Still a Work in Progress (18 page)

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” Ryan asks.

“What do you think? You’re always so mean to me. It’s a little tiring. It’s like your main goal in life is to yuck my yummies.”

Ryan stands up. “‘Yuck my yummies’? Are you kidding me?”

“Guys,” I say. “Stop fighting.”

“It’s a saying,” Sam says. “And you do it. All the time.”

“Well, excuse me for trying to help you!”

“Help me what?”

“Be a little less”— Ryan struggles with how to answer —“Sam-like!”

“What the heck is that supposed to mean!”

“Never mind!” Ryan stomps up the stairs and goes inside.

“Hey!” Sam says. He goes after Ryan, leaving me on the icy steps.

I finish my trail mix with frozen fingers — peanut, raisin, M&M, sunflower seed — feeling more alone than I’ve ever felt in my life.

After school, I see Mrs. Lewis waiting in the parking lot as soon as I step outside. Harper is already bounding down the steps to claim shotgun. Like I care.

“Hey, Noah,” Mrs. Lewis says when I climb into the backseat. “School OK?”

“Yeah,” I say.

Harper turns up the radio, and we drive to the high school for Stu. I wonder if she came for us first this time to rescue me as quickly as possible. I wonder if she knew I needed it.

When we pull into the high-school pickup area, I automatically look for Emma, and then remember she’s not here. I watch as her friends filter outside, laughing and talking, hugging one another good-bye. No one seems to notice Emma isn’t there. They don’t act like something bad has happened. Like Emma is missing. Someone comes up behind Stu as he’s walking out and jumps on his back for a piggyback ride. They sway and topple over, laughing. Stu is still chuckling when he gets to the car and finds Harper in the front seat.

“Out,” he says through the window.

Harper locks the door and grins.

Stu pounds on the glass, and Mrs. Lewis yells at him to just get in the back.

When he sits next to me, he stops grinning. “Oh, hi, Noah. Any news about Emma?”

“No,” I say. And if there was, I wouldn’t tell him. I wouldn’t tell any of these jerks.

I am 99 percent sure Stu was on Emma’s
Lord of the Flies
list as one who would follow the beast. I’d add Harper, too. Jerks.

Stu puts his earbuds in and taps his thighs to the music no one else can hear. Harper stares out the window, bored. Mrs. Lewis sighs about one hundred and thirty times. I want to tell her to turn on the radio to end the silence, but I don’t. I just sigh, too, and stare out the window like Harper, wishing this stupid car could go faster.

“Remember, try to be cheerful,” my mom says for the third time since we got in the car. “The doctor says it’s important for Emma to see that we’re doing OK. We need to show Emma we’re still carrying on and that we can’t wait until she gets home. But not to make her feel guilty about being away. So . . . we have to be cheerful,” she says again.

My dad taps the steering wheel in his nervous, anxious way.

I glance over at the small pile of presents we took from under the tree. The rest are still there, unopened. No one remembered to water the tree, so a whole pile of needles slid off onto the packages when my mom reached under to get some for Emma. We were going to keep the tree up until Emma got home, but now it turns out we don’t know exactly when that will be. Every so often an ornament drops off one of the sagging branches and rattles onto the floor, but no one bothers to pick those up, either. So the presents under the tree are covered in needles and ornaments and lost hope. And everyone pretends not to notice.

I pull out my copy of
A Separate Peace
and try not to get even more depressed, but it’s hard. The last thing I want to read about right now is messed-up friendships, especially with Ryan and Sam fighting so much. At least I don’t think it’s so bad that one of them would push the other out of a tree . . . yet. I try reading for a while but it makes me carsick, so I drop the book on the seat and close my eyes and listen to the
click, click, click
of my mom’s knitting needles coming from the front seat. She’s working on a scarf for Emma, even though she probably won’t be able to leave it there, which my dad points out just before we arrive.

“I know that,” my mom says resentfully. “It’s for when she comes home.”

“I was just saying,” my dad says, just as resentfully.

The building we arrive at is like an old house. Not at all what I was expecting. I thought it would look more like a hospital. Or a prison.

Instead, it’s one of those tall Victorian houses I’ve really only seen on TV. We find a place to park along the street and go inside. The hallway has a black-and-white checked floor, and there’s a big wooden desk with an old lady sitting at it.

“Good morning!” she says loudly.

We all force ourselves to smile at her, even though it hurts.

“We’re here to see our daughter, Emma,” my mom explains.

“What a sweet girl,” the lady says, smiling.

My mom nods and starts to cry.

It’s weird to think that this stranger knows my sister. Knows her enough to know she is a sweet girl.

The lady gets up and hands my mom a tissue. She pats her arm and says, “There, there.” I didn’t know people really still said that.

She leads us to a parlor and explains that this is where we get to visit. Then she tells us to wait there while she goes and gets Emma.

My dad paces around the room in his nervous way while my mom sits in an armchair and wipes her face.

“Get it together,” my dad tells her. “We’re supposed to be cheerful, remember? Positive? She can’t see you like this.”

But just as he’s saying that, Emma walks in.

Since no one else seems to know what to do, I get up and hug her. I expect her to give me her usual punch first, but she squeezes me tight.

“How’s Puker Prison?” I whisper in her ear.

“I miss you,” she whispers back, instead of answering.

I’m afraid to look at her. To hug back too much, because I don’t want to feel how small she is.

When I let go and we face each other again, though, I think she actually looks OK. She smiles, and it’s a real smile, not forced-seeming. I guess for some reason I was expecting her to be wearing her hospital clothes, but she’s wearing normal ones. Not her SpongeBob ensemble, just regular jeans and a normal sweater. One, not three.

Our hug seemed to break my parents’ frozen stance, and they come over and hug her at the same time. Then we all sit down.

