“Boys and girls, I hope you understand the privilege that has been bestowed upon you. You all get to witness one of the greatest miracles of modern science right here at Springside High. What an amazing day!”
And then more clapping and even a few cheers rang out from the students. I closed my eyes and clinched my fists while forcing a smile. I wasn’t prepared for this, and it was becoming pretty overwhelming. Then one kid from the back yelled, “NOGGIN!” like he was trying to start a group chant with it, but the whole room fell super quiet instead.
“Hatton!” Mrs. Lasetter barked. “Apologize! Now!”
“Sorry.”
I turned around to see a skinny kid with glasses and blond, almost white hair slumping down in his desk. He looked at me with this sincere regret on his face.
“No.” I stood up. “It’s fine. I like it.”
“You like what?” Lasetter asked. She’d always hated me, and I could already see it coming back. I thought about succumbing to that look she gave me, the one that had always made even the most defiant students lower their heads in shame. But I was back, and even though I just wanted to run away and hide, defying her was the best moment of my new life.
“Noggin. It has a nice ring to it.”
“He was being rude.”
“But I liked it. What’s your name again? Hatton?”
He perked up and nodded his head. He was smiling now but still looking over at Lasetter with a cautious expression, unsure if he’d be punished for going along with me.
“I always wanted a nickname. Thanks.”
“How do you like that, kids? What a fantastic attitude this young man has! And after all he’s been through!” Principal Carson clasped her hands together and sighed deeply.
“Speech!” one kid shouted from the back of the room.
I looked up at Mrs. Lasetter, and she was clenching her jaw so hard she’d have to take an aspirin later.
“SPEECH! SPEECH! SPEECH!” they all started shouting.
Then Principal Carson looked at me, looked right down at me and into my eyes, and I knew I had to do it. As much as I just wanted to be boring, like Mom said, I knew they weren’t going to let me. I mean, it couldn’t be that bad, right? So I stood up, waited for them all to settle down, wiped sweat from my forehead with the back of one arm, and spoke.
“It’s good to be back here,” I began. “It seems like just yesterday I was walking these halls, even though it was with a different set of legs and all.”
And they laughed. Thank God they laughed. There were even a few “awesome”s whispered from the back.
“I just hope I haven’t forgotten everything I learned five years ago. It would be a shame if I can’t keep ahead.”
Nothing. Not one murmur of a chuckle.
“Get it?” I asked. “Ahead?” I pointed to my skull.
They laughed again, even harder this time. And it could’ve been that they just didn’t know what else to do, but it didn’t matter. I realized, in that moment, that maybe I could do this. I could be this new person. Lawrence Ramsey had done it. Hell, I saw him in a luxury car commercial just the day before. He was cashing in on this whole “Miracle of Modern Science” gig, and he’d only been conscious for a few months longer than I had. But as comfortable as it felt right at first, while they were laughing and looking at me with this strange excitement, it still wasn’t right. It only took me a few seconds to snap out of it and remember that the last time I was in that classroom, I’d just been diagnosed with a deadly illness and my best friend had been sitting right beside me.
After I sat back down and Mrs. Lasetter continued writing notes on the board for a while, the bell rang to dismiss class, and my new fellow students lined up to shake my hand on the way out. Principal Carson had stepped back in and stood proudly beside me, even once leaning down and whispering into my ear something I’ll never forget.
“I’ve never seen that woman get so mad. Well done, young man.”
The last kid in line was Hatton, who opted for a high five in place of a handshake and said I was already the coolest guy he’d ever met.
“I was supposed to be boring today,” I said.
“No way, man. Noggin,” he said proudly. “Superstar.”
• • •
The rest of my classes that first day back were filled with similar reactions from my new classmates. And photos. My God, the photos never stopped. I couldn’t even walk down the hallway without people running right up to me, sometimes not even speaking, and holding a phone out in front of us just long enough to take a picture. Then they just walked away like nothing ever happened. Celebrity is weird.
At lunch my usual table, where Cate, Kyle, and I had always sat, was full of strangers, so I took a seat at an empty one in the far back corner. I ate quietly, just sort of scanning the large cafeteria to see if I noticed anyone. All these people had been just little kids in elementary school when I was here before. It was odd to think that maybe I’d seen them then, playing around in their yards or shopping with their parents at the mall. And that’s when I saw Audrey Hagler, who used to be Kyle’s twelve-year-old littler sister with a pink bedroom and an obsession with Disney princess movies, but was now something very different. She was beautiful, with that long brown hair and just the right amount of makeup on. Seeing her like this made it easier to believe that Kyle needed time to grow into his looks. That was how it worked in this family, it seemed. I couldn’t stop staring at her and I wanted to go say hello but didn’t want to embarrass myself in a roomful of strangers either.
“Do you know her?” Hatton asked when he walked up.
“I did.”
“Geez. Even dead people know Audrey Hagler. Go figure.”
“Her brother’s my best friend.”
