24
Dad leaves early in the morning, which means we need to get up even earlier in the morning.
I sneak downstairs and wait by the truck for Danny. I’ve packed peanut butter sandwiches and bags of Goldfish and pretzels and granola bars and everything else that I could get from my list, including my handmade trophy and Elsa and Levi’s psychrometer, which they handed over at the party.
I pack it all in our Someday Suitcase.
Because I guess it’s Someday.
When Danny arrives, he is already out of breath. Even his backpack stuffed with clothes and some of his teas and medicines seems too heavy for him.
“You need an inhaler,” I say. Marco has asthma, so we all know about inhalers.
“I have you,” Danny heaves. He grabs my arm. I hate the sound of his heavy breathing. The wheezing. The struggle.
“It’s your breathing,” I say. “We can’t depend on me for that.”
Danny grips my arm harder. We need to get into the truck soon. There’s a little bed in the cab of the truck behind a curtain, and Dad probably won’t open the curtain for hours and hours, so we’ll be nice and hidden and cozy for a while.
Then I don’t know. Hopefully we’ll be too far into the trip for Dad to turn around and take us home.
Soon Danny and I are breathing in time with each other—big clear ins and outs. Then I can’t hear his breathing at all—no rattle in his chest, no choke in his throat, just regular silent breathing.
“Wow,” I say, because even if you know magic is there, it’s still a surprise every time.
“Thank you,” Danny says. I think it might be the first time he’s thanked me for being magical. It feels good.
“We gotta get in,” I say, and we climb into the sleeper. It’s not a comfortable bed. It’s tiny and hard, and the bumps in the road will make it impossible to sleep. But it’s perfect for what we need to do.
“We’re going to have to be quiet,” I say.
“I know.”
“Our parents are going to be worried,” I say. “Really worried.” My heart pounds. I like to be prepared. I like plans and lists and the scientific method. We don’t have enough of that.
“I know,” Danny says. I wait for him to come up with an idea for fixing their worry, a way to keep them calm. He doesn’t.
My heart pounds harder and I keep looking through the window at my house. We wait for my dad to come outside, and for a moment I wonder if we should tell him what we’re doing.
But if we tell him, he’ll stop us from going. And we can’t stop. Not now.
My dad leaves the house. He’s got a thermos of coffee that I know my mom made and sweetened with cinnamon sugar for him, and he’s frowning. I like to think he always looks this way when he leaves for a drive—like he’s really sad to go.
“We can’t worry about anything but getting there,” Danny whispers. “Nothing else matters, as long as we get to the clinic. I’m feeling . . . I’ve been doing . . . when you’re not around, I’m bad. I’m getting worse. You need to know I’m getting a lot worse. Every day I’m worse.” Danny’s voice chokes but not because of asthma or anything else.
“I didn’t know—”
“I knew if I said I was worse you would find a way to never ever leave my side,” Danny says. “I couldn’t do that to you.”
I shouldn’t be shocked at the ways Danny takes care of me—they’ve always been there—but I’m shocked anyway. I’d been feeling angry and twisty and turny and topsy-turvy over having to take care of him and having to be near him and how badly he’s been needing me. But all along he’s been worried about me, too.
I take his hand.
This. This is why we are best, best, best symbiotic friends. This is why it’s worth it to sneak away in my dad’s truck and go to Vermont. This is why I’ll do anything I can, anything at all, to fix him.
He squeezes my hand and we have to be quiet as mice as we drive through Florida and Georgia and the Carolinas.
Danny naps somewhere around South Carolina. It’s hot back here and sticky, and Dad has been playing sports radio for hours and hours. They yell and scream, but at some point it starts to sound like a lullaby to Danny, I guess.
I don’t sleep. I just watch Danny. I lay my hand on his forehead and focus on that feeling of being connected by a thread, of shifting something healthy in me into him.
It works.
If I could get my notebook out and write in it, I’d write down that it really, really works.
