Chapter 12

                                    

                                          
FRIDAY, MARCH 22
16 days left
                          
"I can't believe you're ditching me tomorrow," Harry says. He's sitting on the mattress, bouncing up and down. Despite his height, he can sometimes look like a little kid. I think his outfit is throwing me off, too. He's not in his black shirt and black skinny jeans. His mom must have made him put on the blue jeans and a red fannel for the occasion. He looks a bit uncomfortable in them, like he's playing dress-up.
"Ditching you?" I pace around his room. It's simple, kind of what I pictured, not that I spend a lot of time imagining Harry's room. With its beige walls, mandatory University of Kentucky Wildcats Basketball team poster, and maroon trim, it could just as easily be any other high school boy's room.
On his nightstand, I see a picture of a toothy little girl; her mouth is wide open in a smile and she's sticking her tongue out at whoever was taking the photograph. She has the same color hair as Harry, same deep-set green eyes. The girl must be Jade.
Harry's mom is downstairs cooking dinner, her attempt at Turkish cuisine. Should be interesting. His dad's still at work but supposedly is going to make it home in time for the Big Event. I'm kind of surprised Harry's mom is cool with us being in his bedroom alone. It seemed like she thought something was brewing between Harry and me, but maybe she's smarter than I give her credit for. Though she did tell him to leave the door open, so there's that.
"Hey." I spin around to face him. "Why did you let your mom go through with this?"
"This?"
I shrug. "This fake dinner thing. Don't you feel kind of bad that she's slaving away down there?"
He stops bouncing on the mattress and looks down at the ground. "Sort of, I guess. But it has to happen."
I scrunch my face together in confusion.
"I need her to really believe that we're getting close," he explains slowly. "So she'll let me be alone with you on April seventh. It's not like she's going to let me wander off with a complete stranger on the first anniversary of Jade's death. She's too smart for that."
So I'm a pawn in your game. I guess I'd already figured that out. That's why he needs a Suicide Partner, after all. And really, he's a pawn to me, too A means to an end. Or rather, the means to The End.
I go back to snooping around Harry's room. He has a signed baseball that's been strategically placed inside a Cincinnati Reds cap. "My dad got that for me," he says. "We went to a game when I was little."
I nod and keep fingering his things. I wonder if it bothers him. Me, searching for his secrets while he watches. I look over my shoulder at him and he's flopped out on the bed, his chin tilted toward the ceiling. If he does mind, it doesn't show. Maybe that's a side effect of knowing you're about to die: none of your secrets matter anymore. After you're gone, they'll all be discovered anyway. Pored over by other people.
I don't like the idea of other people poring over my secrets. I don't even know if I have any secrets. Besides Harry. And the secret I'm keeping from him: what my dad did.
                          
"So you're going to the zoo tomorrow?"
"Yeah," I say, flipping through his copy of Journey to the Center of the Earth. It's almost cute that he seems to have a slight obsession with Jules Verne. I slide it back onto the shelf and pull out Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
"I used to like those books when I was younger."
"Uh-huh." I turn the page, staring at the black-and-white illustrations. It's a nice copy of the book, like the kind you pay extra for. A collector's edition or something like that. A creepy-looking sea creature stares back at me with its grapefruit-sized eyes. I slam the book shut. When I do, loose pages flutter out of it. I grab for one of them. It's a pencil sketch of a small turtle. The picture is drawn so well, it looks three-dimensional. Even though it was sketched in charcoal pencil, you can still get a sense of the turtle's leathery neck and his smooth shell. But there's something different about it, too—it's almost like staring at a turtle through a blurry lens. There's a surrealist quality to the picture. The markings on the turtle's shell are overly emphasized and his front paws are elongated and thinned.
I flip through the other drawings; most of them are of the same turtle, but I find one that looks like it's a rendering of Jade. Her eyes are wide and expertly shaded, and the sketch has captured her toothy smile. But even though Jade is smiling, there's a sadness to the picture, like the artist knows her ultimate fate, even if she doesn't. I can't stop staring at the drawing. It's haunting.
Harry jerks up and scoots to the foot of the bed. "Those are stupid. Don't look at them."
I thumb back to the first sketch of the turtle and take a step toward the glass aquarium that houses the famous Captain Nemo. Right now, the turtle is bobbing up and down in the shallow water, paddling with his leathery feet. "These aren't stupid. They're actually really good." I compare the sketch with the real-life Captain Nemo. It's almost dead-on, minus the fantastical quality of the sketch. The turtle Harry drew seems sad, almost like he's in mourning. His beady eyes are dark and his back feet look too heavy and swollen to be used for swimming. "You drew these?"
"Yeah." His voice is quiet and I can hear him shifting on the bed, the mattress sighing beneath him. "Can you put them away? They're embarrassing."
"Why are you embarrassed of them? I mean, you did make Captain Nemo seem a bit more emo than I think he is, but besides that, you nailed it." I hold the drawing up against the tank. "It's really pretty incredible."