The Someday Suitcase

by Corey Ann Haydu

  A single cough comes out of his mouth. We pause, waiting to see if there’s more coughing to come, but there’s not.

  “Jake didn’t mean it,” I say.

  “He sort of did,” Danny says. “I don’t mind. But my parents . . . they want me to think positively. We went to this workshop last night at the community center. ‘The Power of Thought.’ I don’t know. They think it will help.”

  “Jake didn’t know what he was saying.” I want to know more about the workshop and why they’re willing to take Danny to the community center but not up to Vermont. I can’t understand why they think a workshop could help but they won’t try Rachel’s clinic.

  “I’m really sick,” Danny says. “That much is true. And it’s not impossible that I’ll—”

  “I’m fixing you!” I say. I don’t believe in the power of positive thought, but I do believe in stopping him before he finishes a sentence that I can’t stand to hear.

  “You have school and stuff.” Danny shrugs. He looks sad. Maybe Jake really did upset him. Maybe it’s not only his parents that don’t want him to see my family. Maybe he doesn’t want to see them either.

  “My parents know you’re going to be okay,” I say.

  “No one knows that, Clover,” he says. He is getting sadder and sadder, drooping in the sun.

  “My parents want me to see you less and your parents don’t want you to see my family and I don’t get any of it,” I say. “We have to do something.”

  Danny looks over at my house and I wonder if he can see my parents moving inside of it—Mom helping Dad pack, Jake glued to the couch, everything the same as it’s always been but so, so different too. “All that matters is that we can see each other,” he says.

  I try to agree with him.

  “Hey, is the sun okay for you?” I step closer to him. Soon, my powers should be kicking in and he should be feeling better.

  “Vitamin D,” Danny says. “Doctor said it was worth a try.”

  “What hurts today?” I ask, knowing the answer just by looking at him.

  “Stomach again. Cough seems okay. I’m tired.”

  “Here.” I put a hand on his knee. I let it rest there, and there’s a heat between my palm and his skin. Maybe it’s Florida heat or maybe it’s something scientific or maybe, maybe it’s magic. “Helping?”

  “Helping,” he says. Soon his body relaxes and I try his other knee, his elbows, his shoulder.

  I can feel Helen and Ross watching us from inside. The lawn chair fits both of us pretty well, and the sun feels delicious, for once.

  “Did I tell you that Levi, Elsa, and I made you a blizzard?” I ask. I keep meaning to bring over the snowflakes, to hang them around Danny’s house, but every day Danny has some new bit of sickness, and I forget all about the snow.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Danny says.

  “Rachel, Levi’s mom, says snow is healing. That’s part of what’s so great about the clinic in Vermont.”

  “My grandfather never saw snow either,” Danny says. I want him to snap out of his bad mood, but it is simply not happening.

  I’ve never seen Elsa in a bad mood. She doesn’t seem to get in them, and I love that. I want to be around her sunniness. But as soon as I realize that’s what I want, I’m embarrassed.

  I try to shut my brain up about Elsa.

  “I thought you didn’t know much about your grandfather.”

  “I didn’t. I asked a lot of questions, though. I think he had what I have. I’m pretty positive. Mom says they couldn’t figure out what was wrong and the symptoms kept changing. Then she started crying and said Grandpa didn’t have someone like you to save him.”

  “Oh.” I don’t know what to say. I take out my notebook. It’s safer there.

  “Write down that he never saw snow and he mystified doctors and that sometimes your body attacks itself and they don’t know exactly why. Write down all the ways we’re the same.” Danny is getting worked up. His voice is cracking and he’s rubbing his eyes like maybe they’re about to release a flash flood of tears.

  “You know what the difference between you and your grandfather really is?” I say. Danny doesn’t respond. He doesn’t think there is a difference, but he doesn’t see what I see. “I think the thing between us is more than science. I think it’s magic.”

  “You don’t believe in magic,” Danny mumbles, but I swear I see a light in his eyes and a lift of his lips.

