Kyle climbed up and sat there, kicking his legs out. He was eyeing the controls next to me. I could tell he wanted to push the buttons. “Aunt Sophie bought me a hamster. His name is Patches.”
“I can’t wait to see him.”
He noticed Ari then. Ari introduced himself to Kyle and my parents. He told them about his brother, Tomas, and how well he was doing. And he said that the social worker had asked them to visit me.
“I was just leaving,” he said. “Nice meeting you.”
As he turned to leave, Mom’s eyebrows shot up. “He’s cute,” she mouthed.
Ari stopped at the door. “There’s one other thing, Amelia.”
“What is it?”
“I wanted to ask if I could visit you again.”
I felt my face heat up. The first time a guy acts interested in me, and it happens right in front of my parents. “Sure,” I said.
Mom winked at me and I rolled my eyes.
“Polite kid,” Dad said when he’d left. “Needs a haircut, though.”
21
EAGAN
There’s a saying in figure skating: you must either find a way or make one. If I can land a triple salchow, then I’m not about to let go of my life without a fight. I’m done crying and feeling sorry for myself. It’s time to get tough.
“I have to go back. There has to be a way out of here,” I say. I walk toward the lighter side of the fog. Miki follows me.
“Where are the other people here? The millions you talked about?”
She gestures around me. “All over. You can’t see them?”
I’m wondering if it’s the truth. As far as I can tell, there’s no one here but me. My voice becomes combative, like when I’m fighting with Mom. “Why can I see you? And why aren’t you gray like me?”
She shrinks away. “Are you angry with me?”
I’m afraid she’ll leave. Then I’ll be alone again. “I’m sorry. It’s just frustrating. I don’t know what’s going on.”
She comes back and twirls around, watching the folds in her dress move in and out in the mist. “I’m here to help you. You asked for me.”
I don’t remember asking for some frilly airhead girl. I’ve always been so focused that it’s painful watching her act so carefree, as though she doesn’t have a worry in the world. As she’s twirling, I smell something sweet. It reminds me of blossoming plumerias, the flowers on the lei Mom brought back from Hawaii. It’s the first thing I’ve smelled that didn’t belong to one of my flashbacks.
“Do you smell that?”
She sniffs the air and smiles. “Flowers.”
“Where’s it coming from?”
She points toward the people. “The other side.”
Now we’re getting somewhere. “Do you know how I get to the other side?”
She points at my life, still flashing in front of me. “I think that’s how.”
“No. I can’t waste any more time looking back.” I follow the scent of the flowers. Maybe there’s a way across that abyss that I didn’t see. A bridge or something.
She follows me. I’m jogging and she’s strolling, spending way too much time looking around when all there is to see is gray nothingness. Three times I have to stop and wait for her to catch up.
“I’m probably missing skating practice, and ice time isn’t cheap,” I tell her, but that doesn’t seem to make any difference in her stride. The scent changes as we walk. Now it smells like medicine, disinfectant, bland food, and death. I can’t help being drawn to the memory of the last time I saw Grandpa.
“Look, Grandpa. I brought your slippers.”
Grandpa nodded. He’d had trouble talking since the stroke because his left side didn’t work well. Part of his lip hung down, and that whole side of his face drooped.
That wasn’t the worst. He was here, in this place, Scenic Acres, in a twelve-by-twelve-foot room that smelled worse than a hospital room. He was supposedly here to rehab. But we all knew he wasn’t going anywhere. Mom had a For Sale sign in front of his house. Did Grandpa know about that? Of course he did. How could he let her do that? How could he still act so upbeat?
I placed the brown loafers next to him on the bed. “Of course, you’ll have to get up off your lazy butt to use them.”
Grandpa’s eyes flashed, and I saw a hint of the man I used to know.
“Tell me the truth,” I said as I crossed the tiled floor to the room’s one window, which looked out at the parking lot of the church next door. Not what I’d call scenic. Nothing like the lilac bushes and cottonwoods at Grandpa’s house. “How are you feeling?”
