nine
She is reading a book again the next day.
“It’s a different book every day, isn’t it?” I ask, feeling like an idiot that it took me this long to realize.
My phone sits beside me, a Mozart violin concerto drifting quietly from the speaker. I’m trying to figure out the exact note the second violin is hitting in the seventh minute, by ear. Finding the notes without looking at the music sheet fascinates me .
Well, it used to fascinate me before I met Eden. Now, it’s her.
“Are you impressed?” Eden asks.
“Very. What book are you reading today?”
She quickly hides the cover against her chest. “I’m too embarrassed to tell you.”
“Now you have to tell me.”
“It’s just a romance novel,” she says and that smile comes out on her face. It’s like the sun. “One of the few ones I was able to get my hands on. My dad won’t let me read anything with a man or a couple on the cover, only flowers. And the classics, of course. I have read them all ten times over.”
I look at her, mouth gaping. All the classics? I bet she’s not kidding either.
“But this one’s racy, huh?” I try to reach for it.
“Hey, don’t make fun,” she swats my hand away. “They help me escape.”
“What would you need to escape from?” She winces at the hoarseness in my voice.
Something breaks inside of me every time she mentions her dad. It reminds me I don’t have one, and I just… I instantly go to a dark place.
“Sometimes things can get tough at home,” she replies. “My dad, he…” I inhale sharply, a piercing pain hitting me in the abdomen at the word ‘dad’, but she doesn’t notice. “He can be really strict at times. Too strict.”
“Well,” I say, my throat working. I can hear the bitterness seeping out of my shattered heart, still raw and bleeding. I can feel it about to spill out of my tongue, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. “Well, as long as you aren’t an ungrateful, spoiled little girl.”
She looks up sharply as if I’ve slapped her. “What did you just say?”
I look her straight in the eyes, mine holding a storm, hers blank with fear.
“I said that some people would take a strict dad over a dead one in a second. Just think about someone other than yourself once in a while?”
That’s what I say. And then, instant regret. Shame.
I regret the words the minute I speak them; I loathe the words the minute I speak them. I loathe myself. ‘I’m sorry’ nearly falls out of my lips, but Eden is already on her feet, legs shaky, running away from me, stumbling over fallen branches and crunchy leaves in her haste .
I don’t think: I run after her.
“I’m sorry!” I call out as my long legs overtake her in three strides. I block her path, hardly knowing what I’m doing. I don’t think I’ve ever been terrified so much in my life. I can’t lose her. I can’t lose her. “I’m sorry, I… I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, you shouldn’t,” Eden says. She has stopped running, and is just looking me up and down calmly.
That stare of hers… I swear it cracks my soul wide open. How does she do it?
“No matter how much you’re hurting,” she goes on, as I lower my head in utter shame, “it doesn’t excuse being a jerk.”
No, it doesn’t. She’s right.
Lately, everyone has been treating me as if I’m made of porcelain, about to break into a thousand pieces. But I’ve taken this as permission to act like a jerk, saying whatever hurtful thing will ease the pain inside me for a split second, without considering the consequences.
And this girl, that I’ve known for all of two seconds, did not hesitate to call me out on my bullshit.
“Look, I get it,” she says, “I understand more than you think. I never got to know my mom. My dad says she died giving birth to me.”
What? I feel like dirt right now.
“But no matter how much pain we’re in,” Eden goes on, “we can’t allow ourselves to turn into something we wouldn’t recognize. Or want to.”
“I don’t…” My breath catches. “I don’t recognize myself right now.”
“I know,” she replies. “It’s up to you to turn into someone you someday will.”
“I nearly lost you,” I say, “just now. I nearly lost you, didn’t I?”
“No,” she replies, surprising me yet again. “You didn’t nearly lose me, Isaiah.” I shiver. “If you think a small thing like your pain will scare me away then you just don’t know me well enough. Yet.”
At the ‘yet’, I exhale.
“I don’t deserve you,” I murmur and she scoffs.
“Look, let’s just sit down, ok?” she says, and we do.
I keep my mouth shut after that, the only sure-fire way of not saying something I’ll be ashamed of forever. But even though I don’t speak, I think .
If my pain didn’t scare you , then what did? Because something did scare her, scared her nearly out of her mind.
And she was running away.
And I nearly did lose her.
But if it wasn’t me she was scared of, then what was it?
…
The next evening, I sprint to the woods scared she might not be here. But she is.