“Oh. Cool. Can I sit here?”
“Sure.”
He sat right beside me, and we both stared across the room at Audrey together. It was something I imagine looked pretty strange to the rest of the kids around us, but we didn’t care, neither of us. That much was obvious. Hatton didn’t strike me as someone who cared what anyone thought of him, and I was a guy with someone else’s body attached to me and a very noticeable scar around my neck to remind everyone of that fact, so I sure didn’t care either.
“Everyone’s been talking about you all day,” he said.
“Has the nickname caught on yet?”
“Not as well as I’d like. But I’m working on it,” he said, his mouth full of food.
“It’s weird, you know. She looks so different. Grown-up, I mean. But her face, the nose and eyes, they’re the same.”
“Trippy,” he said. “See anyone else you recognize?”
“Just teachers. I can’t believe I have to take Lasetter’s class again.”
“A fate worse than death. Sorry. Was that okay to say?”
“Of course. And closer to the truth than you’d think.”
“She’s coming over here, dude.”
I looked up to see Audrey headed straight for us with pretty much the whole room staring my way.
“Travis?” she said, smiling. Her smile was exactly the same.
“Audrey?” I asked. “Hi.”
“Get up!”
I got up, Hatton still seated beside me, and Audrey reached over the table and hugged my neck. She did the same thing everyone else had been doing, where she pulled back slightly and looked me up and down, starting at the neck, then down to the shoes, then back up again.
“I can’t believe this,” she said. “Kyle called me yesterday and he was so happy. He could not shut up about you. No one can, really.”
“He really grew up,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“We all did, I guess.” She laughed.
“That you did,” Hatton said from his seat.
“Huh?” she asked.
“Hi.” He stood up. “I’m Hatton Sharpe. I’m Travis’s new friend.”
“Hey.” She gave him a suspicious stare and then turned
back to me.
“Anyway. Let me know if you need anything around here, okay? I’m junior-class president.”
“Cool. Thanks,” I said like an idiot.
“Travis Coates. Wow.” She shook her head and walked off.
“She loves you,” Hatton said as I sat back down.
“No, she doesn’t.”
“She does. I can tell. I’m very astute about these things.”
“Hatton, she’s my best friend’s little sister. That’s wrong and all kinds of gross, and I don’t even know where to begin explaining to you how weird this is.”
“You’re a modern-day Casanova, you know. You’re a hero. All the women in this school want you.”
“I have a girlfriend.”
“Oh. Already?”
“No. I mean yeah. From before.”
“She waited for you?”
“She kind of has a fiancé. But still.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s complicated. I haven’t seen her since I’ve been back.”
“Can I ask you something?” Hatton leaned in a little closer, his chest hovering right above his lunch tray. “Did you guys ever . . . you know . . . do it?”
“Are you asking if I ever had sex with my girlfriend? I met you, like, two hours ago. Is there something wrong with you? Are you the school pervert?”
“Maybe. But did you?” He raised one eyebrow. I probably should’ve gotten up and walked away, but there was something so sincere about the way he’d asked it, the way he talked to me in this familiar, comfortable tone like we’d been friends our whole lives.
“No,” I said. “We kind of ran out of time.”
“Shit,” he said quietly. “So I bet it’s pretty hard picturing her with some other guy, then. That sucks so bad.”
“It isn’t ideal, Hatton,” I said as the bell rang.
“What’s your next class?” he said, standing up.
“Chemistry. You?”
“Chemistry. Awesome.”
Speaking of chemistry—yeah, Cate and I wanted to have sex. We were teenagers who loved each other and one of us was dying, so we had plenty of talks about if and when we should try it out. But, like I told Hatton, we just never got the chance to go all the way. We tried, though. One night when my parents had gone to this charity thing for my dad’s work, Cate came over and we turned out all the lights, and she lit some candles and put on some music and everything that we thought was supposed to accompany sex. I’d had an okay week and it’d been a while since my last round of chemo, so we figured I’d have enough strength to . . . you know . . .
And this is what happened:
Cate: I’m going to take my clothes off, but I need you to close your eyes. Okay? You can take yours off too.
Me: Okay.
Cate, now under the covers: Okay. All done.
Me: I need help.
Cate, lifting the covers: Doesn’t look like it to me, champ.
Me: No, I mean, I can’t get my boxers off.
Cate, crawling under the covers: Okay. There. Got ’em.
Me: If I weren’t dying of so much else, the embarrassment would be killing me.
Cate, back beside me, her bare shoulder touching mine: I love you, Travis.
Me: Ditto.
Cate, crying.
Me, wrapping my arms around her and falling asleep.
I was glad I met Hatton on the first day back. He was funny in that unintentional way where he mostly just said more of the truth than anyone else around, at least when he wasn’t making things up to flirt with girls. In chemistry I watched him tap a cute girl on the shoulder and tell her she was the only person he ever dreamed about. She looked disgusted, and I nodded my head in affirmation to try to help. Then she gave us both the finger and never turned around again.
