Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

BEFORE

TOM

My mother insists on giving me a ride to the community center for the health fair because it's all the way across town.

At first, I tell her no. She's got a crummy, beat-up Chevy that looks like something out of the junkyard. It's embarrassing to be seen riding around in it. But then she offers to let me get behind the wheel, and I'm sold. I got my license over the summer, and I've barely even gotten to use it.

"Are you checking your mirrors?" Mom asks me for the five millionth time as I change lanes in preparation for making a left turn.

"Yes, of course I am."

"Just checking."

"Ugh. Mom, I know how to drive."

Finally, she stops quizzing me about my mirrors and turn signals and lets me just drive. It's only about fifteen minutes by car, but I enjoy every minute of it. Maybe next year she'll let me drive to school in the morning. A lot of the seniors take their cars to school. I've saved up some money from tutoring, and I could probably get a car at least as good as this one.

"So is your girlfriend going to be there?" my mother asks me.

Good thing we are stopped at a red light, because if we weren't, I definitely would've crashed into something. " What ?"

"Daisy Driscoll. She's your girlfriend, isn't she?"

How does she know that? My face gets extremely hot. "Sort of. I guess. I don't know."

Daisy and I have never talked about whether we're boyfriend and girlfriend. I'm not sure if she thinks about me that way. But then again, why not? We did kiss. And it's not like I'm going to be dating anyone else.

Still, I don't want to assume .

My mother smiles as she watches my expression. When she smiles, the creases on her face grow deeper. I don't know how my mother got so old looking recently. It makes me sad sometimes.

"Daisy is a nice girl," she says. "I'm glad you finally worked up the courage to ask her out."

I don't know what to say to that. Thank you? So I just grunt.

"If you ever need any advice, Tom—"

"I don't."

"Make sure you don't forget her birthday or Valentine's Day," she says. "And all girls love flowers."

Not Daisy. She nearly started to cry when I plucked that daisy out of the ground. Maybe I can get her a flower in a pot or something. Anyway, I don't feel like discussing it with my mother. Instead, I focus all my energy on not crashing the car.

We arrive at the parking lot of the community center ten minutes early. I give my mother a quick peck on the cheek, then I hurry around to the entrance, hoping to get to spend a little time with Daisy. Unfortunately, when I arrive, Alison is the one waiting in front of the doors.

I'm not in the mood for Alison. I didn't sleep well last night. I woke up at two in the morning to the sounds of my parents shouting at each other. Well, my father was shouting and my mother was crying. Then I heard a loud crash and I came running down the stairs. But by then, my father had already retreated into the basement, and my mother was sitting on the sofa, pretending she wasn't sobbing.

It's hard to go back to sleep after something like that. But on the plus side, I didn't see any bruises on her face. I don't know about the rest of her though.

I try not to think about it. It just gets me angry.

When Alison sees me approaching, she gives me one of her classic scowls. "Oh," she says. "It's you . I didn't know you were coming."

"Daisy asked me to come," I say, trying not to sound defensive. Do I really need to justify volunteering at a health fair?

"Wonderful," she says in a flat voice.

Alison has never said a nice word to me in all the time I've known her. Part of me wants to ask her why she dislikes me so much. But there's another part of me that already knows why and doesn't want to hear her say it.

"Well," she finally says, "Daisy will be glad you're here."

"Uh, yeah."

A thought occurs to her and she scrunches up her entire face. "Slug isn't coming, is he?"

"Nah." Slug wouldn't come to something like this if his life depended on it. Even if he had a chance to score with Alison, which he definitely doesn't.

She shudders, emphasizing the pointlessness of Slug's crush on her. I really don't get why he likes her. He keeps saying she looks like a sexy librarian, although I don't understand what's appealing about that, especially to a guy like Slug.

We're standing in front of a large bulletin board. There's a giant flyer advertising guitar lessons. I wonder if Daisy would like it if I learned to play the guitar. Don't girls dig stuff like that? I would do just about anything to impress her.

Alison swivels her head to follow my gaze. At first, I think she's looking at the guitar flyer, but then she says, "They never found her, did they?"

"Who…?" I start to ask, but then I notice what she's looking at. It's one of those old missing signs for Brandi Healey—the runaway. "Oh. Guess not."

"How long has it been?"

I shrug. "I don't know. Four or five months?"

"You knew her, didn't you?"

A weird, cold sensation runs down my spine. "Well, yeah. She was in our class at school."

Alison's mud-brown eyes are trained on my face. "Right. But you used to tutor her in math, didn't you?"

An alarm bell is going off in the back of my head. She's right—Brandi was one of my students until she disappeared. But so what? It's not like anyone blamed me for her running away. I was just the dorky guy helping her pass geometry. The police barely talked to me.

I open my mouth, although I'm not sure what I'm going to say. But I get interrupted by Daisy rushing over to us, her pretty face flushed and happy.

"Tom! Alison!" she says breathlessly. "You came!"

"Of course I came," Alison snips.

Despite Alison's attitude, Daisy wraps her arms around her in a warm hug. After she's done hugging Alison, I get hugged next. And our hug lasts longer. A lot longer. Long enough that I'm grateful when Daisy hands me a volunteer apron to cover up the growing tent in my pants.

"So," Daisy says to me, "I've got to find a job for you, Tom. Do you know how to check blood pressures?"

I don't. "I could learn."

She considers this, but then shakes her head. "Alison, why don't you do the blood pressure checks? I'll have Tom take blood."

Take… what ?

