by Vivian Lux
“I noticed you,” he’d said.
I shook my head and tried to drag my struggling brain back to the classroom. It had devolved into pandemonium now, with one older student outright crying that she was never going to pass, there was no way she was going to pass.
I turned to smile at her, reassuringly, but someone else stepped in and gave her a hug.
I turned back to my seat and fiddled with my pen.
The clock ticked as I sat in silence for the rest of the class. Not even trying to answer. If I thought that maybe not raising my hand would make her call on me, I was wrong. I may as well have just not shown up at all. When class was finally over, I slowly gathered my things as people gossiped and called to each other around me. I hadn’t gotten to know any of my classmates. It hadn’t seemed necessary, but today that same feeling of wanting to be noticed had me seeing them as if for the first time, as if I’d just woken up with the semester nearly over and realized I’d moved through it like a ghost. I looked around, hoping to make eye contact with someone, hoping to make that connection I’d been missing.
I may not have met very many people in class, but I’d observed enough of it to understand the hierarchy. The guys and the continuing ed people, the older women who looked frazzled and left class with phones jammed in their ears as they raced to pick up Johnny from daycare, all sat behind me. In the front row were the A-students, the girls who challenged the professor every chance they got, doing their best Hermione from Harry Potter impressions.
It was the ones who sat in the middle, not so close as to be nerdy but not so far back as to be overlooked, that had the most social capital. In my head I called them the blondes. They all had different hair colors, of course, but they were all blonde in spirit.
I sat in a row by myself. Not belonging to any of the groups.
I took a deep breath and looked down at the blondes as they packed their pretty purses, and I smiled at the one with the shiniest hair.
Her eyes slid right over me. Not even bothering to give me her contempt. Just flat out ignoring me.
I licked my lips, unsurprised.
I’d never known the code, the secret series of knocks that let you enter the world of friends and attention. There was something about me, a smell, a fault, that set me apart, marked me as an outsider. I was too blunt, too honest. I didn’t understand how to smooth things, how not to say exactly what it was that crossed my mind. Afraid of being awkward, I tended to stay silent, which in turn only made me more awkward when I opened my mouth.
I sat back down again, grabbing for my phone like I’d just received a text. I smiled down at my blank screen, miming reading a message as all my classmates took off in clumps of twos and threes, calling to each other as they passed me while I mimed typing a reply. Maybe they knew I was faking but it felt better than letting them know I was alone. Better to stay silent than embarrass myself by opening my mouth. I rifled through my bag, arranging notes, my cheeks burning. I wouldn’t watch them. I was tired of always watching.
I wanted someone to fucking notice me for once.
The classroom was quiet now, the heavy tick of the radiator the only sound. Outside, the everpresent rain pattered softly, like a whisper, against the window. I swallowed hard. I could see all my classmates with their brightly colored, ruffled umbrellas heading out for their cars.
That was another thing wrong with me. I never remembered a fucking umbrella.
The door swung back open again. I glanced up, moving my thumbs over the keyboard in case one of them was returning. But I saw the bright yellow of the janitor’s cart.
The regular cleaner didn’t usually come until night, which was why I glanced up again, wondering if it was Nilda and planning on asking about her dogs. She barely spoke English, but it felt nice to have her smile at me.
But behind it was a girl about my age. She was pretty in a plain, forthright way, her hair back in French braid like a girl much younger than her would wear.
I smiled at her.
She stopped, looking panicked that I was still sitting there and backed out again rather than talk to me.
It appeared I was marked as an outsider even by the custodial staff.
Flushing, I gathered my books and headed out the back entrance and into the rain.
Chapter Nine
Everly
A week later, I slammed the door to the kitchen shut and flew to the table while unzipping my schoolbag at the same time. I didn’t have much time.
Between running Gabe to PT, clinical, and last-minute cramming for my boards on Thursday, I had nearly forgotten about the unit test. I cracked open my beat-up laptop and signed into the system to download my open-book test. It was due into my instructor’s inbox by midnight. It was five in the evening and I still had Gabe’s nighttime dressing change to take care of and reading for tomorrow’s class.
I took a deep breath. I had time. I was going to get this done.
I started clicking through the test, feeling dread pool in my belly with each successive question. “Wait,” I breathed, leaning in and squinting at the screen while my cursor blinked away in silent judgment. “Is that a trick question?” I flicked through my notes, tracing my finger down the page and tapping what I thought was the answer, but the wording was off. I read the question aloud to myself again, noisily exhaling out the tension as I did. “Shit,” I murmured and clicked the answer I was sixty-five percent sure was correct, but the fact that I wasn’t one-hundred percent sure made me even more anxious than before. “Shit,” I repeated, that single word becoming almost like a mantra. “Shit, shit, shit.” I clicked to the next question and prayed.
The door in from the garage banged open.
I startled, knocking my water bottle to the floor where it clattered with a loud, tinny bang, but blessedly did not spill. I clenched my teeth together and then looked up at my parents. ”You guys are back already?” I said, trying to sound happy about it and failing miserably.
