The End of Forever (27 page)

She waved her hand. “I’m all right. I took my medicine.”

“What medicine?”

Her eyes struggled open. Why had she told him? She hadn’t meant to. She shifted in his arms and sat up straighten “Sometimes I get these headaches.”

“Like that day at the mall? I remember how sick you were. I was worried about you. So was Jody.”

She wasn’t sure she wanted him to worry about her. It meant one more person to try to please. “Why do you get them?” he asked.

“The doctors don’t know.” Erin paused, embarrassed to feel so exposed before him. “They’ve done a bunch of tests, but in the end they decided it was all in my mind. So now I’m seeing a counselor, and she’s trying to figure out what’s causing them.” She hadn’t meant to tell him about Dr. Richardson either.

“Is she helping at all?”

“I still have the headaches. I hope we have a breakthrough soon, because I’ve got plans to go to a special dance school this summer. I won’t be able to go if I’m not well. And if I’m not well, then maybe I won’t be able to go to Florida State in the fall either. I couldn’t stand that, David.”

“You’re going away for the summer?” He sounded disappointed.

Without warning she grew agitated and struggled to her feet. “Maybe if I go away, I can get well. You know, not having to be around all the things that remind me of Amy could help me out. And being away from my parents might help too.”

David rose next to her. “What does the counselor say?”

“Not much.” She crossed her arms. “I’m supposed to be working through it. I sometimes don’t want to go see her, but Mom freaks out if I don’t.”

She scrambled over the sand berm, saying, “I need to walk,” and headed for the shoreline.

“Hey, wait up.” In a moment David was next to her. “Slow down, this isn’t a footrace.”

Travis’s voice said, “You know, I’ve suddenly got the urge to go for a run. At this hour you don’t have to get out of the way for other joggers. Yeah, the world’s pretty empty right now.”

“Can’t you keep up?” Erin asked David.

He caught her elbow. He’d rolled up the cuffs of his shirt, and his bow tie dangled around the open neck of the shirt. “Why’re you running off? We were rieht in the middle of a discussion.”

“I’m tired of talking,” she said, pulling away and continuing down the beach. The tide was coming in, and waves kept lapping over her feet.

David stopped her again, taking both her elbows in his hands and drawing her close. “If you don’t talk to me, how will I know what you’re feeling?”

Ocean water sucked the sand away, and the sensation was one of being nibbled up by the ground. “I told you, I’m feeling all mixed up and crazy.” She wasn’t cold, but her teeth began to chatter. “Please let me go.”

For a moment David didn’t move; then slowly he released her and stepped backward. She watched him back off and felt lost. Behind her the sea pulled on the hem of her dress. “It was such a simple thing to do, you know? All she had to do was drive to the store and buy some sodas. Any moron could have done it. She knew how to drive too, you know. She told me she’d driven Travis’s car, and it was a real racing machine—not like my old clunker.

“But she screwed it up. She waved good-bye, she drove off, and she never came back. I can still see the taillights of the car.”

David came closer, and because the tide had eroded away so much sand from where she was standing, she was inches below him and had to look up to see his face. “She shouldn’t have done that, David. I’m so
angry
at her!” Tears came, and Erin clenched her teeth. “She had no right to die. She h—had no r—right to—to—” Her voice shook, and her whole body trembled. “Why did she do it? Why did Amy go away and leave me all by myself?”

Erin drifted on a sea of cozy, snuggly warmth and struggled to open her eyes. Light floated around her, and slowly she came to realize that she was on a sofa cushion on the floor of Shara’s beach house. She rolled over and came face-to-face with a sleeping David.

She instantly sat up, only to see that she was surrounded by many sleeping couples. They were curled and bunched next to one another on cushions and pillows spread across the floor. Crumpled taffeta and crushed satin gave the room an eerie look, as if a magic spell had been cast and people had simply dropped in their tracks.

