Wrong in All the Right Ways

by Tiffany Brownlee

  “Oh, shoot. What time is it?” She checks her watch, but I don’t need to do the same. I already know that it’s two forty-two. How? Because I checked it a million times in the four minutes and thirty-seven seconds that it took me to get up here. “Dylan must be in PT.”

  “PT?” What’s PT?

  Smiling from ear to ear, she sticks out her hand to pull me from the floor and brings me in for a hug. “Physical therapy. Dylan’s awake. He woke up three weeks ago.”

  “Three weeks?” Why am I the last to find out about this?

  “I’d never want to hide this from you but it was really rough at first, honey. He was having trouble with recognition and needed some time to find his words. Dylan begged me to wait until he was doing better before we brought anyone else in,” she says, answering my question before I can string together the words to ask it. “I forgot that they changed his schedule to physical therapy on Thursdays now that he’s regained enough muscle memory to stand on his own for a little while.” She pulls back, placing her hands on my shoulders. “Well, say something.”

  At first, I don’t know what to say, but then the words crash into me like a wave breaking onto an unsuspecting surfer.

  “I’m so happy he’s awake, don’t get me wrong. But three weeks, Mom? I just wish I found out when you guys did.” I’m a little hurt, but that doesn’t last long when the thought of seeing Dylan races through my mind. “Now, where is he?”

  “Physical therapy. Fourth floor.”

  I grab her hand and race toward the stairwell; the elevator is too slow to take one floor down.

  When we reach the front desk of the physical therapy wing and sign in, my mom pulls me to the side. “I must warn you, he’s still a little groggy some days. He didn’t remember your dad or Matthew or me at first, but slowly he’s re-mapping memories. And now he calls me Mom and your dad Dad.” My jaw drops when I hear this. Dylan never called Dad Dad. “He even remembers that he and Matthew used to play hide-and-seek, and sometimes he talks about the best hiding places in the house. It’s actually kind of cute.”

  “So, he could not remember … anything about me?” I knew this was a possibility, but I didn’t think that it would actually happen.

  “We show him pictures of you, but so far, he just hasn’t said very much.” I place my hand over my mouth, the tears ready to fall at my first command. “But you never know. He might. Only way to find out is to see for yourself.” My mom opens the door and pushes me through it. There are two sets of people behind the doors of the physical therapy room. In the corner, there’s a twentysomething-year-old guy and a teenage girl at the parallel bars. With a black brace on her knee, she winces as she applies pressure on her leg and takes another step, the man cheering her on. And against the far wall is Dylan with a middle-aged man in scrubs. They’re walking very slowly on the treadmills.

  “Hi, Dylan!” my mom calls with a wave when she enters. Dylan returns the favor, his eyes passing over me, and then falls back into the exercise with the man. “I’m going to talk to his therapist to see how things are coming along, and find out what his plans for the future are. You guys should catch up, though. Remember, if he’s not totally responsive yet, just give him some time. It may click once he starts interacting with you.” My mom beckons the physical therapist over, whose name is apparently Jason, and they head to the tables on the side to talk.

  Dylan switches off the machine and makes his way to one of the nearby wheelchairs to rest. He doesn’t turn around when I approach but picks up a set of flashcards from the side pocket and begins saying the words out loud.

  “Hey, Dylan.”

  “Hi,” he says, without looking up at me. I rub away the goose bumps on my arms before sitting on the bench beside him.

  “You want some help with those?”

  “I guess. I can’t believe they’re making me do these,” he jokes. For a moment, his brown eyes catch the light, and I almost melt in his presence.

  He hands me the cards, and I show him the one on the top of the deck. Water. “Do you know what this word says?”

  “Water.”

  “Good. And this one?”

  “Elephant.” I flash the next one to him, but he doesn’t attempt to say the word. “I hate this activity. It’s for babies,” he says. “I like talking better. I just want to be a functional human again.”

  “One more, and then we’ll stop.” I show him the card again.

  “House.” He’s right. These words are silly and juvenile.

  “Very nice!” I try to make light of this, handing the cards back to him. While he puts them away, I check him out. He’s lost so much weight in his arms, legs, and face that I have to try hard to remind myself what he looked like before. His dark hair is a bit longer—it now brushes against the tops of his shoulders—and his skin is a lot paler than the sun-kissed glow he used to possess, too. I’m so engrossed in what he looks like that I can barely focus on his words when he speaks.

  “I think I used to do quizzes with someone else before the accident. A girl. But it wasn’t words on the cards. It was something else—science?” His eyebrows wrinkle as he tries to extract the memory from deep within his mind, a coy smile slowly emerging on his lips.

