Those seconds between my begging DJ to stay on the line and him answering were the longest of my life. They stretched out like they’d been sucked into a black hole and spaghettified. A second is a second, except when it’s forever.
“I promise I won’t ever leave you,” DJ finally said.
I had nearly suffocated in the waiting, and now I could breathe again. “Still wish we could trade places?”
DJ’s laugh was wet, like he was crying, which I tried not to think about so that I didn’t start crying too. “I would, you know?”
Strangely, even though I’d never met DJ in person, I got the impression that he was sincere. He wasn’t just saying he would take my place to make me feel better. He would actually do it if given the opportunity. That’s the kind of person he was. And I was the kind of person who would have let him.
“If you make it back home,” I said. “Do me a favor and tell my mom what happened. Her name’s Emma North—”
“Please don’t do this, Noa.”
“And tell her it was me and not the cat that knocked down her little Christmas tree with the crystal ornaments on it that Gamma had given her. She’s hated Jinx ever since, and the poor cat doesn’t deserve it.”
Maybe it wasn’t fair of me to unload this crap onto DJ, but someone had to make sure my mom didn’t spend the rest of her life wondering where I’d gone the way I knew she wondered about my dad. She needed to know that both of us hadn’t abandoned her.
I’m sure it was my imagination, but the air in my suit felt thinner. DJ didn’t say much as I babbled on about nothing. I told him to find Becca and make sure to tell her that she did not look good with a perm and I should’ve been honest with her, but I’d had a crush on Sanjay too and I’d hoped her hideous perm would make him lose interest in her.
I told him about Mrs. Blum and her bakery where I’d learned to bake. How she’d watched me after school, when I was younger, on the days when my mom had worked late at the hospital where she was a nurse. Mrs. Blum had given me dough to knead to keep my hands busy at first, but eventually she began to teach me for real.
I told him about the musical I starred in when I was in fourth grade, and how I stood at the edge of the stage to perform my first solo, opened my mouth to sing, and threw up all over the audience in the front row.
“You said you had a boyfriend?” DJ said. “Want me to tell him anything?”
“Ex,” I said. “And no.”
“I’d be happy to break his arms if you want.”
“I thought you were a pacifist.”
DJ said, “For you, just this once, I’ll make an exception.”
The air was definitely getting thinner. My eyes were heavy and hard to hold open. I hoped I would simply fall asleep and that would be the end. But I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live even though I wasn’t always sure why. I wanted to live despite my missing dad and my broken heart and all the thrown milkshakes. I wanted to live because, sure, life sucked a lot, sometimes it was unfairly horrific, but it was always worth sticking around for to see what came next.
“Noa?”
“Yeah, DJ.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said, and I tried to make sure he knew I meant it.
“Someone owes you an apology for this,” he said, “so it might as well be me.”
“Thanks.”
“And I know we’ve never even properly met, so you’ve got no reason to believe me, but I think you’re wrong about love. Love isn’t war. Life is the war; love is a truce you find in the middle of all that violence. And I bet there’s someone out there who loves you, even if you don’t know them yet.”
I wanted to tell DJ he was wrong. I knew what love was and what it wasn’t. If love wasn’t war, then why had it hurt so badly? Why did the idea of it still give me nightmares? I had survived falling in love, and I had the scars to prove it. But this wasn’t the hill I wanted to die on. DJ was trying to comfort me in my final minutes, and I appreciated that more than he would ever know.
“I wish I could’ve met you in person, DJ. You seem all right.”
“Me too.” DJ exhaled, and the sound of it over the speakers was like a breeze I could almost feel. “How much air have you got left?”
It was becoming difficult to catch enough breath to talk. “Just a few minutes. You’re not going anywhere, right? You promised.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m staying right here until the end.”
QRIOSITY KILLED THE CAT
ONE
I SAT UP GASPING BECAUSE the last thing my body remembered was dying. A deep ache lingered in my chest like someone had used my ribs for a trampoline, and though breathing hurt, I took one sweet breath after another, clearing the fog from my brain.
“DJ?” His name felt strange on my tongue. Strange that he was the first person I thought of upon waking, but it also felt as natural as breathing. If I strained, I could hear DJ’s voice in the dark, like he was just on the other side of a door talking to me, telling me jokes to keep me from freaking out, reassuring me that everything was going to be fine with his barely-there Southern twang.
Soft blue lights flickered on. I shielded my eyes with my hand, blinking until they adjusted. The air was humid and sticky and smelled sharply of antiseptic. It reminded me of the hospital where my mom worked. For a moment, I expected her to walk through the door and tell me that I hadn’t woken up in space, that the experience had been nothing more than a fever dream.
But she didn’t. Because it wasn’t.
I was lying on a cool white table in a sterile white room that was only slightly larger than my bedroom back home. A second table, empty, sat to my left, and there was a counter across the room that was clean except for a pile of clothes. I peeled back the silver blanket draped over me and swung my legs around to stand, but a glossy white cuff wrapped around my left bicep jerked me back. Tubes and wires ran from the cuff into a port on the wall. I touched the smooth surface, looking for a seam or a latch so that I could pry it off.
The cuff shrieked, and a gender-neutral voice with a vaguely British accent said, “Removing the MediQwik Portable Medical Diagnostician and Care Appliance while it is treating you for cracked ribs and hypoxia-related brain injury could result in complications such as internal bleeding, memory loss, and death. MediQwik, health redefined. MediQwik is a trademark of Prestwich Enterprises, a subsidiary of Gleeson Foods.”
Out of all the garbage the computer voice spit out, I zeroed in on one thing. “I’ve got brain damage? How the hell did I get brain damage?”
“The cause of your brain damage was death.”
“I died?!”
“You were clinically dead for seven minutes and thirteen seconds before your successful resuscitation and repair. You’re welcome.”
I had died.
The last thing I remembered was the sound of DJ’s voice. Not what he said, just the last note of it repeating on a loop until it faded entirely. I recalled no bright light. Gamma Evelyn and Grandpa Andy hadn’t been waiting to welcome me home. There had been no chorus of angels, no fluffy clouds. There’d been nothing. At least, nothing that I could remember. All those years of Sunday school had been a lie.