Dear Edward(15)

“When you’re feeling better, maybe we can go swimming there,” John says.

The new place inside Edward, the one that revealed itself after the crash, starts clicking. He remembers overhearing his mother tell his dad that Lacey had had another miscarriage. He hadn’t known what the word meant and had looked it up in the dictionary.

“We can fix the room up more,” John says. “We will, definitely. You decide what color you want the walls, and I’ll paint them. Do you have a favorite color?”

“No, thank you,” Edward says.

He turns and maneuvers slowly out of the room, then down the stairs. That night he sleeps—or, more truthfully, doesn’t sleep—on the couch in the living room. He hates being out of the hospital. He hadn’t anticipated this feeling, but then, he finds it impossible to anticipate any feeling now. It turns out that the hospital, with its beeping machines and routine and constant parade of medical staff, had been holding him together. His body now hurts in a new way; the dullness has been extinguished. He can sense the metal rod that replaced part of his shinbone, and his skin feels weird and rough to the touch. The hair on his head—which doesn’t even have nerve endings—somehow aches. At 2:00 A.M., on his second night in West Milford, he sits upright on the couch with his hands on his thighs. The pain shimmers beyond the boundaries of his body. It seems impossible that he can survive this.

The next morning, there’s a knock at the front door. John has already left for work, and Lacey hasn’t yet come downstairs. Edward blinks his eyes—two hot, dry stones—and hauls himself up on his crutches to answer. A woman and a girl about his age are on the front steps. The woman is dark-haired, with light-brown skin. She’s holding a red thermos. The girl is half hidden, peering out from behind her mother. Edward can only see one eye behind a pair of glasses, staring at him. His brain clicks, rattles almost, then stops. For a second, Edward feels okay. Clear, normal, unbroken. The sensation, gone almost immediately, is jarring.

“Hello,” he says, to the girl.

“I’m Besa,” the woman says. “And this is Shay. We live next door, so you’ll see a lot of us. I brought this coffee for your aunt, but it looks like you need it more.”

She holds the thermos out, and Edward hugs the warm cylinder to his chest. The smell reminds him of a café near his family’s apartment that pumped coffee-scented air onto the sidewalk in order to lure people inside.

“I’m—” He hesitates. This is the first time he’s had to introduce himself. Eddie is gone. He’s glad his aunt made the decision she did in the hospital. “I’m Edward.”

Besa gives a warm smile, which triggers a memory of Edward’s mother smiling, and then triggers a wave of fear. He has the sudden desire to lie down at this woman’s feet. Is every mom he encounters going to remind him of his own? If this is the case, he’s doomed.

Besa says, “We know who you are, ni?ito.”

Shay steps out from behind her mother, a small frown on her lips. “I’m two months older than him, and you said I had to wait until I was eighteen to have coffee.”

Besa puts up her hand. “Cállate, mi amor.”

Lacey appears then and leads them into the kitchen. Edward lowers himself into a seat at the table and pours an inch of coffee into the thermos lid.

“Do you like it?” Shay asks.

The coffee tastes like he imagines fresh pavement does, burning and sticky, but he nods and tries to pull himself straighter in his chair. Shay is an inch taller than him, with shoulder-length brown hair and a dimple in her left cheek.

“Have you gone outside yet?” Besa asks. “Into town?”

“He needs rest,” Lacey says. “He’s not ready.”

“Good,” Besa says. “Because this place has gone completamente loco. West Milford is small, Edward, and everyone knows everyone, and nothing as exciting as you showing up has happened in decades, if ever. Did your aunt tell you the town painted this house while you were in the hospital?”

Edward tries to make sense of this. “How does a town paint a house?”

Lacey says, “The town council did. They wanted to be helpful.” She pushes her chair back and walks to the counter. “They felt bad and wanted to help but didn’t know what to do. It’s so silly, because John painted the house last summer. It didn’t need it at all.”

“Everyone at camp is talking about how you’re here,” Shay says. “I’m practically a celebrity because I live next door to you.”

Camp, Edward thinks. The word sounds familiar, but it takes his brain a moment to figure it out. Summertime. Children. Arts and crafts. He and Jordan did a science camp every summer, at the Museum of Natural History.

“Do we all want pancakes?” Lacey says, in a bright, let’s-change-the-subject voice.

He’s staring into the coffee when he hears the girl say, “I met your brother once.”

He thinks he’s misheard her. When the sentence replays inside his head, he sags slightly in his chair.

But Besa seems to have heard the same thing. She says, “What are you talking about? You never met his brother.”

“I met him here,” the girl says. “Well, on the lawn. I think I was six. I knew your family was visiting that day, and I was pretending to cut my lawn with my toy lawnmower. Jordan came outside by himself.”