A PERFECT DAY WITH DANNY
Today is a perfect day.
We are huddled in the cab of Dad’s truck, and it’s hot and cramped and scary, but it’s also wonderful.
“We’ve never done something like this before,” Danny whispers. “This is our very first adventure.”
It’s true. Danny and I have done everything together our whole lives, but everything we have done has been predictable and safe and routine. It’s been great, because we’ve been together, but we have spent all our days at the pool and in our backyards and stuffing our faces at the Sunday night cookouts and inventing games of tag with Jake and passing notes and games of Snowman back and forth during class. We’ve been at the mall and the movies and sometimes some other kid’s birthday party. But we haven’t had a proper adventure.
“I’m not even thinking about getting in trouble,” I say, which seems impossible because I love following the rules, but there’s a buzz in my chest and my fingers seem to have a pulse. Sometime in between South Carolina and North Carolina, I stop being scared and start being thrilled.
The truck hiccups over speed bumps and potholes, and every time Danny and I crack up. We have to keep our laughter quiet, so we blow out our cheeks and turn red with the holding it in. Our eyes tear up from how badly we want to let the laughter out, and that only makes it funnier and better. We hide our faces in our elbow crooks, and kick each other when little giggles sputter out.
We count the bumps in the road and try to keep our bodies stiff and see who can stay the most upright every time the truck bounces. We make faces for the people talking on Dad’s sports show—a silly frowny face for the man with the deep bellow, a fishy face for the man who talks very quickly, a crazed openmouthed smile for the woman who laughs at everything.
We snack on trail mix and Goldfish, and the further away we get from Florida, the further away I feel from everything that’s happened over the last few weeks. Out on the road we are Danny and Clover again. We are wild, we are fearless, we are goofy and silly and funny. We are best, best friends who know how to stay laughing through all the bumps in the road.
I thought this was a road trip to get to Vermont to fix Danny, but it’s fixing me, too. Danny is well for the whole ride. He doesn’t cough or sniff or complain about earaches or stomachaches once, and I stop thinking of his sickness and everything I’m scared of.
For hours and hours, in the tiny bed with Danny, there’s nothing to be scared of at all.
We’re free.
25
I dream about snow and adventures and the long, long highway. I bet that’s what Danny dreams about too.
We must sleep for a while, for longer than we should have, because at some point when my back is a little sore and my head is cloudy, I get woken up. By Dad.
“CLOVER?” he booms. His voice shakes the whole truck. His voice shakes me.
“Dad,” I say, in my mouse voice. Danny keeps snoring.
“What in the WORLD are you doing back here?”
The darkness is lit up by lights on other trucks. We’re at one of the truck stops Dad’s told me about, and I guess I knew this would happen. When you don’t have a plan, things can go wrong pretty quickly.
Even though Dad’s face is twisty and strange, I’m still secretly excited about our trip and the sound of crickets and the chill in the air.
“Hi, Dad,” I say. I want him to smile. I want him to see how good what we’ve done is.
I nudge Danny awake. W
e can explain better together.
Dad doesn’t look mad, exactly. He looks scared and confused and amped up. He’s breathing heavy and sweating. But his eyes have a squint that says he really wants to know if we’re okay.
“We’re okay,” I say.
“Does Mom know you’re here? It’s been . . . you’ve been here since this morning? It’s been hours and hours and hours, Clover. Your mother must be—Danny’s mother must be—Mom said you were with your friend Elsa. What were you thinking? What possible reason could you have for being here? I’ve never seen anything like this from you before, Clover. Not anything! And Danny. You’re a sick kid. You can’t be in a truck miles away from your doctors. I can’t believe either of you would be so—I have to call your parents—they must be worried sick—”
“I told them I’d be with Clover,” Danny says. He shrugs. “They know when I’m with her—they know I’m safe.”
Dad scrambles for his phone and he paces outside the truck calling Mom and Danny’s parents, waving his arms around, raising his voice on words like completely unaware and what were they thinking and irresponsible and reckless and downright dangerous.
