Little Do We Know(34)

The house was quiet, so I went to the front door and peeled it open. I raced back to Luke’s car, tiptoed over to the driver’s side, ducking down low, and lifted the latch. I slid behind the steering wheel.

As soon as I closed the door, the pungent smell stung my nostrils again, but this time, it was different: Luke’s car smelled like lemons and fresh-cut grass. The mess had been scrubbed from the passenger seat and the dashboard was spotless, too. And that’s when I realized how my dad had spent his “alone time with God.”

I felt a pang of guilt. Dad might have been flawed in some human ways, but deep down, he was such a genuinely good person. It was his way, to do something kind like that and never say a word about it. It made me second-guess how I’d been treating him lately.

I looked around. The rest of the car wasn’t quite as clean. There was a half-finished bottle of Gatorade in the cupholder and an empty bag of Funyuns smashed in the passenger side door pocket.

Inside the center console, I saw the usual stuff, like charging cables and earbuds. A tube of lipstick caught my eye, so I picked it up and gave it a twist. Deep red. I could see a color like that on Emory. I counted three unopened Mentos rolls and one that was almost empty.

Then I spotted a blue piece of paper on the floor behind the passenger seat. I reached behind me and picked up an envelope with an E on the front. I turned it over. Luke hadn’t sealed it. For a second, I wished he had.

I sat up taller in the driver’s seat and gave the neighborhood another quick glance. And then I curled myself around the steering wheel, worked the flap, and removed the card.

There was a small white heart in the center, and inside, in boyish-looking handwriting, his words:

Em,

I love you. I love seeing you rehearse onstage. I love watching you with your friends. I love the way you play with your hair when you’re nervous, and the way you look at me like I’m the most important person in the room. I love seeing you in my jersey. I love hearing you yell my name in the stands. I love our “goodnights” and I can’t wait to tell you “good morning.”

Prom. Graduation. Road trip.

Luke

P.S. Sorry. I know that’s a bit long for Day 281. Feel free to paraphrase.



He was in love with her. That was clear. I could hear it in his voice. I could feel it in the bend and flow of the words, and even the spaces between them, and it surprised me.

And now he was dead, and my heart broke all over again, not for me and what I saw, but for Emory. Luke died in his car, in my front yard, under my streetlamp, in my dad’s arms. And Emory was right around the corner the entire time.

I hated that I was the one who found him. I shouldn’t have been the last one to hold his hand. It should have been her.

I opened the door and threw up all over the pavement.





By 6:00 a.m., the doctor had come out to the waiting room three times with an update on what was happening with Luke. The first time, she told us they were working hard to repair a small tear in his spleen. She said it was too early to tell, but they were doing everything they could.

The second time, she told us that Luke was fighting hard but that he’d lost a lot of blood. She held out a clipboard authorizing a transfusion, and Mr. Calletti signed it and passed it back to her. She warned us that even if he survived the surgery, until he woke up, they had no way of knowing if he’d have any permanent brain damage. “He went some time without oxygen,” she’d said carefully. “We don’t know how long that was.”

The third time, she told us he was awake. Groggy. Medicated. But alive. He was able to speak. He seemed to have full motion in his body. His brain function appeared to be normal.

Luke’s dad looked like he was about to cry. His mom smiled with her whole face. Addison hugged me, but I must have been in shock, because I couldn’t move or smile or feel a thing. That image of him, blue and lifeless, was still stuck in my head and I wasn’t sure I was going to get rid of it until I had something to replace it with. When I could see his face and touch his skin and kiss his lips and hear his voice, maybe then I’d believe he was going to be okay.

Somewhere after 8:00 a.m., she returned. “You can take turns saying hello, but keep it short, okay?” Mr. and Mrs. Calletti stood.

Mr. Calletti gestured to me. “Emory can go in, too.”

“Is she family?” the doctor asked, looking at him sideways.

“Yes, she is,” he said, and I felt tears well up in my eyes.

But I didn’t let them fall. I was too happy to cry.



“He’s lucky you found him when you did,” the nurse said as she checked Luke’s IV drip. “He almost died last night.”

“I did.” Luke said it under his breath. The nurse didn’t hear him.

I looked down at his bloodshot, sunken eyes and his face, bloated from all the medication he’d been given over the last seven hours. His dark curls were matted and stuck to the side of his head, and his lips were dry and cracked. A bag of yellow fluid hung on a rack behind his right shoulder, dripping down to a needle inserted into a vein on the back of his hand.

“This will kick in quickly,” the nurse said to me. “I’ll go ahead and let you stay until he falls asleep, but keep it down. No one can know you’re in here.”

I waited until she left the room, and then I sat on the bed. I took his needle-free hand in both of mine and smiled down at him. “Damn. You look like shit.”