The narrow road slowly wound through the trees and fields. Driving on the island was a little different than it was driving on the mainland. When the fastest road was only forty, no one was ever in a huge hurry. We were back on island time.
We pulled into the driveway, finding another gigantic paper sign taped to our garage door. This one read We Love And Miss You, Jake!
A small smile did finally crack on my face when I found Samantha’s name written on it, in big orange letters.
I helped Mom carry the bags in, stepping through the front door.
About a million balloons were hugging the ceiling in the living room. A thousand cards lay on the coffee table, a handful of stuffed animals were lined up in the window seat.
“Well look at that,” Mom marveled as she stepped in behind me. She actually laughed. “I think your school missed you.”
I just nodded, taking it all in. This hadn’t just been my high school. This had been the whole island.
“Wow,” Mom called from the kitchen. “Look at that stack of dishes.” She laughed.
I walked into the kitchen with the groceries to see what she was talking about. There was a stack of casserole dishes, mixing bowls, and Tupperware with names I recognized written on them. It looked like our family had been well-fed while Mom was with me.
“Jake?” I heard a voice from upstairs. A second later it sounded like a heard of buffalo were pounding down the stairs. I was suddenly attacked in a dog-pile of a hug that sent all of us to the ground.
“Hey! Hey!” Mom yelled, pulling Joshua and James off of me. “The stitches, the stitches!”
“Sorry, Jake,” they both said in unison, pulling me to my feet. I just tried to laugh, and punched both of them in the arm.
“I’m so glad you’re home,” Jamie said, coming at me a little more gracefully. She pulled me into a hug. I felt pathetic that it still hurt just a little whenever someone touched me.
“Ugh,” Joshua said, eying my throat. “That’s so gross!”
“Josh!” Mom gasped, wrapping a hand over his mouth. “You can’t say stuff like that to him.”
“It is pretty disgusting,” James said, eyeing it up close.
“James!” Jamie shrieked, slapping at his arm.
I pulled out the small notebook I now always carried in my pocket. He’s right, I wrote. It is pretty nasty.
Jamie just sighed and rolled her eyes as she walked out of the kitchen. “Boys,” she said as she disappeared back up the stairs.
I was glad to see that not everything had completely changed. Jamie still acted like a thirteen year-old girl. The boys were still honest, gross boys.
“Does it hurt?” Joshua asked, released from Mom’s grasp.
Not too bad, I wrote. It felt weird trying to communicate like this. Like the whole conversation was in slow motion. It felt like I couldn’t quite write fast enough.
“Cool,” Joshua replied lazily, wandering into the living room to watch TV.
“Homework, young man,” Mom yelled, neck-deep in the fridge. The whole family swore she really did have eyes in the back of her head. Joshua just sighed and turned to go up the stairs to his bedroom.
And just like that, the whole family seemed to go back to normal. I stood there in the kitchen for just a moment, not quite sure what to do with myself. So I did what I would have done before. I grabbed my stuff, and walked to my room, like it was just any normal day.
5 minutes into reality
There were just as many balloons, stuffed animals, and cards in my small room as there were in the living room. I couldn’t even put my bags on my double sized bed, it was covered with so much stuff.
I normally liked to keep my room clean, but I didn’t mind that it was messed up with support.
Dropping my bags onto the floor in the corner, I gathered a handful of the cards and dropped them onto the dresser. Pushing some of the bears, lions, and ducks to the side, I flopped down on my back, arms crossed behind my head. That’s when I noticed the t-post, stood up against the wall. Someone had attached a sign to the top of it, just a simple white square of wood. Printed in neat, black letters, it read: “The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.” -Arthur C. Clarke. I didn’t have to inspect the post further to know it was the post that had changed my life forever.
It was sickening to think that thing had been inside of my body.
Adjusting my position, I forced myself to look away from it and stare up at the ceiling.
I had a decision to make in that moment. I could let this accident, this insane thing that had happened to me ruin my life. It wouldn’t be hard to let it consume me. It would be really easy to get mad at life and to just give up.
It would be a heck of a lot harder to keep doing what I had always been doing. It wouldn’t be easy to go back to school in a few days. It wouldn’t be easy to walk around the island, to have every single person know what had happened to me. Because that was the way it was going to be.
So I had a decision then.
Was I going to take the easy way out, or take the hard, high road?
I must have fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes it was pretty dark out. I heard muffled voices outside my door.
“Mom, don’t let them wake Jake up,” Jordan said from the hallway.
“He’d want to see his friends,” she insisted. I faintly heard my doorknob jostle as someone’s hand rested on it.
“Yeah, Jordan,” Rain teased her. “Jake needs his posse right now.”
“Posse?” Jordan mocked him. I could just see her crossing her arms over her chest and giving him “the look” girls were so good at.
I pulled myself up and made my way through the mess that was my room and opened the door. Their eyes jumped to my face, their expressions surprised and guilty.
“Oh, hey, Jake,” Carter said. “You’re awake.”
I just nodded.
