The Someday Suitcase Read online

“Something hurt?” he says. He puts a hand on Danny’s forehead and one on his back, shifting mine aside and taking my place.

  “Everything hurts, and I don’t want Clover to leave,” Danny says. He puffs his lower lip out a little, so that he looks more pathetic, and his eyes go big and wide.

  I’m pretty sure he’s faking it, but I get sad hearing him say everything hurts anyway. I don’t want anything to hurt.

  “I think you’ll be okay here with me for a few moments,” Mr. Purvis says. “We don’t want Clover missing class, do we?”

  Danny’s eyes flit to my face, and there’s a hint of a smirk. He’s trying to help me get out of class, and that would be nice, except he’s forgetting that I have math next and I love math. We’ve been learning about statistics, and we get to do group experiments with coin tossing and dice rolling and talking about baseball. I might even like baseball.

  My teacher, Mr. Yetur, teaches everything but science, art, music, and gym. He has a beard and wears Muppet ties and gets marker on his nose most days. I think math is his favorite thing to teach. I don’t want to miss it.

  I don’t want to be in the nurse’s office while everyone else is recording heads-and-tails ratios in spiral notebooks. I have my awesome green pen and a newfound love of the number seven, now that I’ve started drawing a fancy line through its middle.

  It’s hard to want two things at once: to be in math class and to be around my best friend.

  “I really feel better when Clover’s with me,” Danny says. “It helps. Can’t she stay?”

  Mr. Purvis sighs and nods and turns his back to us. Danny grins when Mr. Purvis isn’t looking, proud of doing me a huge favor. I try to smile back, but everything in the nurse’s office smells like rubbing alcohol and cough syrup.

  I watch the clock for Danny’s mother to arrive. When she finally gets there, she looks paler than Danny.

  “He’s okay,” I say right away to try to make the nervous look on her face go away.

  “We’re going to go to the special doctor your pediatrician recommended,” Helen says like she hasn’t heard me at all. I didn’t know about any special doctors. “We’re going right away. Do you need help getting up?” She puts her hand on Danny’s forehead, and I take a step out the door to make room for her.

  “I think it’s bronchitis,” I say. I try to say it like the doctor would: in a serious voice with no question mark on the end.

  “We’ll see, Clover,” Helen says, not looking at me at all.

  Danny looks at the ground.

  “I can’t walk,” he mumbles. “I’m tired.”

  One minute ago Danny seemed fine, but now he’s so tired his eyes look droopy, like they do when we have sleepovers and try to stay up until the sun rises.

  “I think I need someone to carry me,” he says. I look to see if he’s smirking again, to see if this is another Danny plan. He’s blushing. His arms looks floppy and he’s not fidgeting at all.

  “I’ve got this, Helen,” Mr. Purvis says. Danny’s skinny and Mr. Purvis lifts him up easily, but it looks all wrong anyway. Ten-year-old boys aren’t supposed to be carried around like babies.

  I watch them go, Danny’s mom click-clacking down the hall and Danny with his arms around the nurse’s neck. Soon the hallways will be full of kids and teachers and jokes and dropped pencils and the smell of gum.

  But not now.

  Right now it’s me, alone.

  6

  The next day, Ms. Mendez writes with red marker on the dry-erase board.

  SCIENCE FAIR

  Danny and I have been waiting for our own science fair since we started attending it in first grade. Danny’s always wanted to build a robot and I’ve always wanted to do a project on how plants grow, and I figured we’d find a way to meet in the middle: a plant-growing robot; a robot that is actually a plant; a project on how to teach a robot to garden.

  “It’s time to pick partners. You’re also welcome to work on your own. Proposals are due on Monday,” Ms. Mendez says. She doesn’t have to explain much about the fair, because we already know everything there is to know about it. It’s a huge all-school event that only the fifth graders participate in. The rest of the school attends, wandering around the crowded cafeteria and the playground, where all the exhibits are set up. Everyone at school votes on their favorite project, and someone wins Crowd Favorite and someone else wins Best in Show from the judges, and there are big trophies and shiny ribbons and a whole day off from the sticky classroom.

