by Bella Jacobs
“There have been some fatalities. About two percent for children, closer to thirty percent for teens.” Worry creeps into her pale-blue eyes, such a close match to my own that people have always assumed she’s my birth mom, even though that’s where the resemblance between us ends. “You’ll be Dr. Highborn’s oldest patient so far, and that likely means an even higher risk of complications. But when I explained your situation, how…” She swallows. “How hard things have been lately, well…”
How hard…
When she explained that I’m dying. That’s what she means. We’ve all been dancing around it for months, looking the other way, “Tra-la-la nothing to see here, folks,” while my organs slowly began to fail.
But here it is, laid out in the cool, mint-and-earth scented air.
Pops must have been working in the herb garden, one part of me observes as another solemnly acknowledges, There goes any doubt about that. You really are dying. You haven’t been being a big melodramatic baby, after all.
“I’m dying.” A sinkhole opens in my chest that widens to encompass the kitchen and then the house and then the entire neighborhood. I feel like I’m in free fall—panicked and helpless as I tumble through an endless black void—but strangely peaceful at the same time.
There’s a power in labeling things.
In facing them.
In looking a monster right in the eye and calling it by its name.
Death, I see you there. I know you’re watching, but I’ve got my eye on you, too, motherfuckah…
“No, you’re not,” Mom says, the words as fierce as she is, my tough little mama who has always refused to give up on me, no matter what. “You’re going to be Dr. Highborn’s first adult success story. You’ve got a good chance, Wren. You’re not that far out of adolescence. I mean, as far as I can see, you look the same as you did the day you turned eighteen.”
“Never could put any meat on your bones.” Pops comes to stand behind Mom, leaving muddy footprints on the tile. His tone is calm and easy, but those footprints make it clear how upset he is.
Pops doesn’t track in dirt. He lives to get dirt under his fingernails, but he’s too proud of our home to muck it up. He doesn’t own the bungalow, not even after thirty years of on-time disbursements to pay off the second mortgage, but he loves it.
It’s hard to pay off a house when you’re shelling out thousands of dollars a month for experimental medicine our insurance won’t cover. Even with the help of the Church of Humanity Compassion House scholarship fund, my sickness has brought our family to the brink of financial ruin more than once.
“How much is it going to cost?” I ask, my voice small, guilt pressing down on my shoulders again.
I want to live, God knows I do, but I don’t want to ruin my parents in the process. Especially since it sounds like this is a long shot for me, as the first adult guinea pig of this new procedure.
Mom’s eyes fill, but I know immediately it’s her angry cry, not her sad one. Her gaze is on fire behind the shimmer, and I half expect her to send me to my room for a time out until I learn to control my temper, the way she did when I first came to live with her as a feral four-year-old determined to tear off my clothes and run wild through the neighborhood every chance I got.
“Don’t you dare, Wren Frame.” She sniffs, and her lips pucker into a crooked bow at the center of her face. “Don’t you dare talk money at a time like this. Your life doesn’t have a price. We’ve already talked to the bank about a third mortgage, and the lender promised we’d be approved.”
“But then you’ll never pay off the house,” I say, some twisted part of me driven to make the argument for letting me die, for avoiding the risk when there’s a very real chance there will be no reward.
“Wren, I swear—”
“Screw the house.” Pops’s uncharacteristic curse is so firm and loud that Mom and I both turn his way, our eyes going wide. “I don’t care if we lose the house. It’s worth it. Even if there are no guarantees…” He trails off, his throat working as he swallows. “Even a chance is worth it to me. Anything to help my baby girl.”
And that does it. Those two sweet words from the sweetest man I know break me. My face crumples as I lean into my parents, tears making my voice thick as they wrap me up in their arms. “I love you, Pops. Mom. I love you both so much.”
“And we love you, miracle girl.” Mom uses the old nickname, the one she and Pops stopped using months ago when my health started to fail like all the others.
