How to Be Brave(17)

Be still, my fluttering heart.

He’s staring at me, waiting for me to respond.

Right. Words. Speak, Georgia.

“Looking at it now, it’s kind of sick, actually, that she read ‘The Raven’ to a little kid, right? I mean, he’s freaking being haunted by a bird of death. Way to give a kid nightmares.”

Daniel laughs. “Are you headed to the bus stop?”

I nod.

“I’ll walk with you.”

Siiigh.

“Cool!” I say with maybe a little too much enthusiasm.

We close our lockers and head toward the door. We walk past Liss, who’s dressed like Rosie the Riveter. She flexes her biceps and mouths to me, “You can do it!” And then, “Number thirteen!”

Crazy girl. I look at Daniel to see if he saw her.

He didn’t. Phew.

We step into the breezy afternoon, passing hordes of people dressed as skeletons and ghouls, farmers and angels, and the ever-predictable guys dressed as cheerleaders and girls dressed as football players. Once we near the edge of the school, I take off my raven hat and tuck it under my arm. We walk toward Lincoln Avenue, past shops and restaurants. It’s a perfect autumn day; the sky is bright and the air is cool. The Second Official Locker Date has just evolved into what I will call Our First Semiromantic Stroll. Except that neither of us has said anything in more than a block.

“Weather’s changing,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s a little chilly.”

“But nice,” I respond.

Come on, Georgia. You can do better than that.

“Um. No costume for you today?”

He stops right in front of a Starbucks doorway and throws his backpack on the ground. A mom walking out with a stroller and a stressed-out business-looking man have to push past us to walk around. They both grumble, but Daniel stays right where he is. He unzips his jacket and gives me a frown.

He’s wearing an orange shirt, kind of like mine, except his says “3.14159265358979323…” with more numbers winding around the front of his chest and under his armpit. Then he pulls his jacket down and spins around. The numbers continue around his back and fade into tiny, tiny font. I offer a silent swoon for this close-up glance at those ridiculously chiseled shoulders.

“Pumpkin pi,” I say. “Nice.”

“You got it!” He pivots around, a wide smile on his face. “You’re one of, like, three people to get it!”

Yes! Go, me!

“Well, you’re the only one who got mine,” I say, pointing to my bird.

“Really?”

“Well, you and Ms. Langer.”

“Yeah, she got mine, too.”

He zips up his jacket and throws his bag over his shoulder. “Does no one pay attention in class?”

We keep walking, past the overpriced hipster shops and right past my bus stop, but I don’t say anything. I’ll walk all the way to the Wisconsin border if it means I get to talk to Daniel Antell. “Maybe next time, you should bring actual pie for everyone.”

“Yeah, for everyone in the dorm or whatever.”

“Oh, right.” Only eight more months until we all graduate, and then two more after that, we all disperse across the nation. It all seems so far away and yet so close. “What are your plans for next year?”

“Not sure yet. Somewhere that’s not here. I applied to about eight different schools.”

“Do you know what you want to study?”

“Yes. Bioengineering so that I can work with three-D medical technology.”

“Wow. That’s specific.”

“Yeah, eventually I want to work as a researcher in the development of human organ printing. My dad has polycystic kidney disease.”

“What’s that?”

“He has cysts that grow on his kidneys,” Daniel says. “He needs a transplant, but it’s unlikely that he’ll get one.”

Oh. Wow. Like, really. Wow.

I take a deep breath. “My mom had kidney failure.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize that,” he says. “I mean, I’d heard that she died. I’m really sorry, by the way.”

“Thanks.” I can feel him looking at me, but I just can’t look back. I might start crying, and that would definitely put a damper on this Second Unofficial Date. Instead, I focus on not stepping on the lines in the sidewalk, just like I did when I was a kid.

“I didn’t know it was a kidney thing, though.”

“Well, that was part of it. She had been diabetic and had all kinds of heart trouble, which messed with her kidneys. It’s what led to the end. She actually got an infection in her catheter site that spread through the rest of her body and finally to her brain.”

I haven’t talked about this with anyone. I mean, I would e-mail Liss in spurts when it was happening, but I haven’t actually articulated the history of how my mom died to anyone else. It’s like it just happened yesterday, and yet it’s an entirely foreign dimension of existence, me being her daughter, her being alive.

Daniel’s looking ahead now, and I’m still avoiding the sidewalk cracks, and we’re both walking silently in a strange kind of rhythm, and I think that I’ve said too much. I’m a downer. I’ve committed the mortal sin of TMI. I bet he wants to split.