He motioned me closer and waved his fingers in front of him. “Wif my fingers.”
I smiled. I always fell for that joke no matter how many times Grandpa told it to me.
He struggled to speak. “Enjoy ife.”
“What?” I said, then immediately wanted to kick myself. I hated to see him screw up his face with such concentration just to spit out a few words.
“Enjoy … now. Before … you … get … old.”
“Okay. How?”
He shrugged, then made the slow effort again. “Sometime … ife … sucks.”
“Did you say life sucks? Isn’t that supposed to be my line?”
Grandpa nodded, and one side of his lip curled up. He was smiling. The first time I’d seen him smile since his stroke.
If I had to live in this place, I’d never smile. But then, I almost never smile anyway.
“It’s too quiet in here. Why don’t I turn on the radio?”
Dad had brought Grandpa’s thirteen-inch TV and propped it on a dresser across from his bed. But before, Grandpa had never watched TV much. He would putter around the basement with his tools when he wasn’t out walking to the coffee shop to meet his friends. Now he’d lost all that. Gone in one paralyzing stroke.
I fiddled with the dial of his radio, the one he’d kept on the corner of his workbench. Flecks of brown and white dried paint made it look out of place on the sterile steel nightstand. I found a station playing big band music.
Grandpa was trying to hold a notepad with his left hand, the bad one. His fingers curled up and out. The skin on his hands was translucent and shiny as he scribbled. He showed me the pad.
Aren’t you supposed to be at a dance?
I’d looked forward to the homecoming dance for weeks. It was all I thought about when I wasn’t skating. But now it seemed selfish to think about dancing when Grandpa couldn’t tie his own shoes. I shook my head. “It’s tonight, but I told Scott I didn’t feel like going. He’s okay with it—he’s out in the hall waiting for me.”
Grandpa touched my arm. “Bring … him … in.”
I hesitated. “Okay.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t want Scott to meet Grandpa. But I wanted him to meet the Grandpa I knew before the stroke, the one who was strong and independent and good with his hands, who could look at a piece of furniture in a store and go home and make the same thing without taking a single measurement.
I wasn’t ashamed of him now, but I still missed my old Grandpa.
Scott wasn’t where I’d left him. I expected to find him cowering in a corner, maybe holding his breath in case being old was contagious. Instead he was pushing a woman in a wheelchair down the hallway. What an image. Scott, the big football player, standing behind the hunched-up woman in the wheelchair. And was he ever moving!
“What are you doing?” I shouted after him.
He waved. “Giving Mrs. Solen a ride to the cafeteria. Be right back.”
Scott came back while I was browsing through the books Dad had brought Grandpa. A mystery, a book about World War II, and Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation.
“Hi, Mr. Lindeman.” Scott reached out and took Grandpa’s right hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Grandpa nodded and tried to pull himself up in his bed. He leaned against one side and inched his way up until I helped him find the remote that moved the bed. He took it from me and pressed it unti
l he was almost sitting straight up, then he leaned back against the pillow, exhausted from the effort.
I wanted to tell Scott that this wasn’t what Grandpa was usually like, that Grandpa used to walk two miles a day and had a sharp tongue that matched my own.
Grandpa picked up the pad and showed Scott the same question he’d written before.
“Yeah, the dance,” Scott said. “She doesn’t want to go.”
Grandpa scribbled something underneath his writing. His tongue hung outside his mouth, trailing off to the side as he wrote. Then he spoke as he showed Scott the writing. “Make … er.”
“Make her,” Scott repeated, then raised an eyebrow. “You know Eagan better than I do. Can you make her do anything?”
Grandpa’s eyebrows narrowed. I could tell he was up to something. He scribbled for a long time and pulled on Scott’s arm. “Try,” he said as he showed him the paper, which I couldn’t see.
Scott grinned. “Okay. Got it.”
“Got what?” I said.
“Nothing.” He had a sly smirk on his face.
“Seepy,” Grandpa said, lowering himself back down on his pillow and waving his hand at me. “Go now.”
