Safe With Me (11 page)

“Why not?” I asked, and she shook her head.

“Your dad just wants to protect us, honey,” Mom explained. “He’s worried if the donor family found out who we are, they might ask for money.”

“They wouldn’t do that,” I said, not actually knowing if this was true, but I didn’t think that the kind of people who would take their daughter off life support in order to save other lives would also be the kind of people to turn around and blackmail us after the fact.

“You never know,” Mom said with a small shrug. “I know it’s hard. I want to reach out to the mother of the donor, especially. Tell her how grateful I am for what she did for us. But we have to respect your dad’s wishes, okay?”

I could tell that she thought it was crappy of Dad to not let us write to the family, too, but the truth is, I haven’t been able to figure out what I’d say even if I could. Anything I come up with in my head sounds cheesy or I’m sure would make them feel worse than they probably already do. I feel pretty guilty, actually, knowing that I got to live when their daughter died, and I wonder if they’d even
like
me, if they’d wish someone else had been saved. It’s a weird sort of pressure, feeling like I
have to live up to a memory of a person I didn’t even know. It’s hard to feel worthy of this kind of gift. I mean, really, how do you find words to thank someone for saving your life?

Hailey’s voice pops me out of my thoughts. “Is that why your
hair
looks like that?” She wrinkles up her pert little nose. My face floods red and I run my hand over my head, wishing I could melt right into the floor. One of the side effects of my meds is thinning hair; it’s still long, but while I’d used a thickening shampoo and tried to tease it enough to make it look normal, apparently, I’d failed. Before I can come up with a proper retort, a woman sticks her head out of another office and calls my name. The nurse, I assume, who is expecting me.

“See you later,” I mumble.
What a bitch.
If I’d been smart, I would have come up with a lie about moving or transferring from another high school and not said a word about the transplant. I wonder how long it will take for the whole school to hear all about the weird new stranger in their midst.

I make it through my meeting with Mrs. Taylor, working out a schedule for me to come to her office two times a day—once after third period and once after lunch—so I can take my pills. I sit through homeroom/AP English, somewhat slumped down in my seat, grateful that for the most part, everyone seems to be ignoring me. A few kids give me curious looks, a few others say hello, but that’s it. The English teacher, Mr. Preston, assigns us
To Kill a Mockingbird,
which I’ve already read three times, so I tune out for the rest of the class. I wonder what Dirk (which he told me was his
actual
first name, chosen by his parents as a hybrid of the name of their favorite actor, Kirk Douglas) is doing right now. We chatted back and forth quite a bit over the last month, both inside the game with our avatars and on
email and instant messaging. He sent me a picture of what he looks like in real life—kind of short, but muscular with a thick, wrestler’s build and blond hair. He wears glasses, but they’re the cool, funky kind, and he is definitely cute enough to date a girl way prettier than me. I sent him a head shot of “Sierra,” the same profile picture I use on Facebook, holding my breath as I waited for his response.

“Wow,”
he wrote in his email. “You’re hot
and
you like video games? How is that possible?”

“It’s not, actually,” I probably should have said, and sent him a picture of what I really look like. But then he’d know I’m only sixteen and he wouldn’t want to hang out with me. I didn’t think it was
that
much of a big deal, lying to him. We’re playing in a fantasy world . . . and he is my fantasy.

The bell rings and I’m forced to stop thinking about Dirk. I maneuver my way through the crowded hallway and try to find my locker. I’m standing off to the side, attempting to peek around a group of kids standing in front of what I think is probably number 387, when a boy next to me looks over my shoulder at the piece of paper I’m holding.

“You want the next row down,” he says, and I whip around to face him. He’s taller than me, with brown hair that hangs a little too long over his blue eyes, and wears a black-and-white plaid shirt with his jeans.

“Oh,” I say. “Okay. Thanks.”

“You new?”

I nod, and he smiles, revealing shiny silver braces. “Cool. I’m Noah.”

“Maddie.” I wait to see if he asks me about where I’ve transferred from, but he only gives me a short wave.

“See you around,” he says, and then I’m left to push my way through the crowd to my locker. Voices echo off the stone walls, making me cringe. I’m used to the quiet of the hospital ward or my house; the excessive noise makes me want to cover my ears.