  My heartbeat picks up when he’s says this. “Maybe it’ll help if you describe her.”

  “She used to smell like … strawberries. And she looked like…” He stops, blinking his eyes a few times with a confused look on his face. When he turns toward me, I can almost see my name sitting on the edge of his tongue. “Emma?”

  I’m already crying by the time his final syllable comes out, and when I wrap my hands around his fragile frame, I feel him do the same to me. “Yes, Dylan. It’s me.”

  “Emma,” he repeats, this time so clear that I can almost hear pieces of the old Dylan within it. His smile resurfaces, and I hold him tighter when I see it.

  “You know, for a minute there, I didn’t think you’d remember me.”

  “Forget you? I could never.” He half smiles. “How have you been?”

  I walk him through my summer at UCLA and tell him all about the craziness at the internship. I know that he probably doesn’t understand why I’m so excited to spend my summer fetching coffee for the assistants and reading manuscripts of books that may never get published, but I don’t care. Just talking to him makes me so happy.

  “But enough about me. How have you been?”

  “Fine. Considering.” He motions to the wheelchair beneath him and sighs. “I can walk, but I get tired really easily, so I have to use this thing, too. I was told that I broke a ton of bones and was pretty slashed up, like a victim in a horror film.”

  “Yeah, you were.”

  “Well, that would explain the weird scars I have all over my body.” He smiles at me, letting his eyes pierce mine, like he hasn’t missed a beat between us for seven months. “I’m kind of upset that I missed the opportunity to get people to sign my casts. I mean, that’s the whole point of breaking bones, isn’t it?”

  I can’t help but laugh. I’ve missed his funny rhetorical questions. It’s been far too long. “Mom and Dad wouldn’t let anyone near you with a pen. They wanted you to have a ‘clean cast.’”

  “Probably for the best.”

  “Yeah. Mom would have majorly flipped out if she had walked in to see that someone drew anything lewd on your cast.” Giggling, I raise a hand to brush my hair out of my face, but he catches my hand before I can do it.

  “Let me,” he says as he rolls his wheelchair closer and tucks the pieces behind my ears like he used to do all the time. “Your eyes are just as brilliant as I remember them.” I feel his bony hand graze the side of my cheek and then take hold of the back of my neck before he presses his mouth into mine. Everything happens in slow motion: he lifts my chin, closes his eyes, and leans in before brushing his lips across mine, re-creating the first time he ever kissed me, in the middle of the not-so-crowded mall. A rush of energy surges through my body, making its way
out to every extremity. And your lips are just as soft as I remember them.

  “Wow,” he breathes as he releases his grip on my neck. “Just like I remember it.”

  I look over at Mom, hoping that she didn’t see us kiss. And as far as I’m concerned, she didn’t. She’s neck-deep in a conversation with Jason, a serious look in her eyes.

  We’re both quiet for a moment—I guess taking in the fact that our lips connected in the same way that they used to before the accident. The electricity from the kiss is still convulsing through my body when I say, “We have some things to discuss. About us, I mean—”

  “I heard you,” he cuts me off.

  “What?”

  “In the hospital room … I heard you. You told me that you loved me.” I must give him a blank stare, because shortly after he asks, “Right? I wasn’t just dreaming that, was I?”

  “You weren’t dreaming. I said that.”

  “Did you mean it?”

  “Of course I meant it.”

  I was in love with him then, but am I still in love with him now? The escalation of the blood pounding in my ears answers for me: without a doubt.

  “Hm.” “Hm”? What’s that supposed to mean? “So how is this supposed to work now that you’re at UCLA?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. In the car, Mom told me that they adopted you, so legally you’re my brother now. Kinda makes things more difficult on top of everything else.”

  “Yeah. And I don’t want to be the guy who holds you back or slows you down.” My eyes inadvertently look at the wheelchair he’s sitting in when he says this. “But I don’t want to give you up that easily, either.”

  I look down at his hands and want so badly to wiggle my fingers into the spaces between his, but with my mom not too far away, I decide against it. “What do you want?”

  “I want you.” His words come out stronger than anything else he’s said to me this entire time. “And I know I’m not supposed to because it’s wrong, but I can’t help that.”

  “I know.”

  He’s quiet for a long while, causing the weight in my stomach to return with full force. In his silence, I think back to a conversation we had up on the balcony the night before the showcase. I have to wonder how much of his memories about me he has recovered, because Dylan’s words now seem to echo that conversation from months ago. “We’re not right, but we’re not wrong, Emma. I just can’t help the way that I feel about you.”

