100 Days (29 page)

“Love you too, Mom.” We say it in unison, just like we've done since my first sleepover here in fifth grade. Back then, this room was decked out in tie-dye.

Mrs. Watkins peers at me in the dark and puts the back of her hand to my forehead. “Do you feel okay, honey?”

I nod. True, I have a little bit of a scratchy throat, probably from inhaling that reservoir water. I'm definitely not going to mention it now that everyone has finally calmed down.

“Well, don't be alarmed if I come check on you in the middle of the night, okay?”

I nod again, or try to, at least. The truth of the matter is, my head is so heavy and I'm so tired that I can't … even …

*   *   *

I wake from the strangest dream, but then realize I'm still having it, that the dream's tentacles are still wrapped around me even though I'm no longer asleep. In the dream, a large, long-haired white cat is sitting on my chest, heavy and warm, watching me with half-closed eyes. The cat is purring an uneven
thumpity-thump
type of purr. I know it's a dream from this fact alone, because Moira has never owned a cat—her mom and dad are both allergic. I want to say something, but lying in the dark of Moira's room I find myself without the ability to speak. My voice is simply gone. I try to lift my hand, but it's as if my limbs turned to lead while I slept. I'm like somebody trapped in a spell, a zoned-out princess in a high tower.

*   *   *

I don't know how long it is before I hear the next voice. It's gentle, but with a note of panic woven through. “You're going to be okay,” Moira's mom says from above me. Somehow, I am in motion. I am being carried. I open my eyes and look up as her voice starts to fade away. She glances worriedly down at me, her hair like a curtain framing her face. “Your mom's going to meet us at the hospital.”

 

94

MOIRA

DAY 7: JUNE 18

“I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry!” Those were the only words I could say when I saw Deb running down the hospital corridor toward me, toward the temporary room they'd wheeled Agnes into. “It's all my fault. I'm so sorry.”

There's no way Deb could have been prepared for what she saw, for how small and pale—almost translucent—her daughter looked lying there in the hospital bed. It was like Agnes was hardly there at all, but where had she gone? How could she have started to disappear so quickly? It was only hours ago that we'd …

“It's not your fault,” Deb told me without taking her eyes off Agnes. “It's nobody's fault.”

Now, only twenty-four hours later, Agnes is firmly encased in the coma-like state that she kept slipping into and out of yesterday. She's hooked up to more tubes and machines than I can keep track of, and her doctor told us it doesn't look good at all. Out in the waiting area, Boone and Agnes's dad are pacing around, drinking too much coffee. A few hours ago, Mr. Delaney came in, and Deb and I left so he could be alone with Agnes. Now we're back, sitting in a huddle next to the bed, propping each other up with our eyes closed.

 

95

BOONE

DAY 6: JUNE 19

Father's Day.

Mom is in her room when I'm about to leave for the hospital. I knock softly on her door. Yesterday I hung around the Intensive Care waiting area in case Deb or Moira needed anything, and I've called in sick to the Feed & Seed so I can go back there today. First, though, I just need to talk to somebody. I need to get my head screwed on straighter if I'm going to be of use to anyone else. It was too much of a shift, from utter bliss at the reservoir Thursday night to the way my gut felt like it dropped through the earth when I found out Agnes was admitted to the ICU on Friday. Life doesn't seem quite real. I knock again.

“There's a piece missing,” my mother finally responds. Her voice is distant and timid on the other side of the door.

“What? Mom, are you okay?”

“From that puzzle you brought me last week. The optical illusions one.” She sounds bereft.

“I'm sorry,” I tell her, trying to keep my voice as steady and encouraging as possible. “I'll get you another puzzle.”

“I want to finish that one.”

Now I can feel the mercury rising. It's clear my mother can't handle any more stress today. She's already dealing with the life-altering trauma of a misplaced piece of cardboard, for God's sake.
Why are you acting like such a child?
I suddenly want to yell at her.
Why the hell are you so weak?
Of course, I don't say either of those things.

