Chapter Seventeen

Lina couldn’t stand being in the house. Everywhere she looked, there were memories of Francis.

She stood on the porch, staring out at the first pink strands of dawn that crept along the shadowy street. Her lungs ached from the cigarettes she’d smoked, and her eyes stung from crying. She felt rubbery and hollow and sad.… Oh, God, how could there be such sadness?

She bit her lower lip and felt the burning glaze her eyes again. Turning, she saw the porch swing—the one he’d given them for Christmas last year—and suddenly she was crying again.

Come back, Francis. I’m sorry. Oh, God, I’m so sorry.…

In some dim part of her mind, she heard the whine of a car engine. Dully she looked up and saw her mother’s car pull into the driveway. She walked to the edge of the railing and stood there.

Mom killed the engine and got out of the car. The whack of the Volvo’s door shutting seemed obscenely loud in the predawn quiet. She was halfway up the walkway when she saw Lina standing on the shadowy porch.

Mom climbed the creaking steps and stopped, leaning against the wisteria-entwined white railing. Her gaze flicked over the ashtray on the floor, on the butts that were strewn everywhere. But when she looked at Lina, she didn’t say a word.

Tears sprang to her mother’s eyes, and she moved forward, opening her arms.

Woodenly Lina moved into the circle of her mother’s embrace, felt the warm, loving arms enfold her, and suddenly she was a child again. Six years old, and she wanted to believe that her mother could make everything better.

She waited for her mother to say something, to give Lina some magical, miraculous words that would turn back the clock.

But her mother didn’t speak, just held her.

And Lina knew. It would never be all right again.

He sits on the porch swing, trying to make it sway beneath him, but the wooden slats remain utterly motionless. The air is thick and heavy and smells of nothing. Before, he wouldn’t have known what that was, nothingness, but now he does. He tries to remember the million smells that used to linger around her front porch. Roses and fresh-cut grass, the fecund humidity of muddy earth when the rains came, the smell of the wind itself as it blew leaves across the sidewalk. Even the dead brown wisteria vines that curl around her white railing used to have their own wintery smell.

Now there is nothing. The wind moves past him. He can see it touching the fallen leaves, swirling in minute whirlpools on the brown grass, but none of it touches him where he sits in the porch swing that can’t be made to move.

He is waiting for something to happen, that’s all he knows. There is a moment out there, hovering beyond his grasp; he feels it the way he used to feel rain on his cheeks or the wind at his back. He has something left to do.

He has learned that if he concentrates very, very hard, he can find himself inside her house, wandering among her things, reaching out for bits and pieces—mementos of a past he is rapidly forgetting. But it makes him tired, all that thinking, and it makes him feel things that hurt, and when he’s done, he wishes he hadn’t moved, had just sat here on this swing where he feels so at home.

Last night Lina was beside him, and when she first sat down, he felt the swing rustle and move beneath him. So much so, he could almost feel the movement of the wind, almost hear the creaking of the wooden slats. But he thinks, in the end, it was just a memory, that he couldn’t hear those things at all.

She had cried, his precious baby, and in some pocket of his soul, he’d known that she was crying for him. He’d ached to touch her, comfort her, but he couldn’t concentrate with the hacking sound of her sobs washing over him. So he’d done what he could, used the power that seemed to lie curled in the emptiness of his belly. He’d squeezed his eyes shut and spoken to her in his mind. Words, remnants of words he could barely remember.

I’m here, Lina. I’m here.…

He’d thought the words over and over and over, and still her tears had gone on, wrenching through him, making him ache.

Finally she’d gone into the house, and he’d followed her, drifting from room to room, wanting desperately to feel that he belonged in this place, the only real home he’d ever known. But with each passing bit of time, he’d felt himself getting weaker and weaker. Once, when he looked down, he couldn’t see his feet, and in the next second, his legs were beginning to fade. Finally he’d curled up on the end of her bed like a cat and closed his eyes.

