The One Thing (32 page)

For several heartbeats, there was no sound but the hum of the air-conditioning. Then I heard Mom’s voice, barely even a shocked whisper: “How do you know about that?”

“God, Mom, does it really matter?” I said, slapping the tears away from my cheeks. I groped for the wall to steady myself as I yanked off my flip-flops, one at a time, throwing them
on the floor. Then I spun on one heel and stalked toward the stairs.

Dad bellowed in protest and my mother snatched my arm. I could sense her outrage filling the room clear to the ceiling. “You are not leaving this room, young lady,” she snapped, and
I could tell by her tone that I’d gone too far, that I’d tripped over some invisible line, and now she was furious. Sternly, with terse enunciation, she said, “In fact, you are
not leaving this house at all—not tomorrow, not the next day, and not the day after that.”

I twisted my arm free. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re
grounding
me because I was at the hospital today with a dying
ten-year-old?” I laughed without humor. “This is great. You two have finally found something I don’t want to lose, something you can take away from me.”

“Oh, come off it,” Dad scoffed.

I whirled toward him. “No, I won’t
come off it
. It’s true and you know it. Until now, you’ve had nothing to ground me from.”

“As parents,” my mother cut in, her voice still sharp, “our job is to protect you from yourself. And that is what we are doing. You need to work on yourself. You need to start
moving on with
your
life. You need to deal with your own problems instead of obsessing over a sick child.”

I barked a derisive laugh. “
You’re
preaching to me about moving on?” I threw my hands up in the air like I was giving up, and in a certain way, I was. And maybe they
were as well, because they said nothing to me as I stomped up the stairs and slammed the door to my room.

When I climbed into bed that night I felt dirty, like I’d committed several unspeakable crimes. All I wanted to do was crawl into the shower and scrub myself until my skin was raw, to wash
the memories and the hurt and the damage off my body. But I was too exhausted to stand, too exhausted to move, really, so instead I fell into bed, tumbling into a deep, empty sleep—the sort
of sleep you have when you need protection from your own thoughts. When I woke the next morning I found myself dressed and sitting in a full bathtub. Apparently, I’d taken up sleepwalking
again.

I toweled off and padded downstairs to the laundry room. Leaning against the dryer as my water-heavy clothes flopped around inside it, I debated whether I should go back to bed. I wasn’t
going back to sleep, so what was the use? I felt as though I’d arrived at a dentist appointment two hours early and I had nothing to do but plant my ass in one of their uncomfortable,
fake-leather chairs and wait for my root canal.

I slipped into my room before my parents got up. I didn’t want to run into them, and I didn’t want to listen to their voices, and I didn’t want to think about the things
I’d said to them.

I spent the next three days either in my room or in the basement, avoiding my parents, playing my song again and again until my fingers were chafed and sore, and sagging over my cell phone as I
waited for Mason to call with updates on Ben.

The first day: Ben’s doctor amputated his leg.

The second day: Ben spiked a fever.

The third day: they were still awaiting the lab results to learn how far Ben’s cancer had spread.

The fourth day: Ben was getting transferred to another hospital.

“Why is he getting transferred?” I asked Mason when he told me, jerking ramrod straight on the edge of my bed.

“I’m not really sure,” Mason said, and I heard his car door slam. “I’m walking in there now, so if I cut out just know that the reception sucks here.” He
sighed heavily, not speaking for several long moments. I could hear his boots clunking down a tile floor. “He seems in such terrible shape to be transferred right now. I mean, he’s so
weak and sick, barely hanging on, and now they’ve put him—”

The line crackled.

“Mason? Are you there?”

Nothing.

He’d lost reception.

My hand shook as I hit the END button on my phone. All I could think about were the last words he’d said. Ben was in terrible shape. He was weak. Sick. Barely hanging on.

And it was my fault.

I collapsed on my bed, curling up in a tight ball and letting the guilt come. Weeks of it, hurricanes of it, slammed against me in staggering waves of nausea and remorse and shame. Fact was,
I’d known all along that something was off, known there was a reason I was seeing Ben, and I hadn’t bothered to find out what it was.

I hadn’t even
tried
.

It was the same thing I’d done with my friendships, the same thing I’d done with my piano lessons, the same thing I’d done with practically everything I’d struggled with
in life. It was half-assed and it was lazy, and the realization of it pinned me to the bed until I could hardly breathe.

All I could see was Ben, his skin pallid and plastic-looking, asking just one question:
Wasn’t I worth the effort?

Choking for air, I staggered upright and across the room. With shaking hands I grappled with the screen and shoved it outside, letting it tumble to the ground. Then I thrust my head out and
gulped in the air. The evening was cool and breezy. Somewhere up there were billions of stars, whirling in a celestial merry-go-round. Maybe if I could see them right now I wouldn’t feel so
forgotten, so alone. I shut my eyes, trying to replicate the feeling of absolute belonging I’d had at the beach when I’d seen the stars, but I knew I couldn’t. Perfect moments
like that couldn’t be duplicated. They could only be remembered. I sat down hard on the windowsill as my breathing slowed.

I needed a friend.

Sliding my phone from my pocket, I did the one thing I hadn’t done since I lost my sight: I reached out for help.

B
en was fighting for his life, I’d been avoiding my parents for days on end, I’d gotten about fifteen hours of sleep over the course of
a week, and yet here I was with Clarissa at my kitchen counter, in front of a couple dozen cupcakes. Just beyond these walls, the sky was dark and churning, gaining the strength of a category-five
hurricane, but right now I was safeguarded by frosting and butter and chocolate.