“You sneak.” I kissed him on the cheek and helped him lower the bed. As we were leaving, I confronted Scott in the hallway. “So what did he draw?”
“Football formation. A rough diagram of an inside trap.”
“What does that mean?”
“I think it means he really wants you to go to the dance.”
I sighed. “He’s always saying I have to enjoy life more.”
“He’s a smart guy,” Scott said.
I thought of the dress Kelly had lent me, a dark blue satin one with spaghetti straps. Kelly’s mom said it showed off my blue eyes.
“I guess we shouldn’t let the old guy down. Do you think we can still make it?”
Scott wrapped his arms around me and squeezed. “Hey, it’s just a little halftime adjustment.”
22
Amelia
“Here,” Ari said, handing me a sheet of paper with a phone number printed in big letters. “If you’re anything like Tomas, the first month is a big pain in the ass. You can’t go anywhere except the doctor’s office. You drive everyone crazy because you want to get out. So, if you need someone to talk to …”
“Hey,” Tomas objected. “I wasn’t that bad.”
“You were worse.”
“Thanks.”
I took the paper and tucked it inside my drawing book. I folded a strand of hair behind my right ear, thankful that Mom had decided to run errands when they arrived. Ari had come three times now. He didn’t have to come three times. And now he was giving me his phone number. He didn’t have to do that, either.
“You promised me food,” Tomas said, punching his brother on the arm.
Ari handed his brother a five-dollar bill. “I know how much you miss the cafeteria food. Have at it.”
Tomas bent over and clutched his stomach. “Are you serious? You want me to barf?”
“Relax. I saw a sign on the way up here. They’re having an ice cream bar today.”
Tomas immediately straightened up. “That’s different.” He took the money and headed toward the door. “You coming?”
“Nah,” Ari said. “I’m going to hang here awhile.”
“See you later, bro,” Tomas said. “Bye, Amelia.”
“It’s okay if you want to go with him,” I assured Ari.
“I’d rather spend time with you.” He walked over to the window and picked up the stuffed toy horse Grandma had sent me. “Why don’t you have to wear a mask? Tomas had to wear one the whole time he was hospitalized.”
“Everyone wore masks the first few days. But now that I’m in a private room with its own air purifier system, they’re not as strict. Whenever I leave this room, I have to wear one, though. And no one is permitted to touch me unless they’re wearing gloves. Not even my own family can kiss me.”
I felt my face grow warm. “Not that anyone else would kiss me …” My voice trailed off and I looked down at the covers.
Ari’s lips curved upward. “All right, then.” He squeezed the horse and tried to make it sit on the end of my bed instead of posed in a standing position. “Why are girls so into stuffed animals?”
“You look like you’re having fun with one.”
He waved a hoof at me. “I’m horsing around.”
“You’re really dumb.” I laughed and put my hand on my chest. It felt weird to laugh, as if my heart wasn’t used to it.
I never thought I’d be able to do this: think about a boy. No. More than that. Think about flirting with that boy. I always thought about boys. Guys I saw in movies. And cute men like Dr. Michael. But I never imagined I’d get to do anything more. Who’d want a girl with a bad heart?
So I never learned any of that stuff—flirting, kissing. I didn’t even know how to kiss. Or fool around—I’d only seen it in movies. It was scary to think about, but when Ari wasn’t looking, I stared at his lips and wondered what they’d feel like on mine.
“Hey, don’t pull your stitches,” Ari warned, but he was smiling.
“No chance of that. All I’ve done for the last six years is sit around. I can’t remember what it’s like to do sports or run up a flight of stairs. I don’t even remember what it’s like to stand in the rain.”
Ari shrugged. “It’s a lot like standing in the shower. But colder.”
“Sounds great to me. Except …”
“What?”
“I feel guilty being happy. Like I’m betraying her somehow.”
“Her?”
“My donor.”
“How do you know your heart didn’t come from a guy?”