  “What if our partner is out today?” I ask. Elsa and Levi look at me with sad eyes. Marco sighs like he’s already tired of my sick best friend.

  “She means Danny!” Brandy says, and the rest of the class giggles, because it’s really pretty easy to giggle at Brandy.

  “Why don’t we talk about it after class?” Ms. Mendez says. Her lips are pulled tighter than usual, and it feels like something’s wrong.

  “Can I get an extension, though?” I ask. It’s not like me. Usually I listen to what the teacher says and stay quiet. Danny’s the one who asks lots of questions and interrupts and gets notes on his report card about being disruptive. I get notes about not speaking up enough. “I need an extension so I have time to talk to Danny about what we’re going to do.”

  “We’ll talk after class,” Ms. Mendez says again. And I can see it in her eyes, in the way her hands grip the marker, in the way she watches the class watch me—she doesn’t think Danny will be better in time to be my science fair partner. She doesn’t think he’s okay.

  I sink back into my seat.

  I miss Danny so much I can barely hear Ms. Mendez or see Elsa mouthing Are you okay? to my left.

  “Your project should be something you can get passionate about,” Ms. Mendez says. She’s sneaking glances at me to make sure I’m okay. I’m not. “Scientists care about their subjects. They fall in love with their work. Scientists aren’t afraid to feel. They choose something to study that makes their hearts beat and their toes tickle and their minds whir. Be scientists.”

  I take halfhearted notes. The letters droop and slant down. They won’t stay on the lines of my notebook. I can’t think of anything to be passionate about without Danny there to push me along. Danny is in charge of passion and I’m in charge of reason, and that’s how things work best.

  I’ve lost track of what makes my heart beat and my toes tickle. My mind is not whirring at all. It’s frozen.

  “You want to join our group?” Elsa asks. “We’re going to do a project on the weather. We’re going to figure out how to predict when the rain’s coming.”

  I think of how me and Danny and Jake are always trying to predict the exact hour of the day that the afternoon shower is going to come.

  “I’m really good at the weather,” I say. “I always know when the rain’s coming.”

  “Then we should test you,” Levi says. If Elsa said it, it would be a joke, but coming from Levi, it’s a real suggestion. He adjusts his glasses and looks at me very, very closely, and I think he honestly wouldn’t mind doing a science experiment on me.

  “Maybe,” I say, shrugging. I shouldn’t shrug, because it’s so nice that Levi and Elsa want to include me at all, but I feel all shrug-y and I can’t seem to shake it. “Do you think you’re allowed to do a science fair project on a person?”

  “Sure!” Elsa says, and she’s getting a little giggly at the idea of doing a project about me, and I’m wondering how I can tell Danny that I had to join another group because Ms. Mendez, my favorite teacher in the world, wouldn’t let me wait for him to get better.

  And that’s when I think of it.

  Danny.

  If Elsa and Levi can do a project on me, I can do a project on Danny.

  Ms. Mendez said to pick something you care about, something that you’re desperate to know more about, something you’re passionate about.

  That’s Danny.

  “Science is about the need, not the want, to answer life’s big questions,” Ms.
Mendez says. She’s pacing the room, watching us come up with ideas and shift into pairs and trios.

  My heart lifts way up high—all the way through my throat and head and to the ceiling and beyond until it’s up in the sky and landing all the way back with Danny in his bed at home, sad and sick and alone.

  “You know what?” I say to Levi and Elsa. “I think I’m going to work alone. I’m going to do a project on Danny.”

  Elsa’s face slides into disappointment that is trying to be something else. “You can’t do a project with Danny,” she says. “He’s not here.”

  “Not with Danny,” I say. “About him. I’m going to find out what’s wrong and I’m going to find out what will make him better.”

  Levi adjusts his glasses again. “Isn’t that what doctors are for?” he says.

  “I know Danny better than the doctors do,” I say. “If science is about caring, I’m the best scientist to do this.”

  I nod to myself and Elsa swallows hard, and I know they don’t believe that I can fix my best friend; but I know that I have to.

