Satellite: The Satellite Trilogy, Part I (16 page)

“Yeah, sure.” Her disappointment makes me feel terrible.

“Clara!” I yell from the elevator. She turns. “Snowmobiling,” I say.

“Huh?”

“That’s what I regret never doing while I was alive.”

Her porcelain face lights up as the elevator doors close.

I blow through the room, dropping my bag on the way to the bookcase. Searching for my empty frame, I almost miss the surprisingly good photograph of Willow and me. I stare at it for only a second. “Displace,” I say, out of breath. Stoked to see Tate, I hardly notice losing my stomach in the fall.

I don’t hang out in my bedroom this time. I miss my parents terribly, but I don’t think I can stand seeing my mom break down again. When I’m through my wall, I jump into the air to cover the mile as fast as possible.

The street we walked a million times (because Tate stubbornly insisted the exercise was good for us) looks different from up here. Even the trees have betrayed me, their branches transformed into twisted, skeleton arms reaching up to me. Or maybe warning me to turn back.

I lower myself to the deck and push away my panic. I can’t go back without seeing her.

After mustering the guts to walk through the wall, my breath hitches. It’s like I’ve just dropped by after school. When Elliott walks into the bright-blue kitchen, I stumble backward.
Breathe, Grant, breathe!

“Hey, Fish—where’s Dad?” Elliott asks.

“In the garage,” Fischer answers.

“Cool.” Elliott bites off half of Fischer’s sandwich and drops the rest back onto the plate.

“Hey!”

“Thanks,” Elliott mumbles with his mouth full. I step out of his way and the back door swings shut behind him.

I jump when a loud rumble faintly resembling music cuts through the silence. Typically the only noise around here is cartoons from the television. But even that is rare, as Fischer is usually building something or playing a game with Elliott or Tate. Fischer appears aggravated when he looks toward the stairs. He grabs his plate and stalks into the living room.

She’s up there. I’m so close now.

Taking the steps two at a time, I freeze when the knot in my gut tightens. My legs don’t want to go, but I force myself through the bedroom door. When I see her, even from behind, I feel…everything. Empty and full, all at once.

She nods to a rhythm that doesn’t exist and turns.

Oh. My. God.

I gasp and fall backward through the door, thudding against the wall in the hallway. After three breaths, I go back in.

I can’t find her through all the makeup. The thick lines, as black as her T-shirt, are especially disturbing. Her ribs jut out in a sickly way. She makes Clara look obese.

She shakes her iPod and skips through four songs before stopping at one I recognize. The song is slow, heart wrenching—a guy belting out emotional lyrics accompanied by an acoustic guitar. I silently plead for her to change it, but the song continues, flooding the room with sadness.

When I reach out, my hand ghosts through her and makes me shiver. She picks up a photo I hate—one that makes me look even less deserving of her. Tate is glowing, so happy and full of life. Me, on the other hand—not so much. My cheeks are sunken from the chemo, and my Cardinals hat can’t hide my missing eyebrows. This was the last baseball game we went to before I died.

She pulls her arm back and then the frame crunches against the wall. She yanks the picture out of the shards of glass. “How could you leave me?” she yells, ripping the photo paper. Goose bumps cover me, followed by darkness, but Tate’s room instantly comes back. My jaw clamps down to control my chattering teeth.

Something crunches under Tate’s foot before she throws herself on her bed. I study a fragment of a shredded photo on the carpet. For the life of me, I can’t—

“Oh, honey!”

I jerk my head up and more emotions run through me. Tate’s mom is thinner too, but at least she’s opted out of the black makeup and clothing trend. “You have to stop destroying these things,” she says, moving a red pillow out of the way so she can sit on the bed beside Tate.

“It’s too painful,” Tate whispers.

Her mom looks around the room. “Let’s box them up, OK? We can put them in the basement,” she suggests.

“I won’t act like he never existed!” Tate yells.

“That’s not what I’m saying. You just need—”

Tate interrupts. “I need his things around me.” She sniffs and leans against her mom.

“Will you at least consider talking to someone?”

“How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not going to some shrink!”

Her mom rubs Tate’s scrawny arm.

“What did I do to deserve this?” Tate moans, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Look at me,” her mom says, pulling Tate’s chin up. “It’s not your fault. Everything happens for a reason, even if we may not understand it.”

