“Same place I bought the board,” I tell him.
“It’s cheap. If it snaps and you lose your board, you’ll have to swim all the way in,” he says. “I’ll bring a better one for you next week.”
He’s still on one knee and I almost blurt out, “Are you about to propose?”— but I stop myself. Making flirty jokes with a boy I’ve only known for a few weeks is definitely not something I did before. Besides, we don’t really have a joke-cracking relationship. Most of the time, Kai is all business. So what I actually say is, “Okay, thanks. I’ll bring some extra cash.”
He stands. “No need. You can borrow one of mine. See you next week.”
I nod. “Next week.” I pick up my board and start walking toward the path that leads to the parking lot, but I pause to call over my shoulder. “I’m catching one next time. Even if I have to stay out there till I can’t feel my toes.”
“Hmm. If you can’t feel your toes, how are you going to keep your balance?” Kai raises his eyebrows as if he has just imparted some deep wisdom.
Well, okay. That was kind of a joke, so maybe he’s not all business.
When we were younger, Emma used to tell me that if you died in your dreams, you’d never wake up. “Think about it,” she said. “If someone is trying to kill you or you’re falling through the sky, you always wake up before.” Before the hunter unleashes his arrow. Before your body slams into the ground.
Even though I was skeptical of anything superstitious, Emma’s certainty spooked me. “Dream your death, and you’re screwed.”
But now I know this can’t be true. Because for the last few weeks, I’ve died over and over again in my dreams. Every single night.
It always starts with me speeding toward the black mouth of a tunnel on a motorcycle. I wear a heavy leather jacket, steel-toed boots, and a helmet. Air rushes through the seams on my face shield and bright yellow lights streak by, blurring into a single fluorescent line. I lean into a curve and, as I’m pulling out of it, I see a Christmas tree, tied with twine, lying across the lane. I swerve, slide, hear the echoing screech of tires behind me. Time slows for a few brief seconds as I am sent flying. There is broken glass. There is the acrid smell of burning rubber. Oil-stained pavement rushes up to meet me, filling my field of vision. The last thing I hear is a loud, sickening crack as blood washes over my eyes.
And then there is nothing.
A nothing so complete and empty that I know without a doubt that I am dead.
Until the phone on my nightstand sounds its alarm, ushering in another day.
I jolt up in bed, heart hammering, and silence my alarm. It’s okay, I think. You’re okay. You’re in your room. In your bed. Not dead. It’s the “nothing” part of the dream that’s the worst. Worse than the crack as my head hits the pavement. Worse than all the blood. Is that what death is really like? Like nothing? It’s terrifying to think that in one instant you’re seeing and smelling and feeling and hearing and thinking and then in the next you’re just this . . . void. Even though I’m sweating, the thought makes me shiver. And my head hurts like hell. Almost like it really did just slam into the pavement.
There’s a knock on my door, and a nanosecond later, my mom pops her head into my room. I always used to protest when she wouldn’t wait for my “permission” to enter, but now I cut her more slack. All the heart drama has put her through the wringer.
“Are you awake in here?” she asks.
“Yep, I’m up,” I say.
Mom gives me a closer look and the little worry line between her eyebrows deepens.
“Everything okay?”
My pulse is still racing from the dream, so I take a deep, calming breath. “I’m fine,” I lie, not wanting to get her all worked up over a nightmare.
She sets a glass of water down on my nightstand and sits at the edge of my bed. “You look a little pale.”
“Mom, I’m fine.”
“Okay,” she says, standing back up, giving me “my space.” “Don’t forget your pills.”
“Yes, Mom.”
Making sure I take my medication has become her number-one mission in life. She pauses in the doorway again on her way out.
“Dad wants to stop for lunch in the city after your appointment. Any thoughts on where you’d like to go?”
Oh, boy. I knew they were going to make a big deal out of this.
“I still don’t understand why you both need to come,” I say, throwing off my covers and swinging my legs out of bed.
“Don’t be silly, Chloe. Your six-month appointment is a big deal! We should celebrate, don’t you think?”
I should want to, right? Today is my six-month postoperative checkup. Six months since my original model heart was removed and replaced by another. Now that I have reached this milestone, and provided that the heart biopsy that I must submit to this morning looks good, I will no longer have to see my cardiac surgeon every few weeks. It also means that I’m supposed to be able to get back to most “normal activities,” whatever that means.
The thing is, taking a gazillion pills a day doesn’t exactly feel normal. Neither does going to school in the summer or my constant compulsion to just get in my car and drive fast, fast, fast, or the weird memory issues I’ve been having — for how long now? weeks? months? — or my now-nightly death dream. And the least normal thing of all? The constant, ever-present, can’t-get-away-from-it-not-even-for-a-second awareness of someone else’s original model heart beating inside my chest. Thump. Does it sound different? Thump, thump. Does it speed up faster? Does it skip in a way that’s unlike the one that used to be mine?
I wish I could tell my mom and dad that it feels strange to celebrate. That everything feels strange.
After showering, I pull on a pair of jeans and find a sweater to wear over my T-shirt. It’s always so cold in the hospital. Before heading out to the kitchen, I take a quick look at myself in the mirror on my closet door, just to make sure it’s still me looking back. Same brown eyes. Same constellation of freckles on my cheeks. Same not-quite-manageable hair. Still me.
At least, it appears to be. Aside from the thump.
Thump, thump.
From the moment that I could talk, I wanted to know why about everything.
Why do people need to eat?
Why do my fingers wrinkle in the bath?
Why don’t we get burnt up by the sun?
Mostly because I was curious. It was fun to ask questions and learn the answers. But a part of me also really needed to know. Explanations were comforting, especially when delivered by my science-teacher dad:
“Your fingers wrinkle in the bath to help you grip things in the water. The water tells your brain that things might get slippery, so your brain sends a message back to your fingers that makes the skin on them shrivel up a bit, so that it’s easier to hold things that are wet. They’ll go back to normal in a little while, after you dry off. No worries.”
My five-year-old self had been studying the puckered skin on my fingers and was relieved to hear that it wouldn’t stay that way.
“Or maybe you are actually an old woman named Gertrude disguised as my daughter,” he couldn’t help adding, looking into my eyes and squinting as he wrapped me in my pink butterfly towel. “What have you done with my Chloe?”