“Don’t mind if I do.” I avoid looking at her. I have to. I prop
myself up on my elbows, though my muscles contract in protest. I don’t
need this guy telling other lifeguards that I’m a wimp. Though I guess
I have that almost-being-mangled-by-the-ocean thing as an excuse.
“Good to see you, though. That was some sick wave. Wish I’d had a
surfboard. Oh, yeah, thanks for finding me.”
“I’m calling your mother. ”
“Aw, come on, Layla. I was just playing.”
She stomps up the sandy hill until the only thing I can see is her
ponytail swinging in place, taunting me and moving steadily out of my
reach.
My favorite memory of Layla is when she told off a cop.
She was nine and change, because I was already ten and she still
had some weeks to go. She hated that I was born on June 24, right
smack in the best part of our Coney Island summers, and her birthday
was all the way in August, when the water started getting cold and the
trash piled up as tall as we were.
The cop, three times our heights and with a gleaming gun at his
side, stepped right in front of me. I was pulling our raft toward the
water by some moldy rope I’d found under the pier. We’d just read
Huckleberry Finn and wanted to sail off onto the Mississippi, but all
we had was the Coney Island Beach. The raft was my greatest
accomplishment, wood planks supported by our boogie boards held
together with Krazy Glue taken from the baby-sitter’s desk drawer. The
tips of my fingers were raw from having stuck them to each other and
then pulling them apart.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the cop said. He was too tall
for me to read his badge, but I remember his face, fat and red with
caterpillar eyebrows.
“Why?” Layla asked.
“Answer the question.”
“We’re not supposed to talk to strangers,” she said, her hands on
her hips, the same way she did when her dad told her she wasn’t
allowed to play with me so often. That she also needed friends who
were girls.
The cop pulled out his badge. “See this? I’m not a stranger.” And
then the cop reached for me. Just to grab my shoulder, just to take us
back to the boardwalk. But I struggled and Layla kicked him on his
shin, and we left the raft that we’d worked on for a whole week.
Sure, another cop found us on the boardwalk and called our
parents. I lied and said I was the one who had kicked the cop, and he
didn’t say different. Layla was pissed at me for trying to cover for
her, but I always have and I always will. Just like I know she’d do
the same for me. She’s my best friend. She’s my Layla. She’s my girl.
•••
In the ambulance they give me extra-strength, hospital-approved
painkillers that numb my muscles until they feel like putty and the
stretcher feels like down feathers.
For a moment, I’m falling. It’s one of those dreams where your
mind zooms out and you’re falling, falling, until you think it’s
actually happening, so you jump in real life, and that jolts you out
of the dream.
But the nervous jolt lingers throughout my body like the world
just dropped from under my feet and I still haven’t hit the ground. I
can barely keep my eyes open. What if I don’t wake up? Why can’t I
remember anything? But my body is numb and sleepy and warm, and when I
do push myself to open my eyes, I’m in the hospital. I’m hooked up to
a bunch of beeping machines with screens that look like last week’s
algebra test I got a C on.
A nurse comes in. She’s tiny, with a round face and eyes like the
anime posters in the boys locker room. Except those anime girls are
blowup dolls in Catholic school uniforms, and this nurse is just
sweet. She comes up close, and I can see she doesn’t have any makeup
on, except for the pink on her cheeks. No one’s cheeks can be that
pink.
“Hello, nurse.” When I hear my voice, it sounds raspy, the voice I
always think Rip Van Winkle would’ve had after he woke up in the wrong
century. That’s how I feel-like I’ve slept for too long. I look around
the white room, but there isn’t even a clock.
She fumbles with her clipboard, flips through some pages. Her lips
open, but it’s like she doesn’t know what to say, because she just
stands like that.
“You’re awake?” she says. It’s supposed to be a statement, but it
sounds like a question. Or maybe the other way around. You never know
with girls.
“Yeah. Couldn’t sleep with all this beeping.”
She gives me a look that certifies me as the biggest douche bag
this side of Brooklyn, and that says a lot. “Oh, that’s a joke.” She
looks down at the floor. She’s wearing white sneakers with pink socks.
“Not a very good one, I guess.”
“No, really. It’s funny!” She gives me a truly pretty smile. She
walks up to my bed and fixes the pillow. She smells like chemicals
trying to smell like apples and vanilla, but it’s still nice.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
She points at her name tag. “Christine. You sure are popular. We
had to put some of the flowers out at the nurses’ station, because
they don’t fit in here.”
For the first time, I look around the room. I’ve never been in a
hospital before. I don’t even remember having to go to the doctor
before. This hospital looks just like the ones in the soap operas
Layla’s mom watches, all white with a TV running a basketball game in
one corner and a little table full of yellow and white flowers. Except
mine has bouquets on both windowsills, on the table beside my bed, and
all along the wall on the floor. I can’t even imagine who they’d be
from. My mom wouldn’t send flowers. She would be here. “I’m Tristan.”
She laughs and fiddles with the wires taped to my pulse. “I know.”
She nods over to where my file is at the foot of the bed.
Duh, again. “So, Nurse Christine”-I take a deep breath and put on
my best grave face-“am I terminal?”
It takes a second for her to register that I’m still just kidding.
When she gets it, she looks at her white sneakers again, shaking her
head. “You shouldn’t joke about those things.”
Stupid me. She sees death and sickness all day long.
“I’m sorry,” I go. “You don’t have any pills to cure me of being a
jerk, do you? ’Cause that would help me out a lot . Maybe even some
sedatives?”
This time she laughs for real. “I think the sedatives we already
gave you give you nightmares. You were talking in your sleep.”
“You were watching me sleep?” I think I say it because I like the
way her cheeks flood fuchsia when she looks away from me, all shy.
“I should j-just go get someone, I think.” She leaves the
clipboard in the metal slot at the foot of my bed and is out the door.
Man, as much as I can get girls to like me, I sure make them run away
as fast as they came.
Two seconds later the door opens and in walks my mom. She takes
three huge steps and pulls me into an iron grip.
“I think you just realigned my spine.”
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” She holds my face in her hands and says,
“Let me look at you.” Her voice is smooth and deep, like she should be
singing everything she says.
Her eyes-a turquoise so sharp I would say they were freakish if
mine weren’t the same color-are all watery, and I can’t stop myself
from burying my face in her embrace, because when I ran out into the
storm, I remember her face flashing in my mind.
She wipes her eyes with her index fingers and tries to laugh it
off. “I could kill you for worrying me like this.”