The Kindness of Strangers (18 page)

So Jordan wheeled his IV stand along with Bryn. Her Slinky curls bounced when she walked. He couldn’t believe how shaky his legs were. Her office wasn’t very far away, but Jordan panted and had to wipe sweat from his lip by the time they got there.

Bryn’s office walls and ceiling were painted blue with clouds, and there was a painting of a bright yellow-and-orange sun around the light in the middle of the ceiling. Two beanbag chairs and a couch. A table in the middle of the room. Her desk and computer. But what Jordan was most interested in was a shelf along one wall, full of art supplies. He saw Legos, clay, models, beads, all kinds of paper and brushes, pencils, chalk, charcoal, watercolors, oil paint. Along another wall was a shelf holding two dollhouses and a small blue tray full of sand.

“Look around. You can use anything you want.”

“What’s this?” he asked, pointing to the box of sand. It reminded him of a litter box.

“That’s a sand tray.” Bryn took it off the shelf and brought it to the table in the middle of the room. She held up a tiny wooden rake. “You can arrange designs in the sand and make scenes using rocks and figures and things. You want to try it?”

He frowned at it. “What’s it for?”

“Whatever you want. Just playing.”

Yeah, right.
Everything he did was supposed to “mean something.”

He sat down and dipped the rake in the sand. The sand was thicker than he expected. He pressed down and liked the slight crunching sensation under the rake. He dug a hole, then filled it in. He made a diagonal line from one corner to the other, pushing hard to see how deep he could go before the sand fell in on itself. Then he did another line right beside it, trying to see how lightly he could touch the sand and still leave some kind of visible mark. He looked up, startled at how quickly he’d lost himself. It was kind of hypnotizing.

“Keep going, if you want.”

He shook his head. He put the rake down and crossed his arms.

Bryn stood up. “Here, look at all this stuff. Pick some things to use in the sand tray.” She opened a cupboard full of shelf after shelf of miniature figures. On the top shelf were figures of Jesus and angels and Buddhas and saints.

Jordan looked at the saints. “That’s St. Francis,” he said. “He protects animals.”

“You’re right. You know the saints?”

He nodded.

“Are you Catholic?”

He shook his head, then shrugged. “I don’t know. We never go to church or anything.” Was that bad? Should he have said that? He didn’t want to make things worse.

“So how’d you learn about the saints?”

“My grandma.”

“Tell me about her.”

Jordan shook his head.

“Okay. Maybe not today.” Bryn always said that, like Jordan was going to keep coming here forever.

He looked at the figures. The next shelf had all kinds of people. Lots of different colors and shapes and sizes. Old people. Little kids. Babies. There was a shelf with every kind of animal. There were cats. Even one that was black and white like Raja. There were houses and buildings and rocks and trees and flowers and shells and colored marbles, and down on the last shelf there were monsters. Skeletons and vampires and devils.

And a dragon. There were about four dragons, but one was really scary-looking, with fire coming out of its mouth. The fire looked real. Jordan reached out to touch it. It was smooth and cold and painted so that he couldn’t really tell if it was plastic or ceramic or what.

“You can use whatever you want to make some kind of picture or scene in your tray.”

“That’s all I have to do today?”

Bryn laughed. “Sure. But don’t rush it just so you can get away from me, okay?”

Jordan looked up at the angels. His grandma had told him he had a guardian angel, but it wasn’t true. He didn’t think his grandma lied to him on purpose. She really thought someone would protect him. She’d be sad if she knew she was wrong. There was one angel in a purple robe that was pretty cool. Its sparkly wings reminded him of a dragonfly, and they rose up out of the angel’s shoulders like it was about to take off and fly.

Holding on to his IV stand for balance, he reached and took down the angel.

“You want me to put that on the table?” Bryn asked. He handed it to her. While she did that, he took the black-and-white cat and four red glass marbles. He looked at the dragon but decided not to take it.