I’d never called Clarissa for anything other than to discuss schoolwork or the Loose Cannons, and it had felt strange doing it today. I’d nearly hung up when her line had started
ringing. But then I’d realized: backing away from the uncomfortable, the difficult, was the exact reason my life was such a catastrophe. So I’d taken a deep breath and invited her
over.

“Absolutely,” she’d bellowed into the receiver. “I’m totally free. Cupcakes! I’ll bring cupcakes for brain food.” She paused for a moment. “Um.
We’re finishing up our research paper, right?”

“Nah. Not really. I mean, only as far as my parents are concerned, seeing that I’m grounded.”

“Yuh-oh,” she breathed. “What happened?”

It had felt right, telling Clarissa. I’d let it tumble out of me in a knotty, trembling mess. Not all of it. God, not all of it. If I’d told her I could see the dying, she’d
likely think I’d gone straightjacket. I’d told her only the parts that mattered: Ben’s illness, my crappy relationship with my parents, my wrecked friendships.

And now, a sea of cupcakes in front of me, I was surprised to discover that I felt slightly better, that I’d talked my way into a place where I could breathe again. I could almost ignore
the sharp, insistent poke of my phone in my back pocket, awaiting Mason’s update.

Almost.

All the same, Clarissa was doing a pretty good job sidetracking me. “Here, try this,” Clarissa said through a full mouth, stuffing a cupcake in my hand. “Turtle brownie with
cheesecake buttercream: the wind beneath the wings of many a grounded girl.”

“Clarissa,” I said, running my hand around the side of the cupcake, “did you take a bite out of this before you gave it to me?”

“They say that the first bite is the best,” Clarissa said by means of answering. “That you get ninety-nine-point-something percent of your enjoyment out of that one mouthful,
and then everything after that is just
eating
, not
enjoying
. I know, right? It’s so true!” Her palms slapped down on the counter. “And so: yes. I will take a
bite out of every cupcake on this table, and then I will pass them along to you. I will spend this entire time savoring, while you...”

“Eat your leftovers,” I finished.

She snorted and bumped me with her shoulder. “But you have to admit: best leftovers
ever
.”

I laughed. She had me there.

We ate in silence for a minute or two. There was something peaceful about it, that silence—just the two of us hunkering down in a sea of sugar, an uncertain world swirling outside.

Clarissa handed me another one-bite cupcake. “So,” she said. “Mason Milton, huh?”

The proverbial record scratched.

I cleared my throat, working to keep my voice even. “Yeah. I mean, like I said—he’s Ben’s brother. So, yeah.” I shoved nearly the entire cupcake in my mouth so I
didn’t have to say anything else.

“Hum,” she said after a tick or two, and I squirmed like someone had just dropped a pinecone down the back of my shorts. “By the way you talk about Mason, I can tell you really
like him.”

I swallowed, opened my mouth to lie to her, but then stopped. “Yeah. I do,” I said, surprising myself a little. This was the first time I’d admitted it out loud, and the relief
was immediate, a heaviness tumbling off my chest.

“Maybe you need to step up your game?” Clarissa said.

I snorted, swiped my index finger across the top of a cupcake, and tried the frosting. “He has a girlfriend,” I said around my finger.

A model.

From New York City.

Whom I despised out of principle.

“All the more reason,” Clarissa chirped. “Let him know he’s wasting his time with that harlot.”

I barked out a laugh. I was really starting to like this girl. “Maybe I will,” I said. “What about you? Any luck with Iced Coffee Guy?”

She paused for a moment and then said, “Well, I talked to him. Like, for real talked to him.”

“And?”

Her voice overly loud and forced-chipper, she said, “Turns out that he’s twenty-nine. And married.”

“Oh God.”

She cleared her throat. “Yeah. It’s...yeah. I mean, it’s totally fine. It isn’t the first time I made a crap decision based on erroneal information.”

I smirked. “Erroneous. Erroneous information.”

“Right. That’s what I said, isn’t it? Anyway. It’s just...It would be so much easier sometimes if I could see, you know? Even a little bit. Or maybe...” She sucked
in a breath and let it out loudly. “Maybe see everything, just once, so I could always remember how beautiful it is. So I could understand
what
it is. You know what I
mean?”

All this time I’d thought life had been easier for her. But the truth was, she’d never see a color or a tree or even her own face. And yet, she was still happy. Borderline crazy,
yes, but happy. “Yeah,” I whispered. “I do know what you mean. You want your one bite of the cupcake.”

She sighed. “Exactly.”

Just then, my phone vibrated sharply in my back pocket, rattling against the stool like automatic gunfire.

“Maggie,” Clarissa said, “is that your phone?”

I swallowed. “Yeah,” I said, pulling it out of my pocket. It shook in my palm, insistent.

“Um. Aren’t you going to answer it?”

Realizing I’d been holding my breath, I exhaled. “Right. Of course.” I fumbled for the TALK button and squawked a hello.

A female voice, unfamiliar and detached: “Is this Maggie Sanders?”

Dread pooled in my chest, black and thick and endless. “Yes?” I breathed.

“This is Saint Jude’s, calling on behalf of the Milton family. They need you here immediately.”

M
y entire world caught in my throat.

“Is...is something wrong?” I whispered through unmoving lips.