What Happened to Lani Garver

by Carol Plum-Ucci

  I realized I'd just said "illness," and yet he hadn't turned to stare. I watched him study the corner, his dark eyebrows knit together like he enjoyed the challenge. The question he asked next didn't make much sense, had nothing to do with illness.

  "Do you ever get mad?"

  "What do you mean?" I asked, confused. "Mad at who?"

  "At anyone. Your friends. Your mom."

  "I get mad at my mom pretty regularly," I admitted, though I couldn't figure what this had to do with anything. "If I don't remind her to pay the bills, the electric will go out or something. Yet if I show that I'm mad and remind her too loudly? She doesn't respond well to that." She's shot in the ass all night, and I'm stuck with my guilt.

  "And your friends? You get mad at them?"

  "I get ... annoyed sometimes because—" I stopped, Macy's lecture ringing in my head. You're not only trusting a strange kid who ran away, but you're talking about us?

  I heard a moan and realized it was mine. I felt worse than when I came here, when I thought there was a chance I could walk home. I started swallowing spit and decided I'd better prepare him for a bedroom version of "The Umbrella Ride." "You ran away, right?"

  "Right."

  "You've seen a lot, then?"

  "Sure."

  "Sick people?"

  "Tons."

  I didn't expect the easiness in his answers but was relieved. "Good. Cuz I'm scared I'm going to puke. Sorry." I shut my eyes, then I snapped them open. Last thing I wanted to do besides puke was have a nightmare in a strange bed. "How'd we get on the subject of my friends? What were we talking about? God or something..."

  "Don't really think we were talking about God"—he whizzed a wastepaper basket over by the side of the bed but looked more distracted by his thought than grossed out by me—" ... think we were talking about control."

  I didn't know what he meant, but I noticed how his fingers dangled loosely between his knees, like he was not the least bit rattled by me. It was hard to believe I could threaten to hurl, and any kid would be taking this whole scenario so well. "You're not going to call nine-one-one on me, are you?"

  "Not unless you want me to."

  "No way. I just want—" My gut whirled until I thought my stomach was in my brains. I thought, I just want some goddamn control. Probably because he had just babbled that word. "I want to ... to sleep."

  "Go ahead."

  I watched his hands flip, like he had shrugged. Yeah, so I can meet some ... Sally who swallows forks and knives right in front of you. "I can't sleep here."

  "I don't bite."

  "You're too nice," I said.

  "I'm too nice."

  I didn't catch the sarcasm in his voice until he started giggling again. He thinks I'm nice, ha. I'm really selfish ... If I bother people I'll lose them, and I want to keep them, which is not the same as being nice. It would feel pretty great ... to bother just one person ... somebody I didn't care about so much...

  "I had cancer in junior high." I gripped the corner of the pillowcase—watching for a twitch, a squirm, a something.

  His eyes merely missed a blink as they widened for a second. He said, "Okay..."

  I waited, but he had nothing to add. "So ... you ever know anybody with cancer?"

  He nodded. "I've had friends with AIDS. There's a certain type of brain cancer associated with that. Couple of friends..."

  AIDS. Gayness, drug abuse, runaways ... the terms should put me on edge, I thought hazily. But talking to someone my own age who knew about anything this serious ... it gave me a rush. I reached out, grabbed hold of his fingers, and squeezed them. I waited for him to pull away, but he kept staring absently at the corner.

  He finally asked, "So, you've never had a support group? A counselor? Friends who had the same thing?"

  I tried to remember what happened in eighth grade. "My mom kept saying the chances of a recurrence were slim, like, less than one in five. She needed to forget the whole thing—"

  "Jesus." He pinched the bridge of his nose with the hand I wasn't turning to sludge and kept his eyes clamped shut. When he opened them, they were full of something—anger, maybe. I guessed he thought I should have been in a support group.

  "Yeah, well. I could have talked myself blue in the face to someone, and it wouldn't have helped my real problem."

  "What's your real problem?"

  "That I'm afraid it's come back." I just started spewing again—how tiredness had turned to dizzy spells and how I had not felt like fainting since chemo. He looked concerned but not horrified. I had just told him some stuff that would make most of my friends politely freeze in horror.

  "How old are you?" I asked suddenly. The feeling rushed through me like maybe he was, somehow, a lot older. Maybe he was really college age but his running away set him back. He listened like a grown-up—like he was expected to do something constructive and not just join in my pity fest.

  His mind seemed to stop concentrating, but his eyes looked weary. He rolled them. "How old am I? I'm ancient." His laugh sounded tired.

  "What do you mean?" I figured he probably meant something like It's not the years; it's the mileage. But he didn't answer. He trudged around the mattress and flopped down on the other side. He blinked at the ceiling a bunch of times.

  His hair fell back on the pillow, giving me a chance to look at him more closely than I had dared in school. He had one of those baby noses that blended into his cheeks without a single flaw. His dark brown eyelashes, impossibly long, made me think of a toddler who hadn't grown into his face yet. So much maturity coming through such innocent features—that froze me, reminding me of some sci-fi story I had read of an old man stuck in a child's body.

