“What’s a nemesis?” Jasmine hopped from one skate to the other behind Kelly, her dark pigtails flying. She’d just turned ten, the only ten-year-old at our club who’d passed up to intermediate level. Her favorite jump was the double salchow.
“That means it’s her hardest move,” I said.
“Oh,” Jasmine said. “Mine’s the double axel.”
“Mine’s the triple lutz.” I played it over in my head, saw myself landing, the edge of my skate gripping the ice. I’d been landing the triple lutz since novice level, but lately I’d started falling, as though I’d forgotten how to do them. The jump that’s hardest for a skater fluctuates week by week and sometimes day by day.
“Where’s Bailey?” Jasmine asked.
Kelly and I exchanged looks. “She’s taking some time off,” I said.
“Because she doesn’t eat?”
Nothing got past Jasmine. “Yeah, even though she’s not a peanut like you, Bailey needs to eat healthier and not get too skinny.” Bailey’s metabolism would never be like Jasmine’s, a little twig of a girl. Jasmine wouldn’t have much to worry about when she hit puberty, when most of us found it harder to make those jumps because our bodies were changing and we suddenly had hips and breasts.
Kelly had been a promising skater until she hit puberty early, had a big growth spurt, and never seemed to recover. She was the same level as Jasmine, and really hadn’t progressed in the last three years.
I could tell this was Kelly’s last year. She had skating goals, but the intensity was gone. The Olympic dream was still intact for the rest of us. We all knew when and where the next winter Olympics would take place and how old we’d be then. We knew who was up and coming in the field, who was injured, and who was retiring.
“I’m not a peanut,” Jasmine protested.
“Yeah, you are.”
Kelly leaned over and whispered to me, “Did you know Bailey’s been anorexic for three years?”
I mouthed a big “no.”
“Hey,” Jasmine said, grabbing my arm. “I hate when you tell secrets.”
Kelly rolled her eyes at me. She didn’t like kids much, particularly Jasmine. “It’s big-girl talk,” she told Jasmine.
“Sorry, peanut,” I said. “I hate secrets too.”
Especially family secrets. The secret life my parents were living, saying I was an only child when I wasn’t, or at least I wasn’t supposed to be. There had been a brother or sister once, who’d either died before birth or shortly afterward.
I couldn’t remember Mom going to the hospital, but I was only two or three. What happened then, and why didn’t they ever tell me about it? Why did they keep it a secret from me all these years?
“Come on, girls,” Coach Brian called. “On the ice. Remember, practice doesn’t make perfect.”
“Perfect practice makes perfect,” the six of us replied in unison.
We hurried onto the ice for our group edge class, which focused on our turns and movements and control of our edges. Edge class was the only group activity we had on the ice. The rest of the time we worked with individual coaches.
This was so much better than being home on a Saturday morning. I was never allowed to sleep in, anyway. I loved this place, the smell of the ice, my eyes watering from the cold, the feel of my toes in my skates. I loved grabbing at a mist of cold dust in a beam of light. Jasmine said we were catching stardust. Such a little-girl thing to say, but it made me smile.
This place was my home away from home, and with Grandpa stuck in a nursing home on the other side of town, the people here felt like my closest family now.
Coach Brian worked us hard for almost an hour. Afterward we took a break while Kelly worked with her coach on her short program. She breathed deeply and skated out to the middle, where she took her pose and waited for the music to start. It was a ballad, slow and graceful, like Kelly. Her first jump was a double combination. She made it perfectly.
Sometimes it’s the simple moves that you fall on. Kelly did just that. In the middle of one of her backward crossovers, her feet collided with each other, and she tripped and fell forward.
She rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe I fell on that. Let me start over.”
“Come on, Kelly. You can do it,” I cheered her on. “Just pretend you’re competing.” “Keep your head up,” I thought. “Arms out straight. Look back during the crossover. Relax, but focus. Oh, and keep smiling, even if you fall. The judges like that.”