I freeze on my tracks and try not to gawk at the way her long braid curls around her pale, long neck. Good thing she already has her nose buried in a book—a different from yesterday—and she doesn’t see me make an absolute fool of myself.
Then again, I’m sure she does notice I’m here, because she shifts a little without lifting her eyes from the page. She rearranges her crossed legs, and her scuffed boots rustle on the dead leaves. She sits up straighter. Focuses on the book harder.
Ok, I’m making that last part up, but I swear that she feels this electricity between us too. Or I hope she does.
“Hi,” I say, and feel like an idiot.
She just grunts lightly in reply, distracted. I know what that grunt means: she doesn’t want to talk today. That’s actually a good thing, because I seem to have lost all ability to function around her.
I pop my earbuds in and scroll through my phone for some Sibelius. Time gets away from us, and it’s completely dark by the time she reluctantly gets up to leave. We’ve barely spoken two words to each other, but she ended up resting her head on my knee while I held up my phone’s light to her book’s pages so she could see well enough to read. And that’s why neither of us have moved for the past three hours.
She is shivering when she gets up, her face’s sharp angles outlined by what’s left of the sun’s last light.
“Will you be ok?” I ask her.
She nods, turns to leave. I love that she never says ‘bye’ to me anymore, because we’ll meet again tomorrow. I’m already halfway back to campus, when I realize I should have walked her home. I turn on my heel and jog back to our spot.
I know it’s pathetic to run after her like this, but it’s almost like a need I can’t explain. I want to say one more thing to her, look at her face one more time, let her eyes see me one more time before I have to face another sleepless night. Before I have to face another anxiety-filled day. To have to wait another night and school day before seeing her again feels like an eternity.
Already the weight is settling back onto my lungs.
The weight that lifts only when I’m near her. So I run back, and that’s when I begin to realize a few things. One, I can barely see where I’m going, even with my phone’s light turned on and pointed directly at my shoes. I stumble and catch myself before falling flat on my face about ten times. That’s how thick the darkness is between the trees.
Two, I don’t know which direction Eden went. I don’t know where she lives.
Three, I really know very little about her even though she is quickly becoming the only thing that is anchoring me to this world. The real reason I haven’t dropped out of school yet. Without the hope of seeing her every evening, this place would be unbearable.
And if I am really being honest, what I think is unbearable is not just school. It’s everywhere. It’s the whole damn world. This world is unbearable.
Except for the place where she is. There, I can exist.
I don’t know what makes me call out her name in the thick darkness, except desperation. Her name is pure, unadulterated desperation and my tongue, its taste bitter and dark like fear.
“Eden!” I scream into the night. In the distance, beyond the trees, I can see the lights of the cars crossing the avenue, but inside the forest, it’s completely dark. “Eden, are you here?”
I don’t think she could have gone very far, since I have been running like a crazy person, and she was moving slowly, as if with effort. This is farther than she could possibly have walked in the past three minutes.
Sudden fear grips me.
Why did I not walk her home?
Why does my head turn to mush when I’m with her?
Why am I always brain dead around her?
“Eden!” I call again, my fear turning feral. “Eden?”
And then I see it. A flash of white on the forest floor, just beyond the tangled roots. I get that icy-hot feeling in my veins, that rush of panic and adrenaline that makes me run even faster towards the white thing, even while the breath catches in my chest.
It’s her white knit sweater. I think I knew, deep down inside, that something horrible had happened to her, as if we are connected somehow. My legs threaten to buckle, but I force myself to stay focused, to keep running. I reach her within seconds.
“Oh, thank God,” I whisper, dropping to my knees.
She’s lying on the leaves, curled to her side like she’s sleeping, her face turned at an unnatural angle, her skin so white it practically glows in my phone’s light. I crouch on the dirt and circle my arms around her, pushing her into my chest, the need to absorb anything bad that’s happened to her nearly consuming me. She doesn’t move. Her head flops back, her lips white, bloodless.
“Eden?” Heart pounding, I grab her by the waist and carefully lift her to a seated position, checking for injuries. I find none, but her body is completely boneless in my arms, drooping, lifeless.
“Eden?” I try to stay calm.
I can’t do this, I’m not strong enough to save her , I think frantically.
“Eden, come on, open your eyes. You’re ok, you’re ok.”
It’s stupid talking to her like this, especially when I know how to administer first aid, but I am hoping she will open her eyes and look at me. But deep down inside, I know it’s not going to be as simple as that. I have never seen anyone unconscious look so white. I didn’t see my dad when he fainted—which he didn’t, according to the doctors, he died right away—but James did. My brother has never told me what Dad looked like right after it had happened.
