Page 113 of What You Wish For

“Am I still asleep?” I asked Duncan.

He smiled. “If you are, then I am, too.”

“Why is this happening?”

Duncan said, “The teachers asked if we could have a bubble party during homeroom.”

“And you said yes?”

“I said yes.”

“You never say yes.”

“This time, I did.”

“But… why?”

Duncan looked away and surveyed the kids. Then he gave a little shrug. “I don’t know. You convinced me.”

“What—the other day?” I asked. “How, exactly? All we did was almost die!”

He shrugged. “I guess you reminded me of something. Something important. And that was enough.”

“What did I remind you of?”

Duncan lifted a bubble wand toward his lips and blew a steady stream of bubbles in my direction. Then, when the wand was empty, he lowered it, shifted his gaze to my eyes, and said, “You reminded me what it felt like to be happy.”

And that, right there, was the tipping point.

The rest of the spring semester just floated by on a cloud of pleasantness.

Babette and I felt like maybe we had done it. Maybe we had fixed him. Or, more specifically, maybe we and six weeks of twice-a-week therapy had fixed him. Could it have been that easy? That fun? He really did seem a lot better.

He didn’t turn back into Old Duncan, exactly. He still wore his suit, still coiffed his hair, still stayed serious a lot of the time.

But there was warmth to him now. He let himself give in to play. He gave in to crazy socks. He accepted that Chuck Norris was never meant to be a security dog and started letting the kids pet him.

He let himself relax. A little.

There was no hope of resisting him after that, and I let him take my heart completely hostage. I settled into a comfortable-uncomfortable life of pining. I never found the nerve to ask him if the things he’dsaid on drugs had been true, and he, of course, never brought it up. He continued doing Babette’s daily tasks, and I joined him if he needed a partner, and he seemed to actively like my company… but he never tried to kiss me again or take anything to another level.

It told myself it was fine. I tried to focus on the upsides.

Babette was doing better—and making (mostly failed) attempts to learn how to cook. Alice—her fiancé still deployed until mid-summer—joined us lots of nights. We played board games at Babette’s kitchen table, and gossiped about our coworkers, and analyzed Duncan’s progress.

It was good to settle into a little holding pattern, I decided. It gave me some time to practice self-care. That seizure that had been threatening never did come, and I wanted to keep it that way. I meditated, took walks by the water, and got plenty of sleep. It started to feel like maybe things could find a way to be okay.

Until one day Tina Buckley showed up in the library. My library.

“I need to talk to you,” she said. “It’s about Clay.”

I stopped.

“He’s having trouble with his reading.”

This got my attention. Sweet Clay, with his big, owl-like glasses, was one of my most voracious, enthusiastic readers. I could not imagine him having trouble with his reading. With Clay, in fact, the challenge was finding enough books to keep him busy.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

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