“Okay,” he says, eyeing me curiously. “And it’s something we have to talk about in your dad’s office?” he jokes, gesturing around at the stale white walls and brown furniture.
“Sort of,” I say. “Yes. But I’ll get to that part in a minute.”
“Okay.”
Pause.
“I’m not sure where to start.”
“The beginning?” Matt suggests, still smiling.
I exhale loudly, then decide to go for it. “I’m sworn not to tell you what I’m about to say,” I begin. Matt sits up a little straighter in his chair, his interest piqued. He nods, as if agreeing not to share my secret. “So, before a drug gets approved and can be sold to people, it goes through a bunch of testing. A lot of the time, the public knows about the drug while it’s being tested, but sometimes, with really controversial drugs, the tests are done secretly. They can take years, often decades.” I pause, giving myself one final out. Then I just say it: “I’m part of one of those programs.”
“Cool. What’s it for?” Matt asks without skipping a beat. The look on his face is so… excited. I wait a moment before continuing, holding on to that look for as long as I can. I feel like I’m about to crush him, but how can I keep hanging out with him if he doesn’t know the real me?
“It’s a drug called Revive,” I say finally. “It brings people back from the dead.” Matt’s brows pinch together in confusion. “I died when I was four years old,” I clarify. “The drug brought me back to life.”
“That’s… Are you messing with me?” Matt asks.
“No,” I say seriously.
Matt’s eyes look playful as they search mine for a trace of teasing. When he finds none, his expression becomes somber.
“How did you die?” he asks, concerned.
“I was in a school-bus crash in Iowa,” I say. “The bus skidded off a bridge into a lake.”
I can practically see the wheels turning in Matt’s brain.
“Not the one they made the miniseries about?” he asks, taking it in.
I nod.
“So…” he begins, the pieces clicking together for him. His eyebrows knit tighter and he shifts in his chair a little. After a few moments of puzzling, Matt asks what I’ve been waiting for him to ask: “Audrey?”
He says only her name, not daring to speak the rest.
I shake my head, not wanting to go there at all. But I realize that I have to.
“It’s not…” I say, my voice trailing off. I regroup and try again. “It doesn’t work on people with diseases or really serious injuries. It can’t regrow damaged tissue. It’s more like an electric pulse to your entire system at once. It shocks you back to life from the inside out. Revive can’t help bodies that weren’t healthy when the person died.”
Visibly processing the information, Matt says, “That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.” He’s borderline monotone, distracted, looking from me to the desk to the walls and back, searching for answers. He swallows hard; I think he’s shell-shocked.
“I know.”
“And… I don’t… I mean, I’m not sure if I even want to know about this,” he admits. He fidgets, then wipes his palms on his pants. “I mean, what am I supposed to do with this stuff? If it can’t do anything for Audrey, I mean, what good is me knowing about it? It’s not really fair.” Matt stops talking and looks down at his hands. The sadness in his eyes makes me wonder if I’ve done the right thing.
>“There was banter,” he says.
“Which is what we’re doing right now,” I reply. I fold my hands over my stomach.
“And exorcise,” Matt says.
“Exercise?” I ask. “That was a vocabulary word?”
“No, not like running on a treadmill, like exorcising demons.”
“Oh,” I say. “Okay. Do another one.”