Illuminate (2 page)

“Y’know, I just don’t know how I’m going to tell some of my patients about this. They’ll be devastated!” said blond-beehived Nurse Calloway from cardiac. She stabbed at her cake as Dr. Michelle from pediatrics—the youngest resident in the entire hospital, and my idol—and white-haired Nurse Sanders, with glistening eyes behind her thick glasses, nodded in agreement. This was my little sorority. “You’ll break all their hearts,” Calloway went on.

“And those are hearts that are already in pretty bad shape to begin with!” Dr. Michelle chimed in with the punch line. We all laughed. This is what passed for humor in these parts. Indeed, a few patients liked to call me a “heartbreaker,” which was certainly something I never heard from anyone who wasn’t an octogenarian with failing vision. Dr. Michelle smiled. “We’ll miss you, Haven.” She could almost pass as a patient in her department, being so energetic, young, and, like me, only a couple inches over five feet.

Sanders sniffled. “Could you still come on weekends? Or evenings?”

“Now I’m starting to feel bad,” I said. “Maybe I should stay.”

At the other end of the nurses’ station a good fifteen feet away, Joan perked her head up, waving her cake knife in the air. “I know you’re not guilt-tripping my girl, are you, ladies?” she called over to us, cutting a piece of cake for herself at last. Propped up on the table behind her was a framed photo of me, about ten years old wearing a mini–candy striper’s uniform. Images of me were all over this place: I was everyone’s surrogate child smiling from their desktops and cabinets and computer wallpaper. The hospital had pretty much been my daycare center for as long as I could remember; I came to work with Joan and was babysat by anyone and everyone until I was old enough that they could start giving me something useful to do. Joan wandered over, plate in hand, mouth full of cake, and put her arm around me. “We have to let this one spread her wings. She’ll fly back.” She winked.

“I’ll be back at the end of June. You’ll barely have time to miss me,” I said, a crater deepening in my heart. “I’ll do a goodbye tour before I go today.”

And tour I did, making the rounds to see all my favorites and ending the day with the toughest stop of all, pediatrics. I cut a pied piper’s path through the ward, collecting pajama-clad followers as I went room to room dispensing hugs and kisses and promising to be back soon. We landed back at the playroom and gathered at the bulletin board we had assembled together: a collage of photos of each child in the ward, running the length of the wall, with a border in a riot of colors. It looked like a massive yearbook page, and we updated it with new photos of everyone on a regular basis. It had started as nothing really, just a little project for photography class last year. I had asked a few kids if they would be willing to let me photograph them and they agreed, and then somehow everyone wanted in on it. Jenny, a bandana-clad fourteen-year-old, had explained once, “we look better in your pictures than we do in the mirror.” I assured her no Photoshop was involved—this was them.

The strangest thing of all though was the reaction back at school. Most of the kids in that photography class were in there either for easy As or were really tortured artist types who dressed all in black. Then there were people like me, who could appreciate the arts, even if we didn’t quite have the skills to participate, and figured we couldn’t be that bad at pointing and shooting. When I put together that project though, something clicked. You looked at the pictures and jumped into the eyes of those kids and felt like you knew everything there was to know about them. Each semester the class voted on someone’s work to be displayed in the glass case in the school’s front hallway, and somehow they chose me. Every time I walked by it, I would see a handful of people stopping to stare, kids who never seemed to notice anything. Even Jason Abington had looked—a few times in fact—and once when I happened to be walking by (because I walked by a lot) he saw me and elbowed me, nodding at the case, and said, “This is yours? It’s really cool.” That meant more to me than I’d like to admit. But it was true; the sweet faces of my subjects did all seem to glow in those pictures, like the camera cut down to their core.

I addressed my little posse now. “I’m officially putting you guys in charge of the Wall of Fame.” I knocked a knuckle against the bulletin board. “Dr. Michelle has kindly promised to take the photos so you can keep rotating in the new ones. Don’t let her slack off. I’ll be back soon and it better be in good shape.” I smiled.

“Ooooh, um, she’s not such a good photographer,” Jenny whispered. “Remember the one of me with just one eye open when you were out that one day? It took, like, an hour to get something even that good.”

