The Infinite Moment of Us Read Free Page B

contribute
    anything to society?”
    “Nice job of assuming it’s a guy,” Thad Lundeen had said.
    Wren had blushed. “Fine. Sorry. But what if a boy or a
    girl is born with . . . whatever. A fear-of-flying gene. Does
    that mean he or she can’t grow up to be a pilot? No matter
    what, end of story?”

    Different kids jumped in. The conversation grew loud
    and off-track, and Charlie wondered if he was the only one
    to hear her last comment.
    “And what about souls?” she said, bowing her head and
    addressing her desk. “Don’t souls count for anything?”
    Her downcast eyes, her pink cheeks—he saw them in
    his mind still. He held in his brain an entire store of the
    amazing things she’d done and said. He loved the whole
    package.
    And then, yesterday, when she waved at him outside the
    school . . .
    Something had passed between them. Something he
    couldn’t explain, and it had made him forget that he didn’t
    believe in souls. Anyway, who was he kidding? He didn’t
    believe in love, either, but this he knew: He loved Wren
    Gray. He’d loved her forever, it seemed.
    The router jumped beneath his hands. Ah, shit. He’d
    turned it up slightly, so that the bit was pointing toward the left rather than straight down, and the webbing between
    his left thumb and forefinger moved directly into it. Shit .
    Shit, shit, shit. He clamped his T-shirt over the wound, and
    his foster dad, Chris, glanced over.
    “Wassup, Chahlie?” Chris said in his rough Boston
    accent. He took in the blood soaking through Charlie’s
    T-shirt and put down his rag and can of varnish. He came
    over and gave Charlie’s wound a close, careful look. He

    whistled. “C’mon, son. Let’s get you stitched up.”
    Grady Hospital was the largest hospital in Atlanta, as well
    as the fifth-largest public hospital in the United States. It
    smelled like shit, piss, and body odor. Patients on gurneys
    lined the ER hallway, since, with more than three hundred
    patients walking, stumbling, or rolling in each day, there
    were never enough rooms to go around.
    “Just fill this out,” a brown-skinned woman told the
    elderly white woman ahead of them in the long line.
    “I’m fine,” Charlie told Chris for the fiftieth time.
    He wasn’t, but finances for Chris and Pamela were hard
    enough without adding on a couple hundred bucks for a
    drop-in visit to the emergency room. “Really. Let’s go.”
    Chris ignored him, just as he’d ignored him the first
    forty-nine times.
    Charlie sighed and searched fruitlessly for an escape
    route. At the next desk over, a girl tapped into a computer,
    head down, as a frizzy-haired woman standing before her
    complained about a crackling sound when she breathed.
    “Don’t worry,” the girl said. “We’ll get you taken care
    of.” She looked up from the computer, and Charlie’s blood
    froze in his veins. Not really; it oozed relentlessly through
    the towel his foster mom had given him, just as it had since
    he’d nearly sliced his thumb off. But it felt as if his blood
    froze, as well as his brain, his heart, and every last muscle
    in his body.
    “Charlie?” Wren said, her expression registering equal
    shock.
    Wren. Behind the desk. At the hospital. Why?
    The frizzy-haired woman took her paperwork with a
    harrumph.
    “Charlie,” Wren said, beckoning him forward.
    Chris approached the desk, relieved. “You know my
    boy?” he said. “Great, because Chahlie here got into a fight
    with a router, and if you’ve ever gotten into a fight with a
    router, you know who won.”
    Wren smiled uncertainly. “Ouch,” she said. “Well, let
    me get you into the system. Can I see your driver’s license
    and insurance card?”
    Charlie had his license. That was no problem. But he had
    to look away as Chris patted his pockets and put on a show
    that they both knew would lead nowhere.
    “Insurance card,” Chris said. “Sure thing.” He pulled out
    his wallet, a battered and bruised thing that was perhaps
    once