Practically Ever After Page 11

  “’I know the feeling. Not the almost dying part,” I said, realizing how silly I had to sound compared to her experience, but pushed on, “but I went through three doctors and a bunch of tests before someone realized that I had real food sensitivities and IBS and I wasn’t just making stuff up. I mean, stress actually plays a real factor in my problems, but it’s not the root cause.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yeah, but compared to what you’re going through, avoiding foods that give me stomachaches is nothing.” I couldn’t help but give her face and arm a once-over again, though. Unlike my grandmother, there was no sign of drooping in her face and she’d walked without help over to the table. “So, um,” I said, trying not to sound like I was prying into her health problems, “it’s just your hand that got affected?”

  Julia aimed an amused smile at Annie and then turned it on me. “I look pretty healthy, don’t I?”

  “I’m sorry, I just—”

  Annie patted me on the arm sympathetically. “She’s messing with you, Grace. But,” she said, tapping on my notebook with one fingernail, “a piece of advice. If you want to go into designing things for people, the first thing you need to do is let go of any assumptions about what typical patients look and act like. If you can let go of those, you won’t end up just designing things for the loudest or more visible or most assumed group of people.” She shrugged, then said, “And with that soapbox speech done, I’m going to leave you two to it.”

  “Thanks,” I said to Annie’s back as she made her way over to one of the therapy tables.

  “She’s right, I was messing with you a little bit. Sorry,” Julia said with an impish smile. “But, anyway, I have what doctors call ‘spasticity’ in my left hand and elbow. My brain isn’t talking right to those parts of me and, since it’s not bad enough to need surgery, they’re trying to retrain my brain and muscles to work together in a new way, instead.”

  “Then, I’d definitely love your feedback,” I said, flipping my notebook to a clean page and clicking my pen. “Okay, first question—tell me about the problems you have with,” I gestured at the glove Annie had put on Julia after helping her out of the computer-glove, “that?”

  “You mean other than standing out everywhere I go with this thing on? I’ve got the ‘you should see the other guy’ jokes down pat when people ask if I got in a fight or something,” she said, good naturedly.

  I snorted. I’d used the same comeback when I had a black eye from a misplaced elbow from one of my teammates at a cheerleading competition. Cheer was rough. “I’ve definitely been there with wrist braces.”

  “Let’s see. Outside of looking like I smashed my hand into a wall, it’s a pain to do things with it and not get it wet. I like that it’s soft and I know people didn’t like the old plastic gloves because they were too hard, but I use this all this time and the soggy glove thing is such a pain. They’re so expensive, it’s not like I can just get a second one to trade out when this one’s drying.” Before I could ask another question, she added, “Also, it looks like something a guy would design for an older guy. I’d love something a little more—” she gestured at her outfit.

  “Stylish?” I prompted, and, when she nodded, I added that to my list.

  “Or as close to invisible as possible,” she said, holding up her hand to give me a better view of the glove. “You know, maybe if you took the material out of the middle here,” she pointed at her palm, “and moved this strap, it probably would be better.”

  I kept making notes, but remembered what Oliver said about how people would also talk about solutions when we were interviewing them, but that we should look for the problem they were trying to solve. Maybe what she really wanted was something that felt less restrictive or was cooler. I watched as she tugged at the wrist strap as she talked, running her finger under it every now and then like it was bothering her.

  “Do you have anything you like about it?” Annie prompted as she passed us on her way to one of the leg machines with another patient.

  Julia scrunched her nose. “I was getting to that,” she said in an aside to me. “I like how it helps to keep my fingers extended but doesn’t take too much work for me to curl my fingers back to pick something up.”

  I wrote “low actuation force” in my notebook under the pros section of the table I’d drawn in there, right under “soft.” “What if—” I started to say, but stopped myself. Ideas were swirling in my head, but I was supposed to listen, not offer solutions. Which was turning out to be really hard. Leia was right about my habit of wanting to give people answers right away for everything. “I mean, what else?”

