Meet Me at the Boardwalk Read Online Free PDF

sobbing.
    After two sleepless nights, the hysterics, the disbelief, the denial—and finally the call from Eloise Gordon, Miles’s mom, “He’s going to be okay!” —we got the news that it was safe to visit him in the hospital. If you’ve never been to an ICU, intensive care unit, I don’t recommend a sightseeing trip. The bright lights, the beeping, the gurneys, the IV’s…everything bathed in a blinding white, white, white: the floors, the scrubs, the surgical masks— I felt sick. And then we saw him.
    His eyes were closed. He was hooked up to about a dozen different tubes and wires. A nurse hovered over him. They’dshaved his long blond hair. He had a bruise on his forehead. His legs were elevated. The left leg was wrapped in a cast. His tan looked fake, almost orange. It was almost as if you could see how pale he would have been if he hadn’t spent the summer in the sun. He didn’t look like Miles.
    “Miles?” his mom whispered. She kneaded his shoulder. The nurse didn’t seem to like that, but she didn’t say anything. “Sweetie? Megan and Jade came to visit.”
    His eyelids fluttered. His pupils were little pinpricks; there was only brown. He smiled at Megan. He didn’t notice I was there.
    “Thank God, you’re here,” he croaked.
    I tried to say hello, but my throat was too parched. I began tugging at my hair.
    “He’s heavily sedated,” the nurse said.
    “You saved my…my…life, Megan.” He closed his eyes again.
    “Actually, Mr. Browning saved your life,” Megan whispered. “And that other surfer, Bruce Willis’s personal assistant. What’s her name? I’ve been in such a fog since this whole thing.” She glanced up at me. “Jade?”
    I didn’t answer. (How could I? I couldn’t even speak.) Instead I bolted.
    As I ran down those horrible white halls, I thought: How would I know what Bruce Willis’s assistant’s name is? You’re the one with the mom on the tourist board.
    Now flash forward to the morning of September 14.
    Miles came home, via wheelchair. I ditched school with permission to welcome him back. To be fair, Mr. Browning intervened on my behalf. ( “You think this poor kid wants to spend all day alone?” ) But Megan didn’t ditch. She didn’t have to. She’d been taking the bus from Seashell Point to the county hospital three times a week to visit him. She’d been the loyal friend. She’d sat by his bed, listened to him—all of it. She’d been completely sympathetic about my not having visited Miles since that first day.
    “I understand,” she kept saying.
    Even worse, she meant it. Megan never says anything unless she means it. She barely talks at all, so her words count. But what was there to understand? That I ran out on him like a coward? That I was jealous of how Miles honed in on her instead of me in his drugged-out stupor? That I was too fragile to go to an ICU? That I wasn’t as good a person as Megan was?
    I’d arranged everything with Mr. and Mrs. Gordon earlier.
    They would drop him off; I would fix him lunch and put him to bed while they went to work—and so on and so forth. And of course, I’d help him catch up on the missed schoolwork and gossip for a few hours. Then they’d be back to relieve me for Miles-care in the early afternoon. Essentially, itwas a babysitting gig. But I had an angle. In all her visits, Megan had only brought Miles flowers as a gift.
    “Flowers.” “Miles.”
    Say those two words together. It’s like saying: “Turquoise.” “Jade.”
    They don’t match.
    I’m sure he appreciated the gesture, but flowers were empty, an allergenic Hallmark card. Megan could have done better. So I bought him a skateboard.
    It cost me my entire summer earnings from working at Amusement Alley, plus a couple of bucks that Dad gave me. And yes, I know, it might have seemed a little cruel at first. But I knew that Miles would get the joke. (Especially since I’d pre-tagged the board with several kiddie stickers of giraffes.)