Later, when my mom peeks her head in, I ignore her, too. Soon I hear Dad lumbering down the hallway, which means he actually got out of bed today.
I’ve taken his sickness from him. What a thing to pass down to the next generation.
• • •
All day, the wall is my only friend. If I don’t look at the window, it’s a day with few visions.
Still, the scene rolls through my brain regularly, and I can’t make it go away—the more I try, the more often the vision appears. I don’t want to tell anyone—not a soul—but I admit to myself that I will need a doctor soon. And on the off chance that I’m not already insane, this vision will push me there. I think about what it’ll be like to be in a hospital for people like that . . . people like me, I guess I should say. A hot tear slides from the corner of my eye into my hair. The thought of a crazy roommate scares me, like, a lot. The thought of having to take drugs that make me feel weird, of strange doctors asking me questions about the vision, of my mother with her overly cheerful face coming by to see me and pretending everything’s just fine . . . I can’t take it, I really can’t.
• • •
Back when I was in first grade, when my father went crazy with the hoarding and the depression, he was in the hospital for a few days. I visited him—only once, though. I can still remember the smell of that place. His roommate was a scary man with white hair and a red-splotched face. His eyes bulged, and the scariest thing to me was that he didn’t have any teeth. He walked up and down the hallway muttering to himself, and I was so afraid of his gummy maw coming after me that I slammed the door to my dad’s room when he was coming in, and screamed when my mom tried to take me out of there, past him. Trey was with us, and Aunt Mary, too. We must have closed the restaurant . . . I don’t remember. It doesn’t really matter.
I wonder what goes through my father’s mind every day. If it’s anything like this, well, I guess I feel sorry for him.
• • •
Around two in the afternoon, I hear a soft knock on the door. I want to ignore it, but for some reason I say, “Come in.”
It’s my father. I turn over in bed, hoping I look as sick on the outside as I feel on the inside. “Hi,” I say.
He looks scruffy and tired, but he’s wearing his chef jacket. He puts a plate of toast, complete with parsley garnish, on my bedside table and sets a glass of clear carbonated liquid next to it. “I thought you might be getting hungry,” he says, his normally booming voice softened. “Did I wake you up?”
I shake my head and sit up. “Thanks.”
He puts the back of his hand on my forehead like Mom always does, and holds it there for a few seconds. Then he pulls it away and says nothing.
“It’s more of a stomach thing,” I say.
He nods, and we both know I’m lying.
“Well,” he says. He fidgets with his hands, his big thumbs bumbling around each other, and I realize I hardly even know him at all. I’ve lived with this man for almost seventeen years and all I know about him is that he’s an embarrassment to me. It kind of leaves a gigantic hole in my heart.
I wonder what he thinks about. If he ever thinks about killing himself. He turns to go, and I almost call out after him to wait. I almost whisper, “Do you ever see visions?” But I don’t say anything.
The reason I don’t is that even if his answer is no, I can guess that he, out of anyone in the world, will know why I’m asking—because I must be experiencing them. Which would lead to my parents putting me Someplace Else. And right now, today, a partly cloudy February day just outside of Chicago, I cannot risk leaving this bed for anything. Not for any doctor, not for any vision.
Not for any boy.
Twenty
When Trey sneaks upstairs after the dinner rush, around nine, he doesn’t ask for permission to come in. He sits on the bed and looks at me.
“So. What are you sick of?”
I smirk. “You.”
He rolls his eyes. “Are you going to live, or what?”
And that question, that joke, makes me hesitate. It burns through me. Am I? I look up at him, and my chest feels so much fear it squeezes my heart, makes it throb faster and faster.
“It’s not a difficult question,” he says with a smile, but I can see him searching me, trying to get inside my brain. He’s been giving me a lot of looks like that lately. He knows me too well.
“Yes,” I decide, thinking of body bags in the snow. “I’ll live.”
He rests his elbows on his knees, thumbs on his forehead, holding it up, massaging it, maybe. He closes his eyes, like he needs to think. And then he takes an audible breath and says, “I’m just gonna say this: You’re not pregnant, are you?”
I almost laugh. And then my eyes get wide, because he’s not laughing. “No, of course not. Is that what Dad thinks?”
“Yeah.”
I let my head fall back on the pillow. “Jeez. I haven’t even kissed anybody yet. I’m, like, the poster child for purity. I still have my freaking . . . my freaking . . .”
“Cherry?”
“No—”
“Hymen intact?”
I slug him. “Oh my God, shut up.”
“Virginity?”
“Ugh! No! Well, yes, but—dammit, I can’t think of the term. What’s that thing girls used to wear in the olden days to keep the—just, never mind.”
“Chastity belt?”