What You Left Me Page 4

  He made me a part of this.

  And this is much better than solving my own problems.

  • • •

  I’m not there anymore. I know that. Wherever I went with Spitty isn’t where I am now. What I lived there isn’t quite the same as the way I remember it happening. And I do remember now. I think?

  It’s hard to know what is what.

  To me, there was a crushing, grinding loudness, then a sudden stop, bringing in its place a ringing hiss everywhere. In my ears. In my chest. My legs. My eyes were open, but in slits, like a wide-screen movie on a thirteen-inch TV or something. Spits was above me. Soaked in blood. He was grabbing me and saying every swear word ever invented. Even some he made up. He was trying to hold something together, and he was shaking badly, like the time the police caught us toilet papering Turrey’s house, except this time he was full-on sobbing. More than end of Rookie of the Year–level crying. His face looked gnarly. Literally. There was blood pouring out of his nose.

  Dripping on me.

  On my body.

  The body I can’t seem to find, because I can’t see anything but gray, and I don’t know if it’s even seeing at all, because I don’t think you can see thoughts. They exist on the inside of a blink.

  Like me, right now.

  • • •

  It’s approaching midnight. The crowd has downsized, but you’d never know it by the amount of yellow robes scattered about. Cameron is asleep on Aminah’s shoulder with her legs propped on my lap. I’m holding a magazine, using her ankles as an armrest, but really eavesdropping on text-message girl. Her name is Brooke Delgado, and she has identified herself as Martin’s girlfriend, which jabs at my heart more than I care to admit. Guess I was right not to give him my number.

  Being right is not always satisfying.

  Brooke’s on the phone with her mom, mixing Spanish and English to relay everything Spencer’s dad said earlier. I’ve been hoping she might have an inside scoop, but it doesn’t seem so.

  I go to get a Kit Kat from the vending machine, and I overhear that she isn’t Martin’s girlfriend after all, which bandages up my heart jab far more than it should.

  “Stage five clinger,” says some kid they call Turrey.

  Definitely not meant for my ears. But as a master in the art of multitasking, I can pretend to do up to three different things while listening to someone’s conversation. For maximum effect, I bang on the side of the machine to buy myself more time.

  “That shit was over months ago. She knows it,” Turrey says. “She just wants attention.” He catches me looking at him. I dart back to my seat.

  “How long do you want to stay?” Aminah asks. She looks like she’s over this whole thing, but is willing to provide support for a little longer if need be.

  “You guys can go. I think I’m going to stay a little longer.”

  She shoots me a look. “And how are you planning on getting home?”

  “I don’t know,” I half joke. “But I want a chance to see him.”

  “Petra Margaret McGowan, be real! This is so weird.” She looks very over this whole thing now. “What would you tell his parents? Oh yeah, we go way back to five hours ago.”

  My cheeks burn. “Let’s go. I can come back tomorrow.”

  She makes no effort to hide how much I’m disturbing her, aggressively grabbing my magazine to toss onto a stack. “Daniel wouldn’t even come with us here tonight, and he’s having a pool day tomorrow, so he won’t be driving you.” She shakes Cameron awake. “You’d have to ask this sleeping beauty for a ride. Just taking us here was a big deal, especially since she thought she was leaving her car at your house for the night while we partied our youth away with a bunch of classmates we never met. You know how she gets about wasting gas.” Cameron, only half-coherent, gives a thumbs-up to that. “I’m not sure how you plan on doing this again tomorrow.”

  I don’t answer. Just stand up and walk toward the exit. They both follow. No one says goodbye to us. A few odd looks, one quasi grin, but no words.

  I’ll find a way to get here tomorrow.

  5

  A yellow sea appears in front of Petra. Students—868, counting herself—cloaked in graduation gowns. She sits among them, smack-dab in the middle. “This again,” she mutters in response to the ceremony. She starts chipping off her nail polish to kill the time.

  “What?” Martin McGee sits next to her, his fists balled up in anticipation and his eyes wide with terror and fascination.

