Chapter Twenty-Nine
Twenty-Nine
By the time Mom pulls into our garage the day I’m discharged, I’m rabid with impatience. I’ve even tried calling Marcus on the phone, but it just goes to voicemail.
“I’m going for a drive,” I announce right after Mom has helped me up the stairs to my room.
“You absolutely are not,” Mom says. “You know the doctor said no driving before your next follow-up. You’re walking like a toddler, and you want to drive?”
“Driving is just sitting.”
“The answer is no,” Mom says firmly. She has been acting like mothering is her full-time job ever since I woke up. “Where are you even trying to go?”
“To see Marcus.”
“Marcus Riddick?”
I try to hide my impatience. Is it so unbelievable to people that we might have something to say to each other?
Mom sighs. “Get settled in for the night, and if you still want to go, I’ll take you tomorrow.”
As much as I’d like to go right this second, I realize this is my best option.
When I wake up the next morning, it’s to Mom telling me that I have a guest.
I hurry down the stairs as fast as I can.
Marcus is standing in the living room, his back to me. He’s looking at the picture of me and Dad. Our bodies buried in sand, with only our faces showing.
“I’m six in that one,” I say.
When he turns, my heart rockets into my throat. Marcus looks like sunshine in my living room, like light and hope and warmth.
I hurry across the room and throw my arms around him.
“Hey, hey,” he says, gently wrapping his arms around me, then cradling the back of my head with one hand. I sob into his chest. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” I say, refusing to let go. “It’s really not.”
We stay like that for another minute, and I think, despite the circumstances, this is our best hug yet.
“I got something,” he says, and I step back, watch as he digs around in his backpack. I’m expecting one of his birds. Maybe he brought the one I saw him making in his car shop. But what he pulls out is the paperback of Moon Over Hanover, Dad’s book.
I stare in stunned silence because I haven’t seen a copy that wasn’t Dad’s for years. But here it is, in Marcus’s hand, looking frayed and used.
“I was in a used bookstore, and I found it. I’m only halfway, but it’s really good,” Marcus says.
I take it from him, open it, reverent and quiet. There are highlighted passages, underlined words, and I don’t think they all belong to Marcus. Some, but not all.
I thought there would never be another person who went out looking for Dad’s words, but Marcus did. And somebody before him.
I throw my arms around him again, hug him tight, fighting even more tears.
“I want it back,” Marcus jokes. “I paid three whole dollars for it.”
I disentangle from Marcus, but it’s so I can lean up, wrap my arms around his neck, and kiss him. Marcus’s lips are soft and familiar, but he doesn’t kiss me back. He takes several steps away from me.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
Then I remember: Jason. Everyone still thinks I’m dating him, in this reality. Marcus probably wants to do things the right way.
“Sorry,” I say, feeling defeated. “I have to sit down.” I’m so tired from the effort of all the standing that I immediately sink into a couch. I pat the cushion next to me.
Marcus sits but leaves a respectable space between us. All his movements are surprisingly tentative. “You, er, wanted to see me?” he asks.
I nod, tucking my feet under my body. “Did they tell you the same story?” I ask, and I can’t help the derisive tone in my voice. “We were both in comas and Jason was the one who was awake.”
Marcus frowns. “You don’t think we were in comas?”
“Do you?” I ask. Before he can answer, I say, “And for a month? There’s no way.”
He rubs the back of his neck, speaks to the ground. “There’s pictures, you know. Medical records.”
“It’s bullshit,” I say, dismissive, right as I see that what Marcus is actually looking at is his left foot. It is in a cast, but not the same type as Jason’s. “What happened?”
“I might not play again,” Marcus says, his voice quiet. “They’ve done two surgeries.”
“Oh my God,” I say. “Marcus, that’s…”
He’s not laughing and downplaying it at all.
“How are you?” I ask.
“Devastated,” he says. “It’s stupid, but it has taken me a long time to realize how much I love it.”
Marcus looks at me. “I’m going to try to get better. Try to keep playing.”
