What Remains (17 page)

Twenty-Four

They put me in one of those little rooms in the ER that are meant for people who aren't staying overnight. I was here for a broken wrist once. And to get a tetanus shot after I stepped on a rusty rake that Justin Dillard “accidently” left outside my locker in sixth grade.

This time, Ben Evans found me in the dugout when he came to retrieve a batting glove he'd left behind. I told him to dial 911, but Coach was right behind him and said he'd drive me to the hospital. I ranted the whole way in the car. “Lizzie hates me. Her heart is rejecting me. I forgot my meds.”

Coach sounded like he did when he came out to the mound to talk to our pitchers. “Breathe. You've got this. Focus.” But I knew a pep talk wasn't going to help me.

I tuned him out and concentrated on keeping Lizzie's heart working, even though I could feel her fighting against me. It's funny how you can take breathing for granted: in, out, in, out. All day, without thinking. Now I had to work for every molecule of air. Now I had to fight Lizzie.

Coach left when my dad got there. Mom was in court and someone was sending her a message. I wonder if Spencer knew. Or if anyone had told Ally. I hope she didn't think I'd stood her up even though I did.

At some point between getting out of Coach Byrne's car and lying on the bed with oxygen going into my nose and a ridiculous hospital gown on and my father hovering over me, I realized that as much as I miss Lizzie, as horrible as I feel for what happened, I don't want to die too. For some reason, that comes as more of a surprise than I would have imagined. But now I know what I have to do.

“I need my phone,” I say to Dad.

He rubs his temples like I'm asking to run a marathon. “You need to just relax, Cal. I'm sure someone will be here soon.”

Lab techs come in and draw blood while nurses take my pressure and listen to my chest. The physical pain eased up after they gave me some shot, but the real pain of what I saw being done to Lizzie's locker is right in front of my eyes. And in my head.

“Can you get me some water?” My dad looks at me with a raised eyebrow, waiting for me to explain why really I just want him out of the room. “With ice.”

“Cal, I think I should just stay here until the doctor comes.”

I glare at him until he nods and leaves. I guess he figures I'm not going to die in the next five minutes and I hope it will take him longer than that to figure out where to go for a cup and then the water and ice. And a few minutes is just what I need.

“Lizzie. Come on. We have to talk about this.” I close my eyes because I feel stupid looking at the wall and talking to an empty room.

At first there's just silence. A trickle of sweat down my forehead. The hiss of the oxygen being pumped into the tube in my nose.

I have nothing to say.

I smile through the pain. Just like Lizzie to break her silence to tell me she doesn't want to talk to me.

“Listen,” I whisper. “I get it. I really do. I know what that painting meant to you.”

Really? You think you do? Because Cal Ryan baseball star certainly had more than one thing in his life he was proud of.

I wince and don't remind her that I'll never play baseball again. “You had other things to be proud of.” I realize as soon as the words are out of my mouth that they're going to set her off.

Yeah, I was barely hanging on in school. My mother hated me. And, oh yeah, I'm in love with my gay best friend. That's a lot to be proud of.

I don't call her out on her choice of present tense because her heart is beating all out of time inside me. Instead I take a deep breath and say, “You were a good person, Lizzie. A good friend. No one could ever make me laugh the way you did. The way you do. Still.”

She's silent so I continue. “You're the only one I know who cared enough to sign up for the donor registry. You saved my life.”

There's silence. So much silence. The type that seeps around corners and fills up empty spaces. For a minute I think that this is it. Lizzie's heart is going to stop beating. Then, in a small voice I've never heard her use, she says,
Don't fucking waste it.

Before I can protest, my dad comes back into the room followed by the doctor and I brace myself for the bad news.

Spencer rustles up the stairs and into my bedroom, hidden under a bunch of bags.

I glance at him from the bed, where I'm propped up against a stack of pillows. “I'm surprised my parents let you up here. And what is all that?”

One by one he unloads his haul. “I brought you the stuff my mom used to give me when I was home sick from school.” His stack of Archie comics and
Mad Libs
makes me laugh. I used to get them too. When I was eight. “And your homework from Mr. Brooks,” he adds.

He acts like I'm home with a sore throat instead of the real reason, so I decide to cut to the chase. “I'm not dying, apparently.”

He looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “I read that panic attacks are common among transplant recipients.”

“Screwing up my meds last night probably didn't help either,” I admit.

“Your dad told me about that. You never forget anything. What were you doing?” I don't have time to answer before the realization hits. “Shit. Ally was here last night, right?”

Last night, Ally, the stars, the way her hair looked against my pillow, they all flash back in a glorious instant. “Yeah, but … I mean, we didn't … ”

“Have you talked to her today?” he asks, cutting me off.

