Anything but Ordinary(53)

Bryce’s eyes opened. Carter was still standing in front of her. It was real.

She had woken up a ghost of who she had been five years ago, and she was just starting to materialize now. She was just starting to live. How could she be dying?

He brought his hands down. His face was red, streaked with tears. “I think you should come in. To the hospital.”

Immediately Bryce shook her head, backing away. She wouldn’t go back there.

“Maybe there’s something we can do. We can figure something out. We can study you. Bring in as many experts as it takes.”

“Study me? Like one of your classes? No.” If she was going to die, she wasn’t going to do it between those walls. She would do it on her own terms.

“Medical observation, Bryce.” He sounded aggravated, hurt.

“Get away from me,” she said, and her breath came back. The beating heart came back, reminding her she was alive.

Bryce turned from Carter and walked away, her hand on her chest. She felt the wild thumping of her heart, the warmth of her skin beneath her dress.

“Bryce!”

He started to follow her, but she whirled around and shouted, “I need to be alone!”

His arm fell, his face fell.

Bryce turned to the stretching sidewalk and strode as quickly as her legs would allow. Soon, she no longer felt him behind her.

Good. She walked quicker. If all he was to her was a doctor, she didn’t need him anymore. He couldn’t save her. She thought about turning around, yelling that to his back, but what would be the point? She thought about yelling after him, telling him to come back. But he was gone.

Die, die, die. The word took a different meaning now. I am going to die. Die was a place just as much as a verb. A place she was going to, no matter which direction she went.

A wave of heat shot through her, pain coursing from her skull down her neck, her back, her spinal cord. The city turned on itself, the sidewalks rising before her.

Tall green grasses.

She was in her backyard. Her limbs came flopping out from under her, skinny and tanned. She was seven. Sydney came running up, her dark curls flying. “Got ya!” she shrieked, her fingers cocked in a gun. “Bang! Bang!” Instinctively Bryce’s hand went to her bony chest, and she fainted to the ground.

She hit the ground, rolling around in the tall, sweet grass, letting the blades tickle her face.

“I’m dead,” she said, and with a blink Bryce was back on the streets of downtown Nashville, her hand still on her chest. She lowered it, and her fingers touched cement. She was on her hands and knees again. Her head rebounded in pain with every heartbeat. She tried to take deep breaths, to calm herself, taking in the grainy sidewalk. A red spot landed on the rough gray. Another. She lifted her hand to her face. Blood was dripping from her nose.

Just need to walk it off. She stood up and wiped her nostrils with a Kleenex from her purse.

She looked up. The restaurant rose in front of her. She stuffed the tissue in her purse and opened the sleek glass doors to a warm room full of chattering people. They looked at her with smiles. A few said hello and waved at her to sit down next to them. She knew everybody, and everybody knew her.

But as Bryce stood there, shivering, she had never felt more alone.





ou’ve got to try this risotto, Bryce,” someone was saying. Bryce was vaguely aware of a fork floating in front of her. She took it and set it on her plate.

“You’ve got to try it!” the voice said again. A perfumed head tilted in front of her. Zen.

Candlelight sparkled off of her loose curls. “Lost in space?” she said.

“Yeah,” Bryce replied.

She popped the ricelike pasta in Bryce’s mouth, an explosion of taste. It was delicious. Overwhelming.

The restaurant was painted in a warm red-orange color, filled with candles and mirrors and dark wood. In the light, everyone—Zen, Mary, the brunettes, Greg’s parents, Gabby’s mother—looked like they were blushing. All the tables in the tiny restaurant, except for the booths by the wall, were combined in a long line where the wedding party sat.

Greg’s parents, Jim and Lisa, were to the right of Gabby, next to their sons. Greg sat there, folding and refolding his cloth napkin into different shapes, seemingly oblivious to everyone around him.

Next to Greg was the broad-shouldered line of his fraternity brothers, including the tousle-haired Tom. He had given her a small wave when she walked in.

On the left side was Gabby’s mother, then her grandparents, speaking mostly Spanish, and the bridesmaids. Gabby was radiant at the head of the table.

This morning at the rehearsal she wore her pearl-colored heels with a pair of jeans and a loose linen tank, hands shaking as she held a practice bouquet of prairie flowers that Mary picked from the church landscaping. Greg stood across from her, hair still bed-messed, and they muttered back and forth, quick, repeating, stumbling over the words like they were back in elementary school giving a book report.

Tomorrow the bridesmaids would meet early at the stone-carved church, to help Gabby get ready. The ceremony would start at 4 p.m., and after it was over, the hundred guests would go in caravan back to one of the lavish conference rooms at the Opryland Hotel. They had invited mostly family and friends from Nashville. Only a few other Stanford people were flying or driving in. The reception lasted from “6 p.m. till ?” the invitation had said, like it could go on forever if they wanted it to.