Kelly struggled with her routine, falling two more times before she made it through. Once we’d tried to count how many times we’d each fallen in one week. It was over forty.
Jasmine pulled on my arm.
“What?”
She waved me down. “Come here.”
She cupped her hand close to my ear and whispered, “Kelly has a pimple on her back. But don’t tell. It’s a secret.”
I stood up. “I thought you hated secrets.”
“I do. But you tell secrets about me all the time.”
“We weren’t talking about you. We were talking about someone else.”
Jasmine folded her arms. “Yeah, right.”
“No, really. We were talking about Bailey. About her anorexia.”
“Then why were you whispering?”
“Well …” I paused. “Because we didn’t want anyone else to hear us,” I thought to myself. “Because we were gossiping and we knew that Jasmine was a motormouth who repeated everything we said.”
“Because we were being diplomatic,” I finally said.
“What’s diplomatic?”
“Jasmine,” her mom called. “I was waiting for you out front.”
“Go. I’ll explain later,” I told her. As I watched Jasmine leave, I imagined what it would have been like to have had a little sister, how my life would have been different. Would I still have felt this desire to succeed? Would Mom have acted differently?
The secret they kept from me wasn’t so terrible. The keeping of the secret bothered me more. Why hadn’t they ever told me? Or had it slipped out when they were fighting, and I missed it?
Maybe this was like Bailey’s secret anorexia that she’d hidden for three years. Maybe some secrets are buried so deep that people forget they’re even there.
24
Amelia
It was a simple chair, a wooden rocker. All the pediatric rooms had one. I hadn’t paid much attention to it before. It had rounded spindles and curved arms. I stared at it for a long time, as if I knew that chair. The longer I stared, the more I felt it, a strong sensation rising up inside me. I wanted to run my hand over the wood and feel the flow of the grain. I wanted to put my nose up to the headrest and smell the wood and varnish.
I’d never seen the chair before I came here, but I recognized it. How was that possible?
Was it a side effect of the cyclosporine or prednisone? Were the drugs tricking more than just my immune system? Were they causing chaos in my mind as well?
I tried to talk to the social worker. Really, I did. But she kept talking about stuff like guilt and self-esteem. I didn’t know how to tell her that my problem went beyond feeling good about myself.
Ari told me to believe in my new heart, to listen to what it was telling me. His brother had shown me his scar, a reminder that his organ was a loaner from someone else, a person who would always be a part of him from now on.
It made me wonder why God created the heart the way He did, so small a part only the size of a fist but in charge of the whole works. It moved all that blood through the body and never took a rest, even when we slept. Was it any wonder that my new heart made me feel more than just energized now? But that didn’t mean this heart had forgotten her.
Did that chair mean something? I drew the horse I remembered from my dream in my notebook. I filled in the landscape: silky prairie grass leaning in the direction of the wind with tall buttercups spinning an enchanted walkway for the horse to follow. Pillow clouds reached down to the treetops. I drew the
horse running, her mane whipping in the air and her nostrils flared to capture the feeling I’d had riding her. Free. Powerful.
Since the transplant, my body had felt so alive. Everything felt more vivid, even the pain. But the Amelia inside remembered the sick, puffy, tired feeling of the last six years. She had no memory of a heart that beat even and consistent and strong.
Rain splattered against the window. I got out of bed and threw on my robe, then pulled the IV stand with me to the window, where I ran my finger along the drips down the pane. People below were running, covering their heads with newspapers and purses. Mom avoided taking me out in the rain as much as possible. When she did, she dropped me off at the door and made me hurry inside. Now I wished I could stick my head outside and catch raindrops on my tongue, but the window didn’t open. I had to go outside. I had to experience that rain.
