“Phyllis?” I murmured. “I think I need to take a break. Phyllis?”
She wasn’t listening. I closed the door and prepared to change back into my own clothes.
No sooner had I started than Phyllis rapped on the door and gently threw another dress over the top. “Try the peach beauty on this instant,” she commanded. “It will transform you.”
The dress was an elaborate floor-length gown with layer upon layer of ruffles. Unfortunately, real ruffles, and not the potato chips.
No way was I wearing this, not even in a dressing room. What if there was a tornado that knocked down the entire store and I was discovered in a heap of debris with this thing on? Okay, so maybe tornadoes are rare in New Hampshire, but you couldn’t be too careful. “No, I think I’m done,” I told her. “I need to get going—”
“Don’t walk away from this beauty,” Phyllis insisted. “If you do, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. There’s an old saying in women’s wear. ‘To peach her own.’ It’s a magical color.”
So, now we were diving into the realm of magic. I was starting to think Phyllis needed to retire. But to humor her, I slipped out of my jeans again and pulled the dress on over my tee, not willing to commit to a full try-on. I looked at the angled neckline and how it framed my slightly round face. Something about the color did work—it wasn’t one I usually wore, but it did look good against my skin.
Hold on a second. What was I thinking? The notoriously overheated Flanberger’s was getting to me. Get ahold of yourself. Those waves of fabric make you look like a curtain in a country-western furniture showroom.
My phone rang, and I slipped it out of my purse. Stella’s dad? Why was he calling? “Hello?” I said.
There was a cough, an awkward throat-clearing on the other end. “Frances, it’s David Grant. Stella’s been in an accident. A fairly serious accident. I wanted you to know right away.”
“What—where? She . . . ?” I was already tucking my purse under my arm, lifting the latch on the changing-room door.
“The ambulance is taking her to Mercy Regional,” Stella’s father said. “We’ll meet you there.”
I shoved the phone in my purse and started pulling the dress over my head. The zipper was stuck and I couldn’t get the dress off. I heard a slight tear and stopped pulling. I just grabbed my shoes, jeans, and purse and ran out of the store, past Phyllis, past the checkout, straight out into the parking lot.
At the hospital I sat beside Stella’s brother, Mason. He told me she’d been on Old Route 91, out by the dairy farms where the road dips and curves. “Roller Coaster Road” was what I used to call it when I was little, and I’d scream with delight as my dad floored it to go up a steep hill and then zoom down the other side.
“So . . . who was it? Or was it a hit-and-run?”
“A woman driving a minivan hit her,” Mason said. “She had two kids in the back. She called nine-one-one right away, so that’s good, but . . . I don’t know. I have a pretty bad feeling. Car versus bike—it’s never good. What if Stella . . . you know.” His voice seemed to cut out, like a lawn mower that lost its choke. He ran his hands back and forth through his short dark-brown hair, which was sticking out in various directions.
“Don’t think that,” I said. “She’s going to be okay.” I had no reason to say that, nothing to base it on, but he needed to hear it. So did I.
We’d been sitting in the waiting room together for ten minutes, and we knew Stella was conscious and being treated for pain, and she had some leg and internal injuries. That was all we knew, and it was bad enough.
We’d made small talk about Stella, the ride, Mason’s freshman year at Granite State College, my stupid peach dress. The minutes were wearing on us.
Mason kept bouncing his legs up and down in a very nervous way, like he wanted to run out. Maybe he did that all the time, but if he did, I’d forgotten. I felt just as jittery. I was tapping my fingers against the chair in almost exactly the same rhythm. We were a terrible ER mariachi group. The Jitterers.
Stella’s parents had been in the exam room with her ever since I’d gotten here. I’d raced through the automatic double doors in the peach chiffon nightmare of a dress. I’d planned to change when I got here but somehow misplaced my jeans between Flanberger’s and Mercy. I felt so self-conscious sitting next to Mason. If it was going to take another twenty minutes until I could see Stella, then I should go find the pants.
These were the dumb things I was thinking about while I sat there on that hard red plastic seat beside Mason. It was easier to think about that than about why we were here and what was happening . . . what might be happening.