Erin’s muscles ached from sleeping on the floor. She arched her back and rubbed her arms. Carefully she studied David. How childlike he looked as the sunlight pouring in through sliding glass doors turned his hair the color of spun gold. Erin watched him, trying to remember the evening before.

It returned in snatches, like scraps of photographs tossed into the wind. Walking the beach with David and crying … sitting in the sand while
David rocked her … coming back to the house only when the music had stopped and the lights had gone out … stepping over bodies stretched along the floor, and David wrestling a sofa cushion from someone already asleep … David pulling her down next to him and holding her until the rhythmic sound of others breathing had lulled her into an exhausted sleep.

Shed made a fool of herself the night before. Why had she started talking about Amy in the first place? Why had she broken down and cried? Where had all the anger and tears come from?
Maybe it was the medication,
she told herself. Yes, that had to be it. She’d taken the pills to stave off a headache, and they must have caused her to “lose it” in front of David. How could she face him today?

Quietly Erin rose and carefully threaded her way into the bathroom. Once there, she stared at her reflection in the mirror, at her tangled hair and mascara-smudged eyes, still red and swollen. God, she looked awful! She wondered where her purse was and her hairbrush. She splashed water on her face and rinsed her mouth. She needed some orange juice and decided to go to the kitchen.

Pinky and Andy and three other couples were sitting at the pine table talking quietly.

Pinky grinned. “Did we wake you guys?” Her eyes were glassy, and Erin realized that this group hadn’t slept at all.

“No. Is there any juice?”

“Help yourself.” Erin took the paper cup Andy
shoved toward her. She found the juice in the refrigerator and filled the cup.

“Some party, huh?” Pinky asked. “Where’d you and David spend the evening?” There was an innuendo in Pinky’s voice that Erin didn’t like.

“We just walked the beach.”

“Uh-huh …” Pinky drawled, cutting her eyes toward Andy.

Erin didn’t care what they thought. She was exhausted and wanted to go home, take a shower, and sleep in her own bed. “What time is it anyway?” she asked.

“Seven o’clock.”

The last time Erin remembered seeing a clock, it had been four
A.M
. “Short night,” she said, draining the last of her juice.

“I’m glad Ms. Thornton said no play practice today,” Pinky said.

The play.
Inwardly Erin groaned. The performance was a week from Saturday, and suddenly she was dreading it, as if it were too big a chore to tackle.

“Hi, guys. What’s for breakfast?” David stepped through the doorway.

“Whatever you want to fix,” Pinky told him, and everybody laughed.

He tried to catch Erin’s eye, but she refused. He’d seen her soul last night, and now, in the light of day, she felt more exposed than if she’d stood before him naked.

“You don’t think I can cook?” David said, stepping
around her. “What do you want? Eggs, French toast, pancakes? Just name it.”

“How about cereal?” Seth said, sauntering into the room. “Its hard to screw that up.”

“Ye of little faith,” David said. “Watch this, hair ball.” In minutes he had everyone organized, and eggs were being scrambled, toast was browning, and the aroma was bringing other sleepy kids into the kitchen.

Erin stood aside, impressed by the way David could take over a room, grateful that she didn’t have to interact with anybody. Later he drove her home, but she avoided talking by feigning sleep, and at her front door he asked, “Can I call you later?”

“I’m gonna crash for the rest of the day. I’ll see you at play practice Monday after school.” She went inside before he could say anything else.

Her mother was waiting for her inside the door. “Did you have fun? Are you all right?” She was trying to sound pleasant, but Erin saw the circles under her eyes and realized that shed probably been up most of the night too.

“Im fine, Mom. I told you not to worry.”

“I wasn’t worrying. I was just asking. Can’t I even ask if you had a good time or not?”

Erin felt guilty, but she was too tired to hassle with her mother. “Can I tell you all about it later? I’m really wiped out.”

“Yes, of course. Go on to bed and we can talk tonight.”

