When I get home, I fry up an egg, and then wedge it between some bread and eat it while I watch television. Mom and Dad get home when I’m flipping through the channels trying to decide if I want to watch the gritty crime drama about detectives who track down missing people, or the other gritty crime drama about detectives who track down missing people.
Mom turns off the television. “You want to tel me about what happened today?”
“Tess moved. Her eyes were closed, but I saw them moving, like she might blink. Or was going to blink.”
“Abby …” Mom says, and sits down on the sofa. “You can’t …” She looks down at her hands. My mother’s nails are always neatly polished. This week they are a pale pink. “You don’t know how much your father and I want Tess to wake up, and saying things like that only—”
“Hurts,” Dad finishes, coming in and sitting down next to Mom.
“But I did see her eyes move.” This is a good thing, and I don’t see why my parents don’t believe me and why they are sitting on the sofa looking miserable.
“Remember the first week?” Dad says. “You and me and Mom were there, and you swore she moved her hand when Beth was talking to her?”
“Her little finger,” I say. “And it happened.”
“Beth didn’t see it. And Beth is her roommate and friend, honey.”
“She was looking at Tess.”
“Exactly.”
“No, I mean she was looking at her face.”
Dad rubs a hand over his forehead and then leans back into the sofa, closing his eyes. “Abby, we don’t want you to think that your sister—” He breaks off, clearing his throat. “Don’t be angry at Tess.”
“I’m not,” I say, but he gives me this look, this I-see-through-you look, and I go upstairs and slam my bedroom door.
I know what I saw today. Tess heard something in that guy’s voice, something that grabbed her, and now I know exactly what I need to do.
I can’t reach her, but maybe someone else can.
I get up, open my door as quietly as possible, and slip down the hal into Tess’s room. It hasn’t been touched since the accident, and her bags from school are stil on the floor, and photos of her and her col ege friends are sprinkled al over her desk.
I slide my hands over them, see Tess smiling in the sunshine. She has my dad’s bright smile, al warmth, and I wonder about the guy she was smiling at. Did she like him? Or did she like the guy with the black shirt who shows up in the next photo, eyes on Tess and ful of longing as she reads something he’s holding in one hand?
Or what about the guy two photos later, the one who is grinning at her as she examines a tattoo on his arm, watching her fingers on his skin? Or is it the guy holding the camera in al the photos?
Whoever he is, he hasn’t come to see her—none of them has—and Beth, as nice as she is, is just her roommate and can’t and won’t make up for that.
But that guy today could. I can almost see her sitting up and smiling at him now.
I wonder if she can see it too, and think that maybe, just maybe, she can.
after school the next day. She’s standing in the tiny alcove the hospital has set aside for smokers, hidden off to the far side of the building. Milford is a no-smoking town, and self-righteously proud of it, but Ferrisvil e isn’t, and since Milford people can afford to go to better hospitals—and do—this is where people from Ferrisvil e come. And a lot of them, like Claire, smoke.
I fan the air around me and her, and she makes a face at me.
“I thought you were quitting,” I say.
“I’m working on it.”
“How?” I squint, pretending I can’t see her through the haze of smoke.
She sighs and stubs out the cigarette. “Fine, Mother. Hey, what did you think of that guy yesterday?”
“He can make people walk into doors.”
She laughs. “That was the best, wasn’t it? You should see Eli when he’s working in the gift shop, though. People stop and just stare at him like this …” She makes a zombie face.
“You one of them?”
“No, I’m off guys forever after everything with Rick,” she says. “Trying to get him to pay child support— ugh.”
“Guys suck,” I say, and she shakes her head at me and says, “Yeah. You’re lucky you don’t have to deal with al that crap. Tess always …” She trails off, like she’s said something she shouldn’t.
Like she’s said something I don’t know.
Like I don’t know that Tess is easy for anyone and everyone to love and I’m—I’m not.
“Hey, I’m glad I don’t have to deal with al the stuff Tess did. Al those guys cal ing and tel ing her that they loved her, or sending her stuff, or wanting to take her out, and me? Wel , I don’t have that problem at al .”
Claire bites her lip. “You know what I meant, Abby. You’re very—you have—”
“I have a sister I have to go see,” I say, stopping her before she has to try and finish her sentence. “And the sooner she wakes up, the sooner she can go back to breaking hearts. See you later.”
