The World Without Us Page 4

  “Come in.”

  She walked into my bathroom. “Getting ready for bed?”

  I nodded and spoke through a mouthful of toothpaste. “Tired.”

  She opened my medicine cabinet. “Think I’m getting a cold. Do you have any vitamin C?”

  I spat in the sink. “Don’t think so. Thought you said that was an urban myth anyway.”

  She made a face. “Yeah, well, there’s not much evidence that it works, but it’s harmless, right? And I can’t afford to get sick right now.”

  “Busy?”

  “Yeah. Ramon is coming up for his last appeal, and it doesn’t look good.”

  I stuck my toothbrush back in the holder. “Mmm.”

  She followed me out of the bathroom. “Mel, I was wondering…is Jeremy someone important to you?”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  “I don’t mean to pry,” she said. “I just wondered.”

  “I haven’t known him that long,” I said. “We just kind of clicked though. He’s a good friend.”

  “Just a friend?”

  “I’m not sleeping with him, if that’s what you mean.” Something else occurred to me. “Tell me you weren’t checking my medicine cabinet for birth control.”

  Her cheeks flared, red and blotchy. “I’m sorry. That was…I shouldn’t have done that. I just wanted to say, if you want to go on the pill…or to talk about options…”

  I held up a hand to stop her. “Not. Sleeping. With. Jeremy.” I made a face. “Or anyone else, for that matter. And don’t worry: if I was going to, I wouldn’t be stupid about it.”

  “I know you wouldn’t.”

  I raised my eyebrows at her.

  “Okay, okay. Sorry. I should know you wouldn’t. But he’s older than you, right?”

  “Not by much—”

  “And I remember being your age, Mel. I know how fast things can happen. How fast things can get out of control.”

  “Yeah, well, not in my life, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “So, did you like him?” I asked, just to change the subject a little.

  “He was very polite.” She hesitated. “And he seems bright.”

  “Yeah, he is.” I sat down on the edge of my bed. “How come you didn’t answer the question?”

  “Mel, I don’t know him.” She looked uncomfortable.

  “You didn’t like him, did you?” I glared at her, trying to read between her words. “Why not?”

  “I didn’t say that. Don’t twist my words.”

  “Do you know his mom or something? Is she in one of your Parents Talking with Teens groups?”

  Vicky frowned. “I couldn’t tell you if she was; you know that. But no, I haven’t met his parents.”

  “Then why are you being all weird about him? Because you thought I was sleeping with him? Is that it?”

  “No. I don’t know. Maybe.” She gestured helplessly. “Look, Mel, we’ve always been able to talk about things, right? But you’re sixteen; you’re entitled to your own life and your privacy. And you make your own choices about friendships and who to trust.”

  “Gosh, thanks.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic,” she said. “Like I said, I don’t even know Jeremy. I just felt…concerned. About him. Not you.”

  “Because of his brother?”

  “Maybe, yeah. That threw me.”

  “Me too.”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “Nope.”

  “How did he drown? Did he tell you?”

  I realized he hadn’t. I’d asked, but he’d started talking about reincarnation instead of answering. “Not really,” I said.

  She nodded. “Maybe it’s all those years as a counselor, Mel. But I just get the feeling there’s more to Jeremy than meets the eye.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing? I hate shallow people.”

  “I know. But it’s hard to know what’s hiding in the depths sometimes.” She sighed. “And I’m your mother; I worry, okay? Can’t help it.”

  “Well, don’t.” I stood up and gave her a hug. “I’m fine. He’s a friend. And if I ever want to go on the pill, you can take me to see Dr. Rosewater, okay? You can hold my hand in the waiting room.”

  She laughed. “You’re making fun of me.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I am. And now I’m kicking you out, because I’m going to bed.”

  “I love you, Mel. Forever and always. Remember that.” Vicky kissed my cheek, my nose, my other cheek. “Sleep tight, love.”

  “Love you too,” I said.

