He hadn’t even bothered to look at me.
“I’m not Darla,” I said.
He glanced my way. Then looked back at the game.
“Dr. Farnsworth?” I said.
He waved at me. “I’m sick,” he said. “Go away.”
And he looked sick. He looked like death.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just wanted to ask you something.”
He rubbed his forehead. “You want your money back? You gonna sue me or something? Because I don’t have any money. I have no money.”
“I don’t want your money.”
He laughed at that. Like it was funny. Really, really funny. “You don’t want my money? Where you from? Mars?”
“No,” I said. “I’m from Summerlin.”
He looked at me. “Summerlin?”
“Summerlin.”
He shrugged. “Never heard of it.”
I sat down on the couch. The couch that I had remembered being plush and expensive but now looked threadbare and cheap. Everything looked cheap.
“You told me I could talk to my friend after she died. You told me it would work.”
“That’s what I tell everyone,” he said.
My blood ran cold.
“That’s what you tell everyone?”
He started yelling at the TV. “Hit the ball! Hit the ball, you moron!”
The man at bat didn’t hit the ball.
“What about those testimonials?” I said.
He glanced at me. “What?”
“All those people said it worked.”
He sighed. “People believe it because they want to believe it. Because they’re desperate. No one wants to die.”
I tried to breathe. I tried to control my breathing.
He picked up another beer and drank some.
“So you lied.”
He looked at me. “I lie all the time. Don’t you lie? Everyone lies.”
I stared at him.
Lied. Lie. Don’t I lie? It felt like the walls were caving in.
I did lie.
Lying to my mom. Lying to my dad. Lying to Skeeter. Lying to Kim. Lying to Gabby. Gabby screaming that I lied. Lied. Lied.
I wiped my forehead. “So you’re saying that you can’t talk to dead people.”
“What does it matter?”
I felt tears start to fill my eyes. It was all too much. Everything.
“I’ve talked to dead people,” I said.
He burped. Then he said, “Maybe you have. Maybe you haven’t. Maybe you wanted to so much you made it up in your head and thought you did.”
Suddenly I felt anger. I felt it bubble up hard and fast.
“No. I didn’t make it up in my head,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. I didn’t want him to see me cry. “I didn’t do that,” I said. “I talked to dead people I didn’t want to talk to.”
He shrugged. “Then I guess you got the gift.”
It got quiet except for the noise of the game. The Giants were up by two. It was a rebroadcast. I’d watched this with my dad months before. Nothing here was real.
Then Dr. Ted Farnsworth said something, he said, “You came with that skinny girl. The dark one, right?”
Now the tears were running down my face.
“She didn’t make it, did she?”
I didn’t say anything but I guess I didn’t need to.
He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair
“You knew she had heart disease,” I whispered. “You knew. She trusted you because you knew.”
He sighed. “It was a gamble,” he said. “If they come in young, odds are it’s either the heart or cancer. Cancer is chemo. Your friend had hair so I guessed heart.”
Now I was completely empty.
Then he said something. He said, “This life is a hole,” he said. “It’s so not worth it.”
My heart thumped.
This life is a hole. It’s so not worth it.
It’s so not worth it.
It’s so not worth it.
It’s so not worth it.
Was he right?
Was it a hole?
I thought about Ms. Homeyer and Ed and how they danced and got married and she wore a mermaid dress. I thought about Baylor and the panther doing the robot and how he looked for me, how he thought I was different and how he only died because of an asthma attack. I thought about Kim. Kim who wanted to live and should have lived but then didn’t live. Kim who was my best friend and made everything around her better.
Everything.
He was wrong.
He was wrong.
I had seen dead people.
I had talked to them.
And it was worth it.
He was wrong.
I saw him then. A big bag of bones. Scamming people. Sitting in this stupid bus. With nothing. He had nothing.
Just then the door to the bus opened.
It was the man with the flat top and he said, “You still want to go, Gary?”
Dr. Ted sighed. Put down his beer and looked at his watch.
“I guess so,” he said. Then he looked at me. “You need a lift somewhere?”
I wiped my eyes. “What?”
He said, “I have an appointment I need to get to,” which didn’t make sense because he was supposed to be leading a seminar. He kept going. “We can drop you off if you have someplace you want to go.”
I nodded. I did need a ride. “Sure,” I said. “There is someplace I want to go.”
And so then Dr. Ted Farnsworth, or Gary, and his flat-top friend gave me a ride home in his big-faced TALKING BEYOND!! bus.
• 79 •
After school Gabby was waiting for me.
“Did you know?”
I stood in the hall with my backpack. “Know what?”
“That she was sick.”
