Phoebe was born with a hole in her heart. That sounds like a huge deal, but it wasn’t really. Turns out it’s pretty routine. But when Phoebe turned three, the doctors decided the hole wasn’t going to heal on its own, and she needed surgery. Before that, however, they did an EKG, and I got to watch.
Phoebe lay down on a hospital bed, and Mom clutched her hand like she was saying her last goodbyes even though everyone else, including Pheebs, was pretty chill about it all. Phoebe watched the cartoon the technician put on for her, but I watched the monitor. The technician rubbed a wand over Phoebe’s chest, and a black-and-white picture of her heart showed up on the screen, contracting and expanding with every beat.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing.
The technician showed me the arteries and the different chambers of Phoebe’s heart.
“And this is what’s causing all the trouble,” the technician said. “This is where the hole is.”
“It looks like a bird,” I said, and the technician laughed.
With every heartbeat, the wings of the bird flapped. This was blood flowing over the loose tissue, but to me it was like one of those drawings little kids make of birds in the sky, the ones that look like elongated letter m’s. I watched, mesmerized, as the bird’s wings moved up and down, up and down.
They got her into surgery, and she was only in the hospital for a day, and then she milked my parents for ice cream for dinner until she was sick of ice cream, and that was that.
But sometimes I look at Phoebe and I think about how she had a bird inside her heart. On the outside, she’s just like everyone else, but I like to think that maybe she carries within her something magical and free.
CHAPTER 49
Phoebe
I can’t sleep.
Instead, I leave my room, creeping down the stairs and out of the house. The stars stretch out in front of me, glittering over the tops of the trees. Our yard is small, but it feels huge, tucked away in a clearing and surrounded by trees on three sides. A car drives past slowly, the headlights briefly illuminating the trees and casting long, creeping shadows deeper into the woods. As soon as it’s gone, the night returns to its cozy darkness. Even though the grass is damp, I sit on the little hill behind our house, staring up into the sky, pretending that all that’s left of the world is me and a hundred million stars and the blackness of the night.
At first it’s quiet outside, but then I hear someone walking toward me from the house. I look over and see my brother’s silhouette, then I turn back up to the heavens.
“Hey,” Bo says as he approaches.
“Hi.”
He sits down beside me, looking back at the house instead of up at the sky.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Just thinking.”
He open his mouth to speak, but no words come out. Instead, I say, “I saw you.”
He looks at me, confused.
“I saw you earlier this week, watching me with Rosemarie and Jenny on the porch. Why were you spying on me?”
“I didn’t mean to spy on you,” he says.
“Don’t do that.” But I mean more than just “Don’t spy on me.” I mean, “Don’t give me false hope about my future over bowls of cereal.” I mean, “Don’t pretend that something’s not wrong.” I mean, “Don’t treat me like you treat Mom and Dad.”
I mean, don’t.
“It’s weird,” I say.
“What is?”
“When you’re gone.” I’m still not looking at him. If it was daytime, I don’t think I could say all this. But I’m so tired, and I can’t spend my life pretending, like Mom and Dad do. “It’s different. And now that you’re back. It’s all different.”
I wonder what Bo thinks life is like here when he’s gone. Does he think we all just hit the pause button and wait for him to return? No, we keep living—but no one hesitates outside his room, questioning whether it’s worth it to reach out or better to keep the silence. No one’s on edge, wondering what mood he’ll be in. No one hides. I get home and Mom asks me about my day at school, listening to my stories without being preoccupied about what she could be doing to help Bo. Dad sits in the living room and watches sports because he wants to, not because he’s trying to pretend there’s nothing wrong. There’s life-with-Bo, and there’s life-without-Bo, and they’re entirely different, and I’m getting whiplash trying to live them both.
“It’s getting cold,” Bo says, interrupting my thoughts.
“So go inside.”
Bo stands and heads back to the house. I wish I knew how to connect with him. He’s my brother; we should be close. We shouldn’t just be going through the motions, awkwardly trying to find something—anything—that we have in common.
I jump up and run over to him. We walk back toward the house in silence.
When we reach the door, he stops, staring at the lock. It stands out in shiny gold tones against the brushed nickel trim. Dad replaced it last week, before he went to pick Bo up from Berkshire Academy.
“I wish you didn’t have to go away again,” I say, staring at the lock. Maybe we could find some sort of identity as a family if Bo were here for more than just a weekend.