“What’s your favorite thing about the mall?” Danny says. I’ve missed his questions, the ones he already knows the answers to.
“You,” I say.
Danny blushes.
We aren’t usually sweet with each other. It’s not part of our special brand of symbiosis. He squirms and I squirm too, and I’m about to apologize for saying something cheesy when Elsa’s voice breaks through our conversation. I hear her laugh and Levi’s snort—they are unmistakable, wonderful sounds.
The sounds give my heart a happy leap, then a guilty twinge.
I shouldn’t want to turn around to see the faces of my new friends. But I do. I really, really do.
And there they are: at the other end of the food court, Elsa and Levi are laughing and wearing sneakers and being cool. When I see them, I wonder what they’re talking about and if they’ll tell me later and when we can hang out next.
Then I stop myself from thinking that. If I am the person who is going to fix Danny, I don’t have time for other friends.
But.
But.
Elsa has a bracelet that shines in the ugly mall lighting and Levi is saying something about his mom and her newest book of Zen meditations. There’s an empty chair across the table from them that looks almost like it’s meant for me.
It’s hard to squash down some feelings, once they start to push their way up.
“Elsa and Levi are eating Chinese food over there,” I say, even though I know I should stay quiet. Danny and I only need each other.
Ms. Mendez says symbiosis is simple. I try to make my brain focus on the simplicity. Danny plus Clover equals Everything I Need.
“Elsa and Levi are here?” Danny asks. He gets a funny smile on his face, like he’s hiding something very un-smile-like underneath it. I know his faces well, and this is a bad-news face.
On top of recently being in charge of cataloging Danny’s illness, I’m also keeping a list in my head of everything his face does. His face, it turns out, does a lot. Over the course of an hour it takes a hundred different shapes. Some people have happy and sad and asleep and that’s about it. I think I’m like that. Danny has all these mini feelings, in-between expressions. The way leaves in places like Vermont change from green to yellow to orange to red to brown over the course of the year, with all sorts of shades along the way.
Danny has hundreds of seasons. He is nothing like Florida, which is maybe part of why I love him so much.
The season on his face now is like the beginning of spring somewhere in Not Florida. Trying to be warm, but still too chilly for a walk without a jacket, still determined to surprise you with rain.
“Elsa has big ears,” Danny says. “And Levi doesn’t know how to read out loud. Have you ever noticed that? He stumbles over every word.”
Danny is never mean, but he’s being a little mean.
“You’re being too loud,” I say, since I don’t want to tell him he’s mean.
Neither of us is supposed to be mean to anyone.
“Maybe that’s today’s symptom,” Danny says. He smiles even bigger. The thing underneath it grows, too. “Volume control.” He says it so loudly I know it’s not an accident at all.
“I thought today’s symptom was being cold,” I say since Danny’s in a red sweater and thick socks. Elsa has on a shirt that is my favorite shade of purple, and Levi is using chopsticks to pick up rice. I watch their mouths and try to decipher what’s making them laugh so hard.
“The illness is mysterious,” Danny says. “You know that. Volume control could BE A THING.” He is pleased with himself, yelling that last part. We’re sitting in the perfect part of the food court for his voice to echo.
“We should go say hi. We could hang out with them for a little.” I say it knowing I shouldn’t.
“Why?” Danny slurps the end of the milk shake without asking if I want some more. “You see them all the time at school. Seeing me is obviously more important. You said so yourself. You have to stay near me to help me.”
“Wasn’t it nice the other day? To be around everyone again?”
Danny shrugs. “What’s your favorite food in the Menagerie of Awful?” he asks. He won’t even look in Elsa and Levi’s direction.
“They’re going to get up in a minute—let’s go over.”
Ms. Mendez says scientists use both their heads and their hearts, but she doesn’t say what to do when your head and your heart disagree.
“You love answering my questions,” Danny says. “Why won’t you answer my question?”
I look at the remnants of all the terrible food we just ate. “Egg rolls,” I say. “Ones that were obviously frozen about ten minutes ago and need to be drowned in soy sauce.”
“You used to like desserts best.” Danny polishes off the french fries and the pepperoni from the pizza, like he’s supposed to.
“Things change,” I say, and I mean it to be light, like an elbow nudge of a sentence, but it hits him hard.
Danny has a steamy summer rainstorm look on his face—like it was nice out but I’ve ruined it.
Elsa gets up to bring her tray to the trash cans and sees me. There’s a moment where it looks like she’s choosing whether or not to say hi, and it takes me waving to snap her out of it.
“I’m cold again,” Danny says. “I need to buy another scarf.” I know that means he probably has a fever, but I pretend not to hear him.
“Hey, Elsa!” I call out.
“Clover! And Danny! You’re out and about again! That’s awesome! Are you coming back to school for good this week?”
“Maybe.” Danny looks at the table like he’s going to eat even more, but there’s not really much of anything there.
Right away I feel bad. He doesn’t want to explain. He doesn’t want to tell them the aquarium might have been a one-time thing. He doesn’t really want to answer any questions. And I should know that. Because Danny asks questions and I answer them, and that’s how it’s supposed to be.