He turned around, but he pushed his IV stand too hard and it bashed into the table, jarring the angel that stood waiting for him and knocking it to the floor. One of its wings cracked off right at the angel’s back and lay beside it.

Jordan stared at the severed wing lying on the bright blue carpet.

“It’s okay. They sometimes break. Don’t worry about it.”

But looking at the wing made him feel as if someone had reached inside his chest to squeeze his heart. He froze, feeling on the verge of a clue to that day of his plan, balancing on a precipice. One of the hardest vocab words. P-r-e-c-i- . . .
no, stop it. Stay here.
There was something he’d almost remembered. . . . But nothing came to him. Just that weird ringing—like an alarm going off way down the hall. He breathed out slowly.

“Jordan?”

He raised his gaze to Dr. Bryn and blinked.

“You okay? Do you know where you are?”

He frowned at her. Did she think he was stupid?

“You looked like you went somewhere else for a minute. Were you thinking of something? Remembering something?”

He shook his head. Bryn picked up the angel and the wing and asked, “Do you still want this one? Or a different one?”

He didn’t answer. He sat at the table in the front of the tray and put the cat and the marbles down beside him. Bryn put the angel and the wing with his other choices and sat across from him.

He took the rake and dipped it in the sand. What should he do? He tried different things—he put a red marble in all four corners and drew a rake line from marble to marble like a frame. He could put the angel in the middle. No, that was boring. He took the marbles out of the tray. He tried different patterns, then finally smoothed all the sand and made straight rake lines from top to bottom on the whole tray. Then he perched the cat in the top right corner of the frame, not really in the sand at all. He looked at Bryn and nodded.

“Could you try to use all the objects you selected?”

He glared. She was making up new rules. He shook his head. Bryn just nodded. “Okay. So this is it. What’s the cat’s name?”

His heart stuttered over its new extra beat. He shrugged.

“Make one up.”

He lifted a shoulder. “Spot.”

“Okay, Spot the cat. What’s Spot doing?”

“Sitting there.”

Bryn laughed. “And what’s Spot feeling?”

Jordan paused.

“Is he happy? Sad? Scared?”

“Happy.”

“Why?”

“Because . . . everything is smooth and perfect.”

Bryn nodded. She cupped her chin in her hands and looked at the tray. “Yes it is. I have a question for you: True or false, you like things to seem smooth and perfect.”

Jordan froze again. “You said this was all I had to do.”

She nodded. “Just one last question. True or false, that’s all.”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, for a true-or-false question, you have to say ‘true’ or ‘false,’ ” Bryn teased him. “Saying you don’t know is copping out, and you know it.”

Jordan rolled the marbles in his palm. “True. Everyone thinks that’s true.”

“I don’t,” Bryn said. “But it’s okay that you think that. I think it takes a lot of energy and hard work to pretend things are perfect. I think I’d get really exhausted trying to pretend that. Sometimes it takes a lot of guts and bravery to admit that things aren’t perfect, that they’re not even okay. How would anyone know I needed help if I was always pretending everything was fine?”

Jordan squinted at her. Why would
she
need help? He remembered Mr. Garcia encouraging him to experiment with asymmetry. Mr. Garcia had told Jordan his art would be more interesting if it wasn’t so “tidy.”

Jordan looked at the sand tray. He shook the marbles like dice and let them fall into the sand. They bounced and left jagged marks on his neat, straight lines. One marble hit the cat and knocked it off the tray.

“Wow,” Bryn said. “What’s Spot feeling now?”

“I’m tired.”

“Tired of what?”

“I don’t want to play anymore.”

“Okay,” Bryn said.

Jordan was surprised she let him off that easy. He liked that she stuck to her word, but it also made him sad, because he didn’t really want to go back to his room yet. Bryn took a picture of his sand tray, so he could keep it even after the tray got changed.

Jordan looked at the figures on the table. “What’ll you do with that broken angel?”

