What Remains

by Helene Dunbar

  The office is the same as it was when I left on Tuesday, only this time I know what to expect so I don’t feel quite as stressed out. This time when he ushers me in, I sit down and start to make a list of the things in my head I do want to talk about.

  There’s the driving thing, of course. I mean, I can’t ask Spencer to drive me around for the rest of my life, although knowing him, he’d do it. It’s been fine since he hasn’t brought up that night in The Cave again and neither have I. I just wish I could stop thinking about it. And doing an Internet search for “what do you do when you’ve made out with your best friend” is not going to get me anywhere. I can only imagine what Mom would think if she saw that in my browser history.

  Then there’s Lizzie. I’ve spent some time while I’m in school and Lizzie is … wherever she goes when she isn’t actively in my head … thinking about it all. And I’ve made the decision that I have to find a way to talk to Reynolds about her before I go completely bonkers. I’m going to leave the dreams out of it. But at least I can talk about missing her. And maybe, if he seems cool, about the feeling that she’s somehow still here with me.

  “I’m glad to see you, Cal. I wasn’t completely sure you’d want to come back,” Dr. Reynolds says when he sees me. He’s laughing a little and he really does look glad to see me.

  “There are things I guess I really want to talk about,” I admit.

  “Go ahead then. What’s on your mind?”

  “It’s Lizzie, really.” I’m surprised at how guilty those words make me feel. It’s like I’m reporting her to the principal or the cops.

  “Yes?”

  I have this speech in my head, but somehow the words keep tying themselves in knots between my brain and my mouth.

  “I Googled it. I mean, what happens to people who are transplant recipients. People who get organs that belonged to someone else and who remember stuff … ”

  “Remember?” Dr. Reynolds cocks his heads and puts his stack of papers down. “Cal, are you talking about the theory of cellular memories?”

  I nod. This is where he tells me I’m nuts; that Lizzie is dead and having her heart doesn’t mean it’s possible for some part of her to still really be alive inside me. My stomach flops and for a minute I worry that coming back here was a mistake. My shoulders tense as I glance at the door, calculating the best way to make a run for it.

  “Interesting,” he says. “So you feel like you’re able to access Lizzie’s memories?” He doesn’t say this in the way I expected him to. It isn’t that condescending response that means he’s going to have me locked up. He actually sounds intrigued.

  “No, not memories.”

  Yeah, be glad about that, Cal. You’d never sleep again.

  “Dreams,” I say, ignoring both her comment and my promise to myself to keep this a secret. “I’ve had dreams that I think are hers. And I can feel her. Inside me.” I stop and blush because it sounds like I’m saying something suggestive when that isn’t my intention at all. “Sorry. I’m not saying this right.”

  “It’s okay, Cal. We’re going to take this slowly. So you say you can feel her … what, thoughts? Emotions? Even when you’re awake?”

  “Sometimes, I can feel her react to things.” I’m kind of embarrassed to talk about it now. I’ve read report after report about people suddenly liking chicken when they’d been a vegetarian or bursting into tears when they listen to Frank Sinatra when they’d only listened to heavy metal. But I haven’t really read anything about hearing voices or being influenced like what happened with Spencer.

  “How does she react?” Dr. Reynolds asks.

  “It’s like I can feel her heart race in reaction to things. I can kind of sense when she’s happy or upset. And I hear her voice almost like she’s talking to me, only I know that I can’t really be hearing it. And sometimes, it’s like she wants to do something and … ”

  “Her heart?” he asks with a raised eyebrow. “Do you feel like she’s made you do things you don’t want to do?”

  “No … I … It isn’t like that. She just … I don’t really want to talk about it. I thought I did, but … ” I say, too quickly. I’m pissed at myself because I’ve just said everything I wasn’t going to. I thought I could talk to him about Lizzie without talking about Spencer and everything else, but it’s all tied up together and it isn’t working.

  And really, at the end of the day, all I want is to be able to get in the car and drive like a normal person. I want to not be afraid that I’m going to kill someone every time I’m behind the wheel.

  “Okay, that’s fine. We’ll talk about what you’re comfortable with. Do you want these feelings to go away?”

  I try to figure out how to untangle the mess of thoughts in my head. “It doesn’t really bother me all the time. I mean, it’s like she isn’t really totally gone and that’s nice. It’s nice to have her with me. I miss her. I just … ”

  I miss you too, you know.

  “Do you feel like sometimes it’s too much?”

  “Yeah. Something like that.” I look around for something to do with my hands. I wonder if this is how Spencer feels when he’s onstage and how he could possibly like it. I hate that feeling of being watched except when I’m on the field. I get up and walk over to his desk and pick up a ball encased in plastic, black signatures flowing over it.

  “That’s the 1984 team,” he says. It’s pretty cool that he has all of this historic baseball stuff.

  “My coach … my old coach … asked me to be student manager of the varsity team,” I say. I hope it will balance all of the stuff about me that’s probably in that paperwork and all the bizarre stuff I’ve told him today. Maybe it will make him realize that I haven’t turned into a total loser.