“Good point. We’ll just hope that she’s improved since then. Or else, you can be camerawoman.” I winked. “I’ll miss you guys. Okay, high-fives, everyone.” I raced around slapping each soft palm.

Night had fallen by the time we left the hospital. The lights of Chicago were a dull glimmer in the distance as Joan drove through the windswept suburban streets of cozy, quiet Evanston. The city felt much farther away than it actually was from home and the comfortable routine of my life. The car heater blasted, and beneath my puffy parka I could feel cold bands of sweat trickling down my skin. I sighed.

“You okay?” Joan asked, peeking at me from the corner of her eye.

“Sorry, yeah.” I kept my gaze straight ahead into the ice- encrusted, velvety night. “That was a lot tougher than I expected.”

“Of course, honey, they’re all like family. Besides, going-away parties are designed to make you sorry you’re leaving—they’re sneaky that way.” She smiled, and I did too. “But you know what? We’re all right here. We’re not that far away. It’ll be fine.”

“I know, I’m just sort of, I don’t know, nervous.” A twinge of guilt nipped at me. I didn’t want Joan to worry, and I certainly didn’t want to remind her that just about twenty-four hours ago she was completely vetoing this whole plan. She had sounded all the expected alarms:
Why do you need to stay there? How hard are they going to be working you that they need you on the premises 24-7 when you only live an hour away on the L? Don’t they know there are child labor laws?
Sure, I had told her, the whole thing is organized by the state Department of Education so obviously they’re not shipping us off to some sweatshop. But, in the end, there was no denying the honor that seemed to come with this, and that stipend (Joan’s eyes had positively bulged). I had pulled out the packet from Principal Tollman, with all the particulars about the hotel, glossy photos of its grandeur, and a host of clippings from every newspaper and magazine in the city about the glamorous woman—Aurelia Brown, blond, stunning, unbelievably young, and powerful—who would be my new boss. Joan had to say yes.

But now, as Friday night closed in on me, ushering in what I knew would be an intense weekend of preparation for this sudden new chapter, nerves were getting the best of me.

“I just don’t know what this will be like,” I continued. “I don’t know if they’ll like me or if I’ll do a good job. And it’s just weird. I mean, I’ve never even been to camp and now I’m going to be living somewhere else. And I know I want to go away to school, but I would have a whole extra year to get ready for that, you know? I just feel really . . . off.” That was the only way to put it. I felt that I was playing the role of me—and doing it badly—in what would be a spinoff of my life. The glow cast by the streetlamps transformed the bare trees lining our path into spindly, tentacled beasts. I shivered and took a deep breath.

“Don’t worry. They picked you, remember? They know you’re special,” she offered, in soothing tones. “And, besides, Dante will be there. You kids will have each other.”

“I know. That’s the only reason I’m not totally freaking out. Imagine what a basket case I’d be if I had to go it alone.”

“No kidding.”

Dante Dennis had been my security blanket, and best friend, for about ten years now. That he was one of the other two kids going to the Lexington with me might have otherwise seemed pure, dumb luck, except that he and I were always neck and neck, vying for the top of the class (politely, of course). So it made sense when he hedged at lunch, sheepishly peeking out from behind his chin-length dreadlocks and grabbing a french fry from my tray.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any news, would you?” He had eased into it, then bulldozed on. “Because I do. And I will die if you
don’t
have news. Please tell me you’re ditching this town and breezing into the Windy City for a certain fabulous internship.” He raised his eyebrows at me—up/down, up/down—conspiratorially. Instantly a wave of relief washed over me.

“You wouldn’t be checking into the Lexington Hotel, would you?” I answered.

“Yesss!” He was practically jumping in his seat now. “Oh my god, we’re going to have so much fun. I mean, who lives in a hotel? Only, like, rock stars and celebrities and maybe those messed-up starlets who, like, divorce their parents. Get me out of this horrid high school and into Chicago society!”

“Yes, please.” I smiled. We looked around at the tables full of people who would elect us president of things like French Honor Society, but yet not talk to us ever. “Are you a little . . .”

“Nervous?”

“Yeah.”