The next thing he knows, he’s here again, stationed on the porch swing. Sunlight is all around him, streaming from billowy clouds perched high in a clear blue sky. A last yellow-green leaf rustles on the wisteria vine and floats to the lawn.

He looks down and his feet are still gone, his legs are inconstant shimmerings of shadow against the white paint of the porch floorboards. He wonders how long it will go on, this slow vanishing, and what will become of him when it is over.

And so he waits.

Angel was lying very still. Everything was dark. He could hear sounds, noises that were a confusing, frightening din. He blinked, tried to open his eyes. Failed.

“Angel?”

He heard her voice, coming at him from beyond the darkness. He needed her suddenly, needed her so much.… He tried again to open his eyes. His lashes flickered. It took so much energy.…

He heard her voice again, coaxing him, whispering his name. He fought to push aside the layers of cotton and fog that pressed around him. Finally one eye cracked open, and light stabbed him, sent him scurrying again for the comforting shadows.

“Come on, Angel, open your eyes.”

Slowly, hesitantly, he tried again. And found her sitting beside him, her masked face inches from his. For a split second he was seventeen again, and she was his Madelaine, waiting for him.

He tried to remember where he was, why she was here.

Then he noticed his heartbeat, strong and even. Ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-dum.

He squeezed his eyes shut and all he could hear was his—someone else’s—heart hammering away in his chest, thudding beneath his skin. He wanted to reach for the needles and tubes and rip them all out, but his hands were weak and shaking.

He’d never experienced such a devastating sense of violation, of loss. He felt invaded; the stranger’s heart didn’t belong in him. He felt it with every breath, thumping too loudly, aching in his damaged chest. Where was his own heart? Weak and useless as it was, it was his, and now it was gone. Lying in the trash somewhere …

His heart, the storehouse of his soul, his dreams, his ideas …

“Oh, Christ …” he whispered in a scratchy, broken voice that he didn’t even recognize. Panic swooped in.

God, it wasn’t even his voice anymore. There was nothing left of him, nothing.…

Then a word stopped his fall, left him breathless and shaking and more afraid than he’d ever been in his life. DONOR.

He forced his eyes open again and stared up at Madelaine. He knew he was crying, he could feel the tears coursing down his cheeks, and he didn’t care. “Who?”

She flinched as if she’d been struck. “Angel,” she said in a voice so calm that for a second, he was swayed. All he wanted to do was fall into that voice, that look in her eyes. “Don’t think about those things now, just relax. The surgery went well. You’re doing fine. Fine.”

The surgery. He thought again of his heart, his own worthless heart, and the tears kept coming and coming. It felt as if he were grieving, but he didn’t know for whom, for what. He just knew that this heart wasn’t his and it was inside him, thumping too loudly, pumping too efficiently. His hands and feet were uncomfortably warm, and suddenly the cold numbness he’d had before was preferable to this … thing beating inside him.

The question came back to him, weighing on his thudding heart. Whose heart is it? He wanted to ask the question again, to demand an answer, but he couldn’t do it, couldn’t form the words or force them up his raw, burning throat. He wondered suddenly if he wanted to know. Sweet Jesus, did he want to know who was inside him, keeping him alive, warming his hands and toes?

Madelaine stroked the side of his face and it felt good, so good. He closed his eyes again and shook his head. He wanted to say something to her, but what? What?

The darkness came back for him, crooking its silent finger, drawing him back to the black cocoon where he didn’t remember, didn’t care.

“Angel, you’re going to be okay,” came her voice again, soothing, calming. “You’ll feel better when the anesthesia wears off completely. Trust me. You’re experiencing disorientation, it’s normal. To be expected. Don’t worry.”

He turned his head a little, felt the pillow sink beneath his cheek. Beside him, the cardiac monitor spat out reams of paper, showing its bright pink heart-line graph across the black screen. For a second he couldn’t focus, couldn’t make out what he was seeing. Then it struck him. There were two blurry pink lines running side by side on the computerized screen, where before there had only been one.

