[]Sythlight: What happened? Everything ok?
KittyKat: my granddad had a stroke
[]Sythlight: Oh no!
[]Sythlight: :( That’s awful. I’m sorry.
KittyKat: he’s ok
KittyKat: I mean, considering
[]Sythlight: Do you want to talk about it?
KittyKat: on here or on VoiceChat?
[]Sythlight: Either
[]Sythlight: What do you think?
KittyKat: ok. I’ll call you
MEG
IT HURTS.
That’s something they don’t show in the movies—how condoms can tug and grab at areas that are way more sensitive than I expected, amid all the banging of knees and elbows and noses.
Afterward, we don’t curl together as one on the couch, blanket pulled up to the dimples in our chins. Instead, Grayson stands, runs his fingers through his hair, and starts tugging on his clothes.
This part I do know from the movies. This is the point where the guy pulls on his clothes and leaves. Except this is Grayson’s house, so there’s nowhere for him to go. He buckles his belt and sits down on the couch beside me, shirt clutched in one hand.
I lean down and snatch up my own shirt, pulling it over my head, skipping the bra, which still lies abandoned on the rug. I lift my hips, tug my underwear on. I ease up beside him so my bare leg presses against his denim-covered one.
“Do you want to watch your archery thing?” I ask, and Grayson nods, not looking at me. He reaches forward, taps some buttons on the camera.
On the screen, the short kid finishes pulling back the string and lets go. Grayson puts his arm over my shoulder. The weight of it is like that enormous snake that tiny girl on Britain’s Got Talent wore while she recited a poem about saving the animals—as the thing basically tried to strangle her to death.
I have done it. I have saved us. We are right back where we’re supposed to be, watching his oh-so-important video, not fighting.
Except that I don’t care about his stupid archery. I actually could not care less if he wins or loses or gets clobbered over the head by that hairy biker who—yes, I do remember—is not in his division. I just want him to kiss me, and wrap his arms around me, and breathe his warmth into my ear, and tell me that it’s okay that I feel wet with what I think must be blood. It hurts enough to be blood.
The video clip ends. Grayson leans forward to start the next. His hair flops forward toward his eyes, and he flicks it back before putting his arm once again around my shoulder.
On the screen, a mousy, freckled guy prepares his bow. Are all archers as thin as Pixy Stix?
Grayson’s not breaking up with me. Grayson’s not breaking up with me, because we just had sex. And I think that’s the only reason.
I get to my feet, swoop down and snare my pants, pulling them on one leg after another. My legs feel like cacti. I should’ve shaved them this morning. But I didn’t know this morning that this was going to happen.
“I’m going to go,” I tell Grayson. He doesn’t protest, just hands me my bra, which I stuff into my pocket.
“Meg, I’m sorry,” he says, which I’m pretty sure means Good-bye.
KAT
SYTH’S VOICE HOVERS ABOUT MY HEAD, DARTING FROM MY HEADPHONES TO my ears like a tiny hummingbird.
I talk about Granddad, and about how the flesh seems to have melted off him basically overnight, and how awful it is to see him as brittle bone again, when he’d been getting so much stronger. I tell him about my doll and the dresses for her that Granddad gave me, and about the carnival, even though it’s embarrassing to admit that lights and music can make me cry.
He tells me about his oma and how she speaks only German, and how when he was little that made him scared of her, but now he’s thankful for it because he can actually speak a little German.
“Like what?” I ask.
“Like Fahrtwind. It means airstream.”
That makes me laugh. “You didn’t really learn that from your oma, did you?”
“Okay, maybe not that one,” he admits.
I tell him about how Meg and I stopped talking over our silly science project, but she came anyway when I texted and now we’re talking again and that’s at least one good thing that came out of Granddad’s stroke. And then I feel horrible for saying that, but he says he understands.
He tells me about his friends and how one wants to be an engineer and another has no idea, and I recognize their names because their questionnaires are printed out and sitting on my desk.
At some point, we stop playing LotS, and I lean back in the computer chair with my feet up on the desk.
By the time the doorbell rings, more than two hours have passed.
“That’ll be Meg,” I say. “We have plans.”
“Okay,” he says. “Talk to you later then?”
I nod, even though I know he can’t see me.
The doorbell rings again. Typical impatient Meg. I’ve missed her.
“Syth—I mean, Dan?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for listening.”
“Anytime.”
“How’s Granddad?” Meg asks when I open the front door and usher her in. I like the way she does that—calls him just “Granddad” as if he’s hers, too, because he’s mine.
“No further strokes,” I say, “which is good. Mom and Dad are there now. They say it’s a miracle how well he’s doing.” It both does and doesn’t feel like a miracle. Seeing him so fragile in that tiny bed—not a miracle. The fact that he’s still alive—well, he’s supposed to live forever anyway, right?
Right?
Meg nods, as if in answer to my unspoken question, and hands me her coat.
Something is wrong.
She smiles at me, pats me on the head in her strange, caring way, but there’s a deadness in her eyes that wasn’t there yesterday. That I’ve never seen there, ever.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Of course,” she says, though she shakes her head almost imperceptibly, as if shaking away an unwelcome fly. “How are you doing?”
“Okay.” I study her carefully as she picks up my mom’s latest textbook draft off the front table and leafs through it absentmindedly. Her voluminous curls look normal—a bit lopsided from her toque, but that’s normal, too. Makeup, bright-colored nail polish, all normal. But she’s slouching, I think. Something is making her look even shorter than usual. “Do you want to maybe watch Legs or something?” Maybe that’ll cheer her up.
She drops the stack of paper with a thud. “Oh! Guess what! LumberLegs emailed me!”
“Did you sign up for that fan club? I got that, too.”
“No, not that. I mean, that too. But I sent him a couple of emails and he actually responded.”
“He did not! You’re joking.” Legs gets thousands of comments on every video, hundreds of daily posts on Reddit, and who knows how many emails.
She shakes her head, pulls out her phone, unlocks it, and hands it to me.
“Holy crap! He really did! He emailed you. This is amazing.”
She grins, stands up straight, and starts to recite the words on the screen in my hand in her best LumberLegs impression: “‘Meg—’”