  “That sounds like it would be good for you. Are you going to do it?”

  “Sure.” I try to downplay the excitement I’m feeling to be doing something that involves baseball, but then it wells up and spills over through the smile that widens my mouth. “I start on Saturday.”

  I put the ball down and go back to the chair and sit, more relaxed now. “See, it’s just that Lizzie is braver than I am. Lizzie … nothing really scares her. It never really did. And I feel like I owe her.”

  Dr. Reynolds nods and plays with his pen. “Cal, before the accident, did you ever feel like Lizzie pushed you into doing things?”

  “I guess that depends on what you mean by pushed,” I say. “I mean, she was always trying to get me and Spencer to do crazy things with her. She just liked to have fun. And I think … no, I know, she enjoyed making me squirm, which is pretty easy to do.”

  “And now?”

  “Well, no I wouldn’t say she’s pushing me. Most of the time it’s just these surges of feelings, except for … ” Crap, I’ve done it again and I’m not talking about that. I don’t care how cool this guy is and how much great baseball stuff he has. I’m not talking about Spencer.

  “Except for?” Of course, he doesn’t miss anything.

  “Nothing,” I say, wondering when the hour will be over.

  “These surges of feeling. Are they frightening?”

  “No … I mean, it’s just Lizzie. But it’s distracting sometimes and we don’t always feel the same way about things.”

  Ain’t that the truth!

  Reynolds leans forward. “Cal, you’re dancing around something here that I think you want to talk about but are afraid to. You know you can tell me anything, right? I’m not judging you. I’m here to help you work through all of this.”

  “Can we talk about driving?” I know that it isn’t an an-swer to what he’s said, but I feel like if I keep talking about Lizzie, I’m going to crack in two and not even the doctors will be able to put me back together.

  “Of course. We can talk about whatever you want.”

  “It isn’t getting easier. I mean, every time
I even think about getting in the car I’m worried that I’m going to kill someone.”

  “You know that isn’t likely, right?”

  “The odds are one in 19,000.” I know this because I looked it up. I tried to find the odds of getting a heart transplant at sixteen, but it must be so rare that they haven’t been calculated.

  “What do you think would have happened had Lizzie or Spencer been driving the car that day?”

  His question stumps me. It was one I hadn’t thought to ask. “I don’t know. Lizzie drove like a maniac, and Spencer … I don’t know.”

  “I have a copy of the accident report here,” he says, pulling out a dog-eared sheet of paper from the middle of his pile. “Has anyone shown it to you?”

  I shake my head.

  “Would you like to see it?” He holds it out to me. I hesitate for a minute. I’ve done everything possible to avoid hearing the details or knowing anything about the guy in the other car. But I’m curious about what he thinks might help me, so I take it.

  There are a lot of things written down, like mile-markers and license plate numbers. To my relief, the other driver’s name has been crossed through with black magic marker, but in the “notes” box it says “distracted driver: cell phone text.”

  Okay, the guy that hit us wasn’t paying attention. I get it.

  Dr. Reynolds is looking at me expectantly, waiting for something to sink in. “I don’t want to preach to you, but did you know that over nine people a day are killed in the US alone by distracted drivers?”

  I shake my head.

  He looks down at his papers and muses, “It’s the leading cause of death for teens.”

  “Was the driver a kid?” The question doesn’t feel like my own. I really don’t want an answer. None of that matters. But I can feel Lizzie’s curiosity rising. She’d want every last detail. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

  Dr. Reynolds pauses and looks at me. “It might help you come to terms with things,” he says. “If you did want to know. When you’re ready.”

  I shake my head as he reaches over and takes the paperwork back before I have a chance to read the rest of it. I’m sure somewhere on there are a bunch of other things I don’t want to know: details of how they had to pry me out of the car and where they found Lizzie.

  “And we can review that, Cal. But until then, try to accept that it wasn’t your fault,” he says again, as if repeating it enough times will push it through the wall in my brain that’s keeping me from being able to accept it.

  I nod. I almost believe it when he says it so emphatically. He looks down at his book and cocks his head. “Tuesday? Do you want to come back Tuesday?”

  I think about it and am almost surprised that yes, I do want to come back. It’s easy to talk to him. I might not be jumping in the car when I get home, but I can breathe a little easier than I could when I came in.

  “Okay.”

  “Can I ask you to do one more thing?” he asks. “I’d like you to keep a journal.”

  “Like a diary? I’m not really a writer.”

  “That’s okay. I’m not suggesting that you write a book. But I’d like you to make a list of every time you think Lizzie is … with you. Influencing you. Every time you think you can feel her thoughts.”

  My stomach goes sour. Putting things in writing scares me. There’s something permanent, something public about that. Something I’m not sure Lizzie wants. Something I’m not sure I want.

  “Dr. Reynolds … ” I start to beg off.

  “You don’t have to, Cal. You don’t have to do anything. But I’m going to suggest it might help you to get a handle on which areas of your life you feel she’s having the most control.”

  I hear what he’s saying, I really do. I just don’t know that I actually want to do it. “Can I think about it?”