Fear welled up inside him, spilling through him in wave after wave. He started to shake, felt his insides knot up smaller and smaller.

Then he looked back at the monitor and it showed only one heartbeat. It should have calmed him, the realization that it had been a hallucination, but it didn’t.

He could feel the drugs whirring through his bloodstream, dulling this moment, blurring his vision, but it didn’t matter. The stranger’s heart kept beating, beating, beating.…

“Oh, God,” he whimpered. He’d never been so sick or afraid in his life. “You should have let me die.”

“Just relax, Angel. Relax. We’ll talk later.”

He felt her squeeze his hand, felt her stroke his tear-soaked cheek, and he wanted to take comfort from her, ached to take comfort from her.

But he couldn’t. It didn’t matter what she said later, what she told him was normal or to be expected. He knew the truth, knew it with every beat of the stranger’s heart.

Someone was living inside him.

It was cold along the shadowy streambed where Lina stood alone, waiting for her friends to drift down the loose embankment. They’d appear on the rise like they always did, one by one, their bodies silhouetted against the cool blue of an autumn sky, their hands jammed in their pockets, cigarettes hanging limply from their mouths. She’d hear them talking before they reached the crest of the ridge, their voices high and exuberant.

It always brought a swift stab of longing, that first sound of their laughing conversations. She’d rise to her feet, craning her neck to see the first familiar face, hear the first called-out “Hey, Lina! Hold that spot for me!”

Whenever they came careening down the ravine toward her, their tennis shoes skidding and sliding through the wet autumn leaves, their backpacks thumping against their bodies, she felt—for a few brief, shining moments—as if she belonged.

The crowd met here every morning before school, collecting like lost souls, drawn together to share cigarettes, booze, pot, and a sense of togetherness.

They were the “bad” kids, the problem ones. Everyone knew it, from the teachers to the counselors to the principal himself. Once a semester, one of the new teachers would come tearing down this crumbling bank, pointing an accusing finger and rousting them all. But by the end of the year, that teacher would be tired, and there would be more and more days when they stood here alone, talking among themselves, laughing at their own bravery, believing they were invincible.

But Lina didn’t feel invincible anymore, and nothing as easily obtainable as a few cigarettes would ease the ache that pressed on her lungs until sometimes she didn’t think she could breathe without starting to cry.

She jammed her hands in the baggy, linty confines of her jeans and sat down on a mossy rock. Two towering cedar trees stood stoically on either side of her, their graceful branches collapsing downward like an umbrella that had been left half-open after a rain.

“Hey, Lina!” It was Jett, standing at the crest of the hill, wearing all black, his buzz-cut hair dyed to match. He jumped over the edge like a skier, knees up, arms flung wide. His shoes hit the earth hard and skidded out from underneath him. With a whooping holler, he ran all the way down, leapt across the creek, and came to a breathless stop beside her.

She stared at him, this boy whom she’d had a crush on for almost two years, and felt suddenly as if she’d never seen him before. It made her feel a bit sick to her stomach, unsteady on her feet.

He grinned at her, flashing a set of white teeth. “Can I bum a smoke?”

It was always the first thing he said to her. “Sure,” she mumbled, reaching into her leather pocket, pulling out a pack. She knew the second she touched it that it was empty. A frown darted across her face. When had she smoked them all?

Then she remembered the other night, when they’d landed back at SeaTac Airport. Mom had put Lina into a taxi and sent her home.

To that empty house with pictures of Francis everywhere. It felt as if every place she looked, she saw him, felt him, heard him. Finally she’d raced from her room and curled onto the porch swing—the one he’d bought them for Christmas last year—and cried and smoked until her mother came home.

“Sorry,” she said, glancing up at Jett. “I guess I’m out.”

His disappointment was obvious. “No prob.”

