“She doesn’t have any friends, Logan,” says Jeremy, tearing into another slice of bread with his teeth. My mouth falls open, but no words come out.
“Jeremy,” Ms. Bryan hisses. My best guess as to why Jeremy’s here now is that, one, Ms. Bryan didn’t want to risk being alone in a room with Logan and, two, the dinner table feels a tad less empty with a young male presence.
I’m not angry, though, because Jeremy’s right. I’m completely friendless. And everyone is staring around the table at one another knowing that it’s true.
“I—I’m so sorry for your loss,” I spit out too abruptly.
Logan gets very still. “Thank you, Lake.” His voice gets gruff. “Thank you, I appreciate that. I know what you mean. But, the truth is, there’s no need to apologize for things that weren’t your fault, Lake. That Penny on the other hand—”
My face flashes hot. “It wasn’t Penny’s fault.”
Logan shakes his head and looks down at his fork. He has a handsome crop of salt-and-pepper hair. “That’s not what the accident report says.” How did he get his hands on the accident report and why hadn’t I seen it? Had I even been asked what had happened? I can’t remember.
“Logan, don’t say that,” Ms. Bryan hisses. “That’s enough.” Ms. Bryan’s silverware clatters to her plate.
“It wasn’t her fault,” I say more slowly this time.
Logan’s jaw clenches. A vein protrudes from his forehead. “Aren’t I entitled to be upset, Jolene? Aren’t I ever allowed to be upset about anything? He was my son too.”
I share a look with Jeremy.
“I know he was your son too. That’s why you’re here,” Ms. Bryan shoots back.
At this they both immediately drop eye contact with each other and switch to staring at me. I think, for a second, they’ve forgotten that I am in the room. That’s why he’s here: I turn the phrase over in my mind.
“Smooth,” says Jeremy, shaking his head and making thatch marks with his fork in the red pasta sauce smeared over his plate.
“Wait, where is Tessa?” I ask for the second time tonight. “Was she even invited?” I feel sick. I haven’t spoken to Penny’s family since the accident. My parents said I would see them here and that I needed to respect their space. Do they think I’m avoiding them?
Ms. Bryan ignores my question. “I guess you know why you’re really here, then,” she says. I feel painfully idiotic, because in fact I didn’t realize why when I first arrived, but I do now. “I—we—wanted to talk to you about your birthday. It’s this month, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I say. “It is.”
“Right. Well, we know you and Will loved each other very much and so we assume…but wanted to be sure that…”
“I told Jolene that we shouldn’t assume anything,” Logan says. “So, excuse me for being so blunt, but we want to hear straight from you that you’re planning to use your resurrection on our son.”
“No pressure,” Jeremy adds.
Underneath my dress and my stupid, sticky hose, I’ve become a human sweat faucet. The best thing about black, I’m learning, is that it doesn’t show armpit stains. I cast about for something to say, something to make me feel less trapped. “But what about Maddie?”
“Maddie’s a baby,” Logan says. “The idea of being without Will—well—for any amount of time—”
“It’s unbearable,” Ms. Bryan finishes.
They’re right. Maddie’s only an infant, so if they depended on her to use a resurrection choice on Will on her eighteenth birthday, then Will would miss almost seventeen years of his life. Once he was resurrected—if he were ever resurrected—I’d already be thirty-four years old while he would have stayed eighteen. Would I look different to him? Would I feel different?
“And paying for one?” I ask. The question is distasteful and I flush to even suggest it. The buying and selling of resurrections is illegal. The commoditization of life was the grease atop the slippery slope on which our population currently found itself. After all, that was how the debates began. Was vitalis a right or a product? If left only to those who could afford it, then could we live with the demographic the lifeblood would inevitably create, with the powerful more powerful and plentiful and the poor left to dwindle and die? But there are ways, I’ve heard, if you know where to look and aren’t afraid to ask….
I look at the Bryans with their current but sale-rack clothes, their mortgages, their used cars, and know they could never afford a resurrection on their own.
“Even if we sold both houses…” Logan’s voice trails off.
Ms. Bryan exhales loudly. “Sorry, we don’t mean to be insensitive. We know you’ve just been through a terrible trauma and your mom says you’re already seeing a therapist—we think that’s great, don’t we, Logan?—but I’m sure you’ll understand.”
“Of course,” I respond on autopilot. My ears are ringing.
“Then it’ll be Will.” Logan says this as a statement. There’s a certain authority that comes with devastatingly good looks, and he wields it like a movie star.
Ms. Bryan isn’t even looking at me anymore. She’s cupped her hand over her mouth and is staring out the window, which, in the darkened night, now reflects our images back to us. There are fresh tears brimming so close to the edge that I can’t believe they stay balanced there.
Meanwhile, I knit my eyebrows. Heart pounding. “I…don’t know. I mean, I think so. I just—” The sight of Ms. Bryan sitting there shaking her head at nothing and of Logan’s eyes boring into me feels like a rope being wrapped around my neck. I should have let my mom come. She could have dealt with this. It was a mistake to come alone. Suddenly I feel like I can’t sit here a moment longer. I’m screaming at myself not to overpromise, not to promise anything. “I’m feeling a little sick, Ms. Bryan.” My voice sounds convincingly frail without even trying. “Can you excuse me for a second?”
My thighs ram the underside of the table as I bolt out of my chair. The water in all four of the glasses sloshes onto the place mats. I take quick steps down the hall and, without looking back, climb the carpeted stairs to the second story, past the framed school pictures of Will.
Upstairs, it’s graveyard quiet. My heart thuds against my chest. My ears are still buzzing and I stuff my fingers inside to try to make them stop. Through the floor, angry, muffled voices have begun to rise. I can’t make out the words, but I know they must be about me. I wait to hear the thudding weight of someone following me, but instead, I find myself completely and utterly alone.
I massage my temples and stretch my neck, trying to shake loose the feeling of claustrophobia. How could Ms. Bryan have gone behind Tessa’s back like that? At the same time I know I’ve probably been na?ve not to see it coming.
The Bryans, they’re just desperate, I tell myself.
But so am I.