Flutter Read online

  It is then that I stand up, and out of the corner of my eye, I see a movement in the stream, at the farthest point of my eye line. A slinking blackness on the surface of the water. A shape, a motion that seems a bit unnatural. Shadows, but not really. Instantly—oddly—I think of an old black-and-white movie being projected onto the surface of the stream.

  I don’t like the way the water moves on my skin now. I have goose bumps, and I don’t like how the sun has gone behind a cloud. I don’t like the stillness on Next Hill or the look on my boy’s face either.

  I feel a bit on edge. I think briefly of Dad in the other loop and the heron.

  I look again at the surface of the stream. All I see is the clear, pale blue. I think of the hospital room wall then.

  I steal one more glance at the boy’s face. He looks serious, almost grim. The colors come in my peripheral vision now—I see them like a prism, feel them there, and I know I’m going.

  “Can you help me?” he pleads.

  “What?” I say, feeling the familiar thrum begin behind my eyes.

  “Please, help me,” he says.

  “I’ll be back,” I say.

  “Esperanza,” he says. And now he smiles.

  And I am gone.

  Two

  The intercom clicked on, and then I heard the nurse’s voice. “Did you need something, hon?”

  “No, I just accidentally hit the button,” I answered, rolling my eyes at myself.

  The intercom clicked again. “Emery, you didn’t eat any of your breakfast.”

  “Loretta, it smelled like pickled eyeballs.”

  “Do you need some chocolate?” Loretta’s voice asked.

  “No thanks,” I answered. But then I thought better of it, pushed the button again. “Something with peanut butter.” Loretta laughed her crazy, loud laugh, and I heard it in stereo, over the speaker and through the open door of my hospital room.

  “I’ll bring you a snack in a while.” Loretta didn’t know what was wrong with me, but she was pretty sure it could be cured with chocolate.

  I flicked the power button on the side of my laptop and sat myself up more comfortably in the bed. I opened up my pink notebook and recorded the date, the time of my last two loops. I described them clinically, scientifically, avoiding emotion and sentiment. But it was difficult to be that way, now that my loops were becoming something more. They were usually calm—mundane, really. Just my boy and me fishing in the stream behind his barn, snacking on blackberries, not talking much. Or a very old and very bald Dad teaching me how to drive a stick shift on some nameless country road, snorting with laughter while I ground the gears and swore under my breath. And sometimes it was just me. Me sitting cross-legged in the sand, staring out at the surreal turquoise water, running my fingers through the clean white sand. Me eating ice cream in my backyard. Me alone with a feeling of completeness. A feeling of calm. These were normal loops.

  Requests for help, warnings from Dad, these were new developments. And even though there was no official scientific term for freaked out, that didn’t mean I wasn’t feeling it.

  I stared at the last sentence in my notebook. Esperanza. I wasn’t sure, but I thought that in Spanish it meant “hope.” I grabbed my laptop, searched for the meaning. There it was. I was right. Esperanza = “hope.” I wrote that down in my notebook, circling and underlining the words. What did my boy want me to glean from this?

  I sighed. I wasn’t too familiar with hope lately. The Spanish or English version.

  What did my boy mean by it? Did he hope that I could help him? Why the Spanish version? I remembered the fleeting panic in his eyes when he asked if I could help him.

  Then I wrote down one more word: scared.

  I closed the notebook and my computer, and shoved them onto my bedside table, my vision finally beginning to clear from the loop, the headache shrinking. I looked around my room.

  Long-term patients—lifers, as some called themselves— liked to bring things from home, make their rooms more comfortable, more personal. Heather down the hall had recently gotten permission from the board to paint a mural on her wall.

  I stared at the blank, pale blue of my walls. There were no knickknacks. No pictures. No signs of life.

  This would not be my life. Could not be my life.

  I had planned to leave this place many times. I made the decision constantly, on again and off again in my mind, but had never actually left. I thought that … that they would eventually believe me. They didn’t. They wouldn’t even listen.

