Earthbound

CHAPTER SIX

“Hey, Tave,” Jay says as I slide into the passenger seat, my leg throbbing from ankle to hip. Usually Reese picks me up from PT because Jay’s at work.

“No lab Nazi today?” I ask, buckling my seat belt. The combination of aches from therapy and knowing that he tattled on me to Elizabeth makes me much less than happy to see him.

“Worse,” Jay says, pulling into traffic. His voice is scratchy and he stifles a yawn. “I have research to do at home.”

“The virus?”

He pauses, so briefly I almost don’t catch it. “Yeah.” But he doesn’t elaborate. “What happened to your head?”

My fingers fly to the scrape, preemptively sabotaging any lie I might have tried to tell. Clearly, my bangs aren’t doing their job. “Um.” I fumble for an explanation. “I ran into a wall.”

“Let’s see,” he says when we hit a red light. He stretches his arm out toward my face. I try not to flinch, but when his hand stills midair, I know I’ve failed. I don’t like people reaching for me—not anymore. Too many months of doctors and nurses checking my eyes, my stitches, my ears, my temperature, my scar, and—of course—about a million needles, all pointed toward me.

He doesn’t push it. Jay’s always pretty good with stuff like that.

“Please, Jay,” I say, rubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands as I feel a headache building. “I’m totally feeling like a dork already—I was just a stupid klutz. I promise.”

He hesitates longer than I think is really necessary. It’s just a scrape.

“I know you talked to Elizabeth,” I blurt after a short pause, my anger making me brave. When in doubt, go with a diversion. Or better yet, an accusation.

He smiles guiltily, tilts his head like a puppy that got caught chewing on a shoe. “I didn’t really tell her anything,” he protests. “Not even what the dream was about.”

“Did you tell Reese? What it was about?” I clarify.

“You know I tell Reese everything.”

I can’t be mad at that. They’re married. And family or not, I’m an intruder in their life. “Light’s green,” I mutter.

“It was really casual,” Jay says, trying to placate me. “Dr. Stanley calls once in a while to make sure everything’s going well at home, and she happened to call this morning.” He pauses, glances over at me. “I didn’t think it was confidential; I mean, was it?”

“Not really,” I admit, feeling my frustration ebb. It wasn’t that big of a deal. “I just feel like I don’t have any privacy. Like, ever.”

“I’ll warn you next time,” he says earnestly. “In fact—peace offering—when we get home, you go upstairs and put a dab of makeup on that scrape before dinner and I’ll make a teeny exception to my tell-Reese-everything rule. Our little secret,” he whispers with a grin. “Truce?”

I go ahead and give him a weak smile. It isn’t that I don’t want Reese to know, exactly. But she worries. A lot. Not that I blame her—her stepbrother died in a plane wreck and she inherited his crazy, damaged kid. Death makes people paranoid.

I should know.

Just before we pull into the garage, I catch sight of the billowy curtains in Reese’s office fluttering through her open window. Wind chimes that Reese let me mount across the front porch a few weeks ago sway in the slight breeze. As I take in the ringing of the chimes and the classic beauty of the house, I feel my whole body relax. For some reason, I’ve always found their home comforting.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” Jay says as we walk in the back door, “but I do need to get some work done before dinner.” He yanks off his already-loose tie and tosses it over the arm of a chair as he heads into his “office.” It’s more like a lab, complete with three computers, charts of molecules plastered on the wall, and one side of the room entirely taken up with bookshelves full of colorful reference books in very non-alphabetical order.

His actual chemistry stuff is at the lab—he says it’s too dangerous to bring home—but every simulation and research tool you could possibly want is in there.

Assuming you can find it.

Jay drops into his office chair and gets right back to work, and I tiptoe upstairs to fix my forehead.

Reese’s office is down the hall from my room and I hear her inside, humming off-key. I creep by the barely cracked door and into my room before she can catch me. My makeup bag is sitting on my vanity, and I pull out my best cover-up and examine the scrape in a decent mirror for the first time.

It really isn’t that bad; it just stings like crazy.

I dab pancake-y makeup on it and it stings even more, but at least it’s hard to see now. I finish the job off with a little powder and check out my handiwork.

Pretty good.

I still look stressed, though. They don’t have makeup to cover that. It’s something in the eyes. But I think I have reason to be. I’m tired of listing the psycho things that have happened to me in the last twenty-four hours. Tired of trying to figure out how I’m going to talk to Elizabeth about them all without sounding like I’ve taken some pretty massive steps backward in my recovery.

Avoiding eye contact with myself, I run my hands through my short, dark hair, but all that does is make it look wild and unkempt. With a sigh I smooth it back down and click my compact closed.

