And it was my fault.
I collapsed on my bed, curling up in a tight ball and letting the guilt come. Weeks of it, hurricanes of it, slammed against me in staggering waves of nausea and remorse and shame. Fact was, I’d known all along that something was off, known there was a reason I was seeing Ben, and I hadn’t bothered to find out what it was.
I hadn’t even tried.
It was the same thing I’d done with my friendships, the same thing I’d done with my piano lessons, the same thing I’d done with practically everything I’d struggled with in life. It was half-assed and it was lazy, and the realization of it pinned me to the bed until I could hardly breathe.
All I could see was Ben, his skin pallid and plastic-looking, asking just one question: Wasn’t I worth the effort?
Choking for air, I staggered upright and across the room. With shaking hands I grappled with the screen and shoved it outside, letting it tumble to the ground. Then I thrust my head out and gulped in the air. The evening was cool and breezy. Somewhere up there were billions of stars, whirling in a celestial merry-go-round. Maybe if I could see them right now I wouldn’t feel so forgotten, so alone. I shut my eyes, trying to replicate the feeling of absolute belonging I’d had at the beach when I’d seen the stars, but I knew I couldn’t. Perfect moments like that couldn’t be duplicated. They could only be remembered. I sat down hard on the windowsill as my breathing slowed.
I needed a friend.
Sliding my phone from my pocket, I did the one thing I hadn’t done since I lost my sight: I reached out for help.
Ben was fighting for his life, I’d been avoiding my parents for days on end, I’d gotten about fifteen hours of sleep over the course of a week, and yet here I was with Clarissa at my kitchen counter, in front of a couple dozen cupcakes. Just beyond these walls, the sky was dark and churning, gaining the strength of a category-five hurricane, but right now I was safeguarded by frosting and butter and chocolate.
I’d never called Clarissa for anything other than to discuss schoolwork or the Loose Cannons, and it had felt strange doing it today. I’d nearly hung up when her line had started ringing. But then I’d realized: backing away from the uncomfortable, the difficult, was the exact reason my life was such a catastrophe. So I’d taken a deep breath and invited her over.
“Absolutely,” she’d bellowed into the receiver. “I’m totally free. Cupcakes! I’ll bring cupcakes for brain food.” She paused for a moment. “Um. We’re finishing up our research paper, right?”
“Nah. Not really. I mean, only as far as my parents are concerned, seeing that I’m grounded.”
“Yuh-oh,” she breathed. “What happened?”
It had felt right, telling Clarissa. I’d let it tumble out of me in a knotty, trembling mess. Not all of it. God, not all of it. If I’d told her I could see the dying, she’d likely think I’d gone straightjacket. I’d told her only the parts that mattered: Ben’s illness, my crappy relationship with my parents, my wrecked friendships.
And now, a sea of cupcakes in front of me, I was surprised to discover that I felt slightly better, that I’d talked my way into a place where I could breathe again. I could almost ignore the sharp, insistent poke of my phone in my back pocket, awaiting Mason’s update.
Almost.
All the same, Clarissa was doing a pretty good job sidetracking me. “Here, try this,” Clarissa said through a full mouth, stuffing a cupcake in my hand. “Turtle brownie with cheesecake buttercream: the wind beneath the wings of many a grounded girl.”
“Clarissa,” I said, running my hand around the side of the cupcake, “did you take a bite out of this before you gave it to me?”
“They say that the first bite is the best,” Clarissa said by means of answering. “That you get ninety-nine-point-something percent of your enjoyment out of that one mouthful, and then everything after that is just eating, not enjoying. I know, right? It’s so true!” Her palms slapped down on the counter. “And so: yes. I will take a bite out of every cupcake on this table, and then I will pass them along to you. I will spend this entire time savoring, while you...”
“Eat your leftovers,” I finished.
She snorted and bumped me with her shoulder. “But you have to admit: best leftovers ever.”
I laughed. She had me there.
We ate in silence for a minute or two. There was something peaceful about it, that silence—just the two of us hunkering down in a sea of sugar, an uncertain world swirling outside.