I manage to make it through the rest of my classes without really talking to anyone else. I write down my assignments and organize my binder, really only excited about computer science, where the teacher, Mrs. Decker, promises we’ll be scripting our own programs before the end of next week. I text a quick, nondescript message to my mom at lunch—“I’m fine”—and take my meds at the office as I promised. At the end of the day, I stop by my locker to grab the few books I’ll need for my homework, and as I’m shoving them into my backpack, trying to ignore the buzz of people around me, I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn around and see Noah.

“Hey,” I say, trying to sound casual. I wonder why he sought me out again, but find myself sort of happy to see him. “What’s up?”

He cocks his head to one side, and jerks his too-long bangs out of his face. “Is it true that you had some kind of
organ
transplant?”

He must know Hailey
. Either that, or she’s flapped her jaw to enough of the right people that the whole
school
knows about my operation. Sucking in a quick breath, I nod, not wanting to say anything more, but he keeps talking. “Which one?”

“Liver,” I whisper.
I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be different.

“Do you have like, a
gnarly
scar?” Again, I nod, pressing my lips together. My scar looks like an upside-down T, starting in
between my poor excuses for breasts and ending in a line that spans my entire abdomen, just above my belly button. Even after a year, it’s thick and red and still a little bit painful if I twist too far in the wrong direction. I try not to look at it in the mirror.

“Awesome,”
he says, and I let out a startled laugh. He jams one hand into his front pocket and swishes his hair out of his eyes again. “What’s so funny?”

I shrug, then shut my locker. “I guess I don’t really think of my scar as ‘awesome.’ ”

“Dude, why
not
?” he says. “You’re like, a Franken-babe.”

I stare at him, wondering if he has any idea just how shitty it is to call a girl anything related to a monster. My eyes fill and I drop my gaze to the floor before pushing past him and speed-walking down the hall. I will
not
let him see me cry.

“Hey!” Noah calls out. “I meant that as a
compliment
!”

I pretend not to hear him as I shove through the mass of students gathered at the front doors. I see my mother’s midnight blue Mercedes in the parking lot, and I rush down the stairs. Once inside the car, I drop my backpack to the floor between my legs and let the tears come. I curl my shoulders forward and put my hands over my face.

“Maddie, sweetie . . . what’s wrong?” Mom asks, reaching over to rub my back. “
Tell
me.”

I shake my head, as tears and snot run down. I feel like I’ve been holding my breath the entire day, waiting for that moment when someone would make me cry. I knew going to this school was going to suck. I knew there was no way I’d fit in.

“Oh, baby,” Mom says. “What can I do? Can I help?”

“He called me a
monster,
” I sob, dropping my hands to my lap and leaning over the console to rest my head on her shoulder.
“He asked about my scar.” I don’t know how to explain just how exposed Noah’s words made me feel. I can imagine the nickname catching on, how I’ll have to endure it being launched at me as I walk down the hall, listening to the laughter and whispers behind my back.

“Who did?” Mom wraps her arm around my shoulders and squeezes me to her.

“Nobody. A boy. A stupid asshole
boy
.” She doesn’t scold me for my language, so I continue. “And a girl said my
hair
looks bad. She seemed all nice at first and then she totally insulted me!” I pause to take a shuddering breath as my tears begin to subside. “I’m so
ugly,
Mom! I hate it! Can’t I just stay home and have a tutor again?
Please?
Can’t you talk to Dad and make him
understand
?”

“You are
not
ugly,” Mom murmurs against my head, apparently choosing to ignore what I said about Dad. “Your hair is a little thin, that’s all. It just needs the right cut and maybe some color.” She pulls away and reaches into the console to grab a stack of junk mail that has been sitting in there for god only knows how long. My mom is organized about many things, but for some reason, her car is always a mess.

“What’re you doing?” I ask with a sniffle.

“Looking for something.” She rifles through the various envelopes and flyers until she comes up with a pale yellow card with an image of a pair of black scissors at the top. It looks vaguely familiar to me. “We got this a few weeks ago, remember?” she says. “Announcing a new salon opening? You liked the name . . . Ciseaux.” She pauses. “We’ll go there right now and get you all fixed up, okay?” She hands me the card, and I take it, noticing that she has tears in her eyes, too.

