Skinny(19)

I picture Jackson, atop that granite boulder, arms out-stretched above his head. In my mind I see him punching his clenched fists at the carpet of twinkling stars overhead with a look of absolute delight on his face shouting, “Home free!”

Don’t you remember? I think.

I fidget with the cover on my notebook, trying to collect my thoughts, and desperately search for words of the past that will trigger the memories. I think about how we used to lie for hours in the grass out by the soccer fields and look at clouds. Rat saw cirrus and stratus clouds. I saw circles and triangles. Jackson saw bunnies and alligators and pipe-smoking old men. He was the best at finding something out of the white clumps of nothingness. When he was older, he was going to become a pilot and fly right through those clouds, he’d tell us.

“Do you still like planes?” I blurt out into the sudden silence.

Look at me, Jackson, I want to say. Look for the something inside clump of nothingness.

He turns back around to glance down at me. Finally. But he still has the same puzzled expression on his face.

“Sure,” he says, vaguely.

“You had all those models of planes in your basement.” I don’t give up. I need to see the recognition in his eyes now. Before the surgery next week changes me forever. “You wanted to be a pilot.”

He laughs. “I don’t have much time for airplane models these days. With football and band and” He motions toward Mr. Blair’s desk. “. . . homework.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Skinny hisses in my ear. “You just hang around the house eating yourself into a stupor.”

“I guess you’re really busy,” I say.

“And I have to get a workout in there somewhere or I’m never going to make varsity.” He flexes his arm. His bicep bulges against the short sleeve of his T-shirt. The height and the muscles are new this year. He doesn’t look the same, but I haven’t forgotten what he’s like on the inside. And his eyes are exactly the same. I know those blue-green eyes with the darkly fringed lashes. I’ve seen them crinkled with laughter, muddled with fever, sparking with anger, and squinting in pain. I saw those eyes when they were blue-green with delight at his first time on a skateboard. And when they were gray-green and clouded with tears over the death of his cat, Mr. Whiskers.

Once they were even black-green when they glittered at me from behind a Spider-Man mask on Mr. Peter’s front porch. But most of all I remember the deep, grass green of his eyes, intense and compelling, right before I closed mine and kissed him.

Look in my eyes, Jackson. Remember. Me.

But there is no sign of recognition. Mr. Blair finishes with Kristen and waves Jackson up. I watch as he leans over the desk, listening intently, his rumpled brown hair falling down into his eyes. My hands itch to push it back away from his face, but I just stand there. Remembering.





ABRACADABRA





Chapter Seven


What if I don’t wake up?” I mumble under my breath. The annoyingly cheerful woman with the smiley-face scrubs wraps a big rubber band around my arm, ignoring my question completely. She snaps it into a tie above my elbow and slaps my forearm. The fat of my arm jiggles as she frowns down at what she sees.

“That may be a good one there.” She prods at my arm, searching for a place to stick the waiting needle.

I try to look sympathetic. I don’t know if I should apologize or what. What am I supposed to say? I’m sorry my veins are all covered up in fat just like the rest of me?

“I’ll be right back.” She’s going for help. The first one always goes for help. Everything that is alive and pumping inside of me is somewhere underneath all of this.

“The odds of death are one in two hundred. That’s pretty slim,” Rat says. He’s sitting on the end of the hospital bed in the pre-op room.

“Thanks,” I say.

“But I guess if one hundred and ninety-nine people had the surgery this week then . . .” He doesn’t smile. He isn’t kidding.

“That’s not helping.”

“Where’s your dad?” Rat asks, and I know he’s trying to change the subject.

“On his way. Got called in for a traffic accident.”

“Bad?” Rat asks. We both know that a town with I-45 running through the middle of it at seventy-five miles an hour always has the potential for deadly accidents.

“Could have been, but it turned out okay. Larry Joe Green’s three cases of beer were strapped into the child safety seats instead of his two kids.”

Smiley Face returns with a helper and they set to work on my arm again. I feel the prick one more time and then a sharp pain as the needle digs in deeper.