Everything, Everything (4 page)

5:00 PM - Pleads with Kara and Olly to begin chores “before your father gets home.”

KARA’S (SISTER) SCHEDULE

10:00 AM - Stomps outside wearing black boots and a fuzzy brown bathrobe.

10:01 AM - Checks cell phone messages. She gets a lot of messages.

10:06 AM - Smokes three cigarettes in the garden between our two houses.

10:20 AM - Digs a hole with the toe of her boots and buries cigarette carcasses.

10:25 AM–5:00 PM - Texts or talks on the phone.

5:25 PM - Chores.

HIS DAD’S SCHEDULE

7:15 AM - Leaves for work.

6:00 PM - Arrives home from work.

6:20 PM - Sits on porch with drink #1.

6:30 PM - Reenters the house for dinner.

7:00 PM - Back on porch with drink #2.

7:25 PM - Drink #3.

7:45 PM - Yelling at family begins.

10:35 PM - Yelling at family subsides.

OLLY’S SCHEDULE

Unpredictable.

I SPY

HIS FAMILY CALLS
him Olly. Well, his sister and his mom call him Olly. His dad calls him Oliver. He’s the one I watch the most. His bedroom is on the second floor and almost directly across from mine and his blinds are almost always open.

Some mornings he sleeps in until noon. Others, he’s gone from his room before I wake to begin my surveillance. Most mornings, though, he wakes at 9 a.m., climbs out of his bedroom and makes his way, Spider-Man-style, to the roof using the siding. He stays up there for about an hour before swinging, legs first, back into his room. No matter how much I try, I haven’t been able to see what he does when he’s up there.

His room is empty but for a bed and a chest of drawers. A few boxes from the move remain unpacked and stacked by the doorway. There are no decorations except for a single poster for a movie called
Jump London
. I looked it up and it’s about parkour, which is a kind of street gymnastics, and explains how he’s able to do all the crazy stuff that he does. The more I watch, the more I want to know.

MENTEUSE

I’VE JUST SAT
down at the dining table for dinner. My mom places a cloth napkin in my lap and fills my water glass and then Carla’s. Friday night dinners are special in my house. Carla even stays late to eat with us instead of with her own family.

Everything at Friday Night Dinner is French. The napkins are white cloth embroidered with fleur-de-lis at the edges. The cutlery is antique French and ornate. We even have miniature silver
La tour Eiffel
salt and pepper shakers. Of course, we have to be careful with the menu because of my allergies, but my mom always makes her version of a cassoulet—a French stew with chicken, sausage, duck, and white beans. It was my dad’s favorite dish before he died. The version that my mom cooks for me contains only white beans cooked in chicken broth.

“Madeline,” my mom says. “Mr. Waterman tells me that you’re late on your architecture assignment. Is everything all right, baby girl?”

I’m surprised by her question. I know I’m late, but since I’ve never been late before I guess didn’t realize that she was keeping track.

“Is the assignment too hard?” She frowns as she ladles cassoulet into my bowl. “Do you want me to find you a new tutor?”

“
Oui, non, et non
,” I say in response to each question. “Everything’s fine. I’ll turn it in tomorrow, I promise. I just lost track of time.”

She nods and begins slicing and buttering pieces of crusty French bread for me. I know she wants to ask something else. I even know what she wants to ask, but she’s afraid of the answer.

“Is it the new neighbors?”

Carla gives me a sharp look. I’ve never lied to my mom. I’ve never had a reason and I don’t think I know how to. But something tells me what I need to do.

“I’ve just been reading too much. You know how I get with a good book.” I make my voice as reassuring as possible. I don’t want her to worry. She has enough to worry about with me as it is.

How do you say “liar” in French?

“Not hungry?” my mom asks a few minutes later. She presses the back of her hand against my forehead.

“You don’t have a fever.” She lets her hand linger a moment longer.

I’m about to reassure her when the doorbell rings. This happens so infrequently that I don’t know what to make of it.

The bell rings again.

My mom half rises from her chair.

Carla stands all the way up.

The bell sounds for a third time. I smile for no reason.

“Want me to get it, ma’am?” Carla asks.

My mom waves her off. “Stay here,” she says to me.

Carla moves to stand behind me, her hands pressing down lightly on my shoulder. I know I should stay here. I know I’m expected to. Certainly I expect me to, but somehow, today, I just can’t. I need to know who it is, even if it’s just a wayward traveler.

Carla touches my upper arm. “Your mother said to stay here.”

“But why? She’s just being extra cautious. Besides, she won’t let anyone past the air lock.”

She relents, and I’m off down the hallway with her right behind me.

The air lock is a small sealed room surrounding the front door. It’s airtight so that no potential hazards can leak into the main house when the front door is open. I press my ear against it. At first I can’t hear anything over the air filters, but then I hear a voice.

“My mom sent a Bundt.” The voice is deep and smooth and definitely amused. My brain is processing the word
Bundt
, trying to get an image of what it looks like before it dawns on me just who is at the door. Olly.

