103

I’d been sitting by the lake, in the increasing dark, for almost fifteen minutes before Abigail showed up. Taking her time. A bag of Oreo cookies swinging in one hand with each slow step.

She sat down hard and offered me a cookie without saying a word. She looked at me like she wished she could raise one eyebrow like her mom did. Both of hers went up into sharp peaks, and I figured she was waiting for me to say something.

“What?” I asked with a mouthful of Oreo.

“You know I’m mad at you. Or should be, except you didn’t know, but you should’ve known, so, yes, I’m a little mad at you. Sort of. Not really.” She pushed at a small pile of sand. “I don’t know.”

“Again, I ask—what?”

“You told my friends I was in the hospital.”

“Two things,” I said, and snagged another cookie. “First of all, I didn’t tell them. I asked them if they knew why you were.”

“Yeah. I never told them I was.”

“That was going to be my second point.”

She looked like she was about to say something but just blew out a long breath and dropped her shoulders.

“Yeah,” she said. “Ben and Maddy called me tonight. I just said I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Why not tell them?”

“I don’t even know how.”

“No offense, but I don’t believe that,” I said, and those eyebrows shot up like arrowheads again, which almost made me laugh. “I don’t,” I said. “Miss It’s-a-Word.”

“Okay, then I don’t want to tell them.”

“Well, that’s different,” I said, looking at her. “So why don’t you want to?”

“You are persistent.”

“You can’t solve a problem by ignoring it.”

“Is that one of your dad’s sayings?”

“Probably.”

“Yeah,” she said, and pushed again at the sand. “Actually, that one’s true.”

“Some are better than others,” I conceded.

She stared out over the water, which was a little rougher than usual that night. Three-foot waves broke over sandbars. Patches of gray-white clouds covered most of the sky. It was getting dark.

“Abigail,” I said, and pushed her hair behind her elf ear, tracing its slight point with my finger.

“That tickles,” she said.

I stopped and looked at her, waiting.

She fixed her eyes back on the lake, kind of like, somewhere between it and the sky, she’d find whatever words she was looking for.

Finally she took a deep breath, looked straight at me, and said, “I have something called Crohn’s disease. I found out in March. My immune system attacks itself, and the fight takes place in my . . .” She cleared her throat and then said, quickly, “intestines.”

I didn’t say anything for a second. Then: “That’s why you were in the hospital?”

“I had to have a little piece of the inflammation removed before it became a full blockage.”

“What does that mean?”

“The disease causes scar tissue, and scar tissue can create a block.” She looked at me—eyebrows only slightly arched—like I was supposed to figure out the rest myself. “So nothing can get through,” she added.

“Oh.” Man. “Got it.”

“My doctor actually cut out eighteen inches of my intestines.”

“Abigail,” I said, “that doesn’t sound like a little piece.”

“Well, we’ve got several feet, which in my case is good. And bad. Lots more room for future inflammation.”

“I never really imagined having a conversation with you about intestines,” I said, and pushed my shoulder against hers.

“You would not believe how much my family and I have talked about intestines in the last four months.”

“Well, yeah.” I smiled slowly. “Whose family hasn’t? Oh. Hey. Ileum.”

“Yeah?”

“Part of the intestines.”

“You know your anatomy.”

“No,” I kind of laughed. “Your mom gave me your family’s Wi-Fi password.”

“Oh, that,” Abigail said, nodding. “Well, it’s not one you’d guess, is it?”

“It really isn’t.”

“There’s more if you want to hear it,” she said.

“Lay it on me,” I said, and leaned back, propped up on my elbows.

“There are tons of foods I can’t eat,” she said. “Like shellfish, sodas, French fries, milk, or much dairy. Popcorn’s like eating glass. Ice cream’s a nightmare. I can’t gain weight. I even drink those meal replacement shakes with dinner and still—nothing.

“If I eat the wrong thing, I’m literally bent over in pain. Literally. The cramps are so bad. And this is when I’m not having a flare-up.”

“What’s a flare-up like?”

“It’s like someone reaches up under your rib cage, grabs your stomach and everything below it, and shoves a knife into it, and the pain lasts for days or weeks at a time.”

“Oh my God.”

“And for added fun, they’re completely random, so”—she hesitated, even rolled her eyes kind of at herself, like she didn’t want to say this but had come this far—“I live my life around . . . bathrooms.” She puffed out a little breath. Shook her head. “I literally can never be far from one.”

“The walk,” I said, sitting up. “And then up on my balcony.”

“Yeah. Sometimes I just need to leave in a hurry.”

“Oh, man, I am so sorry I gave you a hard time about that,” I said, squeezing the back of my neck.