It never occurred to me that Gabby wouldn’t know. That Kim didn’t tell her.
I didn’t want to deal with it.
I started to walk toward the door. “I think you knew,” she said, following me.
I kept walking.
“Did you know, Emmy?”
It seemed an impossible question. Kim’s heart disease had been a part of my whole life. Every day. Every hour. Every minute.
I focused on the doors. I just had to get to the doors.
“Did you know?”
I kept walking.
“Emmy! Did you know?” her voice echoed through the hall and I couldn’t do it anymore. “Yes. Of course.” I turned to face her. “Of course I knew. Why wouldn’t I know?” Almost screaming.
“You should have warned me.”
She shoved me against the wall so hard it knocked the breath out of me.
“Why didn’t she tell me?
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Tears were pouring down her cheeks, and I was trying to breathe and then she was gone, the doors banging against the wall as she left.
•
The thing is, Kim wasn’t usually sick.
She was usually normal and beautiful and fast and funny and no one would know that she was going to die.
That any second her heart could blow up.
• 80 •
We pulled up at 4:42 p.m.
The bus was as long as our house.
Mom was on the front porch.
Dad was, too.
Joe.
And Gabby?
“Looks like you have an entourage,” Dr. Ted Farnsworth said.
I nodded. “Yeah. I guess.”
I walked to the door “Thanks for the ride.”
“Don’t sue me.”
“I might,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. And that
was it.
I got off the bus just in time to see Gabby jog across the street to her house.
Mom rushed over to me. “Where have you been?”
The bus started to pull away and Dad yelled, “Wait! Emmy, what is going on? Why were you on that thing?” and then he was chasing after it and huffing, and Joe started running, too, and what were they going to do? Grab onto the back? James Bond it inside? Beat him up? Get some advice about the afterlife?
“Dad,” I yelled, “it’s okay.”
Mom had her arms around me. “Did he assault you?”
“No, Mom. Ewww. No.”
Joe and Dad kept running until they couldn’t anymore, both of them bent over in the middle of the street. Dr. Ted Farnsworth’s face on the back of the bus got smaller and smaller and smaller and eventually disappeared.
Mom said, “We’ve been trying to get a hold of you all day. Gabby told me she saw you leave, and I told her you were at the library and then we went to check.”
“Who went to check?”
“Me and Gabby.”
“Gabby?”
“She was worried about you, so she came over.”
“Oh,” I said.
I took a deep breath.
“We went to check and you weren’t at the main library, so then we checked some other places, but we couldn’t find you. And your phone was turned off.”
Joe and Dad were back now. “What happened? Who was that guy?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I met him with Kim once. He’s okay.”
“He’s okay?” Dad said. “He’s okay?”
“Calm down,” Mom said.
“I will not calm down,” Dad said.
Joe said, “Yeah. That was weird. I wouldn’t calm down if I were Dad. The guy looked like a total creeper.”
“He’s not as bad as he looks,” I said, which maybe wasn’t true.
I glanced at my watch. I had forty-five minutes.
Mom sighed. “Let’s get something to eat. It’s been a long day.”
“I can’t,” I said.
Mom looked at me.
“I mean, not right now. I have one more place I have to go.”
“Hell,” Dad said.
“I’m sorry. This is the last time. The very last time. I promise.”
“Where do you have to go?” Mom asked.
I looked at Joe. And then I said, “I have to go out to Red Rock.”
• 81 •
After Gabby left me in the hall, I sat there.
And sat there.
And sat there.
Someone turned out the lights.
I stood up and walked outside.
Skeeter was sitting on the grass.
At least I thought he was. He was blurry. Maybe I was crying then, too.
He stood up. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
Then he was saying something to me but I wasn’t listening. I was walking.
I think he walked with me.
I think he was with me and we walked the five miles home because the buses were gone.
I think I was sweating and I think he gave me some water.
I think when we got to my house I walked in and I think I left him on our front lawn.
I think I crawled under my bed and I think I cried and cried and cried.
• 82 •
Mom drove me.
I didn’t have my stuff.
No Snickers, no Skittles, no Ladyhawke.
Mom looked straight ahead and let me sit there.
“Where to?” she said once we’d gotten past the houses and were coming to the turn off.
“Just drop me off at the visitors’ center,” I said.
She nodded. Then she said, “Can I come with you?”
I looked at her. She was such a good person and I had been so horrible. So horrible. To her. To Gabby. To everyone.
“I have to do this alone but I promise, I promise that I will tell you everything tonight. Everything.”
She glanced at me.
“What do you have to do?”
I took a breath. “I don’t know,” I said. I watched raindrops hit the windshield. “I guess say good-bye?”