“Are you working today? Should I start dinner?”

“Well go out for dinner.”

“Where’s Daddy?”

“Out. He said he’d be out tonight too. No use in cooking for just the two of us.”

“No use,” she agreed. “No use at all.”

“Erin, it’s really great to see you. I’m so glad you called and wanted to come over.” Beth Wilson’s eyes shone as she spoke.

Erin sat cross-legged on Beth’s bed, munching popcorn. “I’ve been wanting to come over for ages, but with school and play practice and Spring Fling and all—”

“How was the dance? Tell me about it.”

Erin still wasn’t caught up on her rest, but Sunday afternoon at her house had been filled with its usual tension, so she’d called Beth and practically invited herself over. “The dance was fun, and afterward we stayed up all night at Shara’s beach house. We all sort of fell asleep together on the floor.”

Beth clutched her knees and giggled. “Sounds romantic.”

Erin recalled how snuggly and content she’d felt in David’s arms. “Hardly,” she said. “My bones still hurt from the hard floor. I’d never make a camper.”

“We used to camp,” Beth said wistfully. “Before my mom got real sick. Before Dad left.”

“How is your mom?”

Beth shrugged. “About the same. She has to go for dialysis again every other day, and they’re trying to locate another donor kidney for her.”

Beth’s house smelled of sickness. Erin noticed it as soon as Beth opened the front door, but she smiled and came inside anyway. It reminded her too much of the hospital, of the Neuro-ICU unit, and of Amy’s cubicle. “Then they’ll do a second transplant?” she asked.

“Yeah, just as soon as they find a donor kidney with a good tissue match. Of course, there’s no telling how long that will take, so all we can do is wait and continue the dialysis. But Mom’s a priority. You know how it is.”

Erin knew how it was. Somebody had to die in order that somebody else could go on living. “
You can’t just turn off the machines. You can’t just give Amy away in bits and pieces
,” she had pleaded with her parents.

Her mother had said,
“Something has to make sense. Organ donation is our only way of making this whole thing plausible.”

“So,” Beth was saying, “how’s your love life?”

Erin blushed. “What love life?”

“You know—David Devlin? Didn’t you have fun with him Friday night?”

“David’s all right.”

“Just all right?”

Erin studied a spot on the wall, above Beth’s head. “I don’t know why everybody’s trying to fix me up with David. It’s not like that between us. He’s just a guy I do things with. That’s all.”

“Gosh, Erin, I didn’t mean to make you mad. I was only teasing.”

“And I didn’t mean to snap,” Erin said. “It’s the play and finals coming up. I don’t know. I guess it’s just me.”

“And I’m trying to live vicariously,” Beth admitted with a quick smile. “Because my life’s the pits.”

“Are you going to finish the school year?”

“I have to. When Mom found out I was skipping classes to help around here, she exploded. For a sick woman she really let loose. But even though I’m finishing high school, I refuse to go away to college.”

“Will you go at all?”

“Just to Hillsborough Junior College. That way I can be at home, look after Mom and my brother and sisters, and still get some sort of college degree.”

Erin was counting the days until she could go away and start living on her own—if only her parents would let her. She felt sorry for Beth. It didn’t seem fair that she was having to give up her plans all because her father decided he couldn’t cope with having a sick wife. “Has your dad ever called or written?”

Beth shook her head. “But we do have some help financially now, and I don’t think Social Services is going to break up our family. A social worker with the dialysis unit figured out that things weren’t going so hot for us, and she’s been a big helo. She checks on us every week, and so far I’ve
been able to convince her that I’m doing a good job.”

To Erin it seemed as if Beth were doing a superb job. “You are coming to the play, aren’t you?”

“I’m planning on it. How’s it going?”

“You know how it is toward the end of rehearsals—it seems like a disaster, but somehow it all comes together at the last minute, and you make it through. We’ve got dress rehearsals all this week.”