by Jill Wolfson
Tyler bolted upright, a puppet whose strings had been pulled taut. “What the…?” He blinked hard in the direction of the laugh, trying to see through the dimness of the room and the thickness in his head. In the corner on the floor sat a man in jeans and button-down shirt, his back against the wall, his arms wrapped around his bent knees. Had he been there all this time? How had Tyler missed him?
“What are you thinking?” the man asked. “That I came in through the bathroom window?” He sang that last part, Beatles-style.
In a clumsy move, Tyler knocked the bottle of wine to the floor. The last few mouthfuls drained out. The carpet sucked it up. Even in the dim light, he could see the big, purple blotch. His mother, the antidrinking cleaning maniac, was going to have a shit fit.
“Soda water,” the man said.
“Huh?”
“The bubbles in it are supposed to lift the stain right out.”
“Does that really work?”
“You’ll have to tell me. Don’t wait too long to blot it or it’ll set.”
Tyler’s eyes landed on a tower of paper napkins sitting on a dresser. As he pushed himself to standing, the full force of the alcohol hit. Walking slowly and holding on to furniture, he picked up the napkins and got a better look at the man. Definitely not a teenager or even in his twenties, but nowhere near as old as his parents. Green eyes with heavy lids. A V-shaped point in the middle of the hairline above the forehead. V for vampire. Everything about the man seemed vaguely familiar, as if Tyler knew each of his features individually, but when they were all put together, he turned into a stranger.
“Who are you anyway? A relative, I bet.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You have the Schecter lips. Or maybe you’re the other side of the family. Your eyes are like my mom’s.”
“And Amanda’s. She had the green eyes, too, right?”
At the mention of his sister, Tyler groped his way back across the room. He placed a thick pile of napkins on the stain and watched the purple design rise to the surface like invisible writing from a magic trick. “Aren’t you going to tell me how sorry you are about my sister? How everyone misses her?”
“It takes a lot of courage,” the man said.
“For what?”
“It takes a lot of courage to love something that death can touch. That death has already touched.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s something I heard somewhere. Maybe in a history book. Doesn’t it sound like something written on a gravestone?”
“What are you, a history teacher? I hate history. So boring.”
“Not a teacher. School and I never really got along. I’m more of a history buff. I enjoy hanging out with the already dead.”
Tyler had never thought of history like that. Hanging out with the already dead. Who was this guy? Nobody in his same gene pool had ever talked to him like this.
Unless.
“Hold on! I know who you are. You’re that relative, the cousin. My grandma’s sister’s daughter’s son, or something like that.”
The man shrugged. The name came to him. “Aaron, right? The one who isn’t married and doesn’t have a real job and keeps jumping from one interest to another and won’t settle anywhere. The weirdo. Um, no offense.”
“No offense taken.”
“When your name comes up, they do that clicking tsk-tsk thing with their tongues. You get even more head-shaking than I do.”
To demonstrate the relatives’ disapproval, the man pursed his lips and gave a quick, tense shake of his head. This was so hilariously accurate that Tyler laughed in big, sucking gulps.
Not a good move. The air went down the wrong pipe and set off a coughing spasm. Some wine moved back up his esophagus and into his mouth. Reflexively, he swallowed it again, syrupy alcohol mixed with stomach acid. Disgusting. It burned hard going back down.
Everything hurt Tyler now, and he groaned. His eyeballs felt lost in his skull, as if they decided to part ways and search for help in opposite directions.
“Manischewitz is a recipe for disaster,” the man said. “In future debauchery, stick with vodka. And remember what I said. What did I say?”
Tyler dropped backward on the bed, his head landing on a pillow. “Stick with vodka!”
“Not that. What I said before.”
“Before when?”
“Before. Remember?”
Tyler looked at the ceiling. He closed his eyes when it started to spin.
Remember?
About what?
About what?
He never heard the answer.
FIFTEEN
SECOND DAY OF MOURNING, and then the third day. People coming and going, tears and hugs and deli platters. Tyler held on to one thing. As soon as the shivah ended, life would start getting back to normal. It would have to. He wasn’t sure what normal would look like anymore, but it wouldn’t be this. His mother would have to return to work sometime. His father would stop sleeping in the guest bedroom and go back to his own apartment; he and Tyler would return to their usual divorced-father-son routine, dinner and a movie on the weekends.
But even after the official mourning period was over, life was anything but normal. His father was still there every morning and spending seemingly every waking minute by his mother’s side. His parents weren’t even fighting. Plus, his mom told Tyler that he could stay home from school as long as he needed. Definitely not normal. She was a freak about his not missing school. He wondered what he could get away with. Three more days, three weeks, three months?
He spent this time holed up in his room playing his entire supply of video games with a goal in mind: twenty-four hours straight. The only breaks he allowed were short naps and trips to the bathroom and to raid the refrigerator for shivah leftovers. The first eight hours of play breezed by. At eleven hours, there was a slump, but a second wind kicked in. Tyler felt it as a new jolt of power being turned on in his brain. Even the dull ache in his wrist from working the buttons and levers disappeared. Electrified, he easily knocked off a particularly tough level ten and settled into that zone of intense concentration where ordinary time and place disappeared and body and mind connected in clear purpose.