  “Magic’s just love with a twist,” I say, and I wonder if I sound like Rachel.

  Danny nods. It’s a small nod, but it’s better than nothing. I can see him thinking about the word magic. Maybe that is the only word for what we have between us.

  “Clover?” His voice is quiet. Maybe his parents are listening in, or maybe his throat hurts, or maybe this is how Danny is now.

  “Yep?”

  “I’m really scared.”

  I think my heart must stop beating, because everything pauses for a moment.

  I can’t tell him not to be scared, because I am too.

  “I have a plan,” I say. I’m excited to say the words out loud for the first time, and I try to see that same happiness in his face, but the fear is hiding it. “I know how to get to Vermont.”

  “My parents said no. I told you that.”

  “We’re not going to get permission,” I say. “We’re just going to go.”

  My notebook has a calendar on the back page, and I use my pen to circle the day after my birthday—November 6. It is only a week away. “This is the day,” I say.

  “Your birthday’s the fifth,” Danny says. “Just have a party on the fifth.” A few months ago, I think Danny would know exactly what I was trying to tell him already, but his sickness has made him a little unfocused and distracted. I have to get him to listen.

  “November sixth is the day we’re going to Vermont,” I say. I tell him about my dad’s trip up north and the space on his truck where I know we can hole up for the ride. “I’ve done some math.” I put my shoulders back, proud of the way I use math and science and hope and love all at once. “According to my math, a drive straight from here to the Somerset Clinic would be about twenty hours. But Dad makes a bunch of stops for deliveries and also has to take breaks to sleep and rest and have coffee. So I’ve calculated that we will be at the Somerset Clinic on November eighth, by dinnertime.”

  I write down numbers as I talk to Danny—how many hours Dad sleeps, how long it takes to unload and reload the truck, how many times Dad says he stops for coffee, and I add them all up in front of him.

  “Won’t he find us eventually? Won’t our parents be worried?” Danny asks. It is the hardest part about our plan. I know our parents will freak out when they find we are missing.

  “Dad will probably find us before we get all the way there,” I say. “And if he does, we have to hope it will be too late for him to turn around and bring us home. He’ll have to finish his job, and we can’t exactly walk home, so we’ll get to go with him.”

  Danny nods. I think he’s starting to understand how great my science brain is for planning and scheming and calculating. I’m starting to see how great my science brain is too.

  “And our parents worrying?”

  “I can tell my parents I’m meeting Elsa early, to help her test some morning weather.”

  “And me?” Danny asks. But his solution is even easier.

  “All you have to do is tell your parents you’re with me,” I say, “and they won’t worry at all.”

  Danny smiles. “That’s true.”

  It’s all coming together—maps and numbers and the Someday Suitcase and the Somerset Clinic and my epic plan and my science brain.

  “Wait,” Danny says. “We get to Vermont November eighth?”

  “Yeah.”

  November 8 is the day of the science fair. Danny knows because it’s important to me and he was going to try to feel well enough to come.

  “It’s perfect,” I say, wanting Danny’s wo
rried, guilty face to go away. “It’s the conclusion of my science fair project on the day of the science fair!”

  “But you’re missing the fair.”

  “Ms. Mendez says the fair isn’t the point of the experiments. She says some people won’t have conclusions at the fair, even, because science is our effort to control the unpredictable. She says scientists sit back and let the world happen in its own time; they don’t try to force something.”

  There’s a long pause before Danny’s face changes, but when it finally does, it turns into my very favorite Danny look. Eyes crinkly, mouth wide and pushing his cheeks up, chin jutted up at the sky. Pure happiness.

  “The end of the experiment,” Danny says with a big nod.

  “Vermont,” I say, nodding back.

  “We have a plan,” Danny says, and as much as I liked saying the words, they sound even better coming from him.

  21

  “I hear you’re all very focused on your science fair projects,” Ms. Fitch says when we’re in class on Monday one week and one day before the big fair.

