Tanner is very quiet. Just when I start to worry maybe he’s already lost interest, he says, “Ann, whatever it is you need to say…just say it. It can’t be that bad.”
I actually laugh at the comment! Not only can it be that bad, it couldn’t be worse. With my finger, I draw a heart in the sand between us. While slowly tracing my drawing, I finally get to the point. “The last time I went swimming was during a swim meet. I was winning. I had a seizure, right in the water.” I trace the heart again. “Drowning really sucks.”
“Whoa.”
It’s so hard to speak…I have to pause so I can swallow. “It was all fuzzy, but I remember not being able to help myself, because I had no control of my body. I sank to the bottom of the pool. I thought for sure I was dead. In fact I did die, in the technical sense, but they resuscitated me and took me to the hospital.”
“Oh my gosh. Was everything OK?”
Still tracing the heart, making it ever bigger, I shake my head. “They ran tests on me…and found something bad. A hole, actually. Not a big one, but big enough. I guess holes in your heart don’t have to be big to be a big problem.” I can’t look at him. Won’t. Instead, I listen for the telltale signals that I expect to hear—a gasp of horror, a dramatic sigh, or a pathetic “I’m sorry”—anything to show that he pities my feeble existence. I stay motionless for several seconds, but he remains mute. I poke the sand right in the middle of my sketch to make a hole. “They tried to fix it,” I finally tell him. “But it didn’t work.”
“What does that mean?”
Now I carve an X through the heart with my finger. “It means I need a new one. I’m on a list. My parents brought me here this summer just to sort of get away from things while we wait. The doctors say I need to get a new one in the next few months or things could really get ugly.”
“You mean…?”
I know what he’s asking, and that particular question, coming from him, is the one that my defenses can’t resist. Tears begin running down my face—some are tears for everything that might never be, but others are simply from embarrassment that I feel so stinking sorry for myself. I nod, but again refuse to look at him. This is the moment where I’m sure he’ll find some graceful way to bow out of any presumed interest he might have had in me. Who knows, maybe he’ll even stop by the house on the way back and take Bree up on her offer. After all, my little sister is whole, while I am defined by a hole.
A moment later, Tanner grabs my hand. “On the bright side,” he says sweetly, “you’re on a list.”
Something about the way he says it makes me laugh, even through my tears. “Yeah. Great.”
“Nah, I’m serious.” He motions toward the horizon. “Just look out there, Ann. Right now there’s this incredible ocean between you and the world beyond, but that doesn’t mean you won’t eventually get to meet the girl who’s over there looking back. Once you reach the top of the list, you’re on top of the world.”
I want to giggle at his earnestness, but when the sound mixes with crying, it comes out as a wimpy snort. “That was deep.”
With a wink, Tanner waves a hand very seriously at the ocean. “Like the deepest trench of the deep blue sea,” he says in a ridiculously deep voice.
Now I laugh for real. Something about his humor helps quell my tears. “More like deep quicksand, and I think you’re in over your head. Since when are you so poetic?”
The deep voice continues. “Only when trying to impress a really cool girl.” He pauses briefly, then goes half an octave lower. “Is it working?”
My laughing abruptly stops. He said it in a funny voice, but I can tell he’s also being semiserious. “Did you hear anything I told you, Tanner? I need a new heart. Soon. And you still want to impress me?”
His normal voice returns. “You’re not impressed?”
I shrug. “I’m just…yes. I’m impressed that you haven’t walked away yet.”
“Walk a—? Why would I do that?”
“Gee, I don’t know. A heart defect is a pretty good reason. Don’t you get it? Right now, this very minute, I could have a heart attack and die. Doesn’t that scare you?”
“Does it scare you?”
“Yes!”
He checks his watch once, then looks away, and then he checks it again. “Well, that minute is over and you’re still here.”
“Huh?”
“You didn’t die that very minute.”
“But I could have. If not that minute, then the next one or the next, or maybe tomorrow or the day after that.”