All of a sudden Mason’s expression tightened. I heard footsteps in the empty hallway, coming closer. I stood up, my stomach turning somersaults, my palms sweating. A female doctor in a white coat was walking toward us, beside Stella’s parents. The doctor wasn’t smiling. Nobody was smiling. I wasn’t breathing.
“Mom?” asked Mason. “Say something, please. Somebody.”
“Stella is resting now, and she’s holding her own,” said the doctor. “We’ve stopped the blood loss and we’ve made her comfortable.”
It sounded like something I’d heard on my mom’s favorite medical drama. To my mind, “making someone comfortable” meant giving up on them—it was the horrible thing the vet had said just before he put our dog to sleep six months ago.
“We’re admitting her and moving her upstairs,” the doctor continued. “There are still a lot of things to sort out. She’ll need some surgeries right away. . . .”
Surgeries . . . plural? She kept talking, but I somehow stopped listening. It felt like I was standing under a shower that only sprayed bad news. Bad news. Rinse. Repeat. Bad news. The doctor was mentioning the broken bones, the stitches on Stella’s arm, how her face was bruised but was really better than it looked.
“So, can we see her now?” I asked.
“Please. I wish you would.” Stella’s mom put her hand on Mason’s arm, which was saying a lot. Their family didn’t hug much. It was just the way they were. Stella and I weren’t huggers, either. We knew we were close. We didn’t have to make a show of it, the way other girls ran around hugging like they hadn’t seen each other for weeks when actually it was forty-five minutes between trig and chemistry.
“Stella needs to rest right now,” said the doctor. “So please keep your visits short. They’ll be moving her upstairs, out of ER, as quickly as it can be arranged.” She nodded at Stella’s parents. “I’ll check in with you shortly.” She strode off back down the hallway.
Mr. Grant held Mason in his gaze for a second. “You two can go visit now. I know you won’t say anything upsetting, Frances. But Mason . . . just don’t tell her how bad she looks. She does look pretty bad, and I know you guys always tease each other. But don’t this time. Just don’t.”
“Right. Got it.” Mason nodded, and I followed him down the hall to the exam room. “Like I’d say something right now,” he muttered to me. “I mean, seriously.”
“I know. You—you wouldn’t.” He was a very decent guy, considering he’d once gotten a video of me falling off a trampoline and shared it with the entire world. “You want to go first?” I asked him. “Or you want to go in together?”
“Actually . . . I need a drink of water first. You go ahead on your own.”
I wished he hadn’t said that. I didn’t feel brave enough to go in by myself. “I can wait for you,” I said.
“No. You go ahead. I’ll be there in a minute.” He looked pale and slightly ill. He had a history of puking when his family was hurt—like when Stella cut her foot on a nail in the driveway when she was five, or when their older brother dislocated his ankle doing a skateboard trick. It was almost sort of cute, or would be if it didn’t involve throwing up. I decided not to push him.
When I walked into Stella’s hospital room, I felt a wave of anxiety nearly knock me over. The floor was wobbly. My legs were shaking. I wished Maso
n had come in beside me so I’d have someone to fall onto.
I surveyed the room, not wanting to look at Stella, which was crazy. I had to look, had to go comfort her. I was scared out of my mind. Her hands were wrapped in gauze, and her elbow was taped. She had one long, bright-red scrape on her chin, covered in ointment—it was stitches, I saw as I got closer. She had tons of small wounds on her face, probably gravel driven into her skin. Her blue eyes looked glassy, and at the same time, washed out.
I took a moment to compose myself. The last thing she needed was to see me freak out. She was going to be fine. She was banged up, sure, and she’d be on crutches for a while, but she was going to be okay.
“You look terrible,” I suddenly blurted.
“Thanks,” she muttered.
“I’m sorry, Stells. I’m really sorry I said that.” Oh God. Why was I such an idiot at times? “I guess . . . it’s a law for best friends to be honest, isn’t it? Plus, I kind of panicked.”
Stella took a long, slow breath and winced. “In that case,” she said slowly, “that dress is hideous.”
“I know, right? I was trying on prom dresses when your dad called and—anyway, how are you feeling?”
“I can’t feel anything, actually,” she said. “I guess I’m drugged up on painkillers.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about what happened,” I said.
“Quit saying sorry,” she said. “It was fun while it lasted. We were going to prom. We were going to do the Cure Ride. And now nothing,” she said in a flat voice.