Tate flails off the bed and stomps across her room, avoiding the shards of glass on the carpet. I jump out of the way before she goes through me, and she spins around. “Come on, Mom! I am so sick of the BS, ‘Everything happens for a reason,’” she mocks. “If I hear that one more time, I’m gonna hurl!” She shrinks to the floor and hugs her knees.

Fischer clears his throat quietly in the doorway. “Hey, Tate—wanna play a game?” he asks. His voice is soft and hopeful, but he looks scared.

“Not now,” Tate barks.

Fischer flinches from Tate’s verbal blow before ducking out the door.

Tate’s mom pushes herself up from the bed. “At least consider packing these things away before you destroy them all,” she urges, closing the door behind her. “I’ll play a game with you, Fish,” her voice muffles through the wall.

Tate has never refused Fischer. Ever. I kneel beside her and try to push a curl away from her face, but my hand ghosts through it.

Infuriated, I growl and charge through the room, yelling things my dad would say. Stupidly, I assume Fischer’s soccer ball in the corner will respond differently and almost fall over when I try to kick it. After my fit, I sit in front of Tate on the floor and bounce my foot up and down in frustration, knowing I need to go back to Hell (a.k.a Progression) before I get caught. I bend close enough that our faces almost touch, and she stares at me. No,
through
me.

“I love you,” I whisper.

A tear rolls down her cheek and hits my knee, spotting the light denim. I can feel the warmth of the moisture through my jeans.

“I’m so sorry, baby. What have I done to you?” I say, before whispering the command that steals me away.

.

12. There’s a whole world happening around you

My muscles feel like jelly, but relief washes over me when I see Clara. I may have pulled this off. “Hey,” I say, sinking into a chair at the empty table.

“Hey, yourself.” She looks me over.

Mental head slap. I should have at least changed out of my wrinkled clothes so I’d look less like a train wreck.

She marks her place in a book that has some muscled guy on its cover and drops it into her bag. “You were gone awhile. You all right?”

I swallow. I can’t get caught now.

She reaches over and massages my shoulder. “Relax. All the new Satellites need to code a lot in the beginning. It’ll get better.”

“Good to know,” I say with a gulp.

“It’s a lot of responsibility. I don’t think any amount of training can prepare you for that. So—how many blocks?”

“Sorry?” I ask, thinking of Tate’s disturbing makeup job.

“How many blocks did you do today?”

“Oh.” I count them in my head. “Eight.”

Clara laughs. “Oh, come on.” I give her a puzzled look, and she asks if it was one or two.

“Neither. It was eight.”
Like I just said.

She stares—measuring me, I guess—before cracking up again. “Grant, no one performs eight blocks their first time. Heck, most Elites don’t even do that.”

Getting miffed, I repeat, “It was eight,” and give her a wide-eyed nod to drive the point home.

Her glossy mouth falls. “You’re serious!”

“Uh, yeah.”
Duh!
“Who are the Elites?”

“You’re not serious?” She pauses. “Unbelievable! Do you live under a rock or what?”

Awesome. My Legacy left me in the dark. Again.

“The Elites are only the most talented team we’ve got. It’s the highest rank you can achieve here. Every Satellite wants to be one.”

“Why?” I ask, getting tired of her looking at me like I’ve grown a second head.

“Because they’re elite!”

Oh, right—of course.
I keep my real thoughts to myself and ask instead, “How many are there?”

“Seven. Where have you been? It’s all the buzz, now that there’s a spot available. It’s been fourteen years, for crying out loud! How’s Willow taking it? Leaving the team must be killing her.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I mumble under my breath.

When Clara’s finally able to recover, she says, “You didn’t know?” but the shock stays on her face. “You need to get out more. There’s a whole world happening around you.”

“Apparently. Is there anything else I’m missing about Willow?”

“Hmm.” She bites her lower lip. I so wish she wouldn’t do that. The traitor in me begins wondering if her lips taste like peppermint. “Her husband just got here. That’s pretty significant.”

Finally, something I do know. Figures I can’t admit it.

I force my eyes off her lips. “Any word on how that’s going?”

“Good, I think. She said her memories returned all at once.” A worry line creases between Clara’s eyes.

“Is that a problem?” I ask, suddenly concerned about the little loon, even if she never does tell me anything.

“I think it was just unexpected. She said she had a killer headache, but she was beaming when I saw her. Even more than usual, if you can imagine.”

Just the thought exhausts me.

