Opposite of Always(50)

But I don’t feel assured.

Not even almost.

I stand in the doorway.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi,” I say.

She pulls the oxygen out of her nose, pushes it up onto her forehead. “Come here,” she says, tapping on the bed.

I walk over. “Should you be doing that? Taking off your oxygen?”

“No,” she admits. “But if I did everything only the way I should, what kind of life would I have?”

“Kate, what happened?”

“I got sick,” she says.

“Sick how? What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing’s wrong with me.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I mean . . . please just talk to me, Kate. Whatever I can do, I’ll do it.”

“I’m not a machine, Jack. You don’t get to fix me.”

I follow her eyes out the window.

“That’s not what I mean. I don’t want to fix you. You’re not broken, Kate. To me, the way you already are, you’re—”

“I have a condition. But I’m not a condition.”

“But what condition do you have? Why won’t you just tell me? I don’t understand why you’re being so . . . so secretive. I mean, you’re in the goddamn hospital and I just want to be helpful and understand you better and I’m trying to . . .”

But she slices through my words. Throws her hands up like a traffic cop, Halt. Don’t move. “I don’t like you, okay. Not like that.”

“Like what?”

“I mean, I can’t like you. I’m sorry, Jack. You’re really awesome, and funny, and—”

My turn to interject. “Spare me the smoothing over, okay?”

“I can’t do this.”

“What can’t you do?”

“This. A relationship.”

“Who said anything about a relationship?”

“You don’t know what the future holds, Jack. But I do. And trust me, this is the way it has to be.”

And I nearly shout, I know EXACTLY what the future holds! That’s the problem! But I stop myself. Instead, I say what I want to believe— “Kate, the future can be anything we want.”

She chews on her bottom lip. “Xander wants to try again.”

“Who’s Xander?” I ask, but as soon as I utter his name I know. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh,” she says, like she wishes she could put the words back into her mouth.

“Xander. Of course his name is Xander.” Even though I could not have guessed this name in a million-gazillion years, but that’s what you say when confronted with the name of your newly appointed archnemesis. “I thought you said he was bad for you.”

“I did. He probably is. He is . . . but sometimes you . . .”

“Sometimes you what?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Well, uncomplicate it for me, because I don’t get it, Kate.”

“I don’t think you want to get it.”

I shrug. She has a point. I don’t want to get it. But answer me this, who would? Did Ponce de León get it that there was no goddamn fountain of youth hidden in the Florida Everglades? Did Mr. George Washington Carver get it when people sneered who in the hell would want to eat soup made from peanuts? It is my contention that getting it is seriously overrated.

“Okay,” I say. “So, answer this, why are you here with me then? And not with Xander somewhere? Why did you come to a high school prom, of all places, when someone like you could be out doing way cooler things with way cooler people?”

She scrunches her nose, and I don’t mean to reduce everything Kate does to a series of supercute gestures and expressions, but she is so beautiful, so utterly breathtaking, even when she’s mad, even when she’s frustrated, even when she’s frustrated at me, that it takes all of my willpower not to melt into a sticky, gooey Jack-blob.

“Jack, I’m only a year removed from my own prom.”

“I mean, you know I like you, Kate. It’s obvious, right? How much I like you? And then you agree to go to prom. And then we’re celebrating our three-month anniversary, and . . . I mean, am I crazy? I’m probably crazy. But am I crazy about this?”

She shakes her head in that I don’t want to say, don’t make me say way. I know I should stop, because this is the part where she breaks my heart. But I can’t stop. Part of me knew this wouldn’t last. That same part of me that wants to just get it over with.

But part of me also wants to put it off as long as possible. Suspend it indefinitely, and live with Kate in a vacuum of unhurtable feelings.

“Jack, you’re going to be okay. I promise.”

“There’s no way you can know that.”

“One day you’ll forget all about me.”

“Everyone says I have an excellent memory. Even elephants have told me.”

“You should go,” she says, reaching for her call light.

“Answer me this, what does Xander have that I don’t? Why him and not me?”

“Don’t do this, Jack. This is stupid.”

I smile, stupidly, defiantly, because suddenly I feel brave. But not the good kind of brave. Not the kind where the hero runs brilliantly into the inferno because he knows he has to act, he knows that there are lives at stake, lives other than his own, and that he must be the one to save them. No. What I’m feeling is the kind of brave where a squirrel decides to squat in the middle of the highway and stop a semitruck with only his mind.