Shifting

Page 28

“Can I try some of this stuff on?” I asked.
“And I thought you’d be mad at me for offering you Katie’s stuff,” Bridger said with relief. “You do realize it’s the middle of the night?”
“I wouldn’t be able to sleep even if I had a bed to sleep in.” I stifled a yawn.
“Why don’t you try them on in the morning? Let’s veg and watch a movie,” Bridger said, sitting on the sofa. I sat down beside him. The sofa was so soft, it might as well have been trying to swallow me.
Bridger scooted a few inches away from me and said, “We need to talk.”
My heart started to hammer, and not in a good way. “We do?”
“Yeah.” Bridger took off his shoes and put his feet up on an ottoman, his eyes never leaving my face. “I know how you feel about me.”
I sank into the sofa and pressed my hands over my eyes.
“Maggie.” His fingers clamped down around my wrists and tugged. I met his gaze and wished the sofa would swallow me. “Let me just start by saying I really like you, too. A lot.” He let go of my hands and folded his arms across his chest. “You’re one of the most intriguing, unique, beautiful people I have ever met. But I haven’t been fair to either of us. I’m not supposed to date local girls. I’ve been taught that my whole life—so having my family come home has made me realize that I need to rededicate myself.”
I couldn’t look at him. I found a string on the sleeve of his hoodie and began running it through my fingers.
“Now that school’s out, we won’t see each other anymore,” he said.
My heart sank with the thought of never seeing him again.
“The thing is,” he continued, “I wanted to let you know I’m still here for you, as a friend. Nothing more, nothing less. So if you can forgive me for misleading you, maybe we can hang out sometimes. Nothing major, just the occasional movie, or hike, or something.”
Why had it always been my lot in life to be removed from the people I cared about? I wondered. I could already feel Bridger slipping away forever.
“Hey, I’m not bailing on you. And I’ll never ask anything of you but friendship. I just … can’t date local girls.”
Yeah, I got it. No dating.
“Why don’t you date local girls?” I asked. “Yana told me the same thing.”
“I’m supposed to marry someone who has a similar background as me.”
“You mean religious background? You have to marry a Navajo girl?”
He scowled. “Not quite. More like the same social background. So that my kids are … like me.”
I rolled my eyes. Yana was right. Rich people always wanted to produce rich offspring. I definitely didn’t fit into that stereotype. “Sounds like your parents are breeding you. Like a racehorse,” I said, my voice full of all the bitterness I felt.
Bridger frowned and nodded.
“Well, invite me to your wedding. ’Cause that’s what friends do, right?”
A slow smile spread across his face. “You don’t hate me?”
“I suppose not.”
Smile still plastered to his face, he turned on a movie. With twelve inches of very obvious space separating Bridger and me, I let the sofa absorb half my body and zoned out, letting the movie blur.
I snapped awake as light shone on my closed eyelids, but I didn’t open my eyes. Someone walked into Bridger’s room, two sets of feet tiptoeing over the hardwood floor. A woman gasped.
“She’s here!” she whispered. “And wearing the sweatshirt I got him in Italy. I knew it was more than a casual friendship when I saw how he looked at her.”
“You need to trust him,” another voice mumbled—Bridger’s dad. “He is eighteen and he knows his duty. I can tell he has every intention of following what he’s been taught.”
“I’m so glad you’re making Katie stay. But what if—?”
“Shh—I think she’s awake.”
I opened one eye a crack, watching through my lashes as Bridger’s parents came to the sofa, bent over the back of it, and each kissed Bridger’s forehead. His dad looked at me. I froze on the other end of the sofa, closing my eyes and making my eyelids as soft and supple as if I were fast asleep.
“Good-bye, son,” his mother whispered.
They left the room and shut the door.
21
Something vibrated against my ribs. I shifted and inhaled, relaxing into a dream that smelled just like …
My eyes popped open. A warm and heavy weight draped my shoulder. The pillow beneath my cheek moved up and down and smelled like heaven. My ribs vibrated again and I practically jumped out of my skin in my hurry to scramble to the other side of the sofa.
Bridger’s black lashes fluttered against his cheeks and he peered at me with glazed eyes. His hand went to his jeans pocket and he removed a vibrating cell phone. He pushed a button.
