Extraordinary Means (6 page)

“I’m not hungry,” I said, picking up my tray. And then I went back to the dorm, where, for the first time that wasn’t six in the morning, both showers were free.

I stood there for a long time in the lukewarm water, hoping it would bring down my fever, and trying not to panic over the indisputable evidence that I wasn’t getting better at all; that, if anything, I was getting worse.

HANNAH CALLED ME
that evening. I could hear the excitement in her voice as she asked if I’d gotten her email, and I told her I hadn’t checked yet.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because the librarian hates me.”

“What did you do, study too loudly?”

Hannah giggled like it was inconceivable that I could do anything to jeopardize my permanent status as teacher’s pet. I sighed, not wanting to get into it.

“I’m not going back there,” I insisted. “I’ll just give up the internet. I’ll go outside or something. I heard there’s this thing called the sun.”

“Overrated,” Hannah said. “Now, go read my essay and call me back, please.”

So I went. Thankfully, the librarian gave me an internet pass without even bothering to look up.

I logged on, not knowing what to do first. Because it turns out, when time is precious, there isn’t much of a point in reading webcomics or listicles. I didn’t have anything important in my in-box apart from Hannah’s essay, which I loaded onto my stick to read later.

I had a couple of Facebook messages, mostly of the
“how are things” and “get better soon” variety, from classmates I’d barely ever talked to. And one glance at my wall was enough to thoroughly depress me. Everyone wanted me to know that I was in their thoughts and prayers, except for this kid from math class who was promoting his band’s new EP. I loved that, how there was one guy who just wanted me to buy some music, who either didn’t know or didn’t care what was going on in my life.

For the rest of the time, I clicked through my Facebook photos, trying to see what my life would look like to a total stranger. Most of the pictures were grainy cell phone things, other people’s uploads from the Model UN conferences, featuring everyone in the van, in our suits around a conference table, wearing sweatshirts in an Applebee’s at one in the morning somewhere near San Diego. I had my arm around Hannah in most of them. There were pictures from junior prom, too. Of Hannah and me in our formal wear, our smiles ridiculously fake as we posed with the Paris-themed backdrop. From the pictures, you’d almost think I had a life beyond making the honor roll.

After my internet session expired, I walked back to the cottages. It was around eight o’clock, and one of the Indiana Jones movies was being screened in the gym. Genevieve and Angela hadn’t shut up about it at dinner. Apparently everyone brought blankets and pillows and came in their pajamas. But it seemed like the kind of thing that was only good if you had the right people to go with.

It was eerily quiet outside, and the birch trees behind the dining hall rose straight and white in the distance. I hadn’t spent a lot of time outside lately, and I’d forgotten how peaceful it was to be alone in the dark. I walked slowly, breathing in the cool air, and it made the ache in my chest a little better.

I could feel the USB stick in my pocket, and I wondered what Hannah had written for her essay. Maybe about how she wanted to work as a White House staffer, or how she’d moved from Canada when she was fifteen. I had no idea what I was going to do for mine.

When I got back to Cottage 6, I went up to my room and plugged my USB stick into my laptop. There was this awful moment where I thought the file hadn’t transferred, and then it opened.

L—Thanks for proofing!
she’d put at the top.
You’re a rock star.
☺

It was the smiley face that made me totally unprepared for what she’d written.

At first, I thought it was a joke. Then I was confused. And then I was angry as all hell.

The essay was about me. About how we’d planned to go to college together, but after I’d become “terminally ill,” she knew that she needed to live for the both of us. She actually said that. “Live for the both of us,” like I was too corpsified to do any living for myself. Like TB was a guaranteed death sentence, and the bedsheet was already being pulled over my head.

It wasn’t a college essay. It was an obituary. My obituary.

My phone rang, startling me. I knew it was Hannah. And I knew that whatever I said to her right now would be unforgivable. But I also knew that I didn’t give a shit.

“Hi,” I said flatly.

“Did you read it?” Hannah asked.

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“Honestly? I’m in shock,” I said.

“Well, it’s a bit embellished for dramatic effect,” Hannah allowed.

“Wow, you think?” I said, my anger flaring. “Was the essay prompt to write an obituary for someone you know?”

“I thought you’d be flattered,” Hannah said.

“Flattered? That I, how did you put it, was grateful for the days you sat by my hospital bed, helping me through the pain?”

It was quiet on her end of the line, but I could still hear her there, pop music playing softly in the background.