“You can stop looking at me like I’m dying,” Emma says. “I’m OK.”

“We just miss you —” my mom starts, then cries, forgetting all the rules.

“I’m sorry,” Emma says.

“We just want you to get well,” my dad says. “Whatever it takes.” He gives my mom a look like,
Nice play.
She ignores him.

Emma tells us about her daily routine and how strict they are about things, but how everyone is pretty nice. She feels almost
too
positive about the place, and I get this uneasy feeling, like she’s really not being herself after all. I think about the pep talk in the car and wonder if Emma’s the one acting all cheerful and positive for
us.
I wish I could be alone with her so I could ask her what the real deal is, but obviously my parents aren’t going to give up a second of their time with her, and we only have thirty minutes. So instead, Emma opens her Christmas presents and everyone tries to make chitchat, but it’s totally awkward and uncomfortable. When Emma gets to my present, she takes a really long time to carefully remove the tape from the wrapping because I used paper I drew pictures on. The entire wrapping paper is little drawings I made of the Captain in different poses. As she picks back the tape with her chewed-to-the-nub fingernails, Emma starts to cry.

My parents look at me worriedly, like they are afraid whatever’s inside is going to make her cry even worse. I can’t really reassure them, but it bugs me that instead of even noticing all my hard work, they’re focused on Emma. I mean, of course they are. But . . . I wish for once, just once, instead of paying every last bit of attention to her, they could notice what I made, what I can do.

“Careful,” I say, when Emma pulls the paper off the box and starts to open it. “It’s breakable.”

She nods and removes the tissue I stuffed all around the present. Then she smiles and lifts out the piece I made for her.

“The glaze came out a little too dark,” I say.

“No, it’s perfect. I love it, Noah,” she says. “Look what Noah made, you guys.” She holds up my sculpture of the Captain to my parents. “Look how talented he is.”

My parents smile and look a little surprised. “Wow, Noah!” my mom says. “That’s really stunning!”

Emma hands it over so they can look more closely, then gets up to hug me. “Thank you, brother,” she says. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a jerk.”

“Just get well,” I say.

She lets go and sits back down. I wish she’d said, “OK.” Or hugged me harder. Or anything to make me believe she’ll try.

When our time is up, the old lady comes to get Emma. When it’s my turn for a hug good-bye, she whispers in my ear again.

“I’ll be OK. Promise.”

But I don’t know if I believe her.

The doctor we met at the hospital comes out next and takes my parents to her office, leaving me alone in the parlor. I listen hard for any sounds coming from the rest of the house, but it’s eerily silent, and I wonder what Emma’s doing now.

She said she gets to watch a little TV but mostly reads and spends time in therapy. She has to do stuff like go to the bathroom with the door open so she can’t make herself throw up. My mom cringed when she told us. But Emma seemed to act like it was normal. Which only made it worse, I think.

My dad gave my mom a funny look.

“It’s OK, Dad,” Emma said. “It’s good. I have to be honest about this.”

Sometimes the truth hurts even more than the lies.

When my parents get back, they actually look a little more hopeful. They’re even holding hands. We say good-bye to the old lady and then get in the car to go home. I fall asleep before we even reach the highway. It’s the only way to survive being in the car with my parents again so soon.

I wake up when my phone buzzes in my pocket. I have a text from Ryan saying he got in a huge fight with Sam and they aren’t speaking.

I don’t reply.

A few minutes later, I get a text from Sam saying the same thing.

I don’t reply.

My mom is knitting again.

My dad is tapping the steering wheel anxiously.

I text Emma, even though she isn’t allowed to have a phone there.

It was good to see you,
I write.
Hope you can come home soon.

But instead of hitting send, I delete it. It’s better than getting a bounce-back message saying
DELIVERY FAILED
.

At home, we get out of the car, go inside, and ignore one another as usual. I go up to my room and get into bed. I let the Captain jump up and lie next to me. I don’t know why I’m so tired all the time, but all I want to do is sleep. All I want to do is drift off and not come back until I can wake up and have everything be back to normal. Instead, it seems like every time I wake up, things are worse.

After ten minutes of lying there, someone knocks on my door. I don’t answer. It opens anyway.

“Noah,” my dad says, “why are you in bed? It’s only seven o’clock. And why is the dog on the bed when you know that’s against the rules?”

“I’m tired,” I say. “And it’s a dumb rule.”

My dad sighs. “Get out of there and come down. Mom and I want to talk to you.”

“But —”

“Please.”

“Give me five minutes.”

“Fine.”

I wait for him to leave, then roll over on my back and look up at my boring ceiling like always. Whatever they want, it can’t be good. They’re probably going to make me see a therapist to make sure Emma’s illness hasn’t affected me in some devastating way.
Don’t worry, Mom and Dad, I still fit into my husky jeans just fine.

I drag myself out of bed and go downstairs. The Captain doesn’t bother to leave his spot on the bed.

At the last step, I stop. All the lights in the living room are off except for the lights on the tree.

“Merry Christmas,” my dad says.

Our stockings are draped on various chairs, just like they should have been two weeks ago.

“Sorry it took so long,” my mom says.

“Shouldn’t we wait for Emma?” I ask.

My parents exchange a look.

“She won’t be home for a while,” my dad says.

“What do you mean? How long?”

“They’ll reevaluate in a few weeks.

“But — I thought she’d be home in a few weeks.”

“We know,” my mom says. “It feels like forever. But we can visit every weekend. And this way, they can get her in a really stable, healthy place. That’s the best defense. She needs to be away from . . . her triggers . . . until she can get well. Really well.”

“Triggers?”

“The things that make her want to . . . that could cause a relapse.”

“Well, what are they?”

My mom and dad exchange looks again.