  Dreaming

  The next day, Jeremy and I hung out at lunch. It was sunny, but in a hazy, humid kind of way that made me feel both tired and restless.

  “Wish I had a car,” he said. “We could drive somewhere. To St. Pete Beach, maybe. I haven’t been there in ages.”

  We were sitting under a huge mossy oak tree at the far edge of the baseball pitch behind the school. “Isn’t that…I mean, I would’ve thought…”

  “My brother?”

  I nodded.

  “He’ll be dead whether I go to the beach or not,” he said.

  “I know. I just thought it might be hard to go there. For you. Um, like a reminder, you know?”

  He snorted. “Hardly something I can forget, Mel.”

  My cheeks flushed with heat, and I dropped my gaze. I wondered again what had happened. Had Jeremy been there? Did he blame himself for Lucas’s drowning? I couldn’t imagine asking him.

  “You know anything about lucid dreaming?” Jeremy said abruptly.

  I shook my head. “Uh, no. Not a thing. Should I?”

  “Yeah, actually. It’s pretty cool.”

  “Lucid. Like clear? Vivid?”

  “More like aware. You know you’re dreaming.” He shrugged like it was no big deal, but his eyes were even more intense than usual, holding my gaze so tightly I wanted to squirm. “I’ve been working at it for the last year,” he said. “Really hard.”

  “Working at dreaming?” I laughed. “What, you sleep a lot? I hate to break it to you, but that doesn’t really qualify as hard work.”

  He didn’t even crack a grin. “The first time it happened was an accident. I was asleep and dreaming that I was walking down a hallway.” He broke off. “I know other people’s dreams are dead boring to listen to, but stay with me, okay?”

  I nodded. “All ears.”

  “So I was walking down a hallway and there were all these doors…”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And then I thought, hey, this is a dream. Like I woke up, only I was still there in the hallway. It was—I don’t know. I was going to say it was weird, but it actually felt really natural.”

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  “I thought, I can choose to open one of these doors. And I’ll see the beach behind it. So I opened a door, and sure enough, the beach.”

  “So you kind of influenced the dream?”

  He ignored my question and kept talking, the words coming out fast, as if they were under pressure. “And I thought, Lucas is here. And my heart was racing so fast. I ran along the sand…and I caught a glimpse of him. He was standing right there. I could see the ocean behind him. I could smell it.” He shook his head and blew out a long breath. “And then I woke up. But it was so real. Even days later, I remembered it so clearly. It didn’t fade like dreams usually do. So I started reading about dreams and realized it was what’s called a lucid dream.”

  “Because you knew you were dreaming?”

  “Right. So I wanted to make it happen again.”

  “You can do that?” I frowned. “How? I mean, if you have to be asleep for it to happen…”

  “That’s why it’s so hard.”

  “Right.” I wanted to laugh, but he looked so serious that I didn’t dare. “So how do you do it?”

  “You have to trick your own brain,” he said. “So you start when you’re awake. All the time, you ask yourself, Is this real? Am I dreaming? Like, it starts to rain and y
ou say, Is it really raining? Is this a dream?”

  “Weird,” I said.

  Jeremy leaned forward and his eyes burned into me, coal dark and shadowed. “You have to blur the boundaries,” he said. “Awake and asleep. Real and dreaming. You can move in and out of a dream without waking. You can decide what will happen in the dream. Influence how the dream goes as if you are writing a story.”

  “Would’ve been useful when I was about eight,” I said. “I used to have wicked nightmares.” I did too: stupid dreams about being chased by Elmo. A psycho Elmo with eyes like that Chucky doll. I’d wake up screaming and Vicky would come running in and ask what the nightmare was about. I never told her. I was too embarrassed.

  “I’ll send you some links,” he said. “You should try it.” He lay down on his back and closed his eyes. His cheeks looked as silky smooth as a child’s, not a trace of stubble, and his eyelids were traced with blue veins. His dark hair, usually brushed forward and half hiding his face, had fallen back, exposing his high forehead, and he looked oddly vulnerable. My heart was suddenly beating faster, and I had an awful urge to reach out and stroke his hair.

