We love to say everything’s going to be okay, but honestly there’s no way to know. And okay can mean so many different things.
Such as:
This cereal is okay.
That movie, eh, it was okay.
I’m waiting for Dad to give me the okay about the road trip.
But applied to people it generally sounds terrible—
So, what do you think about the new kid?
Eh. He seems okay.
Yo, I heard about your mom. How’s she holding up?
She’s okay.
Hey, I heard you lost a kidney. How are you doing, man?
I’m okay.
Okay isn’t as comforting as I think people intend it to be.
The nurse or doctor or ER tech or guardian angel, or whoever she is, sprints back down the hall, pushing through the doors marked Authorized Personnel Only. The doors rock back and forth, and I consider running after her, wedging my sneaker between the doors, rushing back to Kate. But the doors stop swinging, and there’s a loud clink, a latching sound that seems better suited for a correctional facility, as they lock me and the other unauthorized away from the people we love.
From the people we need.
So that they can try to save them.
So that we’re not there when they can’t.
The same woman comes back forty-three minutes later. I’ve watched each minute tick. I can’t tell you when Franny and Jillian arrived. Only that they’re on either side of me.
The woman’s smiling, which I interpret as GOOD.
“She’s okay,” she assures me. Okay, that word again. “Give it thirty minutes and you can see her.”
“What happened?”
The woman wrings her hands. “I can’t really discuss her health with anyone she hasn’t authorized. I’m sorry.”
I nod. “As long as she’s all right.”
“She is. Thirty minutes.” She disappears behind the swinging doors.
“See,” Franny says, sighing hard. “Everything’s fine.”
“Did you call her parents, Jack?” Jillian asks me, in a way that makes me think she’s already asked me this, that maybe I’d been too lost in my trance to hear her earlier.
“They’re on their way,” I say.
“I wonder what happened,” Jillian says.
“Me too,” I say. “Me too.”
“I’m just glad we were there,” Franny says.
“Me too,” I say. “Me too.”
“You sure you’re okay?” Jillian asks. “It’s like you’re somewhere else.”
She’s right.
I’m back on our first prom night, standing in the rain on Kate’s parents’ front porch, waiting for her to answer the door, for her to explain why suddenly she didn’t want me anymore.
Except now I know that night was never about me.
Kate couldn’t be at prom with me.
She was too busy fighting for her life.
When I go into her room, Kate smiles. But I don’t believe her.
I know it’s meant to assure me.
But I don’t feel assured.
Not even almost.
I stand in the doorway.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” I say.
She pulls the oxygen out of her nose, pushes it up onto her forehead. “Come here,” she says, tapping on the bed.
I walk over. “Should you be doing that? Taking off your oxygen?”
“No,” she admits. “But if I did everything only the way I should, what kind of life would I have?”
“Kate, what happened?”
“I got sick,” she says.
“Sick how? What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. I mean . . . please just talk to me, Kate. Whatever I can do, I’ll do it.”
“I’m not a machine, Jack. You don’t get to fix me.”
I follow her eyes out the window.
“That’s not what I mean. I don’t want to fix you. You’re not broken, Kate. To me, the way you already are, you’re—”
“I have a condition. But I’m not a condition.”
“But what condition do you have? Why won’t you just tell me? I don’t understand why you’re being so . . . so secretive. I mean, you’re in the goddamn hospital and I just want to be helpful and understand you better and I’m trying to . . .”
But she slices through my words. Throws her hands up like a traffic cop, Halt. Don’t move. “I don’t like you, okay. Not like that.”
“Like what?”
“I mean, I can’t like you. I’m sorry, Jack. You’re really awesome, and funny, and—”
My turn to interject. “Spare me the smoothing over, okay?”
“I can’t do this.”
“What can’t you do?”
“This. A relationship.”
“Who said anything about a relationship?”
“You don’t know what the future holds, Jack. But I do. And trust me, this is the way it has to be.”
And I nearly shout, I know EXACTLY what the future holds! That’s the problem! But I stop myself. Instead, I say what I want to believe—
“Kate, the future can be anything we want.”
She chews on her bottom lip. “Xander wants to try again.”
“Who’s Xander?” I ask, but as soon as I utter his name I know. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh,” she says, like she wishes she could put the words back into her mouth.
“Xander. Of course his name is Xander.” Even though I could not have guessed this name in a million-gazillion years, but that’s what you say when confronted with the name of your newly appointed archnemesis. “I thought you said he was bad for you.”
“I did. He probably is. He is . . . but sometimes you . . .”
“Sometimes you what?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Well, uncomplicate it for me, because I don’t get it, Kate.”
“I don’t think you want to get it.”
I shrug. She has a point. I don’t want to get it. But answer me this, who would? Did Ponce de León get it that there was no goddamn fountain of youth hidden in the Florida Everglades? Did Mr. George Washington Carver get it when people sneered who in the hell would want to eat soup made from peanuts? It is my contention that getting it is seriously overrated.
“Okay,” I say. “So, answer this, why are you here with me then? And not with Xander somewhere? Why did you come to a high school prom, of all places, when someone like you could be out doing way cooler things with way cooler people?”
