CARLA DOESN’T SAY anything about it again until just after lunch two days later.
“Now. You listen to me,” she says. “No touching. You stay on your side of the room and he stays on his. I already told him the same thing.”
I understand the words she’s saying, but I don’t understand what she’s saying.
“What do you mean? You mean he’s here? He’s already here?”
“You stay on your side and he stays on his. No touching. You understand?”
I don’t, but I nod yes anyway.
“He’s waiting for you in the sunroom.”
“Decontaminated?”
The look on her face says what do you take me for?
I stand up, sit down, and stand up again.
“Oh, Lordy,” she says. “Go fix yourself up fast. I’m only giving you twenty minutes.”
My stomach doesn’t just flip, it does high-wire somersaults without a net. “What made you change your mind?”
She comes over, takes my chin in her hand, and stares into my eyes for such a long time that I start to fidget. I can see her sorting through all she wants to say.
In the end all she says is: “You deserve a little something.”
This is how Rosa gets everything she wants. She simply asks for it from her mother with the too-big heart.
I head to the mirror to “fix myself.” I’ve almost forgotten what I look like. I don’t spend a lot of time looking. There’s no need when there’s no one to see you. I like to think that I’m an exact fifty-fifty mixture of my mom and dad. My warm brown skin is what you get by mixing her pale olive skin with his richer dark brown. My hair is big and long and wavy, not as curly as his, but not as straight as hers. Even my eyes are a perfect blend—neither Asian nor African but somewhere in between.
I look away and then look back quickly, trying to catch myself unawares to get a more accurate picture, trying to see what Olly will see. I try out a laugh and then smile, with teeth and without. I even try out a frown, though I’m hoping I won’t have cause to use it.
Carla watches my antics in the mirror, amused and bemused at the same time.
“I almost remember when I was your age,” she says.
I don’t turn around, talking instead to the Carla in the mirror. “Are you sure about this? You don’t think it’s too risky anymore?”
“You trying to talk me out of it?” She comes over and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Everything’s a risk. Not doing anything is a risk. It’s up to you.”
I look around my white room at my white couch and shelves, my white walls, all of it safe and familiar and unchanging.
I think of Olly, decontamination-cold and waiting for me. He’s the opposite of all these things. He’s not safe. He’s not familiar. He’s in constant motion.
He’s the biggest risk I’ve ever taken.