She gripped the steering wheel tighter, a tear escaping down her cheek.
“Okay,” she finally said, and I said, “Okay.” And we drove into the parking lot.
“Should I wait here?”
“No. I’ll get home.”
“How?”
“I’ll walk down to the bus stop.”
“Emmy, it’s more than five miles.”
“I know,” I said. “Kim and I used to do it all the time.”
She thought about it for a few seconds and I said a prayer, a prayer that she would let me go. That one more time, just one more time, she’d let me go.
“Do you have your cell phone?”
I pulled it out to show her.
“Call me when you’re done,” she said. “I’ll be waiting at home. We all will be.”
My heart thumped. They’d all be waiting for me.
“Okay.”
The clock said 5:22.
I opened the door to get out and she said, “Emmy?”
I looked at her. “What?”
“I’m here for you.”
I nodded. “I know.”
She smiled.
I closed the door and watched her drive away.
And then I was alone in the rain.
• 83 •
I went to the hospital with Mom the day after Kim collapsed.
I even put on lipstick. I don’t know why.
Kim was in the usual unit on her usual floor.
She was not doing well. Mom had been on her cell with Trish and Kim was not doing well at all, Mom said.
“Oh,” I said.
Mom looked at me when I said that, “It’s worse than usual,” she said in the elevator.
“I heard,” I said. Then I looked at a poster on the wall of a bunch of babies.
She was not doing well but it would be okay. This had happened a few times before and it always worked out. It took time, but eventually she’d be okay.
She’d be okay.
We got off the elevator and Mom walked quickly.
I walked behind her.
And I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be anywhere else. Anywhere but there.
I knew all I’d have to do was sit. Watch bad movies or play Uno with Kim or, if she was too tired, with Mom or Trish.
I’d eat chips from the vending machines and do MASH over and over and over again until Kim and I got the boys we wanted.
It wasn’t hard to be the friend. You didn’t have to have the tubes and the medicine and the shots and the doctors.
But that day was a tunnel. A dark black tunnel.
Trish was out in the nurses’ area talking to a lady.
Mom said she was going to help her. “You check on Kimmer,” she said.
I nodded. “Okay.”
Mom hurried over.
I stood.
And then I moved.
Barely.
I stopped just outside Kim’s door and stared at her name on the whiteboard.
Kim Porter. Someone had made the “o” in her name a heart. I almost erased it with my finger but then I didn’t.
This is nothing.
Everything will be fine.
I took a breath and walked into her room.
•
It was worse than I’d ever imagined.
•
Things beeping, her skin white-leather, the smell heavy and sterile. I had to stop myself from reacting. I’d never seen her like that. Ever.
She opened her eyes.
; “Hey,” she said. Her voice soft.
“Hey.”
She struggled to sit up.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “You don’t have to worry. Just lie there.”
She said, “I’m okay.”
I said, “Yeah. I know.”
She nodded. Then she said, “Your lips look pretty.”
I touched my mouth. I didn’t think she’d notice. I don’t know why, she was the one person who always noticed.
I sat down next to her. “I was just playing around,” I said.
“I like it,” she said.
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
She closed her eyes for a second and I watched her chest. I watched it go up and down and up and down. She was going to be fine. She was always fine.
“So,” she said, her eyes still closed. “Are you mad at me?”
I swallowed. “What?”
“You’re mad at me, right?”
“No.”
“You’re not?”
I tried to think what to say. I was mad at her. I was really really mad at her.
“I don’t know,” I said.
It was all so stupid. She could make other friends. She could go to parties and wear tight clothes. She could have boys pick her up at the grocery store. She could do whatever she wanted.
“What did I do?” she said.
I twisted my ring on my finger. I just wanted things to go back to normal.
I started to say something when Mom walked in. “Hey, Missy.” She walked over and stroked Kim’s hair. “How’re you feeling?”
“Not too good,” Kim said.
Mom reached for her water and helped her drink some. “You’ll be okay. We just need to get you strong again. Your mom is talking to your doctors.”
Kim nodded.
I stood there.
Mom looked at me. She could tell something was wrong. But she didn’t ask. Instead she straightened Kim’s pillow and sat down.
“You want to watch something?”
Kim looked at me. I shrugged.
“Yeah,” she said. “Sure.”
I sat down on a couch across the room.
Mom turned on the TV and 1000 Ways to Die was on. Mom started to switch it and Kim said, “Let’s watch this.”
Mom looked at her and I tried not to laugh. No way my mom was going to let us watch this show. Kim knew it. “You want to watch this?” Mom said.
The End or Something Like That Page 15