  I would give Dad and the team one more chance, and if it didn’t work, if they didn’t do a one-eighty and believe me wholeheartedly, well, then I was going to leave.

  I pushed away my hospital blankets and climbed out of the bed, nearing the window to get a good look at the Ann Arbor sky. It was blue and sunny—clear and bright, the trees bare and vulnerable, bracing for the upcoming winter.

  It had been a long time since I had felt free and young and not so exhausted. I thought about the possibility of hiking down by Brock Point or riding my bike out by the lake. I thought of last fall, how Gia and I had gone to a Halloween party near the lake with a handful of kids from school. We had carved pumpkins and toasted the seeds over an open fire. Gia’s pumpkin had definitely looked a lot like Johnny Hatfield, her old next-door neighbor. It was the gap in the teeth.

  I laughed at the memory.

  That seemed like a lifetime ago. The loops were taking so much out of me now. Only months ago I had spent my days at Loganbridge Academy, at the ballet studio, being normal—or quasi-normal—with only my nights captive to the loops. But now I was too worn, too wiped out to even leave the hospital some days. Things were obviously getting worse, and getting worse quickly.

  I had had such high hopes for figuring this all out when Dad had proposed the “team” to me, the study. I had been so happy to have someone, anyone, listen to me and even half believe me that I had jumped at the chance.

  Nights at the hospital? No problem. How naive I had been.

  As I pondered my looming final face-off with Dad and my team of doctors, I started to wonder which I wanted more: for them to finally believe me or for me to just pack my bags.

  Maybe I could start midsemester at school.

  No, that was crazy. I was in no physical shape for anything, really. I knew that.

  Maybe Nan and I could finally go visit Monet’s bridge, go to Giverny, paint it ourselves, like we had talked about for so long.

  I decided to get some breakfast after all. Maybe eggs, I thought as my brush got tangled in my curls. I caught a look at myself in the mirror. I looked the same—same blue eyes and red hair, same fair skin, same long, slightly off-center nose, just like Mom’s. Nan always called it elegant.

  But I looked different somehow. Beaten.

  I slipped on my robe, and once I was convinced I was at least hospital-type presentable, I walked out into the hallway and pressed the elevator button.

  A few of the newer nurses stared a bit. I was used to it. I knew I was the freak on the grounds. I waved over to Loretta at the nurses’ station.

  I rode the elevator down to the cafeteria, aware that I had my arms crossed over my chest the whole way. Everything was so squeaky-clean, so shiny. So very clinical. Even the elevator buttons looked free of smudges and smears and signs of life. I didn’t want to touch a thing, as if becoming familiar with my surroundings would somehow mean I was accepting my fate here.

  “Emery!” I heard the familiar squeal as soon as I stepped off the elevator.

  “Gia!” I leaned in a bit and tried as always not to seem awkward when Gia gave me her requisite hug. Gia is a hugger, unlike the Land family. But she is my best friend—my only friend, really.

  “I didn’t know you were coming! Does Dad know you’re here? How’s school? How’s Xander’s class—”

  “Emery!” She gave me another hug and pushed me out at arm’s length. “You look like hell.”

  “Thanks,” I mum
bled. “You look great too.”

  She moved us toward the cafeteria line and hooked her arm through mine. I was instantly lighter in her presence.

  “Gia,” I told her, “I’m so glad you showed up. I needed a visit.”

  “That’s what your dad said,” she replied, popping an apple slice in her mouth from the salad bar. She was wearing her dark hair flatironed, stick straight. And she had the same old sequined cat’s-eye glasses. She wore dark, skinny jeans and lots of silver bracelets.

  I pulled my robe tighter as we grabbed our breakfasts. I’m dressing like one of them, I thought, wincing.

  “My dad called you?” I asked. This was new … curious.

  “Texted me, actually,” Gia said, lifting her eyebrows. “Can you believe it? Dr. Land and the twenty-first century.”