Most people with my condition don’t make it out of their teens, and only a precious few see thirty. If I’m the luckiest of the lucky, I could have six more years.
I literally have nothing to lose.
Nothing, except the chance to know what it would be like to be more than friends with the man who, just this afternoon, splashed color all over my black-and-white world, showing me brilliant new things I wasn’t sure existed before.
But if I don’t have the procedure and I don’t go into remission soon, it’s all over. At this rate, I could have three months, maybe six if my doctors can find a better drug cocktail before one of my major organs fails.
But if I risk the procedure, I could have even less time than that.
Almost nothing at all.
A 30 percent chance of fatal complications is nothing to take lightly, and as an adult my risk is probably higher, Mom said. If I put myself in this doctor’s care, I’m flipping a coin for my life. No matter how much I want that permanent remission, I don’t know if I’m ready to make that call.
“How long do I have to decide?” I sniff as I pull back from my parents’ embrace, swiping tears from my cheeks with the backs of my hands.
Mom’s forehead furrows. “I told you, sweetie. We have to go in the morning. First thing. They’re holding the seven a.m. surgery slot for you.”
“Oh,” I say, blinking fast. “I’m sorry. I must have been zoning out during that part. Tomorrow. Wow.” I exhale sharply. “That’s so fast.”
“I know.” Mom shakes her head. “But if we miss it, we might not get another chance. People from all over the world are fighting for a place on Dr. Highborn’s schedule. But he’s based right outside Seattle, so we’re one of the few families who can take advantage of this last-minute cancelation.”
I pace a few steps away, one hand propped on my hip as my free fingers tug on my earlobe, fighting to see my way through to a clear decision. But my thoughts are racing too fast to be corralled. My mind is a swarm of sounds and smells and faces—Carrie and Kite and the kids at the shelter and Mom and Dad.
What if I go to sleep on the operating table tomorrow and never get to tell them all goodbye?
What if you say no and miss your one shot at a real life?
“I have to go call Carrie,” I say softly, decision made. It lands hard inside me, making my stomach knot and my blood pressure drop with a suddenness that makes me dizzy, but I know it’s the right choice. “Tell her how much she means to me. Just in case.”
Mom and Dad let out a breath in unison, and Mom reaches first for Dad’s hand and then mine. Glancing between the two of us, she says, “But there won’t be any ‘just in case.’ We’ve got this. We’re leaving here as a family tomorrow morning and coming back as a family.”
After promising them I’ll get packed for the surgery trip while I’m calling Carrie, I slip down the hall to my room. It used to be Scarlett’s room, this dark, cool space shaded by the cherry tree outside the window, but I moved in a few years ago, freeing up my childhood bedroom for Mom’s crafting and sewing supplies. By then, we were finally ready to take down Scarlett’s band posters and paintings, to tuck away her vibrant sheet set and the brightly colored tapestries she hung in front of the windows.
But I kept one of my sister’s pieces, one she painted when she was just nine years old, of a fox at the edge of a field. The fox appears to be dancing, its luxurious tail rippling in the sunset light as it lifts paws to the faint moon visible in the sky
above.
It’s one of my favorite works of art—ever.
I know it’s kid art and far from museum quality, but it speaks to me. Something about the fox, the field, the certain slant of light makes me breathless with longing. If I stare at the painting long enough, I can imagine that I’ve been to this place, danced with that magical creature, lifted my hands to the moon, and known that I was loved.
Loved by the moon and the stars, loved by the earth and the trees, loved by the wind whispering through the tall grass and the light warming my skin, all of them assuring me that I am part of an endless dance.
I walk to the painting now, but when I bring my fingers to hover above the fox’s tail a sharp flash of pain ignites behind my eyes.
I wince, squeezing them closed as my vision goes white and then blue, and then a pudgy hand swims into focus over my head, fingers spread wide as if to reach up and touch the tree limbs waving above.