My mother’s nostrils flared a little at the obvious distress in my voice, but she put her smile back on, choosing to dismiss it. “There was a wait,” she said. “We would’ve been there past seven.”
I exhaled and shook my head, trying to look sympathetic through my irritation. My parents never stayed out past seven. It had been a hard and fast rule, ever since I was a child, that life stopped at 7 o’clock. Growing up this had been fine because I was on their same schedule, but now that I had night classes, and practicum and clinical, it was something else entirely. Plus I was in the middle of a freaking unit test. “Huh,” I said, my heart sinking. Because I knew what came next.
Slam went my mother’s pocketbook on the counter. Whack went the closet door as it hit the wall. The TV blared to immediate life, loud enough for each explosion from the movie they’d started last night to rattle my teeth. “Start the stove,” my father bellowed at my mom, as he yanked open the freezer. “There’s a pizza in here at least.”
“Honestly, I cannot believe how rude that hostess was,” my mom complained as she slammed through her drawer full of pots and pans. “If I talked to my customers that way I’d be out of business. Everly? Scooch your stuff over?” When I took too long, she came over and gave all my notebooks a nudge.
I took a deep breath, and kept my eyes firmly on my screen so they wouldn’t see the frustrated tears that glittered in them. “Hey, guys? I just need twenty more minutes to finish this test, okay? You know the WiFi is terrible in my room, and I have to get this done. Could you keep it down until then?”
No answer. I didn’t have to turn my head to know that my mom was probably staring me down. I wanted to swallow but my throat felt way too tight.
The explosions boomed from the living room.
I waited a beat. Waited for my parents to give me hell.
Then I looked up and realized they weren’t even in the room anymore.
They hadn’t heard me.
I sat back in the chair, uncertain of how I felt about that. I should h
ave been relieved that they didn’t hear me, but I was more pissed than anything else.
On the screen, my cursor blinked in time with the seconds that were ticking away. Another explosion made the glasses in the cabinet rattle.
I leaped to my feet. Without even understanding what I was doing, I started packing my bag up. “I’m heading out!” I called.
No one answered. No one noticed I was leaving. And for once I was happy about that.
Chapter Ten
Gabe
Once I was able to manage stairs on my crutches, I had insisted on being moved to my old bedroom. Being in the sunroom made me feel like a guest in my house, and I was keenly aware of my family trying to tiptoe around whenever I slept. I didn’t want them to have to worry about waking me anymore.
I also really, really missed having a door I could shut.
So my brothers had banded together with my dad to wrestle the awful hospital bed up the stairs. They’d managed to keep the cursing to a minimum, though when they set it down on Finn’s foot, he’d let off a few choice f-bombs that my mother pretended not to hear.
I was finally alone again, and though it felt weird to be away from the bustle of the house, it was so much easier to fall asleep in the silence.
I have no idea how long I was out when I was woken by an unfamiliar noise. Like a mouse had gotten trapped in the wall.
Scratch scratch scratch.
We had mice growing up. It’s one of the inevitabilities of living in the country. They came in, like clockwork, every November, something you could set your watch by. The mice would come, and my father would diligently set out his traps, and my mother would squeal and run away shuddering every time one of the little guillotines snapped shut. As my brothers and I got older, checking the traps became our job, something Finn always took a rather unhealthy interest in.
I was used to mice, but they were annoying when I was trying to take a nap. Without even opening my eyes, I reached out and balled my good fist. Then I slammed it hard against my bedroom wall, intending to scare it away. Scratch scratch scratch, BANG!
“Jesus!” came a voice.
I opened my eyes in surprise. Someone was in my room? “The fuck?” I managed to croak. I opened my eyes and Everly Foster was on the floor of my room, a drift of papers and books all across her lap. She looked up at me guiltily. “Hi.”
I wondered if she knew I’d been dreaming about her. “Hey,” I said, trying to sit up.
“Sorry. I thought you were asleep,” she said.
“I was asleep,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “But the mouse woke me up.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Mouse?”
“Yeah.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t hear a mouse,” she said, turning back to her paper and writing something down.
That’s when I realized the scratching sound was that of her pencil and the skittery sound that I’d thought was dripping water from the gutters outside was actually her fingers dancing over her keyboard.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to sound curious. I didn’t mind her being here. Not one bit.
”Trying,” she said, pausing to read something on her screen and then click, “to finish a unit test.” She exhaled and let her head fall back against the wall and gave me a look of such utter helplessness I wanted to leap from the bed and go fight all her battles for her.
This girl was starting to get under my skin.
“Sorry,” she sighed. “It’s noisy at my house and it was quiet here, and I needed to change your dressing anyway before I headed into clinical but you were asleep and I just saw a golden opportunity to finally work uninterrupted.” She leaned in and clicked the screen again, this time with a satisfied grin on her face. “Okay phew, that one was easy.”
“Who’s being noisy at your house?” I wondered.
“My parents,” she said without taking her eyes from her screen.