They stood there a second longer, waiting for the other kids to arrive. Yesterday she would have tried to talk to him, would have pulled conversation from the chilly air around them and clung to each word he gave her, but today she was too tired to expend the effort.

She heard the magpie chatter of distant conversations and looked up just as five or six kids lurched over the crest of the hill and skidded downward. Within seconds they were all standing alongside the stream, cigarettes going, talking loudly and laughing.

Lina looked at them, from one face to another, and felt a dawning sense of confusion. Why, when she was standing here among her friends, did she feel so lonely that she wanted to cry?

It took her a second to realize that no one was talking to her, a second more to realize she didn’t care.

Jett pulled a thermos out of his backpack and twisted the lid off. With a grin he said, “Kahlúa and Coke, anyone?”

Everyone cheered and reached for the thermos. But before Jett could take the first swallow, another silhouette appeared on the rise.

“You kids get back to school. The first bell rang five minutes ago.”

As one, they looked up and saw Vicki Owen, the new guidance counselor, standing above them. Beside her, Principal Smithson looked ragged and tired, and Lina wasn’t surprised by his expression. Smithson had raided this ravine a couple of thousand times too often to believe it would make any difference.

The kids laughed at getting caught and tossed their still-burning cigarettes into the stream. Lina watched the white butts swirl together, mix with the fallen leaves, and float downstream. It occurred to her that a bird could see that little white cylinder and swoop down on it, swallowing the deadly man-made thing before it realized what had happened.

“You, Lina Hillyard, I want to talk to you.”

It was Miss Owen’s voice. Lina looked up and realized that she was the only one left at the stream. The other kids and Principal Smithson were gone; the only evidence that they’d been there was a skidding trail of loose mud that cut through the leaves and ferns.

With a sigh, Lina jumped over the stream and climbed up the embankment. At the top she stopped alongside Miss Owen, and saw her mother standing a few feet away.

Lina rolled her eyes. “Great.”

Miss Owen stepped aside, then retreated wordlessly. Lina watched the counselor walk across the football field and disappear into the school.

Finally she turned and looked at her mother. She stood about ten feet away, her hair unbrushed and unkempt, her eyes puffy and red. It was the way they’d both looked in the two days since Francis’s death. The walking wounded.

“Whaddaya want?” she said harshly, knowing what her mother wanted—knowing it was what they both wanted. Comfort, relief from the staggering grief. But there was no comfort. Lina had learned that the hard way. It just kept coming back, sneaking through your thoughts like a snake, pouncing at the most unexpected times. Every time the phone rang, Lina thought it was Francis—then whap! the snake bit.

There was a long pause before her mother spoke, a quiet in which Lina heard the squawking of the crows and the distant whine of a leaf blower. “Vicki Owen called me this morning, told me where you were. I thought … I thought we should talk.”

Lina swallowed heavily. “Is that gonna bring him back, Mom?”

She shook her head. “Come on, baby. Walk with me.”

She stared at her mother, watched as Madelaine turned and walked slowly toward the bleachers. Lina thought about not following, about just splitting and going somewhere—anywhere. But she didn’t want to be alone, and her mother was the only person who really understood how Lina felt.

She followed her mother across the football field and up into the bleachers. They sat side by side, far enough apart that they weren’t touching, but still somehow together in all the empty seats.

Lina glanced around, at the black scoreboard with the unlit entries for home and guest. A prowling black cat crawled across the wooden fencing, his tail wrapped through the sign that proudly proclaimed this place the home of the Panthers.

Lina had been here, of course, but never for a game. She’d never heard the crash of the helmets or the roar of the crowd, never met with a group of friends to watch their team battle another.

Years ago she’d wanted to, back when she was in seventh grade and Cara Milston was her best friend in the world. She’d tried to get her mother to take her to a game, but that was the beginning of Madelaine’s “busy days.” Days and nights and more days that blurred together in hospital shifts that never ended. There had only been a few home games that year, and Madelaine had been unable to go to every one of them. By the next year, Lina had collected a group of friends who wouldn’t be caught dead at a football game. Instead they’d spent their Friday nights down by the stream, sucking up whatever booze someone could get a hold of and chain-smoking.