  “It’s not too heavy, so that’s a positive. The loaner one I got at first was even bulkier and heavier. And I like that this doesn’t cover up my fingertips, because my sense of touch is already weird right now and that would make it nonexistent.” She thought for another minute. “That’s about it, I think.”

  “Thanks,” I said, as soon as I finished writing up my notes. She’d answered a lot of my questions without me even having to ask them. “That was a big help.”

  Julia reached out to shake my hand with her gloved one. “You’re welcome. Good luck with your project. I’d love to see what you come up with.”

  “Thank you, Julia,” Annie said. “Grace, I have an appointment with another patient right now and she’s going to be working with the VR glove today. If you want, I can ask her permission for you to sit in and observe?” She made a gesturing motion towards one of the treatment beds where an older woman was seated. The woman’s lips and eye on one side drooped slightly, just enough to be noticeable, kind of like Grandmom in the first few weeks after her stroke.

  I had to hold back from eagerly nodding my head like a bobblehead doll. “That would be so great.”

  “Great. Let me check with her before I bring you over.”

  As I waited, I stared at my notes, energy building up in me as information and ideas started colliding in my thoughts. This was interesting, like collecting puzzle pieces, and, even though I wasn’t supposed to, I couldn’t help but imagine the perfect final puzzle. I knew I could design something better and easier for someone like Julia to use, and I couldn’t wait to dive in further.

  May

  WEEK 21 FOCUS: Review and fix schedule

  Chapter 19

  I closed my locker door and turned towards the hallway, jumping with surprise to find Alec looking right over my shoulder. “Damnit, Alec, creeper much?”

  He stepped back into the middle of the hallway, ignoring the mutters of some of the people he cut off in the process. “Oh, guru of physics, I’ve come to beg a favor of you,” he said.

  “‘Guru of physics?’ That’s not dramatic or anything.” I leaned against my locker and waved at one of the JV football freshmen who passed.

  “If I were you, I’d take the praise while I still could. Next year, you’re going to have so many physics geniuses around you, it’s doubtful anyone would consider you the best at anything.”

  “Harsh. Especially coming from someone who apparently wants my help with something,” I pointed out.

  “Me needing help doesn’t make that any less true.”

  “You’re so lucky I like you, or you’d be screwed.” I checked my nails, adding ‘make an appointment at the salon’ to my to-do list. My sparkly pink manicure was looking really rough. “What do you need, oh anti-guru of groveling?”

  “You know how Newton wants us to make prototypes of one of the working assemblies from our projects?”

  “Yeah?” I tilted my head at him. “I have mine printing right now.”

  “Rub it in, overachiever.” He narrowed his eyes at me and snorted. “I’m stuck. I can’t get the gear teeth to line up in the assembly for my design. Can you take a look at my model and see what’s going wrong?”

  I arched my brows at his request. “That’s not physics, it’s CAD.”

  “Whatever,” he said, an impatient note in his tone. “Do you h
ave a few minutes? I really need to send this to the printer tonight to get in tomorrow morning’s queue if I want to clean it and put it together in time to show Newton in Friday’s class.”

  I checked my phone for the time and tried to keep my expression neutral. “I was supposed to meet up with Leia before dance class, but,” I cringed, realizing how many times I’d been late to stuff with Leia lately, but said, “I can spare a few minutes.” I pushed away from the lockers. Moving helped mask the worry as I tried to figure out how to be in two places at the same time. There was a theoretical physics equation for that, right?

  “Thanks.” After a second’s thought, Alec arched his eyebrow and said, carefully. “Are you sure she’s not going to be mad if you’re late?”

  I threw off a quick text to Leia and shook my head. “No, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it.” I tossed my hair back and drew up my spine to give myself a confident look. “Besides, I’ll probably figure this out in minutes and I won’t be late at all. I’m a CAD guru, after all.”

