“She has,” Mom said, looking rather proud of herself.
“She had a traumatic awakening at the hospital.” He smoothed the arms of his white coat, as if remembering where I had clawed at him. “I think being there, and being here, is too stressful.”
I was breathing heavy with frustration. They weren’t listening to me. “Doctor. He’s dying, for Christ’s sake. Do something!”
Mom put her hands on my shoulders and started to shush me, but I swatted her hands off. Dr. Logan took out his prescription pad. “For the stress,” he said to Mom. “I think you’d better go.”
Mom pulled my arm and practically yanked me out of the room. Public mortification was a top-five sin in our household. Higher even than tardiness. She grabbed the paper from the doctor, pulled me out into the waiting room, and dragged me toward the door. I turned toward where the boy sat with his nurse. “Hey!” The nurse looked up. So did everyone else. Everyone with and without the wrongness. “He’s dying! You have to do something!”
The nurse’s lips quivered and she grabbed the boy’s wrist. His humming grew louder, higher pitched, and the rest of the room fell away. Then the receptionist was in my face, moving her mouth, but all I could hear was the humming, and all I could see were his eyes, looking right at me, registering nothing. And all I could feel was the itch in my brain, growing with the boy’s humming, spreading with the rising pitch, like it was somehow his fault.
I clamped my hands over my ears and screamed, “Stop it!” but I could still hear him. So I started humming to myself with my hands still pressed over my ears, until I couldn’t hear his voice. But the itch remained. And then two nurses and a man in a suit dragged me backward out the front door, and they helped Mom strap me in the car, and Mom pressed the lock down hard before slamming the door. The tires squealed as Mom pulled the car out and the man and the nurses stood on the sidewalk watching us go. I stopped humming, mortified by their expressions. But nothing was as bad as seeing Mom’s face. Her hands trembled on the steering wheel. And she gulped in air like she was sobbing, but there were no tears.
She dropped me off at home with explicit instructions not to leave the house (or my room, for that matter) while she went to fill another prescription I’d be flushing down the drain. I listened because of the way she slammed the lock on my car door. I listened because I was scared of what she might do.
Except then I heard a loud engine out front and the doorbell rang, and I knew it was Troy. He would understand. So I tiptoed down the steps and pulled him inside and whispered, “You have to leave.” But even as I said that I gripped tight onto both of his hands.
“Why? What happened?”
I leaned into him and he moved his arms around my waist. Everything else fell away as I breathed him in. “I tried to save someone.”
He tensed and pushed me backward. “You . . . what?” He clenched his teeth. “What did you do?”
“I told my doctor someone was going to die.”
Troy gripped my upper arm. “Why did you do that?” Then he shook me. “How stupid can you be?”
I flinched, remembering how little I knew Troy and how little he knew me. “I’m not stupid,” I said, looking at the fingers digging into my arm.
He slowly released his grip. “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. But there’s no point, Delaney. There’s nothing you can do. People will think you’re crazy, or maybe suspect you’re involved somehow.”
I nodded, rubbing my arm, remembering how my parents suspected me in Mrs. Merkowitz’s death.
“I tried to tell you before. I thought it would help to know. You can’t save them. This is hell.”
His eyes were wide and his teeth were clenched, and the overcrowding didn’t look endearing anymore. It looked dangerous. I glanced toward the window. “What are you doing here, Troy?”
“You said you’d come Monday for me to check out the hand. I thought maybe you were avoiding me, and I’m on lunch, so here I am.”
Avoiding him. Right. Because of last night. Was it only last night? “I had a doctor’s appointment that nobody told me about. Sorry.”
He ran his hands over his face, rubbing the tension away. “Okay. It’s okay. I’m sorry, too. So anyway, we should go out tonight. We can talk then.”
“I have plans, actually.”
“With who?” He was showing his teeth, but he wasn’t smiling.
“With Decker. The guy from the pizza place.”
“The neighbor? You’re going on a date with him?”
Then I noticed his front right tooth had a chip, and I wondered whether he got that in a fight or in the accident. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it when I kissed him. “No, not a date. It’s a play, and it’s for school.”
“You’re a crappy liar, Delaney.” He leaned toward me and took a step closer. “He doesn’t know you.”
“I think you should go now.”
“It didn’t seem like you wanted me to go last night, if I recall correctly.” He was right, and that bothered me. Because I hadn’t noticed the chipped tooth, which was practically glaring me in the face. And if I hadn’t noticed that, what else had I missed? I couldn’t think straight around him. Like vertigo. Like falling.
I heard the garage door open and felt relief in my stomach. “That’s my mom. And I’m not supposed to have company when she’s not home.”
He ran his tongue along his bottom lip and threw his hands up in an I’m innocent expression. He didn’t take his eyes off me as he backed out of the house. And as I swung the door shut in his face, he grinned and said, “Enjoy your evening.”
Mom walked in just as Troy walked out. “I didn’t know he was coming. I swear,” I said, breathing too fast between words.
Mom grinned. A real grin. “That’s okay, honey.” She hung her jacket over the chair and tore at the paper drugstore bag.
“You’re not mad he was here?”
“No, Delaney, though I would prefer if he called before he came next time.” I gripped the edge of the dining room chair, wondering if I had just hallucinated the entire doctor’s office scene. How could she swing between two emotions so rapidly? How could she go from treating me like I was crazy to this?
And then I got it. This was normal. Boy over. Kicking him out before Mom got home. Nothing said normal teenager more than that. She was relieved.
Mom shook a pill into her outstretched hand. “It says to take with food. Do you want a cookie or leftover pie?”
“I can’t take it now. I’m going to Les Mis with Decker tonight. I don’t want to be all loopy.”
“You won’t be loopy. You’ll be better. And anyway, I don’t think you should go out tonight.”
“It was my Christmas present. You told him I could go. And it’s for school. And I’ll take the damn medicine when I get home.”
Mom set her jaw and held her chin high. “You can go if you take the medicine.”
I tried to mimic her expression, jaw clenched and tilted up, but from the look on her face, I knew I wasn’t succeeding. I hung my head. “Cookie,” I said. When she turned for the kitchen, I saw the resilience in her profile for the first time. This person who left her own home and made a life for herself. My mother had dragged herself out of her personal hell. She escaped. So could Troy.
I ate a chocolate chip cookie, threw a pill into the side of my mouth, and excused myself to get ready.
I flushed my new medication down the toilet, and tried to think of how to explain this to Troy. That hell can be temporary. That there’s a way out. So I thought about what Mom did—she left. Okay, Troy had already done that. What else had Mom done? How long had it taken? I couldn’t change his past, I couldn’t change his present, but I could give him something—some hope maybe.