Don't You Wish (22 page)

“I used to,” I say quickly. “Not so much anymore.”

“I have a violin!” Missy says, her gaze glittering and excited now. “Will you play it?”

“Oh, it’s been forever. I couldn’t remember anything.”

“Even a scale?”

“No, I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t—”

“Oh, come on, Ayla.” Her plea just rips at my heart. “Get my instrument, Charlie. I know she’ll play for me.”

He gives me a warning look, like if I let his sister down, he won’t be happy. Then he pushes up and says, “If I can find it.”

“It’s in my closet,” Missy says. “Top shelf.”

He disappears down the hall without a word, but Missy is still on fire.

“I used to play the violin,” she admits. “I loved it. Before …”

Before whatever happened to put her into a wheelchair. I know my face is registering sympathy, and the question I don’t have the nerve to ask.

What happened?

“Charlie didn’t tell you, I take it.” She might be paralyzed, but her brain is sharp, as is her ability to read people. Either that or I am totally obvious.

“No, he didn’t tell me anything. Just brought me here to meet you.”

“I made him promise he would let me meet you, as soon
as he said you two were getting to be friends.” She smiles sweetly. “He never, ever breaks a promise. That’s his superpower.”

“That’s a good one.”

“Well, that and his IQ, which is respectable, but not as good as mine.”

Then she must be really smart. “So,” I say softly. “Will you tell me what happened?”

“It was a car accident, four years ago. Four years ago in less than a week, on November seventeenth. We were on our way home from my soccer game, which had gotten called on account of lightning. The storm was getting bad, and Mom was in a hurry ’cause she wanted to get home to unplug the computer in case of a power outage.” She works to swallow, closing her eyes like it hurts her. Or, oh, God, maybe she’s going to cry.

“That’s okay, Missy.”

But she continues, and I get the feeling she wants to tell me the whole story. “We were on Old Cutler Road. You know that really winding one down south? We were just turning onto 168th Street, and …” She takes a ragged breath. “Mom always says she wishes she’d just let the computer fry. But anyway, she ran a yellow light making a left, which is totally legal, but some truck driver was barreling through the intersection, and …”

“I’m sorry,” I say, feeling like those have to be the two most useless words in the English language.

“Mom was always scared of left turns, too. Now she won’t even drive anymore, she feels so guilty.”

“Oh, Missy.” I glance down at her body. “Can you …”

“No. I can’t do anything.” She swallows visibly. “But I will. I know I will.”

“I’m sure there’s hope.” But I’m not sure of that at all.

“I know I’ll walk again.” She sounds entirely confident. “Charlie promised. My spine will be fixed.”

A chill tingles my own spine just as Charlie returns and hands me a violin case, a dubious look on his face. “This I gotta see,” he says.

“Me too!” Missy is far more certain that I haven’t lied.

I slowly open the case and take out the instrument. It’s a three-by-four, so a little smaller than the one I played in my other life, probably because Missy last played four years ago. This one hasn’t been touched in a while, I can tell by the little bit of dust gathered on the strings. I take the soft cloth and brush them, and check the rosin on the bow. Someone rosined it in the last few years. Charlie?

I don’t know, but I have to play this thing now, because if I can’t, I know I’m going to let them both down. And I don’t want to. God, I don’t want to. I pick up the neck and stare at it.

It feels strange in my hands. Ayla has never played a violin, I’m willing to bet. She … 
I
 … won’t know the first thing to do or how to hold it.

I might have Annie’s moral compass and soul, but I still have Ayla’s body and fingers. Can I play a violin?

I look at Missy, who smiles expectantly. And then at Charlie, who’s wearing a serious expression.

I’m shaking a little as I lift the instrument and tuck the chin rest under my jaw. It still feels unfamiliar, and my heart is hammering. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten everything,” I admit. “It was … another lifetime when I played.”

“Please,” Missy says. “Try. I’ll tell you what you need to know. Move the bow.”

Taking a breath, I pluck first, and we all make faces at how out of tune it is.

“Tighten the A string,” she suggests.

Which one is that? I take a guess on which key that is at the top. I get it right. And then the next string. And the next. In a minute, I’m tuned, completely on instinct.

