“The accident was my fault,” I say. “I was driving.”
Amy rolls her eyes. “So what? You were driving because he let you drive. That was his choice. So why don’t you blame him?”
“Because…” It’s always been so clear in my mind, but now it feels like I’m underwater and I can’t quite make it out. “I talked him into it.”
“No. Because after someone dies, we can’t blame them for anything anymore. You think you’re remembering him as he was? You’re not. He wasn’t perfect. He could be a total jerk sometimes. He had terrible taste in music. He was smart, yes, and cute and fun. But he wasn’t perfect.”
“You broke up with him.” It’s already been said, but now I’m saying it with a question underneath. How could you? Was he okay?
“Yep. I did. And he would have been fine. He would have moved on, but now he can’t move on. And neither can I.”
Maybe Amy’s the one who should move, start over. Maybe my parents could adopt her and leave town and I could stay here.
“Doesn’t sound to me like you’re having any trouble,” I tell her. I’m angry now. The comment about Nate’s taste in music was below the belt. “Maybe you are a horrible person.”
“Maybe I am.”
“Aren’t you sad? Don’t you miss him at all?”
A shadow passes over her face, a specter of the old Amy.
“I was. I did. But I didn’t…I didn’t love him. He was a nice guy. I was sorry when it happened. But he’s gone, Tallie. Remembering him doesn’t mean we have to act like we’re dead, too.”
She sounds so calm, so sensible. Like she’s already finished the entire process, figured everything out, put it to rest. Moved on. It should have been harder for her. He should have meant more.
“He was my brother. We were best friends, and he was my brother.”
“I know.”
I was going to tell her about the recipients, about Boston, about finding him. But it’s clear to me now that she doesn’t deserve to know. Or maybe just that she wouldn’t care enough to listen.
—
Before I fall asleep that night, I look again at the Life Choice letter, at the page where they list how many lucky recipients benefited from the donations of a single person. Nate’s heart, his lungs, his kidneys and liver and eyes. So many parts to claim. All those pieces taken, missing from the urn. The universal donor. The one who can give to everyone, but can only receive from his own blood type. More cosmic imbalance.
You’ll never find them all, I tell myself. So I focus on the heart. The essential thing, the part that keeps all of the other parts alive. Cross my heart, he said, whenever he wanted me to know he meant what he was saying.
I press my hand over my own, picture it: a fist inside my chest. Picture Nate’s: a fist inside someone else’s. Both of them keeping us alive, drawing us toward each other with every pounding beat. That’s the treasure, I think. The heart is the one to find.
And when I fall asleep, I do not dream about anything.
thursday 10/9
Now that I know SparkleCat76 lives in Boston and most likely has some part of Nate (whether or not she deserves it), I stash that info in my back pocket and wait to hear from Dr. Fikri, imagining what she might tell me, if she tells me anything at all. Waiting makes me distracted, and being distracted makes me careless. I don’t even see Ms. Doberskiff approaching until it’s too late and she’s got me cornered in the hallway. Wordlessly she tugs my elbow ever so slightly and I follow her into an empty classroom.
“Are you…Is everything okay, Tallie?” she asks. Her hair is pulled into a high ponytail because she has just come from cheerleading practice, and her face is flushed, and she looks like a sweaty movie star.
“I am fine.” I very much want this to be true. “How are you?”
“You look like you’ve been crying. Have you been crying?”
This is one of Ms. Doberskiff’s rules. She will not articulate your problems for you. She makes you do it yourself. And no matter how hard you try, you sound like a guilty child every time. Or a robot.
“No, I have not been crying.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, I do not want to talk about it.”
“You might feel better if you talk about it.”
“I don’t think so.”
Ms. Doberskiff sounds a wee bit exasperated when she says, “I am here to help you, Tallie.”
I am tired of people telling me that I need their help. As if I can’t decide for myself. As if I must just accept their aid, swallow it like medicine that burns going down. Did the saints have to endure such interference?
I smile at her pretty, sweaty face.
“Tallie,” Ms. Doberskiff says. “I was hoping I could change your mind about coming to Bridges next week?”
“I need some time off,” I tell her gently. “I have some things to figure out.”
“You don’t have to do this alone, Tallie. There are so many people who care about you….”
She continues but she is fading, as if she is a radio and someone is turning down the volume so I can let my attention wander. We’re in Mr. Gennari’s history room and there are maps all over the walls, maps with stars marking important places, dark lines in all colors showing how to get from one place to another. A huge map of the state of Massachusetts, with pins and strings between them to trace the routes of past settlers, from Boston to…
“I have to go,” I say, and I start to edge out of the room, tiptoeing backward, as if any sudden movement might somehow upset the certainty that I feel right now, the conviction that I know what to do. And who to tell about it.
But I have to pass my creative-writing classroom to get to the cafeteria, and Mel is waiting in the doorway. She seizes my arm before I can duck out of her way. I do a quick pros-and-cons analysis and decide that it’s not worth trying to evade her. Instead, I let her lead me to our usual seats. I sit in front of her so she can use me as a human shield and take naps while hidden behind my body.
