Around five, Emerald arrives carrying a jade planter with a tall exotic flower I don’t recognize. She looks perfect, of course, her hair twisted and coiled like she just stopped by on her way to prom.
She halts at the sight of Julian exactly the way my mom did this morning, staring at him without moving or speaking. I pry the plant from her trembling hands and set it on the dresser in the corner. I nod toward the hallway and she follows me. Out here is another mural, this one of an elaborate underwater sea party with smiling mermaids, sharks, dolphins, and fish.
“I didn’t think he would look like that,” she whispers. I nod. She doesn’t have to explain what she means. “Matt drove me. He’s with Camila downstairs. They wanted to come up, but they didn’t know if it was okay.”
I cross my arms and lean against the wall, next to the happiest octopus I’ve ever seen. “It’s not. Not yet.”
“You look tired,” she says. “You should probably get some sleep.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”
She flinches, her blue eyes looking confused and hurt, but I don’t apologize. Her hair is perfect, and something about that bothers me.
“Adam…”
“I should get back inside.”
She squeezes my hand. I don’t squeeze back.
THE SECOND DAY in the hospital passes a lot like the first. Julian sleeps. I pace, sit, and eat crappy companion meals sent from the cafeteria. There are long stretches of nothing, interrupted by visits from Delores and Mom, plus friends who venture no farther than the hall. Now the room’s scattered with flowers, floating balloons, and stuffed animals.
I’m sitting in the metal chair by Julian’s bed when he wakes up so suddenly, I jump. He claws the air, then tries to yank the tubes from his nose.
“No, leave them,” I say, pulling down his hands.
He goes still and blinks like he’s awoken from a nightmare. “Adam?” This is the first time I’ve heard him speak since I carried him into the hospital…was that only a day and a half ago?
“Yeah?” I hold him till I’m sure he’s done flailing, and I hook my foot into my chair to drag it forward. “Are you okay?”
It’s a stupid question. The bones in his wrists are grotesque knobs. Liquid sugar runs through a bag and down a tube into his hand, spreading out into his veins. Machines pump oxygen into his lungs and measure his pulse and blood pressure.
Instead of answering, he whispers, “Is school out?” His tone’s dull, voice scratchy like he has a throat infection.
“I don’t know. I didn’t go today.” I glance over at the clock.
“For…” He looks down at the round white stickers pasted to his chest, then fiddles with the tubes at his nose. I’m about to tell him to stop when his arm thuds to his side like it’s too heavy to lift. “For the summer.”
“For the summer? No…we still have a couple weeks left.”
He looks so confused and alarmed that I expect the heart rate monitors to start beeping wildly like they do in movies. “It’s next year?”
I don’t understand what he means. It’s nonsense, like leaving the trunk open for the stars. “Next year?”
“I missed next year. I missed summer.”
“No. It’s still this year. We haven’t had summer break yet.”
He sinks a little and closes his eyes. “That’s good. I always miss it.” Then his eyes spring back open, looking wild and panicked again, while mine flit to the monitors. “But I must have. I was there for so long. I counted. But I couldn’t count anymore. I was in a shell, then the shell disappeared and I didn’t know where I was. I knew you’d be gone. Everyone would be gone.”
“Inside a…? You were in a trunk, Julian.”
“A shell. I was all alone in a shell.”
My fear and worry are ramping up and I think about getting a nurse, but I can’t leave him. I don’t want to upset him by getting upset myself, so I try to keep my voice calm. “It was a trunk.”
He shakes his head, but it looks like he’s working in slow motion. “You…sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. When I found you, it was nineteen days after you checked out of school.”
His eyes close. His eyelids look pink and translucent. “Adam?” I lean in closer to show I’m still here, still listening. “It didn’t…feel like nineteen days. It was like a thousand years…longer than my whole life before it. Why?”
I have to hold my face rigid, because it’s happening again. The burning throat and the urge to cry. I went years without crying, but now it’s like I can’t stop. In spite of my decision to be calm and soothing, I have to blink and brush away tears, but then more stupid tears just refill my eyes like a faucet I can’t turn off. I drag in a breath and try to answer his question.
“It must’ve felt like forever.”
“But why?”
“Because it was so awful.”
“But why can’t good things feel like forever? It was all so fast…before they left. I want to spin it back…slow it down. Why is time like that? Why does it slow down in the places you don’t want it to, but it speeds away when you’re happy?”