Anything felt possible then, everything was under his control. No need to sleep. No need to eat. No sun rising or setting. No worries. No doubt. No fear. No must-dos or should-dos. No world outside of his room. No world outside of his mind. No mind.
No parents.
No dead sister.
No…
On the screen, nothing happened. “Come on!” He clicked, clicked again, but the hero on the screen remained frozen with his hand on a machine gun, an ominous figure in black, poised to pounce. He shut down the laptop, rebooted, but when he restarted the game, it immediately froze at the credits. The next time he tried, a dark screen. He checked the power cord. No problem there. With his right fist, he pounded the cover of the laptop.
It crossed Tyler’s mind that he should ask his parents’ permission to use Amanda’s computer. But he immediately envisioned the whole landscape of repercussions for this simple question: the pained looks, maybe even tears from his mom, all the emotional probing about how Tyler would feel using it and how they felt and what it all meant.
Of course he shouldn’t ask permission! He wanted a computer now. No one was using that laptop. Why shouldn’t he walk into her room and take it?
For the next few hours, Tyler killed Nazis, completed missions for Mafia dons, and blew up imaginary cities until he was tackling his highest level ever in a particular game. It was outrageously hard. No matter what tactic he used, his character faced annihilation. Then he remembered that he once used his sister’s computer, this computer, to download a bunch of game-playing tips.
But where had he stored the file? He typed the words computer games into the universal search. Nothing. Tyler. There it was: Tyler’s stuff. But before he could open the file, the screen filled with a list of
other documents:
Tyler gift ideas.doc
Tyler pix.jpg
He clicked on The Real complete honest truth about Tyler and me.doc, and the file opened.
He never finished his video game marathon. He moved on to something even harder to get his mind around.
SIXTEEN
The Real complete honest truth about Tyler and me.doc
SUNDAY
AHGGGGGGGG. I HATE Tyler. He thinks he can come into my room and use my computer and treat me like I’m a moron who doesn’t notice. He doesn’t even bother turning it off right, and the keys get all sticky because he’s such a gross pig. When I complain to Mom, she’s sooooo lame. She promises to talk to him about it. I’ll talk to him about it. Then even if she does, guess what happens. Nothing!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He gets away with everything because he’s got “issues.” Big effing deal! This is my diary so I can curse all I want! BFD. BFD. Mom lets him get away with everything.
MONDAY
I tried what Mom suggested and talked to him about using my stuff. Again! That did a lot of good. Not! He’s such a jerk. Like when I told him he could maybe use my stuff sometimes, but only if he asks first and asks in a nice way and then puts everything back in the right place. And washes his piggy hands before he touches anything of mine! Of course, he made faces the whole time I talked. He imitates me like I’m a total prissy priss. Like he really knows the real me. Not! He better stay out of my room or else.
TUESDAY
Tyler said I better stay out of his room and then he put all these strings and barricades across the doorway so he’ll know if I go in. Like I want to go into his stupid room. I’d need a protective suit. It’s a toxic pit in there. Yuck.
WEDNESDAY
Tyler and I had another really big fight, and now we aren’t talking at all. BFD. He can’t use my computer! I don’t care if he can’t do his homework and he flunks all his classes and he flunks out of school and has to take a boring low-paying job in a doughnut shop and then lives a miserable life selling glazed and jelly-filled ones and nothing interesting ever, ever happens to him. Plus, he has no friends his entire life, especially not a sister who’s a famous gymnast and an ER room doctor on top of that. That’s the pathetic life he deserves.
THURSDAY
I HATE TYLER
I HATE TYLER
I HATE TYLER
I HATE TYLER
I HATE TYLER
I HATE TYLER
FRIDAY
I HATE TYLER
SATURDAY
Final thought. Nothing new to add about how much I hate Tyler.
SUNDAY
I’ll write something new tomorrow.
MONDAY
Final, final thought. Okay, I’ve been thinking. The name of this diary that NOBODY will ever read isn’t How I Feel about Tyler When I’m Really Mad at Him. Or How Tyler Pisses Me Off or Why I Sometimes Wish I Were an Only Child. The title is The Real Complete Honest Truth About Tyler and Me. And the real complete honest truth is…
Here goes. I wish Tyler liked me. I really, really, really wish he did and I don’t understand why he doesn’t. I wish it was like when we were little kids and had secrets together and made up games that other people thought were stupid but really cracked us up. Like the time we renamed Pokey, an old plastic horse, as Bernie the Belly Bumper and tortured Dad by sneaking up and dancing the toy across his gut. I was probably about seven. I tried telling my friend Hannah about it and she didn’t even crack a smile. But to Tyler and me, it was hilarious even after we did it about 100,000 times and Dad didn’t even think it was funny anymore.
And oh yeah! The Bernie song Tyler made up. It cracked me up!
