Chapter 27

After school on Monday, I’m supposed to meet Ty at the public library. It’s packed. Toddlers run at full speed through the aisles, tired moms and dads chasing after. Adults use the computers and take up the tables. It’s kind of noisy, a lot noisier than it was in the old days, according to Dad. “Back then a library meant you were working quietly.” But it’s warm today, and the library’s air-conditioned and free, so I can see why everyone would want to come here. A lot of places in San Diego don’t have air-conditioning because, also in the Old Days According to Dad, it didn’t used to get so hot and humid. Climate change.

I wipe the sweat off my forehead and look around. Half of me hopes Ty won’t show up. He’ll argue with me and nothing’s going to get done. Maybe I should just leave and be the one who doesn’t show. But that’s not me.

Plus, at that moment I see him wave from the end of a long, crowded table. I wonder if he has to wait a long time to use a computer. “Hey,” he says to the floor. There are no open seats nearby, so I can’t sit down.

I nod. It’s hard to talk if I think someone really doesn’t like me. It’s as if my body actually physically decides not to respond.

Finally he glances up, his expression like someone just farted in his face. He stands. “It’s crowded in here. Let’s go to the park.” He starts moving.

I just walked through the park, I want to point out, but instead I nod again.

“What are you, a bobblehead?” Ty pushes the door open. He doesn’t even make sure it stays that way when I walk out, and I have to make sure it doesn’t shut on me.

I trudge across the wide lawn behind the community pool, following Ty across the street and back to the park. The shadiest tables are taken.

Now I’m breathing a little hard. The humidity makes my heart feel like it’s having trouble pumping. I need to sit. I need shade.

Ty heads toward a sunny concrete picnic bench, but I finally speak up. “Let’s go under the tree.”

“On the grass?” He wrinkles his nose. “Dogs pee on grass.”

Dogs probably peed everywhere in this park at some point. I want to tell him that’s why we wear clothes, but instead I stay silent and go under one of the huge trees and sit down, cross-legged. Ty sits across from me. I open my Chromebook, hoping we don’t have to look up anything on the internet. Because there’s zero Wi-Fi out here. My back prickles with sweat. I realize I drank my whole water bottle during class and didn’t refill it.

“Can I ask you a question?”

A twinge of annoyance goes through me, the same as when Luke’s being a pain, and I spit out the kind of answer I’d give my brother. “You just did.”

Ty blinks in surprise at this unexpected reply. He huffs. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

I shrug yet again, wiping my forehead with my forearm. I don’t know what he wants from me. What have I ever done to him?

He cocks his head. “Why do you think you’re better than everyone else?”

My spine stiffens. What’s he talking about? I think I’m worse than everyone else, if anything. How could he possibly think that? I swallow. “I . . . I don’t.” I focus really hard on the Chromebook. We need to write this thing. It’s due in two weeks, but we have to show an outline, then a rough draft, and then do edits, and we’re going to have to do a presentation. Which we have to practice first. So we’re definitely heading to an F right now. I want to say all this to him, but my stupid words are gumming up.

I start sweating even more. What is his problem with me, exactly?

“Well, you act like you do.” Ty’s stomach growls loudly. I have a bag of Cheez-Its in my backpack, and I take it out and hold it across the grass to him. He looks at it as if I’ve offered him a plateful of ants.

I force myself to take several deep breaths, fighting the urge to get up and run away. Or to put my head down and cover my face with my hair. Instead I sink down a little deeper into myself. I want to answer him, if only so we can finish this stupid project.

I look at the very green grass, the trees. My mind flashes to Miss Gwen. Being in this moment. Reading your partner’s emotions. Let yourself feel the energy your partner’s giving off.

I look at Ty, try to figure out what he’s thinking. Does it matter? He’s practically vibrating hostility as he gnaws on his pencil and squints at me. Disdain is another, like he thinks I’m just about the lowliest person he’s ever met. “You never talk. You’re the only one who gets to leave class and let the teacher read your stuff. Why do you get special treatment?” Ty pulls out some clumps of grass. “It’s not fair.”

So I was right about the emotions, at least. I swallow, my throat scratchy. He doesn’t know me. I want to tell him so, calmly, but the words still won’t come out, all jumbled together where the scratchiness is.

“Answer me.” Ty raises his voice so loud that someone walking by looks over. I sink lower into myself. “Sheesh, you’re such a snob.”

I am not, I want to yell.

And suddenly my body does something new. It unfreezes.

