“You go to Roosevelt?” he asks, and I nod. My school, the only public high school in the city, is sort of an institution. My mom and uncle Charlie went there, too.
“What about you?”
“Barrow?” he says, in that way that Harvard undergrads tell you where they go to school, with a little half question mark at the end as if you may not have heard of it. I wasn’t expecting him to name a private school. I guess my face reveals my surprise.
“I know, I know,” he says. “Private school asshole, that’s what you’re thinking.”
“No, I mean—” I stammer. Barrow is known for being one of the snootier private schools around. It’s hard to imagine him there. “How is it?”
“You know, it’s not bad, honestly,” he says. “The people aren’t as obnoxious as you’d think. And the teachers have been cool with my sisters, with the sickle cell stuff. They take it seriously. My parents sent us there so they’d get that kind of attention, so if they were having a bad day they wouldn’t just get lost in the crowd.”
I’m pretty sure no one at my high school knows about my genetic situation, except my favorite teacher, Ms. Greenberg. In English, sophomore year, she assigned us an essay on a moment that “cleaved our lives in two”—I remember her using those words exactly. She wanted us to think about a time when a single event—meeting someone, making a choice, taking a risk—changed us fundamentally. I could’ve written about setting foot in the dance studio for the first time, or the moment I went up en pointe, but everything I tried to write felt false, so I gave in and wrote the truth.
“Of course, half my classmates assume my whole family’s on scholarship,” Caleb says. “Because hey, you know, how else would we be able to afford it?” He throws up his hands exaggeratedly, pretending to be utterly baffled.
I register that he’s making a joke about race, but I don’t know how to respond in a way that makes me sound smart/funny/race-conscious in a sophisticated way, so instead I overfocus on my frappe, trying not to slurp. Slurping is something I am particularly paranoid about. It’s almost inevitable when drinking ice cream through a narrow straw, but it’s also an early symptom of Huntington’s. My mother slurps a lot these days.
“Hey, so I read this thing last week that you’d find interesting, I think,” I say.
If he notices that I’ve changed the subject away from his clever social commentary, he doesn’t indicate it. “Tell me.” He gives me a quizzical look.
“Have you heard of the blog Teens with Bad Genes?”
Caleb laughs, hard. He has a big laugh, the kind that shakes his shoulders up and down. It’s a good laugh. “I have not heard of that, but I’ve obviously been missing out. What is that?”
“It was started by some kid whose sister has Tay-Sachs. He’s really funny. You wouldn’t think Tay-Sachs could be funny, I know, but trust me. This kid makes it hilarious. I mean, not the disease. But like, living in his family and dealing with all this stuff. And he posts cool genetics news articles and stuff.”
“Oh yeah?” He raises an eyebrow in interest.
As I launch into a detailed explanation of the testing program in the Jewish high schools and all the fascinating questions it raises about genetic testing, it occurs to me that I am seriously nerding out on Caleb.
“Sorry,” I say, cutting myself off. “I’m kind of a dork about this stuff.”
“I already knew that, HD.”
“I’m just saying, you should read the blog because it’s funny and informative.”
“Funny and informative, is it? Well, that must make it worth reading, then.” Caleb shoves me gently. I push him back.
“At first I suspected that the blogger kid was probably a pedo living in his mother’s basement and just posing as a teenager, you know?” I say. “But then I Googled him and he’s legit.”
Caleb laughs again. “Why do you think everyone is secretly a criminal? First you accuse me of plotting to lure you into the woods, and now you think this blog guy is a pedophile? I’m pretty sure most people are not murderers posing as teenagers with genetic mutations, even on the Internet.”
“Truth?” I ask, putting my frappe down.
“Truth.”
“I watched too many murder mysteries as a child. I’m damaged. Blame my parents.”
“Oh, so that’s what this is? And you’ll never get in a taxi because you watched that movie with Denzel and Angelina, right?”
“Exactly!” I say, cracking up. “Never, ever take taxis!”
