The View From Who I Was (17 page)

Twenty-Seven

From Oona's journal:

A healthful daily intake of liquid for men is about
3 liters (13 cups) a day. For women, it's 2.2 liters
(9 cups) a day.

—Mr. Bonstuber

Tanesha followed Corpse, but this time she was silent. This time she didn't stop in the Student Union. Ahead, Clark stood beside the door to AP Bio. He raised his hand in a wave and went inside.

Tanesha tapped Corpse's shoulder. Corpse turned and Tanesha's fist passed through me and caught Corpse's ear, sent her careening against the wall.

Tanesha's eyes dulled. The hate in her fist scorched me.

She tilted her head, gave Corpse a glazed look, and her eyes turned vicious again. A crowd formed around them.
DEAD GIRL SLUGGED.
Brandy sneered at Corpse from Tanesha's side.

“How many people are you going to fuck up?” Tanesha hissed.

Corpse stepped back. Tanesha cocked her arm, and Corpse lifted hers to block it, but the punch connected with her eye. Pain bloomed in her temple. Stars sprayed across her vision. She slid down a locker to the floor.

Tanesha pulled back her foot to kick. Brandy laughed, but Corpse wheeled out her leg, sweeping Tanesha's standing leg from beneath her. Tanesha hit the floor, her breath billowing out her lips. They were eye-to-eye.

Corpse, palm against the locker, wobbled to her knees.

Sneakers appeared. We knew those sneakers. Loved those sneakers.

Gabe kneeled next to Tanesha and said, low, slow, “Listen, there never was and never will be anything between you and me. I will date who I want, you racist. If your life is screwed up, it's your own fault.”

Tanesha's mouth became a slash. One of her front teeth was chipped. Corpse wondered at its history. Faces in the crowd smirked at Tanesha. A couple snickers drifted down. Tanesha glared at Gabe, and her eyes lurched to Corpse. Gabe stepped between them, and Corpse studied his jeans' creases at the backs of the knees.

“Don't even look at her.” The flatness of his words scared Corpse more than Tanesha's fist.

Tanesha drew her legs beneath her and rose, never taking her glare off Gabe. I had to admire her moxie. The tardy bell rang. Brandy took a backward step toward the Student Union.

“You shame us,” Tanesha said. Brandy nodded.

“Do I?” Gabe said. “Who's shaming who?”

Something clicked behind Tanesha's eyes. Mr. Bonstuber and Mr. Handler arrived. They took Tanesha by the arms and escorted her down the hall.

Mr. Rhoades, the assistant principal, hustled up. His hair was always pushed up in the front, and he looked like he'd just eaten something that didn't agree with him.

“Oh, Oona!” He blew out his breath. “Come on. Let's get to the nurse's office for that eye.”

Gabe put his arm around Corpse's waist. She saw Manny watching with narrowed eyes.

“I'm okay,” she said, stepping out of Gabe's embrace, and we followed Mr. Rhoades.

In Corpse's throbbing vision, the hallways and the stairs wavered. Mr. Rhoades opened the main office door and led us past Ms. Martinez, the secretary, and down a short hall. Dr. Bell's door was shut, with Tanesha inside. The nurse's office was across the hall, two doors down. The nurse only worked Tuesdays and Thursdays, so Mr. Rhoades sat Corpse on the cot, and Gabe leaned against the doorframe as Mr. Rhoades opened the mini-fridge, pulled out an ice pack, wrapped it in a thin towel from a stack on the fridge's top, and handed it to Corpse. The room smelled like burlap sacks and rubbing alcohol.

A knock sounded. Gabe craned around. Mr. Rhoades leaned into the doorway, partially blocking our view of two police officers waiting outside Dr. Bell's door. Their black gun belts lured Corpse's eyes. Crystal Village's police force was small, and I wondered if Ash had punched one of these officers. If these same officers had been at our suicide. The door opened, they entered, and the door closed behind them. Mr. Rhoades sighed and shook his head.

“If you'll excuse me,” he said and walked down the hall. He knocked and entered Dr. Bell's office.

Tanesha was eighteen. Tanesha would be treated as an adult. We were all eighteen: Gabe, Tanesha, Roberta, us. Ash never made it.