  Ms. Mendez reaches me last, after hearing about Levi and Elsa’s weather project. Elsa waves her hands around, talking about the thunderstorms, and I think she’ll have a really successful project, because it’s obvious she cares so much.

  “And what about you, Clover?” Ms. Mendez says. “I know you were hoping to do this with Danny, but I talked to his mom after everything yesterday, and it sounds like he might not be able to work on a science project this year. But I bet he’ll assist you if he starts to feel a little better. How does that sound?”

  “Actually, Ms. Mendez,” I say, taking a big, preparing-myself breath, “I’m going to make my science fair project all about Danny.”

  Ms. Mendez’s whole face wrinkles up, but she doesn’t say no.

  A PERFECT DAY WITH DANNY

  It’s December three years ago, and we’re watching winter movies.

  “Why can’t it be like that?” Danny says. He gets close to the TV, so close his nose almost touches the screen, which is how Danny watched TV when we were littler.

  “Like what?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. I want mittens and hot chocolate and big tall boots,” Danny says. “I want to make a snowman.”

  “We have mittens!” I say. “Or my dad does.”

  Danny pauses the movie right on a shot of a woman in a red scarf sticking out her tongue to catch snowflakes. “Where?” he asks.

  We head into the garage, where Dad keeps his winter wear. He has to have all kinds of things for when he gets an assignment to drive up north during the winter. He keeps it all in a big box in the garage marked Winter, like you could find the actual season inside.

  Danny opens the box, thinking winter will pop out like a jack-in-the-box, and he’s disappointed for a half second to see only a puffy coat and some mismatched gloves and two bulky scarves. Then he remembers he’s Danny and he can make anything exciting.

  “Better get ready for the big storm,” he says. He pulls a gray wool hat over his ears. It has a pom-pom on top, and I poke at it. He throws a red striped scarf around my neck and lets me wear the bulky blue coat. It feels like a sleeping bag. He pulls an itchy sweater over his T-shirt and drags me outside, even though it’s seventy-five degrees out there.

  He makes a pretend snowball and throws it at me. I screech, like something cold has hit my face. I don’t know what snow feels like, but Dad once said it was a little like Italian ice, so that’s what I picture. I lean down and make my own fake snowball, bigger and colder than Danny’s. I wind up and throw it, hard. He leaps when it pretend-hits his neck.

  We go back and forth, making bigger and bigger fake snowballs until we are making them so large we have to roll them instead of throw them.

  “Is this what winter is like?” I ask him.

  “I think so,” he says, and we are both beaming from the newness. “I think it’s like this, but better.”

  It’s hard to imagine anything better than the way we feel right now—silly and sparkling and alive.

  I barely notice how hot it is in my sleeping-bag coat. I barely notice that people are looking at us as they drive by. A few of them honk, and Danny and I wave like we’re celebrities and not kooky kids pretending to be somewhere else.

  “We’re going to do this for real someday,” I say, even though it feels almost real now.

  Danny throws another fake snowball at my face. I screech like it’s hit me in the nose.

  “Promise?” Danny asks.

  “We’ll find winter,” I say. “I promise.”

  A car slows down, and inside are people making pinched faces at us—trying to tell us how weird we are.

  I feel bad for them, that they will never have as much fun as Danny and I do.

  7

  Danny has Band-Aids on the insides of his elbows. They’re Superman ones, but I know Danny doesn’t even like Superman.

  Jake loves Superman. When he sees Danny’s elbows, he goes crazy.

  “Can I have the Band-Aids? You don’t need them, right? I can have them?” Jake peels one off Danny’s right elbow and I cover my eyes. We’ve been out on the lawn, the three of us, for an hour, but so far all we’ve talked about is what shape we think each cloud is and what time we think the daily Florida rain shower is going to come.

  “Jake, stop! Gross!” I say, covering my eyes, but Danny only laughs.

  “Hey, if Jake wants my old dirty Band-Aid, he can have it. I’m not even bleeding anymore,” Danny says. “I don’t have any blood left anyway. The doctors took it all.”

  He’s saying it all like a joke, but it doesn’t feel like a joke to me. I spread my fingers apart and look at Danny’s skin that’s been exposed. It’s bruised yellow, and there’s a little red dot in the middle like a target.

