When My Heart Joins the Thousand(46)

No!

The signals from my brain finally reach my arm. I freeze, my fist an inch from his face. He stands, hunched, breathing hard. Slowly his eyes open. There’s a flat, glassy sheen on them; the word dissociation floats through my mind. “Alvie?” he whispers.

I back away and slump against the nearby wall of the reptile house. The world blurs and tilts. When it comes back into focus, Stanley’s expression is dazed, but that weird glassy look is gone. I swallow. “Stanley . . . are you . . .”

“I’m fine.”

I hug myself, fingers digging into my biceps, and bow my head. “I’m sorry.”

He hesitates. I can feel his gaze on me. “What happened?”

I take a deep breath. “Meltdown,” I mutter.

As a child, whenever I lost control of myself at school—whenever I kicked over desks or hit bullies or hid in the janitor’s closet—that’s what teachers and doctors always called it. A meltdown. Like I wasn’t just an angry and frightened girl but a nuclear power plant spewing radioactive waste. Maybe it’s not an inaccurate metaphor.

“But why?” Stanley’s voice is low and calming, but the question still makes me flinch.

I hate telling people this. But I don’t see any alternative. “I don’t like water.” My face burns.

“All water?”

“Not all.” My gaze remains fixed on my shoes. “I’m not bothered by water from the sink, or in toilets, or anything like that. The duck pond in the park isn’t bad, because it’s shallow. But I don’t like being submerged in water, and I don’t like being near so much of it. It—it makes me feel like I’m drowning.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

My ears burn. “Because being afraid of water is stupid.”

“It’s not. Not at all.”

I give him a skeptical look.

He shrugs. “I saw this talk show once about a guy who was scared of pickles, and a woman who was scared of buttons. You know, like buttons on people’s clothes. As a little kid, I was terrified of carousels.”

“Carousels.”

“I mean, I’m fine with them now. But when I was five years old, my dad took me to a carnival and tried to get me on the carousel. It was this huge thing, and it was spinning really fast—or at least, it seemed fast to me—and something about the combination of the movement and the weird calliope music and those horses going up and down just freaked me out. He had to buy me some cotton candy to calm me down. Compared to that, being afraid of water isn’t so weird.”

There’s a knot in my throat. I swallow, but it won’t go down. “I almost hit you.”

“But you didn’t. You stopped yourself.”

“Barely.” And if I hadn’t . . .

In my head, I see my fist crash into his jaw. Bones crack and crunch. He’s on the ground, contorted in pain. He’s back in the hospital, having surgical pins inserted into his jaw to hold the bone fragments in place. Months of agony, because I didn’t stop myself in time.

I shudder. “I could have hurt you.”

“In the future, I’ll be more careful. This won’t happen again. Okay?”

I look into his blue-within-blue eyes. “I don’t understand why you’re not afraid of me,” I whisper.

“I’ve spent most of my life being afraid, Alvie. I’m tired of it. I’m not going to avoid you because of one little mistake.” He smiles and rubs the back of his neck. “Though if you don’t like water, I guess my plans for tonight won’t work out.”

“What plans.”

“Oh. It’s nothing. It was going to be a surprise.”

“But it involves water.”

“Well, sort of. Frozen water.”

I consider this for a moment, trying to remember if ice has ever negatively affected me. “Frozen is all right.”

“Well, in that case . . . you want to meet in the park?”

I’m tempted to ask him exactly what he’s planning—but then, he said he wanted it to be a surprise. I wonder if I’m being reckless. Lately I’ve been taking a lot more chances. But I know what Stanley means when he says he’s tired of being afraid. Maybe surprises aren’t always a bad thing.

“Yes,” I say.





CHAPTER TWENTY


At five o’clock, I pick Stanley up from the park. Since his arm is in a sling, I drive, and he gives me directions. I can’t begin to guess where he’s taking us. When we finally pull into the parking lot, my confusion only increases.

Ahead is a large, open lawn surrounded by trees and illuminated by stadium lights. In the center, there’s a smooth, glassy surface encircled by a low fence. As we approach, I realize what I’m looking at, and I wonder if this is his peculiar idea of a joke. “This is an ice-skating rink.”

“Yep.”

“We don’t have skates.”

He points to a little wooden building with a peaked roof. “We can rent some in there. They sell hot chocolate, too.”

I stare at his cane, then at his broken arm. He just stands there, smiling. Apparently he’s not going to address the obvious—that for someone in his condition, ice-skating is about the most risky activity imaginable, outside of throwing himself repeatedly down the stairs.