The Rising(14)

“Good thing you have me then,” Samantha said, taking off her glasses.

Alex looked at her closer. Since they’d gone to separate elementary and middle schools, he’d only known Sam since their freshman year at St. Ignatius but never really spoke much to her until she was assigned as his tutor. Now she looked different to him, as if he were seeing her for the first time. Just as his parents had looked smaller in the hospital lighting the night before, Sam looked … Well … Better. She looked better. Prettier.

Samantha started to put her glasses back on.

“Leave them off,” Alex told her.

“Then I won’t be able to see.”

“Maybe that’s my plan.”

She left them off. “What’d the CT scan show?”

“I told you.”

“I mean really.”

“Doctor won’t tell me. He says he wants to wait for my parents to get here.”

“Oh,” Sam said, looking down.

“Maybe it’s just routine, the way they do things in this place.”

“Maybe.”

“But you don’t think so.”

Sam started flipping through the textbook. “I think we should try to get some work done.”

“Where’s your iPad?”

“Stolen.”

“Get out.”

“At the game last night. See what happens when I come to watch you play?”

“Guess I owe you a new one.”

She hadn’t told her parents yet. No reason to worry them about it since there was no money with which to buy a new one right now anyway. The thing was practically new, six months old at most. Maybe they’d taken out some kind of warranty on it or something. But what warranty included theft? And how much medical weed did they need to grow to buy a replacement?

A lot, Sam figured.

“What kind of kid steals an iPad?” Alex was saying. “Everyone’s got a tablet of their own.”

“It wasn’t a kid,” Sam told him. “And stop stalling.”

“Stalling?”

“So you won’t have to work. The doctor gives you a clean bill of health, only you get benched for being academically ineligible.”

“Yeah, that would suck, but I can’t help it if I’m stupid.”

“You’re not stupid.”

Alex looked down, then up again. “My parents think I am.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? Then why do they want me to do another year of high school?”

“Do they?”

He turned toward the window, as if seeing something beyond it Sam couldn’t. “I haven’t really discussed it with them.”

“Then how do you know?”

“I found brochures for a whole bunch of schools. My mother told me I’m not ready for college yet, at least not the kind she wants me to go to.”

Sam hesitated. “I thought you said you didn’t talk about it.”

“It was last night in the emergency room. I shouldn’t have brought it up, but I did.” Alex’s eyes turned almost shy. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

“No.”

“The truth, Sam.”

“No. N-O.”

“If I’m not stupid, why do you need to spell it?”

“Stop it, Alex.”

“What?”

“That.”

“What?”

Sam picked up the physics textbook and smacked Alex in the arm with it.

“Ouch.” He grimaced.

“That didn’t hurt.”

“How do you know? It’s not your arm.”

“Because it’s solid muscle. I think you broke the book,” she said, laying it back down on the bed.

“As opposed to opening it, you mean.” Alex winked. “And that’s physically impossible.

“Very funny.”

“I thought so. So you were at the game last night,” he said, his tone changing a bit.

“Cara scored me a front-row seat,” Sam told him, leaving it there.

“That ended up costing you—what?—five hundred bucks?” Alex asked, with a gleam in his eyes.

“Something like that.”

“I’ll buy you a new one with my signing bonus once I get drafted. Of course, that’s a few years off.” Alex propped himself up in bed, frowning. “Can I ask you a question?”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

“Not about school stuff. You ever do something and not remember doing it?”

“All the time. Like putting the milk back in the fridge and then rushing back downstairs thinking I left it on the counter.”

“I’m talking about more than that. Say, drawing. Like in a sketchbook. Pictures of things you’ve never seen before.”

Sam smiled, but stopped just short of chuckling. “That’s called imagination.”

“What if you don’t remember drawing them?”

“You draw?”

“I didn’t say that. Never mind,” Alex said, clearly flustered.

Then a stabbing pain bit into the center of his skull and left him wincing. He thought he might be slipping into one of his daydreams where he’d wake up with ink staining his fingers, but his head just kept throbbing.