When we enter the building, Daisy snatched up my hand in hers and leads me to a middle-aged woman holding a clipboard. "Hi, Elise," she says to the woman. "I've got a new volunteer to do the diabetic screening."

Elise smiles at me, her pen poised on the clipboard. "That's wonderful. Who do we have here?"

"This is Tom Brewer," she says. "He's my boyfriend."

The smile on my face freezes. Did Daisy just call me her boyfriend ? Am I really her boyfriend? Did I actually make the cut? I'm suddenly doing jumping jacks in my head.

After Elise signs me in, Daisy leads me over to a table with a sign above that says "diabetes screening." There's a set of chairs around the table, and a few small blood sugar monitors.

"So what you need to do," she explains in a weirdly stiff voice, "is you use the Accu Check lancing device to stick people, and then you put a drop of blood on one of the test strips to find out the blood sugar level."

"No problem," I say.

I don't let on how excited I am to embark on this task for the afternoon. I assumed I would be doing something like handing out pamphlets on proper diet and exercise. I never imagined I would be sticking needles into people. I never thought I'd get to do anything like this before medical school.

I've got to start volunteering at health fairs more often.

She grins at me. "I figured you could handle it. Alison gets squeamish, but I know you won't."

"Definitely not."

"Perfect. Just don't tell anyone that you're under eighteen, because technically minors aren't supposed to do blood sugar checks."

It's the first time Daisy has ever suggested doing something immoral like lying, and somehow, it makes me like her even more—and I didn't even know that was possible. I can't stop thinking about her, and when I'm with her, it's almost too much. I like her so much, sometimes I feel like I'm choking.

"By the way, I hope what I said before was okay," she adds, her voice hesitant.

"What you said?"

She shifts between her sneakers. "You know, about you being my boyfriend. I know we never talked about it." She takes a shaky breath. "I just… I don't know, it popped out. But you don't have to be my boyfriend if you don't want to be. Like, it's no big deal."

"No," I say quickly. "I want to be your boyfriend."

Her blue eyes light up. "Really?"

She has no freaking clue. "Really really."

Daisy looks so happy after I say that. She starts humming to herself as she shows me the package of sensor pads and explains how to load them into the monitor. I watch her carefully, partially because it's hard for me to take my eyes off her, and partially because I need to figure out how to do this thing.

After Daisy has shown me everything, she asks, "You got it?"

"Got it." It's not rocket science or anything.

She cocks her head to the side. "Want to practice on me?"

My heart speeds up. Sticking a needle into Daisy's finger? Somehow, that doesn't seem like a great idea. I've been doing everything in my power to avoid thinking about stuff like that. "I don't know…"

"Come on. I can't release you on the public without one practice session."

Except, couldn't it be on anyone but Daisy Driscoll?

But no, this is happening. Daisy sits down in one of the plastic chairs, and she isn't satisfied until I'm sitting next to her. She places her soft hand on the table, and I can only just barely make out the pulsations of her radial artery in her wrist.

"You need to load the lancet in the device," she explains. "You can't reuse them, obviously."

"Uh-huh…"

Daisy instructs me as to what to do, but my hands are shaking so badly it takes me about four tries to load the lancet. It's embarrassing. She actually starts to laugh. "Why are you shaking so much? Don't you want to be a surgeon?"

When I finally get the device loaded, Daisy offers me her index finger. I press the head of the device against the soft pad of her finger. I press the button on the side, and the device jerks as the needle thrusts forward. When I pull it away, a tiny red droplet oozes out of her fingertip.

"Is that enough blood?" I ask.

"You may need to squeeze a little more out. I'm not much of a bleeder."

I hold Daisy's finger between mine, kneading out enough blood to fill the sensor pad. I watch in fascination as the crimson dot grows in size. It's amazing how even though Daisy is the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, her blood looks like everyone else's. The same color, the same consistency.

And if she bled out five pints, she would be dead like anyone else.

Actually, she would probably be dead after even less than five pints. Maybe just three or four. I can just imagine the color draining out of her soft cheeks, the way her body would go limp. Well, she would be limp at first. But then she would eventually stiffen in rigor mortis. I've read all about it.

Daisy would be so easy to kill. It would barely even be a challenge.

"Tom?" Daisy's voice is heavy with concern. "Are you okay? You look really pale."

"I'm fine."

"You're kind of hurting my finger."

As quickly as I can, I get Daisy's blood on the sensor pad. She pulls her hand away from me, a slightly troubled look on her face. The glucose monitor counts down, analyzing the sample of her blood for the sugar level. Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight…

"Do you need a Band-Aid?" I ask her.

She stares at me for a second, then shakes her head. "I'll do it."

She grabs a Band-Aid from the box on the table and uses her other hand to get it in place. It's a bit of a struggle for her, but when I try to help, she pushes me away. I really messed up. I should've lied and said I knew how to take blood pressure. I would've figured it out.

Blood pressure would have been much safer for me.

"Are you sure you feel comfortable doing this station, Tom?" she asks me.

"I'm comfortable."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure ."

The glucose monitor beeps. Daisy's reading is back: 120.

"That's normal if they're not fasting," she explains. "There's a table of numbers right here that you can refer to. If their blood sugar is high, you just refer them to see their doctor as soon as possible."

"Got it." I manage a smile. "It was just first-time jitters. I got it though. I promise."

Daisy looks at me for a long moment, but then her face relaxes. She reaches out to squeeze my arm. "I believe in you."

I wonder if she would still feel the same way if she knew the thoughts that were going through my head as I squeezed the blood out of her finger.