I wait for an answer, but minutes pass and it doesn’t come.
I think of the girl at the house. The wrong Marley and how scared she looked. I’m doing it again. I’m an idiot for thinking she actually knows me and that I actually know her. I mean, I was asleep the whole time.
Why is it I never considered that if she was real, she wouldn’t love me?
“I’m sorry. I—shit.” I take a step away from the door, shaking my head. “I’m sorry. I’m leaving now.”
I curse at myself. When the hell am I going to learn? In my rush to get out of there, the bottom of my left crutch tangles on something, and as I struggle to right myself, there’s a loud thud behind me. I look down to see the strap of her book bag wrapped around the crutch, her bag lying open on the floor.
Great. Now she’ll think I was going through her stuff.
I grab for it, picking up a few loose pencils that have tumbled out onto the floor.
But as I slip them back inside, I see the corner of a bright-yellow notebook.
I glance back at the closed door, before carefully picking it up. On the front, handwritten in familiar neat calligraphy, is her name: Marley Phelps.
“You do have a last name,” I murmur. Take that, Sam.
Before I can think better of it, I flip to a random page, my eyes widening when I see what’s written on it.
It’s the story of the two of us at Halloween, all of it exactly the same as it happened. Or how I dreamed it, I guess. My zombie football player costume, me tossing the entire bowl of candy to the kids, her hands reaching up to unclip her shell.
I keep searching, seeing tiny glimpses as I skim, memories I had. The Winter Festival, getting Georgia, eating hot dogs by the pond.
All of it right here.
I’m shaking. If this was all in my head, how does she know?
My eyes land on a single word. “Storyteller.” I think about our conversation that day at the park. When she told me the best part about telling stories.
The audience. Without an audience, a storyteller is just talking to the air, but when someone’s listening…
Someone was listening. I was listening.
Quickly, I close the notebook and put it away, but as I do, a feather falls out of the back and drifts slowly onto the floor.
A duck feather.
I hold it up to the light, smiling. It’s her. I do know her.
And she knows me. At least some part of her does, even though we’ve never actually met.
Gently, I place the feather on top of the notebook and reach into my pocket to pull out a cherry blossom petal I plucked off a flower in the courtyard today. I slide it over the feather, hoping she sees it.
Hoping it means something to her, too.
37
I wait impatiently outside the double doors of the hospital, scanning the parking lot for Kimberly. I check my watch for the millionth time, groaning, hoping she won’t be too late. Now is so not the moment for us to be operating on Kim Standard Time.
It’s almost 7:10. She’s going to miss it.
Finally, under the parking lot lights, I see her blond head bobbing its way around the parked cars.
I frantically wave her over, looking like a madman.
She jogs the rest of the way, her face half-puzzled, half-amused. “What? What’s the big secret?”
I grab her hand, pulling her around the corner and behind one of the huge stone pillars outside the hospital entrance.
“Kyle—”
I put a finger over my mouth and nod toward the door. She peeks around the pillar. I stare over her shoulder, holding my breath. Less than a minute later, Marley and her mom, Nurse Catherine, come out of the lobby, walking in the direction of the parking lot.
“What—”
“Shh.”
Catherine turns, motioning to Marley, who is lagging a few steps behind her. “Marley? Hurry up, baby.”
Kim’s eyes widen, and she grabs ahold of my arm, squeezing it in a vise grip. “Oh my God,” she whispers, excited. Now she’s the one practically flailing.
I grin at her like I just won the lottery.
“How long have you known?” Kimberly asks the second we get back to my room.
“Three days. I wanted to be sure. And…” I grab my iPad and turn it around to face her. “All the things I was telling you guys about her are true. Look.”
“Back up—slow down—hold on—stop,” she says as she tries to regain any sense of chill.
“The accident I told you about? It was real. I didn’t pay attention to this one because it was halfway across the country, but here it is.” I hold up the Post-it that reads 1,911 miles away and hand her the iPad with the newspaper article about Laura’s death. Once I found out Marley’s last name, all of the pieces fell into place. I did some more googling and was even able to find a photo of Laura and Marley smiling, one wearing pink, the other wearing yellow.
Kim skims the article, her smile wide until she gets to the very end. Then her face grows serious. Quietly, she shuts the iPad off and puts it down on my bed. She’s thinking hard about something. Finally she says, “Why are you telling me? Why not Sam?”
“Because you were right,” I say, giving her a small smile. “About everything.”
I get up and limp over to my closet. I dig around in the bag from my mom until my fingers wrap around a dented blue jewelry box.
I sit down on the bed next to her and hold it out to her. She opens it, and her eyes widen when she sees the charm bracelet inside, a tiny Berkeley charm I ordered last week on Etsy taking the place of the UCLA one.
“Kyle, I—”
“Kim, you’re still my best friend,” I say. “And now I need your help, because… you know me better than anyone. Even Sam.”
Her lips quiver and she puts it on, then throws her arms around me, the bracelet jingling noisily. Laughing, I hug her back, adding, “And because you know how crazy I get when it comes to love. I need you to keep my feet on the ground.”
She snorts, nodding. “Boy, do I.”
We pull apart, and she wipes the stray tears that have fallen from her eyes, giving me a determined nod. “Okay, then. What’s the plan?”
* * *