“How did you know it was happening?” Corpse said.

“Manny,” Gabe said.

“Manny?”

“He saw Tanesha following you and got me.” Gabe studied his hands, still in fists. He sprayed out his fingers and blew out his breath. “He doesn't hate you.” He closed his eyes and slumped against the wall like he'd walked a thousand miles.

Corpse led Mom by the hand into the living room, holding a blue ice pack against her eye. Even though she knew about Mom wanting to be an anthropologist, had knocked the peace pipe down from above the mantel, and had humped with Gabe here, the room still felt like a museum.

Mom sat on the couch, Corpse in the armchair. The last person she'd seen sit in that chair was Ash as she'd played LIFE. Reality seemed to sway, so Corpse closed her eyes. When she opened them, Mom was looking at her intently. She touched Corpse's blackening eye and bit her lip.

“It's fine,” Corpse said, taking Mom's hand. “Mom, you're not going to like this. You're not going to like it at all, but we have to do it.”

“We?”

“Dad and me.”

“What?”

Corpse took a breath and said, too fast, “I'm making him go back to Portugal for spring break.”

Mom seemed to look through Corpse, and one of her eyes squinted.

“Mom?”

Her gaze veered to the window, toward Chateau Antunes's front wall and our trail beyond.

“I think the reason Dad is such a … is so disconnected … is because he hasn't gotten over his parents dying. I think he needs to face it somehow. Then maybe he can … well … love people.”

Mom was a statue.

“Mom?”

She kept staring out the window.

“Mom!” Corpse shook her arm.

Mom collapsed back against the couch and ran her fingers through her hair. “There's that saying:
If you love something, set it free …
”

“I love you too, Mom.”

She smiled, then lifted her chin. “What will you do once you get there?”

“I'm not sure. I just know I need to get him home.”

She pursed her lips till they turned a different color. “I tried to get your father to go, years back, just after you were born.” She laughed sadly. “He'd always been distant, but after you were born, he withdrew much more, grew defensive and mean-tempered. He was dead-set against kids, was furious when I told him I was pregnant. I couldn't understand it. At work, he's suave, charming. For so long, I thought it was my fault. You wouldn't think a beautiful baby would bring about a change like that. I guess he's just a shrewd businessman. He must be.”

She threw up her hand and cast her eyes around the room. “Look at all this.” She laughed. Not the good kind of laugh. “It took me three years to figure out he'd married me for my money. The start he needed. I kept thinking there was something wrong with
me.
He's masterful at that.”

Their eyes had a conversation:

Mom: I've been lonely so long.

Corpse: I understand. It's almost over.

Mom: You think?

Corpse: I know.

Mom: I'm worried for you.

Corpse: I'll be okay.

I remembered what Gabe had told me the day before. “He wouldn't hurt me, would he?” Corpse said.

Mom sighed. “I don't think so. But he's masterful at damage inflicted with words. Sometimes I wish he'd just hit me.” Her eyes traveled to Corpse's swelling one.

“Mom!” Corpse shuddered at the hate I remembered in Tanesha's fist. Heard Dad's fist bang that table.

Mom held up her palm like a traffic cop. “He's too smart for bruises. It might damage his reputation, his career. It's strange, the law. It protects you from bruises, but allows the murder of your spirit.”

“Murder? Mom!” That little girl voice. Only this time, I didn't mind it.

“Work is his false front. He prefers the company of strangers and acquaintances. But if you try to get close to him, Oona—”

“I never knew things were so bad.”

“No?” Mom said. “You tried to kill yourself.”

I shuddered at the thought of Dad down in his office. Could he sense our words?

“Why have you stayed with him?”

Mom looked Corpse straight in the eye. “You.”

Corpse studied the ice pack in her hands, scraped a contrail with her thumbnail through its rime of ice. “I won't go if you don't want me to.”

“No,” she said, “go if that's what your instincts tell you. He's agreed to it. That's something. But I'll be worried the whole time.”

“That's pretty much what Gabe said.”

Mom's eyes twinkled. “I like that boy more and more. Young man, I should say. Given your doctor visit … ”

“Mom!”

