For one desperate second I hope it’s Betty Volunteer. I bet she’d find me a quiet dark room to sit in, would get me a soft drink and pat my forehead, would tell me it’s all going to be okay.
“Dr. Gambier wants to know if you’re okay,” Laurel says.
I wish she were Em.
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“Huh,” she says, and she and her designer flats click back out of the restroom.
I hug my knees against my chest and rest my head on them, not sure what to do next.
Eight
“I’M SO SORRY. I couldn’t get ahold of my dad and my mom’s teaching and Charlie’s at some comic book thing in Kentucky,” I say as I climb into Em’s front seat.
“It’s totally fine. I can’t leave you sad and alone and barfing in the hospital lobby.”
“But I know you’re busy and your mom needed the car. Maybe I should have just waited until Charlie could pick me up.” I can feel myself teeter dangerously near crying, but Em reaches out a hand and squeezes my shoulder.
“Park, it’s okay. I promise. Mom was happy to hand over the keys so I could rescue you. Plus, this means I get to see you today after all.”
I sigh, settling back into the seat as the beat-up old gray Fiesta pulls out of the hospital lot and toward the highway. Even though Em’s driving tends to make me a little carsick and she’s playing her favorite terrible soft-rock station, I can feel the tension leaving my body by the second.
While Dr. Gambier couldn’t have been more anxious to get my potentially contagious self out of there, Betty Volunteer was exactly as I imagined her to be—bringing me a ginger ale and periodically checking in to make sure I felt okay while I waited for Em.
“So, what happened in there?” Em asks.
I open my mouth to answer, but I feel dizzy again. I fix my gaze in front of me and grasp the door handle, white-knuckled. I need to get it together. Em’s leaving. In two days.
“I think I ate some bad cereal,” I finally say.
“Cereal can give you food poisoning?”
“I guess so.”
She chews her lip, thinking carefully about what she wants to say next, while in the background some guy is singing about a horse with no name.
“Park, you’d tell me if something was wrong, right?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” I shake my head hard.
“You’re lying.”
I sniff tears back and think of the truest thing I know right now. “I’m just going to miss you so much. I’m sorry—that’s selfish. I’m also totally excited for you.”
She holds up a hand. “Listen, I know I’m great. You don’t have to apologize for missing me.”
I half cry, half laugh.
“But are you sure you don’t want to come? We could still make it work—most of the places Matty and I are staying at are hostels, so it’d be easy for you to join us once you got to Europe.”
I let myself imagine it for a minute—my entire life in a backpack, going to museums and pubs, wandering through beautiful cities and small towns.
Leaving Charlie behind.
“No. I have to do this internship, Em.”
Em looks nervous and leans over to turn down the radio. “So, I don’t want you to get mad. But there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you for a while.”
“You don’t want me to get mad? That sounds ominous,” I say, letting out an unconvincing laugh.
“Do you really want to do this internship? Do you still want to be a doctor? Because ever since you got your Harvard acceptance, you’ve been kind of weird. I’m sure it’d be scary to change your mind now, but it’s totally okay. You could . . .”
I zone out, thinking of the day I decided I wanted to be a doctor, how as soon as I said the words, Dad looked at me with so much love and Mom told me she was proud of me.
“Of course I do,” I say, cutting off what she was still in the middle of saying.
“I mean, at the very least, maybe you could take the summer off to think about it. Because you’re going to be spending the next God knows how many years studying your ass off.”
A loud, weird laugh comes out of me. “I have wanted this since, like, fourth grade.”
“I know.”
“I mean, ever since Charlie got sick, I’ve known this is what I’m going to do.”
“Park, I know, but . . .”
“This internship is so competitive and such an honor. Of course I want it! And anyway, can you imagine me telling my parents I don’t want to do it? Ha! As if.” I shake my head.
“Parker, you know they love you no matter what you do, right? I just think you might feel better if you talk with them. Or maybe you and Charlie could talk?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Em shakes her head.
“In what world would that ever happen?”
“He’s going through things too, Park. And with all the Erin stuff and Matty being gone this summer . . .”
“What Erin stuff?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
I shake my head.
“They broke up last night.”
“What?”
“I don’t know any of the details—Matty just told me they’re over. But what I do know is that maybe he’ll need a friend this summer. And I know this is totally corny, but maybe you need him too? It’s just something to consider, okay?”
I don’t reply.
She shoots me an anxious look. “Oh crap, are you mad?”
“No, I’m fine,” I say, but it comes out sharper than I intended.
We’re both quiet then, the noise of the highway competing with both the car’s muffler and the cheesy, heartfelt ballad coming from the speakers.
Em’s coming from a good place, but she doesn’t know what she’s talking about with any of this: the internship, being a doctor, Charlie. Sure, she knows me better than pretty much anyone, but I want to be a doctor.
Then I remember Laurel’s face when she talked about the human body being a symphony.
No.
I shake my head, clear my throat, make my voice light and breezy as Em pulls off the highway and onto Route 42. “So, do you have time for me to treat you to a root-beer float and a hot dog at the Float, as a thank-you for picking me up?”
Em looks doubtful. “Your stomach doesn’t hurt anymore?”
“Weirdly enough, I’m actually kind of hungry,” I say.
Em glances over, studying me, and whatever she sees must reassure her. She nods. “If we can get takeout, I’m in.”
“Good, good,” I say, looking out the window at the water tower we’re passing. That’s when I see it: another spray-painted message like the one on the I-71 overpass this morning, all in red capital letters, only this one spreads across the body of the metal tank: WHAT DO THE STARS LOOK LIKE YESTERDAY.
“Look,” I say, pointing as we pass it.
Em laughs. “What do you think it means?”
“I have no clue. But whoever put it up there clearly isn’t scared of heights. Charlie and I saw another one over I-71 this morning.”
“Can you imagine being that fearless?” Em asks.
“No.” What I can imagine is falling to my death onto the highway or crashing down onto the parking lot from the top of the water tower, but I don’t say that. Instead, I sit back in the seat and try to pretend everything is just fine, which is a lot less terrifying than the alternative.
Nine
MAYBE BECAUSE IT’S HOT everyone thinks it’s the perfect day for a root-beer float, or maybe the Friday lunch crowd is always this big, but there’s a surprisingly long line at the Float, so Em drops me off while she runs to the bank to get some euros for her trip.
I stand in line, trying not to feel too bad for missing my first day of my internship and trying harder not to obsess over my conversation with Em. Instead, I study the sneakers of the girl in front of me, rearrange the letters in the first line of the menu to spell other words, try to recite all the words from the newest Taylor Swift song by heart, look at all the nearby buildings.
I realize there’s a new storefront next to the Float where the Lucky Pup Day Spa used to be. The signage catches my attention. It’s bright red and sky blue, painted like a graffiti tag, and it simply says CARLA’S CERAMICS. I always wished I could take ceramics or painting as electives in high school, but I packed my schedule with extra AP science classes instead. I wish I had time to do something like that this summer.
A perky voice interrupts my thoughts.