  “Ok-ay,” he drew out, shutting my locker for me and gesturing towards the multimedia lab. “I’m not coming to your funeral if she kills you. I like my life.”

  “Leia’s not like that. She’ll totally understand.”

  Leia was at our old table at the little French bakery in the same “upscale” strip mall as the dance school. We used to hang out there all the time when we started dating, before our parents knew about us and while I was still dancing. That table had a lot of good memories, but this didn’t look like it was going to be one of them. Leia pointed at her half-eaten pain au chocolat without even bothering to hide her annoyance. “You’re late again.”

  “I know. Alec had a CAD emergency.” I dropped my bag on the empty chair and hurried up to the counter. “Un chocolat chaud fait avec lait d’amande, s’il vous plait.” I cringed after doing it—Leia always called me out for sounding pretentious by insisting on ordering in French, and I could practically feel her eye roll from across the bakery. Instead of heading back to the table and waiting for them to call me up, I paid and hung out at the counter until they handed me the wide teacup-like mug. Maybe, just maybe, she’d forgive and forget in that time. I picked up the saucer and slowly made my way back, willing the almond milk hot chocolate not to spill.

  Leia looked even more annoyed by the time I got back to the table. “Is it even possible to have a CAD emergency?”

  “If he wants to get an A on his final project, yes.” I picked a rose macaron off her plate and tried to sound like being late was no big deal. “He messed up when he calculated the base circle diameter for one of his gears and that all went back to getting the diametral pitch wrong. It all took a little longer than I thought because we had to start practically from scratch.”

  She didn’t even make one of her usual jokes about all the technical terms I’d just dropped, just shredded a section of her pain au chocolat into little pieces as she said, “You could have texted me. I was getting worried.”

  “I’m sorry. Between Alec and you and helping my aunt, maybe I was just a little busy today and couldn’t keep track of everything.” I heard the edge in my voice and, as soon as I saw her eyes widen, forced myself to take a deep breath before continuing. “I’m sorry,” I said, in a much calmer tone, “I just lost track of time. You know how it is when I get started designing something. I’m really sorry.”

  Leia pursed her lips like she wanted to say something else, but paused, instead, to sip some water.

  “So,” she said evenly, “Brooklyn’s at it again, talking about how great the Academy’s prom was and how she heard Pine Central’s prom sucked. Now she’s campaigning to put our post-graduation party on the same day as your graduation, but that’s been scheduled so long that even her parents can’t get it moved.” She took a bite of lemon macaron and waved the other half around as she added, “That girl wants to ruin every good thing about senior year for me.”

  I wanted to march over to Leia’s school and kick the snot out of that little maggot, but I just kept my expression neutral. “Why don’t you—”

  She cut me off, sticking her hand up in the air in a “stop” gesture. “I don’t need advice, I need you to listen to me.”

  Maybe I was tired, or maybe Leia’s own annoyance had rubbed off on me, but I found myself snapping out, “You know, every time I try to offer you a solution, you practically bite off my head, telling me that I’m trying to fix things instead of listening, but things will never get better with Brooklyn because you just won’t take my advice. You’re never going to get off this ridiculous merry-go-round of problems with her if all you do is let her keep being a jerk to you.” I pressed my lips together to force myself to pause and think before adding, “You know what? In a few weeks you’ll never have to see her again if you don’t want to, so why do you let her bother you so much?”

  “If you don’t want to listen, why do you even bother to make plans with me?” Leia shot back, putting her mug down with a little more force than necessary. “Since apparently, everyone else is more important, anyway.”

  “I said I’m sorry. It’s the end of the year, people need help. I can’t just say no to them.”

  “But you can say no to me, right? It’s always me. I’m always getting bumped for everyone else. Phoebe needs clothes for a trip a month and a half from now and you drop everything to help her, Alec needs help with his homework and you cancel with me, Em needs…” she floundered for a second to come up with an example, then just waved it away and pushed on, “whatever Em needs and you go out of your way to help, but you haven’t even spent one stupid hour in the past month helping me or my friends or even just asking me if I need anything. You always put me last and I’m getting tired of that.”