I unplugged the power cord to the IV and snuck into the hallway with my IV stand rattling along the patterned linoleum. It was quiet except for the muffled pagers going off and the hungry beeps of empty IV bags. I made sure none of the nurses saw me slip into an empty elevator, where I pushed the button for the ground floor. The elevator jerked down and my stomach felt queasy.
On the third floor, a woman got on. I smiled and made eye contact as though I was supposed to be there. She smiled back and returned her gaze to the closed door. When the elevator reached the first floor, I exited in the opposite direction.
A side door was close by. Three people passed me as I walked out into the cold rain, dragging my IV stand with me. I stood outside and looked up into the sky. I stretched out my arms wide, feeling the cold wetness dribble down inside my robe, where a large bandage covered my scar. I wasn’t supposed to get it wet. I didn’t care.
I splashed my bare feet in a puddle, squished dirt between my toes. I put my head back, opened my mouth, and felt the cool liquid slide down my throat.
This felt like life. Not the beeping of a heart monitor that kept track of how many beats per minute my new heart could do. What good were beats if you didn’t really feel alive?
Fingers tapped my shoulder. “Excuse me, young lady. What are you doing out here in the rain?”
A woman frowned at me. The name tag attached to her pink smock read “Ms. Lansing.”
I shrugged. “Getting wet?” I turned and went back inside. She followed me to the elevator.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked.
I pushed the button to close the door. “Back to my room. I promise.” I shivered in the elevator. The air inside felt colder now, and I couldn’t wait to snuggle under the covers in my hospital bed.
Maybe Ms. Lansing had put in a call, because there was a nurse outside my room. But I was too tired to stop and explain my wet condition. I walked past her into my room, cleaned myself up, and had just gotten back in bed when Dr. Michael walked in, studying my chart.
“How’re you feeling this afternoon?”
I thought of the rain and the chair and the memory that couldn’t be explained. I thought of how I’d just gone outside for the first time in over a week. “Good.”
He looked up.
“I just got out of the shower,” I said, running a hand through my wet hair. “When do I get to go home?”
“How about Tuesday?”
“Tuesday?” As in the day after tomorrow?
He nodded. “We’ll take another biopsy before you leave. You’ll have to come back once a week at first. Also, the nurses will go over your home health care with you and your parents: what to expect, your regimen of medicine, diet.”
“Tuesday,” I repeated.
“Only if you want to get out of here.” He peered down at me. “From what the nurses are telling me, you’ve already flown the coop.”
His voice was light, but that was all it took for me to regret what I’d done. I hoped my parents wouldn’t find out.
As he listened to my heart and examined my scar, Dr. Michael’s warm hand brushed my skin, which sent tingles all the way up my arm and down to my fingers. I turned my head away. I imagined what it would be like to be grown-up, to be married to someone like him, to feel his soft hands on my skin in a different way. Then I thought of Ari, of how his hands would feel. But I didn’t want Dr. Michael to see all that in my eyes. I focused on the chair.
“You’re doing great. Your body is responding to this heart like it was meant for you. No reason to keep you here.”
I was ready to go home. “How soon can I go back to school?”
“If everything goes well, you can go back to school in the spring.”
School. Back-to-school shopping. Regular activities I’d stuffed away in the back of my mind for so long. Dr. Michael bent over. The dark curl on his forehead made a curly Q. I could see under his lab coat, where his shirt hung open, a patch of dark hair. “Can I go on dates?”
Dr. Michael’s lips drew up into a smile. “Absolutely. I’ll bet you’ll be going on many of those. Although you might want to consult your parents on that too.”
My cheeks burned and I turned away again. The rocking chair seemed to nod to me as a slight breeze from the vent pushed the air around it.
Dr. Michael touched my drawing on the bed next to me. “You’re very artistic. Is that what you want to do when you grow up?”
I tucked the sheets over the picture, embarrassed. “I was just bored.”
Dr. Michael lightly patted the covers over my leg. “Well, you have lots of time to decide. And plenty of time for boys.”
