"How much time does he have? Really?" Jackson asked.
Mrs. King grimaced at the question-but leaned forward to hear the answer all the same.
One of the doctors cleared his throat. Putting a hand on Marcus's skinny, skinny shoulder, he spoke right to him. "It's hard to say, of course. It depends on what you decide to do about medication. But the end could come soon-within the week."
All the air left the room. Fi's heart shriveled in the vacuum.
Marcus had left the hospital the day after the discussion, insisting he wanted to die in his own home. His parents moved a bed downstairs, into the same dining room now covered in inappropriate meats, breads, and casseroles. Two days later, he died in his sleep.
Fi had been with him the evening before it happened. She talked to him, looking into his eyes-but she couldn't be sure that he heard or saw her. By then, he was in so much pain-and on so many drugs-that it was hard to know if he registered her voice or her fingers intertwined with his. If he felt her tears drop onto his cheeks. She told him she needed him, she loved him, she didn't know what to do without him. He kept mumbling something that sounded like "soft with rot" over and over.
Now, Fi inhaled the scent of magnolia blossoms and grass, and the cedar of this hard deck. Her butt was sore, the pollen made her sniffle, little beads of sweat trickled down her back. Still, this self-imposed exile was better than the air-conditioned pleasantries of the reception. Even if she had to share it with Jackson.
More to herself than anyone, Fi spoke out loud. "I don't know what to do now."
Jackson looked toward her, the top of his head dangling between his arms, his chin resting on his shoulder.
"I mean," she hesitated, not sure how to explain it. Not sure why she felt compelled to tell Jackson of all people. "I don't know who I am now."
He just nodded.
"Before I met him, all I cared about was lacrosse. Then, I don't know, all I cared about was him." She glanced at the date square on her watch. "There's a camp at Northwestern in a few weeks-Marcus wanted me to go, but I just can't. It's like, none of it matters at all."
She'd emailed the coach the day after Marcus died. In a long, rambling message, she explained about the broken ankle – coffee shop coincidence that brought her and Marcus together, how wonderful a human being he was, so full of big ideas and dreams that would never get to come true, how he had just died and left her alone, and how could anything really matter after that, she was sorry she wasted the coach's time but she wouldn't be coming to the camp.
Fi got a reply the next day-a concise two lines to Fi's fifty.
Fi, I am so sorry for your loss. He sounds like a wonderful person. I wish you the best in whatever you choose to do. Candace Starnes.
Jackson kept looking loosely at Fi-kind of at her, kind of not really. Eventually, he said, "It's like Picasso. Cubism."
Fi wrinkled her brow at this subject change but nodded at him to go on.
"That's what it feels like. Someone took reality, pulled it in all directions, cut the stretched out bits into pieces, and then glued everything back together in all the wrong places."
Fi had never heard so many normal, nonvenomous words come out of Jackson's mouth. "Why do you hate me?" she asked.
"You took my brother," he answered simply. He sounded numb.
Fi recognized the tone-it's how she sounded, too. "He was with you more than me."
"He was dying." Jackson looked away from Fi, to the tree he didn't climb. "I didn't want to share."
That she understood in the deepest part of her soul.
Fi studied him in profile. The past month hadn't been kind to Jackson. He was a thinner, paler version of himself. He looked a little more like Marcus this way. "Why are you talking to me now, then?"
"No reason not to. Marcus isn't here to fight over." He looked back at her, resting his head against his upper arm, as he'd done before. "And you're the only one who misses him almost as much as I do."
COLLEGE-FRESHMAN YEAR
SEPTEMBER
FIONA
"You look great. Don't worry." Her dad placed his hands on her shoulders, equal weight on each, and turned her away from the mirror she'd been obsessing in front of. "It's remarkable, the difference."
She gave her best I'm fixed now smile, though moving into the dorm today, and officially becoming College Fiona, brought back some of the old nerves.
Fiona's right hand went to the bottom edge of the single fine scar line, the boundary between what was hers and what was borrowed. It was strange, how the pain had faded-from the old scar, from the surgery. No feeling at all replaced it.
Only when following doctor's orders did she let her fingers creep over the line into "foreign territory." He'd told her to apply some creams and to test for the return of sensation. Fiona wanted to correct him on this last bit. Sensation would never return-not unless the original owner came back from the dead and took this missing piece back.
She didn't like to touch it, but she had no trouble staring. All her life, she'd ducked past mirrors. Now she sought them out. In just four months-all her doctors commented on the speed of her recovery-her face had transitioned from an unsettling raw look to the deceptively clear skin she had now. The faint oval outline that would likely stay with her forever-the New Fiona/Old Fiona border-had become less purple, less "angry." The surgeon said in a few years it would barely be noticeable, especially around the hairline.
The scar didn't bother her, anyway. Ryan said it added character. "Tell people you used to be a pirate," Lucy had offered.
Her dad was still looking at her, shaking his watery-eyed head.
She patted his shoulder. "Okay. Deep breath. We need to go."
"This isn't natural," he said, picking up her bags. "Having two children start college in the same year."
Fiona snorted. "That's what happens when you have kids ten months apart."
He winked at her. "Caroline, I'm checking out," he called toward the closed bathroom door. "Come down when you're ready."
Fiona leaned over to pick up a bag. "Nothing over ten pounds," he snapped.
"I know," she groaned. Only two weeks left of Healing Period Restrictions. She'd take the drugs forever, but she would be glad to be done with the weight limits and the creams.
She was ready to start.
Plus, she hated feeling useless. When they moved Ryan into his dorm six weeks ago, all she could do was sit on his unmade dorm bed and text updates to Gwen. He & his roommate are picking desks and beds. He's putting shirts in the dresser. Mom's teaching him the right way to fold.
She slid her laptop bag over her shoulder-three-point-one pounds, she'd weighed it-and her mom emerged from the bathroom. "Fiona, it's cold outside," her mom said, looking her usual, perfect self. "Put something else on."
Weather appropriate gear-her mother's new obsession. Yesterday she'd ransacked Michigan Avenue, bringing back bags full of gloves, scarves, coats, and pullovers. Picking through it-how had her mother managed to find frilly fleece?-Fiona had said she'd packed Ryan's old coat.
"You can't walk around campus in that old thing," her mom had said. "How would that look?"
As Fiona had learned since the surgery, this brand-new, high-end cheek had not lessened her mom's quest to make her suitable-i.e., better.
"I'm fine, Mom," she said now.
In the elevator, Mrs. Doyle looked at Fiona through the mirror. "How lucky you healed so quickly. No one would ever know."
We'll keep it our dirty little secret, Mom.
"Are you okay? Nervous?" her mom asked. "It's a long way from home."
"I'll be back in three months," she said, desperately hoping to avoid a heart-to-heart in the Holiday Inn Express elevator.
"You've never been gone so long before."
Fiona had never been gone at all. The longest time away had been the nights she slept over at Lucy's.
Who was she kidding, that she could do this? Start a new life, as New Fiona? Make new friends? Compete with some of the smartest kids in the country?
The elevator doors opened to the lobby. "Mom," Fiona said, faking calm and gesturing for her mother to go first. "What could possibly happen in three months?"
It turned out she had nothing to be nervous about. Fiona loved college.
Loved it.
Even though she'd lucked into a single, she shared a suite and bathroom with six other girls, whom she liked. The first night, Lexie From Des Moines commanded they all bond over popcorn and pictures. The girls cooed over Ryan. Lexie called David her HTH-hometown honey. No one asked about the scars, because Fiona had passed around pictures she wasn't in.