I grimaced as I rolled over and sat stiffly at the edge of the bed. She didn’t look right down there on my floor. A girl with her dignity, with her sass? There was something about this scenario that set my teeth on edge. “Wait, your parents are the ones being noisy when you have to study?” I asked, lowering my voice halfway through the question when I realized I wasn’t exactly helping her concentration by badgering her about this. But honestly, what the fuck?
She nodded, clicking three times in rapid succession. Then she widened her eyes and let out a long exhale that made the baby curls around her face dance. No matter how quiet her face was, there was still always something about her that was in motion. “I’m done,” she said with a relieved smile.
I grinned back at her, feeling strangely relieved myself. “Good. But I’m sorry you had to sit on the floor of my bedroom to finish it.”
She shrugged and sat up. “I’ll clean up,” she said, starting to pack all her papers.
“No, that’s not what I was talking about,” I said, waving my hand at her to stop. “I was wondering why your parents didn’t keep it down when you had to study. Did you tell them to—?”
“Tell them to keep it down?” she supplied. “Doesn’t really work that way,” she said dryly.
I narrowed my eyes. “They do know you’re going to school, right? Working your ass off? That whole thing?”
Her smile was equal parts amused and frustrated. “I mean, I think they have a vague notion,” she said.
Frustrated, I stared at her, all huddled on my floor doing her absolute best. It wasn’t right. “You need to get your own place,” I said, snapping the fingers of my good hand.
“Yeah, no shit,” she said.
“You’ve thought about it? It would make things a lot easier for you.”
“Yeah, thanks for the advice,” she said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “It’s not like I’m rolling in money.”
“There’re plenty of cheap places,” I said, which was a total lie. I had no idea if there were cheap places or not. Feeling like a tool, I shut my mouth.
Everly just shook her head. “Only way I could do it is if I found a roommate, I think. I need to save all my money for classes. Plus my car is about to die any second.”
I could hear the frustration in her voice and it pissed me off. This chick had everything going for her, but it was like she was swimming upstream. Unsupportive parents, shitty transportation, no place to even get peace and quiet so she could study. I hated the worry lines that creased her face, and I also hated that I knew how tired she was, and could only blame myself for part of it. “You can study right here from now on,” I told her. “It’s not like I’m going to be getting up and bothering you.”
I expected her to smile, but she just turned and gave me a serious look. “I’ll make it up. You don’t have to pay me for tonight.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I growled. “You need a break, and I think it’s high time someone gave you a break, don’t you think?” I grinned at her. “Now come sit on the bed here. I want to make sure that you spend your time here well. Pop quiz.”
Chapter Eleven
Everly
I perched at the side of his bed and settled my textbook on my lap. Gabe was watching me carefully, all his attention trained on me like a spotlight on the star of the show.
I looked down and noticed my hand was crumpling the page. I hurriedly swiped at it to flatten the crumpled corners, and Gabe’s eyes followed the motion.
He was making me jittery and nervous and I had no idea why.
Yes I did.
Was he remembering that night? In these past few weeks, I’d pushed it so far back in my brain that it seemed to circle back around to the forefront. The way he was looking at me right now, I almost believed he was remembering.
He flicked his tongue out, wetting his lips. I held my breath, waiting for the revelation that he’d known all along.
“You know everything in that book?” he asked, a little glint of mischief in his eyes.
I blinked at the unexpected question but qui
ckly recovered. “Of course,” I said, a touch more indignantly than I wanted. “My boards are in two days. I know it backwards and forwards.”
His hand shot out a lot faster than I was expecting and the next thing I knew he was reading aloud. “A patient diagnosed with ulcerative colitis is admitted to the medical unit. When assessing the patient, which of these findings would be of the most concern?” He cleared his throat. “Rebound tenderness, Oral temperature of ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit,” he raised an eyebrow, “which is thirty-seven degrees Celsius but of course you knew that.”
“Of course.” I nodded.
“Let’s see…oh, jeez, I don’t even know how to say that so I hope it’s not the answer or…” he wrinkled his nose theatrically. “Or bloody diarrhea?”
I grinned in triumph. “Rebound tenderness,” I said promptly.
He closed the book with an emphatic thud. “I disagree.”
“You disagree with the NCLEX?”
“Bloody diarrhea is always a concern,” he said, looking thoroughly grossed out.
“I had no idea you’d be such a priss, Gabe King. I guess that’s why I’m the nurse and you’re not.” I reached over and tugged my precious study materials from his hand.
He relinquished them easily. “I’m thinking this gig you have right now is a lot easier than what you’d normally have to deal with, huh?”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “The gig itself is a cakewalk. It’s the patient that’s difficult.”
“Aw, whaddya mean? I’m super easy.” His eyes fell to my lips in a way that didn’t seem at all accidental. “Haven’t even asked you for a sponge bath yet.”
My heart stilled a moment. I raised the other eyebrow at him.
His smile was completely innocent. Too innocent when he said, “To be honest, since I fell, I haven’t exactly felt safe in the bathroom.”
I stared at him. That was certainly a valid concern, especially with the weakness in his ankles. But why did it seem like his eyes were gleaming? “Do you have a fever?” I blurted.