No . I push the thought away. I won’t sink into those thoughts. I won’t go weak. I will stay here and fight for her. I will be strong.
I’ll think about Dad later, if I have to.
This is not like that. This is Eden, my safe place. He… he was my safe place before. The same thing won’t happen again. I won’t let it.
“Eden, come on,” I almost whimper, breath catching, heart pounding.
A sudden, panicked thought strikes me, and I don’t care if I’m being dramatic or not, or if she’s going to laugh at me afterwards, when she is awake and talking again. All I can think is that she might be dead.
I lift her in my arms as I kneel there in the dark, and I bring her chest to my ear. I don’t know if it’s the adrenaline or if she really weighs that little, but she moves like a doll in my arms. I hear nothing. I lay her down carefully, without bothering to take off my jacket to drape it over her. It might have been a smart move, but I don’t have time. Because when I press my finger to her pulse, it’s not moving. She is not breathing .
Both my brother and I are trained in CPR, which is why James administered it to our dad. He just couldn’t believe it when it wasn’t successful. The look on his face when the paramedics came still haunts me; pure disbelief. What are the odds of a fourteen-year-old kid knowing how to do that and having the presence of mind to perform it perfectly? Still, even with those odds, our dad didn’t make it.
I can’t do this. I can’t watch her die. I just can’t.
You can’t do this, it’s true , a voice says inside my head. You can’t do anything right. You’re useless and sad. But she needs you right now, so you’d better get a hold of yourself and be the person she needs right now. You can do this one thing.
This one thing.
Do it.
It takes everything within me not to fall apart right now, right here.
It takes everything inside me not to go back to that concert hall where I lost my dad and lose what’s left of my mind.
This is not like that , I tell myself fiercely, as I turn Eden carefully on her back, and start working on her chest. I do the compressions, counting quietly, careful not to crush her, because her bones feel fragile like a bird’s under my splayed hands. One, two, three, four… Twelve, thirteen…
I work on her diligently, thankful for all these miserable hours working out in the school’s gym when I can’t sleep at night, because now my arms have the strength to keep on pumping as I count in my head.
I concentrate on the task, emptying my mind of all other thoughts.
Still, they come.
Dad.
James.
How scared my brother must have been.
My mom’s face when they told her.
The endless emptiness afterwards, in my heart.
No, focus.
“No! This is not like that!” I gasp as I keep pumping.
And then, Eden coughs and moans, pushing my hands away. I literally fall flat on my back on the ground, next to her, gasping for breath.
“What the heck are you doing?” Eden gasps, then she coughs again, as if it’s hard to breathe .
I rise to my knees and my arms go around her back as I help her to sit up. Her eyes are wide and scared, and her chest is moving erratically, like a frightened, wounded animal’s. My heart breaks.
“You fainted,” I tell her so that I won’t scare her. “I found you—you’re ok now.”
I rub her back until she can breathe normally again.
Except she can’t. Twice she starts to say something, but she hasn’t got enough breath to continue. She starts drooping, as if she’s about to pass out again.
“All right. Ok.”
I place a hand on Eden’s back and another beneath her knees and stand up with her in my arms. She just moans instead of telling me to stop being an idiot, and that makes me panic so much it’s hard not to run all the way back to school.
But I don’t run. I can’t risk falling and dropping her or injuring her. So I walk carefully through the dark forest with Eden curled into my chest, a little ball of shaking fear, struggling for air, so light I can carry her with one arm wrapped around her twisted body, and the other reaching out for obstacles in the dark.
I bring her to my dorm room.
We don’t meet anyone on the way, but even if we had, it would have made no difference. I dare anyone to try and stop me. I’ll beat them to a pulp, no hesitation.
Under the fluorescent lights of the dorm halls, Eden looks really bad. I’m wondering if I’m making a mistake not calling her dad or taking her to a hospital, but she doesn’t have a phone on her, and as for the hospital… I’ll wait for about ten minutes, and if she keeps looking this white, I’m driving her there myself. I don’t care how late it is, or what my professors will say.
“Is this your room?” Eden asks in a small, dazed voice, and I exhale in relief.
The minute we’re inside, I crank up the heat. I put her on the bed and pile blankets on her like a demented person. I grab the first thing I find in the fridge—a juice box.
“This,” I tell her, as I keep wrapping blankets around her body, “is the place where you are going to have some juice.”
