Trust no one.
Mother meant Mom.Motherfelt right when I whispered it, although it made my stomach turn over, hot and uneasy. I didn’t know why, but I understood I could not let the woman in my room see inside the book.
I had to be brave enough to go out there and find it.
CHAPTER 4
Tucker
I paced my hospital room, sometimes stepping into the hall as far as the wires would go.
Gram sat on the sofa bed by the window, knitting a Pokémon hat. A Squirtle. She started making them when I was six and never stopped, even though I quit playing Pokémon years ago.
“You’re going to wear a hole in the floor.” She held up the pale-blue Squirtle. Its round head and big eyes looked amazingly like her, even without her mass of gray curls. “Am I getting it right?”
I coughed to cover my laugh. “It’s great.”
“Is all this wandering about that girl?”
I didn’t have to answer. She could read my damn mind. Of course she could. It had been nothing but the two of us since I was twelve. Since my life caved in after the accident.
This hospital visit was supposed to change everything. I’d have a seizure while wired to the gizmos, and they’d figure out the problem and fix it. We’d hinged all our hopes on it.
I would graduate high school in June. How long could I live with my gram? I wanted a real life. To drive a car more than a few months here and there when my seizures were under control. To get a job. And college. I wanted to go. I had Mom and Dad’s life insurance money set aside for it.
But how could I do any of that if I couldn’t beat this thing? Sometimes I spent weeks lying in bed because sitting up for too long gave me muscle tremors. Then came the migraines.
It was no life at all.
This week was supposed to make things happen for me. Only we were on day four—and nothing.
At least right now I could walk around. For five hours a day I was stuck sitting in bed next to a dude holding a syringe. He had to be ready to pump his radioactive sauce into my veins the minute a seizure started. Surely he was tired of me. My failure. My nothing.
The only thing that had been worth it was that girl.
I plunked down on a chair.
“What was her name?” Gram asked.
“Ava.”
“That’s a nice name. I knew an Ava once. She married a young man named Horace.”
I loved Gram, but I did not want to hear about Ava and Horace. I wanted to findmyAva. I had to know she was all right.
A nurse popped into the room. She was cute, but like most of the staff, she treated me like I was ten. “Quick vitals check!” She tugged a blood pressure cuff from the stand.
“Were you able to find out anything about Ava?” I’d asked all the night nurses since the disco room incident,but nobody would tell me anything. I was hoping the morning ones would tell me something. At least that she was alive.
“We’ve been talking about you two. Hold on.” She held up a finger until the cuff deflated.
My heart sped up. Maybe I would get some answers. “How is she?”
She pulled the stethoscope from her ears. “I think it’s cute you talked to her.”
“Not cute enough to tell me if she’s okay? She wasn’t breathing.”
The nurse glanced over at Gram and leaned in close to remove the cuff. “She’s okay,” she said softly. “She’s in her room.”