“So, little stranger,” she says. “Where ya been?”
“Communing with the dead,” I tell her. Maybe the truth is so absurd that I don’t have to lie to her after all.
“No fair,” she replies.
The class starts, as it often does, with a writing exercise. Something about what our characters would carry around in their backpacks. Mrs. Cohen gives us five minutes to write. The room is completely quiet at first, and then everyone starts writing at once. The soft shushing of pens on paper gets layered, amplified, until it sounds like a chorus of whispers. I cover one ear, then the other, and close my eyes, trying to keep myself together.
Mel taps me on the shoulder. I lower one hand so I can hear her say, “Are you coming to Battle of the Bands? Our set list is finally free of alt-country atrocities.”
I am almost touched by her invitation until I notice that she is holding her phone and aiming it at me, ready to take a picture, and suddenly I feel sure that I will end up in one of her taxidermy tableaus or on fake HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? posters or worse. She is smiling in that way she smiles, full of twisted hidden plans, and I hate her—for just a second—for making me like her. Untrustworthy. Draped with secrets and lies.
“No,” I growl.
She retracts her phone, still smiling.
The whispers are louder now and I want to look around to see if everyone is talking to themselves, but Mel will notice. So I just listen and I hear the words start to form and they are all in my own voice. They are in my head. Tallie, they tell me, you don’t have time for this. You have to go. Go now. Go.
I risk a glance at Mel over my shoulder. She is writing, everyone is writing, pens singing on paper. No one else hears it. It’s only me, like I am trapped, in limbo all over again and no one knows and no one is coming to get me. I put my fingers up my sleeve to where Nate’s name is written, press against it, and feel my pulse racing.
“Tallie?” Mrs. Cohen is staring at me fro
m the front of the room. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” I manage to croak, but it’s not all right because the whispers are drowning me now and I can’t breathe in this room, I can’t breathe, I have to—
I lurch toward the door.
“Tallie!” Mrs. Cohen calls, alarmed. “Do you need a hall pass?”
I leave her behind with all the others in the whispering room.
Mrs. Cohen is still calling my name from the room of whispers but I ignore her and run down the shining corridor. The locker doors line the walls and they are just like the little doors in the columbarium, standing at attention, ready to receive our offerings. I turn the corner and duck into the library. Ms. Huff is in her glass box, a fish in a tank, and I manage to hide myself in the stacks without detection. I can almost breathe again, running my fingertips across the books that are lined up like the vertebrae of some huge creature. The spines in this section are black with gold letters, thick with pages.
Black, like Chase’s binder.
Chase.
I need to find Chase.
I will tell him what I decided, what I’m going to do, and he will tell me I’m right and it will solve everything and it cannot fail. I am jubilant, I can almost breathe again, my heart is racing, alive.
I look at the clock. The numbers seem to shudder at my gaze, but I can read them well enough.
Then I am in the cafeteria, where Chase is sitting with a few of the guys from the photography club. He looks up as I approach, there’s a camera in his hands and he raises it slowly—to show me? to take my picture?—and just as I start to tell him that I know what to do, everything
goes
black.
—
My mother comes to pick me up from school.
The school nurse tells her that I had a panic attack or maybe just a “syncopal episode.” At first I think she is saying sinkable, as if fainting proves that I am somehow less buoyant than other students, but then I see where she has written it down on the incident report she’s filling out for the school office. Another memento for Hunter’s TALIESIN MCGOVERN scrapbook.
More evidence that will end up on Dr. Blankenbaker’s tally sheet. Tallie sheet. I keep my hand on my chest all the way to the car, to see if I can detect disruptions in my heartbeat, get some warning that it’s about to happen again.
Mom turns the car on and buckles her seat belt and fiddles with the radio for a minute. Then she turns the car off again, and the radio, too.
“I need to tell you something,” she says, and then sighs, as if she is tired of hearing her own voice.
“Okay.” I pull down my sleeve, as if it will leap up and reveal Nate’s name written on my arm. Ballpoint wears off too quickly, so this morning I wrote it in Sharpie. I admit to scoffing a little at the word permanent. How naive.
Mom’s hands are folded around each other, knuckles straining. “I’m going to clean out his room this weekend.”
She still won’t say his name, but she’ll put his ashes in a wall and give his stuff away to whoever wants it. Objections line up in my head but I can’t start an argument. Anger makes us make mistakes, say things we regret later, and I have too many secrets now to risk it.
“Okay,” I say again.
“Is there anything you want? Before I box it all up?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? I know this is hard. It’s hard for me, too, but Dr. Blankenbaker thinks I’m ready….”
As long as you’re ready, I think. Maybe I should have kept going to Dr. B. Actually talked to her. At least then I’d have a say.
Why didn’t you tell me that you donated Nate’s body? But I ask this only in my head. Maybe Dad has already told her that I know the truth, but even if she knows, I don’t want to have that conversation just in case Professor Gerald Rackham—and, by association, my layers of lies and deception—comes up. Aloud I say, “It’s okay. I don’t need anything from his room.”