I hope that keeps working.

“There,” Missy says happily. “Now play something.”

I raise the bow and hold my breath, shifting my gaze to Charlie. I stare at him and hope he’s not too mad when I can’t do this.

I move the bow, press a string, and play an A.

Missy lets out a soft cry of delight.

The reaction spurs me to play another note. I close my eyes and let myself be Annie for a minute, a shaky bow moving across the strings to play the first few bars of some really dumb French folk song we played in eighth-grade orchestra. It’s all I can dig out of my subconscious.

“Oh, that’s beautiful,” she says.

I open my eyes to see Charlie’s expression. That is probably the way I looked a few minutes ago when I was bowled over with a blast of affection. He looks like he cares for me. Deeply.

He leans closer and puts his hand on my leg, burning me with his touch and his relentless gaze.

“Who
are
you?”

I am Annie Nutter.

And right then, I decide. I’m going to tell Charlie the truth.

I play one more simple piece and by the time I finish, Missy has fallen asleep. Her head slips slightly, and Charlie is up in a flash behind her chair.

“Let me take her back to her room,” he says softly. “The meds usually hit around this time and she gets tired. Especially when there’s good music. Actually, great.”

I feel another blush coming on—why now, after a week of no red face?

“Not great,” I correct him, but actually, it wasn’t horrible, considering Ayla Monroe had never picked up a violin in her life.

Where the heck did
that
ability come from?

By the time Charlie returns, I’ve put the violin away and mentally prepared my speech. I’m scared, I admit to myself.
But I can’t go through this alone any longer, and Charlie—a boy who makes and keeps promises, holds the yearbook and an Ensure can so his sister is able to drink in the nutrients she’s missing, and endures the second level of hell at school—Charlie is the right person to tell.

“I think I’ve figured you out,” he says as he comes back to the living room. “You have a secret life you hide from the kids at school so you’ll stay popular.”

I let out a relieved breath. “You know, you’re not far from the truth.”

“I like it.” He drops down onto the sofa. “Maybe you could teach me how you’ve done it, so I don’t have to get boxed up in the bathroom every few weeks.”

My eyes open wide. “That wasn’t the first time?”

“I used to carry a penknife but got suspended for it, and I didn’t want to screw up my college career. Someone always finds me, but …” He smiles. “Usually a guy.”

I shake my head as the question I asked him in the car resurfaces. “Why don’t you go to a public school? You wouldn’t get treated like that.”

“Can’t. I have to stay at Crap for Missy.”

“I don’t get the connection. Why?”

He looks at me like he’s not even sure where to begin.

“She told me a little about the accident,” I offer, to help him out. “And I know that you guys—well, you and your mom, like you told me—were on the news and that’s how you got your scholarship. But how does Missy fit into Croppe?”

“After the accident, my mom pretty much lost everything trying to take care of Missy. Before that, we lived in an apartment in Cutler Ridge, and my mom taught sixth-grade
science. Then … everything changed in an instant. Insurance covered a lot of it, but still the medical bills wiped us out. We got some help here and there, but eventually we couldn’t stay in the apartment, so we found a few shelters—you have to move after a certain amount of time—that could accommodate Missy’s special bed.” He pauses for a minute, rolling the Coke can in his hands. “I stayed out of school as long as I could before some government agency made me go back. When I did, I won the Miami-Dade County Science Fair, competing against seniors in high school, and I was basically in eighth grade. And I also won state.”

“Wow. No wonder they did a news story.”

“Yeah, and that’s when Croppe got involved.”

“Offering the scholarship.”

He shrugs. “That’s just a little side PR benefit for them, but it’s part of the whole deal.”

“What deal?”

“John J. Croppe isn’t just the name of a private school in Miami, Ayla. John J. might be the granddaddy who built the school, but Croppe Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices is an international company, and research—like what they’re doing with Missy—is where they mine for money in the future.”

“What are they doing with her?”