  The whole class nods. Elsa and Levi keep looking out the window to see if it’s raining. They have predicted a rainfall at noon today, and if it doesn’t happen, they have to reassess their data. Brandy and Marco have cat scratches all up and down their arms because Brandy insisted on doing a project about her cat. José smells like glue and keeps doodling pictures of cars on every piece of scrap paper around. Paloma can’t stop yawning because she’s staying up late every night for her astronomy project.

  “Remember how after the aquarium we drew pictures of fish and how they made us feel?” Ms. Fitch asks. Brandy presses on one of her scratches. Paloma yawns again. I wonder what Danny would have drawn if he’d been in class that day. “Well, I’m going to give you free rein of the classroom. All the craft supplies. All the clay and paints and glitter and scraps of paper and yarn you could ever need. I want you to make something that tells us about your project. Or maybe you can even make something that might help you with your project. Sometimes art is about beauty and sometimes it’s about necessity. Did you know art has a little bit of everything in it? Science and math and literature are all a part of art.”

  Elsa and Levi crane their necks. It’s 11:50 and there’s no rain in sight.

  “Can’t we just go work on our projects?” Marco asks. He is very serious about winning the science fair. His brother won it last year, and his sister two years before that.

  “Sometimes you need to turn something over and upside down to really see it,” Ms. Fitch says. “I think if you take a break from looking at your project through the science lens, you might be surprised at all the new things you see.”

  Marco sighs. Paloma yawns. Brandy asks if maybe she should go to the nurse about one particularly nasty scratch on her elbow.

  I go through the plan for November 6 again in my head. Get out of bed super early in the morning, before the sun comes up, right before Dad gets on the road. I know where the extra keys are, so we can sneak into the truck with no problem at all. Stay very quiet. Make sure Danny doesn’t snore. Sneak out for bathroom breaks when Dad stops for bathroom breaks. Hope our parents don’t worry too much.

  “Don’t get so stuck on finding solutions that you lose sight of everything else,” Ms. Fitch says. “That’s what art’s for. So that you don’t lose sight of everything else.”

  Elsa gives me a look, a serious one. She thinks Ms. Fitch is talking about me and the way I can sometimes see only Danny and nothing else.

  I wander the art room, looking for something that will make me see my experiment in a whole new way.

  “I think you’re going to win,” Levi says. I hadn’t noticed him behind me, so I jump a little at the sound of his voice.

  “You do?” I ask. And for a second I forget that I won’t be at the fair, that I can’t win. I picture myself with the trophy—it’s a shiny goblet that they engrave the winner’s name into. I think I’d put it in our living room so that no one would ever forget I’m a scientist, including myself.

  “Obviously,” Levi says, like it’s so obvious it doesn’t require any explanation at all.

  “I want to win,” I say. I’m surprised by the words. I didn’t think I cared about anything but curing Danny. It feels a little bit good, to care about something that’s mine.

  My heart sinks a little. Because I can’t win if I’m not here.

  I almost tell Levi my whole plan, but I’m too scared of getting caught, of something going wrong. So instead I smile really big. “Thanks for saying that,” I say, looking him right in the eye so he knows how much I mean it.

  Levi grabs behind me to get some string.

  “I want to make a kite,” he says. “Elsa wants to make a rain bucket. Do you know where the clay is?”

  I laugh because Levi and Elsa already see the world in beautiful, strange, upside-down ways. I point to the clay and tell Levi I think a kite and a rain bucket will make their project complete. He hands me a hunk of clay too.

  “You’ll figure out something good to do with this,” he says.

  I sit with Elsa and Levi, but I tune them out, which they don’t seem to mind. They’re both hard at work—Levi drawing alien shapes on the paper for his kite and Elsa trying to find the perfect curve for a rain bucket. The rain they predicted doesn’t come, but neither of them notice. That’s what art does; it lets your mind focus on something else.

  I roll the clay around in my hands for a while. I contemplate all the watercolors in the middle of the table and try to pick my favorite shade. I’m tempted to take out my Danny notebook, but I don’t. I close my eyes. I turn everything upside down and inside out. I forget Vermont and immune disorders and sick grandfathers and trucks.