It didn’t used to be short. I wish it would grow faster.

They shaved the right side of my head for surgery, and when the bandages finally came off, it was covered in matted fuzz while the other side was still halfway down my back.

That was the first time I cried. Until then, everything was numb and I felt disconnected—like all this medical stuff was happening to someone else. Someone with no parents and very little chance of a normal life.

Not me.

But the hair. The hair was mine.

And if the hair was mine, the rest of it was too. The broken brain, the dead parents, all of it. Mine.

At least I could do something about the hair. I decided then and there to shave the other side too, so at least I would match. I don’t know that it was the wrong decision, but having a shaved head isn’t exactly my idea of pretty.

I thought it made me look insane.

Two hundred years ago, they would shear the hair off all the “patients” in asylums to keep them from getting lice and nits. So for weeks after surgery, whenever I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror with my stubbly hair and hospital gown, I felt like a prisoner in an old-fashioned madhouse.

And thought it rather apropos.

Tentatively, I poke at the scar that runs along my head, fingering the raised edge. The doctors told me that it will gradually get flatter and less noticeable, but it’ll always be there. It’s about eight inches long and stretches back diagonally from just above my hairline on the right side of my head. Luckily, once my hair got to be about an inch long, it covered the scar almost completely. The four inches I have now is dark enough that no one can see my scar at all unless I run my fingers through my hair.

I don’t do that in public; I’m very careful.

Still, maybe a visit to the salon would help.

“How was PT?” Reese asks, making me jump. At least she waited to swing by my room until after I hid all evidence of my latest injury.

“As good as torture ever is,” I mutter, shoving my makeup bag aside. My leg is still aching.

“And how about your session with Dr. Stanley yesterday?” she continues. Reese and Jay apparently didn’t get the memo about the Elizabeth thing; they always call her Dr. Stanley.

“Fine,” I say, peeling off my sweater; all this adrenaline is making me hot. The air from the open window cools my prickly skin.

“So things are going well?” she asks. “Progress?”

I look up at her, suspicious; this is more than she usually delves. Or maybe I just haven’t noticed, but today everything makes me feel paranoid.

“I’m only asking,” Reese says quickly, “because I need to visit a client out of town in the next week or so. I wondered how you would feel about me being gone for a couple days.”

“Oh, that would be totally fine,” I say, too fast. “Is Jay going with you?”

“Don’t I wish. He’s got a new project. There’s no way they’d let him take a week off now.” She’s leaning against my door frame, her voice distant—wistful. If she weren’t answering a direct question, I would wonder if she was talking to me or herself.

Then, abruptly, she straightens, and looks at me and smiles. Big.

I like Reese; I really do. But she tries so hard. Too hard, I guess. Jay takes everything more naturally, and it’s easy to sit and joke when it’s just him and me. Or even all three of us. When I’m alone with Reese, it takes effort.

“Dinner’ll be ready in about ten minutes,” she says cheerily. “I made lasagna.”

I grin and she interprets it as excitement for the lasagna—which is understandable. It’s great lasagna! But really I’m laughing at her use of the word made. Because in my opinion, the guy at the deli made the lasagna. All Reese can take credit for is slipping it into the oven and setting the timer.

That might be baking, but it’s definitely not making. When Mom made lasagna, she’d spend hours rolling fresh noodles and crushing tomatoes and chopping oregano. Nothing came from a pouch or a can or a deli; for Mom, food was art. Reese’s lasagna is different—just like everything else in my new life. So different that it doesn’t seem entirely real sometimes. There are days when my life here feels like I’m at an exotic summer camp and after a few more candlelit meals and nights under my silky down comforter, I’ll go home and my parents will be waiting back in middle-class Michigan.

Other days it feels so different that the fact that my old life is gone seems all the more real.

And depressing.

Luckily, most days are somewhere in the middle.

“My favorite,” I blurt at last.

Reese plays with the edge of her untucked blouse as her mind churns almost visibly. She’s trying to think of something else to say.

I avoid the tension by looking out the window at the frothy Piscataqua River and almost choke in surprise, my heartbeat immediately back up to full speed. “You know what, Reese? I’m kinda hot. I’m going to go outside for a little bit.”

I hope I sounded sufficiently casual as I squeeze past her and make it halfway down the stairs before she can respond, my leg throbbing as I nearly run.

“Dinner in ten,” she yells after me. “You need to eat!”

But I barely hear her.

I burst out the back door, my eyes scanning, searching. Please don’t let me be too late, I mentally beg.

But I’m not.

He’s still there. Crouched on the riverbank.