I picked up my notebook, feeling stupid. All my life, drawing horses had helped to calm me. My fingers automatically knew how to sketch the circles of the basic form, the length of the ears to the nose, the spacing of the legs.
Now all my drawings seemed childish. The rocker moved slightly as though agreeing with me.
“Any concerns?”
“Um, the prednisone. Is there anything else I can take?”
“Why? Are you having problems?”
“A little bit.” My face felt hot again and I kept my eyes down. “My face is breaking out.” I’d asked the nurses about it. A mild side effect of the drug. There were many worse side effects I could get instead.
Dr. Michael bent down again. “Any rashes?”
“No.”
He patted my cheek. “That should go away as we lower the dose. Sometimes it’s just a question of maintaining the right level. But we’ll stick to a higher dosage for a while.”
He wasn’t the one with zits popping up on his face. I felt them on my back and shoulders too.
When Dr. Michael stood up, he patted his pocket. He had one of those sports buttons pinned to the outside. A picture of a little boy with dark skin and the same curly hair as Dr. Michael posed on the ice in his hockey gear. His skates were slanted inward. The blades—there was something wrong about them. They weren’t the right kind of skates.
My heart sped up. I wanted to reach out and touch that button.
“Any other questions?”
“Can I do sports?” I blurted out.
Dr. Michael raised his eyebrows. “Well, it’s something you’ll have to work up to. No contact sports. Some of our patients go skiing and swimming. A few play tennis and golf. What sport are you interested in?”
“How about skating?”
25
EAGAN
I swish a hand through the gray murkiness. I’m pissed. “So let’s say for the sake of argument that I’m dead. Who dies during a figure skating competition anyway? A car accident would make more sense. I just got my driver’s license. But I hit my head on a board. A stupid half inch of board.”
Miki tilts her curly head. “Would you have preferred to die in a car accident?”
“Yes. No. I mean, I can’t be dead. I don’t want to die.”
“Most people don’t. But you knew you would. Didn’t you?”
I want to say no. But here, in this place, you can’t lie to yourself. The evidence is flashing all around you in your kal
eidoscope memories. “Yeah,” I say in a small voice. “Maybe I knew.”
“What is this?” Mom asked. I’d just come out of the bathroom and had a towel wrapped around me. She was in my room. She’d discovered my stash. She’d piled the batteries, bars, and bottles of water in the middle of my bed. It was an impressive pile, stacked high like a volcano.
“What are these for?” she said accusingly, confronting me as though she’d found drugs or something worse.
“For an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency?”
“End-of-the-world emergency.”
“Eagan, you have to stop reading all that crap that makes you do these things.”
“It’s not the books, Mom. You ever have the feeling that something bad is going to happen? I just want to be prepared.”
Mom threw her hands in the air. “What’s going to happen? Where do you get these ridiculous ideas?”
I should have kept my mouth shut. But I couldn’t help it. “Why are my ideas ridiculous? Because you don’t want to hear them?”
“You’re sixteen, Eagan. You should be thinking about pleasant things. What about the mental imagery you’ve been doing for your performances? This,” she motioned toward the stack, “can’t be helping your mental preparation.”
There was a difference between imagining yourself performing your jumps successfully and having a gut feeling about some worldly disaster, but Mom didn’t want to listen. “I still have my eye on the goal,” I insisted, “but there are other things to think about in the world. I mean, more than the matching pillows on a sofa.”
Mom waved the batteries in the air. “Is that what you think I do all day?”
I went tight-lipped and put on my headphones, then turned up the music.
Mom threw the batteries on the bed and stomped out.
The next day I convinced Dad to take me to get my license. I’d passed the written and driving test already. I just had to stand in line and get my picture taken.
“I can miss first period,” I said. “It’s just a study session.”
I wasn’t prepared for the twenty-five-minute wait at the license office.
“Do you want to be an organ donor?”
In a Heartbeat Page 10
