LITMIR.BIZ

      9

      The phone at Olivia’s house is blinking when we get in but she ignores it, sits me down in her parents’ gleaming steel kitchen and puts a peanut butter sandwich in front of me.

      “Just don’t let me see you destroy it,” she says, putting a bag of corn chips next to me, and then goes over to the phone.

      I hear her talking while I’m opening the sandwich and putting corn chips on top of the peanut butter.

      “No, she called me from the hospital, and I said I’d come get her. I—look, Dan, I think she just needs some decompression time. You know?”

      I love Olivia. Not just for talking to Dan for me, but for a million little things. Like, she was okay that my mom loved peanut butter and corn chip sandwiches even before I was. I thought the idea was disgusting until I found myself wandering around the house three nights after she reached for toast and then broke. I was thinking about her, the things she did, like how she always had to put her wallet in her purse before she’d put anything else in or how much she hated peas.

      I was wandering, remembering, and I was alone. Dan was sleeping peacefully, no doubt dreaming of his baby.

      I thought about those sandwiches.

      I made one the way she always did, first pressing the slices of bread and peanut butter together, and then taking them apart to put the chips on before smooshing it back together, and it was good. As I ate it, for a moment I swear I could almost see her. Picture her smiling at me.

      “Sure, she’ll call later,” Olivia says. “Okay. Bye.”

      She comes back to the table, one arm extended. I hand her the chips and smile as she heads toward the pantry, eyes averted from my sandwich.

      “It’s not that bad. I’ve seen those gel things your parents eat.”

      “True,” she says, coming back to the table and sitting down.

      “You can see the sandwich now since you’re sitting here, you know.”

      “Yeah, I know. What happened?”

      I tell her.

      “Oh,” she says when I’m done. “Names, huh? He must really think the baby’s going to make it.”

      “I guess. All it has to do is lie there and suck everything out of Mom that’s pumped in until it can survive long enough to live in an incubator.”

      “Emma,” Olivia says, picking up my plate and walking over to the shiny steel sink. “You know the baby’s not a bug or anything. It’s your brother.”

      “Half. And it’s—Mom is dead and it’s not and I try not to see it but sometimes it moves and Mom’s—she’s just lying there, you know? Her body is only there for the baby and Dan chose that. He said he loved her, that he’d do anything for her. What kind of love is that, Olivia? Would you want someone to keep your dead body breathing with tubes and machines because they wanted something from you?”

      I’m yelling by the end and Olivia has come back to the table and puts her arms around me.

      “I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t—my parents—our family’s not like it was for you and your mom. And the baby, it’ll never even know her. That’s so strange and awful.”

      “When Dan finally gets around to thinking about that, he’ll probably just say it’s proof that science can work miracles and it’s how Mom would have wanted it.” By the time I’m done talking, I’m shaking so hard my teeth are chattering.

      “I want to fix it for you, you know?” Olivia says. “You’re so angry, Emma. And I don’t know if it’s with Dan or your mom.”

      “Dan. Definitely Dan.”

      “And the baby.”

      “I—look, I do get that it didn’t choose for Mom to die. But she did, you know? And the doctors say the embolism didn’t happen because she was pregnant but it’s just...” I swallow. “There was that clot and everything else—she was so scared, you know, so scared, and now I see her every day and try not to wonder if she’ll wake up even though I know she can’t. That she won’t.”

      “Maybe you should talk to someone.”

      “Dan said that too,” I say. “What’s a shrink going to tell me that I don’t already know? My mother’s dead and I miss her. I’m angry at Dan for keeping her body alive so the baby he wants so badly can maybe survive. Mom would hate being trapped like she is and I can’t—won’t—forgive him for it. I can’t forgive the baby either, and maybe that makes me awful, but I don’t care.”

      “You really are angry. Like, I’m worried about you angry.”

      I shrug and stare at the table again. Olivia knows me and she’s right. I am angry. I am so angry I feel like it’s all I am.

      “At least I’m angry for a reason. At least I’m not running around stealing cars for fun like Caleb Harrison. I saw him at the hospital today. Twice, actually.”

      “Wow, so it is true,” Olivia says.

      “What?”

      “I heard his parents got him some emergency hearing and he got assigned community service for the thing with his dad’s car,” she says. “You know, picking up trash and stuff. But I guess he’s at the hospital instead. What did he say?”

      “Nothing,” I say, thinking of his, What’s your problem? and his stares. The second one was the worst. The way he was just looking at me and Mom, and how he must have seen me lying there, resting my head on her hand.

      “Nothing? You sure?”

      “How do you know what happened to him, anyway? It’s not like you’d have found out by going anywhere near a computer, so that means you talked to someone and that means...”

      “Yes, I saw Roger,” she says, and blushes. “But it’s not what you think. I was getting gas and when I went to pay for it, he was inside getting a soda and we talked for a minute.”

      “Uh-huh. So you were getting gas.”

      “Yep.”

      “Even though you got it two days ago and you’ve only driven to school and back since.”

      “All right, fine,” she says, mock-slapping my arm. “I saw his car in the parking lot and I might have wanted to see him, and I did but it was no big deal. Okay?”

      “How long did you talk to him?”

      “Awhile.”

      I grin at her. She stares at me for a moment and then grins back. “I know! We talked! Do you think he likes me? I really want him to like me.”

      “What’s not to like?”

      “The fact that most people think I’m a freak because I don’t use computers

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