  “Of course,” he says, already working on something else. “See you on Tuesday.”

  Seventeen

  Reynolds’ list is a lot harder than it sounds.

  I keep taking out pieces of yellow lined paper like the ones I used to use to write down my baseball career options, and stare at them, willing the words to appear.

  I try to catalog the times when I think Lizzie’s heart is pounding because she’s reacting to something. And I write down the crazy dreams that are definitely not mine. I even force myself to describe the flicker of feelings that go through me when Spencer and I are just hanging out.

  But I feel stupid. Even though no one has seen the list, it makes me feel self-conscious. There are a whole lot of balled-up pieces of yellow paper in the garbage can next to my desk from lists I’ve started and destroyed. And there are a bunch of ashes in the can from the earlier pieces of yellow paper that I’ve already burned. The last thing I need is my mom reading what I’ve written. Or Spencer finding them.

  It’s much easier to blow off the lists and focus on Saturday and the weather. The forecast is 65 degrees and sunny with light winds blowing from behind the plate. That’s perfect weather for baseball in a part of the country that could just as easily see snow in April.

  The team will practice inside if the weather turns bad, but I don’t want to sit inside the stuffy gym. I want to be on the field, smelling the freshly cut grass and feeling the sun on my skin. I don’t want to watch everyone run laps inside. I want to hear the sound the ball makes when it hits the glove. I want to hear the crack of the bat.

  I’m too keyed up to sleep much on Friday night. I stay quiet, though, because I don’t want Mom to know I’m awake or she’ll decide that I’m getting too excited and make me come home after my appointment at the hospital. She doesn’t get that it’s a good thing; that even though I won’t be playing, the thought of standing on a baseball diamond energizes me.

  I get to the field early on Saturday because Mom drops me off after my checkup. The doctor is still happy and says I can kick up my exercises, which is great because the meds are making me bloated and even the thought of running makes me feel light and free.

  I’m so early there are only two cars in the lot. One I know is Coach Byrne’s, but I don’t recognize the other one, which is a small blue convertible. I wander over to the field and find Coach sitting in the bleachers. He’s sorting through line-up cards filled with player stats and projections against the standout pitchers in our league.

  I’m way happier than I should be to see these lists of names and numbers. It’s probably strange to love trying to make the numbers come out in our favor almost as much as I love playing. I pick up the first card in his stack and convince him to move a couple of the guys around in the batting order. I know the pitcher we’ll probably be facing for our first game and he has a crazy screwball that some of our usual guys are going to try to slam. They’re going to fail miserably.

  While he’s filling in his sheets, I watch the grass move in the breeze. It feels like summer and home and while I want to be out there playing, I’m grateful to be here at all.

  “This is the best decision I’ve ever made,” I say to Coach without tearing my eyes from the field.

  “Good thing you’re young. You have time to make even better ones,” says a girl behind me.

  I turn around and realize that after all of this time, I’m somehow having a conversation with Ally Martin.

  She’s wearing slightly faded jeans with a long-sleeved white T-shirt and a Central Warriors baseball cap over her long hair, which she’s pulled back. I have a freaky flashback to one of the Ally/baseball dreams I haven’t had in so long and then stand there without a coherent thought running through my head. I literally have nothing. For her part, she’s smiling, but there’s a challenge in her eyes. I think she knows how much this is bugging me out.

  Finally Coach looks up and says, “Oh, not sure if you two know each other. Cal Ryan. Ally Martin. Ally is our official scorekeeper this season. I wanted h
er to get a little practice in too.” Coach is calm, like he can’t tell that worlds have just collided in front of me.

  “Scorekeeper?” I ask, like I’ve never heard the concept before.

  Ally sits down next to me and puts her feet up on the row of the bleachers in front of us. “Yup. Coach needed someone and I’ve got experience, so here I am.”

  My brain is being pulled in two because I couldn’t ask for anything better—if more distracting—than to have baseball and Ally at the same time. But I can’t imagine what experience she could have. The official scorekeeper spot always has a million people applying for it since they actually have a certain amount of power in a game. They determine what’s an error and what’s a hit. They keep all the stats. I have no idea how Coach is possibly going to teach her everything before the season opens. I realize it’s my turn to speak, but I’m not sure if I should be worrying about talking to her because I’ve wanted to for so long or worrying about her being our scorekeeper.

  “Stop looking so terrified, Cal,” she laughs. “You know my dad coaches the Central College Warriors, right? I’ve been doing this for their team the last few years.”

  Her dad coaches the best private college baseball team in the state. How the hell did I not know that? I know a million useless things about her. I know what her favorite flavor of yogurt is. I know what bands she likes, and what books she reads. I don’t know how I managed to miss this.

  I replay the sound of her saying my name. I’m having one of those moments that I want to capture so I inhale and try to hold it in, the bright sun, this freshly mowed grass, and the faint smell of vanilla.

  I don’t really know what my face looks like when I do this, but Ally, who amazingly is sitting next to me and speaking to me, puts her hand on my shoulder, where it feels like it burns a delicious hole through my shirt.