“Danny doesn’t have to go anymore,” I say, trying so hard to do the right thing even though I can’t figure out what the right thing is. I try to make it sound cool and fun—that Danny is above school. That he doesn’t need it anymore.
Elsa tries to find more to say. “It’s—you’re—do you have to do homework or are you too sick, or I mean tired, to do that kind of—I mean—does Clover tell you what we’re doing in all the different—”
“Clover tells me everything,” Danny says.
Elsa doesn’t know what to say to that and neither do I.
“Hey, guys,” Levi says when he makes his way over. He doesn’t know what to say either. “At the mall, huh?”
“You guys buying stuff?” I ask. My voice is too high for normal conversation. Dogs could hear it.
“My mom’s making me get dressed up for my brother’s bar mitzvah,” Levi says. “So I’m sort of looking for a tie and a nice shirt, but mostly we’re wandering.”
“Shopping for ties is way boring,” Elsa says. “I thought it might be like shopping for clothes. But it’s not. Everything’s striped.”
“Not everything,” Levi says. He looks at the ceiling, reconsidering. “Almost everything.”
There is a space in the conversation where they are supposed to ask if we want to wander with them, but nothing fills that space. It stays empty and awkward, and Danny scratches his nose and shivers.
“Are you okay?” I ask, trying to fix all the mistakes I’m making, trying to be a better best friend.
“I gotta get out of the cold,” Danny says. “Maybe buy a scarf.” Levi laughs and Elsa laughs, and they both have to stop when they realize that Danny’s not laughing.
“Scarves are cool!” Elsa says with too much enthusiasm. “Clover should get one too, for Vermont.”
I startle. Danny wouldn’t like that I told Elsa and Levi about the Somerset Clinic, even though I only found out through them. He wouldn’t like that they know anything at all about our big plans and our love of sno
w and how desperately we are trying to figure out what’s wrong with him.
I don’t think Danny wants them to know anything about him at all.
“Scarves are totally cool,” Levi says. “Kinda like ties, actually. So, yeah. Same thing.”
I want to become a table or a piece of discarded pizza crust. I hope that Danny will say something light and airy, the way he used to, the way he’s supposed to do. I hope that Danny will see how kind Elsa is and how gentle Levi is and maybe even invite them into our world a little.
Sometimes I hope for things that will never, ever happen.
Sometimes I can’t help but hope for impossible things.
It isn’t very scientific of me at all.
“No,” Danny says, “scarves aren’t like ties at all.”
He storms off with all our trays of food piled on top of each other, and I silently beg him not to drop them before he gets to the garbage cans. When something is already terrible, I am scared of it getting worse.
With Danny lately, things are always getting worse.
I have solved one part of the Danny Experiment, but there are bigger questions now, about how to be a good friend and also myself. I don’t think I understand who needs what, and if there is room enough for my needs too. I want to ask someone what it means that I can save him, and why it doesn’t feel good to be saving him.
“You’re so nice to him,” Elsa says.
I’m supposed to answer that Danny’s my best friend, so I’m not being nice, I’m being his friend. I should answer that Danny and I are so close we’re practically the same, so if Danny’s sick, I’m sick.
I don’t say any of those things.
“You told them about Vermont?” Danny says on our way out of the mall a few minutes later. He is stormy and chilly.
“They told me about Vermont,” I say. “Levi’s mom did.”
“Vermont is ours,” Danny says.
“I know.”
“They’re not invited,” Danny says.
“I know.”
I think I’m going to cry.
“All I need is you and me and the snow,” Danny says.
“I know,” I say. I wonder at the way he looks healthy and strong after a few hours with me.
And it scares me, but it also is the most joyful thing in the world, to see Danny the way he’s supposed to be.
“You’re my best friend,” he says, and even though we aren’t usually sweet, I guess today is a day where we are both being sweet with each other.
This time neither of us squirms.
Loving Danny isn’t a hypothesis, it is a fact of the universe, and nothing—not even Elsa and Levi—could ever change that.
He looks up to the sky like some snow might start falling down now, just for him.
If I could make that happen for him, I would.
List of Expressions That Danny’s Face Makes and What They Mean
– Curved-down lips and sad eyes mean he’s worried about something that he doesn’t want to talk about.
– Toothy smile and raised eyebrows mean he’s excited about a sneaky plan that he hasn’t told anyone yet.
– Open lips and wrinkled nose mean he finds something either very gross or totally baffling.
– Closed eyes and pinched mouth mean something hurts and he’s trying to wish it away.
– Puffed-out lips and wrinkled forehead mean he’s on his way to sadness but could still be stopped.
– Big eyes and closed-mouth smile mean he misses something he used to have and wonders if it will ever come back.
18
Elsa, Levi, Rachel, and I are looking at clouds on Wednesday afternoon.
Danny is doing another overnight at the hospital because he keeps getting new infections that are building on whatever his main disease is. Mom says that happens with the type of immune problem they’re pretty sure Danny has. It doesn’t seem fair to me—he already has a really hard sickness, and now because that sickness has made him so weak, he can’t fight off any other infections.