  "'Ancient' ... That's a funny comment." I finally ran a finger down his peachy cheek and came back with equal sarcasm. "Do you even shave yet?"

  "No."

  "Well, then?"

  He took my hand off his face, plopped it down on my own chest, then patted it with too much patience. "Go to sleep, why don't you? Let me think..."

  "I'm not asking you to solve my problems." He looked too stirred up. I felt uncomfortable, like I was a pain. "Don't fret. If I'm not in remission anymore, there's nothing we can do."

  His hand came down on my head in a "dad" sort of way that gave me another weird twitch. He rubbed my hair and stared off at the ceiling, either like I was three or he was sixty. It left me half annoyed, half hypnotized.

  "Claire, I'm not saying you're still in remission or not in remission. I'm saying you've got so many issues, I don't see how you could tell one thing from the other."

  "'Issues' ... What do you mean?"

  He kept thumping his head lightly against the wall, staring at the ceiling. But his hand came down over my forehead and then my eyes, so I had to shut them.

  "I'm not going to sleep on your bed," I informed him.

  "Then try to relax so I can think."

  I didn't exactly have a choice. I could imagine myself trying to walk home and heaving in the gutter with ten drivers catching the view.

  "Sometimes I have nightmares." I tried to warn him.

  "Go figure."

  I caught more sarcasm but couldn't figure how he would know about my nightmares. "They're bloody. I don't wake up well."

  "Do you scream? I can turn up the radio."

  My eyes filled up, to my shock. I wanted to think of something awful to say so he would stop being so nice. But I couldn't think of anything. "I don't scream. I'm just not ... in a great mood when I wake up."

  "You're in a worse mood than this?"

  I laughed, sniffing up tears, feeling completely stupid. "Sorry if ... I upset you."

  He laced his fingers on his stomach and stared at me with a look of shock that I would have expected when I said I'd had cancer, but I couldn't make sense of it now.

  "You're an odd one..." I yawned. "Are you going to tell me how old you are?"

  That's the last thing I remember until I was dreaming. It wasn't a bloody night
mare, though it had that same deranged feel to it. I dreamed about Lani's arrival on Hackett. It wasn't by bus or car. I saw him walking toward me out of the mist with something heavy on his back, like a shiny pack or a roll of fluorescent blankets ... coming off the water at the end of Fisherman's Wharf.

  5

  I stared into a radio alarm that said 8:10, and I couldn't decide whether it was morning or night. The room was dark ... night. My surroundings made sense when I saw the three pinheads of candlelight.

  Lani lay flat on his back, on the far side of the bed, fingers laced across his stomach. He didn't use a pillow. I hazily remembered having a dream about him that hadn't upset me too badly. But without any pillow, he looked almost laid out, like a vampire, or a corpse in a funeral home. I flicked at his arm, hoping he would roll over, because I had some tingly, power-nap high I didn't want to lose via freaky thoughts.

  His lips were a little opened, but I was surprised when they moved so easily. "You're feeling better."

  I couldn't argue.

  He inhaled deeply. "Mom made meat loaf. Smell?"

  I could smell beef wafting up. It made my mouth water as I stood up.

  "Wanna eat before you leave?"

  "I hardly ever eat red meat, thanks."

  He sat up. After a long exhale he asked, "Now, how did I know you were going to say that? No red meat, no sticky buns..." He stood up and stretched. "No fun..."

  "I have plenty of fun. Just not with sugar and dead cows." I tied my cheerleading jacket around my waist because Indian summer had definitely hit and the air had grown thick with wet heat. I hiked up my backpack with a jerk to help me ignore my stomach's begging. Since I lost weight for cheerleading, I had stuck pretty well to a regimented plan—fruit for breakfast, salad for lunch. Dinner, I ate whatever I wanted, so long as it didn't include anything fried, too much red meat, or any desserts. My stomach was telling me this gravy could definitely be on my diet, but I'd already eaten red meat once this week. "I look like I just woke up from a hundred-year sleep. Your mom's going to think we did the nasty up here."

  "And that would be the end of the universe?"

  I giggled, traipsing after him and his sarcasm. When we got to the foot of the stairs, his mom came through the kitchen door.

  "Would you like to invite your friend for dinner, Lani? I've kept it warm."

  My eyes felt all swollen from sleep. I was afraid to say no, because moms take that sort of thing like personal rejection. But Lani piped up.

  "She already said no thanks. She needs to get on home."

  His mom walked right up to me and stuck her hand out. "It was very nice having you. I hope you come back soon."

  Having me. I had hardly said a thing to her. I looked into her eyes as I shook hands, and I saw something there. Almost an urgency. She was hoping we did the nasty up there. As if my presence made her son not gay.

  "You have a really nice house ... and your cooking smells really great ... Some other time, okay? My mom is waiting for me—"

  Lani pulled me out the door almost before I finished blathering. He let out an uninterested half giggle, which seemed more directed at me than his mother.

  "You know what she's thinking, don't you?" I started.

