The Blue Zone

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Upstairs, Emily was freaking out. Kate tried her best to calm her. Her sister was lying spread-eagled on her bed, punching the mattress in tears.

She had her tournaments, her coach, her eastern ranking. This was the season all her friends were having their sweet sixteens. She was taking the SATs next Saturday.

“This is our home, Kate. How can we just uproot our lives and leave?”

“I know, Em…”

Kate lay next to her and gave her sister a hug, like when they were kids and shared their favorite music. Em had her ceiling painted sky blue, with a canopy of Day-Glo stars that illuminated when you turned off the lights.

Kate looked up at them. “You remember when we were at the old house and gold was in the dumps? We didn’t go anywhere that year, and Dad was having a hard time. I was at the high school but you were at Tamblin. He kept you there, Em. Even when it was hard for him. He did it so you could keep playing squash.”

“That doesn’t make it okay, Kate.” Emily glared, wiping away tears. “What he’s done. You’re gone. You’re out of here. What are we supposed to say to people? My daddy’s a drug dealer. He’s in jail. We have to take off now for a few years. See you in college. This is our life, Kate…”

“And it doesn’t erase it, Em… I know. It just…”

Em sat up and stared at her. “It just what, Kate?”

“You’re right.” Kate squeezed her hand. “It doesn’t make it okay.”

Justin was at his desk at the computer, leaning back with his feet up, like someone in a trance, playing a video game. Kate asked how he was doing. He just looked blankly at her and muttered back, in his usual way, “I’m okay.”

She went down to her old room at the far end of the hallway.

They pretty much kept it just as it had been when she lived there. Sometimes she still slept over on weekends or holidays. Kate stared up at the red bookshelves which still had a lot of her old textbooks and folders. The walls were plastered with her old posters. Bono of U-2. Brandi Chastain-the famous soccer shot of her on her knees when the U.S. team won the Olympic gold. Kate was always into Brandi more than Mia Hamm. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jeremy Bloom, the mogul snowboarder. It always felt warm coming back here.

But not tonight. Em was right. It didn’t make it okay.

Kate rolled onto her bed and took out her cell. She hit the speed dial and checked the time. She needed someone now. Thank God, he picked up.

“Greg?”

They had met at Beth Shalom, her family’s Sephardic temple in the city. He just walked right up to her, at the kiddush after Rosh Hashanah services. She’d noticed him across the sanctuary.

Greg was great. He was a sort of Wandering Jew himself, from Mexico City. He didn’t have family here. He’d been in his last year of medical school at Columbia when they met. Now he was a second-year resident in children’s orthopedics. He was tall, thin, lanky, and he reminded her a bit of Ashton Kutcher with his mop of thick, brown hair. They’d basically been living together for the past year in her Lower East Side apartment. Now that they were getting serious, the big question was where he would end up in practice. What would happen to them if he had to leave New York?

“Kate! God, I’ve been really worried. You’ve been leaving these cryptic messages. Is everything all right up there?”

“No,” Kate said. She held back the tears. “Everything’s not all right, Greg.”

“Is it Ben? Tell me what’s happened? Is he okay? Is there anything I can do?”

“No, it’s not medical, Greg. I can’t go into it. I’ll tell you soon, I promise. There’s just something I need to know.”

“What, pooch?” That was what he called her. His pet. He seemed very worried about her. She could hear it in his voice.

Kate sniffed back the tears and asked, “Do you love me, Greg?”

There was a pause. She knew she’d surprised him. Like some stupid kid. “I know we say it all the time. But now it’s important to me. I just need to hear it, Greg…”

“Of course I love you, Kate. You know that.”

“I know,” Kate said. “I don’t mean just that way… What I mean is, I can trust you, Greg, can’t I? I mean, with everything? With me…?”

“Kate, are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m all right. I just need to hear you say it, Greg. I know it sounds weird.”

This time he didn’t hesitate. “You can trust me, Kate. I promise you, you can. Just tell me what the hell’s going on up there. Let me come up. Maybe I can help.”

“Thanks, but you can’t. I just needed to hear that, Greg. Everything’s okay now.”

She had made up her mind.

“I love you, too.”