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Olly’s ghost girl again. I press my hands into the porcelain of the sink. I can’t lift my eyes to the mirror because I won’t recognize the girl looking back at me. “I have to know for sure,” I growl, using someone else’s voice. “Give me a day,” she says, and tries to pull me into a hug, but I don’t let her. I don’t want comforting or protecting. I just want the truth.
PROOF OF LIFE ALL I HAVE to do is go to sleep—quiet my mind, relax my body, and go to sleep. But no matter how I will it, sleep just will not come. My brain is an unfamiliar room and trapdoors are everywhere. Carla’s voice loops in my head. Maybe she never recovered from what happened. What does that even mean? I look at the clock. 1:00 A.M. Seven hours until Carla comes back. We’re going to do some blood tests and send them off to a SCID specialist that I found. Seven hours. I close my eyes. I open them again. 1:01 A.M. I can’t wait for answers to come to me. I have to find them. It takes all my effort to walk instead of run to my mom’s office. I’m sure she’s asleep, but I can’t risk waking her. I grab the handle and for one horrible moment I think the door will be locked and I will have to wait and I cannot wait. But the handle turns and the room lets me right in like it’s been waiting for me, like it’s been expecting me. Her office is perfectly normal, not too neat, not too messy. There are no obvious signs of an unwell mind. Crazy, jumbled, chaotic writings don’t cover every inch of the wall. I walk over to the big desk at the center of the room. It has a built-in file cabinet, so I start there. My hands are shaking, not a tremor, but actual shaking, like an earthquake that only I feel. My mom is meticulous and extravagant in her record keeping. She’s kept everything and it takes me over an hour to get through just a handful of files. There are receipts for big and small purchases, lease agreements, tax documents, warranties, and instruction manuals. She’s even kept movie ticket stubs. Finally, toward the back I find what I’m looking for: a thick red folder labeled Madeline. I pull it out carefully and make myself a space on the floor. The record of my life starts with her pregnancy. I find prenatal vitamin recommendations, sonograms, and photocopies of each visit to the doctor. I find a handwritten index card with two check boxes—one for boy and the other for girl. Girl is checked. My birth certificate is here. As I search through, it doesn’t take me long to realize that I was a sickly baby. I find pediatric sick-visit reports for rashes, allergies, eczema, colds, fevers, and two ear infections, all before I was four months old. I find receipts for lactation and infant-sleep consultants. When I’m about six months old, just one month after my dad and brother have died, I’m checked into a hospital with Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV). I don’t know what that is and I make a mental note to google it. It was severe enough to keep me in the hospital for three days. And then her record keeping becomes less meticulous. I find a printout about RSV from
- Page 159 and 160: three meals and two snacks exactly
- Page 161 and 162: eathed the same filtered air for so
- Page 163 and 164: GUIDE TO HAWAIIAN REEF FISH
- Page 165 and 166: I’m sure I don’t want him to. *
- Page 167 and 168: ZACH BACK AT THE hotel, Olly calls
- Page 169 and 170: Do you have my daughter? Is she OK?
- Page 171 and 172: THE MURPHY BED IT’S LATE AFTERNOO
- Page 173 and 174: ALL THE WORDS I COME AWAKE slowly,
- Page 175 and 176: MADELINE’S DICTIONARY in•fi•n
- Page 177 and 178: THIS TIME OLLY SMILES. HE will not
- Page 179 and 180: “Do you believe it?” he asks.
- Page 181 and 182: THE END SOMEONE HAS PUT me in a hot
- Page 183 and 184: My. Heart. Stops.
- Page 185 and 186: RELEASED, PART ONE
- Page 187 and 188: READMITTED MY MOM HAS transformed m
- Page 189 and 190: RELEASED, PART TWO Wednesday, 6:56
- Page 191 and 192: Madeline: but mine isn’t
- Page 193 and 194: GEOGRAPHY I’M IN AN endless field
- Page 195 and 196: LIFE IS SHORT SPOILER REVIEWS BY MA
- Page 197 and 198: PRETENDING I’M STRONGER WITH each
- Page 199 and 200: I’m trying not to focus on Olly,
- Page 201 and 202: FIVE SYLLABLES A MONTH LATER, just
- Page 203 and 204: HIS LAST LETTER IS HAIKU From: gene
- Page 205 and 206: FOR MY EYES ONLY From: Dr. Melissa
- Page 207 and 208: question if I have spoken after all
- Page 209: IDENTITY CARLA’S BARELY IN the do
- Page 213 and 214: have SCID?” Her concern morphs in
- Page 215 and 216: I should feel compassion. But that
- Page 217 and 218: THE VOID A UNIVERSE THAT can wink i
- Page 219 and 220: “But my heart stopped.” “Yes.
- Page 221 and 222: ONE WEEK A.D. I HAVE MY first weekl
- Page 223 and 224: THREE WEEKS A.D. MY MOM TRIES to en
- Page 225 and 226: FIVE WEEKS A.D. I ORDER REAL plants
- Page 227 and 228: MADELINE’S MOM
- Page 229 and 230: lot left.” We go back inside. I f
- Page 231 and 232: THE END IS THE BEGINNING IS THE END
- Page 233 and 234: FUTURE PERFECT #2 From: Madeline F.
- Page 235 and 236: FORGIVENESS I STARE OUT the window
- Page 237 and 238: THIS LIFE EVEN AT 9 A.M. on a Satur
- Page 239: choices you make and all the choice
- Page 242 and 243: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS YOU ARE TRULY a tho
Olly’s ghost girl again. I press my hands into the porcelain of the sink. I can’t lift my eyes<br />
to the mirror because I won’t recognize the girl looking back at me.<br />
“I have to know for sure,” I growl, using someone else’s voice.<br />
“Give me a day,” she says, and tries to pull me into a hug, but I don’t let her. I don’t<br />
want comforting or protecting.<br />
I just want the truth.