“The thing about my mom’s Bundts is that they are not very good. Terrible. Actually inedible, very nearly indestructible. Between you and me.”

A new voice now. A girl’s. His sister? “Every time we move she makes us bring one to the neighbor.”

“Oh. Well. This is a surprise isn’t it? That’s very nice. Please tell her thank you very much for me.”

There’s no chance that this Bundt cake has passed the proper inspections, and I can feel my mom trying to figure out how to tell them she can’t take the cake without revealing the truth about me.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t accept this.”

There’s a moment of shocked silence.

“So you want us to take it back?” Olly asks disbelievingly.

“Well, that’s rude,” Kara says. She sounds angry and resigned, as though she’d expected disappointment.

“I’m so sorry,” my mom says again. “It’s complicated. I’m really very sorry because this is so sweet of you and your mom. Please thank her for me.”

“Is your daughter home?” Olly asks quite loudly, before she can close the door. “We’re hoping she could show us around.”

My heart speeds up and I can feel the pulse of it against my ribs. Did he just ask about me? No stranger has just dropped by to visit me before. Aside from my mom, Carla, and my tutors, the world barely knows I exist. I mean, I exist online. I have online friends and my Tumblr book reviews, but that’s not the same as being a real person who can be visited by strange boys bearing Bundt cakes.

“I’m so sorry, but she can’t. Welcome to the neighborhood, and thank you again.”

The front door closes and I step back to wait for my mom. She has to remain in the air lock until the filters have a chance to purify the foreign air. A minute later she steps back into house. She doesn’t notice me right away. Instead she stands still, eyes closed with her head slightly bowed.

“I’m sorry,” she says, without looking up.

“I’m OK, Mom. Don’t worry.”

For the thousandth time I realize anew how hard my disease is on her. It’s the only world I’ve known, but before me she had my brother and my dad. She traveled and played soccer. She had a normal life that did not include being cloistered in a bubble for fourteen hours a day with her sick teenage daughter.

I hold her and let her hold me for a few more minutes. She’s taking this disappointment much harder than I am.

“I’ll make it up to you,” she says.

“There’s nothing to make up for.”

“I love you, sweetie.”

We drift back into the dining room and finish dinner quickly and, for the most part, silently. Carla leaves and my mom asks if I want to beat her at a game of Honor Pictionary, but I ask for a rain check. I’m not really in the mood.

Instead, I head upstairs imagining what a Bundt cake tastes like.

PIÈCE DE REJECTION

BACK IN MY
room, I go immediately to my bedroom window. The dad is home from work and something’s wrong because he’s angry and getting angrier by the second. He grabs the Bundt cake from Kara and throws it hard at Olly, but Olly’s too fast, too graceful. He dodges, and the cake falls to the ground.

Remarkably the Bundt seems unharmed, but the plate shatters against the driveway. This only makes this dad angrier.

“You clean that up. You clean that up right now.” He slams into the house. His mom goes after him. Kara shakes her head at Olly and says something to him that makes his shoulders slump. Olly stands there looking at the cake for a few minutes. He disappears into the house and returns with a broom and dustpan. He takes his time, way longer than necessary, sweeping up the broken plate.

When he’s done he climbs to the roof, taking the Bundt with him, and it’s another hour before he swings back into his room.

I’m hiding in my usual spot behind the curtain when I suddenly no longer want to hide. I turn on the lights and go back to the window. I don’t even bother to take a deep breath. It’s not going to help. I pull the curtain aside to find that he’s already there in his window, staring right at me. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t wave. Instead, he reaches his arm overhead and pulls the blind closed.

SURVIVAL

“HOW LONG ARE
going to mope around the house?” Carla asks. “You’ve been like this all week.”

“I’m not moping,” I say, though I’ve been moping a little. Olly’s rejection has made me feel like a little girl again. It reminded me why I stopped paying attention to the world before.

But trying to get back to my normal routine is hard when I can hear all the sounds of the outside world. I notice things that I paid very little attention to before. I hear the wind disturbing the trees. I hear birds gossiping in the mornings. I see the rectangles of sunlight that slip through my blinds and work their way across the room throughout the day. You can mark time by them. As much as I’m trying to keep the world out, it seems determined to come in.

“You’ve been reading the same five pages in that book for days now.” She nods at my copy of
Lord of the Flies.

“Well, it’s a terrible book.”

“I thought it was a classic.”

“It’s terrible. Most of the boys are awful and all they talk about is hunting and killing pigs. I’ve never been so hungry for bacon in my life.”

She laughs, but it’s halfhearted at best. She sits on the couch next to me and moves my legs into her lap. “Tell me,” she says.

I put the book down and close my eyes. “I just want them to go away,” I confess. “It was easier before.”

“What was easier?”

“I don’t know. Being me. Being sick.”

She squeezes my leg. “You listen to me now. You’re the strongest, bravest person I know. You better believe that.”

“Carla, you don’t have to—”

“Shush, listen to me. I’ve been thinking this over. I could see this new thing was weighing down on you, but I know you’re going to be all right.”