  I let my hands do the thinking.

  It feels good, to let go of numbers and charts and theories.

  My hands take over.

  “Pretty,” Elsa says when the bell rings and art class is over. I look down at what I’ve done. I half expect to see a sculpture of Danny’s head or a big heart for how much I love him.

  Instead, I have made a trophy. It looks just like the one they give to the science fair winner, only smaller and with a little snowflake carved on one side, and my name on the other.

  It’s only my name, not Danny’s, and even though I sculpted it and I engraved it, I’m surprised.

  Ms. Fitch comes by to pick up anything any of us made from clay so she can put it in the kiln.

  She lifts my trophy up and looks at the way it swoops at the top and balloons at the bottom.

  “You decide whether or not you win,” she says, in her singsongy, supersmart voice. “You know whether or not you did your very best on your project. I love this, Clover.”

  I’ve never been much of an artist, but when Ms. Fitch says those words, I feel like one, for a moment.

  I add the trophy to the list of what to pack for our trip. It will be out of the kiln in a few days, and I won’t have time to paint it, but I’ll ask Ms. Fitch if I can take it to show Danny. Really, though, it’s me who needs it. It’s silly, and it’s selfish, but on November 8 I’ll know I did everything I possibly could to be the scientist that Danny deserves.

  List of Things to Bring to Vermont

  – Sweaters

  – Bananas

  – Water bottles

  – Goldfish

  – Cough syrup

  – Advil

  – A thermos of Helen’s special tea

  – Books

  – Camera

  – Sandwiches

  – A map of where the Somerset Clinic is

  – Thermometer

  – Cookies

  – Trail mix

  – A blanket

  – My research notebook

  – Danny’s doctor’s phone number, just in case

  – My trophy

  22

  The next day, Ms. Mendez wants to know how our science fair projects are going, and I don’t know how to an
swer.

  “I figured out a lot,” I say, and maybe it’s my imagination, but I think everyone in class starts doodling in their notebooks or finding other places to look. It turns out no one at all wants to hear me talk about Danny. But it’s hard not to talk about him all the time. “It’s really coming together.”

  “Wow, Clover. That’s great news. Want to tell us a little more?”

  I have about a million things I could tell her about Danny and maybe magic and the Somerset Clinic and my notebook filled with facts and theories and the big circle around November 6, which is less than one week away.

  But I know to be careful. I think before I answer.

  “I think I’ve found that once you answer one question, about a hundred more questions pop up,” I say. “So an experiment never really ends. It just . . . shifts.”

  “Evolves,” Ms. Mendez says, nodding and smiling and making me feel extra smart.

  “Yeah. My experiment has evolved,” I say.

  “That’s a great lesson to have learned, Clover,” Ms. Mendez says. “Sometimes you answer questions you didn’t even know you were asking.”

  I love how Ms. Mendez understands everything. I could hug her. “Exactly!” I say. I grin and wonder if there’s any way to ask if magic and science have ever collided before, but I decide to be safe; I’ll wait and ask that question at the clinic. In Vermont, Danny and I can finally be totally honest about everything.

  I wish we could leave right now, but I’d hate to miss science class.

  We’re going to talk more about pollination and how it relates to symbiosis. I can’t miss that.

  “I’ve learned that we can predict some things, sometimes, but not all the things all the time,” Elsa says. “I guess I thought I’d be sure of everything when we were done. But I’m not more sure. I’m just more . . . um . . .” Elsa trails off, trying to find the right word.

  “Informed,” Levi finishes for her, and I feel a deep ache for Danny finishing my sentences.

  “That’s a life lesson, too, isn’t it?” Ms. Mendez says. She sounds a little dreamy. “Science teaches us about the world and also ourselves. It shows us certainties and limitations to certainties.” I think she looks at me for an extra pause, like there’s a lesson I’m supposed to learn, more than everyone else.