The cab doors started to close. “You know what I mean,” Cara said, looking down at her phone again.
Sam turned and walked away, shaking her head. She found Alex’s single room all the way down the hall on the right and entered through the open door after knocking.
“You’re kidding, right?” Alex asked, propped up in the hospital bed with a disbelieving glare fastened Sam’s way.
“How do you know I didn’t just stop by to see how you were doing?”
“Because I recognize the textbooks through your backpack. How do you squeeze so much in that thing?”
“Practice, just like you.”
“Speaking of which…”
“What?” Sam asked him.
“My parents told me they saw you here last night.”
“I didn’t want Cara to be alone.”
“I heard she left after a few minutes, which would be more than she just spent with me.”
“It was after we heard you were doing okay, that you could move your limbs and everything.”
“I’m sure that was a great comfort to her.”
“Trouble in paradise?” Sam asked, playing dumb as she unslung the backpack from her shoulder.
“Maybe that hit last night knocked some sense into me. Was she always like this?”
“Only since first grade.”
“You think I’d be used to it by now.”
“Resigned, at least.” Sam eased the physics textbook from her backpack and laid it down on Alex’s bed. “Ready to get some work done?”
“I got wrecked last night, in case you didn’t know. I can’t work today. I’ve got a headache.”
“You felt well enough to visit with Cara.”
“That’s what gave me the headache. And I’m doped up.” Alex rolled his eyes, made himself look woozy. “See?”
She regarded the pouch feeding liquid into his arm. “Normal saline solution to keep you hydrated. Sorry.”
“Like you know everything.”
“More than you,” Samantha said. “That’s why I’m the tutor. Do you remember where we left off?”
“My head hurts. I can’t do this today. I had a CT scan.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“They shot me up with something.”
“It’s called contrast medium dye,” Samantha told him, brushing the wavy brown hair from her face. “It makes the scan clearer.”
“Know what it showed?”
“Something bad?”
“Nothing.” Alex smiled. “Turns out my head’s empty. No brain at all.”
“Good thing you have me then,” Samantha said, taking off her glasses.
Alex looked at her closer. Since they’d gone to separate elementary and middle schools, he’d only known Sam since their freshman year at St. Ignatius but never really spoke much to her until she was assigned as his tutor. Now she looked different to him, as if he were seeing her for the first time. Just as his parents had looked smaller in the hospital lighting the night before, Sam looked … Well … Better. She looked better. Prettier.
Samantha started to put her glasses back on.
“Leave them off,” Alex told her.
“Then I won’t be able to see.”
“Maybe that’s my plan.”
She left them off. “What’d the CT scan show?”
“I told you.”
“I mean really.”
“Doctor won’t tell me. He says he wants to wait for my parents to get here.”
“Oh,” Sam said, looking down.
“Maybe it’s just routine, the way they do things in this place.”
“Maybe.”
“But you don’t think so.”
Sam started flipping through the textbook. “I think we should try to get some work done.”
“Where’s your iPad?”
“Stolen.”
“Get out.”
“At the game last night. See what happens when I come to watch you play?”
“Guess I owe you a new one.”
She hadn’t told her parents yet. No reason to worry them about it since there was no money with which to buy a new one right now anyway. The thing was practically new, six months old at most. Maybe they’d taken out some kind of warranty on it or something. But what warranty included theft? And how much medical weed did they need to grow to buy a replacement?
A lot, Sam figured.
“What kind of kid steals an iPad?” Alex was saying. “Everyone’s got a tablet of their own.”
“It wasn’t a kid,” Sam told him. “And stop stalling.”
“Stalling?”
“So you won’t have to work. The doctor gives you a clean bill of health, only you get benched for being academically ineligible.”
“Yeah, that would suck, but I can’t help it if I’m stupid.”
“You’re not stupid.”
Alex looked down, then up again. “My parents think I am.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? Then why do they want me to do another year of high school?”
“Do they?”
He turned toward the window, as if seeing something beyond it Sam couldn’t. “I haven’t really discussed it with them.”
“Then how do you know?”
“I found brochures for a whole bunch of schools. My mother told me I’m not ready for college yet, at least not the kind she wants me to go to.”