  It looks like it hurts.

  “Did they find anything?” I ask. Danny shrugs. “Are you coming back to school next week?” He shrugs again. It’s been a long week at school without him. Most days it’s been hard to even talk to him—he’s busy with doctors or he’s too tired to come to the door, or Helen’s worried that I might make him sicker, somehow, with my germs.

  “That means no,” I say.

  I don’t tell him about the science fair, or what I’ve decided to do my project on.

  Jake puts the Band-Aid on his jeans, trying to make it stick. It’s not going well, but Jake’s not one to give up. Plus, he loves anything Danny gives him. Jake is maybe the only other person in the world who loves Danny as much as I do.

  “Can I keep it forever?” Jake asks, and I smirk, but Danny gives a serious nod. They’re both in wrinkled shirts and sneakers that used to be white but are now gray. They both have tan shoulders and burnt tips of their noses, all shiny and red like little Rudolphs.

  I get filled up with a warm, gooey, inside-of-a-chocolate-chip-cookie feeling.

  “I hope I’m never so sick they have to take all my blood,” Jake says, because Jake will say anything in his matter-of-fact voice. He doesn’t notice the way I shiver in my skin from the comment. The warm-cookie feeling seeps out of me and I need answers, before I can relax.

  “Come on, Danny. Tell me the truth,” I say. “Did the doctors figure anything out?”

  “Not yet. They said they need to run more tests. They said sometimes it’s tricky to figure out what exactly is going on inside someone’s body,” Danny says. “I’m going to Tampa. There’s a guy there.”

  “A guy?” I ask. “Tampa??” Danny’s eyes are clouding over, and I know that means he doesn’t want to talk anymore, but I don’t care. And it doesn’t matter that Jake is jiggling his knees and I know that means he might throw a tantrum any moment. Once I want an answer to a question, nothing else matters to me. Dad says that’s why I’m so good at school, and Mom says I take after her and I’ll have to watch out.

  I think I just care about stuff more than other people must.

  “I want to go to Tampa!” Jake says. He clings to
Danny, wrapping his little hands around Danny’s skinny arm. He must do it too tightly, because Danny winces and unwinds Jake’s fingers.

  Jake turns his back on Danny. He doesn’t like being told not to do something. Usually the two of them can wrestle and tear at each other’s skin and hair and yelp and growl for hours. My mom calls it rabble-rousing, but there’s not going to be any rabble-rousing this afternoon. I’ve never had blood taken before, so I didn’t know it would hurt after, and the realization makes me sad. I want to wrap Danny’s arm up in cotton balls and old blankets and everything soft.

  “They want to do some other tests,” Danny says, because he knows if he doesn’t explain something about Tampa, I’ll only keep asking more and more questions. “Like X-rays but more intense or something. I don’t know.”

  “How can you not know?” I look around for something to write on, but of course there’s nothing out here but our sad plastic kiddie pool and an old-fashioned sprinkler Mom lets us run around in when it’s really hot, and two swings and one plastic slide that I’m too big for now, and our shared palm tree watching over us. I can see a little ways into Danny’s yard, where there’s a big rock we like to hide behind when there’s something disgusting for dinner. There’s a time capsule we buried beneath the ground by the rock, but no spare paper or pens. “Let me run inside and get a notebook,” I say. “I’ll take notes.”

  “It’s not school, Clover,” Danny says. He tries to tickle Jake, but Jake’s staying good and mad. Danny tries to tickle me, but I need answers, not giggles. I need to start solving the problem of What’s Wrong with Danny so we can start answering the question When Can Danny Come Back to School with Me?

  It’s bigger than the science fair. It’s bigger than anything I’ve ever done before.

  “What exactly are they testing?” I ask, even though I know Danny wants to talk about something else. I’m not letting him get away with it, though. “Why are they freaking out?”

  “I keep having weird little symptoms. So I guess they’re testing everything. Blood. Lungs. Heart. Skin. My liver and kidneys. Everything. Mom wants me to get acupuncture, but Dad says it’s expensive, and I say the last thing I need is more needles.”