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37 Things I Love (in no particular order)

Henry Holt and Company

Wings

If humans had them, the world might just be perfect.

I LOOK FOR WAYS to stop myself from falling. The air is wide beneath me. Wide and warm. The beam, cold and narrow. This balancing act will end with me spread wingless in the sky, no idea how it happened — maybe I closed my eyes at the very wrong moment. Then I'm tumbling, tearing, down, down ... The scream that rips out of me is so familiar, I recognize its taste before I even hear the sound. My stomach soars into my throat, about to choke me, when I buck and come awake.

The dream. It's only the dream. I clutch the edge of my mattress, which is on the floor. There's nowhere to fall from here, but I feel as if I'm groping the air.

Mom appears in the doorway. She crosses the room with fleet footsteps and puts the washcloth in my hand, cool and soothing. I press it to my face as she settles down beside me.

This is our routine.

Mom scoops the hair away from my cheeks. Her hands are small and swift. She says nothing. She's tried every comfort word already and learned that saying nothing is always safest.

I get that she doesn't know what to do with the dream, or with me. The inside of her slim wrist strokes my cheek, maybe by accident.

It's almost time to get up. Light seeps in under the curtains, and Mom's here, still dressed in her work clothes.

Her fingers sweep through my hair, every strand, repairing the loose ponytail I was sleeping in. By the time she's finished, my grip on the mattress has relaxed. I hold on to her arm, knowing she has both feet on the ground.

I don't like the worried look on her face, or the urgent way she strokes my hand, trying to calm me down.

When I lie back against the pillows, she stops and holds my hands between hers.

* * *

"I'M HAVING FETTUCCINE," Mom says, pressing buttons on the coffeemaker. "What do you want for breakfast?"

It's things like this that make me sure that we will never talk about the dream. Never talk about anything that matters.

"Oatmeal, I think."

"Raisins?"

"Yeah."

Mom stretches high to reach the Quaker Oats carton. It's only the second-highest shelf, but she wobbles on tiptoe, like a beginner ballerina. At times it's hard to believe we're even related. Mom is thin. Rail thin. Dirty-looks-from-passersby thin. Eating-disorder-ad thin, but just by nature. She loses weight when she sneezes. Sometimes I think she loses weight when I sneeze.

Her voice doesn't match her body. Not at all. People never guess she's Laura Baldwin, late-night radio goddess, by looking at her. Mom has this depth-roated voice like hot milk on chocolate. Her voice is her job, her life. Her voice is this amazing gift to the world.

To look or sound like her, all small and throaty, is a different kind of dream. Standing side by side, we seem like strangers.

I head for the coffeepot as Mom shifts to the stove. She starts heating water for my oatmeal. Then she nukes the leftover fettuccine from my dinner last night for herself.

Mom works nights at the radio station, so she cooks me dinner while she cooks herself breakfast, and vice versa. We hardly ever eat the same thing at the same time. According to my guidance counselors, this makes me more likely to be "troubled."

But it works for us. Mom sleeps during the day while I'm at school, so she'll be awake when I get home. If I come home late, she knows I've been to see Dad. Those are the days when she bakes cookies. It's funny, because Mom's not at all domestic like that.

She leaves for work at the radio station late at night. Her on-air shift is midnight to four A.M., and she's always home by six, when I'm getting up for school.

It's five thirty now. In two hours, I'll have to leave for school. Four days until summer vacation, and I'm counting the minutes.

"We need to talk," Mom says, over fettuccine and oatmeal.

"Huh?" My spoon slips, clattering against the bowl.

Mom and I do great at not talking. It's not a hostile thing. There just aren't any words lost between us. Mom saves up her thoughts for when she's on air.

I don't have a whole lot to say. At least not to her.

"I want us to talk," Mom says. "About your father."

I push my bowl away half full.

She's dragging me across the invisible line, straight into the never-ever domain. I am shaken.

"Ellis, I think it's time."

She couldn't be more wrong.

Dad

My hero. In all ways but one, perfect.

I STAND OUTSIDE the building I call ALF, lingering on a path that I'm usually happy to follow. I rarely come here before school, but this is an emergency.

I pace in the grass. In two years, I've never hesitated for a second on the way to visit Dad. Today, I don't know what I'm going to say.

It shouldn't be this hard.

Dad knows everything about me. Every wound and how I got it. Every scar, the ones you can see and the ones you can't.

I tell him things I didn't even know it was possible to say out loud, until I say them and they're out there, in the air. He listens, never judges me. Never says anything that would make me feel bad.

Or good.

Taking a deep breath, I glide in through the main doors of the nursing home, the Assisted Living Facility, aka ALF.

I push open the door to his room. "Hi, Dad."

The machine beside his bed hisses, this eternal sound. That's how he sounds to me now. The voice that I will always remember as his.

I go to the side of his bed and take his hand. I know he's glad to see me. I'm sure he knows I'm here.

When he goes, it'll be me and Mom. Mostly, it will be me alone.

* * *

I WAS THIRTEEN, but I barely remember the construction accident two years ago. Some flashes, but that's it. All I know is, Dad was here one day and not here the next.

