Everything That Makes You (7 page)

Fiona was in no mood for Lucy's rant, but David had gotten sucked right in.

“Why not dump weed killer right into the Mississippi, then?” Lucy asked, squaring off with him. He sat beside Fiona on the coffee shop's battered futon.

“That's not what I meant,” he said. “But you can't expect all the big farms around here to go organic. It's just not practical.”

“Fiona, does your boyfriend know it's that kind of thinking that's destroyed our ozone layer?”

David had yet to develop the skills to avoid Lucy's Injustice-Du-Jour debates. On any other day, Fiona would have been a nice girlfriend and helped him out. But today was February 27, the day she was always bitchy—as Ryan had been kind enough to point out last year. Today, it was every man for himself.

Fiona stood up, taking both her Moleskine and mug. “I'm getting a refill.”

When she got to the counter, Gwen held out her hand, taking the mug and refilling it without instruction. “Are you coming with Ryan tonight?”

“Um—”

Gwen handed the mug back. “My art show?”

“Oh, right. Your show.”

“I've got three paintings. My teacher thinks a few local art dealers might even come.”

Gwen went to a high school for performing and fine arts. All seniors participated in a show—which Fiona found equally intriguing and horrifying. “Let me double-check with Ryan.”

Gwen nodded. “I'm heading out in a minute, to get ready. It's at six.”

“Right, I know,” which she didn't. Nor did she want to go.

Just then, Ryan walked in and planted a quick kiss on Gwen. He turned to Fiona, his smile fading. “How you doing?”

“I'm fine. Why?”

Ryan reached over to pick up the mug of decaf Gwen had already poured. He pointed toward an empty table in the corner. “Come sit with me.”

She wasn't sure which was worse—this annual February 27 heart-to-heart with her brother or Lucy's sermon in the nook. At least she'd get him to herself.

As she walked behind him, her eyes came level with his shoulder blades, rather than the back of his head. He looked so much older than her now.

At the table, he studied her over the rim of his mug. “I want to talk about the surgery.”

Fiona's breath came out in an audible
ooof.
“God, why?”

“Because you've gotta make a decision.”

“Maybe not making a decision is the decision.”

“Is it?”

She used her index finger to circle random patterns across the wood. “Why do you want me to decide now? Why can't it be next year? Or ten years from now?”

“If you don't do it soon, you
will
have to wait. The recovery time is four months, at least. It's not like you can schedule it whenever you want it. If the donation is there, you've gotta be ready for it.”

“I know.”

“Once you get up to Chicago, you won't have that chunk of time again for four years. You've already got all the credits you need to graduate, you're already set with college. It's the perfect time.”

“Did Mom pay you or something? What's with the sales pitch?”

“You're suspicious, because I want what's best for you?”

“How do you know this is best for me?”

“You want to wallow every February twenty-seventh from now till you die?”

“It's one day! Every other day I'm fine.”

“You're burned every day, Fiona.”

“Yet you make a bigger deal about it than I do,” she snapped. “
You
didn't get burned, Ryan. I did.”

Ryan looked at the table. “I know.”

“So you can't be all high-and-mighty about what I should do.”

“I'm not. I just want to help. I want to make it better.”

Make me better, you mean.
“Is it that hard to look at me?”

It was a hateful thing to say. She was equally pleased and horrified as all expression melted off his face.

She stood, picking up her Moleskine. “Tell Lucy and David I went home.”

“I'll drive you.”

“I want to walk.”

“No, let me—”

She held up her hand and walked out without a glance or a word to anyone else.

It wasn't a long walk home—maybe a mile—but it was cold and gray in that way that only Memphis in the winter can be. Not cold enough to justify buying a two hundred dollar puffy down coat, but never warm enough for the bulky sweatshirts everyone made do with instead. And the
gray.
She hadn't seen actual sunlight in a month and a half. Maybe vitamin D withdrawal was the real reason she was so foul by the end of February.

Tossing her hood over her head and pulling the drawstring
tight, Fiona bundled against herself and began the trudge home. Gradually the walk warmed her. Cold, clean air filled up her lungs and scrubbed them clean. She unfolded slowly, each vertebra notching itself upright when good and ready. Twenty minutes later, her hood was down, her back straight, her good cheek flushed.

At some point, Fiona found herself simply
standing.
A low wall edged the lawn just beside her. She was only a few blocks from home, but she walked over to sit on it. Not moving forward or backward, but sideways.

She breathed, in and out. She felt the cold, hard stone poke into the cold, hard of her tailbone. She stared ahead at nothing in particular.

