Extraordinary Means by Robyn Schneider Page B

tell you something?”
    I said sure, expecting the same panic attack that everyone had in their first few weeks at Latham, about not wanting to die here. I braced myself for a conversation so predictable you’d almost think it was a symptom of tuberculosis.
    And then he told me how his girlfriend had written his eulogy as her college admissions essay. I hadn’t been expecting that, at all. But then, nothing about Lane was what I expected. He was familiar and unfamiliar, like a song I’d heard a different version of, and whose lyrics I couldn’t quite remember.
    I sat there as it poured out of him, what she’d written, how she hadn’t even seemed sorry, and how fucked-up it was that she saw him like that. I hadn’t known any of that was going on with him. Sometimes I forgot that everyone who arrived here left behind their actual lives, often in a hurry, and frequently unfinished. And when I thought about how I’d acted all week, like he owed me this big apology for even existing, I felt even worse.
    “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” I said.
    “Yeah, but that doesn’t make it suck any less.” Lane sighed. “I’m just so tired of everyone going on about how I’m sick, and how sorry they are. I can’t remember the lasttime anyone had a normal conversation with me.”
    I couldn’t, either. I was so used to it that I hardly even noticed. If a stranger on the street had asked me to rate my pain on a scale of one to ten, I probably wouldn’t have blinked.
    “Do you know what my mom talks about?” I said. “Ice baths and miracle herbs. She seriously calls them that. ‘Miracle herbs.’ And I’m like, I’m sorry, but if there was some miracle out there, I don’t think they’d sell it in Whole Foods.”
    Lane snorted, and I went on, encouraged.
    “So yeah, talking to people? Totally depressing. We should off ourselves right now, so we can be done with people caring how we feel.”
    For a moment, Lane thought I was serious. Then he realized I was full of shit, and he laughed.
    “When you put it that way,” he said.
    “Your ex-girlfriend cared about you. She cared in a shitty way, but that’s why it took her so long to say anything.”
    It was cold out, and the wind picked up then. I pulled my hands inside the sleeves of my sweatshirt, shivering.
    “Ex-girlfriend,” Lane mumbled. “That’s so weird.”
    He was quiet a moment, lost in thought.
    “What?” I asked.
    “Oh. Um. I was just thinking how having an ex-girlfriend is one of those things that isn’t true until someone says it. Like, we all had TB before we were diagnosed. We just didn’tknow we did. But breaking up isn’t like that. Being single is something you’re aware of the moment it happens to you.”
    “Or if you’re like me, being single is a chronic condition since birth.” I said it like I was joking, even though it wasn’t funny.
    “Wait, so you and Nick aren’t . . .” He sounded surprised.
    Everyone assumed Nick and I were a thing. Everyone. But as much fun as Nick and I had hanging out together, I had zero interest in going there.
    “Nick?” I made a face. “God, no. He’s practically my brother. We’re partners in crime.”
    Lance winced at my joke, like it dredged up something painful.
    “Hannah and I used to call ourselves ‘lab partners in crime,’” he explained. “Before she decided to eulogize me for shits and giggles.”
    He leaned forward and propped his chin on his hand, looking tremendously sorry for himself.
    “It’ll be okay,” I said.
    “Will it?” Lane murmured, like he didn’t believe me.
    “Here’s a secret,” I said. “There’s a difference between being dead and dying. We’re all dying. Some of us die for ninety years, and some of us die for nineteen. But each morning everyone on this planet wakes up one day closer to their death. Everyone. So living and dying are actually different words for the same thing, if you think about it.”
    I’d thought about it for a