The Start of Me and You (16 page)

I smiled genuinely, and he called out, “Hey, Ry!”

Ryan glanced up at us from his conversation with Tyler. Max pointed at him. “Can you take Tessa home?”

“Sure,” Ryan said. Tessa nodded at us, waving. I called my good-byes to everyone and followed Max toward the exit. As we walked to the car, I looked over my shoulder back into the theater lobby. They were already talking again, Morgan’s head thrown back in laughter at something Tyler said. Now it was a double date, and I was
so
not on it.

Inside the car, I pulled my phone out of my purse and pushed the Power button.

“What’s with the mood, dude?” Max asked as he turned on the engine.

I sighed again as we pulled out of the parking lot. “It’s just that my mom is so lame about my curfew. When I get home, my dad’s going to be there anyway. And they’ll stay up late, and yet I have to be home now? It’s so unfair.”

I glanced down at my phone. Nine missed calls—Mom.
Mom. Dad. Cam. Dad. I stopped scrolling as my heart throbbed in panic. Max had only picked me up three hours ago. My phone had been off in the theater. The only text said, “Call when you get this,” from my dad. I couldn’t bear to listen to the three messages, so I dialed, hands shaking.

“Is everything okay?” Max asked, glancing over at me.

“I … I don’t know.” My dad’s phone was ringing—once, twice, three times.

“Paige?”

“Dad? Wh-what’s going on?”

“Paige, honey,” he said. “Your grandmother had a stroke.”

The word reverberated against my brain—
stroke, stroke, stroke
, colliding with any neurons that would have otherwise helped me process the word. My lower lip trembled, and my vision tunneled around me, all sense of time and space lost.

“What?” I could hear my own voice in my ears, choked and childlike.

“She’s doing all right,” he continued, “but it’s too soon to tell what damage has been done.”

My throat restricted, and I gasped for air to compensate.

“It’s okay, kiddo. We’re all here at the hospital with her, and I’m going to come get you now.”

“Okay,” I breathed. My whole world went blurry, like I wasn’t fully inhabiting my body.

“Paiger, listen to me,” my dad said. “It’ll be all right. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

The line went dead. This situation didn’t necessitate a good-bye. In fact, “good-bye” was the absolute last word I wanted to hear.

“Paige?” Max asked quietly. I could feel him looking between me and the road ahead of us.

I moved my lips, forcing them to form the words. I held up my phone as if it were some sort of explanation. “My grandma had a stroke. She’s alive, but … I don’t … know. My family’s at the hospital.”

My voice cracked twice as I said it. Speaking the words out loud, having to tell someone else, made it real. My eyes filled with tears, even as I begged them to remain dry. I covered my face even though I still held my phone in one hand, embarrassed and exposed.

“Listen, Paige,” Max said. “I’m sure it’s going to be okay. She’s already at the hospital, and medical technology is so advanced when it comes to strokes. Call your dad back. Find out which hospital and tell him I’m driving you now.”

Before I could even attempt to protest, he made a U-turn, back toward the highway. I wiped at my wet face, nodding. That’s what I needed, to be with my family immediately. To see my grandma, to know that she was okay.

I quickly dialed my dad’s cell phone number.

“Dad,” I croaked. “My friend Max is bringing me now, okay?”

We were mostly quiet during the drive to the hospital. I wasn’t even really thinking, just staring out the window at nothing as tears kept slipping out. It was late November, and the trees were finally bare. I hadn’t noticed until now, how sullen they looked.

At one point, Max said, “It might help if you take deep breaths and let them out slowly. The oxygen expands your bronchioles, which will activate your parasympathetic nervous system and slow your heart rate.”

Using science to comfort me. I wanted to tease him for it, but I was too busy holding my breath and letting it out slowly.

As soon as the tires hit the parking lot, I called my dad, and he described how to get to the waiting room. I unhooked my seat belt, nearly bailing out of the car before it had come to a full stop. I could see my quick breaths in the air, but I couldn’t feel the cold. I was already numb.