Having no voice kind of felt like being a prisoner in my own body. I couldn’t even say hey in return.
“We’re glad you’re back,” Rain said, wrapping his arms around me, pounding on my back in a very “manly” hug. “School hasn’t been the same without you.”
“You okay, Jake?” Jordan asked. “I’ll make them leave if you want me to.”
A smile cracked my lips and I shook my head.
Jordan eyed them for a long moment and finally turned and walked away with Mom.
The guys shuffled into my room and I closed the door behind them and flipped the light on.
“So how’s it feel to be back on the rock?” Carter asked, picking up a very pink teddy bear and sitting on my bed.
I shifted through my backpack until I found one of the notebooks Mom had bought. Finding a pen took a while longer. Frustration made my face hot when I couldn’t find one.
I finally found it at the very bottom of my bag.
Opening the notebook, I glanced at my friends. I felt like an idiot. Feelin’ the spotlight, that’s for sure, I wrote.
“The whole island hasn’t been able to stop talking about you,” Rain said, flipping through the cards on my dresser. “A bunch of the old ladies put together a fund raiser to help pay for everything. I think I heard they raised something like six thousand dollars.”
My eyebrows rose, surprised. That was a lot of money.
“I think Mr. Carol donated about half of that,” Carter added a little more quietly.
I honestly hadn’t even thought about Mr. Carol since all of this had happened. Would I still continue to work for him? Ninety percent of my pay had been the use of Mr. Carol’s plane. And I couldn’t fly anymore.
I couldn’t fly anymore…
I hadn’t realized I’d been too quiet for too long until I saw the perplexed expressions on my friend’s faces.
“Everything’s going to be okay, isn’t it?” Rain asked. “I mean, you’re going to be alright physically, and everything?”
I swallowed hard, my eyes
falling to the floor for a second.
This was that moment again, where I had to decide.
My insides felt like a bunch of lizards biting and snapping at each other. I nodded.
Yeah, I wrote. Everything’s going to be okay.
“It’s just going to take some time,” Carter said, a sad half-smile on his face. I nodded and tried to smile too.
So, I wrote. You think Samantha missed me much? Time for a change of subject.
That brought a chuckle out of both of them. “She’s actually been talking to my dad a bunch about rearranging your schedule,” Carter said, tossing the small bear from one hand to the other. “Don’t ask me why she’s been involved.”
My brow furrowed, giving a small nod.
Think I got a shot with her anymore?
“Hey, you never know. Some chicks like the sick and the helpless.”
I chucked my pen at Carter’s face, shaking my head.
“What?” he continued, throwing the pen back at me. “It’s true.”
I wondered how it was possible, for things to go back to normal so easily. I may have been writing my words instead of saying them. But these two were still my best friends, and they were still going on like nothing was wrong with me.
Week 1 of reality
The family, Dr. Calvin, and my psychologist all decided that I would go back to school as soon as I could eat solids again, and that meant Thursday. So the days between when I got home and then should have seemed peaceful.
They were the total opposite.
Mom hounded me about watching the sign-language videos I’d been sent home with for three hours a day. On top of that she still expected me to stay caught up on my school work.
And the phone wouldn’t stop ringing.
It seemed every hour on the hour someone else would call, talk to Mom for about thirty minutes, and ask how I was doing, what was going to happen in the future, and what they could do to help.
A lot of people would just show up at the house too, wanting to see how I was doing. Jordan got very good at being the door guard. Any time the doorbell rang I would slide into my room and close the blinds. Jordan would simply tell them that I was sleeping or studying and couldn’t be disturbed.
I never appreciated my sister as much as I did in those few days.
My cracked cell phone wouldn’t stop vibrating on the dresser, text messages from half the student body at OHS saying they couldn’t wait to see me.
To say I was overwhelmed was an understatement.
I was terrified to go back to school on Thursday.
Because I knew everyone was going to be staring at my neck, every single one of them knew what had happened to me. And they were all going to feel sorry for me.
I didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for me.
I continued to receive all nourishment by IV, my esophagus still not healed enough to eat solids. I never thought I’d miss food so much.
By Wednesday night, Mom was trying to force me to sign as much as I possibly could. But it was a disaster. My eyes may have been watching that woman on the sign language videos, but I wasn’t absorbing any of it.
Mom was getting way better at sign language than I was.
I kind of felt bad for not making a bigger effort when she was trying so hard.
2 years ago
8 months into sophomore year
It was slim pickings.
I should have guessed it would be, seeing as it was the day before Mother’s Day. Had I thought about it earlier, I would have gotten Mom something nice when the family had gone off-island last weekend. Now I was stuck browsing the tiny aisles of Ray’s Pharmacy.
Picking up a silver photo frame that had JOY engraved into it in cheesy font, I wondered if Mom would like something like that. Probably not. Mom wasn’t into cheesy.
“Mother’s Day is just a day asking for people like us to get into trouble,” a familiar voice said as it approached from behind. I turned to see Samantha browsing through a rack of cards, each of them equally cheesy to the JOY frame.