“Don’t say nothing! We can still go to prom, we can still . . .” My voice trailed off. “Do lots of things.” I perched on a chair beside the bed. She looked exhausted, with dark lines under her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept in a few days. Bedsheets and white blankets covered her midsection, but tubes ran underneath the covers, connected to monitors, making clicking noises periodically with her vital signs.
She was pulling at a thread on the top blanket. “They gave me this stupid warming blanket,” she said, “like it’ll help.” Tears trickled out the sides of her eyes. I grabbed a tissue and started to hand it to her, then realized she wasn’t up to using her arms much. I’d need to do the work. I dabbed at the tears rolling down her cheeks. This was such a backward situation. She never cried. She was usually the one who handed me Kleenex. I fell apart at sad movies and pet stores and random other places.
Stella fiddled with the plastic hospital ID bracelet on her left wrist. When her fingers touched the IV tube in the back of her hand, she pulled her hand away. “I hate these things.”
“I’ve never had one,” I said. “Does it hurt?”
“Not exactly. More like it feels like you’re trapped.” We both contemplated that for a minute, me staring at her pinched skin, the heavy tape and plastic tube, and her looking anywhere but her hand. I looked up at the liquid dripping down the tube from a couple of plastic pouches, pulsing into her.
The door opened behind us, and I glanced over my shoulder to see Mrs. Grant walk in. Stella’s mom walked over and laid her hand on my shoulder. “Franny, do you think you could go to our house and pack a bag for Stella? You’d know what she wants, and that way, we can stay here.”
“Sure—sure, I’ll do that. No problem.” I knew they were probably trying to get rid of me for a while, and though it made me feel guilty to think this way, there was a part of me that was all right taking a break. Stella looked so unlike herself. It was almost as if I didn’t know this Stella. I jumped up and started for the door, then turned back to take a last glance at Stella. “I’ll be back later, okay?”
She didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure if she was asleep or if she just didn’t hear me.
I headed out into the hallway and nearly bumped into Mason. He was holding a bundle of blue fabric.
“These jeans belong to you? I found them in the parking lot.”
I couldn’t respond.
“You said . . . you lost them? I went outside to get some fresh air by my truck and, well. I saw these crumpled on the pavement like someone dropped them.”
The floor seemed to fall away underneath me, and I felt like I was losing my balance, plunging, arms outstretched, reaching for the ground as if I were in an elevator that was crashing.
“You don’t look good.” Mason grabbed onto my waist, forcing me to lean against him. “You feeling all right?”
“Not . . .” I couldn’t find the words. I couldn’t figure out what to do. I knew I should sit down, but I didn’t know where to find a chair.
He took my arm and guided me to a chair by the nurses’ station. “Sit down for a minute. Sit right here. Head down, Franny. Breathe slowly.”
I leaned over, head between my legs, eyes facing the shiny hospital floor. I hugged the jeans as if they were my favorite blanket. My warming blanket.
“Come on, Frances. It’s going to be okay.” Mason crouched down beside me and rubbed my back once or twice.
Easy for him to say. He hadn’t seen her yet.
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About the Author
Photo credit www.chelseypaul.com
CATHERINE CLARK is the author of Maine Squeeze, Love and Other Things I’m Bad At, Picture Perfect, Wish You Were Here, The Alison Rules, How to Meet Boys, Eleven Things I Promised, and many others. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. For more about Catherine and her books, and the occasional milk shake recipe, visit www.catherineclark.org.
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Books by Catherine Clark
Eleven Things I Promised
How to Meet Boys
Maine Squeeze
Love and Other Things I’m Bad At
So Inn Love
Better Latte Than Never
Banana Splitsville
Rocky Road Trip
Icing on the Lake
The Alison Rules
Picture Perfect
Unforgettable Summer
Credits
Cover photograph © 2016 by Katarina Sundelin/PhotoAlto/Corbis
Cover design by Steve Scott
Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE SUMMER OF EVERYTHING. Copyright © 2016 by Catherine Clark. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.epicreads.com
ISBN 978-0-06-235922-3
EPub Edition © March 2016 ISBN 9780062359247
16 17 18 19 20 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Originally published separately as Picture Perfect and Wish You Were Here
FIRST EDITION, 2016
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The Summer of Everything Page 35
