Little Do We Know(38)

As I walked back to the waiting room, I thought about what Mom had said earlier; that I should give Emory space and let her come to me when she was ready to talk. It still seemed impossible to do, but deep down, I knew she was right.





As soon as I stepped into the hallway, I felt every head turn in my direction. Under normal circumstances, I would have enjoyed the attention, but I’d spent the last two nights sleeping in a scratchy armchair in a hospital room, and even though I’d taken a shower that morning, my hair still felt stringy, my eyes looked like someone had punched me, and I didn’t completely trust my legs to carry me from class to class.

“Everyone’s looking at me,” I said as I dialed the combination on my locker door.

“Yeah, you’re right. They are,” Charlotte said, looking around. “And…Tess and Kathryn are heading straight for you.”

I didn’t want to talk to Luke’s friends about what happened on Friday night. I was tired of thinking about it. And I was just plain tired. I needed to get through three periods so I could get to lunch, because the only place I wanted to be was in the quiet theater, pretending to be Emily Webb, escaping into her world and blocking out mine.

“Emory, are you okay?” Tess threw her arms around me, then backed up so Kathryn could do the same.

“I’m fine. Thanks for all your texts. Addison and I have been reading them to Luke all weekend. They made him laugh.”

Suddenly, Dominic was there, wrapping his arms around my neck from behind. “I’m so sorry, Emory.” And then he let me go and launched straight into what happened during the game and the bus ride home. “Luke kept saying his side hurt and he was feeling nauseated, but the doctors checked him back on the field and didn’t find anything wrong. He said he wanted to get an X-ray over the weekend. He was convinced he had a cracked rib.”

“He seemed fine,” Tess said. “I talked to him at the party, and I guess he seemed kind of…buzzed….” She trailed off, and I could tell from the look on her face that she was realizing she might have misinterpreted the events of that night.

“He was sitting on the couch for a long time,” Kathryn added. “He looked kind of…pale. I asked him if he was okay, and he told me he was waiting for you to get home. He seemed sort of out of it, I guess, but…”

I remembered that. Tyler, Charlotte, and I were driving home when he texted me and said he felt horrible. His stomach hurt. He was light-headed. I told him it was okay if he wanted to go home, but he said he wanted to see me.

“I would have driven him home if I’d known,” Dominic said.

“We all would have done something, I swear…” Kathryn added, looking at Dominic and Tess for support.

“You had no way of knowing how bad it was,” I said. “Luke didn’t even know.”

Parroting the doctor’s words, I explained what had happened. I told them how that hit Luke took during the game had left a tiny, almost microscopic puncture in his spleen that no one could have caught without an MRI. How his abdomen had slowly filled up with blood the entire time he was on the bus and throughout the party. How, the more he moved, the more that puncture turned into a tear and his blood pressure dropped.

“The lacrosse team has a bunch of cards and stuff for him,” Dominic said. “Coach is organizing a visit to the hospital after school.”

“He’d love that.”

Luke’s hospital room already looked like a flower shop that blew up inside a balloon factory, but I wasn’t about to tell Dominic that. “He’s out of the ICU and in a regular room now, so he can have visitors. They plan to release him tomorrow morning, and hopefully, he’ll be back at school next Monday.”

“I heard you never left his room all weekend,” Tess said, changing the subject.

I rolled my eyes. “One nurse had it in for me. She tried to kick me out about ten times.”

The bell rang.

“We’d better get going,” Charlotte said as she tipped her head toward our math class.

“See you at lunch?” Kathryn asked.

“Can’t,” I said. “I’ve got Our Town rehearsal.”

Tess hugged me again. “Thank you for finding him,” she said.

I hadn’t corrected Luke in the hospital a few days earlier, and I didn’t correct Tess, either.



When the lunch bell rang, I practically sprinted for the theater. I didn’t stop at the cafeteria for a sandwich. I couldn’t even imagine eating anything.

Melanie and Tyler were already on the stage, running through their first scene, and when they saw me, they both stopped mid-sentence. As soon as I hit the top step, half the cast was there, taking turns hugging me, surrounding me with so many questions, I couldn’t even tell who was asking them.

“How’s Luke?”

“What happened?”

“Are you okay?”

I let out a yawn. “Luke will be okay. And I’m exhausted, but fine.”

“You should go crash in the flop room,” Melanie suggested. “We can wake you up when it’s time to go to class.”

My whole body felt weak, and my eyes were heavy. It sounded so nice to crash into that squishy couch and sink deep into its green velvet cushions, but it sounded even better to be with my friends in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, in 1901.