She scrunches her nose, and I don’t mean to reduce everything Kate does to a series of supercute gestures and expressions, but she is so beautiful, so utterly breathtaking, even when she’s mad, even when she’s frustrated, even when she’s frustrated at me, that it takes all of my willpower not to melt into a sticky, gooey Jack-blob.
“Jack, I’m only a year removed from my own prom.”
“I mean, you know I like you, Kate. It’s obvious, right? How much I like you? And then you agree to go to prom. And then we’re celebrating our three-month anniversary, and . . . I mean, am I crazy? I’m probably crazy. But am I crazy about this?”
She shakes her head in that I don’t want to say, don’t make me say way. I know I should stop, because this is the part where she breaks my heart. But I can’t stop. Part of me knew this wouldn’t last. That same part of me that wants to just get it over with.
But part of me also wants to put it off as long as possible. Suspend it indefinitely, and live with Kate in a vacuum of unhurtable feelings.
“Jack, you’re going to be okay. I promise.”
“There’s no way you can know that.”
“One day you’ll forget all about me.”
“Everyone says I have an excellent memory. Even elephants have told me.”
“You should go,” she says, reaching for her call light.
“Answer me this,
what does Xander have that I don’t? Why him and not me?”
“Don’t do this, Jack. This is stupid.”
I smile, stupidly, defiantly, because suddenly I feel brave. But not the good kind of brave. Not the kind where the hero runs brilliantly into the inferno because he knows he has to act, he knows that there are lives at stake, lives other than his own, and that he must be the one to save them. No. What I’m feeling is the kind of brave where a squirrel decides to squat in the middle of the highway and stop a semitruck with only his mind.
And, well—
Need I tell you how that ends?
“I want to know, Kate. Why him? Why not me?”
“Because Xander’s been there. He was the first guy who stuck around when things got hard. Is he an asshole sometimes? Absolutely! But he’s a known quantity. I know who he is. And I know if push comes to shove, he’ll be there for me.”
“I want to be there for you even when push isn’t shoving, Kate.”
“Stop being nice to me.”
“I’m miles beyond that.”
She shakes her head. “I’m sorry, but I can never love you, Jack. I just can’t, and I never wanted to hur—”
But I’m already jumping off the bed. “Just stop,” I say. It’s too much. All of it. Everything.
I fling open the door, only narrowly avoid four people who all look like different versions of Kate, people I have to assume are her family.
“Excuse me,” I say, brushing past them.
The girl in the group smiles at me. “Jack,” she asks, saying my name like she’s said it before. Like it’s been said to her plenty of times.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Hi. I’m Kira. Kate’s sister.”
“Nice to meet you,” I manage to get out, tears welling up in places they don’t belong, namely my eyes. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
I don’t wait for her to ask me where or why.
I run down the hallway, back into the waiting room.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say to Franny and Jillian.
“Wait, what’s happening?” Jillian asks.
“Jack,” Franny calls after me.
But I’m already outside.
I’m already sucking cool night air.
I’m already wiping stupid tears from my stupid eyes and telling my stupid heart to pull it together. She’s not for us, I tell my stupid heart. Get over her already.
But I can tell it doesn’t believe me.
Life as We Know It
Naturally, thereafter, life sucks.
Everything is gray now. And not shiny chrome gray. Dull, monochromatic gray. I am the very image of the moping, love-angsted teenager. I wear the same jeans for several days as an outward symbol of my pain.
But no one bats an eye when you wear the same denim for a week.
So in a more obvious outward symbol of my pain I wear the same shirt.
And not just a flannel or solid-color shirt—those would be too easy to chalk up. Yes, you wore two red flannel shirts on back-to-back days, but maybe today’s flannel has a white hatch that’s slightly different from yesterday’s eggshell hatch? No, to proclaim your heartache you must go all in—which is why I’m wearing a shirt that is unmistakably unique.
A white T-shirt with a giant decal smack-dab in the middle.
A birthday present from Grandma Charlie two years ago—featuring a giant bottlenose dolphin, who’s smiling for no apparent reason, and who’s spouting an impressive amount of water from his blowhole, a spiraling tower of water atop which a grinning yellow rubber ducky floats.
You heard right. Creepy dolphin, blowhole, scary rubber ducky. All on the same shirt. Boo-yah!
Like I said, there’s no question whether I’m wearing the same shirt.
You know I am.
Boy does that get everyone’s attention.
And yes, in the way you’d expect. Molly Hendricks stands up in art class and says, “Jesus, Jack, please tell me you own like fifteen of the same shirt. Or that your parents are getting a divorce and you’re staying at your dad’s crappy apartment and he didn’t have quarters for the unit washing machine.”
“Wow, Molly, that was a very rude yet decently composed joke,” Ms. Haggerty, the art teacher, concedes. After class Ms. Haggerty pulls me aside.
“Jack, is everything okay at home?”
“Home is fine.” But my heart is another thing entirely.