Clara pushes on the face of her calimeter when mine starts buzzing. I mimic her by pushing on the glass face of my own. “Good luck on your next round,” she says, tying her hair into a ponytail.

“Thanks,” I reply, wishing I was going back to Tate instead of Ryder.

Clara hikes a pink bag over her shoulder and winks before vanishing. She didn’t kiss me, at least. Figures Rigby’s not around to see that we really are just friends.

“Hey, you!”

I turn to the familiar voice. “Hey, yourself,” I holler to Anna, who’s halfway across the almost-empty Benson.

“Man, you look tired. Tell me everything!” she says when she reaches me.

“Wish I could,” I joke and dig in my bag for the rock.

“Oh, right. This is why I’m not a Satellite yet.”

“Seriously, Anna, it’s only been a day. Has anyone else been released?”

She shakes her head.

“You’re fine,” I assure her.

“I know. I’m just so excited to start.”

“Well, you shouldn’t be. It sucks.”

She looks me up and down. “You appear to be coping all right. Aside from looking drained, that is. I think I’ve almost got blocking down,” she continues. “Seriously, I don’t know how you did it with Willow. My muscles are so fatigued after just one block.”

“You’ll get it.”

“I hope so. It’s good to see you. It gets lonely around here when everyone’s out saving the world.”

I smirk. “The world is going to be in a sad, sad state when I’m finished with it. How’s Owen?”

Her face lights up. “He’s fabulous! You think he’s great, right? I mean—as a Satellite, of course.”

“Cut the crap, Anna. You’re totally into him.”

She blushes and gives me a spacey grin while fidgeting with her skirt.

“Not that my opinion matters, but I think it’s nice that you two have each other.”

“Thanks,” she says, still vacationing in la-la land.

“You’re welcome.” I look around the empty room. “I should head out.”

After we say good-bye, I hitch my bag onto my shoulders, clutch the rock, and say the magic word. A colorful collection of blurred streaks whistles far below me. I must be getting better at this because I can keep my eyes open without tossing my lunch. Or maybe it’s just because I didn’t eat lunch. Either way, I’ll take it.

The living room is eerily still when I land. After I park myself on the Pepto-Bismol-colored sofa, the kitchen lights flicker on and the mantel clock resumes ticking. Ryder gasps once before his breathing falls into a strong rhythm.

I pull my assignment book out and flip to the appropriate page.

A handwritten note has been added since yesterday:

Welcome to your second session. Thus far you are doing an excellent job. Keep up the good work.

—S

By the time I read the entire span of the day’s events (partly to kill time, but mostly so I don’t miss anything again), the sun is setting. Aside from a couple of documented outbursts, the instructions for the upcoming day mimic yesterday’s: keep Ryder calm. I glance over at the mouth breather. Looking forward to that.

Willow’s parents show up with an overnight bag. They try, with no luck, to get Ryder to eat something. Eventually they throw in the towel and retreat up the steps to Ryder’s dad’s room. Ryder opts for the chair again and he floats in and out of consciousness through the night. Occasionally I have to block him when he gets too upset.

Terrified about the possibility of losing my memories (to the point of making myself nauseous) my mind stays on Tate in my down time. My memory still seems intact, even full of events I wish I could forget.

“I don’t understand why we can’t go on with the wedding,” Tate had once uttered from my bed while I messed with the cable wires behind my TV.

“I’m not going to let you marry me like this. It’s not fair to you,” I’d said coldly, frustrated because my hands no longer worked like they should.

“
Not
marrying you is unfair to me!” Her voice raised an octave. “You’re not dying!”

I dropped the wires. “Please,” I begged. “I don’t want to do this now.”

When her tears started, I went to her. “Listen, the chances of me dying are—” I shot a dirty look at my hands. “You’ll be glad we never got married. Trust me.”

“That’s not true,” she whispered, trailing her hand from my disgusting bald head to my sallow cheek.

“Do you honestly want to be a widow at twenty-three?” I asked, still unable to look at her.

“Grant, you’re not dying!” she cried.

When I finally raised my eyes, she was truly broken.

“I get it. You don’t want to marry me anymore. Stop blaming the disease,” she whispered.

Fighting against the pain, I held her as tightly as I could. “I do want to marry you. I love you.”

“Then why won’t you?”

“Because I’m dying. I know you don’t want to believe it, but I am. I can feel it.”

“How can you say that? How can you just give up?” True to form—always the glass-half-f girl—she had fooled herself that there was still hope for me.