  “Next he’ll be getting hair plugs and a spray tan,” I joked. We laughed and made our way over to a table near the kitchen door, and I sat down, trying to smooth my flyaway hair into some kind of shape, knowing it was useless.

  “So, give me the details. What’s new at school?”

  “Emery, I think I’m in love.”

  “Not again,” I answered, not even looking up from putting ketchup on my eggs.

  “He’s gorgeous and emo but not too emo, no guyliner or anything. Turtlenecks but no wallet chains. You know what I mean.”

  I nodded, smiling, glad to have the distraction. “Just no guys with hair dye, okay? All goth and moody, writing bad poetry.”

  Gia was already on to the next topic. “Mr. Phelps, the health teacher? Well, he’s been canned because of the whole blogging thing. I’m sure you heard about that?”

  I shook my head and buttered my toast, listening to Gia recount all the news. It was so good to have something close to normal to talk about. But I also felt that familiar snaky coil of envy in my stomach.

  I wanted Gia to have all this fun. I wanted this for her, but I wanted it too.

  “What’s up with Julliard?” I asked her.

  “I got the audition, Emery!” Her eyes danced, and I reached across the table.

  “You do? When? I knew you would. I’m so happy for you!”

  “January. The week after Christmas break.”

  “You rock, Gia! That is awesome, really.” I could feel my eyes tearing up. I couldn’t help it.

  “Emery?”

  “I’m sorry, Gia. I’m sorry. I’m happy for you. I am. It’s just …”

  “I know. How are you? We need to talk about it.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Emery, you don’t look good.”

  “I know.”

  “And I know everything is top secret, double-oh-seven and all, but I’m here and your dad called me, and I can see that—”

  “They don’t believe me.”

  “The team? I know.”

  “I’ve been thinking of quitting it all. Leaving,” I told her, not looking up from tearing the crust off my toast.

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  “It feels different this time.”

  “How?” Gia grabbed my hand over the table and squeezed it until I looked at her.

  “I’ll be eighteen soon. I can go be somewhere else.…” And at the last instant, I added, “Or some time else.”

  “You can’t control it,” she whispered.

  “Not yet.”

  “But you think you might?”

  “It feels more physical lately.”

  “Yeah, it looks more physical, Emery. You look—”

  “Gia, I know it’s killing me.”

  “Emery, please! Ha!” Her attempt at a laugh sounded more like an accusation. She looked at my eyes for an instant but then looked away.

  We sat in silence for a long moment.

  “Emery, I wish—” Gia started.

  “I don’t think I want to die in a hospital bed having lived only for my scientific observers, data recorders, and data interpreters. Maybe I don’t have too much time left. Maybe I just want to go … to be … normal. I mean, what did I used to do before Dad stuck me here? Before the meaning behind the loops became my whole reason for existence?”

  “You worried about pimples and boys and did homework, Emery. It’s not that great.”

  “But it’s normal.”

  “You don’t want normal.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t want to be a lab rat anymore.”

  “What do you want?”

  I looked at Gia, attempted to lift my mouth in a smile. “To live. Really live.”

  “Emery, you—”

  “I want choices.”

  Gia nodded.

  “How did I get here?” I said, gesturing to my bathrobe and the bright white, too-clean hospital surfaces around us.

  “That first crazy EEG when you were, what, twelve?” Gia said.

  “That started it, I guess.”

  “I remember,” Gia said, and began humming while she took a bite of her breakfast burrito.

  And then I nearly choked on my eggs. There on the inside of her left wrist, Gia had a tattoo. Just a plain blue-and-black cluster of different-sized stars. Six or eight of them, a few dark blue, the rest a black outline with sky blue in the middle.

  A tattoo.

  How many times had we talked about doing that together? How many designs had we drawn out together?

  I put my fork down for a moment and rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands, not wanting Gia to see that I had noticed.

  I didn’t know if I even wanted a damn tattoo anymore. They were kind of stupid, really. But who had Gia gone with? When did she go? Where? That place on Margaret Drive? Did it hurt?

