She shrugged. “It’s her messed up way of protecting me. I have to check the handwriting of my old notes because sometimes she adds her own words to them.I love my momand stuff like that.”
“But you do love her, right? Or is that hard with your memory?” That was probably too much to ask, but the whole situation seemed so screwed up. I’d seen Ava’s mother overreact. And the way Ava instinctively knew to be afraid. Something wasn’t right.
Ava concentrated a moment on a red tulip, its jagged top and round bottom copied from the example. I thought she wasn’t going to answer, but finally she stopped painting and said, “I’ve seen the mothers on the shows. Some of them are obviously supposed to be bad, making fun of their kids or hitting them. Others, the good ones, I guess, hug them and pack their lunches. The worst thing they do is make them eat their vegetables.” She dunked her brush in the water. “But mine is different.”
“Different how?”
She dried the brush on a paper towel. “When she talks, the words don’t match the look in her eyes. Her words are fine. But her eyes are not.”
“And it scares you?”
Ava dipped a brush in the white paint and gave the red tulip big white eyes. Then she went back to the red and rubbed them out. “I feel scared about most things. So I don’t know. But I don’t trust her, and apparently I never have. The memory problem means I have to always warn myself.”
“Do I scare you?”
“You’re the only thing that doesn’t.” The way her gaze met mine as she said it made my heart thunder.
She trusted me. I would never, ever betray that trust.
The art teacher approached our table and tapped Ava’s painting. “Nice work.” She looked at my blank page meaningfully. I stuck a brush in a pot of green and made a random swirl on my page.
When she moved on, I asked Ava, “Do you know how many times you’ve lost your memory?”
“I’m not totally sure. I don’t get to see my medical records. But the notes say I had two seizures between eight and twelve, and several since I’ve been a teen. I don’t know why they got worse. And I don’t know if I’ve found all the notes.”
“Are they in your hospital room?”
“They’re taped inside that giant history textbook I was holding when you came in yesterday.”
“You’re clever.”
She shrugged and returned to her painting with its yellow sun, green grass, and bright flowers. She examined it for a moment, then stuck her brush in the black pot and began obliterating it.
A protective urge rose in me. “What are you going to do when you get out of the hospital?”
“According to my notes, I’m planning to blow out ofmy mother’s house the moment I turn eighteen. I think that’s why she stuck me in here. They thought I was too dumb or confused to understand their conversation this morning. But I can figure out what ‘medically incompetent’ means. If she can prove I can’t make my own medical decisions, I won’t be considered an adult even after my birthday.”
“That’s bad,” I said. “Can she do that?”
“She’s already working on it.” She lifted the brush from the page. It was completely blacked out.
“I want to help you.”
Her gaze held mine. “I’m not sure anybody can.”
“I’d like to try.”
The art teacher wandered over, frowning at my plain green spiral and Ava’s black page. “You ruined your perfect picture!” she said.
“I sure did.” Ava tilted her head to the woman. “I think it would help me a lot if you brought me back here tomorrow to try again.”
I had to bite back my smile. Nobody was going to put one over on her.
Ava was a fighter.
Things got pretty grim for me the next day. I hadn’t had a seizure and I was due to be evicted from the hospital in less than twenty-four hours. We’d tried everything. They gave me antihistamines. Kept me up all night. Bike rides. Strobes. I breathed heavy for huff tests until I thought my head would pop off.
But nothing.