Max leaned across the seat. “Do you want me to stay?”

“No, I’m okay.” I glanced back at him across the car. “Could you not tell anyone about this?”

Even though my paramount concern was, of course, my grandma, I still couldn’t shake the thought of Max relaying my embarrassing meltdown to Ryan Chase.

“Of course, I won’t. Promise,” he said. I nodded and shut the door behind me, bolting toward the hospital. It felt, however foolishly, like everything would be okay, if I could just get to her.

She looked so small in the hospital bed. I wished she could hear my thoughts through her drugged slumber:
I’m going to apply for screen-writing school, Grammy. Get better so I can tell you all about it
.

The little room closed in around us, too many machines looming against the walls. I wasn’t used to my grandmother being silent or still. An oxygen tube curled across her cheeks, under her nose. After almost two hours of sitting in the room, I was beginning to feel like I needed some extra air myself.

My mom was in a chair next to the bed, her hand clasping my grandmother’s. Her head rested on the bed, and I couldn’t tell if she was even awake. Cameron was curled up in a seat, texting or playing a game on her phone. My dad was pacing around the room, unable to stop moving. Since I’d arrived, he’d left at least six times, going for more coffee or to the bathroom or to find the doctor for another question he’d come up with. The doctor had no answers. We just had to wait for her to wake up. It was too much for me, the pacing and the machines and the beeping.

I pointed out into the hallway, gesturing to my dad that I would be outside. I teetered out of the room, running my hand along the wall to steady myself. The hallway felt just as stifling as the little room where my grandmother lay sleeping. I glanced around at the hospital, struck by its drab walls and antiseptic smell. Only a shock of blond hair stood out in the colorless hallway. It belonged to a tiny, familiar form, seated on a bench with her elbows propped on her knees.

“Tess?”

She looked up and, seeing me, leaped off the bench toward me. She grasped both my arms.

“Is she okay?” she asked.

“W-wait,” I sputtered. “How did you know I was here?”

“Max came and got me.”

“You left
Rocky Horror
?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Are you okay? Is your grandma okay?”

“But you didn’t … have your car?”

“Max took me to get it,” she said impatiently.
“Is she okay?”

“She’s stable. Okay for now,” I told her, so relieved to have her in front of me. Her presence made the hospital less foreign. “And I’m … I don’t know. Fine.”

“Good.” Tessa nodded. She eased her grip on my arms. “Good.”

“You left
Rocky
for me.”

She lagged her head to the side. “Of course, I did.”

My lower lip wavered, fresh tears forming. Tessa lived through losing Aaron right beside me. It seemed unfair that she was always the one supporting me. Her life would have been so much lighter if it weren’t entwined with mine.

“So,” Tessa said. “Is there a plan?”

“My mom’s going to stay.” I gestured back at the room. “And I think my dad wants to stay with her.”

“Do you want to go home? I can take you.”

“I want to stay, but my dad said earlier that he was going to take Cam and me back. I don’t think he wants us to be here if they get bad news.”

Tessa winced. “Do you want to stay longer, or do you want me to take you back now? I can do whatever.”

“Let me check with my dad.”

Tessa walked back with me and stood outside the room. Cameron was curled up with a pillow on the ledge by the window, nodding off. She looked so harmless this way, like when she was a baby. When I nudged her arm, she startled awake with the same childlike expression of sleepiness. My dad stood up, gesturing for me to move toward the hallway. He hugged Cameron and me at the same time, his arms stretching wide to fit both of us into one embrace.

“It’ll be okay,” he said for the hundredth time that night. “Go home and get some sleep.”

Cameron opened her mouth to say something, but my dad cut her off.

“I’ll call you if anything changes,” he said.

“But what if Mom …,” I began. He clasped my shoulders firmly, quieting my question.

“I’ll be with her the whole time,” he said.

