If I Stay by Gayle Forman Page B

TNT. I have my doubts about it. So does Kim.
    “Don’t you think that nurse might recognize you?” Kim asks. “You did yell at her.”
    “She won’t have to recognize me if she doesn’t see me. Now I get why you and Mia are such peas in a pod. A pair of Cassandras.”
    Adam has never met Mrs. Schein, so he doesn’t get that implying that Kim is a worrywart is fighting words. Kim scowls, but then I can see her give in. “Maybe this retarded plan of yours would work better if we could actually see what we’re doing.” She fumbles around in her bag and pulls out the cell phone her mother made her start carrying when she was ten—child LoJack, Kim called it—and turned on the monitor. A square of light softens the darkness.
    “Now, that’s more like the brilliant girl Mia brags about,” Adam says. He turns on his own cell phone and now the room is illuminated by a dull glow.
    Unfortunately, the glow shows that the tiny broom closet is full of brooms, a bucket, and a pair of mops, but is lacking any of the disguises that Adam was hoping for. If I could, I would inform them that the hospital has locker rooms, where the doctors and nurses can stow their street clothes and where they change into their scrubs or their lab coats. The only generic hospital garb sitting around are those embarrassing gowns that they put the patients in. Adam probably could throw on a gown and cruise the hallways in a wheelchair with no one the wiser, but such a getup would still not get him into the ICU.
    “Shit,” Adam says.
    “We can keep trying,” Kim says, suddenly the cheer-leader. “There are like ten floors in this place. I’m sure there are other unlocked closets.”
    Adam sinks to the floor. “Nah. You’re right. This is stupid. We need to come up with a better plan.”
    “You could fake a drug overdose or something so you wind up in the ICU,” Kim says.
    “This is Portland. You’re lucky if a drug overdose gets you into the ER,” Adam replies. “No, I was thinking more like a distraction. You know, like making the fire alarm go off so the nurses all come running out.”
    “Do you really think sprinklers and panicked nurses are good for Mia?” Kim asks.
    “Well, not that exactly, but something so that they all look away for half a second and I stealthily sneak in.”
    “They’ll find you out right away. They’ll throw you out on your backside.”
    “I don’t care,” Adam responds. “I only need a second.”
    “Why? I mean what can you do in a second?”
    Adam pauses for a second. His eyes, which are normally a kind of mutt’s mixture of gray and brown and green, have gone dark. “So I can show her that I’m here. That someone’s still here.”
    Kim doesn’t ask any more questions after that. They sit there in silence, each lost in their own thoughts, and it reminds me of how Adam and I can be together but quiet and separate and I realize that they’re friends now, friends for real. No matter what happens, at least I have achieved that.
    After about five minutes, Adam knocks on his forehead.
    “Of course,” he says.
    “What?”
    “Time to activate the Bat Signal.”
    “Huh?”
    “Come on. I’ll show you.”

    When I first started playing the cello, Dad was still playing drums in his band, though that all started to taper off a couple years later when Teddy arrived. But right from the get-go, I could see that there was something different about playing my kind of music, something more than my parents’ obvious bewilderment with my classical tastes. My music was solitary. I mean Dad might hammer on his drums for a few hours by himself or write songs alone at the kitchen table, plinking out the notes on his beat-up acoustic guitar, but he always said that songs really got written as you played them. That was what made it so interesting.
    When I played, it was most often by myself, in my room. Even when I practiced with the rotating college students, other than during lessons, I still usually