“I wasn’t trying to exploit you,” she said.

“Your words, not mine.”

“Lane—”

“No,” I said. “I don’t care, and I don’t want to hear it. Because the thing is? I’m not
dead
. I’m not
dying
. And here’s another thing I’m not, while we’re at it. I’m not your boyfriend anymore.”

I slammed down the phone, which was oddly satisfying. Much more than stabbing angrily at the screen of my iPhone.

I kept repeating what I’d said to her over and over again in my head. That I wasn’t dead. And I wasn’t dying. No matter what Hannah had written in her essay.

The odds were 80 percent that I’d walk out of Latham before the end of the year with an arrested case of TB and a doctor’s note permanently excusing me from gym class. I’d thought Hannah knew that, or at least that she understood the difference between terminal and incurable. I’d thought she understood a lot of things. And I thought I had, too.

I’d been so stupid. It was never going to work out with Hannah and me. Staying together while I went off to Latham was a joke. We’d been humoring each other, but it wasn’t funny anymore. I didn’t know if she’d sent me that essay because it said what she was afraid to tell me—that she wanted to move on. Or if she’d genuinely wanted me to have it, like some fucked-up tribute.

At least I got some small satisfaction from knowing how awkward it would be for her when I returned to Harbor, and to her classes. And when she saw me around campus at Stanford—if she even got in. I hoped that sob story of an essay ruined her chances.

I’d done so much of her English homework. Come up with her essay topics, helped her put together the outlines,
proofed every one of her papers, even the two-page weekly responses. I’d carried us through physics for the entire thermodynamics unit because she was too stressed over the SATs to prep for labs. And I hadn’t minded. I’d been happy to help, because it meant I had someone to spend time with, instead of studying alone in my room. Instead of being the guy everyone hesitated over before inviting me to things, because no one really wanted to hang out with their hard-ass history teacher’s kid.

I read her essay one more time, just in case I’d overreacted, just to make sure it really was as bad as all that.

It was worse.

I took the stairs down to the common room and let myself out of the dorm. It was cool outside, the whole world vibrating with the low hum of crickets, or maybe cicadas. I could never tell the difference. I stood there for a minute, not knowing what to do or where to go. Latham still felt so wrong, like I was living someone else’s life, because this couldn’t be mine.

I could see the gazebo in the distance, so I walked out there through the wet grass and sat on the steps, feeling totally out of sync with the universe. I stared up at the stars, which were dead things, and the trees, which were silent and ghostly, but alive, and I tried not to think about what Hannah had written in her essay.

I didn’t cry, because I was scared that if I started, I’d never stop. I could feel everything straining inside of me,
like strings stretched so tightly that maybe it wasn’t the crickets that were humming at all. Maybe it was me.

After a while, there was a rustling in the woods. The sound of footsteps. I glanced up, wondering who else would be outside.

I could just make out the shadow of a girl. She crept across the grass with a heavy backpack, a knit cap on her head.

And then she stopped, staring at me.

“Lane?” asked Sadie.

I HATED WHEN
Nick didn’t come with me, and he hadn’t that night. He’d backed out at the last minute, claiming he was tired, so I’d gone to meet Michael myself.

It was always unnerving to be alone in the woods after dark. I wasn’t afraid of whatever animals lurked behind the trees. Mostly, I was scared I’d get lost. That I’d wander out the wrong side, into town, shivering and terrified, and everyone in Whitley would act like I was Frankenstein’s monster.

That didn’t happen, though. Michael was there in our meeting place just like he’d promised, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Those things will kill you,” I said, handing him the envelope.

He crushed the cigarette under his boot and shrugged.

“I didn’t realize you’d ridden here on your high horse,” he said.

“His name is Applesauce, and he’s a palomino.” I
motioned toward the bags. “This everything?”

“Sure is,” Michael said, counting out the money. He put on a tough act, like he was some thug drug dealer, instead of a Starbucks barista. “What happened to your bodyguard?”

“He’s taking a sick day.”

God, I was going to kill Nick. The bags looked heavy, and I didn’t know how I was going to carry all of them back without him.

Michael’s cell phone vibrated, and he pulled it out, checking. He made a face. “Gotta head back, but it was a pleasure doing business with you, sweetheart.”

I hated when he called me that.

“The pleasure’s all yours,” I said, and somehow managed to cram everything into my backpack.

