gets mixed up. He is never completely sure of anything he remembers anymore. He was told that after his fever broke he did not even remember his own name. It wasn’t exactly amnesia, but the illness had damaged his brain. He was not the only one to whom this had happened. It happened to many other people as well. It happened to the president of the United States.
Even now there are important things Cole knows he should remember that he cannot remember at all. He has resigned himself to perhaps never remembering them again. He knows he is lucky to know his name, lucky not to have worse damage, lucky to be alive. Though he wishes ardently to learn not to be afraid to die, he cannot help being glad—even if it sometimes makes him feel base—that he survived.
It was his mother, he decides. Both his parents used swear words all the time, but it was more like his mother to swear twice in one sentence.
Pastor Wyatt uses a cream that makes his hands smell like cookie dough.
Cole has nightmares. Some contraption is crushing him, some ferocious animal is about to devour him, an object he cannot live without is lost or taken away. He cries out, doggy-paddling in the dark. Then there is light, impossibly bright, stabbing his eyes. It is always Pastor Wyatt who comes, never Tracy. Because Tracy never says anything about these nights, Cole thinks maybe she sleeps right through his screams and Pastor Wyatt getting out of bed. He knows married people don’t always tell each other everything.
Pastor Wyatt sits with him for a while, stroking his head, praying with him. Jesus is here, he croons. But it is the smell of those hands that soothes Cole most.
In the upstairs bathroom one day, he uncaps every bottle and jar till he finds it. The cookie-dough smell is vanilla. It is one of his secrets, how much he loves that smell, and how he sometimes goes into the bathroom just to take a deep whiff. He believes that if he tells anyone, the smell won’t have the same effect anymore. It is a secret also because he thinks of it as a girly thing. He pictures Les Wilbur and Peter Druzzi jeering.
Les Wilbur. Peter Druzzi. Cole wonders about them, as he wonders about all the other kids from school. He thinks he remembers that Les was sick, but it could have been Pete. Or it could have been both of them. He wonders if they have passed.
Died. Say died.
Ruthie Lind has passed, that he knows for sure. It happened before Cole himself got sick. Ruthie was one of the first to pass. Jade Korsky? He doesn’t know. He and Jade hadn’t been in the same school anymore. The closet, the cherry cough drop—all that was back in the city. Ages ago. When was the last time he’d played hide-and-seek?
His mother and his father, both of whom were afraid of dying, have passed.
The best way to remember them is to remember the good about them.
He knows that Pastor Wyatt is right. He does not know why it is so hard.
ONE OF HIS BIGGEST SECRETS IS THAT he does not like Tracy. It is a guilty secret, because Tracy has always been nice to him. She cleans his room and washes his clothes and asks him every day what he’d like for lunch. She gives him only light chores to do and praises him for the smallest things, like helping to load the dishwasher. (“What a peach!”)
Once, when he accidentally breaks a ceramic bunny he knows she loves, she looks crestfallen. But before he can apologize, she says, “Jesus hates it when we care too much about some silly old thang.”
Tracy is Pastor Wyatt’s second wife. She calls him WyWy, which embarrasses Cole, though not as much as her calling him Daddy, or DaDa, as she also sometimes does.
Pastor Wyatt tells Cole to call him PW.
Cole knows that Tracy is younger than PW, but he does not know how much. She will not say her age. Certainly she is too old to be saying DaDa. But she often talks more like a child than like a grown-up. PW drops his watch and she says, “Did it get hurt?” To her an alarm clock is a “warum.” Her favorite letter is b. She says “bamburger” and “bumbrella.”
Cole finds it strange that PW laughs at Tracy’s mistakes but never corrects them. “We were going full bottle.” “The house was infected