Summer Days and Summer Nights (29 page)

I kept my brain waves clean of emotional turmoil—the muck of my mother not coming downstairs for breakfast that one morning when I was five, the empty space in the driveway where her car had been. I kept secret the chaos of my heart and guts. I was only interested in showing the mechanics of my mind, like the gears in a clock.

When I finished, the class greeted me with scattered applause. Unenthused, but that wasn't surprising. They never liked anything I did. One of the girls raised her hand and asked our teacher, “Um … Mr. Gregory? Does that even count as art? I mean, she just showed us her brain.”

“It counts as performance art, Jessa,” Mr. Gregory said, taking off his glasses. “Think about what you just said—she
showed us
her
brain
. An act of vulnerability. That is incredibly rare, in life and in art. Art is, above all things, both vulnerable and brave.”

He gave me a wink. Mr. Gregory was part of the peace of this room. He always seemed to understand what I was getting at, even if I couldn't quite get myself there.

“Why are we here?” I said to Visitation Matthew, frowning. “We didn't even
know
each other yet.”

Matt was sitting near the back of the class, on the side, his head bent over a notebook. He smiled at me within the visitation. Dimpled cheek, crinkled eyes, a flash of white teeth.

“This is where our story started,” he said. “You were so … I mean, their opinions were completely irrelevant to you. It's like while everyone else was listening to one song, you were listening to another. And God, I loved that. I wanted it for myself.”

It made me feel strange—weightless in places, like I was turning into tissue paper and butterfly wings.

“You think I didn't care what they thought of me?” I shook my head. I couldn't let him believe a lie about me, not now. “Of course I cared. I still can't think about it without blushing.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “But I went to that party sophomore year because I found out you were going and … I wanted to get to know you. I loved this project. I loved everything you did in art class. I felt like you had showed yourself to me, and I wanted to return the favor.”

My cheeks felt a little warm. “You never said.”

“Well, you've said before that talking about old projects embarrasses you,” he said, shrugging. “So I never wanted to bring it up.”

“
This
is what I was worried about, you know,” I said, softly. “About the medication. That it would mean I couldn't do this—art—anymore. I mean, feeling things—feeling intense things, sometimes—is part of what drives me to make things.”

“You think you can't feel better and do great work at the same time?”

“I don't know.” I chewed on my lip. “I'm used to being this way. Volatile. Like a walking ball of nerves. I'm worried that if I get rid of the highs, and even the lows—
especially
the lows—there won't be anything about me that's interesting anymore.”

“Claire.” He stood, weaving through the chairs, and crouched in front of me, putting his hands on my knees. “That nerve ball isn't you. It's just this thing that lives in your head, telling you lies. If you get rid of it … think of what you could do. Think of what you could be.”

“But what if … what if I go on medication and it makes me into this flat, dull person?” I said, choking a little.

“It's not supposed to do that. But if it does, you'll try something else.” His hands squeezed my knees. “And can you really tell me ‘flat' is that much different from how you feel now?”

I didn't say anything. Most of the time I was so close to falling into the darkest, emptiest place inside me that I tried to feel nothing at all. So the only difference between this and some kind of flat, medicated state was that I knew I
could
still go there if I needed to, even if I wouldn't. And that place, I had told myself, was where the real me was. Where the art was, too.

But maybe—maybe it
wasn't
where it was. I was so convinced that changing my brain would take away my art, but maybe it would give me new art. Maybe without the monster in my mind, I could actually do more, not less. It was probably equally likely. But I believed more in my possible doom than in my possible healing.

“It's okay to want to feel better.” He touched my hand.

I didn't know why—they were such simple words, but they pierced me the way music did, these days. Like a needle in my sternum, penetrating to my heart. I didn't bother to blink away my tears. Instead of pulling myself away from them, away from sensation entirely, I let myself sink into it. I let the pain in.

“But how can I feel better now?” I covered my eyes. “How can I
ever
 … ever feel better if you die?”

I was sobbing the way he had sobbed in the car with me, holding onto his hands, which were still on top of my legs. He slipped his fingers between mine and squeezed.

“Because,” he said. “You just have to.”

“Who says?” I demanded, scowling at him. “Who says I have to feel anything?”

“I do. I chose you for one of my Last Visitors because … I wanted one last chance to tell you that you're worth so much more than your pain.” He ran his fingers over my bent knuckles. “You can carry all these memories around. They'll last longer than your grief, I promise, and someday you'll be able to think of them and feel like I'm right there with you again.”

“You might not be correctly estimating my capacity for grief,” I said, laughing through a sob. “Pro-level moper right here.”

“Some people might leave you,” he said, for once ignoring a joke in favor of something real. “But it doesn't mean you're worth leaving. It doesn't mean that at all.”

I didn't quite believe him. But I almost did.

“Don't go,” I whispered.

*   *   *

After that, I carried him back to the ocean, the ripples reflecting the moon, where we had treaded water after jumping off the cliff. The water had filled my shoes, which were now heavy on my feet, making it harder to stay afloat.

“You have makeup all over your face,” he said, laughing a little. “You look like you got punched in both eyes.”

“Yeah, well, your nipples are totally showing through that shirt.”

“Claire Lowell, are you checking out my nipples?”

“Always.”

We laughed together, the laughs echoing over the water. Then I dove at him, not to dunk him—though he flinched like that's what he expected—but to wrap my arms around his neck. He clutched at me, holding me, arms looped around my back, fingers tight in the bend of my waist.

“I'll miss you,” I said, looking down at him. Pressed against him like this, I was paper again, eggshell and sugar glass and autumn leaf. How had I not noticed this feeling the first time through?

