Chasing Orion (23 page)

“So why does Phyllis call you Saint Georgie?” Evelyn asked.

It was when she asked me this question at recess the next day that I suddenly knew why I had been crying the night before. I wasn’t Saint Georgie. I didn’t even want to be Saint Georgie. The whole thing was a stupid idea. I couldn’t save anybody, and I didn’t know what I was trying to save anybody from. But I knew that Emmett needed help.

We were out on the playground, and it had begun to snow. A mean snow. Flurries whipped by the wind like tiny slivers of glass that pricked your face. The Mustard Seeds were still jumping away, and Evelyn and I wandered over to the anthill. I hadn’t told Evelyn about my fears, about how Phyllis had this strange hold on Emmett, but I decided right then to begin to tell her a little. Her question had sort of opened things up. “Uh . . . uh, I’m not sure why she calls me that. Just, you know, my name being Georgie and all.” But since she had brought this up, I decided to ask her the question.

“Listen, last night when we were there and Emmett said that thing about ‘nothing is too wonderful to be true’ and Phyllis answered him, did you hear her say ‘death’ or ‘breath’?”

Evelyn shut her eyes in a long owlish blink. “I’m not sure. Why?”

“I think I heard her say ‘death.’” I just blurted it out. It seemed like such a relief.

“Really? You think she wants to die?”

“What?” I had heard her, but I really wanted Evelyn to say it again. This was the first time I had really gotten close to telling anyone my fears.

“I said, do you think she wants to die?”

“I’m not sure. But Evelyn, I’ve got to tell you something.”

“What?” She seemed to sense my fear.

“I’m really scared. Scared for Emmett.” I hesitated a moment before asking the next question. “Would you want to die if you were in one of those things?”

Evelyn took a long time answering. “I think so.”

Just at that moment, Amy Moncton walked up to us. “What are you two always doing over here?”

Evelyn and I looked at each other. Playing with an anthill? What would the Mustard Seeds think of that? “Just talking,” Evelyn replied.

“Just talking . . . hmmm.”

“You have a problem with that?” It was not the nicest thing to say, and I really don’t know why I came back at her like that.

“No, just wondering,” Amy said. Another Mustard Seed came up. “They’re just talking.” Amy’s voice was seared with contempt.

“What about?” Patty Wertheimer asked. Evelyn and I called her the Heimer.

“Death,” Evelyn said flatly, and continued poking at the anthill.

“Ewww!” Their faces curdled in disgust.

“You guys are so weird!” Amy said, and both girls began giggling and raced off hand in hand.

The very next evening, I went over to Phyllis’s to ask Emmett for help with my math homework. But I was still haunted by the two words
breath
or
death.

“You know more about the machine, Emmett, than my dad does,” Phyllis was saying as I came in. “Hi, Georgie. I was just saying that Emmett knows more about the iron lung than my dad. I think it’s good that you know all this stuff about the machine,” she continued.

“But I don’t want your dad to, you know, feel . . . uh . . . uh . . .” Emmett replied.

“Topped?” Phyllis said. “Topped by a high-school senior.”

“Naw, I didn’t mean that exactly.”

“Listen, I’m the one who told Dad to show you.”

“You told your dad to show me?” Emmett asked.

“Yes, right after the second time you came over. I said, ‘Dad, show him how it all works, the alarm and all.’”

I must have looked weird or something, because Emmett all of a sudden asked me what was wrong.

“Nothing,” I said, then turned in the mirror to Phyllis’s reflection. “Why did you ask your dad to show Emmett all that stuff?”

“You’ve got to know what to do if there’s a short circuit. He’s way smarter than any of the nurses around here. I just knew he was the one the minute he walked in here.”

He was the one!
One what?
I almost screamed. “Listen, I’ve got to go.” I forgot all about my homework question.

“What are you rushing off for?” Phyllis asked.

“Nothing,” I said, and hurried down the steps. I knew Phyllis was trying to catch me in the mirrors. “You’re rushing off to nothing! That seems kind of dumb.”

She just knew he was the one! Dammit. What did she mean by that? The one what? Was I going crazy? Crazy scared? I didn’t want to think this way. Not about Phyllis.

That night in my sleep, I saw a face. It wasn’t exactly Phyllis. The face was furry, and across the forehead there were eight shiny beads, so shiny that they reflected Emmett’s face and mine, too.

“Come closer.” It was a low, hoarse voice, but I knew it was Phyllis’s. Emmett started to move, crawling up the trembling silver threads of a web. They jiggled, and he nearly lost his balance. “You won’t fall. Come on, Georgie, you too.” She was calling to me now. “Remember, the threads are sticky. Come closer.” And I began to creep forward on the threads. With each dreadful step, I drew closer to this thing that I knew was Phyllis but not Phyllis.

“Why have the mirrors turned all black and shiny?” I asked.

“Those aren’t mirrors, silly girl. They are my eyes. The mirrors are shattered.”

I looked down at that moment and saw the razor-sharp shards beneath me, like a carpet of daggers, and then I felt myself falling and Emmett falling, too.