Clarissa handed me another one-bite cupcake. “So,” she said. “Mason Milton, huh?”
The proverbial record scratched.
I cleared my throat, working to keep my voice even. “Yeah. I mean, like I said—he’s Ben’s brother. So, yeah.” I shoved nearly the entire cupcake in my mouth so I didn’t have to say anything else.
“Hum,” she said after a tick or two, and I squirmed like someone had just dropped a pinecone down the back of my shorts. “By the way you talk about Mason, I can tell you really like him.”
I swallowed, opened my mouth to lie to her, but then stopped. “Yeah. I do,” I said, surprising myself a little. This was the first time I’d admitted it out loud, and the relief was immediate, a heaviness tumbling off my chest.
“Maybe you need to step up your game?” Clarissa said.
I snorted, swiped my index finger across the top of a cupcake, and tried the frosting. “He has a girlfriend,” I said around my finger.
A model.
From New York City.
Whom I despised out of principle.
“All the more reason,” Clarissa chirped. “Let him know he’s wasting his time with that harlot.”
I barked out a laugh. I was really starting to like this girl. “Maybe I will,” I said. “What about you? Any luck with Iced Coffee Guy?”
She paused for a moment and then said, “Well, I talked to him. Like, for real talked to him.”
“And?”
Her voice overly loud and forced-chipper, she said, “Turns out that he’s twenty-nine. And married.”
“Oh God.”
She cleared her throat. “Yeah. It’s...yeah. I mean, it’s totally fine. It isn’t the first time I made a crap decision based on erroneal information.”
I smirked. “Erroneous. Erroneous information.”
“Right. That’s what I said, isn’t it? Anyway. It’s just...It would be so much easier sometimes if I could see, you know? Even a little bit. Or maybe...” She sucked in a breath and let it out loudly. “Maybe see everything, just once, so I could always remember how beautiful it is. So I could understand what it is. You know what I mean?”
All this time I’d thought life had been easier for her. But the truth was, she’d never see a color or a tree or even her own face. And yet, she was still happy. Borderline crazy, yes, but happy. “Yeah,” I whispered. “I do know what you mean. You want your one bite of the cupcake.”
She sighed. “Exactly.”
Just then, my phone vibrated sharply in my back pocket, rattling against the stool like automatic gunfire.
“Maggie,” Clarissa said, “is that your phone?”
I swallowed. “Yeah,” I said, pulling it out of my pocket. It shook in my palm, insistent.
“Um. Aren’t you going to answer it?”
Realizing I’d been holding my breath, I exhaled. “Right. Of course.” I fumbled for the TALK button and squawked a hello.
A female voice, unfamiliar and detached: “Is this Maggie Sanders?”
Dread pooled in my chest, black and thick and endless. “Yes?” I breathed.
“This is Saint Jude’s, calling on behalf of the Milton family. They need you here immediately.”
My entire world caught in my throat.
“Is...is something wrong?” I whispered through unmoving lips.
Silence swallowed up the line. Finally the woman said, “I’m sorry, but since you aren’t a relative, I’m not at liberty to give you that information. I’ll let the family
know you’ve received their message. Good-bye.”
“Wait!” I yelled. “Ben Milton—is he okay?”
No answer.
“Hello?”
She was gone. The line was dead.
My fingers went cold. I couldn’t release my grip on the phone. Seconds ticked by. I knew I had to think, knew I had to do something, but the woman’s words were still ringing shrilly inside my skull, a terrifying echo. Finally, I forced my fingers to bend, to find Mason’s number in my phone. My call went straight to voice mail.
Slowly, and with sharp articulation, I said to Clarissa, “We have to get to Saint Jude’s.”
And then slowly, and with sharp articulation, I thought, Ben is dying.
“Saint Jude’s,” Clarissa repeated woodenly.
I fell to my knees and swept my hands back and forth on the tile, frantically searching for my shoes. “Yes, it’s a hospital.”
Clarissa cleared her throat. “Right. That’s what I thought. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard Dad mention it before. And every time I ride the bus, I—”
“Can you call him? Your dad? And see if he can give us a ride?”