  “I said that, didn’t I?” Petra asks him, mortified. But she can’t help herself. She keeps talking. “This whole thing is ridiculous. Put on a robe and pretend to care about all of these other people walking across the stage. It doesn’t really do justice to what it takes to get to this moment. Although it’s kind of perfect, actually. Ninety-five percent wasted time, five percent valuable. Just like high school!” The words pour out, her every passing thought now conversation. “Of course, if I was valedictorian instead of Steve Taggart, I’m sure I’d be looking out at all these people and thinking the system was perfect.”

  She stops to consider Martin again. His bewildered stare hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s grown stronger. “Figures. You’re afraid of me because I’m being myself,” she says. Her throat goes dry.

  “No,” Martin says back. There’s a fervor to his tone. “Not at all.” He shakes off a distracted thought. “I just don’t understand what’s going on.”

  “What? With us? Nothing.” Her tongue is as sharp as cut glass. She doesn’t even want to be harsh with him, but she can’t stop. Her usual filter seems to be broken. Her every emotion and thought come out as is, without time to reconsider. Before she can stop herself, she says, “I want to try, but I don’t know you well enough to know if it’s worth it.” This unexpected bout of vulnerability stifles her breath.

  The strange mix of confusion and terror on Martin’s face grows.

  Petra puts her hands over her mouth to prevent herself from saying more.

  Hands over mouth.

  Not hers anymore. An old memory overtakes the moment, and with a flick, like a remote changing channels, she’s in the back of Ryan’s Jeep. His callused palm is pressing so hard into her face that her lips fold into her gums.

  She’s moving. Fighting. Resisting.

  Flick.

  She’s back at graduation, one of 868 again.

  The scenery sharpens. Details she hadn’t noticed before come into clear view, like the fact that there is a curved wall all around them, and the sky is not a sky, but a ceiling. They’re inside a cylinder of sorts. It’s dank and gray. And shrinking.

  The room is shrinking.

  “What just happened?” Martin asks.

  Petra doesn’t have words. The old memory has affected her like a disease would, preventing her ability to speak.

  “Please, just tell me what’s going on,” Martin pleads.

  “Petra Margaret McGowan,” a voice calls out from the stage.

  Somehow, it’s become her time to graduate. She rises as if possessed and scoots down her row out to the center aisle. The other graduates track every step of her silent processional.

  Petra picks up her pace, keeping her eyes trained on her feet, hoping to blend in enough that the stares no longer follow her. When she reaches the stage, she begins the walk from left to right, finding a modicum of comfort in this familiar motion. Still she can feel the other graduates’ stares growing more critical. She reaches out for a diploma, but there is nothing there.

  The other graduates laugh.

  Petra can’t help herself. She looks out to see their faces.

  They don’t have faces.

  Their features are melted into blurs. It should make it easier, but everything becomes more concentrated instead, like the students all have one pair of eyes and one single thought: Petra is a
fraud.

  All the students but one, she realizes.

  Martin McGee.

  He’s sitting still, terrified as ever, desperate for her to acknowledge him.

  “Petra,” he calls out.

  For a moment, the walls aren’t shrinking, and the rest of the crowd doesn’t matter. There’s just Petra and Martin and a question mark between them, begging to be answered.

  Petra sprints to the stairs along the other side of the stage, trying to run to Martin. She can see now that he’s hurt. Blood glistens on his skin. Glass shards glint.

  What happened?

  Before she can reach him, the cylinder erases the crowd and closes in on her.

  She’s trapped.

  6

  SATURDAY, JUNE 9

  Aminah woke me up, texting me at the crack of dawn to ask about swimming today. First of all, school’s done. Stop getting up at 6:45 a.m. Second of all, I know I told her less than twelve hours ago that I’d be coming back to the hospital. I can’t just forget about what happened to Martin.