Even the JV basketball team gets in on the fun. “Rubber ducky, you’re the one, you make my bath time lots of fun, rubber ducky, I’m awfully fond of you . . . rub a dub dub . . . ,” they croon while we stand in line for Mystery Meat Monday in the cafeteria.
At least the jokes are funny. I even laugh, especially at the Sesame Street serenade, although only for a second, because laughter goes against the broken heart melodrama that I am in the middle of suffering. My friends, on the other hand, fail to see the humor.
“Jack, you smell terrible, man,” Franny says on the drive home.
Jillian doesn’t pull her punches either. “If you show up outside in that shirt tomorrow, Jack, you’ll have to find another ride.”
But then she frowns and reaches across the car seat to pinch my cheek. There are times when Jillian is downright motherly; these are the times when I can see into her crystal ball and know that she will be an amazing environmental activist/doctor/Supreme Court judge, yes, but she will still find time to bake the best oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for her kids, and she will help them with their homework, even when it’s new math, and she’ll be front and center at their terrible, terrible choir concerts. And most importantly, when the entire world’s chorus is singing in perfect harmony about how much they suck, she will be there to always remind them of her love, of their immeasurable worth.
“She doesn’t deserve you, man,” she says in a near whisper, like the ad-lib at the end of a love song. I appreciate Jillian’s efforts, but the truth is this: I don’t deserve Kate. I blew it.
“Seriously, dude, if you want her so bad, just go after her already,” Franny says.
The three of us are lounging in my basement, Jillian finishing her history paper and me watching Franny play our favorite online shooter, Imperials. “But no matter what, this whole bleeding-heart thing has to stop. It’s killing our vibe. And you seriously stink.” He declares this in the middle of an amazing kill streak, demolishing the record I’d set weeks back, which I take as an omen.
I don’t bother to tell him that I shouldn’t stink anymore, because for the past two days I’ve been back to my regularly showered program.
But Franny is right about the other part.
Just go after her, Jack.
Drowning in your sorrows is no way to live.
I’d rather drown in love, or at least in a vat of “strong like.” You know, if I have to drown, and if I’m allowed to choose my drowning-liquid preferences.
Later, Jillian texts me her take:
JILLIAN: Will you just listen to me, you moron?!
ME: Fine. All ears.
JILLIAN: For some idiotic reason you think you don’t deserve her, Jack. But the thing that really bugs me—that makes me want to slap you up and down the street—is that for some even more idiotic reason you think you don’t deserve to be happy. But you do, Jack.
JILLIAN: As much as anyone.
ME: But as my friend, you have to say that, right?
JILLIAN: No, believe me. I definitely do not.
JILLIAN: And when have you ever known me to say something that I didn’t mean??
ME: Very good point.
JILLIAN: I thought so.
ME: I don’t know what to say.
JILLIAN: There’s nothing to say.
JILLIAN: Just go after her, Jack.
JILLIAN: Seriously! Stop wasting time talking to me and go get her back already!
ME: Thank you thank you thank you
JILLIAN: Go!
Only my car is in the shop.
And Mom
needs her car for work.
And the last bus to Whittier left twenty minutes ago.
And Jillian has the late shift at Pizza Pauper, and I don’t want to take her car and leave her stranded.
But then Jillian makes magic happen—tells her boss she has a personal emergency—and then Jillian’s ordering me into her passenger seat and Franny war-yells, “ROAD TRIP” and flings himself into the back seat and we’re floating down the highway, pushing time and orange-barreled roadwork behind us. Franny, on the fly, makes an awesome get your love back playlist, and he alternates between letting the songs play and serenading us with his own songs, most of which feature a surprise rapper guest appearance, the rappers being Jillian and me, which sounds awful, but whose awfulness cannot be done proper justice without actually hearing our flow.
“Okay, we’ve gotta pull over,” Franny says in the middle of my freestyle.
“What? Why?” Jillian asks.
“I have to pee. Just pull over.”
“No way. Do you realize how dangerous it is to pull over on the highway? You’re practically asking to be decapitated by a speeding minivan.”
“Well, I’ve gotta go bad.”
“It’s only nine miles to a rest stop.”
“Only nine,” Franny says sarcastically.
“Just don’t think about waterfalls,” I suggest.
“Or swimming in the ocean,” Jillian adds.
“I hate you both,” Franny says.
Nine miles later we pull into some creepy gas station.
“Please make sure you wash your hands thoroughly before returning to my vehicle,” Jillian shouts out the window after Franny.
And Franny pauses near the entryway to moon us, although he manages only a half-moon because an elderly black woman walks out of the gas station, and Franny, clearly flustered, can’t pull his pants up fast enough. The lady smiles, whistles the best whistle ever, and Franny laughs, takes a deep bow.
Jillian and I scribble numbers onto napkins, and when Franny walks back out, we lean out of our windows and hold up our napkins—and my napkin says “7.5” and Jillian’s says “perfect 10,” because love is knowing the bad is there but choosing to appreciate the good.
And if there are better friends than these two, you keep them. I don’t believe you.
Opposite of Always Page 15