“He’s in surgery this afternoon,” Clarissa said. The cadence and tone of her speech were all wrong. Flat and uniform. “Can you call your parents?”
“No,” I said quickly, finally finding one shoe. I crawled forward, searching for the other one, banging my head into the kitchen cabinet. “No. I’m grounded, remember?”
“Your grandpa?”
“Out of town. At the horse races.”
“Okay,” Clarissa said in that same foreign tone. “Then we’ll take the bus. You live in Bedford Estates, right? Do you know how to get to the bus stop on Sycamore? Bus Seven routes through there every twenty minutes.”
I used to play soccer at a park on Sycamore when I was little. I’d seen that bus stop probably a thousand times in my life. It was two blocks from my house. “Yeah. I can find it,” I said as I found my other shoe. I lurched up and jammed it on my foot.
“Okay, I’m pretty sure Bus Seven stops at Saint Jude’s.”
“You’re pretty sure?” I screeched.
I heard Clarissa swallow. “Yeah. I mean, I’ve heard the bus driver call out the stop before, and there can’t be two Saint Jude’s, right?”
“Right. Let’s go.” Pushing back my anxiety as much as possible, I concentrated on each step—getting out of the house, making my way down the driveway, finding the sidewalk, crossing the first intersection, rounding the corner to Sycamore.
The bus stop was eerily quiet. Standing by the curb, I listened desperately for an approaching bus and punched in Mason’s number again and again.
Voice mail. Voice mail. Voice mail. Voice mail.
I stuffed my phone back in my shorts and pressed the round button on the face of my watch. Two fifteen.
Stay alive, Ben.
“How do you know Bus Seven even comes through here?” I blurted, starting to panic.
“O and M,” Clarissa said, and I wanted to shake her and tell her to speak normally. “I’ve had heaps of sessions here. Wait—I think the bus is coming.”
The bus’s brakes shrieked as it halted at the curb. Clarissa snatched my hand and dragged me along the length of the bus, presumably looking for the door. Coming to a quick halt, she said, “Excuse me, this is Bus Seven, right?” When a rumbly-voiced male made an affirmative noise, she yanked me on board, paid the driver, and moved skillfully down the aisle, apologizing occasionally to the other passengers as she tapped her way down the walkway and found two empty seats.
Say what you would about Clarissa, but she knew what she was doing.
“How’d you learn to do all this?” I asked as we sat down.
Her leg bounced up and down beside mine. “O and M taught me the basics. But that only takes you so far. So once I got out on my own, I mostly learned by screwing up.” Her hyper, manic tone was back, just a little, and I exhaled at the sound of it. “I mean, you take the wrong bus, go the wrong direction a few times, look idiotic once in a while, but you figure it out. Kind of like life, I guess?”
Yeah. Kind of like life.
I exhaled loudly. I might’ve been getting around on my own now, too, had I put any effort into it. I’d spent so much time fighting Hilda, fighting being blind.
As if that were the worst thing out there.
I rubbed my forehead with my fist. I couldn’t just stand still anymore and let everything steamroll over me. There were people relying on me right now, things I needed to do, a life I needed to live.
The bus lurched to a stop and the doors coughed open. “Merriweather Mall,” the bus driver drawled. In the aisle, passengers bumped slowly past me. I dialed Mason again. Voice mail. Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I checked my watch. Two forty-five.
Time seemed to be speeding up.
“We should be there soon,” Clarissa said.
“Right,” I said, twisting my hands together in my lap and keeping them that way. There was no music in my head right now, nothing to keep my hands occupied.
“Civic Center,” the bus driver called out lazily as we slowed to a stop again. Someone wearing flowery cologne moseyed past me. I heard the door wheeze shut, but we sat there for a painfully long time before we crept forward, seemingly one car length at a time. I tightened my grip on my cane.
Stay alive, Ben.
The thought was weak now, a guilty whisper, and I reached in my pocket and turned off my phone, suddenly terrified that Mason would call and tell me otherwise.
“Saint Jude’s,” the bus driver said, and it had no sooner come out of his mouth than I jerked to my feet and scrambled down the aisle. Clarissa called out in my wake as I lurched down the steps and took off, leaving her behind.
