Everything, Everything

by Nicola Yoon

I don’t leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years.

I guess if you’re going to be born with an illness that requires constant care, then it’s good to have your mom as your doctor.

I’m eighteen now. Technically, I’m an adult. I should be leaving home, going off to college. My mom should be dreading empty-nest syndrome. But because of SCID, I’m not going anywhere.

My heart speeds up and I can feel the pulse of it against my ribs. Did he just ask about me? No stranger has just dropped by to visit me before. Aside from my mom, Carla, and my tutors, the world barely knows I exist. I mean, I exist online. I have online friends and my Tumblr book reviews, but that’s not the same as being a real person who can be visited by strange boys bearing Bundt cakes.

“I’m sorry,” she says, without looking up. “I’m OK, Mom. Don’t worry.” For the thousandth time I realize anew how hard my disease is on her. It’s the only world I’ve known, but before me she had my brother and my dad. She traveled and played soccer. She had a normal life that did not include being cloistered in a bubble for fourteen hours a day with her sick teenage daughter.

Tsk tsk tsk

I’m hiding in my usual spot behind the curtain when I suddenly no longer want to hide. I turn on the lights and go back to the window. I don’t even bother to take a deep breath. It’s not going to help. I pull the curtain aside to find that he’s already there in his window, staring right at me. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t wave. Instead, he reaches his arm overhead and pulls the blind closed.

Olly’s rejection has made me feel like a little girl again. It reminded me why I stopped paying attention to the world before.

“I’m not so sure.” “That’s OK. I can be sure for both of us.

Spoiler alert: Boys are savages.

I’m so eager for the book to end so that I can read something else, something happier,

Unbelievably, it’s still intact. What is that thing made of? It’s probably best that we didn’t try to eat it.

He takes a black marker from his pocket and writes on the window: SORRY ABOUT THE OTHER NIGHT. GENERICUSER033@GMAIL.COM

Olly: we’re gonna be friends

Olly: yes. so not cinderella and not rapunzel. snow white then. your evil stepmom put you under a spell so that you can’t leave the house and the world will never know how fair you are

It’s a pain to come see me.

I’ll have to ask Olly the probability that she could miss every single note. Shouldn’t she hit one just by random chance?

I head to the mirror to “fix myself.” I’ve almost forgotten what I look like. I don’t spend a lot of time looking. There’s no need when there’s no one to see you.

“Everything’s a risk. Not doing anything is a risk. It’s up to you.”

He’s the biggest risk I’ve ever taken.

After all the IMs I felt like I knew him, but now with him standing in front of me it doesn’t feel that way at all. He’s taller than I thought and way more muscled, but not bulky. His arms are lean and sculpted and his biceps fill the sleeves of his black T-shirt. His skin is a tanned golden brown. It would be warm to touch.

We are awkward together for a few moments, unsure what to say. The silence would be much less noticeable over IM.

“So, why outer space first?” he asks. I shrug. “I want to see the world, I guess.” “Not what most people mean by that,” he says, smiling.

I might not be in love, but I’m in like. I’m in serious like.

For the first time in a long time, I want more than I have.

So. I don’t check my e-mail. One thing I’m certain of: Wanting just leads to more wanting. There’s no end to desire.

THERE’S NO E-MAIL from Olly. Not one. I even check my spam folder. This shouldn’t bother me and it doesn’t. It doesn’t bother me a lot.

I’ve read many, many books involving heartache. Not one has ever described it as little. Soul-shattering and world-destroying, yes. Little, no.

“Go!” She slaps my knee. “You have enough things to be afraid of. Love can’t kill you.”

Trying not to smile only makes you smile more.

My stomach does a little flip thing that I’m really going to have to get used to, since it seems to be a side effect of seeing him.

What is it about being in the same room with him that makes me so conscious of my body and all its parts? He even makes me aware of my skin.

He sits up again. “Imagine, though, if you could just change the right inputs; you could fix things before they went wrong.” He says this last part quietly, but with the frustration of someone who’s been trying to solve the same unsolvable problem for a long time now. Our eyes meet and he looks embarrassed, like he’s revealed more than he meant to.

I want to say something, not just something, but the perfect thing to comfort him, to make him forget his family for a few minutes, but I can’t think of it. This is why people touch. Sometimes words are just not enough.

He wasn’t quite sure what any of it meant, only that his dad seemed to love Olly and Kara and his mom a little less than he did before. And the less he seemed to love them, the more they tried to become more lovable.

In two weeks my skin will have no memory of Olly’s hand on mine, but my brain will remember. We can have immortality or the memory of touch. But we can’t have both.

Olly: all from holding hands huh. imagine what a kiss would do Madeline:… Madeline: Friends don’t kiss, Olly. Olly: really good ones can

“Is it always like that?” I ask, breathless. “No,” he says. “It’s never like that.”

But it’s not a competition if one person can’t even show up for the event.

It matters that she lives in the same world that Olly does, and I don’t. I never will.

I almost wish I hadn’t met him. How am I supposed to go back to my old life,

How am I supposed to go back to being The Girl Who Reads? Not that I begrudge my life in books. All I know about the world I’ve learned from them. But a description of a tree is not a tree, and a thousand paper kisses will never equal the feel of Olly’s lips against mine.

He’s much too smart to fall for this, but he wants it to be true. He wants it to be true more than he wants the truth.

I turn in his arms, thinking how quickly it’s become my favorite place in the world. Familiar, foreign, comforting, and thrilling all at once.

What would I see in the mirror if I were a normal girl? Would I think that I was too fat or too thin? Would I dislike my hips, my waist, my face? Would I have body-image issues? As it stands, my only issue is that I would gladly trade this body for one that works properly.

I get the feeling that he’s holding himself in check. I’m sure I don’t want him to.

“I’ve never felt about anybody the way I feel about you.” He doesn’t say it quietly. If anything, he says it too loudly and all in a rush, as if the words have been wanting to tumble out for a long time.

Given my lack of choices, what if I’ve just chosen him by default?

Being in love with you is better than the first time. It feels like the first time and the last time and the only time all at once.”

How does he do that with just a look? Do I have the same effect on him?

Everything’s different and the same. I’m still Maddy. Olly’s still Olly. But we’re both more somehow. I know him in a new way. And I feel known, too.