I have so many thoughts and questions about how one problem leads to more problems, but I’m trying to forget about questions and infections and even Danny, for a minute or two.
Elsa, Levi, and Rachel are trying to find a relationship between the clouds’ shapes and the amount it rains. Elsa has a theory that heart-shaped clouds rain less, and cloud-shaped clouds rain more. Levi has a theory that it is windy for ten minutes before the first raindrop hits.
Rachel has a theory that when she feels weepy, it means it’s going to rain.
I’m a scientist, but I like Rachel’s theory best of all, so maybe I’m something else besides a scientist, too.
Or maybe I really like Rachel.
“I should do my own project on emotions and weather,” Rachel says. “I think my emotions are deeply connected to weather patterns.”
“I think you are crazy,” Levi mumbles. I can tell that some days he thinks his mom is funny and some days he thinks she’s annoying. I wonder if he minds her looking at the clouds with us. For all I know, he minds me watching the clouds with him and Elsa. It’s hard to say what Levi feels at any one time.
“What do you think, Clover?” Rachel asks, even though it’s not my science fair project.
I squint at the clouds and sniff the air. I wiggle my toes and roll my ankles. I look at the sun, at the trees waving in the wind, at the grass’s color.
“I don’t know,” I say. “My ankles don’t hurt. I don’t think it will rain.”
“Maybe we’ll never know everything there is to know about the weather,” Elsa says. She is furiously taking notes.
“I read that you can make your own psychrometer,” I say. “It’s a thing that measures humidity in the air.” I meant to stay quiet and let Elsa and Levi do their project without me, since I have my own project, and helping them feels like I’m betraying Danny. But I looked up how to forecast the weather, and I found out building a psychrometer is pretty easy. And I guess it sounds cool. It’s the kind of thing I’d do if I didn’t have my own Very Important Project.
“How will it help our project?” Elsa asks. Rachel turns toward me too. Levi doesn’t take his eyes off the sky.
“Humidity can help predict rain.” I shrug like it’s no big deal, but I love that there’s a device you can make in your house that can tell you the future. It makes me feel hopeful about solving all the other mysteries in my life. If we can predict the rain, maybe we can also predict what will happen to Danny. If a couple of kids can make a psychrometer, a bunch of fancy doctors in Vermont can figure out Danny. “I saw it on a website. I’ll show you. You just need thermometers and some gauze and a little fan.”
“And then you can tell what will happen with the weather?” Elsa asks. “No way.”
“Science can solve everything,” I say, mostly to myself.
Elsa and Levi nod.
“Some things will always remain mysteries!” Rachel says. Levi huffs.
“My mom likes mysteries of the universe,” he says. “She says faith comes from mysteries.” And I don’t see him roll his eyes, but I can hear it. I wish I knew something like that about my mother. I know she likes cooking, like me, and she likes the air conditioner on high. I know she is a really good mom and that when Jake is being hard, she treats herself to a scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream and an episode of some show about women with big lips and men in suits who kiss too much.
But I don’t know what she thinks about the world.
“I thought science had all the answers,” I say, turning toward Rachel. “I thought that was the whole point.” I make fists with my hands and try not to sound desperate. I don’t have time for mysteries. I don’t have space for them.
“Sometimes the answer is magic,” Rachel says. Her eyebrows are raised and Levi is blushing. “And I don’t think it’s going to rain today. I don’t feel like crying at all.”
Magic. I’d written that word down in my book last week, and I keep trying to ign
ore it, but it keeps popping right back up. I wonder if there’s room for science and magic. I wonder if both are possible at once.
“Do you really believe in magic?” I ask Rachel. She smiles.
Levi answers for her. “She made it rain once,” he says. All this time I thought he didn’t believe a word his mom said, but it turns out I don’t know Levi very well at all. He looks a little proud now. Sheepish, but proud. Elsa giggles.
“The atmosphere makes it rain!” she says. And I know that, but I want to know more about Rachel’s magic.
“You know the clinic I told you about?” Rachel says. “There was science there, and room for faith and religion, too, which are important to me, but I think there was magic too. And art. All things that help us figure out other ways to see the world. I think we need all those things.”
I think about Ms. Fitch. When we came back from the aquarium trip, she told us to draw the way the fish looked, but also the way they made us feel.
“So don’t draw them the real way?” Brandy asked.
“The way they look and the way they make you feel are both real,” Ms. Fitch said. She smiled like she was telling us the world’s biggest secret.
“When I was sick—” Rachel starts to speak again, but Levi won’t let her finish.
“I don’t want to talk about when you were sick anymore,” he says. “You already told me all about that.” That’s when I see the thing Levi and I have in common that’s even bigger than the way we like science and logic and Elsa. He’s scared, too. He’s scared like me, of the way illness can change everything.
I want Levi to get what he wants, but I’m not ready to let the conversation with Rachel go, so I ask my question quietly. “Isn’t magic for little kids? Didn’t the doctors make you better?”
Rachel takes a big breath. I can’t imagine her being sick. I wonder if she was like Danny—always getting skinnier and paler and shakier and sadder.
The Someday Suitcase Page 11