  I started rolling a cigarette instead.

  His eyes opened. “Melody. Why do you smoke?”

  “I dunno. I don’t much. Like, this pack will last me a week.” Three a day, max, but Vicky and Bill would be so upset if they knew. I felt guilty every time I thought about that.

  “When did you start?”

  I sighed. “Last year, start of high school. I was put in the early college prep program, you know?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Really. You don’t strike me as the type.”

  “What, not that smart?”

  “Don’t be stupid. Of course you’re smart. I meant not that much of an ass kisser.”

  I shrugged. “I wasn’t a straight-A student or anything.”

  “What’s this got to do with smoking?”

  “Promise you won’t laugh?

  ” He nodded. “Promise.”

  “So, Devika and Adriana, they didn’t get in. And all of a sudden, it was like the fact that we’d been hanging out for two years meant nothing at all. They were making all these cracks about me, saying I was a brownnoser, telling other people that I thought I was better than them…”

  “Okay.” He looked puzzled but didn’t say anything more.

  I sighed. “I guess I was just trying to show them I didn’t care, you know? Acting all tough and cool. Dressing differently. Smoking. I was trying for a certain image. Dumb, I know.”

  “Still?” He gestured at my jeans and T-shirt.

  “No. It lasted maybe a month. Black clothes, heavy eyeliner, vaguely goth.”

  He laughed. “Sorry. I just can’t see it.”

  “No, I know. You’re right. I couldn’t pull it off. I looked like, I don’t know, geek girl in goth drag.” I broke off, remembering. “That stupid party you heard about…”

  “Death Wish?”

  “Mmm. That was the end of it. Devika and Adriana were there and I was…I don’t know. It was lame. I’d had a few drinks, and I missed hanging out with them. And I took a couple of Tylenol because I had a headache, and then I just had this impulse…I took a couple more, and a couple more. Then I started crying and told Adriana. I guess I wanted her to feel sorry for me or something.”

  “Maybe she did the right thing, calling an ambulance.”

  I snorted.

  “Seriously. She had no way of knowing how much you’d actually taken. Maybe she was scared.”

  “She told everyone, Jeremy. I mean, when I came back to school, it was a nightmare.” I lit my cigarette. “Death Wish.”

  “Yeah, I know. I heard the stories.”

  “Is that why you started talking to me? Because of what you’d heard?”

  “Maybe.” His face was unreadable. “So, you’re still in the early college prep program?”

  I nodded.

  “And you still smoke.”

  “I like it.” I lay down beside him and stared up at the sun. “Watch this.” I blew a perfect smoke ring. “See that? It’s a lost art.”

  “A lost art that’ll give you cancer.”

  “I know, duh.” I made a face. “I’m going to stop.”

  “The first time I met you, you said you smoked because everyone on death row smoked.”

  “They do.” I rolled onto my side to face him. We were lying side by side, angled so our heads were only a foot apart. “It’s part of the culture.”

  “Have you been to the prison? I mean, how do you know that?”

  “Look online,” I said. “There’s this woman my mom knows—Pam. She’s a graphic designer or something, but she volunteers with Vicky’s group. She makes web pages for the inmates. They send her stuff—artwork, stuff they’ve written, pictures their grandkids send them—and she posts it for them.”

  “No way.”

  “Sure, why not?”

  He shrugged. “Just seems weird, that’s all, to think of them having grandkids.”

  “They’re just people, Jeremy. It seems weird because we don’t think of them as people. Because it’s easier to kill them if we believe they’re monsters. That’s why Vicky and Pam do the website thing. WaitingToDie.com. To show the public their human faces.”

  “Does anyone actually look at the site?” He sounded doubtful.

  “Not so much. People don’t want to know.” I propped my chin on my elbow. “You want to know what it’s like in there? You get three meals a day: five AM, eleven AM and four PM. You eat with a spork. You know that you are going to be killed, but you don’t know when. It could be years—”

  Jeremy interrupted me. “Mel. It’s not your fault they’re in there.”