“It would have been funny if—you know—things were different. And for your information”—she looked at me—“my grandmother is the one who taught me to say ‘powder my nose.’”

“Mine taught me how to care for a Ficus.”

“Doing well, is it?”

“Thriving. I think. I don’t know. It’s green, and it’s not dead, so I guess that’s good. So, back to—what’s it called—Crohn’s disease?”

“Yes, back to that.”

“I’ve got questions. I don’t know if they’re interesting or not.”

She kind of bobbed her head side to side and said, “Let’s hear them.”

“Does this have anything to do with your mysterious disappearances?”

“Yeah, but they’re not mysterious.”

“They are to Mrs. B.,” I said. “And me. Where do you go?”

“Inside,” she said, nodding once toward her house. “Sometimes I’m just down for a couple days, and I don’t want this whole town to know why.”

“Your friends don’t deserve to know?”

“Maybe, but then it gets around. And can you imagine the jokes Brandon is going to make?”

“I’d say they’re going to be epic,” I said, and she nearly smiled. “Maybe don’t tell him all the details.”

“There are more. You still want to hear them?” she asked.

“I do,” I said.

“I’m on a bunch of different meds. My doctor keeps adjusting them, and until she gets them right and I stop having flare-ups”—she sighed—“I can’t go away to school.”

“That surgery didn’t cure it?”

“There’s no cure. Just treatment. You manage it—hopefully—but it never goes away. Like diabetes.”

I pointed at her sweatshirt—Boston College in maroon and yellow, hard to make out now in the darkness—and asked, “Is that where you were going to go?”

She nodded. “And I was going to teach English abroad once I graduated.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere,” she said, like everywhere was the coolest word she’d ever said. “Spain first. Then maybe somewhere in Asia.”

“What’s Spanish for dyspeptic?”

“Yeah,” she said, and nearly laughed. “The first sentences I’ll teach my class: ‘I am feeling dyspeptic today. Where is the nearest bathroom?’”

“Can’t you still do that?” I asked, and watched as her smile slowly disappeared.

“Not until I’m in remission,” she said. “And even then, the disease is one big cycle of remission and relapses. And you never know when it’s going to hit.” Her eyes got glassy and she blinked several times.

I sat up, pulled a tissue from my pocket and handed it to her.

“Thanks,” she said, and wiped kind of savagely at her eyes. Then she wiped them again. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just . . .”

I used my thumb to dry off a spot on her cheek.

“. . . a little mad and a lot scared,” she said.

“I’ve been there.”

“At least your big change was temporary.”

I shrugged when I said, “It might not have been. And I didn’t know it would be at the time, which is part of why I was scared.”

“But it was temporary. This one isn’t.”

“You know what I think?” I touched her butterfly necklace for a second and then traced my fingers along her neck. “Good or bad, all change sucks.”

“Yeah, well, I’d rather have the good kind.”

“Me too,” I said, and I kissed her.

I eased back in the sand and Abigail came with me. We moved together. She had her legs on either side of me, and I pressed her hips gently into mine. I groaned and she laughed quietly against my mouth, doing that thing with her teeth and my lip. I slid my hands under the back of her sweatshirt and felt warm smooth skin and the sharpness of her shoulder blades and the silkiness of her bra strap. She made a sound in my ear, a quick breath, a good breath, and I had just slipped my fingers under the silky strap when Abigail Howe farted.

She pulled up, hair hanging down at both sides, eyes wide in the darkness.

We stared at each other.

Her mouth moved but no words came out. I was frozen.

And then we both lost it. We laughed, gulping huge breaths. We laughed so hard, we spit. I reached up to wipe a fleck of it off her cheek.

“Oh, my God,” Abigail said, rolling off me onto her back.

She covered her face with both hands and shook.

“I could die,” she said through her hands, still laughing.

“So you farted,” I said, and she slapped my chest.

“Will it make you feel better if I fart too?” I asked.

“No.”

“’Cause I can do it.”

“No!”

“Everybody does it.”

“Not while they’re kissing their boyfriends.”

“Oh, come on. It’s not like this is the first time you’ve done it in front of me.”

“Yes, it is,” she said before remembering. “Oh, wait. By Ben’s truck. Oh my God.” And she covered her face again.

“Yeah,” I said. “I thought it was him.”

“I wish it had been,” she said, and she breathed out the last of her laughter and sat up. “I’ve got to go in.”

“No, don’t go,” I said, and reached for her arm, but she stood.

“No, I really need to go in.”

“You coming back?”

“Not tonight,” she said, jogging toward her house.

I stood and brushed sand off my shorts and then called after her, “Did you just call me your boyfriend?”

She didn’t answer. But I knew she heard me.