“Carli,” Mom says, and puts her paperwork down. She has a look of concern in her big, Diana Ross–looking eyes. “Sometimes life hits you with things, but you have to keep going, you know.”
Wait, what? I see what she’s doing. She’s trying to flip this conversation from her sadness to mine. But you know what, if she wants to do that, I’m going to use it. I reach down (don’t have to reach very far) and pull out the sadness I’ve been feeling all week—about our family, Daddy, this whole situation—and I say, “It would help if I knew what happened.” Tears pool at the base of my throat, and I gently guide them up behind my eyes and let them fall.
“Carli,” Mom says, and picks up the Styrofoam cup from the nightstand. She takes a sip. There’s a Lipton tea tag hanging by a string on the outside of the cup. Mom is bougie about her tea. No way she’s enjoying that Lipton. “You want me to get you some ice chips?” she asks.
“Are you serious? I cry and all you offer me are ice chips?” I sit up in the bed and feel the chill from the cold room hit my bare back through the sparse ties of the hospital gown. “Forget ice chips! I want to know what happened between you and Daddy,” I say, tears gone. Pretending gone. Patience gone.
I swear all fifty-two million times I’ve asked her about why she and Daddy are getting divorced, she acts shady, which is not like her at all. She never shies away from the truth. It’s one of my favorite things about her. My whole life, I’ve always been able to ask her about anything. And I mean anything—sex, drama at school, drugs, alcohol, religion, masturbation. Yes, masturbation! But she can’t talk about what happened between her and Daddy? Makes no freaking sense.
“You’ll have to ask your dad, Carli.”
“Seriously?” It’s so irritating the way she keeps suggesting this like it’s possible. I mean, I can ask Daddy about impersonal stuff, like how to craft the best arguments for my teachers to give me extra credit for all the random things I read. Or what I should use to get all my hair out of the drain. Or why we don’t have one-person-one-vote if we live in a democracy.
But whenever I try to talk to Daddy about life outside the very practical or intellectual—basically anything dealing with feelings—he always gets that look in his eyes, that look that makes me stop pressing. After twenty years together, she might be immune to the look, but I’m not.
“Well, I can’t talk about it, Carli. I wish I could, but I can’t.”
“You’re the one always talking about questioning everything! And now I’m asking something that you have all the answers to, but you refuse to give them to me?”
“Look, Carli,” she says. “I wish I could. I really do. But your dad has to be ready to talk to you about it, you know, or it won’t do you any good.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“No, Carli.”
“Seriously, if it doesn’t do me any good, it’ll be on me. I asked for it.”
“I said no.”
Cole and Daddy walk back in before I can get an answer out of Mom.
Dr. Williams is with them. “It’s time,” she says, two nurses right behind her. One comes over and releases the brakes on my bed, and the two of them together begin to steer me out of the room. Daddy, Mom, and Cole are right behind them.
I guess this is it. It all seems to be happening so fast. The nurses are wheeling me to a room where the doctors are about to take out a part of me . . . a part I’ve lived with my whole life . . . a part I might miss. What if I never wake up?
My bed clears the room and I’m moving down the hall, staring up at harsh, fluorescent lights.
When we come to a set of double doors, Dr. Williams presses a large red button on the wall, they swing open, and we all pass through, Daddy ducking. “The waiting room is just up there to the left,” Dr. Williams says, and points to a space ahead with more puke-pink chairs arranged in a square.
The nurses turn me toward a long hall with more double doors.
Let my family come with me! I want to beg.
Cole grabs my hand.
“We’ll be close, Angel-face,” Daddy says, standing on my right.
Mom puts her hand on my left leg and says, “Just down the hall.”
I look up at my family, all together, wanting so much I can’t have. Wanting to wail like a baby, but instead I close my eyes.
REX
I make it just in time to catch Carli in the hall upstairs. When I see her, my heart starts floating in my chest. At least that’s how it feels. Like there’s nothing attached to it, like it might just go overboard and decide to float off somewhere. And that’s without even seeing her face. Through the large glass windows on the double doors in the hallway, all I can see is her big red hair peeking up over the back of the hospital bed.
On one side of her, a beautiful tall woman with short natural hair is patting her leg. Must be her mom. And on her other side, her brother is holding her hand. Her dad (clearly where Cole and Carli get most of their height from) reaches down to give her a kiss on the forehead. Damn, she’s lucky! Makes me want to push the red button and rush through the doors so I can join in on the love, too.
The nurses start to wheel Carli off, and I see her face. Hold up, she’s scared. Her eyes are wide open, and her small, round nostrils are flared. Carli pushes up onto her elbow and turns back to look at her family. But walking away, her dad is looking down, her mom is gazing out a window, and Cole is busy with his phone.
Two fat tears fall down Carli’s cheeks, and I’m sick. I hate seeing her like this. I wish I could rush in and hold her hand . . . rush in and tell her everything will be okay.
I press my forehead to the window of the door and mouth:
You’re okay.
You’re okay.
You’re okay.
Over and over again. And before the nurses wheel her out of view, our eyes meet, her face rearranges itself to resemble something like peace, and I feel like I’m back in the gym, catching her again.
Very Important Things
CARLI
It’s four thirty p.m. on Monday. Cole’s at his game. Mom’s back at work after taking the weekend off. And I’m sitting on the orange velvet sofa in the living room with my legs stretched out. I’m alternating between cutting very important things out of magazines and staring at a blank page in my notebook.
No more boys in my notebooks.
And definitely no more boys on my walls.
Instituted those rules after I kissed my first boy (Patrick) behind the bathroom stalls at basketball camp when I was twelve. After I got home, I must’ve written his name down in every color marker, crayon, and ink pen I owned. Then I waited for him to call, waited for him to ask me to be his girl, waited to put bursts of colors—bright, intoxicating colors—all over my walls.
None of it happened.
After Patrick, I might’ve been tempted to write a few more boys’ names down, thinking they were true. But between side chicks, ego-tripping, dudes trying to get all big and bad, dudes thinking they could tell me what to wear or how to do my hair, dudes not doing what they said they would do, dudes being all sweet one second and not even texting me back the next, dudes trying to pressure me into sex, or dudes plain working my nerves, they were all false alarms.