You'd Be Home Now (5)

No, that’s not right. I shake my head. My brain is getting fuzzy from the pill. Joey stopped going to the fireworks with me a few years ago. He hung out with his friends instead. Came home late and drowsy, sneaking in quietly after my parents had gone to bed. I watched the fireworks split the sky by myself in the backyard. I always waited up for him, even though I was tired.

    Maddie is still talking, her words dissolving as soon as they leave her mouth.

Maybe that’s what Joey liked about drugs. The way they rearranged things, shifted memories, erased what he didn’t want to deal with. Make uncomfortable things fade away.

“Emmy.”

Maddie’s sharp voice shatters my thoughts.

“What’s the matter with you? Is it the Vicodin? You have to eat before you take it. Jesus.”



* * *



—

Dr. Cooper’s office is cold. Even though my insides are warm from the pill, I shiver.

“It’s like an icebox in here,” Maddie murmurs, wrapping her arms around herself.

The door opens. “Ah, the famous Ward girls, gracing me with their presence!” Dr. Cooper closes the door to the exam room and grins at us, exposing expensively whitened teeth.

Maddie side-eyes me and I try to hide my smile. I know she’s thinking of what Mom calls him. Doctor Vampire. “You can see those teeth from miles away,” our mom said once.

He busies himself washing his hands. “Madeline, your studies are going well? Dartmouth, is it?”

“Brown,” Maddie answers.

He dries his hands and gazes at her. “And what will be your field, eh? You’re a Ward, the world is your oyster.”

“I’m joining the circus,” Maddie says.

Dr. Cooper chuckles. “Is that so?”

“Seriously. I’m headed back next week to take a summer circus course. My life’s dream is to be shot from a cannon.”

    “Always so spirited, Madeline,” he murmurs, turning to me. “And this one.”

His smile wobbles as he struggles for something to say.

Because he and I both know that I’m not spirited, or exceptional, or anything much. Dr. Cooper literally has no small talk to offer me.

I’m just “this one.”

“Emory,” he says finally. “Let’s take a look at that knee, shall we?”

He hooks a hand under my armpit and hoists me onto the table. The tissue paper rips underneath me as I slide back.

He pats the blue brace gently.

“Are we ready?” he asks. His breath smells minty and there are little hairs springing from his ears. I feel like someone who takes such good care of their teeth might also want to trim their ear hair, but what do I know?

I look at the ceiling. “Sure,” I say.

He starts unsnapping the buckles on the brace, moving slowly. “Tell me at any time if you feel pain, Emory.”

“I can’t feel anything. I took a pill before I came in.”

He eases his hand beneath the brace and slides it out from under my leg.

It feels weird without the brace on. My leg feels lighter than it has in weeks.

“Yikes.” Maddie prods my thigh. “You lost a lot of muscle tone. Well, you can build that back up before dance team in the fall.”

Dr. Cooper presses his fingers all around my knee. “Oh, she won’t be dancing for quite some time.”

“Wait,” I say, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice. “I can’t be on dance team?”

    “Oh, goodness, no,” Dr. Cooper says. “You’ve got a good bit of physical therapy ahead of you before you can even attempt that.”

“Mom is going to freak. Dance team is Mom’s jam,” Maddie says. “Maybe you can still dress, Emmy, but just sit out.”

“I don’t care,” I say. I’m pretty sure I only made the team because Mom made a call, to be honest. “I never liked dance team anyway. That was just Mom trying to make me Maddie 2.0.”

I don’t know if I would have said that if Vicodin wasn’t buzzing through my body.

“Emmy,” Maddie says, but not harshly, because she knows it’s true.

“I’m an alternate, Maddie. I suck. I sit out most of the time anyway and when I am in, I’m in the back.”

I’ll have to act disappointed when I tell my mom, but really, I’m relieved. No more pulling and tugging at the itchy royal-blue skirted shorts and gluing sparkles on my eyelids. Pasting a fake smile on my face.

Dr. Cooper is looking at me.

“What?” I say. “Are we done?”

“There’s a bit of swelling,” he says, “but it all looks good. It’s healing nicely. I just need you to bend it. Very slowly, just a bit at first.”

Suddenly I’m panicked. I look down at my pale, thin leg, the skin wrinkled from the brace. I think of the car, the accident, how I felt sitting in the passenger seat, feeling like something was missing from my body, that something wasn’t right. My kneecap had smashed against the dashboard as we flew through the air and then again when we landed. I think I remember it, some sort of cracking sound maybe. The sound of something splintering.

    I don’t want to hear that sound again.