I couldn’t see Saint Jude’s, but I stumbled forward anyway, snatching a passerby and pleading for help to find the lobby. Once inside, I twisted around in staggering circles, praying for a speck of eyesight.
I saw nothing.
“Welcome to Saint Jude’s. Can I help you?” said a pleasant female voice from somewhere in front of me.
I scrambled forward, slamming hard into a counter. “ImlookingforBenMiltonsroom,” I said, my words all coming out in one breath.
“Excuse me?”
I put my palms flat on the counter. Leaned forward. “I am looking”—I paused, trying to control my inhalations, trying to calm down—“for Ben Milton’s room.”
“Let me check,” she said haltingly. For a moment, the only sound was the snapping of computer keys. Then: “First floor. Room one-oh-two, straight past this counter, second door on the left. Would you like some—”
I lurched away. My feet felt slow, like I was trying to trudge through deep, damp sand. People were everywhere, it seemed, wandering slowly down the corridor. Bumping into them, I apologized and then wedged myself past. I found the wall with my left hand and kept walking, images of Ben blurring together in my mind.
Stay alive, Ben.
It wasn’t even a thought anymore. It was a prayer.
My fingers skipped over the first doorjamb. I jerked to a stop. Took a wobbly step backward. Slid a flat palm up the wall until I found the number plate for the room. My fingers skimmed over the braille. Room 101.
Ben’s room was next door. And I still couldn’t see.
Something was clawing at my stomach, my chest, my heart. I couldn’t breathe. Tears tumbled down my cheeks. I pitched forward, running my hand along the wall until I found the next doorjamb, the next number plate.
Room 102.
I froze. Someone was crying in the room. It was Mrs. Milton, her muffled sobs drifting out of the room and floating around me.
The moment was hopelessly huge, and it seized me so quickly, so severely, so unlike anything else I’d ever known, I felt like I’d flatten beneath the weight of it. My cane fell to the floor. It rolled away, a long, drawn-out tinny sound trailing off behind me. I stood completely still, rooted in the emptiness, fe
eling as if something were crushing me, squeezing the air from my lungs. Something massive and unyielding.
Ben was dead.
My knees buckled and I collapsed to the floor.
No.
I thought this as forcibly as I could, so I could make it true. Ben couldn’t be gone because I could still feel his kindness, and I could still feel his smile, and I could still feel all the beautiful things he’d done for me. I could still feel him.
I wasn’t in a hospital, unable to see. I was stuck in some horrific dream. I’d wake up any second now, roll out of bed, take a shower, have breakfast, and ask Gramps to drop me off at Ben’s. Ben would be home and I’d see him, because he’d be alive.
A speaker system blared overhead—a page for an X-ray tech. “No,” I whispered. I felt my chin wobble, felt my lungs closing up, felt hopelessness surging in. I wrapped my arms around my stomach and rocked back and forth on the hallway floor. If I had any sense about me, I would’ve known I was in shock. I couldn’t grasp any thoughts. They were all slippery, dark, transient, sliding through my fingers before I could get purchase of them.
My head jerked up as I heard footsteps coming down the corridor. A gurney’s wheels on tile floor. Chatter. Banter. Laughter. Staggering slightly, I lurched to my feet, wiping the wetness from my cheeks and glaring into the void. There were only three cards in my verbal Rolodex right now, and all of them were printed with four-letter words.
That was when I heard one voice.
One familiar voice that brought back memories of laughter and video games and Doritos and stars.
“Thera?”
The voice was horribly weak and slurred, but it was Ben’s.
I sucked in the sort of breath you take when you’re swimming and come up to the water’s surface in dire need of air. Ben was alive?
The gurney bumped past me and into the room. Groping for the doorjamb, I teetered there for the length of several heartbeats, confused. Dizzy. Inside the room were scuffles and grunts. More chatter. More laughter. The nurses were doing something. Transferring Ben to his bed? Then they breezed past me in a sea of babble, taking off down the hall. Mrs. Milton captured me in a quick hug. “Isn’t it wonderful?” she blubbered.
The One Thing Page 23
