Secret for a Song by S. K. Falls Page A

chick?”
    I
noticed Drew’s brief look of disappointment at Jack’s lack of enthusiasm,
though he covered it up so quickly I had to wonder if I’d imagined it. “This is
Saylor,” he said. “Saylor Grayson, meet Jack Phillips.”
    I
waved in a sort of awkward little circle. “Hey. Heard a lot about you.”
    “Have
you...” Jack began, and then exploded into a series of coughs, dry and
crackling. Jeannie came back into the room but he waved off her help. When she
was gone, he looked at me as if nothing had happened. “Have you heard my phone
number? It’s even better.”
    Drew
burst out in guffaws that sounded only a little bit forced and I obliged with a
small laugh. I wondered if this was really happening.
    After
some idle chatter, Jack raised up his bed and Drew and he played a video game
for a little while. They asked if I’d like to play, but I declined. I’d never
been one for video games, and anyway, the longer I stayed in Jack’s house, the
guiltier I felt. I wanted to engage with him as little as possible.
    Finally,
when Jack fell asleep mid-round, Drew looked at me. “We should go,” he said. “Take
Zee’s car back.”

Chapter Nineteen
    O utside,
I watched as Drew’s breath and mine mingled in a misty tangle. It wasn’t
actively snowing, but the clouds were brooding and low, and I could smell it in
the air.
    When
we got in the car, I blasted the heat at full. “You know, he doesn’t seem so
out of it.”
    Drew
looked at me askance.
    “I
mean, Zee said she didn’t like the idea of physician assisted suicide for Jack
because the cancer had affected his brain. But he didn’t seem...off to me at
all.” I began to back out of the Phillips’s driveway.
    “Yeah.
He was having a pretty good day today.”
    “Really?
So that wasn’t normal?”
    Drew
made a “meh” face. “It’s not like he’s usually a rage machine or anything, but his
personality goes through this intense change. At the beginning, when I first
met him, he was really easygoing and happy, in spite of his diagnosis. When he
has his bad days, you can’t see any of that Jack anymore. I guess that’s what
Zee was talking about.” He paused. “But see, when he’s alert and mostly with it
like he was today, he still says he wants to have a choice in when he goes and
how he goes. That’s what makes me fight for his right to die.”
    We
were quiet for a moment, and then Drew reached inside the zippered compartment
of his messenger bag. “Mind if I put this on?”
    I
glanced at his hand and saw a Carousel Mayhem CD. Smiling, I waved toward the
stereo. “Go for it.”
    “I
knew you had good taste in there somewhere,” he said. “You know, buried under
the Carly Rae Jepsen stuff.”
    As
I laughed and turned to mock-glare at him, I noticed his fingers reaching to
feed the CD into the drive. But instead of lining the disc up with the opening,
Drew kept smashing it against the part of the dashboard that held the dials for
the heat.
    Thinking
he was being goofy, I chuckled. “What are you doing?”
    But
he didn’t answer. When I looked up at him, his eyes were red-rimmed, his jaw
hard. He let his hand go limp against the gear shift. “Would you mind doing it
for me? Please?” I had to strain to hear his voice; it was barely audible
against the whoosh of the heater.
    I
took the CD. “Um, sure. No problem.” I stuffed it in without incident and the
music began to play. When I plucked up the courage to look at Drew again, five
minutes later, he was asleep. His head lolled against the headrest, his lips
parted as if in a sigh. There was something upsettingly, terribly vulnerable
about him in that moment. He reminded me of a five-year-old, spent after
pitching a tantrum and not getting what he wanted. Of course, if Drew had
pitched a tantrum, it had been internal, a silent raging. No wonder he was
exhausted.
    When
I pulled into Zee’s driveway, I wasn’t feeling well at all. My body hurt all
over, and I knew my fever had to be