At the end of the day Mom picked me up and had this look on her face that asked a million questions all at the same time. So I answered them as efficiently as possible to ease her mind.
“School was good. I made a new friend. He’s hilarious. And I saw Audrey Hagler, and she is so different and grown-up now. But also the same. It’s weird, but I can make it work. I like my new clothes, too—thanks, Mom.”
And she smiled so big, even though she was sort of crying. I wondered if she’d ever smile again without crying, or if this had become her default setting. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who needed a reset button. I turned on the radio and pretended not to see it. That’s what she wanted anyway. She didn’t like getting attention like that, which is something I really loved about her.
“Any word from Cate?” I asked as we turned onto our street.
“No, sweetie.”
“Sucks.”
“Maybe she’ll be ready soon.”
“I want it all to go back, you know. All of it.” I looked out the window, my forehead pressing up against the glass.
“You may want to think about that a little longer before saying it again, Travis.”
But I had thought about it. It’s all I could think about since I’d woken up. And, to be honest, I couldn’t really see all that much difference between the life where I was dying and the one where everyone had become a stranger. Some of my happiest moments were in those few months leading up to the surgery, so maybe this wasn’t right. All those hours in the hospital that I spent thinking about whether or not this crazy procedure would work, whether or not I’d get to come back, and it hadn’t even once occurred to me that it could happen this way. I thought if I woke up at all, it would be in a hundred years to a brand-new world full of new people. But instead there I was stuck in this mutated version of my old life where everyone had grown-up just enough to forget about me. Or, at the very least, move on to lives I could no longer fit into. My best friend had secrets and my girlfriend had a fiancé. I came back from the dead for this? Joke’s on me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JOKE’S ON ME
She’d always been there in very small ways, I’d say. I didn’t really know her before middle school, but then we had a few classes together and I eventually noticed that she was the only other kid who got my jokes, the only one who knew the exact Saturday Night Live reference I was making or the impression I was botching. She’d always be there laughing and, in the cutest way possible, following up whatever I’d said with something she hoped would be funnier. She was competitive in that way alone, and I realized after a while that she was only this way with me. In classrooms full of more attractive, more popular, and all around better guys, Cate Conroy would take pains to sit next to me and be my partner on projects and ask me for help on assignments. By the end of eighth grade she mentioned being tired of riding the bus every day, so I asked my mom if we could start picking her up in the mornings. Luckily, her house was on the way to school from ours.
She lived with her mom and stepdad in a very small house that was actually one half of a car repair shop. It was nicer on the inside than I’d imagined, but something about it never quite felt like a home to me. Maybe because Cate was shy about it and always made sure to tell everyone that they were saving up to buy a new place. Her stepdad, a mechanic, was a nice guy from Chicago who talked faster than an auctioneer. He was always covered in grease from his fingertips to his elbows, usually with a smudge or two on his face, and before Cate and I ever started dating, he would whisper things to me like “I’m rooting for you, buddy.” And I’d always pretend not to know what he was talking about and walk away embarrassed.
I told Cate I loved her, that I was in love with her, outside of a movie theater in downtown Kansas City. She was supposed to say, with tears in her eyes, that she felt the same way. She was supposed to let me grab her and swoop her dramatically down to one side and kiss her like no one’s ever kissed anyone else in the world. Instead she said, “Thank you, that’s sweet,” and hugged me good night when her mom pulled up to take her home.
The next day, after school, she showed up at my house holding a large, flat square, something wra
pped in plain brown paper. She asked if we could go upstairs, and as I led her up, there was the sort of quiet between us that made every creak of our steps echo through the house. We got up to my room, and even though no one else was home, I shut the door behind me. She just stood there, holding the mystery gift, and she had this grin on her face that at least made me step away from the door and let go of the handle. I was ready to bolt, ready to run out of that room as soon as she broke my heart, so I wouldn’t have to face the mortification.
“Relax,” she said.
“What’s that?” I asked, my voice shaky just like the rest of me. Even my chest.
“It’s a present for you.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t know what to say last night.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Why would you be sorry for saying something like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Open it,” she said, handing it over.
It was a painting. But I’d known that much when she’d walked in. For starters, Cate was always painting. And also, right as she handed it to me, I saw a smudge of red on her hand. She was messy that way, never unkempt but always looking like she’d just been working on something important, something that just couldn’t wait.
Something like this painting she handed me. It was us, right in the center of the canvas, sitting alone and side by side in a big empty movie theater. I had my arm around her, my feet kicked up on the seat in front of me. She even made the sneakers green and yellow. You could only see our backs. You could see her wavy blond hair hanging over the back of the seat and my short brown hair jutting just a little over the tops of my ears. There were empty black seats all around and behind us. Nearly the entire far background was a white screen with little tatters and cracks at the edges with huge red curtains on either side. It looked exactly like our theater.