“If you don’t get something for Mom, she’ll be offended,” Sam said as she continued to look through the cards. “But if you get something she doesn’t like, she has to go through the painful experience of pretending like she loves it. My mom’s a terrible actress, so I always know.”
“I thought moms were supposed to love whatever you get them,” I said, browsing through some photo albums. “Isn’t that part of being a mom?”
“It is,” she said as she picked up a card. After reading what was printed in it, she closed it and put it back. “But you know they’re secretly hoping for something really good.”
I chuckled and considered the small selection of scented candles. Mom wasn’t really a candle person. “Why are mom’s so hard to shop for?”
“Seriously,” Sam said, leaving the card rack and joining my side. I felt my heartbeat pick up just a little bit. “Okay, who really wants a fresh cut grass scented candle?”
“I don’t know,” I said seriously, picking the green candle up and giving it a whiff. Sure enough, it smelled just like grass. “It might bring back good memories to someone who worked on a golf course.”
Sam burst out laughing, covering her mouth when she got strange looks from other shoppers. I couldn’t help laughing too as I put the candle back.
“Okay, so I have an idea,” Sam said, swishing her hair over her shoulder. “How about I pick out something for your mom, and you pick out something for mine? That way if our moms hate what we got, which they won’t say if they do, we can push the blame off on each other.”
“A twisted but genius idea,” I said, a smile spreading again on my face as I looked at Sam’s proud smirk. I couldn’t help but smile when I was around Sam.
“I have been told I’m the smartest girl in school,” she said seriously. She couldn’t hold it though and a smile cracked on her face a moment later.
“Did… did your head just get a little bigger?” I said, my brow furrowed.
Sam just laughed again and punched my shoulder. “Get shopping, boy! Get my mother something nice! She deserves it.”
First day back at school
Thursday morning dawned brilliant and irritatingly bright. It would have been easier to talk myself, and Mom, out of me going to school if it had been just miserable and wet outside. But I’d kept myself cooped up in that house for days and I couldn’t deny I wanted to get out and soak up some vitamin D.
“You’re going to do great today,” Mom said as she scooped up a mountain of pancakes and set them on a plate. She’d also cooked a huge pan of eggs, toasted an entire loaf of bread, and had bacon cooking on the stove. Mom was going all out. She had a tendency to do that when she was nervous or unsure about a situation. To her, food cured all.
“We called Principle Hill last night and let him know you were coming back today,” Dad said from where he sat at the table reading the newspaper. “He said for you to go straight to his office this morning.”
I nodded, barely listening to him as I bit into my first solid bite of food since the accident.
Bacon had never, never tasted so good. It burned a bit as it went down, but it was totally worth it.
Real food was so much better than food pumped directly into your system.
After school, I was going to the family doctor here on the island to get the stitches and my IV line removed.
“Joshua, James!” Mom suddenly yelled, making me jump and nearly slop orange juice down my front. “Get down here! You’re going to be late for school!”
Their footsteps thundered down the stairs. James tripped down the last two and landed flat on his face.
Nice! I quickly wrote, shaking my head at them.
“Shut up,” James glared as he walked to the bar and grabbed a piece of toast. “I mean…” he stuttered, flushing red.
I just shook my head, and tried to laugh.
“You look like a mime or something when you do that,” James said,
his tone totally serious. “Your body tries to laugh, but nothing comes out.”
I just tussled his hair and grabbed another handful of bacon. I went to retrieve my backpack from my room. Loading my books back into it, I then stuffed two blank notebooks in it as well. I zipped it up and stood there, staring at it there on the floor for a long moment.
This was the final step back to reality.
Taking a deep breath, I picked it up and slung it over my shoulder.
Joshua, James, Jamie, and Jordan were already shuffling out to the family’s eleven-passenger van, piling in, backpacks slamming into each other, irritated morning voices yelling.
I’d never yell at any of them again.
I’d never yell about anything again.
The pity of my siblings was obvious as I climbed into the front passenger seat. It was normally a race to get there. They never would have left it for me if they didn’t feel sorry for me.
I stared longingly at my beat-down, red and grey Bronco sitting in the driveway as I buckled. The deal was Mom could drive me to school the first few days, just to make sure I was okay, and then I could go back to driving. At least one thing would go back to normal then. It was embarrassing to have my mom drive me to school.
Mom expertly backed the massive van out of the driveway and started rolling down the road toward the school.
“You got your notebooks?” Mom asked. She kept glancing over at me, her eyes flicking to my throat. I nodded. “You got your cell phone?” I nodded again. “You can call me any time today if you need me. I can come pick you up any time.”
MOM! I wrote in black ink on the palm of my hand, flashing it at her with annoyed eyes.
“Sorry,” she apologized, completely ignoring Joshua and James’ fighting in the back seat. “I’m just… worried about you today.”
“He’ll be fine today, Mom,” Jordan said from behind me, reaching up to squeeze my shoulder. I placed my hand over hers, giving it an appreciative squeeze.
“I know,” Mom said, though it sounded like it was mostly to herself. “I know.”