When our laughter naturally trails off, we both force a few extra chuckles out, just to extend the moment a little longer. Finally, I look at him, looking at me.
“What?”
“Nothing, nothing. You’re funny, HD girl.”
“I do what I can,” I say, shrugging. Because you know, this is no big deal. Just me, hanging out with an attractive male, having a not completely awkward conversation. Like normal girls do.
“Anyway,” I say, “I’ll send you the link. For the blog. You sort of have to read it to get what I’m talking about.”
“I’m looking forward to that,” he says.
Ice cream consumed and all possible topics of small talk exhausted, we get up to go. Of course I manage to trip over my own feet going up the steps, and Caleb catches me by the elbow just as I go down on one knee.
“You okay?” he asks, stifling a laugh.
“Fine, fine.” (Mortified, but fine.)
“Now you’re probably going to accuse me of putting a roofie in your ice cream or something, right?” he says.
I brush my hands off on my jeans. “Actually, I won’t try to blame that one on you. I’m the clumsiest ballet dancer you’ll ever meet.”
“Ah, I see. So you’re graceful only when dancing?”
“And otherwise can’t walk a straight line without tripping. Precisely.”
We hover in front of the entrance to the subway station for another minute or two, even though neither of us is getting on. He told me he’d parked his car at one of the meters on Mass. Ave. and never mentioned needing to feed it again, even though I’m pretty sure we’ve been sitting here for more than an hour. I wonder how many quarters he put in, how much time he thought we’d spend together. Then I wonder what percentage of that time I spent babbling about something ridiculous.
Finally, he gives me a weird punch on the shoulder.
“Well, I’ll see you again soon, HD girl?”
“Sounds good.”
“Get home safe. Don’t catch a genetic disease on the way home.” The light changes on Mass. Ave. and the walk signal appears, counting down in white digits from thirty seconds.
“You don’t ‘catch’ a genetic disease,” I say. “That’s the point.” He shades his eyes from the sun with one hand, just surveying me, while the walk signal drops down to twenty seconds. Of course, he knows you don’t catch a genetic disease. “I mean, obviously. Well, you were kidding. Okay, I’m shutting up now.” Nice one, Rose.
But he just laughs again, the shoulders going, and somehow I feel sort of okay being the biggest dork on the planet. Like I don’t have to pretend I’m anything but.
“Okay, HD. Well, in that case, please don’t experience the effects of epigenetics and have a mechanism in your present environment effect changes to your genetic expression. Better?”
Now I’m grinning. “Better.” He grins back, then turns to jog across the street before the light changes again.
Six
“So? Details, please. The date. Tell me everything.” Lena leans across her desk to whisper in my face when we sit down for AP Calculus first period Monday morning. She looks like a proud mother who’s about to ship her kid off to college.
“Also, what do you think happens if a guy with the gene for sickle cell and a girl with the gene for Huntington’s make babies?” Lena muses. “Do you think those gene mutations would magically cancel each other out and you’d have perfectly healthy children?”
I roll my eyes at her.
“Okay, first of all, you’re incorrigible. Second of all, he doesn’t have sickle cell, his sisters do, and anyway, that is a totally scientifically unsound theory. And third of all, it wasn’t a date. It was ice cream and conversation. Very civilized. You should try it.”
At the front of the room, Mr. Petrilli is writing out some warm-up problems involving standard deviation on the white board. I like Petrilli; we all do. He’s been teaching here forever. Bowling ball head, thick Boston accent, and he takes three days off every April to go down to Red Sox spring training. That, and he’s known for using Mrs. Petrilli’s baked goods in class from time to time. I still don’t understand how Rice Krispies treats are related to the derivative, but it doesn’t really matter.
“Come on, give me a clue,” Lena whispers, leaning a little closer as she opens to a clean page in her notebook.
I start jotting down Petrilli’s warm-up problems. “He goes to Barrow.”
Lena’s face contorts instantly, like she’s just bitten into a sour gummy. “Seriously? Ick!”
