She turns serious. “You should have told me.”
“I couldn’t. It…could ruin everything.”
She nods, then shudders.
“What?” I demand.
Her eyebrows swoop up. “I’m sorry, it’s just, the whole idea, it’s unnatural.”
“My parents helping my brother commit suicide? Yeah, it’s disturbing.”
She hums softly. “Or…you know, maybe it’s all of it.”
***
For the record: Penny went out with Noah Ramsey exactly twice and claimed that he kissed like an iguana.
I’d be lying if I said that the conversation with Ringo hasn’t been bugging me. Not just about his mom, which is depressing, sure, but about Penny and Will.
I’ve gone to the coffee shop three times since Ringo told me that he used his resurrection choice. Sometimes I chat with Margaret about the books Matt used to read me because it turns out she’s a huge fantasy nerd too. She even has a C. S. Lewis quote tattooed on the inside of her arm, and I think in a different life she and Matt probably would have made a good couple. I finally did get the chance to ask her about the other address in the ChatterJaw thread and she’s been going crazy trying to uncover who it is. I think it’s become a point of pride for her to figure it out, because she says the user’s IP address is guarded and encoded, like they are protecting matters of national security. She asks if I know anyone who would have that kind of capability and I tell her that I can’t think of anyone except for her.
On the other end of the spectrum is Simone. It turns out she and Ringo went on a couple of dates last month, so she’s the least friendly of the bunch to me, but I gather that she’s sharp-witted, bitingly funny, and militant in her defense of both feminist ideals and Virginia Woolf, when she’s not working behind the counter or bussing tables anyway.
Much of the time spent at Neville’s, I share a set of headphones with Duke Ellington while he loads playlists onto my phone, mostly of Beatles songs that he thinks Ringo would like me to know by heart. I’ve learned most of the lyrics to “We Can Work It Out,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and “Blackbird” and like to surprise Ringo by singing bars from the songs at random. I get a kick out of the way his face transforms, how his eyebrows lift a full centimeter when I catch him off-guard with a new verse that I’ve memorized, how he occasionally takes my hand and twirls me around and stops me by the waist before spinning me back out again.
Mostly, I like the distraction of the coffeehouse crew. It’s so different from Penny and Will. Everyone comes and goes as they please and no one worries about things like secrets being told when they’re not around.
I realize now that some of the pain I’ve seen drawn on Ringo’s face isn’t just an illusion created by the birthmark, it’s the real, raw kind of pain that bubbles up to the surface like water in an unwatched pot. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy surprising him with the song lyrics so much. It’s fun to see that pain evaporate, if only for a second.
He’s more honest about it all now and that weirdly helps us both. I’ve started to think about pain the way I think about lifting a heavy sofa—it’s easier to move around if there are two people carrying it, one at each end.
It’s the other thing, though, what Ringo said about knowing what my friends would want. It’s been weeks since I last saw Penny, but I’ve begun to imagine a new version of her: Penny with flawless skin, no scar on her elbow from where she cut it on a broken pool tile, an altogether even more gorgeous, more perfect Penny. Would she be comfortable with that? Because nothing about resurrections is exactly…organic.
I haven’t been mentioning any of this to Ringo. Instead, in quiet moments, when I don’t have the distraction of the Neville posse, I scroll through the internet idly searching through various forums and opinion pieces on resurrections. The web Buddhists tend to have split views—some see it as unnatural, others as reincarnation. None of these people speaks for Penny, I know.
I’m at home, waiting, waiting. Matt has the kind of appointment where they look at him and tell him he’s still paralyzed. Okay, I don’t actually know what goes on at these appointments, but he has one, which means that I have to wait until Mom finishes carting him back and forth from the special wing of the hospital for people who’ve had really, really bad things happen to them. Like Matt.
At just after eleven in the morning I hear the van door slide open outside. The sounds of voices, followed by those of Matt’s wheelchair and Mom’s footsteps, filter inside. I have to admit that I’ve been avoiding Matt ever since I received the resurrection paperwork, but with just over a week left until my birthday, I can’t waste any more time, time that I truly can’t afford.
Once I know that he’s alone, I’m patient for only a few minutes before barging into Matt’s room. “Matt, I’m opening the third clue,” I say, brandishing it.
I expect this to elicit a reaction. What I find is statue-Matt. I’m semi-used to this version of my brother because he can go unnaturally still, but this time Matt’s chin hangs down onto his chest and he doesn’t move. He isn’t wearing headphones or playing an audiobook or even an album of classical music. He’s just sitting there. “Do we really need an announcement?” he mumbles without lifting his head.
I walk over to sit on his bed and tap the envelope. “Still sealed, see?”
“Lake, I don’t have time for this.”
I hold the envelope at the edges and peer down at it. “But it’s almost my birthday,” I say.
He squeezes his eyes shut and then opens them wide, like he’s trying to wake himself up, but he keeps staring down, down, down and won’t look at me. “Yeah, I’m aware.”
Like everything with Matt, the words are laced with double meanings not lost on me. But I press on. “So I want to finish the scavenger hunt.”
And the thing that’s bothering me is that Matt isn’t even bothering to be Matt. Especially now.
“Then finish it,” he sighs.
This makes me feel a slimy kind of cold. “We made a deal. I promised to bring you along. On every single stop. You were very specific about that part.” I tap the edge of the envelope against my palm, testing the edge. “I’m making good on that promise.” There it is. I leave an elephant-size opening for him to call me out. But he doesn’t and my stomach flip-flops like a scummy dead fish.
“Maybe later,” he says.
I set him up perfectly. Slam dunk. I haven’t kept any of my promises, why start now? I could write the insult for him. So why doesn’t he go for it?
I soften my tone. “Did you get bad news at the doctor’s?” I ask. “Are you…are you dying or something?”
A huff. “Nope, Lake. Going to live for a long time. Good news,” he says with a healthy dose of sarcasm. “My body can keep ticking along like this for about thirty more years, so…”
“But thirty more years,” I say. “That’s not very long. That can’t be right.”