“But you do know. You must,” he says. “If it’s a favorite.”
I stare at him, willing him to read my body language, which is screaming, Let me go inside! But he just stares back at me, waiting. I take a deep breath and use the momentary pause to examine his face. Good-looking. That’s the other thing Louise called him—and he is, in that his face is striking. It entreats exploration. Good bone structure. That’s what Mom would have said. I always thought that was funny, because if you’ve ever seen a human skull, the bone placement is pretty universal. What I’m drawn to, what I can’t seem to stop staring at, is his eyes. They’re green, like two olives dropped into the center of his face, polished to a glossy shine. And they’re intense, yes, but there’s also a kindness about them. They’re a contradiction, similar to Eric himself. And I find it difficult to look away.
I realize he’s still waiting for me to answer. That he’s not going to leave until I respond. I clear my throat. “It’s just so real,” I say. “I read it as a teenager—and it captured . . . I don’t know, everything. The loneliness. The way we idolize other people’s lives. The desire to be accepted. To be noticed.”
He stares at me, his mouth slightly ajar, and I start to feel exposed, like he can see through me, somehow. I break his gaze and pretend to study the rocks at his feet. “Um . . . for me, anyway. That’s what I liked.”
He still doesn’t respond and I feel the heat rise in my cheeks again. “Well, I really better get inside,” I say, and shuffle back toward the door.
“OK,” he says from behind me. And then: “Bye, Jubilee.” It’s the first time he’s said my name and I fumble the keys in my hand, dropping them on the porch. I quickly bend down to pick them up, taking care not to let go of the sweatpants’ waistband, conscious of how ridiculous I must look.
I straighten up, fit the key in the lock, and turn it, twisting the handle with relief. I scoot in and close the door behind me, turning the lock with a swift flick of my wrist. I lean back against the door, dropping my bag onto the ground at my feet next to the pile of mail that’s landed there in my absence and sigh, looking around. My house.
I’m in my house. Lying in the hospital bed, I fantasized about all the things I wished I were doing at home—lying in my own bed, for starters, reading a book in my comfy corner chair, making eggs and toast, mopping the floors, watching the next lecture in my Harvard series.
So it surprises even me that the first thing I do isn’t to go upstairs and change. I walk over to the window and gently push the curtain to one side and watch as Eric slides into the front seat of his car. I stare at his face as he turns to say something to Aja, who’s still in the backseat, and watch as he slowly eases the car in reverse out of the driveway. I picture myself in the passenger seat beside him. What I must have looked like there—what we looked like to people driving beside us.
THAT NIGHT, I can’t sleep. Dr. Houschka’s words keep replaying in my mind: Maybe you could get this thing under control. It’s the reason Mom moved us from the only home I’ve ever known in Tennessee to New Jersey in high school, so we could be closer to Dr. Zhang and get this thing under control. (Although to be honest, I also think she’d run out of men to date in our small town of Fountain City.)
But after the first appointment, I refused to go back. It was clear there wasn’t going to be some magic cure, and besides, I didn’t like the way Dr. Zhang was looking at me, that glint in her eye. She wanted to study me, like I was some kind of alien species. I wasn’t interested in being her guinea pig. Mom encouraged me to give her another chance, but she didn’t—couldn’t—force me to go.
I’m still not interested in being a lab rat, but I know Houschka’s right about one thing—I don’t want to end up in the hospital again any more than he wants to see me there. And I can’t exactly stay holed up in my house. I have a job now. A job that I need. And what if he’s right about the rest of it? What if they do know a lot more about allergies now? Whoever they are. What if there is something that can be done?
I get out of bed and creep downstairs, not wanting to interrupt the silence with the creaking of the hardwoods. In the study, I slide into the desk chair and shake the mouse of the computer. The screen glows to life and nearly blinds me. When my eyes adjust, I type “Dr. Mei Zhang” into Google. Her picture immediately pops up under the heading George Watkins University Allergy & Immunology. I shudder, remembering the way I felt underneath her gaze. As if I were a frog in science class and she was gleefully holding a scalpel. But maybe that was just an irrational childhood fear, like imagining monsters under the bed. I click the link, grab a pen and piece of scrap paper from where they lie on the desk, and jot down the phone number and email correlated with Zhang’s name. I stare at it, by the glow of my monitor, and a feeling washes over me. An emotion so foreign, I can’t immediately identify it.
Possibility.
It feels so naive, the hope I used to carry around like Linus’s blanket, imagining a new life—a life without this debilitating allergy—was waiting just ahead. But there it is, blossoming in my belly, and I can’t dampen it. Not immediately. I mean, I don’t plan on running around giving CPR to strangers all the time, but what if I could work at the library without my gloves, or shake hands with people—or I don’t know, take a business card from someone and let my fingers graze his, like a normal person? Or maybe that isn’t normal—to think about touching a near stranger’s fingers with your own.
In the dark, I peer down at the Wharton sweatshirt I’m still wearing—that I just didn’t really want to take off—and wonder if maybe that’s not normal either.
Anyway, I remind myself, Dr. Houschka said “under control”; he didn’t say “cured.” That’s because there is no cure. There is no cure. I say it aloud so that it sinks in. I will always wear gloves. There is no new life waiting just around the corner.
I stare at the phone number on the piece of paper one last time, before I crumple it up, drop it in the wastebasket beside the desk, and go back upstairs to bed.