I’m so happy he’s not giving up. “I bet with physical therapy and the right doctors…” Then something occurs to me. “Why were you even there that night? Why were you in the accident?”
Marcus rubs his neck. “To see you.”
I’m confused, but I wait for him to go on.
“I know about the breakup,” he tells me, which, of course he does.
“You overheard me in the hospital bathroom the night of the accident.”
“No,” Marcus says slowly, “Jason told me. And we got into it…physically.” He seems embarrassed about this fact.
That’s what the fight was about? That Marcus knew Jason wanted to dump me? “That’s how you knew he dumped me? You didn’t hear it in the bathroom?”
Marcus frowns. “What bathroom?” I’m silent as I try to understand everything that is happening. “No, he told me straight out that he was going to break up with you. So I hit him.”
“But why?” I ask now.
“Because he was being so…so fucking careless with your heart,” Marcus says, and his voice is angry and quiet. “And then that night, I was at Harrison Smith’s party, and there was this rumor that Jason was planning some epic surprise for you for your one-year anniversary.”
He swallows. “Obviously I knew there was no surprise,” he says.
“Not a good one, anyway. And I knew you’d…
I knew he was going to break your heart, and I just wanted…
I don’t even know what I thought I’d do.
At the very least I’d give you a hug or a ride home or…
something. I knew he wouldn’t have thought anything of doing it in public or someplace where it would be less awful for you.
I know it matters to you that things are… perfect.”
At this point, there’s just so much Marcus is saying that I’m struggling to comprehend.
He sighs. “Jay can be such a tool.”
“So you drove to Apollo’s to…what, save me?” I don’t know why the thought fills me with both embarrassment and anger.
Marcus curses. “No, not save you. I mean, I…I wasn’t thinking.”
He pushes his hand through his hair. “I got there too late, of course. Jason’s car was driving out as I was driving into the parking lot.
I turned around and immediately started to head back to Sterlingwood too, a car behind him.
Next thing I know, someone had rammed into me from behind.
A truck. And then I woke up in hospital two days before you did. ”
“Two days,” I repeat numbly. He really thinks our friends and family are right. Meaning our recollection is entirely wrong.
“My foot was broken. Doctor’s telling me they did a couple of surgeries and need to do another, that I had a head injury too.”
I reach out for him, reach for his hands in his lap.
“Zadie, I don’t want you to feel sorry for me,” Marcus says, not reacting to the fact that we are holding hands. “But they don’t have any reason to lie.”
I’m stunned into silence.
“So what, we just imagined the whole thing? All that time? All the dreams?”
“What dreams?” Marcus says blankly.
“Our dreams,” I say. When he looks at me like that, I stop breathing. “The co-dreams. The memories we went into,” I say, still trying to be calm at this point.
Marcus says nothing, and now my pitch has started to escalate with increasing desperation. “Our dreams, Marcus. All the memories of the past year. Most of them were my and Jason’s memories, but we saw some of yours too. And we talked, and nobody could see us…”
He just looks at me. “I don’t…I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about the carnival, the arcade, sitting outside that party just like we did last year…”
I wait for the look of recognition—a light—to enter Marcus’s eyes, but it never does.
“You don’t remember?” My voice is tiny.
“Obviously I remember Penny’s party from last year, but I don’t remember any dreams. I’m sorry,” he says, pushing his hand through his hair again, and he looks like he means it. “I wish I could say I did, but I…I don’t.”
“You don’t remember anything? Even the boat or…” I sit up straighter. “What about when we ran through the fair?”
I know the answer before he says it: He has no idea.
I stare at the ground, trying to comprehend this. How to explain this, how to change this, what to do next, what to say. But absolutely nothing comes to me.
He doesn’t remember.
“That’s impossible,” I whisper, mentally working through a dozen possibilities. I try to explain it all to Marcus again. We connected, we kissed, we told each other the truth.
He looks so, so sorry.
Because, at the end of the day, everything I felt and thought and saw—everything I became. Everything I wanted—was all in my head.
And me and Marcus, us being an us. Us being anything was the biggest lie of all.