“Missy has a rare kind of spinal cord injury. Before, she needed a ventilator to breathe, which is the worst thing imaginable, believe me. But Croppe is testing this device that provides electrical stimulation to the muscles in her diaphragm, and it allows her to breathe on her own. Her voice is funny, but before, she could hardly talk at all.”

“Really? I would never have known something was helping her breathe.”

He leans forward, excited. “It’s a huge medical breakthrough, but they don’t want the competition to know how far along they are. The FDA knows, of course, and they are constantly sending people here to check on her. And she gets all kinds of attention from doctors and scientists from Croppe, and they’ve made it possible for us to have a home and live without my mom working full-time, although she cleans offices at Croppe Pharm because she hates feeling like a charity case.”

“Not a charity case if they’re going to profit from the research,” I say. “But why do you have to go to Croppe?”

“For the good PR they get about how they’re helping this ‘homeless’ family.” He puts the word in quotes, but that does nothing to erase the ugly way it sounds on his lips. “They want me there as part of the deal. I can’t take a chance they’ll back down and stop providing the medical treatment for Missy. So, I endure the homeless jokes.”

“But you weren’t homeless,” I say. “You had extraordinary circumstances.”

He smiles and shakes his head. “God, Ayla, I had no idea you were such a … sweet girl.”

“Ditto,” I say. “Except for the girl part. You’re an awfully good brother.”

He shrugs modestly. “She’s my twin. My other half. I’d be in that chair if I hadn’t been a jerk and insisted on the front seat. The air bag saved me from any serious injury. She wasn’t so lucky.” Guilt drips off every word.

“Are you ever going to forgive yourself?”

“Probably not, and neither will my mom. It was our fault,” he says simply. “She made a dumb move, and I should have been in the back.”

“You can’t second-guess history,” I say. Then I shift on the sofa and turn to him, ready. “Although, sometimes, life can surprise you by doing that for you.”

“What do you mean?”

I bite my lip and realize I’m squeezing my hands together. “I have to tell you something, Charlie.”

“Okay.”

“It’s big.”

He laughs and points at the violin. “After that, nothing could surprise me.”

“This will. But you have to make me a promise … and I understand keeping promises is your superpower.”

“I do what I can,” he says. “What do you want me to promise? To keep it secret? You don’t even have to ask.”

“I need you to promise not to tell me I’m crazy—”

“No problem.”

“Or lying or an alien or manipulating you or making this up in any way, shape, or form.” I’m rushing the words because it is so important to me now. “I want you to promise that.”

“I promise.”

I believe him. How can I not? I’ve seen what he’s made of, I’ve heard his sister’s testimony. And I’ve never felt more comfortable or, oddly enough, more like Annie than since I walked into this house.

“I’m not Ayla Monroe,” I say quietly.

His head angles a little, like my dog Watson when I used to ask him a question he couldn’t possibly understand. “Is that why you called yourself Annie?”

Relief rolls through me. “Yes. My name is Annie Nutter, and about a week or so ago, I was in my house on Rolling Rock Road in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, just as ordinary as I could be. Then there was a lightning strike and I woke up living and breathing in Ayla Monroe’s world. In her body, actually.”

He pales a little. “You did?”

Encouraged by a response that doesn’t include wild accusations or running from the room screaming, I power on. “I did. I was one girl, living one life, not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But everything was completely normal. Then I was in Walmart, and my mother—who is the same mother I have now, by the way—was crying about Jim Monroe’s house in
Architectural Digest
, and we got home and my dad had invented some bizarre mirror thing where you can put perfect features together to create a new you, and my mom broke it and they had this big fight and I had pancakes for dinner and there was a storm, and I think lightning hit the house or something, because I woke up here.”

“You just woke up in a different world.” He cuts off my word spew with a statement, not a question. A glorious, reasonable
statement
.

“You believe me?” I can see he’s having a little trouble. At least, he can’t quite catch his breath or form a word. “I knew you wouldn’t be—”

“Of course I believe you,” he interjects. “Holy crap, this is the most exciting thing I’ve ever heard.”

I laugh a little, like someone has shot endorphins straight
into my brain. Charlie believes me! I barely realize I’m holding both his hands, gripping him, and he’s gripping back. “Exciting?” I repeat.