“What a shame.”

He smirked at me, and the leaves crunched under his feet as he walked away. I clicked my flashlight onto its highest setting, heading in the opposite direction.

I WAS HALFWAY
across the grass when I saw Lane sitting in the gazebo, looking miserable. At first, I thought I was imagining it. That the shadows were up to some new trick, making me see boys in the dark. But when I got closer, I saw that it really was him, hunched and upset and sitting on the steps.

“Lane?” I called.

It was just the two of us outside. Everyone else was at
the movie night, or in the cottages, or asleep. And I wondered why he wasn’t any of those places. Why he was leaning against the peeling paint of the gazebo, looking like the universe had just punched him in the gut.

“Hey,” he said.

“Bad night?”

“That would be an understatement.”

My backpack was heavy, and I’d had to walk pretty far through the woods wearing the thing. I was exhausted, and all I wanted was to get back to the dorm, take off my boots, and climb into the shower. But I couldn’t leave him there.

He’d been nothing but nice to me, and then I’d stomped all over him, trying to put out the embers of a fire that had never existed. Yesterday in the library, I wouldn’t have blamed him for sitting back and doing nothing when Mrs. Hogan nearly caught us stealing internet. But he’d run up and distracted her, making up a dumb story to save me.

Even after the way I’d acted. Even when he didn’t have to.

“Move over,” I said.

I shrugged out of my backpack and sat down next to him on the steps. We stared out at the woods. The trees. The sky. All of the things that didn’t belong to Latham, that weren’t put here behind iron gates for us to cough over.

There was barely any space between us, and I hadn’t quite realized how intimate it would be, sitting there together in the dark. I’d interrupted his solitude, and I could feel him wondering why.

“I used to come to this gazebo a lot,” I said. “Back when I first got here. It felt almost magical, like if anything at Latham could transport you somewhere else, it was probably this.”

“I thought you hated me,” Lane muttered.

I guess I deserved that.

“False alarm,” I said. “It turns out that what I really hate is TB.”

“Yeah, me too.”

His shoulders were slumped, and the stubble that shadowed his jawline looked more defeated than deliberate. Up close, I could see that his jeans were too loose, and the belt I’d made fun of was actually necessary. He looked exhausted, like he hadn’t slept for days. And I had no idea what to do, or say, or how to apologize to this strange, sad boy who was so different than I’d imagined.

“I only hated you because I thought you were an asshole to me when we were thirteen,” I said, all of it spilling out in a clumsy, unplanned mess. “It was stupid, and dumb, and if I’d thought about it for two seconds, I would have realized that the girls in my cabin had faked the whole thing. So I’m sorry. I was horrible to you, and you didn’t deserve it, and you still saved me from Mrs. Hogan.”

“Who’s Mrs. Hogan?” he asked, coughing a little.

“The librarian,” I said.

He nodded, filing away the information.

“How long have you been here?” he asked.

“Fifteen months. Maybe sixteen, depending on whether it’s October yet, or if I only think it is.”

“It’s October fourth,” he said automatically.

“Got the weather forecast for me, too?”

“Sorry.” He shrugged. “Hey, can I tell you something?”

I said sure, expecting the same panic attack that everyone had in their first few weeks at Latham, about not wanting to die here. I braced myself for a conversation so predictable you’d almost think it was a symptom of tuberculosis.

And then he told me how his girlfriend had written his eulogy as her college admissions essay. I hadn’t been expecting that, at all. But then, nothing about Lane was what I expected. He was familiar and unfamiliar, like a song I’d heard a different version of, and whose lyrics I couldn’t quite remember.

I sat there as it poured out of him, what she’d written, how she hadn’t even seemed sorry, and how fucked-up it was that she saw him like that. I hadn’t known any of that was going on with him. Sometimes I forgot that everyone who arrived here left behind their actual lives, often in a hurry, and frequently unfinished. And when I thought about how I’d acted all week, like he owed me this big apology for even existing, I felt even worse.

“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” I said.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t make it suck any less.” Lane sighed. “I’m just so
tired
of everyone going on about how I’m sick, and how sorry they are. I can’t remember the last
time anyone had a normal conversation with me.”

I couldn’t, either. I was so used to it that I hardly even noticed. If a stranger on the street had asked me to rate my pain on a scale of one to ten, I probably wouldn’t have blinked.

