I stop writing and chew on the end of the pen. I’ve reached the last part of the story that I’m really sure of. I’m nervous about putting anything else down in writing because maybe it’s true and maybe it’s just how I imagine it happened. But once it’s written down it’s sure to have a kind of reality that doesn’t exist when it’s just in my head.
I never really liked the book Where the Wild Things Are, but it was one of my dad’s favorites. I never really liked it because I never really liked Max. I always thought Max had it pretty good, and I couldn’t understand why he felt the need to run off. If he hadn’t been such a pain in the ass in the first place he wouldn’t have been sent to bed without any supper. He wasn’t beaten or abused or even yelled at, and still he stormed around like he was so mistreated and unhappy. I never thought he deserved to be angry.
Now that I’m thinking about Emily and how she treated me, I feel a little bit like Max. I wonder if I deserved to be angry. It’s weird, and I don’t really want to connect the two, but I’m also thinking about Mom and wondering if I deserved to be angry at her. It’s all completely exhausting.
I put the pen back down to the paper, but the words aren’t ready yet. And then, like she can read my mind, G opens her eyes. I sit straight up; the pen and notebook fall off my lap onto the floor. I’m wondering if I should ring for the nurse or something, but instead I wait to see if she’ll stay awake or do anything else. I mean, G hasn’t actually been in a coma for ten years or anything, and opening her eyes, while significant to me, probably doesn’t represent a major medical breakthrough for the nursing staff.
Her eyelids flutter a little bit like Mima’s used to do when she was falling asleep during Jeopardy. She hated to get caught falling asleep while watching TV. She said it made her feel like a real old person. So whenever she did, she would shout a random answer out at the TV as soon as her eyes opened again. It was pretty funny. The clue would be something like “gas that makes up 70 percent of the earth’s atmosphere” and Mima would scream out, “What is Andrew Jackson!” “I thought I had that one,” she would say. And I would nod, and we would keep on watching.
G is definitely waking up, though. Her eyes are open now and she’s taking in the surroundings of her room, the blinking machines and the new daylight coming in through the long hanging blinds. I pick my notebook and pen up off the floor without taking my eyes from her face. She slowly licks her lips and makes a face like the taste in her mouth is pretty bad. There’s a cup of ice water next to her bed that I grab and maneuver the straw towards her face so she can drink. She takes a small sip and licks her lips again. “Thanks for staying with me,” she says. Her voice is a little scratchy. She lifts her head to look down at her leg suspended in the air and surrounded by white plaster. “Hmm, that doesn’t look good.”
“Compound fracture,” I tell her. “The bone came through your leg.”
She turns a little pale and waves off the details with one hand. “Did they call your mom?”
“Not yet. At least I don’t think so.”
“They will. And they’ll probably send a cop in too. Have you thought about what you’re going to tell them?”
“Kind of,” I say, and I pick up the notebook from the floor.
“That’s good,” G says. “I’m glad you’re getting it all down, but that’s not what you want to tell the cop when he shows up.”
“Okay, what should I say?”
G is quiet for a minute. She looks out the window thoughtfully. “We were hiking. Just you and me. Let them think we’re boyfriend-girlfriend or whatever. I mean, you don’t have to come out and say it. They’ll just assume it, and don’t tell them otherwise. But it was just the two of us; that’s the important part. I fell and hurt my leg and some people gave us a ride to the hospital.”
“Why can’t we tell them the truth?”
“They’ll go straight to Burdock,” G says. “As long as they fly under the radar, the cops around here don’t really care what goes on there in the off-season. But we don’t want to give them a reason to go sniffing around. I’m sure you noticed that not everything there was completely legal. Plus, you’re underage. I don’t want to get Jesse or Tim in trouble for transporting a minor across state lines.”
“Okay, but how did you and I meet in the first place?”
“The same way we actually met; a bus station. We hit it off and decided to travel together for a while. A runaway story. The cops won’t look too closely at that. They don’t really care that much as long as everything has a tidy ending.”
“What about when my mom shows up? I don’t know if she’s going to go along with our story.”
“Nancy might surprise you,” G says.
“Hey, when did I tell you my mom’s name?”
G shrugs and looks out the window again. “Will you see if there’s a nurse around? I could use some more of whatever painkiller they’re giving me.”
I walk out in hall, dazed, thinking about the story G fed me and wondering if the police officer will buy it coming from me. I’ve never been a particularly good liar when it comes to massive deviations from the truth. Little things are easier, like calling a C-plus a B-minus or telling my mom I was studying with friends at the library when really I was sitting by myself.
The nurse sitting at the desk goes quickly down the hall to G’s room with some pills in a paper cup. I take my time walking back. G hasn’t asked me what happened yet—how she fell and broke her leg. I wonder if she knows the truth. I wonder if I know the truth.
When we pulled up to the hospital I didn’t hesitate for a second. I knew what would happen. I knew that unless I gave a fake name, they would track me down and call my mom and I would be heading back on the first plane to Glens Falls. I knew all this, the same way I knew that Jesse and Tim weren’t going to park the van and follow us in. They looked sad and they looked sorry, but they pulled away all the same. I didn’t even get a chance to say good-bye. I guess I’ll worry about that later. Tim at least is still in school. I could probably track him down someday if I really wanted to.
The point is, I chose it. I chose to care about G and even Mom. I chose to think about the kind of attention that really matters, and I decided to let Emily go, for now. Because if I’ve learned anything in the last few weeks it’s that sometimes you do have to choose. After what happened, it seems like the right decision.
Back in the hospital room, the medicine is kicking in and G’s eyelids are already beginning to quiver. Pretty soon she’s out cold again. I take my notebook and my pen and pull a chair into the hall. What I have to write, I don’t want to write with her lying right there next to me.