She leaned forward and gripped both Corpse's hands. “Oona, I'm happy for you. And a little jealous, honestly.”

I remembered how in the recliner with Dad, I'd thought how everyone was just a kid.

“Thanks,” Corpse said. “You could come with Dad and me.”

Mom shook her head. “I don't think your father or I are ready for that. Even if
he
gets better, it's going to take some time for me. A lot of years will need undoing. It's funny. How a person can try and try for so long, and then one day—”

“You've got to try.”

Mom looked like she might throw up.

“Promise?” Corpse said.

Corpse listened to three heartbeats before Mom said, “Promise.”

Twenty-Eight

From Oona's journal:

Blood and water fulfill the same function. These abilities are temperature dependent. At 4 degrees, water is able to shift material, remove and transport sediment. Blood must also move waste away. Oxygen is present in both and can promote growth and decay.

—Viktor Schauberger

Sugeidi set a stack of clean clothes next to the suitcase on our bed. She rested her knuckles on her hips and studied Corpse's black eye. It had swollen shut for two days, which made Brandy smirk. The yellow and purple had long since faded though, and just a faint purple crescent remained on her lid. Tanesha hadn't returned to school.

“It's fine,” Corpse said.

Sugeidi continued to stand with her hands on her hips.

“What?” Corpse said. “You told me to heal them.”

“
Sí
,” she said, “but I no like.”

Corpse wished everyone would stop worrying about this trip. What did they all see that she didn't? She considered how each of us knows a person in our own way. There was Mom's Oona, Sugeidi's Oona, Gabe's Oona, Ash's Oona, Tanesha's Oona, Mr. Handler's Oona, Angel's Oona, Dr. Yazzie's Oona. With literally hundreds of Oonas out there, no wonder we were struggling to understand ourself. Plus, the Tony Antunes we knew was different from Sugeidi's Tony, or Gabe's Tony, or Mom's. Or from the Tony the voice on his phone knew, the voice Corpse had hung up on. Or the one Dad had laughed with. I wondered if he was having an affair, and Corpse swallowed it back. He was returning to Lisbon for her, and she was the only one that could get him there. She thought of those chocolate eyes. He'd said he loved her. That counted for something. Didn't it?

“Sugeidi,” she said, “we have to do this.”

“You call me?”

Mom had taken our phone to the store, gotten it programmed so it would work in Portugal, and Sugeidi knew this. They must have talked. Planned even.

Corpse grinned. “I call you.”

“
Bueno
,” she said and trod from the room.

“Where are you going to dinner?” Mom said.

“
Le M
é
nage
,” Gabe said.

“That should be yummy,” she said. “Think I'll go there soon myself. Do you have a reservation?” In Crystal Village, spring break crowds started the first week in March, moving west across America and then south into Mexico until the mountain closed in mid-April.

Gabe nodded.

“Have fun. And good luck in your tournament. Where is it again?” Mom said.

“San Diego,” he said.

“Well, safe travels,” she said.

“For all of us,” he said.

They looked at Corpse, who rolled her eyes.

Corpse led him through the mudroom into the garage. She got as far as our white Range Rover's back bumper. She still hadn't driven since we'd died. She worried now that if she climbed into its driver's seat, she'd descend toward that suicide self. I worried about that too, but something else had always troubled us about driving, a strange, gnawing uneasiness.

“Could we walk to town?” she said.

“Sure.” Gabe closed the passenger door.

“What are you grinning at?”

“Walking's good,” he said.

Corpse closed the garage door at the keypad outside. They strolled down the driveway, and as they passed through the opening in the wall, she turned and studied the place Gabe's dad had repaired.

“What's up?” Gabe said.

“Just thinking.” She took his hand and laid her head against his arm. “It's funny how the world works, isn't it? If I hadn't forgotten my Chemistry book that day, I wouldn't have been there in the hall. If you hadn't gone to the bathroom, you wouldn't have been there either.”

“Fate.”

“This wall would be just a wall. Tanesha would still be in school.”

“You can't blame yourself for her dropping out.”

“And Ash might still be alive.”

“Oona. Stop!”

“Don't you ever wonder? What if I'd died?”

He pulled her against him. “I wonder about other things.”

His determination and love when he'd passed through me were right there.