“Do you know what my mom talks about?” I said. “Ice baths and miracle herbs. She seriously calls them that. ‘Miracle herbs.’ And I’m like, I’m sorry, but if there
was
some miracle out there, I don’t think they’d sell it in Whole Foods.”

Lane snorted, and I went on, encouraged.

“So yeah, talking to people? Totally depressing. We should off ourselves right now, so we can be done with people caring how we feel.”

For a moment, Lane thought I was serious. Then he realized I was full of shit, and he laughed.

“When you put it that way,” he said.

“Your ex-girlfriend cared about you. She cared in a shitty way, but that’s why it took her so long to say anything.”

It was cold out, and the wind picked up then. I pulled my hands inside the sleeves of my sweatshirt, shivering.

“Ex-girlfriend,” Lane mumbled. “That’s so weird.”

He was quiet a moment, lost in thought.

“What?” I asked.

“Oh. Um. I was just thinking how having an ex-girlfriend is one of those things that isn’t true until someone says it. Like, we all had TB before we were diagnosed. We just didn’t
know we did. But breaking up isn’t like that. Being single is something you’re aware of the moment it happens to you.”

“Or if you’re like me, being single is a chronic condition since birth.” I said it like I was joking, even though it wasn’t funny.

“Wait, so you and Nick aren’t . . .” He sounded surprised.

Everyone assumed Nick and I were a thing. Everyone. But as much fun as Nick and I had hanging out together, I had zero interest in going there.

“Nick?” I made a face. “God, no. He’s practically my brother. We’re partners in crime.”

Lance winced at my joke, like it dredged up something painful.

“Hannah and I used to call ourselves ‘lab partners in crime,’” he explained. “Before she decided to eulogize me for shits and giggles.”

He leaned forward and propped his chin on his hand, looking tremendously sorry for himself.

“It’ll be okay,” I said.

“Will it?” Lane murmured, like he didn’t believe me.

“Here’s a secret,” I said. “There’s a difference between being dead and dying. We’re all dying. Some of us die for ninety years, and some of us die for nineteen. But each morning everyone on this planet wakes up one day closer to their death. Everyone. So living and dying are actually different words for the same thing, if you think about it.”

I’d thought about it for a long time, even though I’d never
said it out loud. Nick and I joked around a lot, but I didn’t confess anything serious to him. We weren’t that kind of friends. I didn’t have that kind of friends. The ones you could talk to, without being afraid someone would cut in with a witty remark, trying to get a laugh, and ruining the whole thing. But there was something about sitting on the steps with Lane that made it feel okay to let the darkness spill out.

“So basically, I’m saying the glass is half-empty of TB, and you’re saying the glass is half-full of it?” he asked.

That was a clever way to put it.

“Pretty much,” I said.

“Awesome. I was looking for a new metaphor about being sick.” Lane gave a hint of a smile.

“My personal favorite is the one about the invisible hand of tuberculosis trying to grab hold of us all.”

“Show me on this doll exactly where the invisible hand touched you,” Lane said, his voice serious.

We laughed. He had a nice laugh, a sort of embarrassed chuckle. Unlike mine, which was completely silent, as though someone had turned off the volume.

I shivered again and balled the sleeves of my sweatshirt in my fists, but it didn’t help.

“It’s getting pretty cold,” I said. “We should head back.”

We climbed to our feet, and I shouldered my giant backpack. I could feel Lane staring, but thankfully, he didn’t ask me about it.

We walked back to the dorms together in silence. Not
the awkward kind, but a nice, contemplative silence. Usually, spending any amount of time with someone was a forcible reminder of how much I’d rather be alone. Even my friends could grate on me sometimes, although I tried not to let on. But talking with Lane felt easy. Nice. Like being alone but less lonely.

“So,” Lane said, when we reached my dorm, “thanks for keeping me company.”

I shrugged, like it was no trouble.

“Well, fresh air’s supposedly good for us,” I said.

“Breathing: the miracle cure everyone’s been looking for.”

He smiled at me. We were at the bottom of the porch steps. Gnats swarmed the light above the screen door, and the ancient glider creaked softly. It felt like we were waiting for something, but I didn’t know what.

And then the quiet evaporated as everyone returned to the cottages, surrounding us with a maelstrom of laughter, and conversations, and coughing. The movie had ended. A couple of girls from the second floor pushed past us without apology, and suddenly, standing there felt unbearably awkward. So I told Lane I’d see him around, and then I went inside.