“No. I was on my way to meet her, but … did you see what they did to Lizzie's locker?”

I wait for Lizzie to say something, but my head is quiet. “It really meant something to her,” I continue. “And now it's gone.”

Spencer nods. He knew what it meant as well as I did.

I hope he'll offer up some plan, some way to make things right. Instead he moves the comics over and sits down on the edge of the bed.

“I'm not sure how to say this, so I'm just going to dive
in, okay?” As usual, Spencer doesn't wait for an answer.
“I'm not going to pretend to know how you feel. I mean, a part of her is literally inside you. But she wouldn't want you making yourself miserable all the time.”

I must still be under the effects of some of the meds because I burst out laughing. If Spencer only knew. I think, in some way, my feeling miserable is
exactly
what Lizzie wants.

But then maybe he does know, because he says, “You have to be alive to feel guilty. I've been thinking about that a lot lately. We're lucky to still be here. We're lucky to be here to feel
anything
.”

“I know. I do. But … ”

Spencer reaches over and puts his hand on my arm. This time I resist pulling away. “Cal, we're lucky. It doesn't always feel like it without Lizzie. But we are.”

Suddenly, I'm very, very tired. “Fine. What do you want me to do?”

He sighs. I guess he thinks I'm just trying to play along, but I really am interested in what Spencer would do if he were me. “Go be happy with Ally. Study clouds and weather. Don't let yourself get stuck.”

“Stuck” is actually a good word for me at the moment. Maybe Spencer is right about moving forward, but that doesn't mean I know how to do it or how not to waste the chance, like Lizzie said. “Thanks for the comic books.” I hope he'll read the rest of my meaning into those words.

“Any time,” he says as he squeezes my arm and gets up. “Just one thing. Everyone at school is kind of fixated on you right now. First with … ” Spencer stops, knowing that I don't want to hear the name. “With the driver dying. And now with you being carted off to the hospital. Just wanted you to be prepared for tomorrow.”

Prepared. That one makes me laugh again.

Twenty-Five

I left three messages and sent an email to Ally last night and never heard back, so my first goal at school is to find her. Spencer's pep talk, if that's what it was, has me a little energized. He's right in a way. I'm sad as hell about losing Lizzie, but when I was in so much pain yesterday and convinced that I was dying, I knew that I wanted to live.
Really
live.

I'm not sure what that looks like without baseball, but for the first time I at least want to figure it out.

I catch a glimpse of Ally in the hall, but so many people stop to ask me how I'm feeling that by the time I'm free, I've lost her.

When she never shows up to lunch, I know there's something wrong.

After school, I race through the halls hoping to make it to the auditorium before she gets there for rehearsal. My heart leaps when I see her, even though I expect her to either yell at me for standing her up yesterday or maybe even, if I'm letting myself dream, throw her arms around me and say how glad she is that I'm okay, but she doesn't do either of those. She just stops outside the door.

“Sorry about missing lunch.” I try to say it like I'd just gotten held up in class, not like I'd had a total breakdown and thought I was dying.

“That's … fine,” she says, looking down at the floor. “I'm late for rehearsal. Can we talk later? I can pick you up after dinner.”

I start to ask her what's going on, but she's already walking into the auditorium. “Yeah. Later,” I say. But I'm not even sure she hears me.

The house is empty when I get home. Mom and Dad are both working late. I turn on so many lights that you can probably see the house from the moon. Aliens might just land in the back yard.

The longer I wait, the more nervous I get about Ally giving me the cold shoulder.

I stand by the door like a prisoner getting ready to be taken to the gallows. Only there's this song in my head.

In 1955, a guy named Tom Lehrer recorded a song called “The Elements.” Basically, he sings the names of the elements from the periodic table beginning with antimony and ending with sodium. They aren't sung in alphabetical order. Just the way that they fit best with the music.

When I was six, my dad thought it would be really funny if I learned it. I couldn't sing then either, but it didn't matter. My parents' friends thought it was hysterical to hear a little boy listing the entire periodic table when none of them could have done it themselves.

For some reason, while I'm pacing a hole in the carpet waiting for Ally to pick me up, the only thing going through my mind is that damned song.

Somewhere around “potassium, plutonium,” Ally's car pulls into the drive.

Potassium is a type of salt. If you don't get enough of it, you develop all sorts of neurological problems. Plutonium blows shit up. It's all kind of fitting.

Ally doesn't get out of her car so I lock up the house and head out to meet her. I get in the passenger's side and she doesn't even look at me.

“Ally … ” I start, but she cuts me off.