It was the most powerful thing I had felt in days, weeks, months.

“It was a good story, right?” he said. “Our story, I mean.”

“The best.”

He pressed a kiss to my jaw, and with his cheek still against mine he whispered, “You know I love you, right?”

And then he stopped treading water, pulling us down into the waves together.

*   *   *

When I woke in the hospital room, an unfamiliar nurse took the IV needle from my arm and pressed a strip of tape to a cotton ball in the crook of my elbow. Dr. Albertson came in to make sure I had come out of the procedure with my faculties intact. I stared at her blue fingernails to steady myself as she talked, as I talked, another dance.

The second she said I could go, I did, leaving my useless sweatshirt behind, like Cinderella with her glass slipper. And maybe, I thought, she hadn't left it so the prince would find her … but because she was in such a hurry to escape the pain of never getting what she wanted that she didn't care what she lost in the process.

It was almost sunrise when I escaped the hospital, out of a side exit so I wouldn't run into any of Matt's family. I couldn't stand the thought of going home, so instead I drove to the beach and parked in the parking lot where I had once brought Matt to see the storm. This time, though, I was alone, and I had that strange, breathless feeling in my chest, like I was about to pass out.

My mind had a refrain for moments like these.
Feel nothing,
it said.
Feel nothing and it will be easier that way.

Burrow down,
it said,
and cover yourself in earth. Curl into yourself to stay warm,
it said,
and pretend the rest of the world is not moving. Pretend you are alone, underground, where pain can't reach you.

Sightless eyes staring into the dark. Heartbeat slowing. A living corpse is better than a dying heart.

The problem with that refrain was that once I had burrowed, I often couldn't find my way out, except on the edge of a razor, which reached into my numbness and brought back sensation.

But it struck me, as I listened to the waves, that I didn't want to feel nothing for Matt. Not even for a little while. He had earned my grief, at least, if that was the only thing I had left to give him.

I stretched out a shaky hand for my car's volume buttons, jabbing at the plus sign until music poured out of the speakers. The right album was cued up, of course, the handbells and electric guitar jarring compared to the soft roar of the ocean.

I rested my head on the steering wheel and listened to “Traditional Panic” as the sun rose.

*   *   *

My cell phone woke me, the ring startling me from sleep. I had fallen asleep sitting up in my car with my head on the steering wheel. The sun was high now, and I was soaked with sweat from the building heat of the day. I glanced at my reflection in the rearview mirror as I answered, and the stitching from the wheel was pressed deep into my forehead. I rubbed it to get rid of the mark.

“What is it, Mom?” I said.

“Are you still at the hospital?”

“No, I fell asleep in the parking lot by the beach.”

“Is that sarcasm? I can't tell over the phone.”

“No, I'm serious. What's going on?”

“I'm calling to tell you they finished the surgery,” she said. “Matt made it through. They're still not sure that he'll wake up, but it's a good first step.”

“He … what?” I said, squinting into the bright flash of the sun on the ocean. “But the analytics…”

“Statistics aren't everything, sweetie. In ‘ten to one,' there's always a ‘one,' and this time, we got him.”

It's a strange thing to be smiling so hard it hurts your face, and sobbing at the same time.

“Are you okay?” Mom said. “You went quiet.”

“No,” I said. “Not really, no.”

*   *   *

No one ever told me how small antidepressants were, so it was kind of a shock when I tipped them into my palm for the first time. How was I afraid of such a tiny thing, such a pretty, pale green color? How was I more afraid of that little pill than I was of the sobbing fit that took me to my knees in the shower?

But in his way, he had asked me to try.
Just try.

And he loved me. Maybe he just meant he loved me like a friend, or a brother, or maybe he meant something else. There was no way for me to know. What I did know was that love was a tiny firefly in the distance, blinking on right when I needed it to. Even in his forced sleep, his body broken by the accident and mended by surgery after surgery, he spoke to me.

Just try.

So I did, as we all waited to see if he would ever wake up. I tried just enough to get the chemicals into my mouth. I tried just enough to drive myself to the doctor every week, to force myself not to lie when she asked me how I felt. To eat meals and take showers and endure summer school. To wake myself up after eight hours of sleep instead of letting sleep swallow me for the entire summer.

When I spoke to the doctor about the Last Visitation, all I could talk about was regret. The Visitation had showed me things I had never noticed before, even though they seemed obvious, looking back. There were things I should have told him in case he didn't wake up. All I could do now was hope that he already knew them.

*   *   *

But he did wake up.

He woke up during the last week of summer, when it was so humid that I changed shirts twice a day just to stay dry. The sun had given me a freckled nose and a perpetual squint. Senior year started next week, but for me, it didn't mean anything without him.

When Matt's mom said it was okay for me to visit, I packed my art box into my car and drove back to the hospital. I parked by the letter
F
, like I always did, so I could remember later.
F
was for my favorite swear.

I carried the box into the building and registered at the front desk, like I was supposed to. The bored woman there printed out an ID sticker for me without even looking up. I stuck it to my shirt, which I had made myself, dripping bleach all over it so it turned reddish orange in places. It was my second attempt. In the first one, I had accidentally bleached the areas right over my breasts, which wasn't a good look.

I walked slowly to Matt's room, trying to steady myself with deep breaths. His mother had given me the number at least four times, as well as two sets of directions that didn't make sense together. I asked at the nurses' station, and she pointed me to the last room on the left.

Dr. Albertson was standing outside one of the other rooms, flipping through a chart. She glanced at me without recognition. She probably met so many people during Last Visitations that they ran together in her mind. When she turned away, I caught sight of her nails, no longer sky blue but an electric, poison green. Almost the same color that was chipping off my thumbnail.