  “I know.” I glared at him. “Obviously.”

  “You sound angry. What’s up?”

  I flopped onto my back. “I don’t know. I just think about it a lot. That’s all.” I ground my cigarette out on the grass beside me. “You know the last-meal thing?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What would you ask for?”

  “I don’t know. Um, steak, maybe. Or lobster. Crab legs. And a bottle of red wine. Really good chocolate. Or cheesecake, maybe.”

  “No can do. Forty bucks. That’s the spending limit.”

  “Okay, skip the lobster…” He trailed off. “For real?”

  “For real. And the ingredients all have to be available locally. And it gets cooked by the regular staff, so don’t expect miracles.” I scowled. “My uncle works at a prison.”

  “As a guard?”

  “No. Something administrative.”

  “Huh.”

  Neither of us said anything for a long moment, and I was suddenly acutely conscious of how close his face was to mine. We’d only known each other for a few weeks, but he’d become my best friend. And friends had never come easily to me. I didn’t want anything to mess it up. My heart was beating a little faster than it should be. I’m not attracted to him, I told myself sternly. We’re friends. That’s all.

  I sat up, crossed my legs, folded my arms across my chest. “I’m starving,” I said. “Got any food?”

  Planning to Die

  Vicky and Bill arrive at the hospital faster than I would have thought possible. They look like they just got out of bed—Vicky’s hair is flattened on one side, sticking up on the other, and she’s wearing a sweatshirt and flannel pants; Bill is bleary-eyed and bewildered-looking. “Melody,” Vicky says, and her arms are already around me.

  I start to sob again, pushing my head against her shoulder.

  “Oh, honey. Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.” She rubs my back. “Have you heard how he’s doing?”

  “He’s out of surgery,” Christine says. “He’s stable. He’ll be here for a while though, from the sound of it.”

  “His mom’s here,” I whisper. “I saw her.”

  “Oh, honey,” Vicky says again. “What happened? Were you there with him?”

  “I didn’t thin
k he’d really do it,” I say. “I didn’t think he’d jump.”

  “Melody tried to stop him,” Christine says. “The police officer said she was right there with him, trying to hold on to him when he jumped.”

  Vicky pulls back so she can look at me, but I can’t meet her eyes. I can’t.

  “Melody,” she says. “Oh, Melody.”

  And I wonder if she knows. I wonder how much of the truth she guesses.

  The plan began almost as a joke. Not a ha-ha kind of joke, more of a black-humor kind of thing. I’d had a crappy day—I can’t even remember why. Probably a B on a paper I’d actually worked hard on, or a Very disappointing comment from a teacher, or just more hallway stares and whispers than usual. Whatever the reason, I was feeling lousy by the time Jeremy and I met up under our tree.

  “Look at you,” he said. He was lying on his side on the grass, leaning on an elbow, chin propped on his hand. “Your dog just die?”

  “There is no Dog,” I said.

  “Ha-ha. Come on, what’s wrong?”

  “Life just sucks sometimes, that’s all.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.”

  And this part I remember as clear as if I’m watching it in high definition. Because Jeremy reached out his arms and pulled me in close, so that I was lying down beside him with my head resting on his chest. I could hear his heart beating and smell the fabric softener on his shirt. He stroked my short hair with one hand, his fingers cool on the back of my neck.

  “If things get too bad, we can always check out, right? Like Camus said, the when and how don’t matter.”

  I squeezed my eyes tightly shut. “Yeah. We’ll jump off the Skyway Bridge together.”

  “What’ll you have for your last meal?”

  I moved one of my hands so that my palm was open against the flatness of his chest. “Mmm. Macaroni and cheese. Onion rings. Root beer. Ice cream.”

  “You’re eating local, all right.”

  I laughed. “And you?”

  “That sounds good to me,” he said.

  I closed my eyes and just lay there, smiling, wondering what this meant. Where things were going between us. I wasn’t thinking about falling from a bridge.