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I do. But I love Peter more than the world. More than my parents, more than dance, more than my sister, Tabitha, and my niece, Luna. It’s easy to fall in love with someone who’s a master of their craft. Peter at the piano has an intensity I’ve always admired. An electricity, like if I touched him in the middle of a Rufus Wainwright song, he’d burn my hand. Lower lip between his teeth, dark hair in his face, shoulder blades rolling beneath his T-sh
irt as he moves up and down the keys. I can never help imagining if he’ll ever touch me with the same kind of gentle desperation.
Performance art has always connected us. Our music tastes overlap but aren’t identical, and when we play together, we feed off each other’s energy. My heart never feels closer to his than at the end of a song, when we’re both out of breath, grinning at each other like we’ve created something only the two of us will ever understand.
Aside from that, Peter is a certified Good Person. A good friend, even before my feelings for him turned romantic. When I had to repeat fourth grade because my reading comprehension was below grade level and my report cards were abysmal, Peter read aloud with me at home. I was still a grade ahead of him, but he was patient while I made my mouth form unfamiliar words like “chronological” and “tangible” and “eclipse.” I remember whispering a word to myself first, worried I’d mispronounce it if I said it out loud. The letters were always jumping around. “It’s just me,” Peter would say. “Try it.” It was only after I’d been held back and continued to struggle that my parents brought me to a specialist. Girls are often diagnosed with dyslexia later than boys. It explained so much, though it didn’t excuse the teasing I’d endured, the kids who’d called me stupid. I wasn’t, my specialist said. I just learned differently.
“You have a bigger brain than they do,” Peter said. “They’re jealous.” I snorted, but then he told me he’d been reading up on it—a very Peter thing to do—and there was scientific evidence: usually the left hemisphere of a dyslexic person’s brain is larger than the brain of someone who doesn’t have dyslexia. Plus, he said, John Lennon was dyslexic.
When he started homeschooling, a mix of online courses and a couple at a local homeschool center, I spent my afternoons and weekends with him, ignored other kids’ invitations to parties and sleepovers until they eventually stopped coming.
He is solid and constant. The moon and the stars.
I would do anything for this boy, and I’d have done it sooner if I could, but I had to wait until I turned eighteen a couple months ago to see if I was a match. Sometimes I wonder if the reverse is true—if Peter would do anything for me. Deep in my bones I know that if Peter were healthy, if my kidneys had failed instead of his, he would. He’s just never had a chance to prove it like I have.
I unzip my backpack and spread a blanket over the ground. “I wanted to give you something,” I say as we sit down. “Before the surgery.”
“You’re already giving me something kind of huge.”
“Fine, something you can actually hold.” Making my face super serious, I pull Operation out of my backpack.
He bursts out laughing. I adore Peter’s laugh. It’s like your favorite song played on repeat. “Stop. You’re the best. You’re already the best, and then you do this? There isn’t even a word for what you are.”
His words swim through my veins and try to convince my heart he feels what I feel.
“Fantastic, brilliant, wonderful, perfect.”
“All of those. You are all the adjectives. You and your big brain.” Every so often, that joke pops back up.
Beautiful, intriguing, irresistible—those, too? I don’t say.
We scoot closer to each other on the blanket, Peter’s thigh against my thigh, Peter’s hip against my hip. My entire left side hums with electricity, but I’m careful not to press myself into him the way I want to. I am constantly pretending that Peter touching me is not the most incredible feeling in the world. I’ve trained my breath not to catch in my throat, willed my heart to slow down. I am more aware of my body when I’m with him than when I’m onstage.
“Why are you doing this, Soph?” he asks, idly brushing a thumb across my knee, a gesture that nearly splits me open on the forest floor.
He’s asked this question so many times. A voluntary surgery like this is no small thing. The only thing in my life that comes close, four stubborn baby teeth when I was eleven, can’t exactly compare.
I’ve gotten so used to sick Peter that I wonder what a healthier Peter will be like. He won’t be on dialysis anymore. He won’t sleep so much, eat so little, throw up the small amount of food he’s able to get down. He won’t hurt.
“You are my best friend and favorite person,” I say. “And you really, really need to start wearing jeans again.”
He doesn’t laugh. “Are you scared?” He whispers it, though we are the only people around. Like he wants to keep our conversation a secret from the trees and sky. He reaches over and squeezes my hand.
“Yes,” I say simply, squeezing back. I can’t be dishonest with him, not about this. Even though there is no way I’m changing my mind, I’m terrified of what will happen when I am unconscious. When they cut me open and put part of me into Peter.
On the blanket, my phone lights up with a message from my dad.
Where are you? Luna’s party starts at 6.
It’s five till. “I completely spaced,” I say with a groan, smacking my forehead. “It’s Luna’s birthday.”
“Wait. Before you go.” He reaches over and pulls up the hem of my sweatshirt. His hand fumbles between the sweatshirt and my tank top for a second, like he’s searching for where, exactly, the kidney I’m giving him is located, and then he strokes my back. Slowly I exhale. Through the thin cotton fabric, his fingers are warm.
There are a thousand other reasons I’m doing this, but still, this gesture makes me think what I have only allowed myself to think about on the rarest occasions: that maybe, after the transplant, Peter will want me, too.
“Don’t worry, Soph,” he says, replacing my nerves with something even scarier. “I’ll take good care of it.”
CHAPTER 2