Maybe if Lina had had a brother, or a boyfriend, it would have been different, or if she and Cara had stayed best friends. Or if her mom had gone to high school, maybe that would have made a difference, too.

“You never ask to go to football games anymore,” Mom said quietly.

“Yeah, well, I got better things to do.”

“Like smoking down by the creek?”

Lina shrugged and glanced around the bleachers, noticing the film of wrappers and old popcorn and spilled Coke that lay in sticky heaps on the metal flooring. “I thought you wanted to talk.”

There was a long pause, then slowly, quietly, her mother began to speak. “I was six years old when my mom died. One night I kissed her good night and went off to bed.… When I woke up, she was gone. No one wanted to tell me how sick she was—my dad thought it didn’t matter, I guess, preparing a little girl to lose her mother. But there were so many things I never got to say.” There was a surprising bitterness in her mother’s voice, a hardness she’d never heard before. She frowned a little. “After that, I saw the world differently. I knew it wasn’t a safe place.”

Lina felt the tears come back, stinging, burning. She thought about wiping them away, but didn’t bother. “H-He was always there for me.”

“He still is, baby.”

Lina snorted and smeared a hand across her eyes. “Don’t get into that God stuff. It doesn’t help.”

“You can call it God or Jesus or Allah or mumbo jumbo; it doesn’t matter. What matters is looking inside yourself and discovering what you believe. If you don’t, you’ll have nothing to cling to, nothing to believe in, and everything will start falling apart. Trust me, I know.”

“I don’t want to think about that stuff now,” she said in a tiny, broken voice. “If I do, all I end up thinking about is how gone he is, how he’s never coming back, and how much I miss him.”

“If Francis were right here, right now, what would he say to you?”

For a split second she could almost feel him beside her, whispering in her ear. A sad little smile plucked at her lips. “He’d tell me to ditch that loser bunch of friends and go home.”

“You see? He’s there, inside you. He always will be.”

Lina wanted to smile, wanted it badly, but she couldn’t. “He hated my friends. He thought they weren’t going anywhere.”

Madelaine didn’t respond, but her silence seemed to say it all.

“I know he’s right,” Lina said shakily, “but I don’t know what to do about it. I never did.”

“The biggest journeys start with a single step. Maybe you could go to the Christmas dance. You’ll see a whole different crowd of people there. A girl as pretty as you could get a date in a second.”

Lina rolled her eyes. “As if Mom. Jett Rodham wouldn’t be caught dead at something as dopey as a school dance.”

“What about you, Lina? Would you like to go?”

It was exactly the sort of idea Francis would have come up with. Lina thought about it, and wished immediately that she hadn’t. The idea of attending a school dance was oh, so seductive. She thought about dressing up, fixing her hair, coming down the stairs and getting her picture taken with a boy who smiled shyly for the camera. She thought about her mother, grinning from ear to ear, slipping her arm around Francis’s waist—

No. Francis wouldn’t be there. He’d never be there again.…

Lina jerked to her feet. “Don’t talk to me about these things,” she hissed. It hurt so badly, missing him; she hadn’t thought anything could hurt this bad. “I don’t have that kind of life, damn it. It’s too late for me to become some idiotic homecoming queen. Just leave well enough alone.”

“Oh, baby …” Madelaine said on a sigh, reaching for her.

Lina could feel her mother’s love—a heat that was inches beyond her grasp. But she couldn’t get rid of the picture of her going to the prom, of Francis and her mother waiting up for her.

The thought of him twisted her insides into a tight, throbbing knot. Wordlessly she spun away from her mom’s sad face and ran across the football field. She didn’t know where she was going. It didn’t matter.

She just knew she had to run.