They kissed. I drew close. The sound of the bus accelerating from the stop down the road made them pull apart.

“Hey, let's take the bus,” Corpse said. She jogged to the stop, tugging Gabe by the hand. The bus pulled up, and the owl-eyed driver assessed them as they climbed on. They found a seat near the back.

“That driver sure finds us interesting,” Gabe whispered.

I drifted to the ceiling. A few of the ads had changed since the night we'd killed ourself. That night, I'd felt so vibrant, so … cocky.

“He's the one who called in my location the night of the suicide.”

Gabe studied the back of the driver's thinning hair. “Well, I need to thank him then.”

“Me too,” she said.

When the bus pulled into the Transportation Center, Corpse and Gabe waited until all of the passengers disembarked. The driver eyed them in the mirror. He rose and lifted a backpack from behind his seat.

Hurry!
I said. Corpse strode to him. “Sir?”

His eyes widened.

“Thank you for calling me in that night.”

The driver smiled shyly. “You're welcome.” His voice sounded like it came from one of those old black-and-white movies.

Corpse didn't know what else to say, so she nodded, and he nodded back. She descended the two stairs off the bus.

“Thanks, man,” Gabe said and followed her.

Corpse looked back over her shoulder, and the driver still stood there, smiling.

“What time's our reservation?”

“Seven.”

Corpse read the clock tower at Crystal Village's center: only ten minutes. They paused at the heated fountain and watched the shooting arcs of water. I felt like one of those momentary arcs, drawn forever back to Corpse.

“Doesn't that water seem alive?” Corpse said.

“It does,” Gabe said.

“Isn't it amazing how it can be separate like that, yet moments later disappear, part of the whole pool?”

“Hmm,” Gabe said.

“Did you know water has three phases?” she said.

“Phases?”

“States: solid, liquid, gas. Right now, all three surround us. It's everywhere.”

“I knew that, I guess. Doesn't everyone?” Gabe said.

“Yes, but they forget. And water moves between those states and we never notice.”

“I didn't know you were so into water.”

“Did you know it's healthiest at 4 degrees Celsius?”

“No.”

“It's a narrow margin.”

Gabe didn't say anything, but he studied her as she watched the fountain.

“Our bodies are 57 percent water.”

“Yes.”

“Over half.” She sighed deeply. “Maybe our spirits are gas while our bodies are liquid. I turned solid when I died.”

Gabe looked worried, so she kissed his cheek.

“After dinner could we swing by the hospital?” she said. “There are some other people I need to thank.”

At the hospital, Copse started toward the main entrance but stopped. “I want to see where my ambulance arrived,” she said. “I want to go in that way.”

They followed a sidewalk around the red brick building to a portico that said
Ambulance Entrance
in big letters across the top
.
One ambulance was parked under it. Corpse paused and imagined paramedics pulling her stretcher from the rectangle of light cast by the ambulance's rear door. She pictured the stretcher rolling across the short patch of asphalt, her head bobbing from the jostling, that crown glinting in the lights.

“I was dead right here,” she said.

Pain took over Gabe's face.

She strode to the electronic glass doors and they whooshed open. She strode into the warm air and looked left, right. She approached the reception counter in three strides. Gabe followed a few steps behind, hands in his letter jacket pockets.

“My name is Oona Antunes,” Corpse said.

The receptionist behind the desk had spiky purple hair and a diamond stud through one nostril. “Yes, I know,” she said.

A nurse in green scrubs stepped to the desk, bent over a list, and ran his finger down it. His ponytail reminded Corpse of Dr. Benson, and she remembered his flute's sustaining notes. Inhaled them.

“I wonder if you could direct me to who was working the night I was here.”

“I was.” The nurse straightened and stood eye-level with Corpse.

“So was I,” the receptionist said.

“Who was the doctor?”

The nurse's eyebrows lifted. “Dr. Hanson. Another nurse was called down from Intensive Care, but he's on vacation.”

From the corner of her eye, Corpse saw a white doctor's coat move behind a curtained-off bed. “Could I talk to him?”