I nodded. It was strange, letting go of my worries about my mother to my father, of all people.

“Thanks, Tessie,” my dad said over our heads. “Call my cell if you girls need anything.”

I watched as my dad walked back into the room, settling in for a long night of watching my mother sleep. He sat in the chair, no longer pacing—staying steady for her now. Maybe this was how it was supposed to be. Tessa grasped my hand as we turned to exit. She put her other arm over Cameron’s shoulder, guiding us both toward home.

Chapter Twelve

When Tess and I arrived at school on Monday, I hesitated before getting out of the car. My grandmother had woken up over the weekend, but the doctors were still running tests and monitoring her. My dad stayed with my mom at all times, and it was strange to be home without them. I’d always envied Tessa’s parentless lifestyle, but not like this. This felt lonely and hollow.

Tessa stayed over all weekend, leaving only to shower and grab more clothes. I wasn’t sure how it had turned out this way, that Tessa, who was less than a year older than me, became my guardian in times of emergency. She was quiet now, waiting for a cue from me. As I pushed the car door open, biting wind hit my face.

“If you change your mind, I can take you home at lunch,” she said. “Or before. I’ll just cut class.”

“I know,” I said. My dad had already called the office to excuse me, if I felt I needed to leave. But school provided a welcome distraction, with my familiar routine of classes. I couldn’t bear to be alone, at home, in the silence.

People bustled into the doors beside us, but it all looked different to me now, like the world shouldn’t be moving on while my grandmother lay in that hospital bed. As I made my way down the hall, my eyes found Max. He stood in front of my locker, searching the approaching crowd. I saw him before he saw me. I felt myself smile at the familiarity of him—dark mop of hair and the shirt cuffs jammed up his forearms like an exasperated young professor.

“Paige,” he said, straightening up. This unsettled me, hearing him use my actual first name. “Is your grandma okay?”

“She’s fine for now. And I—”

“Good. Because I was going to text you, but I didn’t want to interrupt whatever was going on with your family, and … I just wanted to apologize because I know I said I wouldn’t tell anyone, but I thought—”

My hand almost moved to his chest as an effort to calm him, but I hesitated. “Max.”

“Yeah?” He blinked, green eyes like mine, behind the rectangular frames of his glasses.

“Thank you. For driving me and for knowing to go back and get Tessa.”

“Oh.” He stared at his omnipresent Converse. “No big deal.”

“It was to me.”

When he glanced back at me, his expression had relaxed. “So … how’re you doing?”

“I …,” I considered my usual refrain, the almost-convincing chorus of “I’m fine!” But my mind flashed backward to our driveway conversations. It was a little late for pretense. “I don’t know.”

He looked so genuinely sad for me, but it wasn’t pity or That Look. He chewed on his thumbnail, as if racking his brain for a solution to this equation. But life is not evens and odds and solving for
x
. And sadness? Sadness is an equation made of all variables.

I realized then that Max Watson and I were staring at each other, not speaking, amid one of the busiest hallways in the school. And almost everyone was looking at us as they walked by, gawking at the intensity of our conversation.

“Hey,” a deep voice said, and I felt a hand on my arm. “How’s she doin’?”

I turned to Ryan, nodding. “Better. The doctors are … hopeful.”

“Oh, that’s great.” The creases formed at the sides of
his eyes, but the blue of them still sparkled through. “I’m so glad.”

I tried on a smile, glancing from Ryan to Max. “Well, I guess I’ll see you in English.”

As I walked away, a lump rose in my throat. Max and Ryan didn’t look related, but they must have shared a gene that made them unabashedly kind. I felt so lucky to be on the receiving end of it. I’d never really been friends with guys before—especially not with two guys who would seek me out to check on me.

I ducked into the bathroom on my way to my first class to double-check my makeup. My eyes were still a little bloodshot from crying so much the night before, but at least I was smudge-free. On the way out, my upper body collided with someone coming out of the boy’s bathroom.