Blood rushes into my neck and my heart thumps harder. My ears are filled with nothing but the sound of my heart beating like the taiko drum Jīchan plays. BAM BAM BAM BAM. It thrums in my jaw, on the roof of my mouth.

Mom says adrenaline is what makes you have the flight-or-fight thing. I can’t fight Ty and I’m not going to just run away from him. So instead it feels as if someone’s just mixed baking soda and vinegar together in my veins. A volcano erupting.

Ty stares at me hard, his face reddening. “Or maybe you’re a robot?”

I don’t say anything.

He squints. “Though you look kind of mad now,” he says triumphantly. “Finally, the robot reacts.”

I ignore him. I need to calm myself down. Maybe that’s why I always freeze, so this doesn’t happen. I try to take a deep breath. Notice your surroundings. I stare at the white flowers growing out of the grass, picking one up and holding it to my nose. It smells like cut grass. My nose itches.

Still my blood crashes through my body. I close my eyes. These are five things you find in the park. Dogs, one. People, two. Ty, three. I try to swallow, but something sticks in my throat.

“See, you’re not even answering me.” Ty sags back. “That’s just rude.”

I don’t owe you an answer. I don’t owe you anything, I want to shout, the kind of thing Mom would say. But I’m too hot. I lose track of my thoughts. I close the Chromebook and hug it to my chest, which makes the ICD press into my muscles in a strange, comforting way. I’m sweating now, and my stomach rears up like an angry horse.

“Ava?” Ty sounds like he’s moved away from me. “Hey—are you okay?”

Sick, I try to say, but I don’t, and I put my hand on the ground and lean over, getting ready to barf.

But then something strange happens.

My heart—pauses. Then it flutters, as if there’s a hummingbird in my chest, its wings beating very softly and fast. Now the blood-rushing feeling is done, but it’s too—too light. I put two fingers on my neck, checking my pulse.

Dum. Dum. Pause. Du—m. Dumdumdum. Pause. Dum.

It speeds up, but still with that pause, as if the hummingbird’s trying its best to break out. Now it feels like there’s bread stuck in my throat, too. I cough, then cough again. Sweat breaks out on my forehead, under my armpits, on my chest. My fingers grab through the sharp pricks of the grass, dirt wedging under my nails, but I barely feel it and I don’t care.

What’s going on?

There’s a sharp burning sensation in my chest. Tears come into my eyes. Am I going to get shocked, the big kind? The worry makes me anxious, and the anxiety makes the heart worse. A lose-lose situation.

I try to take a big breath but I can’t. I need to calm down right now. I lie down on the grass, so if I do get shocked and pass out, I won’t get hurt by falling. I’m proud of myself for remembering that.

“There’s something wrong with her!” I hear Ty say. He sounds like he’s on the other side of the world. “Somebody help!”

That flapping feeling continues and then my chest burns again, all hot inside, as if I ate a bunch of spicy food an hour ago. Only for a couple seconds. Then the feeling goes away. I recognize the feeling from the doctor’s office when they test the pacemaker by making it give me a tiny shock. I’m getting paced.

It will give me three different small shocks to pace me. If that doesn’t work, if my heart still beats wrong, the ICD will take over and give me a big shock. “You probably won’t feel it,” the doctor told me, “because people usually pass out before that. But if you do, it feels like a punch in the chest.”

Which didn’t make me feel better then, and doesn’t now, either, when the memory flashes in front of me like the doctor’s here right now, telling me that.

Fear crowds out every other antianxiety exercise I’ve ever learned. I try to concentrate on anything else but all I can think about is the fact that I’m going to pass out. I’m about to get kicked in the chest. I’m breathing too shallowly, my stomach moving in and out faster and faster. I can’t get air into my lungs.

I curl into a ball on the ground, still breathing wrong, almost as if I’m hiccupping without hiccups. Something scratches my face, my arm. For a second, I think I’m in bed. Like I’m about to fall asleep, and I struggle not to.

“Ava!” It’s not Ty’s voice, but Luke’s. My brother leans over me, his face silhouetted against the waving leaves. “Ava, take deep breaths.” His voice is lower than usual, commanding as Dad’s. But I can’t. He takes my hand and squeezes it. “Purse your lips and pretend you’re blowing out birthday candles.”

I do what he says. I try to imagine a cake with candles, but what I see instead is a hummingbird. Sitting on the branch of the orchid tree, oddly, unnaturally frozen in sleep.

And then everything goes black.