My Life After Now - By Jessica Verdi Page 0,32

your HIV result is positive.”

I dropped the phone in my lap and brought my forehead to the steering wheel.

The hope I’d been clinging to since three o’clock yesterday morning evaporated.

I waited for the nausea, for the panic, for the demons’ resurgence. I waited for the streak of denial, for the compulsion to lash out in violence. I waited for any perceptible reaction at all, but nothing happened.

And then I realized. Nothing was happening because inside, I was already dead.

“Lucy?” Diane’s tinny distant voice was calling to me. “Are you there?”

I took the length of five deep, long breaths.

“Hello? Lucy?”

Slowly, I picked up the phone and brought it back to my ear. “I’m here.”

“What are you feeling right now?”

“Nothing,” I said truthfully.

“It’s important for you to understand that with proper medical care and support, people with HIV can lead very productive lives,” she said.

“You have to say that.”

“I don’t. I say it because it’s true. I’ve been doing this a long time, Lucy. I know many people with HIV who live quite normally.”

“Well, I’m not one of them.”

“You can be,” she said.

“No. I can’t.” My voice was rising. “You don’t understand. How am I supposed to care about normal things like high school when I’m slowly being killed from the inside out? How am I supposed to be normal when the first person I told ran for the hills the second the words came out of my mouth?”

“I’m very sorry to hear that happened to you. But I’m sure you have many people in your life who will support you. A trusted friend or family member, maybe?”

“No. I’m not telling anyone else.”

“Having a reliable support system in place is a key factor in living a full, happy life, Lucy. I’d encourage you to reconsider. In the meantime, we have many group meetings here at the clinic, and I’d also really like to schedule a one-on-one in-person appointment with you.”

The dim ring of the bell sounded from within the school’s walls.

“I have to go,” I said quickly, grateful for an excuse to end the conversation. “Bye.”

“Wait, Lucy—”

I hung up the phone. The normal world was calling for me.

17

Sixteen Going on Seventeen

Lucy Moore as I had always known her ceased to exist. Instead, I was Mercutio. Rehearsals were my only link to the living. On stage, I got to be someone else entirely. I didn’t have to be me anymore, and I craved that time away from myself. So I was able to keep my promise to Andre, and rehearsals continued to go well.

When I wasn’t at rehearsal, I played the guitar. When I was immersed in a song, the music escorted my pain away, if only temporarily.

And I don’t know where it came from, but something amazing happened—I started writing songs. I’d never written my own stuff before. Whenever I’d tried, the only thing that came out were other people’s songs long ago stenciled on my brain. I’d begun to think there was nothing original inside me at all. But suddenly, I was filling notebook upon notebook with melodies and lyrics.

It was Friday night and I was alone, of course. My little desk lamp with the purple shade cast its dull light over my room. Dad and Papa were out at an art show (having realized their little library book enchantment had worn off, they’d tried to get me to go with them, insisting it would do me good to get out of the house, but I’d just kept strumming my guitar absentmindedly and eventually they gave up and left me alone), and Lisa had left shortly after they had, though I didn’t bother asking her where she was going. I was sitting in my favorite spot on my floor, my back against the bedframe, guitar in my lap. I played for hours, the six strings combining with my voice, the sound so big the four walls of my bedroom couldn’t contain it—it spilled under the door and out the windows so that the only sound in the world was this music.

I was so lost in it, playing so intensely, that it was a long time before I noticed that my fingers had actually started to bleed.

The song cut off and I stared at my bloody hand. I probably should have run to the bathroom to clean and bandage them right away, but I was mesmerized, watching the little red beads pulse and ooze from my fingertips. The blood spilled from my fingers, pooled around my cuticles, stained my nails, collected slowly