“No. Just. Not yet.” She puts the car into gear and pulls out of the driveway. I'm dead, I think. And I totally deserve it. Why couldn't I have just kept my shit together rather than having a total freak-out in school? I stay quiet and then it becomes clear that we're heading to Central's campus. As she winds through the maze-like streets, I can see the looming outfield towers in the Warrior's outfield. She parks near the field and motions for me to get out, so I do. I'm pretty good at following orders anyhow, but my guilt and confusion are making it my only option. She could probably tell me to run laps and I would.

It's only five thirty. The campus is alive with students rushing to and from dinner and classes and who knows what else, but the field is quiet. I look at her, puzzled.

“Road game,” she says in a monotone. She unlocks a side door that I wouldn't have noticed. I wonder what the hell we're doing here, but I'm relieved that if the team is playing an away game, her dad won't be here to beat the shit out of me for pissing off his daughter.

Baseball stadiums have a certain smell. Concrete,
mowed grass, sweat, hot dogs, the leather of the mitts; it all forms some sort of baseball perfume that wraps around me and for one glorious second it makes it hard for me to remember why we're really here.

Ally leads me up to the upper deck, first row behind home plate. She has no way of knowing it, but these are my favorite seats in any stadium. She sits down and I follow her lead. And then, for the first time today, she looks straight at me. Her face is tired and beautiful, and Lizzie's heart feels like it's corralled in my too-small chest.

I think about what Spencer said about moving on and living. Maybe this is the first step. Maybe this is my one chance. I'm not sure I even deserve it, but it feels like my only opportunity to find out. I take a deep breath and lean over, gripping the railing and looking over the perfectly manicured field. I don't really know where to start, but know I need to get it all out there. Every last thing. It doesn't matter if she tells everyone in the school and they all think I'm a freak. I can't stay stuck.

“Cal.” Something in the nervous way she says my name forces my hand.

I take a deep breath. “I'm sorry I missed lunch yesterday. I was in the hospital. I thought I was dying, I really did.” I can't even bring myself to look at her so I just talk to the field. “I've been panicking a lot lately. I guess. See, I really, really like you. I mean, I more than like you. There's never been another girl that I've liked before.” I know that I'm rambling, saying things that have nothing to do with each other, but I feel like I've opened a vein and my feelings are pouring out like blood and pooling at her feet. It doesn't help that, out of everything I have to tell her, the fact that I thought I was dying is the easy stuff.

I glance at her and she's chewing on her bottom lip. I'm glad she isn't saying anything because if I don't keep talking I'm going to freak out.

“Look, you're going to think I'm crazy and maybe I am. But that's okay. I still have to tell you this. I need you to know. I can hear her. Lizzie. I can feel her inside me and sometimes I hear her voice. She talks to me, Ally.”

I tell her about Lizzie's locker and how it made me feel like I was dying to watch the inside of it being painted over, and how I couldn't get Lizzie to stop wailing in my head. I have no idea if she understands why that meant I couldn't come meet her. Why it meant that I couldn't do anything besides go out to the field and beat the crap out of bats and cry. But there's more to come.

I pause, steeling myself. Ally is watching me with a blank paralyzed look on her face. I have absolutely no idea what she's thinking, which is scaring me more than it would if she were yelling or telling me she thinks I'm crazy and never wants to see me again. And somehow, I know that I have to take that blankness away and make her feel something. If I'm ever going to be able to move forward, I need to lay myself out in front of her and hope she accepts it.

“And, there's something else. Before you and I were talking, before we were at the field that first day … ” Ally cocks her head and waits. “Lizzie … I … ” I don't know how to say it so I force myself to say each word staccato-like, like a machine gun. “We. Kissed. Spencer. It was Lizzie. I didn't lie to you. The rumors really aren't true. This was just … I don't know. I just felt like I needed to tell you.”

I finally breathe again and wait for her response. My body is humming. I feel like I've just stepped off a cliff. All I can hear is the blood racing in my ears. I wait as long as I can and then have to break the heavy silence that hangs between us.

“Ally, say something,” I beg.

She looks at me and before she speaks, I know that I've ruined any chance I had with her.

“I can't do this.
Us
,” she says. “I thought I could, but I can't. I mean, it isn't like I'm your girlfriend or anything, right?”

“Well, I thought … I mean, I was hoping … ” I shut up because there is nothing I can say. We haven't named our relationship. I did think and hope that maybe we were becoming something, but like I've been about so many other things, I'm obviously wrong about that. I get it, though. I knew before I confessed that she might not be able to handle what happened with Spencer, but I had to come clean.

We sit there for a few minutes and then I follow her silently to her car. Neither of us says anything on the way back. She snuffles like she's trying to hold in tears. When we pull up in front of my house, I try one last time. “Ally, it will never happen again. I promise. Lizzie … ”

Ally puts her hands up and stops me. “I … it doesn't matter. I'm sorry. I just can't.”

She stares straight ahead until I get out of the car and stand, dazed, on the curb, watching her drive off.