Madeline “Maddy” Whittier Character Analysis

This year is a little harder than the previous. Maybe it’s because I’m eighteen now. Technically, I’m an adult. I should be leaving home, going off to college. My mom should be dreading empty-nest syndrome. But because of SCID, I’m not going anywhere.

“Madeline,” He says happily, clapping his hands together. He’s my favorite of all my tutors. He never looks at me pityingly and he loves architecture like I love architecture. If I were going to be something when I grew up, an architect is what I would be.

“There he is!” Mr. Waterman exclaims. He clucks at the scene for a few moments and then turns to me. His merry eyes are a little less merry than usual. “It’s just wonderful, my dear. But how will he eat all that scrumptious food with his helmet on?”

I look back at my astronaut. It’d never occurred to me that he’d want to eat the food.

Actually, mine’s not blank at all, but I really can’t tell him how beautiful his eyes are. They’re Atlantic Ocean blue, just like he’d said. It’s strange because of course I’d known that. But the difference between knowing it and seeing them in person is the difference between dreaming of flying and flight.

“I’ve seen pictures and videos, but what’s it like to actually be in the water? Is it like taking a bath in a giant tub?”

“Sort of,” he says slowly, considering. “No, I take it back. Taking a bath is relaxing. Being in the ocean is scary. It’s wet and cold and salty and deadly.”

That’s not what I was expecting. “You hate the ocean?”

He’s grinning now, warming to his topic. “I don’t hate it. I respect it.” He holds up a single finger. “Respect. It’s Mother Nature at her finest—awesome, beautiful, impersonal, murderous. Think about it: All that water and you could still die of thirst. And the whole point of waves is to suck your feet from under you so that you drown faster. The ocean will swallow you whole and burp you out and not notice you were even there.”

I wish again that I could talk to my mom about this. I want to ask her why I get breathless when I think of him. I want to share my giddiness with her. I want to tell her all the funny things Olly says. I want to tell her how I can’t make myself stop thinking about him even though I try. I want to ask her if this is the way she felt about Dad at the beginning.

It feels strange not to talk to my mom about something, someone, who’s becoming so important to me. My mom and I are drifting apart, but not because we’re spending less time together. And not because Olly’s replacing her. We’re drifting apart because for the first time in my life, I have a secret to keep.

Before, I was worried about keeping secrets from her. Now, I’m worried about not being able to have any secrets at all. I know she’s not upset that I bought new clothes. She’s upset that I didn’t ask her opinion and bought them in colors that she didn’t expect. She’s upset with the change she didn’t see coming. I resent and understand it at the same time.

“Can I have my Internet privileges back?” I have to try.

She shakes her head. “Ask me for something else, honey.”

“Please, Mom.”

“It’s better this way. I don’t want you to have a broken heart.”

“Love can’t kill me,” I say, parroting Carla’s words.

“That’s not true,” she says. “Whoever told you that?”

How am I supposed to go back to my old life, my days stretching out before me with unending and brutal sameness? How am I supposed to go back to being The Girl Who Reads? Not that I begrudge my life in books. All I know about the world I’ve learned from them. But a description of a tree is not a tree, and a thousand paper kisses will never equal the feel of Olly’s lips against mine.

Ever since Olly came into my life there’ve been two Maddys: the one who lives through books and doesn’t want to die, and the one who lives and suspects that death will be a small price to pay for it. The first Maddy is surprised at the direction of her thoughts. The second Maddy, the one from the Hawaii photograph? She’s like a god—impervious to cold, famine, disease, natural and man-made disasters. She’s impervious to heartbreak.

The second Maddy knows that this pale half life is not really living.

He’s much too smart to fall for this, but he wants it to be true. He wants it to be true more than he wants the truth. The smile that breaks across his face is cautious, but so beautiful that I can’t look away. I would lie to him again for that smile.

“Of course I regret it. A lot of bad things happened on that trip. And when my mother and father died, I couldn’t go back for the funerals. Rosa doesn’t know anything about where she’s from.” She sighs. “You’re not living if you’re not regretting.”

What am I going to regret? My mind cycles through visions: my mom alone in my white room wondering where everyone she’s ever loved went. My mom alone in a green field staring down at my grave and my dad’s grave and my brother’s grave. My mom dying all alone in that house.

“Be careful,” Olly calls out from somewhere behind me.

I’m not sure what that means in this context. Be careful because I may drown? Be careful because I may get sick? Be careful because once you become a part of the world it becomes a part of you, too?

Because there’s no denying it now. I’m in the world.

And, too, the world is in me.

By eighteen years old, other teenagers have separated from their parents. They leave home, have separate lives, make separate memories. But not me. My mom and I have shared the same closed space and breathed the same filtered air for so long that it’s strange being here without her. It’s strange making memories that don’t include her.

“Maybe growing up means disappointing the people we love.”

“You should leave them,” I say. “It’s not safe for you there.”

I say it because he doesn’t know it. He’s trapped by the same memory of love, of better times, that his mother is, and it isn’t enough.

“How could you do this to yourself? You could’ve died,” she whispers.

She steps closer, hugs a clipboard to her chest. “How could you do this to me? After everything?”

I wish I could undo the last few months of knowing him. I would stay in my room. I would hear the truck beeping next door and I would remain on my white couch in my white room reading my brand-new books. I would remember my past and then I would remember not to repeat it.

He’s not sure which conversation with his mom finally convinced her. It could’ve been because he told her he couldn’t be part of the family anymore if she stayed. Sometimes you have to leave the people who love you the most, he said. Or, he says, it could’ve been when he finally told her about me and about how sick I am and how I was willing to do anything just to live. He says that she thinks I’m brave.

“Mom, it’s OK,” I say. “I didn’t really believe it anyway.”

I don’t think she hears me. “I had to protect you,” she says.

“I know, Mom.” I don’t really want to talk about this anymore. I move back into her arms.

“I had to protect you,” she says into my hair.

And it’s that last “I had to protect you” that makes a part of me go quiet.

[...]

I try to pull away, to see her face, but she holds on tight.

“Because of the circumstances of your upbringing, we’re not sure about the state of your immune system.”

“What does that mean?”

“We think it’s possible that it’s underdeveloped, like an infant’s.”

“An infant?”

“Your immune system hasn’t been exposed to a lifetime of common viruses and bacterial infections. It hasn’t had time to get experience with fighting these infections. It hasn’t had time to get strong.”