The Fever Read Online Free PDF Page B

hands.”
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    Seconds later, Mrs. Daniels and the doctor disappeared behind the swinging doors, and her dad kept trying to explain things to her.
    â€œLise had a seizure at home,” he said, “a bad one. And her mom called an ambulance. Something happened to her heart, but they were able to stabilize her. They’re taking good care of her.”
    Deenie nodded and nodded, but all she could think was she wished he weren’t there with her. All the smiling-at-nurses in the world wouldn’t get her behind those doors to see Lise. She believed if her dad were gone she could find a way to get back there. She and Gabby always found ways to get places: behind the tall fences at the shuttered train depot, into that room in the school’s basement where they kept old VCRs so they could watch a mildewed cassette of Romeo + Juliet during Back to School Night.
    â€œWe can wait,” he said, “if you want.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œLet me just drive over to the school and set it up with my classes. And tell Eli.”
    Deenie nodded.
    â€œAre you going to be okay here, by yourself?” He looked worried.
    â€œI am, Dad,” she said, keeping her voice even, steady. “I have to stay.”
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    Sitting in one of the metal chairs, as far from the angry man with the droopy mustache as possible, she tried to text Gabby but couldn’t think what to say.
    Then she saw a couple, the woman with a crying toddler in green overalls sobbing at her hip. They were talking to a doctor and nurse in front of the same double doors Lise’s mom had exited.
    Behind them, somewhere inside the belly of St. Ann’s, was Lise.
    She couldn’t believe no one saw her walk in, but then many times she felt invisible. At school, the mall, she could feel people walk right through her. Sometimes, with boys, she realized they could see straight behind her head, to blond-lashed Lise, to long-legged Gabby, to anyone else but her.
    *  *  *
    His leg shook a little on the gas. He was thinking about Deenie in that waiting room with the growling man with the coffee-damp mustache and who knew what new arrivals. Downriver bikers with meth mouths, suburban predators prowling for teenage girls.
    Lately, when he read the crime-beat section of the paper, he’d begun to feel his once-gentle town, their little Brigadoon, was teeming with endless threats imperiling his children.
    He could hear Georgia’s voice buzzing in his head.
    So you left her there? You couldn’t just call the school? Call our son?
    Sometimes it felt like parenting amounted to a series of questionable decisions, one after another.
    At least his version of it.
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    It was just before lunch and the corridors were swollen with students, dozens of hunch-hooded sweatshirts, the boys shoving one another into lockers while the girls glided by in low-tops, skirts, and three layers of tights, their smiles nervous and intricate. He spent half his day feeling sorry for girls.
    His phone vibrating, he thought it might be Deenie, but the minute he moved past the front entryway, the screen went black, his signal lost.
    When he stepped out again, he couldn’t get it back.
    He waited at Eli’s locker, and waited, and then the second bell rang, and everyone scattered, backpacks like cockroach shells.
    There was a slight ripple in his chest. Where is Eli, anyway? As if Eli were as reliable as an elevator and not his shaggy, perennially late son.
    He’ll be here any second , he told himself, but a nagging fear came from nowhere: What if, what if?
    Rounding the corner, he spotted was his son’s blaring-blue hockey jersey.
    There he was, standing in front of his calculus class, shoving folded papers into a textbook.
    Tall and carefree and more handsome than any son of his had a right to be. And late as ever, for everything. It was hard to explain the relief he felt.
    â€œDad?” Eli said, looking up, surprised.