Ryan was right, of course. Everything was horrible on February 27. She was horrible.

On February 27, she was
scarred.
Every bit of her—face, heart, soul, brain—was mauled and mutilated. She was nothing but damage.

She hated it all. Her scars, her self-pity, herself.

She wanted to be whole.

She pulled her Moleskine and pen from her pocket and began to write:

Accidents and incidents / Freak twists in coincidence

Build me up, like bones and skin

I want love and sin

Let me lure you in

Let me begin again

But this fate and skin / They trap me in.

Well, she didn't write it all at once. There were stops and starts, scratched-out lines, rearranged words. Countless breaths came in and out while the sun dipped away, and the night crept up. She only vaguely noticed the lost light and cold fingers, but this was a perfect kind of trance.

She looked up when the car honked.

Ryan screeched to a jerky stop at the curb in front of her and hopped out. “Where the hell have you been?!”

“Here,” she said, looking at him with a groggy, afternoon-nap feeling.

“It's been two hours.”

Fiona looked at the—even grayer, like burnt charcoal—sky. “Wow. I didn't realize—”

“What are you
doing
?” he said, in a furious panic.

She folded the Moleskine, resting it on her knees. “I was walking. And then writing.”

“It's a thirty minute walk home—tops—from the coffee shop, Ona. It's”—he looked at his watch—“six thirty.”

“Wait, doesn't Gwen have a thing?”

“Yes, she does. You'll notice I'm not there.”

It was bad, she knew, to feel a little triumphant about this. “What, you thought I was abducted or something?” She pointed to the long row of large, turn-of-the-century houses lining the street. “We're not exactly in a high-crime area.”

He sat beside her and pulled at the weeds growing through
the cracks in the wall. “Anything could have happened. I didn't know.”

Ryan looked tense and edgy, not yet recovered from his ridiculous—but sweet—panic. Fiona's heart broke a little for him. For the moment, she forgot her problems and stepped out of her mood. She nudged his shoulder with her own. “You're a mess. Talk to me.”

He rested his hands in his lap and looked straight ahead, toward the house across the street. “I just get lost in your story sometimes.”

“Lost in my story?”

He nodded. “Like . . . there's this place you're supposed to be, and it's my job to get you there.”

“Where am I supposed to be?”

He shrugged. “If I knew, I wouldn't keep screwing it up.”

“How are you screwing it up?” she asked, thoroughly confused. It was like someone had sliced the pivotal chapters out of the “story” before she even got a chance to read it.

Ryan's eyes rested on the house across the street. “How am I
not
screwing it up? I push you to talk about things you don't want to. I push David to ask out the girl of his dreams. I push you to do open mic night. I push you into a surgery you don't want. I just push.”

Fiona had never thought of it like this. Not at all. “I like that you're in my story.”

He shook his head and kept staring across the street. “I think about it a lot—if the accident never happened. Do you?”

“Sure sometimes, but it's pointless. I'm not a poor-me kind of girl.” He looked at her then, one eyebrow raised. “Well, not usually,” she said, nudging his shoulder again and acting breezier about the whole thing than she felt. He looked so burdened. “I was little, Ryan. There's no way to know what I'm missing, or who I'd be otherwise. Stuff happens every day that sets us in one direction or another.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know. Stupid stuff.” She considered a minute then said, “You have this killer caffeine headache but somebody else gets the last Coke so you do awful on a final. Your class rank gets screwed. You don't go to the right college, where Mr. Yeah Probably is waiting. So you meet Mr. Well Maybe, instead. He talks you into switching majors so you get a job that doesn't really do it for you but it takes you out of the country all the time and you—”

He cut her off. “Your comparing caffeine withdrawal to a face covered in scars?”

“Half-covered.” She followed Ryan's gaze back to the house across the street. Light blazed from all the bottom floor windows. Flickering blues of a television created the only light on top. “Anyway, plenty of everyday things can make just as much impact. Remember how you tried lacrosse in fourth grade? What if you'd stuck with that? You could potentially be someone else completely.”

Ryan shrugged.

“If we tried to analyze how every little thing changes us,” Fiona continued, “nobody would get anything done.”

Ryan tipped his head toward her and smiled. It was a small smile—a saddish one—but a smile all the same. “I feel like it's my job to fix it.”

Now it was Fiona's turn with the sad smile. “I thought you said I wasn't broken.”

He shook his head. “Not fix
you.
Fix it.”

“What's the difference?”