Dad owns a construction company; that day he was with the foreman at a building site. He slipped, crossing an I-beam that was suspended seventeen stories up at the time. He only survived because he happened to land on an elevated platform several stories below. He was wearing a hard hat, but he still fell a long way.

The first time Mom took me to the hospital to see him, his head was bandaged and he had casts on an arm and a leg. It must've been soon after it happened. I sat on her lap across the room from the bed, and she whispered in my ear that Daddy was going to be all right.

I don't know if she believed it.

* * *

I SPRAWL AWKWARDLY in the vinyl chair beside Dad's bed. My right leg sticks out straight, while my left knee hooks the armrest. My bare toes rest on the edge of his mattress. My left arm's in my lap, and my right arm trails out of the chair, almost brushing the floor. I rest my neck on the chair back.

This bizarre position is really comfy to me now. This is how I always sit when we talk. I stare at the ceiling; it's just easier for me that way. There's this weird green smudge on one of the ceiling tiles. I've spent hours, maybe days, inventing ways it could have gotten up there. It's a problem I really need to get to the bottom of, before ... I just really need to get to the bottom of it.

"Dad, this whole situation is really fucked up." One of the things I love about Dad is that there's no need to censor myself around him. I can be real.

"Mom wants to turn off your machines. Can you believe that? I told her to shove it. Well, I didn't say 'shove it,' but you know what I mean."

Dad's hand twitches.

"I know, right?" I say. "Like I'd ever let her do that to you. Anyway, she won't do it unless I say it's okay. She promised. So we're fine. You don't have to worry about anything. You're not worried, are you?" Maybe I shouldn't have brought this up.

I look at his face. Eyes closed, lips a little bit parted. Very dry looking. I reach for the jar of Vaseline on the nightstand and smooth some over his mouth.

"Sorry I can't stay," I say, rubbing my hand over the scratchy top of his head. The nurses have buzzed his hair close, and recently. "Mom'll find out if I skip again."

* * *

RUSHING OUT OF ALF, I pass Dad's day nurse, Carmen, in the parking lot.

She raises a brow at me. "Hi, Ellis. Cutting it close for school, eh?" She glances at her watch.

"Whatever."

"You need a ride?"

"Nah, bus," I say, waving toward the stop. Who cares if I'm late for school?

Carmen looks me up and down, repositions her bag on her shoulder. Her scrubs are a bright, friendly purple. "Oh, c'mon." She shrugs. "Shift doesn't start for ten minutes. I'll drive you."

I dutifully follow her to her car, a beat-up two-door sedan with low bucket seats. We ease in, and she starts the engine, zipping right out of the space as she's snapping her seat belt into place. I love that she doesn't comment when I don't buckle mine.

"You sure this won't make you late?"

"No worries," she says, artfully gunning across four lanes of traffic to catch the right turn arrow. It yellows as we sail on through.

"Well, thanks."

"Morning visit," she says, eyes on the road.

"Anything going on?"

Pause. "Was it you who cut his hair?" I ask.

Carmen makes a face. "Too short, right?" "Definitely."

"So much for my second career as a hairstylist." She dials up the volume on the radio. "I love this song." It's a croony love ballad that makes me want to gag even while I hum along. We rock, heads bobbing to the beat, until the car pulls into the bus lane at my high school. I hop out, minutes to spare before the bell rings.

"Catch you later," Carmen says.

"Yeah, later."

Colin

We both cling to our obsessions.

THE LAST DAYS of school are the most painful. I can practically touch the edge of that summer euphoria — the ice-cream-truck, bike-to-the-beach, sleep-till-noon liberation high that comes on the heels of the rising heat and humidity. Close, but not close enough.

I slam my locker, wiping sweat from my brow as I meander down the hallway toward whatever is first. Social studies?

My skin is slick with the inevitable perspiration. The sun steams us through the windows, turning our no-AC classrooms into greenhouses. The teacher has two fans pointed toward her desk, stacked textbooks tamping down all her piles of papers. Great. She'll be looking windblown, talking over the hum, while the rest of us swelter.

Abby is already there, sprawled in a seat at the center of the room, working her electricity on poor Colin. Short and wide, with comically thick glasses, Colin Conner hovers on the verge of any number of unpopular groups: nerd, geek, reject, loser, loner. But he has a quiet power that has allowed him to rise to be one of the in-crowd. Strings attached.

Abby smiles up at him amid a feline stretch of her perfectly shaped arms. Colin's cheeks are flushed red, his armpits stained with sweat, but he's rapidly fanning Abby's exposed throat with a worn notebook.

"Oh, Colin," I say to this pathetic specimen. "Have you no pride?"

His fanning arm works faster than ever. Colin has the biceps of a Greek god and the belly of a Buddha. We're not sure how such a quirk of physique is possible, but Abby exploits it at every opportunity.

She grins at me and reaches beneath her desk for a second notebook. Colin automatically takes it in his hand and begins to fan me, too.

It feels damn good, but I roll my eyes.

"Colin, get a life." I grab the notebook from him and smack him on the back of the head. The notebook lands with a splat on Abby's desk. She shrugs, closes her eyes, and leans back into her personal wind.