“No, he’s cool. He made a joke about it. He’s funny. And smart.”
“Funny and smart,” Lena says triumphantly, nodding. “Like you.” She gives me one of her huge, toothy fake grins. Lena acts like a goof a lot of the time, and she can sometimes sound ditzy, but she’s actually one of those effortlessly smart girls who gets A’s on everything without even trying that hard. I’d probably hate her if she hadn’t been my best friend since forever.
Petrilli clears his throat and launches into today’s lesson: “Ah-right, let’s talk about stand-ahd deviation.” I relax a little at the excuse to stop thinking about Caleb and set my eyes on the board.
* * *
But then I have no choice but to think about him, because he disappears. No text messages, no IMs or Facebook chats. He doesn’t even respond to the Teens with Bad Genes link I send over. By the middle of week two with no sign of him, I’m convinced that he’s vanished because he’s realized that he made a massive mistake by hanging out with me.
“Maybe he thinks I thought ice cream was a date-date? And now he feels awkward about it?” I ask Lena over the phone when I should be finishing my English reading.
“If that’s true, he’s super lame. Maybe he’s just been busy.”
“Should I text him?”
I can practically hear Lena’s exasperation in the silence on the other end of the line. “Really, do I have to teach you everything? You do not text him. That’s rule number one for dealing with boys! You’re way too busy with all the cool, interesting things happening in your life. Right?”
“Such as…?”
“Such as ballet, school, getting into college, hanging out with moi, obviously.”
“I just hope he’s okay.”
“He’s fine,” Lena says. Her lack of the anxious gene allows her to soar through these situations without jumping to the worst-case scenario. “Trust me. You’ll either hear from him, or he’s not worth the trouble.”
When we hang up, I consider Lena’s rules for dealing with boys. She’s definitely savvier than I am about this stuff, but the idea of waiting around for some guy I barely know to call or text me just seems annoying. Besides, it’s the twenty-first century. I pull up Caleb’s last text to me. It was from five minutes before we met at the bookstore, when I’d written to say I was running late and he’d texted back, “No worries. No shortage of reading material here.”
I start tapping out a text. “Hey, how are you? Haven’t heard from you in a while, hope everything is ok.” Then I delete it. Next I try, “What’s up? Missed you on IM this week.” Missed you? Get a grip, Rose. Delete. Finally I settle on, “Breaking news: the blogger IS a pedo after all.”
I hit Send before I can overthink it, and let out a sigh as I put the phone down. If Lena asks, this never happened.
I sit on my bed, scrolling through Facebook on my phone and waiting, and waiting. No more texts come through. I toss the phone aside and mark through the combination we worked on today in ballet, going through all the movements but with about fifty percent energy since I have limited floor space in my room. I pause on the part I kept messing up earlier and go through it a few more times until I nail it twice in a row. But my phone’s still silent.
* * *
By the time I get home from dance the next night, my head is more or less exploding. I’ve even tried turning my phone off and on a few times to make sure no text messages got randomly lodged in there, but—big surprise—there aren’t any.
I’d prefer to skip out on dinner and go straight to my room to obsess some more, but Dad has actually cooked for a change—chicken, salad, and rice pilaf—so I’m stuck sitting down for a meal.
It almost feels like our old life: real food, cooked by a person in our family instead of someone at one of our local takeout joints, and it’s just the three of us; Gram’s at her book club. Even Mom seems like she’s having a pretty good night. Her body jerks involuntarily, constant slight, uncoordinated movements, but she hasn’t had any outbursts or said anything inappropriate … at least not since I got home. She’s a little glum, which is her baseline these days, but other than that she seems almost normal.
“Can you help me with the rice, Rose?” she asks. I take more pilaf from the ceramic dish Dad hands me and pile a small heap on her plate.
“Thanks,” she says, giving me a lopsided half smile. She aims a small forkful of salad at her mouth and brings it slowly in for a landing, letting a few lettuce leaves scatter to her plate.