She obediently takes the juice from my hands and gulps it down thirstily. Or maybe hungrily? So I give her the two sandwiches I had stored away in case of an emergency, and she eats them too.
The color returns to her cheeks pretty quickly after that. I just sit at my desk, trying not to be obvious as I stare at her eating as if my life depends on it. Trying to pretend that there are less than two feet between us in this little dorm room. Being this close to her does strange things to my body.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
She is breathing normally now, but she doesn’t answer me right away. She is looking at me with a strange expression on her face.
“What?”
“This is so embarrassing,” she whispers.
I don’t know when I move, but suddenly I’m sitting on the bed next to her, reaching for her hand underneath the mountain of blankets. I find it and close it in mine; it’s not icy cold anymore.
“It’s not embarrassing,” I tell her. “It’s not.” I untuck a leaf out of her braid, and fight the impulse to loosen the elastic band and run that thick, luscious hair between my fingers. I swallow. Now is not the time, Pan. Get a hold of yourself . “Hey, look at me.”
She does not.
I want to take her chin in my fingers and turn her face to me, but I don’t touch her. I don’t think she wants me to anyway, and also... I can’t. I literally can’t. If I touch her right now, I won’t be responsible for my actions. I won’t stop until my lips are on hers and then—
Stop it, right now. Shut. It. Down.
Yeah, tell that to my body, which happens to be on fire right now.
“Do you want to eat something else?” I say, because, as expected, my brain has officially left the building.
But Eden does not scoff or say ‘no’. She says nothing, just keeps looking at me. I think that’s as close to a ‘yes’ as she’s going to get. I swear, if I don’t have any food in this room, I will go to every single room on my floor and beg for their snacks. Thankfully, I find a snacks hidden randomly in my dorm, most of them unhealthy and embarrassing like candy, but I don’t care.
I give them to her. She eats everything.
“You…” I want to ask her why she is so hungry, but I can’t. That’s not a thing you ask a girl, not to mention a girl who seems actually embarrassed to be eating right now. But I have to know. Something is going on here, and I’m not letting her out of my sight until I know what it is. And how to help her. How to keep her safe from it.
“You might need some water with that,” I end up saying, like a coward, as I motion to all the salty snacks.
“Thank you,” she says very politely. Very un-Eden like .
I am freaking out. What is going on with this girl? She is pretty much back to normal, except for that hungry, desperate look in her eyes. Empty, they look empty. I would tear entire armies apart (not to be too dramatic or anything) to chase that look off her face, and instead I am sitting here, powerless.
“I’m sorry for being so hungry,” she says when she’s done.
I silently hand her the water, clenching my jaw hard to keep from swearing for three minutes straight. When I kind of have myself under control again (and kind of not), I say calmly:
“If you apologize for being human again, I swear I’m going to lose it.”
It turns out I didn’t have myself under control after all. She freezes, the water bottle suspended midair in her hand, her eyes going wide.
I take a deep breath and try to get a grip.
“You… why were you so hungry?” I ask her.
She looks away. I have to fight to stay quiet while I wait for her to answer me.
“I’m just on a diet,” she says quietly, and I go feral.
“You are skin and bones,” I say through clenched teeth, and immediately I know it was the wrong thing to say. “You are beautiful,” I add quickly, because she is and I’m an idiot.
I just… I couldn’t say it to her before. It kind of hurts me to say the words to her right now, because they are so little. ‘Beautiful’. She is not beautiful, she is so gorgeous it’s unreal. I don’t think she knows just how exquisite she is. But she is definitely too thin.
“Thanks? I guess?” she purses her lips. I made her mad.
I smile. Mad is good. Mad is alive, for one thing. And for another, it’s doing a good job of erasing the image of her looking pale and lifeless on the forest floor from my mind.
“What time is it?” she asks, her eyelids suddenly drooping.
I have seen this before: she must be crashing, after going through all that. Her energy levels are dropping fast. I think she will be asleep in less than a minute.
“Just after seven,” I tell her. “Don’t even think of getting up right now.”
“I need to go home,” she says, her voice trembling a little. “I’m already so late.”
“I’ll call your dad,” I reply, “I’ll tell him that you’re here with me. That you’re safe. But you’re not going anywhere yet. If you want, I can drive you home in twenty minutes, once you’ve gotten some color back into your face. ”
I expected her to get fidgety and anxious, to start climbing off the bed, but she doesn’t. She just stays put, all the blankets still on her. Dark purple shadows begin to stand out under her eyes. I can’t help myself. I fold my arms around her and push her face into my chest, and I just hold her for a second, feeling her breathe against me.