  With some of the graduation money my grandma sent, the cash my parents said I’m not allowed to touch until I “earn it by getting things sorted out with my academic life,” I bribed Jessica to give me a ride to the hospital, which is the only perk of having my sisters in town for the underwhelming almost-culmination of my high school career. It’s a true miracle my parents haven’t ratted me out to a single person. They’re more ashamed of the truth than I am.

  Just graduated.

  The emergency room people wouldn’t give me much information, so my stealth skills got put to good use. I spotted the vending machine guy from yesterday, Turrey, walking in, and I followed him up. Now I’m sitting between him and what appears to be a husband and wife decked out in matching jerseys.

  It’s a new waiting room. We’ve been bumped up to the intensive care unit.

  The crowd is still impressive in size and just as unfamiliar. Everyone talks or checks their phones. Most do both at once. I don’t think anyone knows I’m a part of the Believe Marty Can Fly team. That’s the official name. Martin’s friend-girl Brooke set up the crowdfunding page about an hour ago, detailing out loud every step along the way. According to her, Martin’s entire right side is “destroyed.”

  When the words pass through her glossed lips, I recoil, like I can actually see how the accident has broken him.

  • • •

  I went somewhere else. I had a body I could see and touch, but it was like cardboard or something. I was really stiff, kind of itchy, and wearing my ugly yellow robe. One of 868 again, because it was my graduation, but at the same time, it wasn’t my graduation, if that makes sense. Which it doesn’t.

  None of this does.

  Petra was there. I really felt something when I saw her, which is a first since I got to wherever I am. For a split second, I had that “Hey! I know you!” sensation you get when you show up to a class you think you have no friends in, only to find someone you’re cool with sitting in the front row.

  The good feelings went away when I couldn’t figure out why we were in some sort of gray tube. Petra didn’t seem to find it weird at all, which only made me more concerned. I kept asking her what was going on. She kept getting more upset with me, saying she didn’t know me well enough and all this bizarre stuff.

  The strangest part of all was that, for a split second, the graduation place disappeared altogether, and I came back here, to the blink. Before I could process it, I flickered back to the graduation place again.

  It was wild.

  When I returned, Petra was withdrawn, like something really horrible had happened to her in that lost flicker of time. She wouldn’t speak to me at all. Out of nowhere, the announcer guy called for her to graduate. She started walking, and the entire crowd stared at her like she was a Cardinals fan at a Cubs game or something. She got to the stage, and she looked right at me. For a moment, we were just watching each other. An unexpected sadness built up in my throat. All the weird, unexplainable stuff didn’t matter. I just wanted to be someone she could trust. I didn’t want these other people to keep staring at her like she was broken. I wanted to fix it all, make it better, but I couldn’t. I was useless. I called her name, and she tried to run to me, but the gray tube somehow closed her in, and I came back to here.

  It wasn’t my place to help. It just wasn’t my place in general.

  But there I was.

  And here I am.

  • • •

  “Are you okay?” the young woman next to me asks after I finish chipping off what little remains of my nail polish.

  “What?” I say, not sure if she means me.

  She switches her tactic. “Do you know Marty?”

  “Oh.” I contemplate being honest but decide excessive exposition would confuse her. “Yeah.” Not an untruth.

  “I’m his sister, Katie. This is my husband, Rick.”

  I give them both somber handshakes. “Petra.”

  “That’s a cool name,” Katie says.

  “I like it enough.” I can tell by her expression that I sound cold. I don’t mean to. Conversational walls tend to pop up when I’m uncomfortable. “It’s a family name.”

  “It’s nice. Thanks for coming out to support Marty.”

  Maybe it’s inappropriate of me, but I take the opportunity to get some more information. “Of course. How is he?”

  Katie leans in. “I saw him this morning. His face—” She starts to tear up, and I know I’ve crossed some kind of line, because her eyes soften, disregarding my coldness and accepting me as an outsider in which she can confide. She must need an outlet. “It’s not our Marty.”

  I nod like I know. I kind of do?