I'm full to bursting with exhaustion and helplessness. I can feel it starting to leak out through my pores, like I might start weeping at the smallest thing, howling for somebody to wrap me in a warm blanket and tell me everything's going to be okay. To top it all off, my father's disapproval scrolls across the backs of my eyelids, which are clenched shut.
Damnit
, why can't I stop thinking about that bastard, especially now? I'm needed at the hospital, and I'm going to be wrecked enough without fighting off the memory of that last day, when he barked at me as he changed the tire.

“Mother of Christ,” my father hissed after pulling the tire off the hub. I stood a few paces behind him on a mound of dead pine needles and sticks, chewing at a hangnail and trying to just shut up and stay out of the way. Something under the chassis had caught his attention. I never found out what it was. When our neighbor, old man Wallace, came out to the spot a few days later to help us get the truck home, he said there was nothing amiss with the axles or the transmission or anything. Still, my father wiggled his body under there so that only his belly and legs were sticking out from underneath the running board. I wondered what he'd found, but there was no way I was going to ask. Hopefully, it wasn't something that would keep us out in the woods all night. Mom would worry.

The creaking groan that came just before the truck rolled off the jack sounded like an old dungeon door closing. It's the same sound I hear in my nightmares to this day. Without warning, our trusty ship filled with wood was starting to roll down the hill as I stood there, helpless. Useless. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. I reached my arms out as if to stop the truck or to yank my father out from under it, but my feet were attached to the forest floor as if they'd sprouted deep, sudden roots. The Chevy lurched upward as the wheel hub plowed across my father's chest, instantly crushing his rib cage. Then it rolled another twenty yards or so before colliding with an enormous pine, the hood folding like a fortune cookie around the tree's trunk.

 

96

MOIRA

DAY 5: JUNE 20

Please let her live.

I'll do it all over again if I have to. I'll protect her better this time.

People can call me the worst names they can think of. They can throw food at me. Forks and knives, even. I don't care. I won't resist.

I'll even smile when they do it.

 

97

BOONE

DAY 4: JUNE 21

It's been four days since Agnes was admitted to the ICU, and everything is madness. If I started giggling right now, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to stop. At the hospital, where I spend every waking moment that I'm not here at home, there's talk of minimal brain activity, of the machines that are breathing for her, of arrangements that must be made.

Agnes's dad paces in the hall while Moira and her mom and Deb cocoon together in the waiting room and sometimes in the chapel. People go home separately to sleep in shifts. I stay with them as much as I can, but I have to drive back home at least twice a day to take care of things here.

Now Diablo's been fed, the house has been cleaned, and Mom is as nonresponsive as ever. She's damn near as nonresponsive as Agnes. I find myself in the pasture, walking in no particular direction. As the moon's pale light washes over me, another tsunami of dark memories swells and crests overhead. I've held it at bay this long, but there's not enough left of me now to keep it from crashing down.

There was never any hope for my father. The simple, obvious truth was that he never should have jacked up the truck on a hill using subpar equipment, and he should have let me put a rock in front of the tire to keep the truck from rolling. These things were just common sense. I should have taken his damaged brain more seriously. I should have forced him to listen to me somehow. But all those
should
s couldn't do squat to change the situation after the fact.

I recall my father's mouth trying to form words after I uprooted my feet from the earth and scrambled to where he lay in a bed of pine needles. To this day, I wonder what he was trying to say as I stood there, mute, looking down at his ruined body. “I'll go get help,” I finally said, my voice nothing more than a hoarse, cracked whisper. And I ran back through the woods, my stomach roiling, tripping over dead tree limbs, running headfirst through whiplike branches that slashed at my face. More than anything I wished I'd ridden Diablo out to meet my father at the wood-cutting site so I'd be able to kick the horse into a flat-out run now. My father was dying—no, my brain wouldn't allow that thought—but it was maybe true anyway, and here I had to rely on my own inadequate legs, legs that had just come through yet another growth spurt and were, at the time, abnormally long and didn't quite fit with the rest of my body. I kept running, stumbling, and tripping until I reached the back door of our kitchen.