I’m struck by the sudden certainty that the hand is mine—my toddler hand from long ago, from somewhere in the lost years I can’t remember.
It doesn’t make sense, though, all the sunshine and trees. I was rescued from a drug den in an industrial part of Seattle, where my mother was living with other junkies, selling her body for her next fix. It’s been inferred through the years—though never said outright by anyone, not even the therapist I saw for a year after Scarlett died—that there was a chance my sister and I were sold, too. That people did unspeakable things to us that are better off forgotten.
But the feeling that floods my chest as I watch my starfish fingers spread against a pale blue sky isn’t terror. It’s bliss. Innocent happiness. Certainty that I belong and I am deeply, profoundly loved.
And safe.
And…home.
Smells rush in, cedar and the same smoky-sour nut scent of black cottonwood from earlier today. Also raspberries and spring grass, sunshine-warmed skin mixed with the musky scent of fur and earth. Another flash of memory—a bed in a cool room where I sleep snuggled with half a dozen other children, all of us cozy in a puppy pile of contentment—and then I’m back in that field, reaching for the sky, certain I can touch the treetops if I wanted to. I could grow wings and fly, even though Mama says it isn’t safe for me to fly so young.
Mama…
Another scent—turpentine and vanilla sugar—slams into me so hard I flinch, followed by images and sensations flickering so fast inside I can barely grab hold of one before it’s replaced by another—full lips, big smile, green dress, blue water, peace, golden grass, fox tail, sharp teeth, safety, my hand, red hair, red fur, softness, love, full moon, fireworks, belonging and belonging and belonging until the fireworks are replaced with gunshots and then—
My phone vibrates in my hand, and I emerge from the rush of memory with a gasp.
I press my fist to my chest, where my heart is doing its best to crash through my sternum, and glance down at the screen to see an unfamiliar number. I answer without a second thought—some of the kids at the shelter have secret cell phones, even though they’re supposed to turn them over when they check-in, and I’ve been on the receiving end of more than one panicked after-hours call from a kid in need of a friendly ear.
“Hello?” I say, my voice breathy and weak from the hallucination.
That had to be what it was. I was two months shy of four years old when I was adopted, and I’ve never been able to access any of my earliest childhood memories, not even when my therapist attempted to guide me into the past under hypnosis.
There is nothing back there but static and blur.
Static…
A faint hum on the end of the line…
“Hello?” I say again. “This is Wren, can I help you?”
“You can help yourself,” a distorted voice garbles from the other end of the line, making my brows snap together. “Go to the window. Open it. Wait for a message.”
“What? Who is this? How did you get this number?” A click-click-click sound as the line goes dead is the only response.
With a shudder, I toss my phone onto my flowered bedspread, where it lies there contaminating the field of poppies. Heart racing, I start toward the door to call out to Mom and Pops, but pause at the last second, something deep inside me telling me to wait.
To think.
To remember…
My fingers dive into the front pocket of my jeans, closing around the lucky coin I carry with me everywhere I go. The gold warms immediately against my skin, sending a pulse of calm threading through my fear.
There was a phone call like that once before, wasn’t there?
A long time ago…
I bite my lip, tugging the coin out of my jeans and flipping it over the tops of my knuckles the way my friend Dust taught me when we were kids, fighting to resurrect the recollection from my graveyard of forgotten memories.
One of the side effects of being exhausted all the time is that the brain tends to prioritize certain functions over others. My body is focused on preserving the energy to keep waking up and walking around and processing food into energy from one day to the next. Archiving memories is way down the list on my biological to-do list, which means many entries in my personal history book are murky at best, blank pages at worst.
But that call…
The garbled voice…
Lifting the coin to hover in front of me, I stare into the eyes of the lion on the smoother side before flipping over to study the eagle with gnarled talons on the other. Sometimes watching the coin twirl in slow circles helps me focus, another trick Dust taught me before he moved away.
Or before he died. I’m not sure which story is true.