“Hello?! Yes. Totally nervous. I mean, the whole thing seems like kind of a big deal—Tollman was, like, weirdly excited, and I sure don’t want to mess up. We could get total kickass college recommendations out of this. And these people could probably get us into any school in Chicago without even trying: Northwestern, U. Chicago, they probably know everyone. We’d be idiots
not
to be nervous. But we’re smart and seriously, we work hard. It’s all good.” He swatted his hand at me, no sweat.

And I exhaled. This was Dante’s rare talent—far more impressive than his tenure on the honor roll or his landslide reelection to student government, or the absurdly gourmet bake sale he organized for charity each year, full of the most precious confections you’ve ever seen (he was no less than an artist whose chosen medium just happened to be frosting). No, his greatest accomplishment, as far as I was concerned, was his ability to act as a human tranquilizer for me. He could keep me operating at a sane and steady level no matter how twisted up I felt inside. He had proven his aptitude for it from that very first day I met him at the hospital so many years ago.

Back then, I was a five-year-old roaming the pediatric ward halls waiting to find out who I was and where I would be shipped off to. He had been rushed to the emergency room by his frantic mom after he had fallen climbing a tree. He had landed on a mess of sticks and rocks he had collected to build a fort and ended up scraping up his back something fierce and mangling his arm. Tendon damage forced him to stay overnight, and he wandered into my room with his broken arm plaster- casted in a sling. We were up till nearly daybreak telling ghost stories. He went home the next afternoon, but became a regular visitor for the month I was there. Every few days he would appear, running down the hall, pulling his mom Ruthie with him, his little arms always full of coloring books or stuffed animals or pictures he’d drawn for me.

Joan pulled into the driveway of our town house. Home never looked so good as when you knew you were going to leave it. Ours was tall and narrow, a faded royal blue out front, with brown shutters and a slim covered porch. The place was plenty big for just the two of us and mere blocks from Lake Michigan, which was still and icy now, but would be our favorite escape for afternoon sunbathing and picnicking when the weather was warm.

“Go on in, I’ve gotta get some things out of the trunk.” Joan shooed me away.

“Need help?”

“Nah,” she insisted. “I’ll be just a sec.”

With that, I ran up the front steps and to the porch as fast as I could, the icy air chilling me to my bones as the wind howled and whooped around me. My gloved fingers fumbled with the keys and finally the door opened and a blast of heat warmed my skin.

I flipped on the light. Through the living room, back in the kitchen, a shimmering silver balloon shaped in the number 16 danced above the table. A homemade cake and a palm-size box, wrapped in glittering silver paper with a matching bow, waited for me.

I dropped my backpack on the floor and beelined straight to my birthday shrine, unzipping my coat as I went and disposing of it on a living room chair on my way. Joan was already at the door by the time I dug my finger into the fluffy icing and licked it off.

“Part two of the birthday extravaganza!”

“Delicious. And amazing. But it’s not until Monday.” That, at least, was the date we had always celebrated since we didn’t really know for sure when I was born. It was the anniversary of the day when I had been found and taken to the hospital where Joan was the first to tend to me, patching up my gashes and scrapes, checking for broken bones, and slowly getting me to talk to her, though I had nothing to say, nothing that was helpful at least.

“I thought since we were already in such a festive spirit, we would just continue the party. Let the good times roll!” She set down her purse and shimmied off her coat, hanging it on the rack by the door. I took the glittering box in my hands and shook it.

“So can I open it?”

“You’d better!” she said, joining me at the table and sampling a finger’s worth of icing herself. “Go on!”

I tore at the paper and opened a white velvet box. Its contents sparkled.

“I know you’re not into jewelry, my precious little tomboy,” she said. “But sixteen is a biggie and I thought you should have something pretty.”

I pulled out a necklace, webbing its gold chain around my fingers. It’s true: I didn’t wear jewelry, and what few pieces I’d ever gotten had always sat in their boxes untouched. But this one already felt different. For one, it wasn’t a heart or a dangling birthstone or any of the typical kinds of things I was used to seeing on the girls at school. Instead, this pendant, almost harp-shaped and running the length of my fingertip, was something entirely new: a single gold wing, its texture softly rippled to give the illusion of feathers.