“We are in so much trouble,” I say.
“He’ll still let us go to Vermont, right?” Danny looks out the window. There’s nothing to see yet. Vermont is still far away.
“We’re really far north,” I say. “He can’t turn around now. He has a very tight delivery schedule. Our plan will work.” I feel a little guilty for how mad Dad is, but I’d feel even guiltier if I didn’t do everything I could to help Danny.
Dad’s hanging up his phone and heading back to the truck. He keeps shaking his head to himself. He flings the door open.
“I’m shocked,” Dad says. “And hurt. We’ve trusted you, Clover. I’m disappointed, too. And scared. I thought I could depend on you. I need explanations. And apologies. And some honesty from both of you.”
I’m shaky, but I know I need to explain everything to Dad anyway. “We needed to get to Vermont,” I say.
“Is this about that clinic? Clover. You know Danny’s parents are in charge of Danny’s health care.” Dad is still sort of shouting, but it doesn’t sound the way it does when he’s yelling at me about accidentally breaking his computer or being mean to Jake.
“They wouldn’t let him go to Vermont,” I say. “He’s really sick, Dad. He’s sick in the scary way. Like what Jake said. When we were making sundaes . . .” I look at Danny. He doesn’t cringe from what I’m implying. He is steady and solid and okay, somehow. “I can’t lose Danny,” I whisper.
“We have to go back now. Look at all the time I’ve lost. Do you see how selfish this was? I could get in trouble at work. Your actions have consequences for other people, and I thought you were mature enough to know that.” Dad isn’t listening. He isn’t hearing me at all. He doesn’t hear how I’m hurt and desperate and also totally sure this is the only option.
“We can’t go back,” Danny says. He hasn’t been saying anything at all, and I’m relieved to hear his voice, to let my own voice rest for a minute. If I talk any more right now I’m going to burst into desperate tears and Dad won’t be able to hear me at all.
“That’s not for you to—” Dad barely looks at Danny. At us. He looks at his phone and his watch and the road and the truck. He keeps shaking his head.
Danny takes a big breath. He looks at me, but I have no idea what he’s going to say. We don’t have a plan for this. I didn’t think through everything the way a good scientist is supposed to. I didn’t think about Dad’s anger and disappointment. I’m losing hope.
“Sometimes late at night my parents think I’m sleeping, but I’m not. I hear the things they say.” Danny looks at Dad to see if his posture or face have changed. Not yet. He is texting someone. He is scratching his head and sighing. It doesn’t stop Danny. He goes on. “They’re scared. My parents are scared and sometimes, late at night, they talk about what would happen if—if I can’t get better. They don’t know what else to do. The doctors are telling them to prepare. Do you know what that means? Prepare? I think I know. They’re pretending it’s okay, but when the whole world is dark and quiet, they admit that it’s not. Even my parents are losing hope.” Danny’s voice doesn’t shake, but my hands start to. And my knees. All this time I’ve been thinking I have secrets from Danny, but he’s been keeping secrets from me too. He’s been carrying burdens and sadnesses all by himself too.
Dad is finally listening.
“I need hope,” Danny says.
I think we are all stunned into silence—me and Dad and Danny too. There are a bunch of other trucks around, music coming from some of them. A few men wander around and pat each other on the back, and there’s a place to eat right ahead of us—it looks greasy and delicious. The sign is falling down, but I think it’s meant to say Frank’s.
It is the last place in the world I ever imagined having a Serious Conversation. I can smell french fries and something bitter and unidentifiable and fumes from all the trucks. Dad looks comfortable here, and it’s strange to see him in his other life, but a little nice too.
Dad stretches his neck, then his arms. He wipes his brow.
“I want you to have hope too,” he says after a great long while. “Look. How are you feeling? Do we need to get you to a doctor? Your health is the number one priority.”
Danny stands up like we’re in the army all of a sudden. He has the straightest back and widest eyes.