He took a deep breath. “Three hundred sixty-four days of the year—I don't know, you're
Fiona.
Fun and sarcastic and just you. This day, not so much. That makes the problem an
it,
not a
you.
”

“So according to this logic, we fix the scars, and my problems are solved?”

“You don't think?”

It was a nice idea, one she probably clung to herself more than she'd like to admit. “There's some safety in it, this way,” she said. “Like, I can always blame something for all the parts of me I hate. What if I'm just as pathetic with a full face?”

“You are the least pathetic person I know.”

Fiona didn't agree with this at all, but that was a different argument. “It's a scary idea, carrying around someone else. I'll be benefiting from
someone dying.
”

“You can't take responsibility for that. That person chose to donate for his own reasons. It has nothing to do with you.”

“But he—she—chose it for
bigger
reasons probably. Something more heroic. Not so some girl could be pretty. Or regular.”

“Who's to say that's not heroic? Who says it needs to be? Whoever it is might just have checked the box with a
Sure, why not?
” Ryan nudged her shoulder. She wasn't looking at him, but she knew he was smiling. “Not everyone agonizes over every little decision, Ona.”

She was pretty sure organ donation didn't fit in the every-little-decision category, but she didn't press the point. This back-and-forth with her brother felt too nice, even if the topic was morbid.

A second television flicked on across the street, in the room just next to the other TV. The lights flickered in unison, like both were tuned to the same channel. “So you think I should have the surgery?”

A few quiet moments passed before Ryan answered. “I do.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. Because you can?”

What a simple reason—no grand philosophy behind it, no gut-wrenching self-evaluation required. It was easy and obvious and lovely.

She decided to follow her brother's lead.

She rested her head on his shoulder and said, “Okay, I'll do it.”

When Fi first started dating Marcus, she'd talked to a girl on her lacrosse team who was allergic to everything—peanuts, soy, wheat. Even though her friend joked about her hermetically sealed lunches, she'd told Fi, no, she didn't count to fifty while washing her hands.

“So what's
really
wrong with you?” Fi asked Marcus, one night later on.

“It's just a weird food thing,” he said. He launched into an exhaustive scientific explanation about allergy vs. intolerance vs. sensitivity that made her eyes glaze over.

While she still didn't understand it, she was getting better at rolling with it. For example, a few days ago, Marcus had gotten some weird bug, and Mrs. King had imposed a strict quarantine. Since Sunday, they had only talked by phone. She missed his smell and his arms around her and the feel of late afternoon stubble against her cheek, but she didn't really mind
the occasional break. She liked staying up late, curled into her covers and snuggling with Panda, talking quietly about everything and nothing.

“What's on your bucket list?” Marcus had asked last night, over the phone.

“Um, I don't know. I've never really thought about it. Go to Paris?”

“I want to ride a camel to the pyramids in Giza.”

“A cruise would be good.”

“Swim in the Dead Sea.”

“Skydive, maybe?” she said.

“Have dinner with the president. A photo tour of the Arctic.”

“Yours are better than mine.”

He laughed. “I lie in bed a lot. I have more time to think about it.”

“I want a dog,” she added. “When I have my own place. Mom's allergic.”

“We used to have a cat. Tanya,” he said. “Dad gave her away when I started reacting to the dander.”

“Oh. Never mind then. I don't need a dog.”

He was quiet a minute. “I'm sorry.”

“For what?”

“Being sick. Screwing up your life.”

“Because I can't have a dog?”

“It's not fair to you. We've never even been to a movie.”

“We've seen plenty at your house. Or started to, at least,” she joked. He didn't laugh.

“Okay, sure,” she said. “It sucks we can't go to the movies or hang out with my friends. But it sucks more that you have to drink those awful shakes your mother makes. That you're always tired. That you can't eat anything. That's what I really hate.”

She knew that he didn't believe her, but it was true. She loved being Marcus King's girlfriend. He made her better. Sometimes she couldn't believe he'd picked her.

It was enough, even if it was only covert late-night phone calls.

All this morning and through school, she felt badly about the conversation. She worried that Marcus worried about her. So this current phone call—which came while she was digging through the fridge—surprised her.

“Whatcha doin'?” he asked playfully.

“Just got home,” she said, folding salami slices into her mouth. “You sound better.”

“Much better, actually. I'm sprung for the afternoon.”

“What do you mean,
sprung
?”

“Want to go somewhere?”

She froze.
This
was the kind of list she'd spent hours on, not some far-flung bucket list. Even so, her mind went blank.