My mother turned from the counter where she'd been spinning salad. “Back already?” she asked. She smiled, but just for a moment, just until she saw the blood from all the cuts on my face running down my neck and drenching the front of my T-shirt.

My mouth was moving like my dad's; no words came out. My whole body shook, and my breath heaved until there was something other than breath there. It was the roiling in my stomach again, rising up and up, uncontrollably up. I tried to move toward the trash can in order to vomit there, but I didn't make it and got sick all over the linoleum floor instead.

Before we left the house Mom screamed into the phone, tried to describe to the paramedics where we were going, how we could be found. Then she was running back through the forest with me. My brain registered the smell of wood smoke in the air as our feet snapped twigs and crunched dead pine needles. Her apron kept getting snagged on branches, but there was no time to stop and take it off. Also, she wasn't wearing proper shoes for the forest. They were little more than thin slippers, really, the flats she was wearing. She cried out at one point but kept going, even though the pinecone she'd landed on had embedded itself in the arch of her foot, and she'd later—in the oily blur of the days ahead—have to get stitches.

Meanwhile, with one clear sliver of my brain, I berated myself. If only I'd tried CPR, tried something other than panicking and running home when I saw my father's mouth opening and closing like the mouth of a hooked fish thrown onto dry land.

But it's pointless to let myself drown in those memories. I need to get cleaned up and head back to the hospital. I'm aware that my face is wet with tears and snot. My throat is dry from sobbing. I've cried so hard and for so long in a sort of wandering daze that my face hurts. I shake the fog from my head and start walking back toward the house.

It's when I'm inside the paddock, latching the gate, that Diablo intercepts me. The gelding's breath forms barely visible plumes of steam in the cool night air as he ambles up to me and exhales gently onto my face.

I step even closer, so that I'm standing right next to his shoulder. Then I wrap my arms around the thickest part of the horse's neck and bury my face in his mane, breathing in the salty-sweet scent. He lets me stand there like that for a long minute before he gets impatient and starts nibbling on my clothes, looking for a treat. I let go of him and walk back to the house, surprising Mom a little when I walk through the door. I no doubt look like hell.

“Boone…” she starts to say. She looks lost.

“It's not okay,” I tell her. “I'm not okay.”

In response, she gives me her classic zombie eyes, her usual Danny's-not-here-Mrs.-Torrance stare, but I'm not having it this time. I don't care if we've both finally gone off the deep end. I won't put up with her refusal to speak or her refusal to be a real live human mother. Especially now when I need her to help keep me sane so I can be a real live human friend to the other people who need me—Agnes and Moira and their mothers.

“Mom. I mean it. I need to talk to someone. If not you, then a shrink, somebody who can help me. And you need it, too.” For the tiniest fraction of a second, my words seem to snap her out of her haze. For the first time in I don't even know how long, it actually feels like she's present, like she's there in the room with me instead of loitering miserably in the atmosphere, just out of reach.

The moment doesn't last long. Drawing back once more into whatever dark, miserable corner of her mind she's been going to ever since my dad died, she stares down at the ground. “I wouldn't even know where to start,” she says in a voice so quiet and broken that I have to strain to hear it.

“Then we'll have to find the starting point together,” I tell her, refusing to let the conversation end there. “We can just think of it like a puzzle. And this piece right here is as good a piece to start with as any. Right? Right, Mom?”

She still won't look at me, and that's when I figure I've lost her. A dull throb starts up at the base of my skull and works its way slowly up the back of my head, settling in my temples. But then my mother does something truly surprising. She steps toward me and puts a hand on my shoulder. How long has it been since she last did something maternal? I don't even dare to let myself think that this might be what hope looks like. Even so, at the touch of her hand, the thing that's been trapped inside of me for way too long breaks free, like a massive boulder from the side of a hill. It doesn't go crashing down, though. It doesn't smash any cars or kill any innocent bystanders when it goes. Instead, it flies up, up, and away, as if it wasn't made of stone at all, but of something even lighter than air.