“Let’s talk about your college a-a-applications,” she says after she’s carefully chewed the bits of lettuce.
“Oh please, Mother, do we have to?” I groan.
“Yes. Dad sssays you’re behind.”
I shoot Dad a dirty look. “I’m not behind, guys. It’s barely October.”
“Okay, but the time is going to fly,” Dad says. “Is your list all set? Including a safety school?”
I take a bite of pilaf to avoid answering. It scalds my tongue.
“Too. Hot,” I say, fanning my mouth.
“You’ve got to get on top of this stuff, babe,” Dad says. “I was talking to a client about his daughter; she’s at Emerson, and he said she loves it. She’s an economics major. You could do that or—have you thought about architecture? Like Mom?”
“Dad,” I interrupt, taking a gulp of water. “Can we stop, please? I’m not ready to commit to a major when I haven’t even applied yet.”
“Sorry, sorry, you’re right. What about your essays? Want me to look at them?”
“Ms. Greenberg is going to read them, she promised. She’s also doing one of my recommendations. Mr. Petrilli is doing the other. Okay?” I look from Dad to Mom and back again.
“Fine. You’re on top of it. Noted,” Dad says. “But I’m just saying—”
“Dad. Seriously.”
“Okay, okay.” He pauses just long enough to cut his chicken, but I can tell he’s not done. “But what about Cunningham? Have you started that application, at least? I thought you were thinking about applying early there.”
I guess I did say that, technically. But there’s still this voice in the back of my head, whispering about PCCA, that I can’t get rid of.
I take a deep breath and smile at Dad. I get that he wants to be helpful. But what he doesn’t understand—and what I don’t want to tell him—is that I know he can’t handle everything. He can’t take care of Mom, and deal with all her meds and appointments and therapy, and get his own work done, and help me figure out this college mess. I determined quite a while ago that I was going to have to figure out this stuff on my own, and that’s fine. It really is. I’m on it.
So instead of explaining all that to him, I just smile. It’s a little forced, but I don’t want to turn this into a thing, especially when Mom’s having a decent night.
“I haven’t decided yet about Cunningham. But I have a meeting this week with Ms. Greenberg, and she’s going to help me figure it ou
t. Okay?”
That should satisfy him. Dad knows Ms. Greenberg is trustworthy. I haven’t had her since sophomore year, when I wrote about Mom’s diagnosis for her class, but I still think of her as my favorite.
It works. “Sounds good,” Dad says. “Just let me know if you want to talk about it.” He turns to Mom, who’s focused on getting food into her mouth. She looks up at me, a little piece of pilaf stuck to her chin.
“Good, sweetie. Ssssounds good.”
* * *
After dinner, I’m trying to focus on my calculus problem set when finally my phone rings. Caleb. I let it ring a few times, almost to voice mail, and then answer casually. “Hello?”
“So you don’t know who’s calling?” he asks, without even saying hi.
“It’s been so long since I’ve heard from you, I deleted your number from my phone.” I’m surprised by my own boldness.
“Uh-huh. Before or after you texted me?” Dammit. Busted. “Hey, look, sorry I went MIA.” He clears his throat.
“What’s up?”
There’s a little pause. “Been a rough couple weeks I guess. Sorry I didn’t shoot you a text. My sister Ella had a bad pain crisis, and then Mom did. It’s been a string of ER visits and hospital stays.”
I know enough about sickle cell to know that it affects the red blood cells, so you can have terrible pain—a “crisis”—literally anywhere your blood flows.
“Oh man, I’m sorry,” I say. Of course, it had nothing to do with us. Because we’re not anything, really.
“Thanks. They’re both a lot better now. It’s just hectic when it happens, you know.”
“Yeah. I mean, I can imagine.”
I wander from my desk to my bed and pick at the pilling on my flannel duvet cover, trying desperately to think of something else to talk about so we won’t have to hang up.
Rules for 50/50 Chances Page 6