I wish I didn’t have to pretend that it’s no BFD that those good times are gone. I wish I didn’t have to act like who cares if Tyler doesn’t like me and I don’t like him either. I wish we were best friends, even though he’s basically a jerk, but there’s a lot of good stuff about him, too. Anyway, I’m part jerk myself. I wish I could tell him that. I really want my brother to know things about me that nobody else does. Maybe one day he will. Maybe one day, we’ll be friends, even best friends. Fingers crossed. I’m gonna make a list of things about myself to tell Tyler so I don’t forget anything important and –
Tyler stopped there. He scrolled back and reread the part about Pokey and hummed a tune. He couldn’t believe that he remembered the Bernie song. He had trouble remembering what he did with his homework or where he had put his sweatshirt. Of all the stupid stuff to stick in his brain! Tyler sang a verse. The words spilled out of him.
Before closing the document, he skipped to the end and read and reread Amanda’s closing line from that Monday night a couple of weeks ago:
There. That’s it, the real complete honest truth about Tyler and me straight from my heart.
SEVENTEEN
I OPENED MY EYES. I heard a loud, steady beat in my ears.
Something was wrong, something in my chest, hard and heavy and way too powerful.
A hand closed around my right foot. I flinched slightly from the cold fingers. Mom squeezed my toes tighter. “Dani, your foot. It’s so warm. Now I know everything’s going to be all right.”
I took a deep breath, and it was sweet, cool and moist. There was so much of it, I gasped. I was drowning in air.
I kept waiting for a clue about whose heart I had.
I waited for a craving for egg rolls or a sudden desire to go on a murderous rampage or a preference for math over English or the memory of someplace I’d never been.
I waited for dreams about somebody I’d never met.
I waited for something, anything. If a cell can remember that it’s the cell of a heart or a toenail or a nose, what else could it remember?
While Dr Alexander examined me, she insisted that I wouldn’t be feeling anything like that. “Impossible, Dani. Personality and memories reside in the brain. Now, maybe if you had a brain transplant. But so far that only happens in science fiction.”
“I have a lot of energy. I’ve never had this much energy. Maybe the heart came from someone hyper.”
“You lived with your old tired heart for so long you got used to it. This is a big adjustment. You’re finally feeling what a teenager with a normal heart feels like. No wonder you’re ready to turn cartwheels. It’s no big mystery.” She poked at the scar that ran down my chest like a zipper, checking for signs of infection.
“Ouch!”
“Sorry. It’s healing perfectly, but the incision will be tender for a while.”
Dr Alexander continued on about how individual organs and cells don’t carry and transfer memories, likes or dislikes. And while she was talking, it all made perfect scientific and medical sense, which I had no reason to doubt because Dr Alexander graduated from a top medical school.
But still. Still. It didn’t make sense to me in the human experience way. Consider the kiss. Two people fall head over heels in love when mouth meets mouth. One minute you’re strangers. The next, you know each other in the deepest way that two human beings can ever know each other. And that’s only a little bit of saliva being swapped. What about a heart?
So I kept waiting for clues, but it was all disappointment. Yes, I had more energy, but I was still me. I didn’t have a sudden understanding of advanced physics. When the thought of a hamburger arose, I didn’t want mustard instead of my usual ketchup. I had hated country music with all of my old heart. I still hated it with the new one.
Courageous and brave, strong and tough. Everyone had a label for me. After the transplant, I was a living, breathing grammar lesson in superlatives.
Dr McGarry, leading a group of surgery residents to my bedside: “How’s the most plucky, bravest cardiac patient in the world?”
A get-well card from a bunch of eleventh-graders I hardly knew: You Are Our Hero!!!!!
A get-well card from my cousin Cara: To the gutsiest person in our family.
When Nurse Brianna changed my catheter bag, she held it up like it w
as the severed head of a monster I had slain for the good of the entire universe, instead of a bag full of pee that had leaked out of me. “Keep up the good work, Dani.”
Card attached to a stuffed lion from the people who work with Mom: To Dani, who has the spirit and courage of a lion.
All this attention gave me the creeps. It’s not that I’m one of those seriously reserved people who doesn’t like attention. I very much like attention, but only if it’s true and deserved. Hearing the word brave applied to me made me feel … pardon me while I choke on my tapioca.
Brave is pushing past firefighters and, without a thought for my own safety, rushing into a burning building to rescue a three-legged dog that’s cowering under the bed.
Brave is volunteering to go to a country where they don’t have the world’s most advanced medical devices, such as they had at Children’s Hospital, and being kind and helpful to people suffering from a horrible skin-eating bacteria that makes their noses fall off.
Brave is walking up to the meanest girl at school and saying what is truly the truth: “Melissa, the way you feel good about yourself is by making fun of everyone else. Maybe one day karma will catch up and give you a contagious skin-eating bacteria and then see how popular you are.”
Brave is doing that.
It’s making a decision to do something that nobody is forcing you to do. You just do it. Because it has to be done. Because it’s the right thing to do. Because no one else has the guts to do it.
The truth is, I didn’t volunteer to have a transplant. Nobody asked if I would agree to be born with a messed-up heart so that someone else didn’t have to suffer. Honestly, if someone had asked, I would have said, “Go ahead and put Melissa’s heart on the wrong side of her body and give her the bargain-basement valves. That’s fine with me.”
