The Art of Losing(13)

But I knew that I didn’t like the way I felt. I didn’t like that I’d kissed my friend and that he didn’t want to hang out with me because of it. Years later, though, I would tell people Rafael Juarez was my first kiss and that we were early make-out adopters. By the time we started freshman year, by the time my friends were making out with boys while I watched movies at home with Audrey, I was desperate for a second kiss.

I met Mike later that fall and I soon lost count of the number of kisses I’d had.

But I never forgot the first one.





Chapter Four



I awoke on Monday morning with a heavy feeling of dread, the certainty that I had to go to school. Then a rare spark of joy hit me. School was over! Cassidy’s party was the last one of our junior year; it was supposed to be a celebration . . . and as fast as the memory cascaded back, the spark fizzled.

I pulled the covers over my head and curled up with Floyd. He’d taken over half of my bed in the night. Somehow he always knew when I needed dog cuddles. But I couldn’t go back to sleep. Not when Audrey’s swollen face was the only image I could see when I closed my eyes.

I dragged myself out of bed and went to the one place that was as miserable as I felt: the hospital.

We’d been pretty quiet in the room, for the most part. I’d read every comic I could carry, plus most of the digital collection on my iPad. Mom had finished a ridiculous number of crossword puzzles. She also continued to read aloud bits of reassuring articles she’d found about head trauma recovery—for me, or for her, maybe for us both. She repeated them when Dad was able to stop by on a break. That was our new routine. But for the most part, we were letting Audrey rest in silence.

We were also getting to know the nurses. My favorite was the night nurse, Keisha, because she talked to Audrey instead of forcing small talk on me. She spoke as if she was sure Audrey could hear her and just wasn’t ready to respond.

I spent most of that day and the next at the hospital by Audrey’s side and tried Keisha’s method. It helped. Talking to my sister kept me from constantly staring at her EEG monitor.

But I didn’t know what to say. I’d told Audrey I wouldn’t talk about Mike with her, but that didn’t stop me from thinking about it. So instead, I bought every gossip magazine the gift shop had and read them aloud to her.

“Oh, look, Audy,” I said. “Drew Barrymore is walking her dog! She’s picking up dog poop, just like us!”

That would have made her laugh if she was awake. Audrey loved Drew Barrymore—and every single movie she’d ever been in—but she also found it hilarious that gossip magazines had whole photo spreads of celebrities doing things like picking up their dry cleaning.

Soon, though, I’d run through all the magazines and began reading her friends’ social media updates aloud. They’d been posting messages to her nonstop. The barrage of notifications finally prompted Mom to turn Audrey’s phone off. I read those to her, too. They were all basically the same. Her friends gushed about how wonderful Audrey was, how bubbly and kind and friendly, how she was the last person who deserved this. The notable exception was Neema, who hadn’t posted anything. Odd. But to be fair, I didn’t want to post anything, either. Audrey’s friends knew her as someone who would go out of her way to help them, who would never hurt them. I wouldn’t shatter their illusion, but I knew better now.

I would have read aloud one of the books I’d brought, but Audrey hated comics. And reading. Dad had never been able to convert Audrey the way he had converted me. Maybe because she wasn’t named after a comic book character. (How he ever talked Mom into naming me Harley is a mystery, but I imagine it involved heavy drugs, a flood of postpartum hormones, and some kind of deal with the Devil. Or the Joker.)

Besides, Audrey had always been a romantic. She pretty much exclusively watched romantic comedies—and she would watch them over and over again, even the worst, most predictable ones. All she’d ever wanted was to find her Prince Charming. The One. True Love. Instead, I’d led her to Mike and he had almost killed her.

Later that afternoon, I decided to put on The Princess Bride, one of the few movies that Audrey and I had always been able to agree on. She liked the romance, I liked the action, and we both liked the comedy. It was a rare and perfect fit.

Taking a cue from Keisha, I even tilted my laptop toward Audrey. If she awoke, I wanted the first thing she saw to be something she would remember and love. But the movie ended without so much as a flicker of her eyelids.

Mom returned that evening to find me staring out the window at the parking lot. I could see my sun-faded forest-green Honda out there baking in the heat. I’d been dreading sharing it with Audrey. She would be getting her license in a few months. Or she should be.

“Harley, you’ve been sitting in here for days,” Mom said. She surveyed my cutoffs, Wonder Woman T-shirt, and flip-flops. “And I’ve seen you in that outfit three times.”

She was somehow perfectly pulled together and appropriately dressed—if there was an appropriate outfit for visiting your comatose daughter in the hospital. For Mom, it was white linen shorts, a sleeveless button-down shirt in pale pink, and dark brown hair pulled into a low ponytail. She could have been going to play tennis later. Except I could see that her mascara was smudged from tears. She had no doubt cried privately in the car before coming inside.