Bryn tilted her head. “I don’t know. Do you want it?”

“No,” Jordan said, but he did.

And here it was, his fifth day in the hospital, and he wished he had that wing. He didn’t know why, but he remembered that feeling of being on the verge when he looked at it. Maybe today, when he went to Bryn’s office, he would ask her for it.

He didn’t write “
Day #5
” yet. He closed his sketch pad and walked to his window, pulling his IV stand. They’d unhooked him from his cardiac monitor this morning, so he could wash—finally they let him do it himself—but no one had bothered to hook him back up. He liked feeling that free and hoped maybe he was done with the cardiac monitor for good. He’d dressed in jeans and a school sweatshirt after he washed. He had this weird collection of clothes that people like Dr. Ali and Reece and Kramble had brought him. For some reason they weren’t allowed to get any of his clothes from his house yet.

“Hey, sweetie.” A voice behind him made his heart jump, and he had to grab the bed rail to stay on his feet. He sucked in breath, wheezing.

It was Wendy. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” She smiled. “More mail for you.” She handed him a big cardboard box and a stack of envelopes. “I opened the box for you.” Jordan knew they wouldn’t let him have scissors or knives. They were all afraid he’d slash his wrists. And maybe he would—he had to do
something
to get out of the mess he’d made.

When she left, he sat on the edge of the bed and peeked into the box. More clothes and a Tupperware container of cookies. It was another package from Sarah Laden. He opened the Tupperware. There were big, puffy sugar cookies iced in bright colors like the kind Danny brought to school for his birthday. Jordan ate one, remembering how Danny had saved two extra ones for them at recess, when everyone else in the class only got one. He opened Sarah’s card. It was another picture of a black-and-white cat. This was a cat wearing sunglasses. His skin prickled in goose bumps. Why did they keep sending pictures of his cat? Warning bells went off in his head, like they did whenever he thought of Raja.

Inside the card Sarah had written,
“I hope you’re doing better and growing stronger. Please tell Ali if you’d like me to get anything for you. Books? Movies? Any stuff from school? I’m thinking about you. Love, Sarah. P.S. Ali said you needed clothes. I sent you some of Danny’s and Nate’s old things. I hope you can use them.”

Jordan looked at the box with new interest. He pulled out a few shirts. Sarah had pinned notes to each one, identifying them as Danny’s. Danny used to get all red-faced and stuttery when the other boys made fun of Jordan, but now he pretended he didn’t see if somebody pushed Jordan in gym. The other boys called Jordan pussy. Wimp. Sissy-boy. The words echoed in the locker room. Even now Danny never said the names out loud. But he didn’t go and get the teacher anymore. And he sure didn’t cry. Danny may not get good grades, but he was smart enough to know that if he cried, they’d call him a pussy, too. It wouldn’t have been too long before Danny started with the names and the shoves himself.

But Jordan wouldn’t be there. Because he’d wrecked everything. Oh, man. What was he going to do?

Again Jordan teetered at the edge of a memory. He breathed deep and waited, but the feeling passed. He lifted a faded red-and-blue New York Rangers jersey from the box. Sarah said it had been sent by her older son, Nate.

Jordan knew all about Nate Laden. His mother had gone on and on about Nate’s beauty, his body, his look. Jordan had been shocked, because Nate was so old. But before Jordan’s dad had said that Nate was
too
old, Jordan had felt a strange mix of hope and surprising jealousy. Then he felt sick to his stomach. Especially since Nate had told Jordan once after a soccer game that Jordan was a “fierce little shit on the field.” Nate played hockey, and Jordan’s mom had taken Jordan to a bunch of high-school hockey games. Jordan liked that they got to be alone together out of the house, where he didn’t have to be on guard. She always made sure Nate saw her there. Jordan got used to seeing Nate search the stands for her, then smile and blush.

Jordan wondered what Nate had thought when he saw the news.

And what had Danny thought?