  I cleared my throat and went back to eating, tried not to make eye contact until I could calm down, not wanting to have to endure a conversation about this mini-betrayal that I felt inside. I knew to Gia it would be no big deal.

  She lived in the regular world.

  I tried to ignore the way my nose stung with tears that wanted so badly to break through. I rubbed the heels of my hands in my eyes again and focused on my plate of eggs.

  Gia was still humming. That song from an earlier loop. The one that I had come to think of as my song.

  Gia stopped humming and said, “I actually put that song down on some sheet music so I could play it for you on my guitar.”

  “Yeah?” I whispered, not trusting my voice, glancing up but trying not to look at her tattoo.

  “Does it have any words?” she asked.

  “All I can remember is the last line. You know, ‘You’re my home. You’re my ho-ome.’ ”

  Gia grabbed my hand again. “They’re going to fix you, Emery. The doctors will find the answers, I think—”

  “I’ve got my answers, Gia. I know what’s going on. I just can’t control it, or keep it from killing me—or making me a vegetable. But I know what it is. These past few years may not have proved it to anyone else, but I know what my loops are.”

  “What do you think needs to happen for them to believe you?”

  “Maybe if I can demonstrate the wormhole,” I said solemnly. “Or bring back a DeLorean.”

  “Or Marty McFly,” Gia said, giggling.

  For some reason, my mind flashed back to Ryan McClannis. I thought about his nervous gaze when he had asked me to the frosh-soph homecoming dance, how I had had to say no because it was being held on a yacht on Lake Michigan, with all the kids getting to stay overnight with chaperones on the boat. But I couldn’t, of course. Because nights were off-limits. Nights meant sleep, which meant possible loops, which meant doctors, hospitals, and the little liquidy gel-probes stuck to my forehead.

  I remembered that I had tugged at the cuffs of my long sleeves while I was talking to Ryan, rejecting him, trying so hard not to hurt his feelings because he was so nice and his left eye had this little nervous twitch, and I just couldn’t bear for him to think it was because of him. Tugging at my sleeves had been my habit, to cover the IV marks on my arms.

  I w
as fifteen then.

  Gia took the last bite of her breakfast burrito, gave me a smile. Thank God for Gia. She believed because she couldn’t not believe and still look me in the eye, she said.

  It was so human and real in the land of the statistic, in the land of the report, the medical journal, the unyielding, all-powerful beep, beep, beep of the monitors and their untruth.

  Gia checked her cell phone. I tried to hide my disappointment that she would be leaving so soon. But what did I expect? She had a life.

  “It’s eight-forty,” she said, taking one last swig of her orange juice. “I gotta motor.”

  I looked at the clock on the cafeteria wall, behind Gia’s head. “I think your cell is messed up. It’s nine-ten.”

  Gia craned her neck around. “Heavens to Betsy! I’m late.”

  She got up with her tray, but I stayed at the table, kind of in shock.

  Gia came back and gave me a quick hug. “Why did you say that?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Heavens to Betsy.” I was used to my boy saying things like that—“Heavens to Betsy” or “For the love of Pete.” He had all kinds of old-fashioned sayings. But Gia? I was used to “OMG.” “It’s weird that you would say that.”

  “You’re pale.”

  “I’m always pale. Why did you say that, though? You don’t usually say that.”

  “I don’t know.”

  I got up and emptied my tray, shaking my head. I walked with Gia to the door. “That’s weird,” I said.

  “Okay, but not that weird. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Gia squeezed my hand then and looked at her cell phone again. “I’ll call later.”

  “Okay,” I answered.

  I stood there, in the sky-blue hallway, tying and untying my bathrobe, thinking of my boy, remembering his plea for help. And all of a sudden I didn’t care about the damn tattoo, or school, or being normal. I knew that something important was going on. My boy. I wished more than ever that I could control this damn looping, so I could go there right now and figure out what he needed from me.

  It scared me to think he was in some kind of danger.

  Three