  It isn’t until he speaks again that I’m brought out of my trip down memory lane. “You ever heard of this thing called ‘the long game’?” It’s sort of out of the blue, and that throws me off at first, so I shake my head. “I used to complain to Jason about never getting back to my old self again, and he told me we’re playing the long game when it comes to this stuff. We don’t focus on what’s wrong right now, but keep in mind the good that will come from this later.”

  I bite the tip of my thumbnail as he speaks. “I’m not sure what you mean. And what does that have to do with us?”

  “It’s where you work toward a goal, but you don’t know when that goal will be achieved. And it has everything to do with us.” He wheels even closer and takes my hand in his. “I think we should be friends for right now.”

  “I agree. With college for me and physical therapy for you, there’s not going to be a lot of time for us to spend with each other. And besides, I’ve already been your sister and your girlfriend, so being your friend shouldn’t be that difficult.” I try to pull my hand from his grip, but he won’t let go.

  “I don’t know. It’s going to be hard to resist wanting to kiss you whenever I see you.”

  “I know, but…”

  His amber eyes capture mine, and a small crescent appears on his lips. “Play the long game with me, Emma.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll go along with this ‘friends’ thing for now, but what’s going to happen when ‘eventually’ rolls around someday? Yes, for the next four years, you’ll be in LA, and maybe I’ll be away too, for art school after all this. But what’s going to happen when our worlds collide again in the future?”

  “Dylan,” I gasp, as breathy as if I’d just run a marathon without stopping. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that we’ll take it one day at a time as siblings and friends, but someday, I hope to end this long game … because … I love you, and I want to be with you.”

  The words seem to come very naturally to him. He speaks confidently. It’s almost as if he’s been practicing them in his dreams for the past seven months, waiting for his chance to say them to my face.

  “I love you, too,” I whisper into the space between us, tears flooding my eyes.

  “I love you more.”

  “I love you most.”

  “Not possible,” he responds, sparking my mind to recall the last text he sent me on the night he asked me out.

  Not possible. You’re never gonna lose me. No matter what happens, I’m always gonna be here

  He’s right. He’ll always be in my heart. No matter where we are or what’s going on in our lives, I’ll know that he will always be with me, playing the long game until a day comes when every obstacle between us gets knocked down and we can be together once again.

  “So, the long game?” he asks, wiping the tears from my eyes.

  “Long game.” I smile, scooting away from his body and extending my hand toward him, like I did on my last first day of high school. “Hi, Dylan. I’m Emma.”

  “Nice to meet you, Emma. I’m Dylan. Dylan McAn … I mean, Ellenburg. Dylan Ellenburg.” A laugh escapes us both at the same time, his just as hearty as I remember it. “That’s going to take some getting used to, that’s for sure.”

  “Yeah, but now, you have the rest of your life to work on it. You’re an Ellenburg for forever now.”

  “Forever,” he whispers, his amber eyes smiling into mine. “I like the sound of that.”

  acknowledgments

  Writing a book is never easy. I spent many hours hunched over my laptop crafting this story, but that is nothing compared to the time that so many generous people have put in to transform Wrong in All the Right Ways from an idea in my head to the book in your hands. I am eternally grateful for them all.

  Thank you to my amazing agent, Jill Kramer, for taking a chance on me and having so much faith in me and my writing. I will never be able to repay you for your love, support, and words of wisdom throughout this journey.

  Thank you to my publisher, Christy Ottaviano, and everyone at Macmillan who had a hand in bringing Wrong in All the Right Ways to life. This includes my production editor, Jennifer Healey, and the designer of my gorgeous cover, Danielle Mazzella Di Bosco. Thank you also to Ana Deboo, Regina Castillo, and Diane Miller for your attention to detail with this book.

  A HUGE thank you to Jessica Anderson, my editor. Simply put, you are incredible (the Wonder Woman of editors, if you will), and words cannot fully express how lucky I am to have you in my corner. I am honored to have had the opportunity to work with such a hard-working and delightful person.

  Thank you to my siblings for being my first beta readers (before I even knew what a beta reader was) and for not being afraid to call me out when my writing fell short. I love you guys! Will, I don’t know how you’ve put up with me through this process, but your love and patience are deeply appreciated. And Mom, thank you for being my biggest cheerleader. You knew I was destined to “be somebody” since I was two years old. I love you, and I hope I’m making you proud.

  And finally, thank you to my readers. Sharing this book with you is a dream come true!

  About the Author

  Tiffany Brownlee is a middle-school English teacher in the New Orleans area. She has been writing stories since childhood and won her first creative writing award in the second grade. Tiffany originally conceived of this novel as she was re-reading Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Wrong in All the Right Ways marks her debut.

  Visit her o
nline at tiffanybrownlee.com, or sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2018 by Tiffany Brownlee

  Henry Holt and Company, Publishers since 1866

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