“I feel great, sir,” he says. He’s never called my dad sir, not once, but today my dad is acting like someone who needs to be called sir.
“Great?” Dad says. He puts a hand on Danny’s forehead. He looks perplexed. He hasn’t seen Danny doing great in weeks and weeks.
“He’s fine, Dad,” I say. “He’s good. When he’s with me, he’s good.”
“That’s not how Danny’s sickness works, honey,” Dad says.
“Yes, it is,” I say. “Watch.” I know now is the moment for us to tell my father. Danny told us what he needed to tell us, and now it’s time to show Dad the other thing. The maybe magic.
I get out of the truck. Dad puts a hand on my shoulder. “Where do you think you’re going now?” he asks, and I see that it’s going to be a long time before he trusts me the way he used to.
“Right over there,” I say, pointing to a trash can a few yards away.
The thing between Danny and me has grown stronger and more vital in the past few days. I know if I’m even a little bit away from him, he’ll start feeling sick again right away.
I think it means he’s even sicker than before. It might mean I’m even more magical, too.
Dad eyes me suspiciously as I walk to the trash can, but I walk slowly so he knows I’m not trying anything tricky. I just need him to see. I need him to understand.
The stars are bright, wherever we are, so I look up at them while I wait to hear Danny cough or moan or sneeze. It’s a risk, but it’s the kind of risk we have to take now. It takes about a minute and a half.
Then:
“Oh my God! Oh my GOD, what’s happening? Danny?? DANNY?”
I run back from the trash can. It’s a short distance, but my dad’s voice sounds so scared I can’t run fast enough.
Danny is on the ground, trying to get a breath of air. His face is drained of color, and his eyes are closing.
“What happened?” Dad says. His ear is at Danny’s chest; he’s putting Danny’s head in his lap.
“I’ve got it,” I say, but I’m shaking. This is worse than what I’d imagined. I thought Danny would start feeling a little sicker. I thought it would be a slow transition. I figured there’d be some coughs or maybe he’d throw up and it would be gross, but we could prove something to my dad. I didn’t know there’d be . . . this.
I try not to think about the conversations Helen and Ross have apparently been having late at night. I try not to think about how terrified Dad sounds and how many times Danny’s been to the hospital.
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I take a deep-down breath and take Dad’s place, putting my knee under Danny’s head and my hand on his forehead. I close my eyes. I try to hear his heartbeat and match it to mine.
Rachel says at some point you learn how to harness your magic, and I think that’s what I’m doing now. At first the magic was mysterious and strange. Now it’s a bit more like science.
Come back come back come back, I think in my head.
And for a few awful minutes, he doesn’t. He wheezes and gasps, but I can tell real breath isn’t getting into his lungs. He is grimacing like it hurts, and his eyes are closed.
“We need to call an ambulance,” Dad says.
My heart pounds.
He is so much sicker than I want to believe. My stomach churns and my brain dizzies up and I know, now, why Ross and Helen are so scared.
I’m scared too.
I’m scared I’m losing Danny.
He stills.
I focus all my energy on him, all the magic and healing and symbiosis and best friendship. I focus all the hope in the world on him, because I know now that that’s what he needs most of all.
His breaths start to come in deep and strong.
And his cheeks get pinker.
And I have fixed him, again.
Dad is stunned.
I’m a little stunned too.
Danny sits up. He rubs his eyes and stretches his neck. He looks at my dad.
“You have to take us to Vermont,” he says.
26
Dad buys us sandwiches at Frank’s that taste a little like plastic and salt and sleepiness. We sit outside the truck on the ground, under the stars, and talk about magic and science and the way friendship can grow into something life-changing and powerful and strange.
Mostly, though, we talk about hope. How badly we need it and how little of it other people have.
“I don’t know about magic,” Dad says.
“Me neither,” I say, because I really don’t know where science ends and magic begins, and which one we have.
The Someday Suitcase Page 15