  “I couldn’t take it. I’m better sitting out here. My mom and dad are camped out in his room until the next surgery. I’m sure you know my mom. Or Mama Dorothy, as she prefers,” Katie says with the ghost of a laugh.

  I start to come clean, my mouth forming an um. I feel incapable of continuing my undeserved role as friend with privileged knowledge, but Katie’s face lights up, thinking I’m making a confirming gesture. “God, everyone knows my mom. She’s wearing Marty’s old football jersey. He played two JV games his freshman year before he quit, but Mom’s all It shows what a fighter he is.”

  “She’s right,” I note back. It’s what has to be said.

  Staring at Katie, taking in her wide eyes and full mouth, spread from smiling over her mother’s apparent ridiculousness, I try to conjure up a picture of Mama Dorothy. Martin mentioned her at graduation, and both kids called her by that name. She must be the type of mom who goes overtime on the job, chaperoning all field trips, showing up to sporting events that don’t even involve her kids, shepherding the masses with her aggressive enthusiasm and charm. Short and hovering around her late forties, sensible haircut with some blond highlights to disguise impending gray, and the kind of smile that could turn up to ten or cut you down to size depending on her mood.

  “They don’t know how many more surgeries he’ll need. Or when he’ll wake up. They keep saying, ‘He’s not out of the woods yet.’ If you’re gonna try to see him, go now,” Katie says, on the verge of tears. “You’d be braver than me.”

  My guilty eyes don’t even have time to meet her gaze before her phone starts ringing.

  “Hold on,” she says. She answers the call, and I divert my attention to my lap, listening in. It’s an aunt. Katie gives her the rundown, choking out details as her husband pats her back.

  Turrey’s been eyeballing me this entire time, giving off a silent judgment that expects a “What?” or “Hi” or “You’re right—I should leave” from me.

  I’ve trapped myself. The only way out is to see Martin.

  Well, maybe not the only way, but it’s the way I choose.

  What can I say? I’m pretty great at maki
ng questionable choices.

  • • •

  Wait. I get it now. It’s so obvious. Don’t know why it didn’t come to me sooner. This is all a dream. Graduation is tomorrow, and I’m doing a weird subconscious Inception-style life lesson thing.

  Man, did I eat before bed? This is like when Turrey did wrestling, and he wasn’t eating so he could make weight. He started having hallucinations in the middle of health class. Mr. Hubert and I had to drag him to the nurse’s office.

  I made up an actual hours-long graduation ceremony, then topped it off with some over-the-top car accident with Spits. Probably represents my fear of what the future will bring us or something. That’s what Katie will say when I tell her about this. She loves dream analysis. She’ll tell me I’m living inside Spitty’s perspective because I care about how he views the world or something. Then she’ll say I made up Petra because she represents everything I wish I could have, and the weird thing with her inside the gray tube has something to do with my fears of messing up good things that happen to me.

  You know what? I don’t even need to ask Katie. I’ve got it all down myself.

  • • •

  I’m up and moving, headed out of the waiting room and around the corner, where the words Intensive Care Unit run across the middle of two doors. A buzzer is on the left wall. If I press it, I am Alice, and this is the rabbit hole. I’ve hovered around the edge, definitely dangled a leg over, but I haven’t fallen in yet.

  I press the button.

  “Hello,” says a fuzzy voice.

  “Hi, I’m here to see Martin McFly…I mean, McGee.”

  Bzzzt. The door opens.

  Down I fall.

  The nurse who buzzed me in sits behind a counter. “He’s straight ahead,” she says.

  The walls are beige, not white. The rooms are quiet, not buzzing with doctors screaming indecipherable jargon over one another while defibrillating chests and stitching up gaping wounds. It’s not at all the picture hammered into my brain by TV shows and movies. Maybe that’s what the emergency room is supposed to look like? I’m lucky enough to never have had to know for sure. The ICU exists on its own wavelength altogether. There’s a vague sense of doom permeating the hallways, masked by clean scents and good ventilation.