Extraordinary Means

One night, I stayed out a little later than I’d meant to, and it was almost lights-out when I came back inside. As I walked across the deserted common room, someone called my name from the nurse’s station.

I walked over to investigate. Nick was in there, alone, lying on one of the cots. He was reading A Storm of Swords in his pajamas and bathrobe.

“Hey, thought that was you,” he said.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, concerned.

“Fine,” Nick said. “I’m almost out of vodka, so I was thinking what to do about that, and then I realized . . . oh man, my chest really hurts.”

He rolled his eyes while he said it.

“So you wanted to come down here and lie on the cot?” I asked, not understanding.

“Codeine, dude. They don’t even question it. I just have to stay here, is all.” He gri

“Well, have fun,” I said.

“Hold on,” Nick said, pushing himself up in bed. “You okay?”

“I’ll live,” I muttered. I hadn’t meant it ironically, but Nick snorted.

“Look, I’m sorry about you and Sadie,” he said.

“Really?” It shot out of my mouth before I’d thought about it.

There was an awkward pause.

“No, I’m secretly glad, I want all my friends to be as depressed and lonely as I am,” Nick said sarcastically. He leaned back and closed his eyes. “Sure you don’t want some codeine? It’s great. The room’s spi

“Trampolines don’t spin,” I reminded him.

“Well, they should. And Sadie shouldn’t have done that to you. Shit, why are girls so impossible?”

“I don’t know,” I said, sighing. “Everything was going great with us, and then Sadie preemptively dumped me because she thinks we won’t last.”

“You probably won’t,” Nick said.

“Thanks a lot.”

“Nothing lasts,” he said. “Even this awesome floaty feeling. We all reach for whatever we think is going to dull the pain, and sometimes we don’t even want whatever it is, we just want to not be miserable, you know? So anyway, I’m sorry I was a dick.”

“It’s fine,” I said.

“No, shut up, I’m atoning. We have seven more weeks at Latham, and then all this is over. It’s like the end of senior year. It’s the last chance to go for things. Otherwise you always wonder.” He shifted on the bed, coughing a little. “I want us to be cool, so we can all keep in touch. That’s all we’re going to have left, you know? Each other.”

He was right. Latham would close down, and TDR-TB would be curable, and it would be hard to explain to anyone who hadn’t gone through it what it had been like at a sanatorium, and what it was like to have this weird past that was filled with blood tests, instead of standardized ones.

“We’re cool,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Did I already ask if you want some codeine? Because it’s awesome, like a trampoline. . . .”

“Think I’ll pass. But thanks.”

I went up to my room thinking about what Nick had said, even though he was pretty out of it. I didn’t want to wonder about Sadie, I wanted to be with her. But I’d never given her a reason to think I really meant it.

I’d never asked her to be my girlfriend, not officially. And I’d never said that I loved her. I’d taken the coward’s path, telling her that I adored her, and that I was crazy about her, using every other phrase that I could instead of the one that I meant.

And now, even if I did muster the courage to say it, she wouldn’t want to hear it. She might not even believe it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

SADIE

I HADN’T EXPECTED Latham without Lane to hurt as much as it did. I’d made a mistake, and I knew it as I lay in bed each night that week, alone and lonely, with no company except my own horrible thoughts. I had trouble falling asleep, so most nights I’d curl up on my side and stare out the window at the inescapable woods. I tried to see beyond them, past Whitley and the dust-covered avocado stands along PCH, all the way down the coast to Los Angeles, to home.

But I couldn’t. All I could see was Lane’s face in the gazebo, the way he’d crumpled, the way he’d stared at me like I’d torn apart the universe and handed him the shreds.

I hadn’t known it would be like that. I didn’t have experience with boys, or experience with much of anything, except having TB. But Latham House was closing down. It was like Nick had taken to saying, that these were the last days of the empire.

He was wrong, though. The sun had already set on our little empire, which was the only one that really mattered. Our group was splintered, the energy that once made our table the center of the dining hall sucked dry. There was no empire anymore, just the ruins of a once-great civilization. Just the memories of a once-great relationship.

It took me three days to build up the courage to even sneak a glance at Lane again, and to stop pretending that whatever picture was in my fashion magazine wasn’t the most fascinating thing in the world.

And when I glanced at him, I wanted to cry. He looked the same as always, my Lane, with his floppy hair and green-brown eyes, except he wasn’t mine at all. Not anymore.

Marina knocked on my door the Thursday after I broke up with Lane. I was curled up in bed with Adele on repeat, in this little nest of electronics and books and chargers, and she snorted when she saw me.

“I see you’ve made a cave,” she said.

“I’m regressing. Next I’ll sprout gills and slither into the pond,” I said.

Marina shook her head.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “I thought this was what you wanted.”

“I don’t know what I want!” I said. “Except to sit in my mope cave.”

“Well, your mope cave has company.”

Marina shut the door and held up a USB stick.

“I just talked to Nick,” she said. “Have you listened to this?”

“What is it?”

“It’s . . . well, it’s Charlie’s album,” she said.

I sat up.

“Charlie made an album?”

“Before he died,” Marina said. “He finished it. Left it in a box on his bed.”

I hated talking about Charlie. It made me feel like I was back there again, standing over Charlie’s body, looking for his green light.

But this was different. This was new.

“Can we play it?” I asked.

“Nick made you a copy,” she said. “So, here. All yours. I’ve been listening to it on repeat all day.”

She tossed the stick onto my bed. I stared at it.

“Thanks,” I said.

“He was coming to find us, you know,” Marina said. “Charlie. He knew he wasn’t doing well. He was trying to say good-bye. That’s why he was in the woods. Not because we guilted him into attending a toga party.”

I stared at Marina. She smiled sadly.

“Not that it’s worth anything,” she said. “I just thought you should know.”

She shut the door behind her when she left.

I popped the stick into my laptop, and plugged in my headphones, and played it.

I’d heard Charlie’s music before, in snippets. A line, a chord progression, the acoustic version on the ukulele. But this wasn’t a rough draft. It was his finished verse. It was Charlie, back from the dead and sitting right there next to me, confessing everything about how it felt to be young and dying and terrified that there was something you still hadn’t finished, that you wouldn’t have enough time.

When the album ended, I was sobbing. Charlie had barely finished making this. And I’d been so stupid to abandon Lane. We hadn’t finished becoming anything yet, because I’d been so terrified that whatever we were was only temporary.

And I’d been so, so wrong. Being temporary doesn’t make something matter any less, because the point isn’t for how long, the point is that it happened. Like ancient Greece. Like Latham. Like Lane and me.

I tried my best to smooth my ponytail, and I put on the last of my favorite lip gloss, which I’d been saving for a special occasion, and then I bolted down the stairs and knocked on the door of Cottage 6.