“Well, I’m listening. If you want to share your feelings,” she says. Therapyspeak. She’s picking up Dad’s habits.
“I’m fine,” I tell her just as a swarm of blackbirds take off from the trees next to the school, all at once, the way they do. They fill the sky like shattered pieces of nighttime. I am spellbound.
“What are you looking at?” my mother asks.
“What?” I turn to her then, and notice how many new lines are etched on her face. When I look back at the sky, the birds are gone.
“Nothing,” I say. “Let’s go home. I think I just need to lie down for a little while.”
Mom does not drive the way Mel does, either in terms of speed or direction. She takes the same route she has always taken, since Nate’s first year in the middle school, which is right behind the high school. She used to pick me up from fourth grade and then we’d come to get him, and she still goes the same way even though new roads have been built that she could use as shortcuts to our house. It is only now that I realize her route takes us down Sycamore Street, past the legendary Victorian with the wrong color blue trim. And I can feel her slow the car slightly as we pass it, so I look at it, too.
The house is massive compared to ours, with its peaked roof and high windows and porch that wraps all the way around it. The trim is painted in layers, blue on gray on white, and for once I agree with Mom. The blue is garish, Cookie Monster bright. It makes the house look like a woman wearing the wrong necklace with her dress.
I crane my neck as we drive by.
“Do you like that house?” Mom asks hopefully.
Something flares in me then. Frustration that I have to protect her. Anger that she has been coveting this house, that she is just like Dad, that she wants to forget the place where Nate was and leave it behind.
I will not forget. I will not move on without him. There is no back to normal anymore. There is only this.
I will find him.
“Not really,” I say. And I close my eyes so we won’t have to talk anymore. And we don’t, and then we are home.
I really do just want to lie down, but something makes me check my email and there’s a message from Dr. Fikri. I stare at her name in my in-box, savoring the excitement that’s gathering in my gut. I am ready for her to bring me the answers. I will not forget. I will find him.
But when I open the email, I only have to read a few words before my excitement curdles like milk.
Dear Tallie,
I regret to say that Dr. Abbott has informed me of your personal history and what he feels are questionable intentions. He has also made me aware that you incited his son to make some very poor choices and break his father’s trust in him. For these reasons, I must decline your request for an interview. I wish you the best of luck in whatever pursuits you deem worthy of your future.
Sincerely,
Dr. Samira Fikri
My personal history? Questionable intentions?
My throat is burning as I dial Chase’s number. I am too angry to text, and the letters on the keyboard refuse to hold still anymore.
He answers on the second ring. “Hey, I—”
“What the hell?” I sputter.
“Tallie? What’s wrong?”
“Your father told Dr. Fikri some kind of stuff about me, personal stuff and about my intentions, and she’s not going to help me, so what the hell did you say to him?”
“Nothing, Tallie, I swear. I didn’t tell him anything.”
“Then how would he know? How would he know what I really wanted to ask her?”
Chase makes a noise like uh or huh but doesn’t say anything.
“What?” I ask.
“He must have looked it up,” Chase says. “He found out about Nate through the hospital. He must have. Because I swear to you, I didn’t say a thing.”
“And I’m just supposed to believe what you’re saying?”
“You don’t have to. But you know my policy.”
“Honest emotional exchange,” I say. “And don’t tell you anythi
ng that isn’t true.”
“Right. And I follow my own rules.”
I want to believe him. I want to, because it means I can still like him and also that somewhere out there, in the informational ether, my answers are findable. He is my ally, I tell myself. We are connected. We share a mission.
“Okay,” I tell him.
“Okay,” he says.
And we both sound like we mean it.
After we hang up, it comes back to me, like a flower opening in slow motion. My plan, the one I was going to tell Chase about when I fainted in the cafeteria. And I know now that I was right, because Nate is telling me exactly what to do.
Dr. Fikri is going to help me, whether she knows it or not.
Time to play another card.
I sneak out the back door and ride my bike to the package store on the corner, the one with an ATM inside. I know Nate’s PIN because he used the same four digits for everything: 1171, the month and year of my mother’s birthday. I feel a twinge of irritation at how good he was. I withdraw a hundred dollars from his bank account—I can’t take it all at once because there’s a daily limit, so I will do this each day, a new ritual. I feel like I’m committing a crime. Technically I guess I am, but my uncle did say that my parents should give me this money, and even though I have some of my own saved up from working at Common Grounds, it feels right to use Nate’s money for this mission. He was saving up for a car, I’m going to get myself a train ticket. It’s practically the same thing. It’s all transport.
I take my phone out of my pocket to make room for the cash. There’s a text from Chase:
r u ok?
I text back, trying to pin the letters down like butterflies.
rosabelle, believe
friday 10/10
Sometimes, when someone has died, one of the survivors says, “I’d give anything just to hear him say my name one more time” or “I just want one more day.” This is absurd. Nobody wants one more day, one more sentence, or one more anything else. We want all of the days, as many as we can get. We are greedy in our unhappiness. We feel we’ve been robbed and we want back what we’ve lost, and then some.
Some of the Parts Page 17
