I’m flooded with relief. “You big jerk,” I say, sniffling in his chest. “You don’t have a fight with a girl and then say you’re leaving. Even though I’m really glad you’re getting away from them.”
He holds me closer and I feel his breath as he laughs silently into my hair. “We had a fight? I thought that was just, you know, talking. Loudly. The Italian way.”
I put my arms around his waist and raise my head to look at him. “I don’t like talking loudly with you.”
“I don’t either. Let’s not do that again.” He gazes at me until I’m lost in him, and says, “Your eyes are so beautiful. I’ve missed them.” And then we’re kissing on the sidewalk in front of the University of Chicago hospital.
Forty
Five things I finally manage to get done over spring break: 1. Buy a cell phone. Myself. I even give my parents my new number because I’m responsible like that
2. Call my sister to see if she’s doing more making out than I am (she’s not)
3. Get my job back and make it seem like I’m doing them a favor while Trey’s out, when really I just kind of miss it
4. See Sawyer every day, and find out being in love, with no stressful visions, is way more fun than anything
5. Scare the hell out of Trey when I tell him that he totally threw himself at a college boy while under the influence of morphine
It was hilarious, that last one. I have never seen Trey so mortified. But you know what? Ben came back to the hospital to see Trey once more. Alone, this time, and he stayed for over an hour. I’m just saying.
And on the morning Trey was being released, Sawyer and I pushed him in a wheelchair to see the other victims, and everything hit hard once again, reminding me that solving the mystery of a vision is not the real part. The real part is the people and the way their lives are changed forever.
It’s weird how hatred can make people do such terrible things to other people. It kind of makes me think about my dad. And I wonder, is his anger a form of hatred? I think about my anger—for Sawyer’s family, for the people who want to kill other people because of who they are, for the vision gods who put us through all of this. Is that anger really hatred in disguise?
Or is only irrational anger actually hatred—the kind of anger and hatred my dad has over a recipe, and toward a family with whom he made a big mistake. Is his hatred really aimed at them? Or is it reserved for himself, because he’s pissed about what he’s done—or what he didn’t do? And does he even know that his anger affects the Angottis’ anger, and that’s why Sawyer gets punched in the face by his own father?
Selfishly, I want to excuse myself, reward myself for having the proper kind of anger. The kind that helps make the world better, not the kind that festers and makes people bitter. But I don’t know.
I don’t know.
It’s late Friday night of spring break when I run into Sawyer at the Traverse apartments. We’re delivering to different buildings this time, but I park next to him so he sees my car and waits for me when he comes out. Which he does.
“Hey,” he says. “My last weekend.” I nod. He told his mother on Tuesday that he would finish the weekend to give them time to find a replacement, and that he was moving in with his cousin Kate for a while, maybe forever, and taking a part-time job at the Humane Society.
He says his mother cried. And that makes me furious. I think, where the fuck are the tears before it’s too late, you moms? Where are they? Why does it have to go this far before you let yourself break? But I don’t say anything. That’s my own battle, and my family is walking on eggshells until somebody (me) decides it’s time to deal with it (just . . . not yet).
“How’s Rowan?”
“She had a blast once our parents calmed down and got distracted with Trey. But she said she wasn’t sure it was worth lying about. Now she’s the one Dad’s eyeing, asking her if she’s pregnant.” I laugh a little, but my mind is elsewhere, on my dad, wondering things I don’t want to wonder but I know soon I’m going to have to ask him about. I lean against my car and pull on Sawyer’s hoodie strings. “You doing all right?” I ask. “After the vision, I mean.”
He shrugs. “I think so. Considering.” “Trey tried to be hilarious today,” I tell him. “He came into my room this morning and told me he had a vision.”
Sawyer’s eyes open wide. “That’s so not funny.”
“My heart totally sank—I mean, I almost started bawling, you know? I don’t know if I could do this again.” I look at him hard.
“Oh, God,” he says. He looks away, picturing it, I suppose. He shakes his head. “I really am glad that we had a chance to save people, but I’ll tell you what—I can eliminate police officer and firefighter from my list of things I want to be when I grow up.”
“I just hope . . .” I begin. “No. Never mind.”
He narrows his eyes and focuses in on me. “What,” he says slowly.
I shrug. Bite my lip. “I mean, obviously I had a vision and somehow I passed it to you. And now, who knows. Maybe it’s done. Or maybe . . . it’s not.”
Sawyer grips the back of his neck and leans against his car door. “What are you saying,” he says, like he knows what I’m saying.
“I’m just . . . I don’t know. What if you got your vision because I saved you, and now you saved people, and one of them is having a vision, only we don’t know it.”