  That hurt. I was trying to be everything for everyone, and the only thanks I got was being told I wasn’t doing enough. Before I could say anything I’d regret, I finished off my hot chocolate and stood, swinging my bag onto my shoulder. “I have to go change so I’m ready for the junior prep class.” I hoped she’d say something to smooth things between us like she always did, but, instead, she just pursed her lips again and dropped her eyes to the table. I shook my head as if trying to shake off the negative atmosphere. “Sorry I was late,” I said as I walked away from the table.

  Chapter 20

  Avoiding my girlfriend all week was exhausting.

  I dropped onto the ground, slipped off my Keds, and dug my feet into the sandy dirt at the edge of the lake in my backyard, my toes just barely touching the water. It was still cold enough to raise goosebumps on my arms and threaten to turn my toenails blue, but I ignored the cold, instead leaning back against the tree trunk and focusing on the reflections in the lake. The tree hid me from the house so that the world was just me, the pine needles poking me in the butt through my jeans, and the lake.

  And there was the earthy cedar water smell, which my mom hated—but I loved, because it reminded me of the science experiments we did in middle school to measure the acidity of the water in the environmental center. The acidic tea of these iron-oxide filled lakes fascinated little biology-loving me, but Mom, who grew up in New York City, never understood the appeal of the smell of decaying plant matter. Outside of the summer, when she and dad would hang out on our private beach, I had this place to myself.

  “Grace?”

  And Leia, who loved this place almost as much as me. Crap, I hadn’t expected her. I closed my eyes and shoved my toes deeper into the water. Maybe if I sat really still, she wouldn’t notice me and would go away.

  A gentle hand touched my arm right before a warm body settled onto the ground next to me. “Your mom said you were out here.” She looked over at me with a hurt expression. “We might have been fighting, but I can’t believe you bailed on me and my best friend again. I promised Emily that you’d be there to help.” Her voice had taken on her disappointed teacher tone, like I was a little kid who needed a lecture on how to behave in class. “We had to rush to fi
gure out how to handle all the kids with only two people.”

  I pushed my hair out of my eyes with a huff. It hadn’t been my fault that everyone needed everything from me all the time. “I’m sorry. I didn’t ‘bail out’ on purpose, but rehearsal ran over and Aunt Drina needed me to watch the rosebuds. What do you expect me to do, run out on my own aunt and leave her with a dozen four-year-olds, to help out in a garden that won’t die if we wait another day to prune it, or whatever you wanted me to do today?” I tried to bite back the sarcasm in my voice but it still snuck through.

  “I know you’re stressed, but you have no right to take it out on me.” Her voice grew lower and dangerously quieter as anger creeped in. “Don’t you think I’m stressed, too? Don’t you think I have finals and family things and senior stuff, just like you do? The only difference is that I’m not blowing you off all of the time and expecting you to say it’s fine.” She barely took a breath before diving back in again, fingers curling into the sand beneath her. “I’m always the one hanging out with your friends and dealing with your in-jokes, but you can’t take a few hours out of your precious schedule to do something for me. It’s not fair, Grace.”

  “You’re the one who sided with my parents about helping out my aunt. And if I remember right, you’re also the one who said I should push harder on my project. And now you’re mad I never have any time anymore?”

  “No, I’m mad you think I’m the only one you can blow off or snap at. I’m tired of being the one who gives in to things all the time,” she shot back. I opened my mouth to argue but slammed it shut again at one warning shake of her head. “I’m tired and I have my own stuff to worry about. I’m just… tired.” She looked at me, her expression both hurt and sad at the same time, and I could see the tears that were starting to form in the inner corners of her eyes. “I think I—we—need a break.”