“Don’t mind if I do.” I avoid looking at her. I have to. I prop

myself up on my elbows, though my muscles contract in protest. I don’t

need this guy telling other lifeguards that I’m a wimp. Though I guess

I have that almost-being-mangled-by-the-ocean thing as an excuse.

“Good to see you, though. That was some sick wave. Wish I’d had a

surfboard. Oh, yeah, thanks for finding me.”

“I’m calling your mother. ”

“Aw, come on, Layla. I was just playing.”

She stomps up the sandy hill until the only thing I can see is her

ponytail swinging in place, taunting me and moving steadily out of my

reach.

My favorite memory of Layla is when she told off a cop.

She was nine and change, because I was already ten and she still

had some weeks to go. She hated that I was born on June 24, right

smack in the best part of our Coney Island summers, and her birthday

was all the way in August, when the water started getting cold and the

trash piled up as tall as we were.

The cop, three times our heights and with a gleaming gun at his

side, stepped right in front of me. I was pulling our raft toward the

water by some moldy rope I’d found under the pier. We’d just read

Huckleberry Finn and wanted to sail off onto the Mississippi, but all

we had was the Coney Island Beach. The raft was my greatest

accomplishment, wood planks supported by our boogie boards held

together with Krazy Glue taken from the baby-sitter’s desk drawer. The

tips of my fingers were raw from having stuck them to each other and

then pulling them apart.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the cop said. He was too tall

for me to read his badge, but I remember his face, fat and red with

caterpillar eyebrows.

“Why?” Layla asked.

“Answer the question.”

“We’re not supposed to talk to strangers,” she said, her hands on

her hips, the same way she did when her dad told her she wasn’t

allowed to play with me so often. That she also needed friends who

were girls.

The cop pulled out his badge. “See this? I’m not a stranger.” And

then the cop reached for me. Just to grab my shoulder, just to take us

back to the boardwalk. But I struggled and Layla kicked him on his

shin, and we left the raft that we’d worked on for a whole week.

Sure, another cop found us on the boardwalk and called our

parents. I lied and said I was the one who had kicked the cop, and he

didn’t say different. Layla was pissed at me for trying to cover for

her, but I always have and I always will. Just like I know she’d do

the same for me. She’s my best friend. She’s my Layla. She’s my girl.

•••

In the ambulance they give me extra-strength, hospital-approved

painkillers that numb my muscles until they feel like putty and the

stretcher feels like down feathers.

For a moment, I’m falling. It’s one of those dreams where your

mind zooms out and you’re falling, falling, until you think it’s

actually happening, so you jump in real life, and that jolts you out

of the dream.

But the nervous jolt lingers throughout my body like the world

just dropped from under my feet and I still haven’t hit the ground. I

can barely keep my eyes open. What if I don’t wake up? Why can’t I

remember anything? But my body is numb and sleepy and warm, and when I

do push myself to open my eyes, I’m in the hospital. I’m hooked up to

a bunch of beeping machines with screens that look like last week’s

algebra test I got a C on.

A nurse comes in. She’s tiny, with a round face and eyes like the

anime posters in the boys locker room. Except those anime girls are

blowup dolls in Catholic school uniforms, and this nurse is just

sweet. She comes up close, and I can see she doesn’t have any makeup

on, except for the pink on her cheeks. No one’s cheeks can be that

pink.

“Hello, nurse.” When I hear my voice, it sounds raspy, the voice I

always think Rip Van Winkle would’ve had after he woke up in the wrong

century. That’s how I feel-like I’ve slept for too long. I look around

the white room, but there isn’t even a clock.

She fumbles with her clipboard, flips through some pages. Her lips

open, but it’s like she doesn’t know what to say, because she just

stands like that.

“You’re awake?” she says. It’s supposed to be a statement, but it

sounds like a question. Or maybe the other way around. You never know

with girls.

“Yeah. Couldn’t sleep with all this beeping.”

She gives me a look that certifies me as the biggest douche bag

this side of Brooklyn, and that says a lot. “Oh, that’s a joke.” She

looks down at the floor. She’s wearing white sneakers with pink socks.

“Not a very good one, I guess.”

“No, really. It’s funny!” She gives me a truly pretty smile. She

walks up to my bed and fixes the pillow. She smells like chemicals

trying to smell like apples and vanilla, but it’s still nice.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

She points at her name tag. “Christine. You sure are popular. We

had to put some of the flowers out at the nurses’ station, because

they don’t fit in here.”

For the first time, I look around the room. I’ve never been in a

hospital before. I don’t even remember having to go to the doctor

before. This hospital looks just like the ones in the soap operas

Layla’s mom watches, all white with a TV running a basketball game in

one corner and a little table full of yellow and white flowers. Except

mine has bouquets on both windowsills, on the table beside my bed, and

all along the wall on the floor. I can’t even imagine who they’d be

from. My mom wouldn’t send flowers. She would be here. “I’m Tristan.”

She laughs and fiddles with the wires taped to my pulse. “I know.”

She nods over to where my file is at the foot of the bed.

Duh, again. “So, Nurse Christine”-I take a deep breath and put on

my best grave face-“am I terminal?”

It takes a second for her to register that I’m still just kidding.

When she gets it, she looks at her white sneakers again, shaking her

head. “You shouldn’t joke about those things.”

Stupid me. She sees death and sickness all day long.

“I’m sorry,” I go. “You don’t have any pills to cure me of being a

jerk, do you? ’Cause that would help me out a lot . Maybe even some

sedatives?”

This time she laughs for real. “I think the sedatives we already

gave you give you nightmares. You were talking in your sleep.”

“You were watching me sleep?” I think I say it because I like the

way her cheeks flood fuchsia when she looks away from me, all shy.

“I should j-just go get someone, I think.” She leaves the

clipboard in the metal slot at the foot of my bed and is out the door.

Man, as much as I can get girls to like me, I sure make them run away

as fast as they came.

Two seconds later the door opens and in walks my mom. She takes

three huge steps and pulls me into an iron grip.

“I think you just realigned my spine.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” She holds my face in her hands and says,

“Let me look at you.” Her voice is smooth and deep, like she should be

singing everything she says.

Her eyes-a turquoise so sharp I would say they were freakish if

mine weren’t the same color-are all watery, and I can’t stop myself

from burying my face in her embrace, because when I ran out into the

storm, I remember her face flashing in my mind.

She wipes her eyes with her index fingers and tries to laugh it

off. “I could kill you for worrying me like this.”

For the first time, I notice Layla and Maddy standing to the left