“Sure.” The nurse walked to the bed and ducked behind the curtain. After a minute he returned with the doctor, who looked more like a professional basketball player as he assessed Corpse with a glowing grin. His shaved head and stature were so far from what Corpse had expected that the words she'd been rehearsing on the walk over evaporated.

“I know this seems weird. But … I just want to …
well … thank you.”

The nurse and Dr. Hanson beamed at each other. Dr. Hanson reached out a big hand and put it on her shoulder. “You're welcome,” he said. “Moments like this make our job worthwhile.”

Corpse looked down and said, “It's so embarrassing.”

Dr. Hanson hugged her then. “We all make mistakes.”

Before I knew it, I'd joined her in that doctor's arms. That glow I felt: another hue of love.

Corpse stepped back, wiping her eyes. “Was I wearing a crown?”

Gabe tensed at her elbow.

The doctor's eyebrows pressed down, but the nurse's rose. They looked at each other and shook their heads. “No crown,” the nurse said.

“Okay. I've been wondering. Are the paramedics from that night here too?”

“They're right outside,” the receptionist said, blotting under her eyes with a tissue. She pointed toward the electric doors and blew her nose.

“Thanks again,” Corpse said.

Corpse strode to the ambulance parked under the portico, Gabe still trailing. He'd grown pensive. The vehicle's back door stood open now and a guy leaned against its frame, holding a clipboard and talking to someone inside.

“Excuse me,” Corpse said.

The guy turned and she could see his partner, seated on a bench within the ambulance. They wore short-sleeved uniform shirts, and she studied the muscles of the arms that had ferried the dead her from that trail.

“My name is Oona Antunes,” she said. “A couple months ago, you saved my life.”

“Not something I'd forget,” said the guy in the ambulance.

The guy outside snorted.

“Thank you,” she said.

Both the guys straightened and seemed to take in her live version.

“You're welcome,” said the one with the clipboard.

The one inside nodded. “It's what we do. Glad to see you're all right.”

She shrugged and glanced at Gabe. “I'm working at it. Anyway, thanks.”

“No problem.”

“Um, when you found me, was I wearing a crown?”

The paramedics looked at each other. They looked at Corpse and shook their heads. The one outside said, “No crown.”

Gabe and Corpse walked back to Chateau Antunes on the recreation path, not talking. But for Crystal Village's distant glow, the moonless night left them in darkness. Gabe put on a headlamp and they followed its beam.

“You're prepared,” Corpse said.

“Yep,” Gabe said.

I remembered following Angel's flashlight down to the fire.

They neared the place where they'd had the snowball fight. Their path to the spruce was gone, covered by a foot of snow, but someone had made a new one. Gabe took Corpse's hand, led her up the bank, and lowered her by the waist on its far side. He turned off the headlamp and stowed it in his pocket. She followed him down the path.

They came to the river, and it was very dark beneath the spruce. Gabe pulled two blankets down from its branches and spread one on the ground. He sat on the blanket and patted the spot next to him. She joined him, and he wrapped the other blanket around them so their heads were hooded.

“That was intense,” he said. “Back there. At the hospital.”

“I'm glad I did it.”

“You might be the bravest person I know.”

“Right.” Corpse said, like
you're kidding
.

The river gurgled beneath ice. A little farther down, it rushed softly in a gap.

“That crown?” Gabe said.

“It's hard to explain. I just kept picturing myself being rescued in it and looking so dumb. You know? I just wondered how stuck-up, how stupid, I looked.”

“You looked beautiful.” Gabe spoke like he was in a trance. Corpse could barely see his profile. “Your mom called and told me where you were. I sprinted along this path, found your heel marks on that trail. I was the first one to arrive. You lay on your side. It was freezing. You were in that dress with no sleeves. I had on just that tuxedo shirt and was so cold, yet you looked comfortable, content. I was afraid to touch you, but I did. You were like ice. I cried so hard.” He looked down, between his knees. “I was sure you were dead.” His fingers traced his lips. “So cold. I heard people approaching on the path, so I took that crown. I wanted one thing to remember you. A goodbye, I guess.”

“You have the crown?”

“Had. After you lived, after that first time I visited you at your house. Remember?”

She nodded.

“I had it in my coat pocket. I walked back on the path and came out here. I threw it there.” He gestured toward the river with his chin.