“You’re ruining everything, Georgie! Saint Georgie!” But the voice was not recognizable. It was a long sizzling hiss, and as I was falling, I saw legs — eight of them, but it was not a spider at all. It was a scorpion.

And in my sleep I felt a sting, a sting in my heel.

“Wake up! Wake up, Emmett!”

I went running into his room.

“What are you doing here?” He yawned. “Georgie, it’s two thirty in the morning!”

“Emmett, there’s something not right about Phyllis.”

“What are you talking about? Of course there isn’t something right about her. She’s got polio. She’s in an iron lung. She can’t breathe.”

“But she didn’t say ‘breath,’ Emmett. I think she said ‘death.’”

Emmett narrowed his eyes. “What are you talking about — breath, death? Are you going crazy?”

I looked at him, searching his face. Had he forgotten about that thing he said, and then that she said? Nothing is too wonderful to be true? Or
was
I going crazy?

“I don’t know. I — I — I j-j-j-just.” Emmett put his hand on top of mine. The jittering letter sounds stilled inside me. “I had a bad dream, that’s all.”

“Do you want to tell me about it? Sometimes that helps.” I could see Emmett looking really concerned about me.

“It was about a spider and its eyes were like mirrors and somehow it reminded me of Phyllis and I was thinking maybe, maybe she was w-w-w . . . w-w-w-w . . .” Emmett patted my hand softly. “Wanting . . . to . . . die . . . or something like that.”

“She doesn’t want to die, Georgie. If anything, she wants to live more than ever.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“But why?”

“She loves me, Georgie.” He didn’t blush when he said this. “And someday in the near future I think they are going to figure out how a person like Phyllis can come out of an iron lung and live. There’s medical technology out there. It can be done. I know it. This is a problem, a technological problem, and it can be solved.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely. They’re really closing in on it. And after that it will be a man in space and after that a man on the moon. It’s going to happen by the 1960s.”

Getting a girl out of an iron lung didn’t sound as hard as getting a man on the moon. “But still, Emmett, it’s just 1952. It could take maybe ten years. You’ll be so old.”

“Not that old, and I’ll wait. I’ll do anything for Phyllis.”

“Really?” But I said the word so softly that Emmett didn’t even hear it.

“What?” He leaned forward.

“Nothing, just nothing.”

I went back to my room. When I saw the little poodle lipstick holder she had given me, I took it, went downstairs, and put it in the trash can in the garage — the one with all the disgusting garbage so I wouldn’t be tempted to go get it again. Then I came upstairs and took out my diary. I unlocked it, and pressing so hard with my pencil that the tip broke, I scrawled,
Even though I might be crazy, I STILL DON’T BELIEVE IN GOD.

And then probably because I was halfway to being certifiably insane, I went downstairs and got the poodle lipstick holder from the disgusting garbage. I guess you could say I was hedging my bets. If I kept the lipstick holder, maybe nothing bad would happen to Phyllis, to Emmett, or, I guess, to me.

Emmett started talking a lot about new medical technology that could help people like Phyllis. “But she has to build up her lungs so she’ll be ready,” he said one night at dinner.

“How does she do that?” Dad asked.

“By weaning — longer and longer periods of time.”

“But didn’t you say she had a seizure the last time?” Mom asked.

“You know, this is the funny thing,” Emmett said almost casually. Funny? What could be funny about having a seizure? “She doesn’t even know she has them.” I was shocked. I remembered Emmett coming back through the yard terrified after the weaning. But I also remember Phyllis saying that it didn’t hurt, that it felt good in a way. A beautiful place!

Mom set down her water glass. She looked shocked, too. I was glad. Maybe I wasn’t as crazy as I thought. “I don’t think this is a case where ignorance is bliss. Couldn’t she really do worse damage to herself?” Emmett got all huffy and told us it was none of our business.

He was probably right; it wasn’t. But it didn’t seem right that I, the youngest person at the table, was the only one to sense something wrong here, very wrong. Was Emmett putting too much faith in science? That would have been so like him. Was I the only person thinking this? Was I the only person really fearful for Emmett? I mean, I was younger and I was not nearly as smart as Emmett, but it was almost as if I were the single person in possession of a dangerous piece of information, even if I did not know precisely what that information was. I was eleven years old. What could I do? What was I supposed to do? I had tried to talk to Emmett once on the night when I had the bad dream.
Death? Breath?
The two words continued to haunt me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I could hardly think of those two words without going to pieces. So I had vowed never to go back. But now I didn’t have a choice. I had to go back because my parents didn’t want me home alone. Still I fought it.

“Georgie, you have to go over there. I don’t care if you don’t want to.” My mom said this in her most firm, no-arguing-with-her voice.

“Mom, I still don’t understand why I can’t stay here by myself,” I argued.

“Because there have been two robberies in this neighborhood and I don’t want you staying alone when Dad and I go out.”

“See? That’s what we get for moving into a fancy neighborhood.”