“I was thinking the coffee shop,” Marcus said.

“Um . . .” Not her first choice. Not her eighth choice, even.

“My favorite place ever,” he said. “Since I met you.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” she said. “You talked me into it.”

“Jackson wants to come, too. Maybe you could bring Ryan? I think they'd get along.”

Their first time out, and his brother was coming? She would not be snide. She would not be snide. “See you in twenty minutes.”

She went to the backyard, where Trent and Ryan were playing lacrosse one-on-one. “Marcus wants to go to the coffee shop.”

Both boys lowered their sticks. “
Marcus
wants to go?” Ryan asked.

“Got a reprieve. Jackson's gracing us with his presence, so you're both coming. I need a buffer.”

“This should be interesting,” said Trent.

Now here they all were—Ryan and Gwen sharing a beat-up recliner, Fi and Marcus tucked together in the middle of the ratty futon, Trent on her side and Jackson on his. Their first ever group outing.

Bringing along backup was a good idea. The Doyle side outnumbered the King side, and Jackson was acting—
gasp—
the slightest bit friendly. Like he'd gotten caught up in this “big night out” as much as she had.

Curling up even closer to Marcus, getting all snuggly under his arm, Fi looked up at him. Always fair, Marcus looked healthy nonetheless, with a little flush in his cheeks, a crisp
look in his eyes. For possibly the eleventh time that night, she said, “You look so good.”

He kissed her forehead. “I feel good.”

“Dude, you have crazy allergies,” Trent said. “There's this girl on the lacrosse team who's allergic to everything, but she still comes to school.”

“It's different,” Fi said, shooting him a
shut up
glare.

“I tried her gluten-free potato snack sticks once,” Trent continued. “Tasted like salted cardboard.”

Fi wanted no allergy—intolerance, sensitivity, whatever—talk tonight. “So why the sudden freedom?” she asked, nuzzling more deeply into her cute, cute boyfriend.

“Maybe they just wanted us out of the house,” Marcus said, laughing.

Jackson made a gagging noise and put his mug on the table. “Ugh. Gross.” Gwen's eyes darted between his mug and him. “Not the coffee,” he said. “My parents' sex life.”

Marcus did a spit take into his green tea.

“I walked in on my parents when I was ten,” Trent said. “Dad said they were wrestling. It scarred me for life.”

“I can top it,” Gwen said. “Hippie neighbors, in their sixties. Two a.m. naked time in the backyard hot tub every Tuesday.”

“Please. Mine's worse,” Trent said.

“There are four of them.”

And so it went, each person telling a story that had the slightest thing in common with the other's and on and on and on so that no one really knew how they ended up on Marcus's
story about the guy who went to Europe with four hundred dollars and still managed to backpack six whole months.

“Another thing for the bucket list,” he said, nudging Fi and Jackson at the same time.

Jackson shook his head, his eyes focused on the ceiling.

Fi was about to smack him when Gwen said, “I want to do junior year abroad in Italy. Florence. See Botticelli's
Birth of Venus
. Michelangelo's
David
. Paint there.”

Ryan pivoted, brows drawn. “Since when?”

“All my life,” she said. “I've told you that.”

“Uh, no.”

“Uh, yes. It's on the spreadsheet.”

“What spreadsheet?” Trent asked.

“All the schools we're applying to.” Gwen ticked off her fingers with each item she listed. “We've got columns for art programs, athletic division, scholarship potential, ranking of the business school. Stuff like that.”

Ryan's girlfriend must be the only spreadsheet-making painter in existence. Weren't the creative types supposed to be clueless and flighty, always losing their phones and forgetting to put gas in their car?

“It's sorted by distance,” Gwen said. “Since we're probably not going to the same place.” She nudged Ryan with a small smile. “Not many business-painting-lacrosse schools.”

“How does
Italy
affect the distance tabulations?” Ryan asked her.

“It's probably a wash against all the pre- and postseason
training,” she said, with a look. “Not to mention the travel games.”

“O-kay,” Fi said. No public displays of issues tonight. “Who wants something?”

“My break's over, anyway,” Gwen said. “I'll get the refills. You two stay here,” she added, smiling warmly at Fi and Marcus.

Fi curled back into Marcus. “Looks like my family's not the only one that's crazy,” he whispered.

“They really excel at it, though,” she said. “Like, maybe the top ten.”

He laughed and kissed her on the head.

“Ugh, stop kissing my sister,” Ryan grumbled.