Colin shoots me a dirty look. I set my books down on the desk next to Abby. Colin has already claimed the one on the other side. I sigh. I love this kid. He's wonderfully brilliant and equally deranged, but he has a profound weakness: Abby. He can't resist her, and she knows it.

I grab for the other notebook, temporarily freeing Colin from his chains.

"Hey," Abby complains. "What gives?"

"Fan yourself," I tell her.

Colin mops the sweat from his brow. He catches my eye and shrugs one shoulder at me — half grateful and half annoyed.

"Colin doesn't mind, do you, hon?"

"Of course not," he pants. "What are friends for?"

* * *

COLIN AND I are the first to reach our lunch table. We sit at the end of one of the long rectangular tables, mostly talking to each other even as the table fills up with the rest of our group. Sometimes Abby sits right next to us; other days she holds court more toward the middle of things. Last year I tried to instigate a move for just the three of us to one of the small round tables nearby, but Abby said those are for the losers without many friends. Colin even came down on my side for a while, saying if we played it right, we could make it a status thing: Look who's cool enough to sit at Abby Duncan's table. Turns out, what Abby loves is not the exclusivity, but the crowd, and where Abby goes, Colin follows. So we're back. It doesn't make much difference to me, in the end. Sitting in silence among friends is better than sitting alone.

I pick at my à la carte salad, watching Colin watch Abby approach us. She stops by the jocks' table, tossing her perfect caramel hair and smiling in what Colin once called "a kissable way."

When Mom finally let me straighten my hair last year, I practiced tossing my hair like Abby for hours. I've got it down now, but it's a skill I rarely have the opportunity to use.

Dennis North, the wrestling team captain (talk about the body of a Greek god ...), actually stands up to flirt with Abby. She tips back her head as they laugh, and Dennis manages to touch her shoulder, stomach, and ass before the joke has run its course.

Colin toys with his fork. Usually, he's not one to delay any kind of ingestion.

"You okay?"

He can't tear his eyes away. "Sure. Yeah."

We figure Abby to be the second most popular girl in the sophomore class. She's standing there in a ragged sweatshirt and simple jeans, but every jock at the table is checking her out. She's that girl.

Abby wants to be everywhere at once, it seems to me sometimes. For Colin and me, there's nothing to do but wait for her to circle through our midst. He lives for these moments, and it's written all over his face.

"It's going to happen one day. Me and her," Colin declares, plowing into the Salisbury steak on his tray.

"Hmmm." I don't have the heart to tell him that Abby doesn't see him. Not really. Even if he had a chance, it wouldn't be good for him. He would be trampled, and he'd go down smiling.

"My mom wants to do it," I tell him. "To end it."

I surprise myself, blurting it out like that. I hadn't meant to tell anyone. Not yet.

Colin's chewing slows. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." I do feel a bit relieved, having it out there. I tear at my lettuce slowly, still not hungry, but it feels like the breaths I'm taking are deeper. More calm.

It's funny that it's Colin I can talk to. We've only been friends since mid-freshman year, and Dad had already been in ALF for several months at that point. Colin wasn't around when the accident happened, doesn't know the whole story firsthand, only the things I've told him. There's a certain look he gets on his face, though — a look that says he knows what it feels like to hope for something that's not even remotely in his hands. I see it when he's thinking about Abby.

"Wow." He's paying attention to me now. For the moment, Abby is forgotten. "What are you going to do?" he says.

I shrug. "You got any ideas?"

"Wait and see. Maybe it'll blow over again." Colin, the optimist.

I draw my fingers through my hair. "Not this time. It's different."

"How do you know?"

"She sat me down to talk."

Colin raises his brows. "And you talked?" Colin knows what it's like at my house, though I still haven't told him about the dream.

"No, I kinda stormed out. But she said —"

Abby slaps her tray down across from me. "He didn't even ask me to the dance. Can you believe it? After all that." She drops into the chair.

I blink toward her, untangling my mind from my own problems. "What?"

She waves her hand, impatient. "Dennis. God, he's so dense. I even told him I'm free next Friday, and nothing. Can you believe that?" With Abby, there's always lunchtime drama. Today, I'm really not in the mood. I let my forehead drop into my hands.

"The graduation dance, remember?" Abby persists, prodding me with her fist. "I'm dying for him to ask me. And we have to get you a date, too."

"We're sophomores," I remind her. "Don't get your hopes up."

Abby rolls her eyes.

"Maybe you should ask him out," Colin offers, picking at his slice of soggy Jell-O cake. I slide my glance toward him. He is the best friend either of us could ask for. Sometimes I don't know why Abby and I bother with each other.

"Yeah, like that's going to happen," Abby said. "Guys are supposed to chase me."

"He wouldn't say no, if that's what you're worried about," Colin says, suddenly scarfing the cake. He defends himself with helpful comments. Today, it's making me sick.

Abby flips her hair. "Of course he wouldn't say no. That's not the point."

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Excerpted from 37 Things I Love (in no particular order) by Kekla Magoon. Copyright © 2012 Kekla Magoon. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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