Making sure that this is what I will remember from today. This.
Her breath against the crook of my neck. The feel of her body pressed to mine. Her warmth.
“It was so dark, Eden,” I murmur against the sharp curve of her shoulder. “And I was already halfway back to campus. If I hadn’t run back to you… If I hadn’t seen you… If it was misty like yesterday… You would still be lying on that floor.”
She gently pushes me away and I realize I was crushing her. But she doesn’t move away from my arms, and I keep them there, around her shoulders.
“But you did find me,” she says.
“I did. And I saved you.” This last bit is important to remember. This is different. This is not Dad. This one was saved. This one I saved.
“Dramatic much?” she says softly.
“Excuse me?”
“People faint by themselves all the time, Isaiah,” she says dismissively. “I would have woken up eventually.”
You weren’t breathing! I want to shout at her, but I keep my mouth closed.
“I am used to it happening,” she goes on. Wait, she what ? “Sometimes I faint by herself, and I deal with it. Dad said it was perfectly normal.”
The sudden urge to murder this man overtakes me.
“Well, your… dad is a wonderful person, I’m sure, but what he said,” I shake my head. “It’s not supported by science.”
“It’s not?”
“To put it mildly. Also, this ‘diet’ of yours should be illegal. You’re supposed to eat every few hours. In your…” I clear my throat. The rage is still boiling inside me, so hot it’s hard to speak. “In your place, I would eat every two hours. At least.”
“I can’t do that when I’m…”
“When you’re what?” She turns away and I grab her elbow. “Eden, when you’re what? Please talk to me.”
“It’s fine, I’ll figure it out.”
This feels like banging my head against a wall .
“Ok, listen, maybe you don’t think I saved your life, but I’ll tell you what is definitely true: you saved mine,” I tell her gently. “I don’t know what kind of diet you’ve been doing, but as for me, I wasn’t eating before I met you. At all. I started eating and sleeping and in general… living after I met you.”
“How ironic,” she says. I don’t think she understood me. Or if she did, I’m not sure what she means, but I go on:
“I started being interested in life after I met you.”
“Same here.”
I go completely still. I wasn’t expecting this. “You… you were not interested in life?”
“I was, but there was nothing interesting in it to be interested in. Does that make sense?”
“It does not. And it also does.”
“I am so bad at explaining it, but trust me,” she says, finally turning to face me fully. “There was no life before you. There barely is now, but it’s different. There was nothing before you. Well, apart from books, of course. They are always worth living for.”
She tries to laugh, but I don’t join her. A chill runs down my spine. ‘They are always worth living for.’ I always admired how much she loves books, but… This is just wrong.
“In any case,” she adds quickly, watching me as the color drains from my face. Keep it together. Don’t let her see how much you’re freaking out. “Thanks.”
I shake my head.
“No. It’s the other way around.” The words come out in this thick, emotional voice that I hate. I clear my throat once, twice. “ I owe you . I need to save your life now that you’ve saved mine.”
That was so not smooth. Like, at all. But I said it anyway. I wanted to say it.
“Being dramatic is your forte, I see.” She is smiling now.
“I thought I might as well lean into it, right?” We both laugh. We’ve gotten into the rhythm of it. Talking and laughing. And breathing. That last one is important.
I get up, shaking a little.
“Where are you going?” she asks me, suddenly sounding scared.
“You’re vulnerable right now and I…” I am not sure I can trust myself, is what I want to say. “I should leave, go crash in the hallway. No one will see me.”
“Don’t leave me alone here.”
“I won’t. ”
She falls asleep in my arms a minute or two later, without even getting under the covers. I just hold her as tightly and as carefully as I can. I’m shaking as I hold her, and I silently vow to myself to make sure she’s fed and taken care of every time I see her. She didn’t want to thank me for saving her, but I know I did. I just don’t know from what.
All I know is that there is something seriously wrong going on at her home, but she won’t tell me what. All I know about her is that reading books is her one escape, and that she has no mom.
Which is enough to make my heart break all over again.
I don’t know when I fall asleep next to her, our heads together, our bodies curled around each other’s, keeping each other warm and alive. All I know is that early the next morning, when I groggily open my eyes and find her still in my arms, I feel different. I am different.
This is it. The minute I wake up, I know it’s happened.
I’m hers now.