Grabbing Marcus's jaw, Fiona brought her boyfriend's face to hers for an inappropriately long and public kiss—that she never got to finish. Jackson groaned, “Good Lord,” while Ryan and Trent threw pillows at them.

They pulled away from each other, and Marcus shifted down, propping his feet on the table. He winked at his brother. Fi stuck her tongue out at hers.

“That was a disturbing display of germ-swapping,” Trent said.

“You use your sleeve as a Kleenex,” Fi said, but regretted it immediately, as Jackson started eyeing Trent's shirt suspiciously.

“So, Jackson,” she said, quickly changing the subject. “Have you heard from Northwestern?”

She knew the answer. Marcus told her he'd gotten the letter a few weeks ago.

“I have,” he said, like a normal person might. “But I'm deferring a year.”

“Why?”

Jackson took a long sip of coffee. “It's just not a great time.”

“I thought we talked about this,” Marcus said, looking straight ahead, not at his brother.

“I heard your opinion,” Jackson said. “I just have a different one.”

“It's as good a time as any, Jackson,” Marcus answered.

“So then later will work, too.”

Fi had been
thrilled
when Marcus said Jackson was going off to school. Even so, she understood Jackson's position. Or what she
guessed
was his position, since he sure as hell wasn't going to tell her about it.

He didn't want to leave Marcus.

Neither did she.

“You can do that?” she asked. “They don't mind?”

Jackson studied her with an expression she couldn't read. “I don't know if they
mind.
But yes, you can do that.”

Marcus nudged her. “You can also transfer in—either in the second semester or sophomore year.”

“You can only transfer in if they accept you,” she said.

“Yes, but they can't accept you when you never apply.”

Fi curled in on herself when Marcus said that last bit, making a point of not looking at Ryan or Trent.

“What?” both yelled at the same time.

“You never applied?” Ryan barked.

“Freaking unbelievable,” Trent said.

“I'm sorry,” said Marcus. “I thought they knew.”

“They do now,” she muttered against his chest.

For the next five minutes, Trent and Ryan alternated the rant.
Was she crazy? She'd wanted to play for Northwestern since she was fourteen! She took the SATs
three times
to get the right score. What was all the rehab for? What was all the work for? That coach
wanted
her, which was a stroke of luck right there. Girls from Virginia and Maryland and New England got those spots, not girls from Memphis. Did she have any idea what kind of opportunity that was? It was the best program in the country!

“Okay, y'all,” Marcus finally said. “I think she got the point.”

“You could have interrupted them earlier,” she said.

Trent stormed off dramatically. Ryan shook his head in disappointment and followed. “I'm going to get some food,” Jackson said, and left as well.

“You okay?” Marcus asked.

She shook her head, not able to talk past the golf-ball-sized lump in her throat. Crying in Otherlands—with Trent and
her
obnoxious brother and
his
obnoxious brother all nearby—was unacceptable.

“I'm sorry,” he said again.

She wanted to yell at him, but that would ruin their one night out. “You shouldn't have said anything,” she said.

“They're not wrong,” he said. “I saw that email. The coach wants you.”

“It's too late now. The team's set.”

“Maybe not. Maybe whoever else she had in mind for your spot said no. Or got a better offer. You could at least check.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?” Good Lord, now she really was going to cry.

“You sound like Jackson,” he said. “And I'll tell you the same thing I've told him. I feel horrible that you're changing your life for me.”

“Maybe I'm the girl with the better offer.”

“It's not a one-or-the-other, babe.” He pointed to the table where they first met. “The first time I saw you, you had an awful pink cast over a horrid compound break, and you still couldn't shut up about lacrosse. And Northwestern. You said it was your
dream
, Fi. How can you not go after it?”

“Because my dream changed.”

It wasn't like choosing between the two things she loved more than anything had been easy. The night she'd finally tossed all her NU brochures into the trash, she'd clutched Panda for dear life, like she was a little kid. She'd never cried so hard.

“But you can have both,” he said.

She'd spent eight months trying to figure out how to do just that. It was impossible. “It's too late. I missed the deadline, and I already said yes to Milton.”

“Just email her and check. One more time.” He touched her
cheek. “Let me live vicariously through you.”

Fi's heart broke a little when he said that. “Would you apply, too?”

He paused a moment before nodding. “Sure.”

She figured he was humoring her. But still, he looked sad when he should be happy. “Okay,” she said. “I'll email the coach.”

Marcus bloomed into one of his full-face smiles. And without the brothers and best friends to mock them, they got to finish that kiss.