Everything stopped. The way my brain was supposed to work and reason things out, the way I had been fidgeting with the dishrag, the way I made decisions. I felt warm from my toes to my fingers, and he wasn’t even touching me.
“So, I don’t know which it is—that you want me to or you don’t want me to.” Troy was nothing like Decker. Decker always gave me time to think and respond. Troy kept talking and filling the silence so I couldn’t keep up or make a decision, and it was too late to say anything anyway because he was kissing me already.
His hands were on my hips, and his mouth was parted directly over mine. And it didn’t feel casual and safe like with Carson. It felt like anything could happen and everything was only just starting and I had no idea what would happen ten seconds from now. He moved his hands under my sweater, up my back, warm hands on my bare skin. I arched into him and he walked us out of the kitchen, never breaking apart.
Then my brain caught up and thought we could only be walking to one of two places. The couch or the bedroom. And I was scared because it turns out I wasn’t actually scared of the idea while his mouth was on mine and his hands were on my back.
So I pushed away, gasping for air. “It’s Christmas,” I said, hoping that answered everything. “I have to go home.”
Troy said, “All right,” but he didn’t move his hands from my back. He didn’t drop his arms until I stepped away.
I couldn’t look at him the whole way home. And when he dropped me off he said, “Bye, Delaney,” with this ridiculous smile, and I turned away so he wouldn’t see that I had the same ridiculous smile. Nothing could stop me from smiling. Not even the fact that the Martins were still here. Nothing, that is, until I saw Tara’s inappropriate-for-snow, little red sports car parked in Decker’s driveway.
Chapter 11
Mom had scheduled a doctor’s appointment for Monday morning without telling me. We didn’t get as far as the hospital. Instead, we ended at Dr. Logan’s private practice a few miles outside of town. When we pulled into the packed lot, I didn’t follow Mom out of the car.
“Let’s go. We’re going to be late.” She frowned.
“I really don’t need to see the doctor. I feel fine,” I said, which was actually a lie. I felt the pull, strong and forceful, leading me to Dr. Logan’s office. Someone was very sick. Someone was going to die. I didn’t want to see them, not by myself, not without Troy to whisper in my ear and hold my hand and act like it was just a natural part of life.
Mom hitched her purse onto her shoulder and stabbed her finger in the direction of the building. “Now,” she said, barely moving her lips.
I kept my eyes on the maroon carpeting when we walked in. I stood in front of a large fish tank near the reception desk and felt the pull. Only it wasn’t from one person. It was coming from everywhere behind me, in a giant semicircle. Faint tugging from every angle, stronger in some directions, just like at the hospital. And in the back corner, something stronger than all the rest.
I scanned the room when Mom and I went to get a seat. People old and young were clustered on the cushioned benches along the walls. There was a wrongness about them. A boy, younger than me, with panicked, fidgeting eyes, breathed through his mouth and followed ghosts darting across the room. An ancient woman clasped her hands together in her lap, trying to control the relentless shaking of her limbs. A woman about my mother’s age lacked any movement in half her face. When the receptionist called her forward, half her mouth turned up in a smile while the other half hung down with gravity, a sideways “S.”
The wrongness made them seem not quite human. Even the fish knew it. They hid inside rock caves and studied the pebbles like they held the meaning of life. They wouldn’t look at us.
Against my better judgment, I took a philosophy elective my sophomore year. It was Decker’s idea. He thought it’d be fun to have a class together. It wasn’t. It was infuriating. There were no finite answers. No timelines or equations or conjugations. Just thoughts and conjectures and debates. Decker thought and conjectured and debated. I took vigorous notes, trying to discern the underlying pattern. I drew arrows and connected dots. I got an A because I memorized everything anyone said in class. I rarely contributed myself.
They spoke at length about what it means to be human—the human condition, they said. The capacity for good and evil, that we are rational beings, that we have free will. No, no, no. I shook my head and finally raised my hand. I read them my list: twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, bipedal, four-chambered heart.
But then Justin Baxter bared his teeth and said his uncle had Down’s syndrome and was missing a chromosome, and he was most decidedly still human. And Tara Spano, who had it out for me even then, said, “Well, what about people who lost a leg?” And Decker smirked at me. I pressed my lips together and never contributed to a philosophy discussion again.
I wanted to go back to my philosophy class and amend my answer. The brain made us human. The undamaged, grayscale imaged, correctly wired brain.
I studied the person in the back corner, where the pull was the strongest. He wasn’t elderly, like I expected. He was barely older than me. A woman in floral scrubs sat next to him, staring off into space. He was rocking back and forth and humming one note repeatedly, pausing only to take a breath. His skin was gray. His eyes were hollow. I would’ve known he was sick even without the freaky brain rewiring.
But he was more than sick. That itch began in the center of my brain, just the hint of it, just a hum really, a low vibration. But it had begun. He was going to die. Like the person in the hospital, like Mrs. Merkowitz, like that man in the fire, like the woman in the church, he’d be dead soon. Very soon.
So when we were finally called back, I didn’t want to talk about myself.
“Your mother says you had another hallucination.” Dr. Logan settled onto a stool and scooted toward the exam table.
“I don’t think I did,” I said, bouncing my right leg and staring at the door.
“Why don’t you explain the situation,” Dr. Logan said to Mom.
She opened her mouth to speak, then seemed to realize that if she told the doctor what she really thought, she’d be claiming I was a murderer. Or a manslaughterer. Or a reckless endangerer. “Well, it was the first night back. On second thought, she may have been sleepwalking. Now she takes her sleeping pills and it hasn’t happened since.”
“Those people out there are pretty sick,” I said. “Don’t you think?”
Dr. Logan followed my gaze to the closed door and looked down at the folder in his lap. “I really can’t discuss my other patients with you.”
“That man—that boy,” I said, pointing toward the hall, “with the nurse. He seems really, really sick.”
“Let’s talk about you, Delaney.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Delaney,” Mom said. “That’s none of your business.” She cast an apologetic look toward Dr. Logan, but the corners of her eyes were tight, so I knew she was annoyed with me.
I stood up and walked to the door, smacking my hand against it. “Are you listening to me? He’s sick.”
I pictured myself standing there, breathing heavy, and I knew I must’ve looked crazy, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
Dr. Logan closed his eyes and broke a rule of doctor-patient confidentiality. “He looks worse than he is. I promise.”
I removed my hand, but there was a print on the door, a watermark from my palm, fading from the outside in. “No, I think you need to check him again. I think you need to help him.” The itch was growing, little by little. It hadn’t started spreading, my hands weren’t shaking, but it wouldn’t be long now. I felt beads of sweat form at my hairline.
Dr. Logan looked at Mom. “I don’t think bringing her here was the best idea. You say she’s been better at home?”