I pulled on the bedcovers. “Don’t laugh, okay? I just know. I feel her inside me. I’m Ameliastein.”
“Ameliastein?”
“Part me and part gross experiment. Okay, you can laugh at the Ameliastein reference,” I said when I saw him smile.
“So do you have any other borrowed body parts besides the heart?”
I peeked under the blanket. “Nope. Not yet.”
“Then you’re not Ameliastein.”
“But I’m different. The same way you said Tomas was different. I mean, this isn’t me. The old me.”
Ari nodded. “It was hard to get used to Tomas’s new personality. We didn’t know what to think at first. And he felt guilty too. That’s pretty normal.”
“My old self was more like Tomas now. I would never, ever talk back to Mom and Dad. They’re probably freaking out, wondering what’s going to come out of my mouth next.”
Ari smirked. “You gotta keep the parents guessing.”
“Sometimes I get really mouthy. I feel like swearing. I never swore once in my entire life.”
Ari set the horse down. “Don’t take this the wrong way. I kind of like the new you.”
I wondered whether Ari would have liked the old me too. Either way, I loved talking to him. He was easy to talk to. I wasn’t as shy around him. Not now, anyway. And he made me feel normal.
Once, when I was seven, just after Kyle was born, I picked him up out of his bassinet and carried him to my bed in the middle of the night because he was crying. Mom freaked when she woke and couldn’t find him. She yelled at me like a regular mom, one who didn’t act as if she had to tiptoe around a sick kid. I think that was the last time she ever yelled at me. The last time I felt normal. I got sick after that.
Ari put the horse back on the ledge. “Okay. So what’s the one food you’ve missed the most since you got sick?”
“I’ve been sick for six years. I have a long list.”
“You can only pick one.”
That could be tough. I twisted my mouth, a habit I had when I was concentrating. “Extra chunky peanut butter,” I announced.
He wrinkled his nose. “Peanut butter? I was expecting pepperoni pizza or ice cream.”
“That was the first food I had to
give up. It was my favorite when I was little.”
“You’re right,” he said, “about one thing.”
“I am?”
“Yeah.” His brown eyes turned mischievous. “You are Ameliastein.”
23
EAGAN
If Miki is here to help, I’ll let her, not that it isn’t hard. I like being in control, the way I am on the ice. Which makes me wonder: am I that much like Mom?
No, I’m just stressed. I have to relax. I close my eyes and take a long, deep yoga breath, contracting my abdominal muscles. Then I hold the breath and count. Finally, I relax and breathe out through my mouth. Miki is leaning forward, her head cocked, staring at me.
“If there are other people here, why can’t I talk to them?” I ask her in a nicer voice.
Miki hovers around me like a firefly. She seems bewildered by everything I do. Her yellow dress stands out like a starburst against the drab gray. The short sleeves puff out against her skinny arms.
“You can. You just don’t know how,” she says.
She has eyes that remind me of Dad’s. They’re the same powder blue shade.
“I know how to talk to you.”
“That’s different,” Miki says, then puts a finger to her lips. “Shh. Listen.”
I don’t hear anything except that annoying blur of voices, which could be background noise at any restaurant. I can’t make out any words.
“They’re praying for you. Here, and on Earth. Do you feel it?”
A sudden glow radiates from inside me. “Is that what this feeling is? I thought it was gas.”
She giggles. “Didn’t you ever feel that on Earth?”
“Sometimes.” I think of gliding around the rink, of doing a perfect sit spin. I think of flushed cheeks and the spray of ice shards. Getting goose bumps, only not from the cold ice. Those thoughts spark something inside me, something warm and substantial, like the girl beside me.
But the competitions don’t seem as important now. Maybe it’s Miki’s carefree attitude rubbing off on me. All that stress over my long program? Wasted energy. Still, I want to go back and do that triple lutz again. Only this time I’d get it right.
That thought sends me back to the ice rink, and the memory wraps around me.
“Double salchows are my nemesis,” Kelly said as she laced her skates.
In a Heartbeat Page 9