My parents told me Dust and his parents moved back to England to be closer to family. George, a fellow seventh grader who lived next door to Dust back in the day, swore he saw a body being wheeled out of his house on a stretcher in the middle of the night, just days before the family allegedly returned to the UK.
A small body, about the size of Dust at thirteen…
We were all sick, all of the kids at the Church of Humanity Chosen Charter School, and becoming increasingly familiar with death. We’d lost Grace over the summer between my fourth and fifth grade year, Vince before Halloween the following year, and both of the twins—Regina and Rafe—during the Christmas holidays mere months before Dust vanished without a trace.
But Dust…
The thought of him gone, vanished along with his fantastic stories and his magical way of turning every silly schoolyard game into an adventure, hit me hard. Even though he was two years ahead of me in school, Dust was my best friend, and the only person I could talk to about Scarlett’s increasingly wild behavior and how terrifying it felt for my sister to pull away from me. Dust listened with his entire self and set about solving problems like it was his mission on earth. Even at thirteen, it was clear that he was going to grow up to be an incredible person, one that fights to keep the lights on in an increasingly dark world.
So I told George to keep his lies to himself and chose to believe that Dust was out there somewhere, hiding treasures in his pockets and making up wild stories and being the same old Dust I’d known.
Years later, when I was in college and I received a waiver for the Church of Humanity’s ban on online activity so I could pursue my degree in social work, I tried looking for him. I hoped to find a social media page with his grinning face, or some sign that he was out there, alive and happy. But there was nothing. No birth certificate, no death certificate, no adoption forms filed in the state of Washington, not even an entry in the movement’s annual member registration database.
His parents’ names were still there, but he’d been scrubbed out.
Erased.
He must have left the movement as a Hostile Faction. Only those in open opposition to the Church of Humanity, those determined to undermine our mission to unite all people, are erased when they leave. Once I’d realized that, I’d stopped looking for Dust.
No matter where
he was or what he was doing, he was a H.F. and forever beyond my reach.
But I kept this coin, the one he promised me would keep me safe.
My gaze softens as I spin the coin faster and the locked doors in my mind begin to creak open. I catch flashes of Scarlett at nineteen, at seventeen, and then Scarlett on the last day of her sophomore year of high school.
We’re having a party to celebrate. Mom and Pops and all our friends are out in the backyard. Scarlett and I are inside, preparing to bring out the box of cupcakes we bought for dessert—I’m insisting I get the only red velvet—when the phone on the wall rings. Scarlett picks it up, and there’s a voice on the other end, a deep, distorted voice telling her to take her sister’s hand and run to the front door.
Run. Now, the voice says, so loud I can hear it from by the refrigerator halfway across the room. I start toward Scarlett, watching her face pale and her eyes go wide. This may be our only chance to get you out. The Frames aren’t who you think they are. You aren’t safe. If you stay, you and your sister will both die. Go. Now.
The phone falls from Scarlett’s hand, and I run to hug her, but I don’t remember what comes next…
I don’t remember…
A scratching sound on the other side of the room snaps me out of my trance, sending my heart jerking back into panic mode. Squeezing the coin in my fist, I spin to face the window.
Immediately, my gaze locks on the fat, fluffy raccoon perched on the sill outside, it’s onyx eyes sparkling in its brown mask. It’s an enormous creature with steel-gray fur shot through with white highlights and a damp black nose that wiggles up and down as it presses one eerily human hand to the window.
I shake my head, not knowing what to make of this night animal out at dusk and looking me dead in the eye with an intelligence that makes my skin crawl. But I’m glad I didn’t open the window the way the voice on the phone told me to do. If I had, that massive beastie and its teeth would be in my room.
That’s clearly what it wants.
The raccoon scratches plaintively at the glass, flinching when my Mom shouts from the kitchen, “Wren, are you okay with red sauce on your pasta? Or do you want your noodles plain with a little butter and pepper?”