Page 80 of You Spin Me

“You’re gonna have to explain some of those words.” I knock on the side of my skull. “Not much going on in here.”

“Well, that’s total bullshit,” she snaps, her tone shifting again.

“Okay, but I didn’t go to college to learn about… what is it that you studied?”

“Dance and theater. It’s not like I’m some erudite scholar.”

“You definitely know bigger words than I do. What exactly does ‘figuratively’ mean? Like, figures?”

She goes back to tracing the outlines of my tats. “It means metaphorically, standing for an idea or something other than what it is.”

“Uh, okay. I guess I get it.”

“Anyway”—she kisses the center of the purple Aster on my shoulder—“all these delicate flowers covering these hard-as-rock muscles. That contrast tells a story in and of itself.”

My brain’s not quite awake, but maybe it’s better that way. Easier to let the words escape when my guard’s down. “They’re reminders.”

“‘There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.’” When I raise my eyebrows in question, she adds, “That’s what Ophelia says. InHamlet. She has this whole speech about the meanings of flowers.”

I’ve never explained my tattoos to anyone. Not even the artist that created them. All he wanted was pictures to work from.

Sitting up and stuffing a pillow behind me, I rotate my arm so she can focus on the ink. I want to trust Jess with all the scary parts of me, so maybe this is a good place to start. “After the fire, I had to spend a lot of time at the hospital. For the first couple of months?—”

Her hand on my forearm interrupts me. “You were there formonths?”

“Yeah, the first time I was there for about five months.”

“Oh my god.”

“Oh, it gets worse. The treatments were—I can’t even describe how horrific they were.” Swallowing past the taste of bile that thinking about that time always brings up, I search for a better way to talk about this. “But there were things, and people, that made it bearable. Barely. Like my mom, who spent as much time as possible with me, even though she had my baby sister to take care of. One of the doctors who always took the time to answer my questions. Some of the nurses were especially kind. And then there was this framed picture of flowers on the wall right by my bed. Staring at those flowers helped me kind of leave my body. Without that, the pain was intolerable.”

“Didn’t they give you, like, anesthesia?”

“They did not. I’ve heard that these days they keep people in a controlled coma for the first weeks or months of treatment. Back then, they didn’t. Not even painkillers. I guess they didn’t have research on how those meds would affect kids, so they were afraid to use them.”

“That’s unbelievable,” she whispers.

“Anyway, when I got to leave the hospital the first time, I guess I threw a major tantrum until my mom talked them into letting us take the picture with us. I’ve kept it by my bed ever since.” I point at the wall behind her.

Even now, I like knowing that it’s there. I can’t look at it for too long, though, so I focus on the flowers on my arm instead.

“Over the years, I learned the names of the different flowers and what they represent. When I turned eighteen, I decided to get a tattoo so I could carry them with me everywhere.” Pointing to each one, I recite, “The aster means patience. Something I had to learn. These are bluebells, which stand for both humility and gratitude. The cherry blossom has a lot of meanings: renewal, the ephemeral nature of life—and beauty.”

“Pretty big words for an uneducated guy.”

“I looked them all up.”

“No roses?”

I shake my head. “Roses are for love and passion. I haven’t had a whole lot of that in my life.”

She’s silent for a few beats before she points to my inner arm. “This is a lotus, right?”

“Yep. It also has multiple meanings, but rebirth is the one that means something to me. Every time I had to go under for surgery, I’d get really afraid.”

When I don’t continue, she asks, “What scared you?”

I’ve never told anyone this. Not even my mom. “I was afraid that I wouldn’t wake up. And I was afraidtowake up. Because of the pain.”

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