I know she is latching on to the only thing she can think of to help me feel better, so I nod, even though I know that having shiny hair isn’t going to magically change anything. I’ll still be the girl who hates how she looks.

I’ll still be the girl with the scar.

The front door of the salon opens just as Hannah is finishing up with Julie Stein, a woman who attended the Ciseaux grand opening party and has been coming twice a week for a blow-out ever since.

Veronica, sitting at the reception desk waiting for her five o’clock, greets the woman and teenage girl who enter. “Welcome to Ciseaux,” Veronica says with a big smile, as Hannah trained her to do. They have moved past the nose ring incident with Sophie, and so far, Hannah is happy with Veronica’s performance and her attire. “Whom are you here to see?”

The woman wraps her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “We don’t actually have an appointment.” She gives Veronica a cautious smile. “Do you take walk-ins? My daughter needs a cut and color.”

“Let me check the schedule,” Veronica says, quickly pulling up the program that manages the stylists’ calendars on the
computer. She peers at the screen, then spins her seat around to face the stations. “Peter? It looks like you’re open.”

Peter frowns as he pauses from sweeping up around his chair. “Sorry, doll. I would, but Paul and I are having dinner with my mother at six.”

“You definitely don’t want to miss
that,
” the woman says and chuckles, but the sound is hollow, similar to the way Hannah has learned to force herself to laugh over the past year. When you laugh, people assume you’re okay. You’re smiling, so everything’s fine . . . right? They don’t notice the twitch at the corner of your mouth or the quiver of your chin. They don’t see that the smile doesn’t quite reach your eyes. It’s easy to miss the small details that show how a person is really feeling, to gloss right over them and move on with your day. It’s a phenomenon Hannah counts on, actually, so she can avoid too much discussion about her grief.

“I have time,” she volunteers, hanging her dryer on the hook on the wall next to her station. Julie was her last appointment, but Hannah prefers to work as late as possible, so this unexpected walk-in is a good thing. Upstairs in her apartment, nights spent alone are the hardest—the silence confronts her with weapons she doesn’t know how to handle. Most of the time, after her last client, she’ll go for her second run of the day, the first being in the morning before the salon opens. After she returns, she’ll check in with Sophie to see how sales are going downtown and how her latest lover is. She’ll clean the apartment, do laundry, warm up a frozen dinner, then eventually fall asleep with the TV on. When she can’t sleep, she takes one of the Xanax her doctor prescribed.

Now, though, she smiles at the woman and her daughter, trying to ignore the biting grip in her stomach as she is reminded, once again, of the things she will never do with Emily. “I’ll be right with you. Please, have a seat.”

A look of immense gratitude washes over the woman’s face, and Hannah wonders what could be so important about a cut and color for her daughter. She gives Julie the hand mirror and spins her around so she can check out the back of her now-smooth, shiny jet-black locks. “Good?” Hannah asks.

“Beautiful,” Julie says, peering at her reflection. “You do the
best
work. I’m sending all my girlfriends here. Have they called?”

“A few, yes. I appreciate it so much.”

“Word of mouth is the best advertisement, right?” Julie says as Hannah releases the cape from Julie’s neck and asks Veronica to ring her up.

“Make sure you give her ten percent off for the referrals,” Hannah says, then turns her attention to the woman and her daughter, beckoning them toward her with a wave of her hand and a smile. “Come on back.”

They rise from the couch in concert, walk around the reception desk, and make their way to Hannah’s station. “Have a seat,” Hannah says to the daughter, who looks to be about fourteen. She has a slight build like her mother, but her torso is thicker—not fat, exactly, just more rounded. Her light brown hair is long and stringy, riddled with split ends, and desperate for some kind of color to bring it to life. The girl’s eyes are reddened around the edges and slightly puffy, as though she’s recently been crying. She looks so sad, so anxious, Hannah’s mothering instinct kicks in and immediately longs to soothe her. “I’m Hannah,” she says.