. I’m better.”
“I don’t think you’re better,” I say, and my heart breaks to have to make his smile disappear. “I think you just feel better.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?” Danny asks, but he knows it isn’t. He sighs. He fidgets. He eats more fries. “Is it hamburgers?” he asks. “Because this burger is awesome, and I’m really sick of all the spinach Mom is making me eat.”
“Why would it be hamburgers?” I ask.
Danny shrugs. “I don’t know. I feel great right now and I’m eating a burger. Or maybe it’s playing video games? That’d be cool! Then I’d have to stop going to school and play video games all the time!”
Danny has trouble focusing sometimes.
“But you miss school,” I say.
“That’s true. Maybe it’s swimming? Is it swimming? I think I feel pretty good when we’re at the pool, right?” He is all lit up. He’s practically bouncing off the walls, thinking of all the wonderful things he’ll be able to do if his illness is cured by hamburgers and video games and the water. “If it’s water, we can go to water parks every day!” he says. He’s in his own Danny-world now. He’s talking so fast it’s hard to keep up. “It will be mandatory, going on water slides! How cool will that be?”
“Danny,” I say, but he’s still thinking about water parks. “Danny. It’s not water or food or anything like that.”
His face drops.
I take a big breath. The biggest one ever.
“It’s me,” I say.
Danny doesn’t say anything at first. He crinkles his forehead and looks at me hard, like I might be lying.
“It’s you being close to me,” I say. “When I’m around, you feel better.”
My notebook is on the table with our Menagerie of Awful, and Danny grabs it and starts looking through it. He squints at some of the pages. I’m worried about how he’s taking all of this, but I’m also pretty proud of the neat way my research looks on the page. I highlighted relevant information. I didn’t scribble or doodle or use my messy handwriting. I did a really good job.
Danny chews his lips and flips pages.
“It’s you,” he says, testing out the words.
“It’s a hypothesis,” I say. I’m hoping Danny paid enough attention in science class to remember that a hypothesis is an unproven but possible thing.
Danny leans closer to me. I’m not sure if it’s on purpose or by accident, but I can tell he already believes me. “That’s why I feel so good today.”
“I don’t know why or how or anything else, but if you look at the research—”
“Stop talking like a scientist, Clo,” Danny says. “Talk like my friend.”
“Remember the fish? The symbiosis? I think we’re like that.”
“We’re like fish.”
“Kind of,” I say. “I don’t know. Think of the way we fit together. The statue game. That you’re silly when I’m shy and that I’m organized when you’re spacey.”
“Yeah . . .”
“Don’t tell your parents.”
“Why not? They’ll be so happy.”
I ca
n’t say why not, exactly. But I’m sure I don’t want anyone else to know.
“We need to focus on getting you to the Somerset Clinic,” I say. “That’s the most important thing.”
“To see snow,” Danny says.
“And to figure out what’s wrong,” I say.
“Does it matter what’s wrong if it’s all okay when you’re here?” he says. I can see his mind working, and I don’t like the direction it’s going. I don’t want to be responsible. Not even for my very best friend in the entire world.
I don’t know how to answer.
“I can’t be here all the time,” I say, and as soon as I say it I know I shouldn’t have.
“Oh,” Danny says. He looks down. He stops eating.
Danny never stops eating when there’s the Menagerie of Awful in front of him.
“You know what I mean. I want you to be better forever. Good scientists get answers. Good scientists ask for help.”
“I understand,” Danny says, but I don’t think he does.
“Plus, don’t you want to go to Vermont? It’s our chance. It’s snow, Danny.”
His feelings are still hurt, I can see it all over his face, but snow is our special thing, so he finally looks up from his lap.
“It gets stuck in your eyelashes,” he says. “The snow. It gets stuck in your eyelashes and you can eat it. And footprints. I want to make footprints in the snow.”
I want that too. I want to run through it. I want snow boots that leave holes in the snow where my feet were. I want there to be a clear path of where I’m going and where I’ve been.
“We’ll get there,” I say.
“We have to,” Danny says, and finally we’re on the same page again.
We decide without words to stop talking about his sickness. We will do the things we are best at, the things that make us Danny and Clover. We order a second round of burgers and an extra order of scallion pancakes and a tub of soy sauce for dipping. Later, we will come up with the world’s best plan for getting to Vermont.
The Someday Suitcase Page 10