“Yeah?” he said, voice groggy. His eyes lost their gloss of sleep and he sat up, glancing at me. “Yes, ma’am. She’s here, Mrs. C. Give me a minute to go get her.”
He put a finger to his lips and handed me the phone, then stood and left the room. I put the phone to my ear.
“Hello?” I said.
“Maggie Mae, how are you?”
“How am I? How are you? I’ve been so worried.”
“I can honestly say I have been better. But I’ve also been worse.” Mrs. Carpenter chuckled. “Would you come to the hospital? We need to talk.”
I didn’t know what to say. Hospitals were the place where people never saw each other again.
“Maggie, dear?”
“Okay.” I would do anything for Mrs. Carpenter, even go to the hospital.
The sliding doors parted and I got a whiff of disinfectant and sick people. Memories started flashing in my brain. Blood. Pale skin. Blue lips. Silence.
Kat O’Connell strode past me, adjusted her oversized sunglasses, and flopped down in a waiting room chair.
“Are you all right?” Bridger asked me. I looked at my feet, cemented to the sidewalk outside the hospital doors, and forced myself to proceed.
“I can’t believe you guys are up so early. I’m sixteen. I need my sleep,” Kat mumbled, standing as we walked past.
“Then you should have stayed home,” Bridger snapped. “You’re the one who insisted on coming.”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
We walked through a waiting room, past people staring in a daze at a tiny television mounted in a high corner. They had no idea what they were watching. At least, that’s how it was when I sat in the waiting room.
As we made our way deeper into the hospital, the beep and hum of life-reading machines came out of hospital rooms and made me sick to my stomach. When I was five, I’d sat in a hospital room staring at a pale face with blue lips, listening to that very sound—the staccato beep of a pulse machine. It was when the sound stopped that my life changed for the worse.
I stared at my feet as they passed over white linoleum, too scared to look into the rooms.
“What’s wrong?” Bridger asked, slowing to walk beside me.
I swallowed and shook my head.
“You know, Maggie, friends tell each other stuff. It makes life easier if you have someone to confide in. Did someone you love die in a hospital?”
I looked at him, wondering how he knew. “My aunt.”
“What happened? How did she die?”
“A freak accident in a national park.”
“Really?” Kat chimed in.
I nodded and touched the scar in my eyebrow. “And when I was twelve, I had to come to the hospital to get this sewn shut.” As if it were yesterday, I could still see Mrs. Simms, her eyes brimming with tears, sign the papers that released me from her care while police officers led her husband out of the ER in a pair of handcuffs.
“You know, I bet a plastic surgeon could make that scar disappear,” she said.
“Katie, shut up,” Bridger snapped.
We arrived at Mrs. Carpenter’s room and knocked.
“Come in,” she called, her voice full of sunshine and cheer. She lay semireclined in a bed, her left leg wrapped in layers of bandages and propped up on a mountain of pillows.
“Hello, Maggie Mae, Bridger … Katie,” Mrs. Carpenter said, studying Kat’s bare shoulder poking out of her oversized wide-neck sweater.
“I go by Kat now,” Kat said, walking to the chair in the corner of the room and sitting.
I forced a smile to my face. “Hi. How’re you feeling?”
Mrs. Carpenter didn’t mince words. “Maggie, I’m going to need some help with getting my house put back to rights and taking care of the animals. I was wondering if you’re ready to move up into the stable-hand room above the barn, and I can use your room until my leg’s better?”
The dark cloud of hospital memories receded with her words. “I think that would be a good idea,” I said with a smile.
She sighed and squeezed my hand. “Bless you, child. Now, if I can just convince them to release me. These hospital gowns are ridiculous.”
While Kat sat silent in the corner, Bridger and I chatted with Mrs. Carpenter as she ate her breakfast. She told me where the key to the barn room was located. When a nurse came in to check her vital signs, we left.
“Do you mind if we make one more stop?” Bridger asked as the door clicked shut behind him.
“You mean at the hospital or on our way home?” Kat asked. “Because I’m all for stopping for breakfast.”
“Here, Katie,” he said.
She sighed, adjusting her oversized sunglasses again. “I’m going to find some coffee. See you at the car.” She strode away and I wasn’t sorry to see her go.
“So where are we going?” I asked.
“I’d like to see how Danni is.”
I laughed a humorless laugh. “Please say you’re not serious.”
“I’m serious, Maggie.”