“I’m not giving up—I’m being realistic!” I barked in frustration. I was fighting, but an exceedingly stronger force kept defeating me. Her tears softened my anger. “I promise we’ll get married if I beat this.” Lying to her was nearly impossible, but I knew I’d never see her walk down the aisle.

She’d buried her head in my shoulder then, and I had silently cried with her. Not marrying her was painful, but making her a widow was…I couldn’t do that to her. I loved her too much.

My biggest regret, the one I couldn’t tell Clara earlier, claws at my insides. Why hadn’t I just gone along with the wedding plans? Knowing it was never going to happen anyway, knowing deep down that I was going to die, I could have at least postponed killing Tate’s dream. Failing in her attempt to save me, she’d had so little to hold on to. I should have given her that.

I push away my stinging tears with the back of my hand and suck in a deep breath. Early morning light cuts through the gaps in the living room curtain, and Ryder’s breathing has reached chainsaw volume. If he ever gets married, his snoring is going to make his wife crazy. Willow’s mom tiptoes in to check on Ryder and then retreats back up the stairs.

I stretch and rub my palms against my jeans, but a small hole makes my hand stop. Springing up, I unbuckle my belt. A second later, my jeans are around my ankles. My finger trails over the raised, tear-shaped lesion on my right knee and then jerks back from the heat of the scar. It’s a twin in every way to the new scar on my chest.

Laughing out loud seals that fact that I’m officially crazy, but I don’t care. Tate’s tear burned me again, which means we still have a physical connection, however screwed up it may be. It also means that seeing her while I code is every bit as real as seeing her in person.

I yank my jeans up when I hear keys jingle in the door.

Mya stomps the snow off her boots on the kitchen doormat while I’m still buckling my belt. “Hey, Ry—wake up! It’s almost eleven o’clock.”

Already?
I glance at the mantel clock. Maybe this day isn’t going to drag after all.

She curses before coming into the living room. “Hey, kid—get up,” she says, shaking Ryder’s shoulder.

Both Mya and I leap back when he comes to. “What?” he shouts, spinning around the room.

“Chill. It’s just me.”

“Oh. Hey, twerp.” He rubs his eyes, but then the color drains from his face and he falls back into the chair.

“We need to be at the funeral home in an hour,” Mya says.

He pushes himself up slowly this time, like he’s made of concrete. “Let me get a shower,” he says with zero enthusiasm.

She glances at his hand. “I’m guessing you didn’t even ice it.”

Ryder pretends to not hear her and walks out of the room.

Mya mumbles her disapproval on her way to the wall of pictures. She traces her finger along one of Willow’s photos. “Please take care of him,” she whispers before exiting the room.

I resume my place on the sofa and focus on the rhythmic clock, trying to keep Tate out of my head. From the kitchen, Mya’s conversation with her grandparents spills into the living room. Ryder and I join them in under ten minutes.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” Mya says dryly, glancing at the peppered wall as she passes by.

Feeling more prepared than yesterday, I wait in the small office for Ryder’s forecasted outburst. I picture my mom and dad in place of Mya and Ryder, planning my funeral. After a while, I have to shut my imagination off because my thoughts become too painful.

“We would like a lot of hydrangeas placed around the casket,” Mya tells the funeral director, a diminutive man with a bad comb-over.

“Mmm, that’s sweet. Red roses will be more appropriate,” he responds smugly, scribbling in his leather notebook.

Mya leans forward to see what he’s writing. Her tone is harsher when she says, “I appreciate your input; however, we would like hydrangeas.”

“My dear, hydrangeas are difficult to get this time of year. Roses will be the most suitable.”

I only know two things about flowers: they are a waste of money (those were Tate’s words; ironically, she always beamed when I bought them for her), and roses are insanely unoriginal (also Tate’s words). I’m not sure what Mya’s deal is, other than she’s a woman.

Mya forces her sour expression back and takes a deep breath.

Ryder jumps in. “No, the most suitable flowers for my dad are hydrangeas.”

“How about white roses, then?” the man offers.

“We said hydrangeas,” Ryder manages through clenched teeth. My muscles tense. Here it comes.

The director looks up from his notebook. “It’s going to be very expensive. Certainly you have a budget to maintain.”

Ryder bolts up, dumping his chair behind him.

I focus and give the order that puts the rippled filter around us.

Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay calm
.