“What do you think, Delaney?” Carson said. “Should I cut mine? Too boyish, right? I need to man up for college.” He ran his hand through the curls that fell almost to his chin.
I tried to smile, thinking of Carson in college. Thinking he would live that long. Thinking I could save him. If only I knew what was wrong.
“Are you sick?” I said without prelude.
“Huh?”
“Sick. You know, ill. Under the weather. You don’t really look like yourself.” Which was a lie.
Carson picked up the napkin dispenser and stared at his distorted image. “No, I’m not sick. Janna, do I look pale to you or something? Freaking Maine winter. I’m going south for college. Florida. Hawaii, maybe. Yeah, Hawaii. You guys could visit me. Learn to surf or something.”
Janna laughed with her mouth closed. “Might want to work on your grades, moron.”
Grades. College. Hair. Like any of it mattered. I couldn’t stop looking at him. I put down the pizza, afraid I might lose yet another meal.
“Delaney, you really don’t look so good.”
“Bad day,” I said.
“It’s just a B, sweetie.” Janna rubbed my back. “Carson over there would kill for a B.”
“It’s more than the B.”
Janna looked at me again, mentally debating something. “Look, I have an idea. I’m gonna take the car to the salon. Why don’t you drive Carson home? Stay there with him, and I’ll come hang out when I’m done. Sound good?”
Actually, it sounded perfect. I couldn’t have planned it better myself. She looked at her brother. “And don’t touch her,” she added.
“Who, me?” Carson said, grin stretching ear to ear.
She scowled. “You’re such a prick. Delaney, hands off the brother, get me?”
“Got you.”
“Whatever,” Carson said. “She looks contagious anyway.”
“Why can’t everyone else see this? My brother is an asshole.” She piled the paper plates on our pizza tray and carried it all to the trash. I started to follow them both outside but felt a quick head rush, a pinprick in my brain, like there was something I was missing. I spun around and saw Troy sitting against the back wall. My subconscious must’ve already noticed him.
“Shit. Carson, I’ll meet you by the car. Gotta go to the bathroom.”
Then I spun around and marched to the far wall, where Troy fiddled with a soda cup. He pretended not to notice me. Instead he took the lid off his cup and moved the ice around with his straw. I sat across from him and cleared my throat.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” he said.
I placed my hands flat on the table and leaned across it. “Stay the hell away from him.”
“Who? Oh, you mean the guy who’s gonna bite it soon?”
“He’s not. He’s going to be fine.”
He reached a hand out and placed it over my own. I snatched my hand back. He shook his head at me and whispered, “You can’t stop it.”
“Watch me,” I said, and stood up to leave.
He stood behind me and followed me out the front of the store. I looked around to make sure we weren’t alone. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “Yesterday, I just wanted to explain. But you ran off.”
“Leave us alone,” I said.
“I will,” he said. “But not because I think you’re right. Because you need to see for yourself. Because then you’ll understand. You’ll come back to me. We’re meant to be together, you know.”
“No, we aren’t. There’s no such thing.” There’s what I do and what I don’t do. What I say and what I don’t say. There’s no underlying path guiding my way. No predestination. Just me, choosing the right way. I walked straight for Carson. I was going to save him.
I followed Carson down a narrow set of wooden steps to their partially finished basement. Half of the basement was exposed concrete and cinder-block walls with workout equipment scattered throughout the empty space. The other half was carpeted floors and plastered walls with couches and a big-screen TV.
“So, since I’m not allowed to touch you, I guess the couch is out,” Carson said, and threw back his head to laugh. He poked me in the side. “I’m just messing with you. Smile.”
I tried.
“You sure you’re not sick?” he said.
“Carson, can I ask you something? When we were little, you had seizures, right?”
Carson turned away and walked for the weight equipment. “You remember that?”
“I remember once. On the playground.”
“God, it was so freaking endless.” Carson maneuvered himself under a long bar with weights on either end. “Spot me, okay?”
I had no idea what that meant. From upside down, he grabbed my wrists and brought my hands to the bar. “Just in case I drop it,” he said.
He was asking me to save him. My hands were damp. I wiped them off on my pants before bringing them back to the bar. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t drop it.”
“So what happened?” I said.
“With what?” Carson lowered the bar for the count of ten. I followed him with my hands. He blew the air violently out of his lungs every time he raised the bar. I cringed each time, thinking he shouldn’t be taking his air for granted.
“The seizures.”
Carson sat up and stretched his arms back and forth across his body, facing away from me. “They started when I was three. Got them under control when I was ten. That’s all there is to it. Changed medicine every couple of months for seven freaking years until they found a combination that worked.” Then, after a moment, he added, “Mostly.”
“Were you scared?”
He looked at me hard, opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind, and repositioned himself under the bar again. “Nothing to be scared of,” he said, lining up his hands. “Seizures usually don’t kill you. Unless you’re in the water or you crack your head open.” He tilted his head back and tried to laugh, but it sounded forced.
I put my hands on the bar and spotted him for another set. “And you have to take the medicine forever?”
“Nope. I stopped taking one of them last month. So hard to pay attention while I’m on it. Who knows?” he said with a crooked grin. “Maybe I’m as smart as Janna underneath it all.”
“Does your doctor know you stopped taking it?”
“Yeah. I might’ve outgrown the seizures. Doctors say it’s pretty common.”
“How do they know?”
“If I stop taking the medicine and I don’t have a seizure. So far, so good.”
It didn’t seem very scientific to me. How long had he been sick without anyone knowing? I hadn’t seen him since Justin’s party. Had there been any signs? When had the pull begun? And how the hell would I get him to a doctor?
Carson’s phone rang while I was weighing my options. Pretend to be sick, ask him to take me. Somehow convince Dr. Logan to run some thousand-dollar tests. But Carson said seizures didn’t kill. What if it was something else? God, what if it was his heart and working out was making it worse?
Carson snapped his phone shut and said, “Let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“Kevin’s house.”
“Janna told us to wait here.”
“Janna tells me to do a lot of things. Janna is my younger sister. If I listened to everything Janna told me to do, I’d be bored out of my fucking mind. Let’s go. I’ll text her to meet us there.”
I stood in front of the steps, blocking his path. “Why can’t we just wait for her?”
He brushed past me. “No point. Justin’s there already. Decker and Tara are on their way.”
Well, that settled it. “I don’t want to go.”
“It’s a miracle Decker gets you to do anything. I’m going.
You can sit here and wait for Janna by yourself, or you can come.”
He was already halfway up the steps. I couldn’t let him out of my sight. “Okay. But I’m driving.”