If I Stay by Gayle Forman

conservatory program is nothing like American Pie .
    Right now I can see Kim is annoyed. She’s walking fast, keeping a good ten feet between her and her mother as they march down the halls. Suddenly her shoulders go up like a cat that’s just spied a dog. She swerves to face her mother.
    “Stop it!” Kim demands. “If I’m not crying, there’s no fucking way you’re allowed to.”
    Kim never curses. So this shocks me.
    “But,” Mrs. Schein protests, “how can you be so . . .” —sob—“so calm when—”
    “Cut it out!” Kim interjects. “Mia is still here. So I’m not losing it. And if I don’t lose it, you don’t get to!”
    Kim stalks off in the direction of the waiting room, her mother following limply behind. When they reach the waiting room and see my assembled family, Mrs. Schein starts sniffling.
    Kim doesn’t curse this time. But her ears go pink, which is how I know she’s still furious. “Mother. I am going to leave you here. I’m taking a walk. I’ll be back later.”
    I follow her back out into the corridor. She wanders around the main lobby, loops around the gift shop, visits the cafeteria. She looks at the hospital directory. I think I know where she’s headed before she does.
    There’s a small chapel in the basement. It’s hushed in there, a library kind of quiet. There are plush chairs like the kind you find at a movie theater, and a muted soundtrack playing some New Agey-type music.
    Kim slumps back in one of the chairs. She takes off her coat, the one that is black and velvet and that I have coveted since she bought it at some mall in New Jersey on a trip to visit her grandparents.
    “I love Oregon,” she says with a hiccup attempt at a laugh. I can tell by her sarcastic tone that it’s me she’s talking to, not God. “This is the hospital’s idea of nondenominational.” She points around the chapel. There is a crucifix mounted on the wall, a flag of a cross draped over the lectern, and a few paintings of the Madonna and Child hanging in the back. “We have a token Star of David,” she says, gesturing to the six-pointed star on the wall. “But what about the Muslims? No prayer rugs or symbol to show which way is east toward Mecca? And what about the Buddhists? Couldn’t they spring for a gong? I mean there are probably more Buddhists than Jews in Portland anyway.”
    I sit down in a chair beside her. It feels so natural the way that Kim is talking to me like she always does. Other than the paramedic who told me to hang in there and the nurse who keeps asking me how I’m doing, no one has talked to me since the accident. They talk about me.
    I’ve never actually seen Kim pray. I mean, she prayed at her bat mitzvah and she does the blessings at Shabbat dinner, but that is because she has to. Mostly, she makes light of her religion. But after she talks to me for a while, she closes her eyes and moves her lips and murmurs things in a language I don’t understand.
    She opens her eyes and wipes her hands together as if to say enough of that . Then she reconsiders and adds a final appeal. “Please don’t die. I can understand why you’d want to, but think about this: If you die, there’s going to be one of those cheesy Princess Diana memorials at school, where everyone puts flowers and candles and notes next to your locker.” She wipes away a renegade tear with the back of her hand. “I know you’d hate that kind of thing.”

    Maybe it was because we were too alike. As soon as Kim showed up on the scene, everyone assumed we’d be best friends just because we were both dark, quiet, studious, and, at least outwardly, serious. The thing was, neither one of us was a particularly great student (straight B averages all around) or, for that matter, all that serious. We were serious about certain things—music in my case, art and photography in hers—and in the simplified world of middle school, that was enough to set us apart as separated twins of some