  "Yes."

  "And you're not embarrassed? She's your mom. Moms create guilt."

  "Yeah, you're right." He nodded genuinely. "Except she's not really and truly my mom. I'm adopted. Which means I can always tell myself, She's just a lady who is nice to me when the mood strikes her, and I can believe myself. I don't have as much guilt."

  "Wow, you're adopted..." I didn't know what I wanted to say about that. I still had starch in my head from sleep. "You've had a very unusual life."

  "Yeah, it's an epic classic."

  "Can I hear some of it?"

  "Maybe sometime." Before I could ask what was wrong with now, he cleared his throat and jumped back on my life. "So you're scared you're sick again. Your friends are helpless, your mom is hysterical, God is a jerk, and your father has a do-not-disturb sign plastered to his forehead."

  I cracked up. "You're making it sound horrible."

  "So ... how would you feel about getting tested without anybody knowing? If it turns out to be something else, then you won't freak your mom out, and your friends wouldn't know, either. And you wouldn't have to bother your dad."

  The concept almost stopped me in my tracks. But I was very familiar, by this point in my life, with the arrival of a thousand insurance forms in the mail every time I had a check-up. "There's no way for me to get tested without my parents knowing."

  "There might be. We could take a bus. It's a long ride. Do you know how you get a test done at your doctor's office and you have to wait, like, ten days for results?"

  I had to nod. "Story of my life."

  "That's because they send those samples up to research labs. If you go right to a big city clinic at a research hospital, you can get your results in a couple hours. And some of those clinics also treat kids without parental permission."

  "Why?"

  "Because a lot of them are runaways, and everyone knows it."

  I stopped and stared. He was streetwise beyond my wildest dreams. Getting on a bus and going far away seemed way radical. But I wanted to make sense out of his mixed-up personality. The only gay people I had ever met were summer tourists. They were usually businessmen from Philadelphia, who would rent duplexes for a couple of weeks and have all their friends down. You could tell who they were because they used beach chairs instead of towels, and smelled like expensive sunblock, and they smiled a lot, and some of them giggled, and they wore those awful, plastic flip-flops instead of Reefs. I tried to fit Lani in with this picture and it didn't work out very well. He seemed more "raw" and stripped down. A guy who seemed happy with a mattress and didn't use a pillow would go to the beach with a towel like us natives, and get all sandy and sunburned, and not care. "You don't ... fit any of the usual categories."

  His grin looked irritated. "You're trying to stereotype me. Don't do that. I hate it."

  "I am not." I'd had a public-school education. I knew better. "There's a difference between stereotyping and deciding where somebody fits in."

  "What's the difference? It's all for the purpose of passing judgment."

  "I wouldn't say that. It just helps you get to know somebody better." I thought of his weird wording in school that day. Not a girl. "It's easier to say what you're not like than what you're like. You're not like a lot of the guys around here, but you're not like a girl, either. You don't look like a grownup. You don't act like a kid. You're definitely not a dork. But I couldn't see you running for class president somehow—" I stopped because I could sense annoyance rolling off him.

  "I don't like being put in boxes. Boy, girl, dork, popular—those are boxes."

  "Sorry. But..." I wanted to know something. "How old are you?"

  "Age is a box."

  I watched him, stumped. "Age is kind of important. If you were, like, twenty ... I don't know how I'd feel about being your friend."

  "What difference does it make?"

  I sighed as an annoying thought dawned on me. "Let me guess. You're one of those super geniuses who's got everything figured out all differently than the rest of us."

  "Genius is a box."

  "Okay..." I felt caught in some game—one I was losing. I thought of a question having to do with actions rather than labels, or his "boxes." "If you read Albert Einstein, would you understand him?"

  "I've read Einstein. I understand him."

  I didn't want to call him a liar, though I figured he had to be one. "What's a kid doing living on the streets and reading Einstein?"

  "It happens." He shrugged easily. "There's no correlation between homelessness and stupidity."

  I supposed he was trying to tell me that I was using boxes again. I kept quiet.

  "As for me and the library, that started in about fifth grade ... whenever it is that boys need to look like boys, and girls
like girls. I had to find hideouts where I could be in peace for a while. The school playgrounds, the street corners, the places most people hang, are not really safe if you're too different from everybody else. The library was good. The dangerous kids won't show up there. Librarians are nice. They'll talk to you ... and one librarian told me once, 'If you can understand human behavior, it can't hurt you nearly as much.' That just always stuck with me. Besides, if you're a runaway, the seats are comfortable. I've spent days and days reading in libraries."

  "Interesting." I would never have put together runaway kids and libraries before. But hearing him put it that way, it made a lot of sense. "So ... what all did you read?"

  He sighed uncomfortably and mumbled out a bunch of mishmash, which I started to realize were last names. The only ones I recognized were Marx, Darwin, Freud, and Hegel.

  "Jesus Christ," I breathed.

  "Yeah, him, too. But listen. This is very important." He stopped and turned a finger in my face. "You cannot tell anybody that I know a lot of stuff. I'm trusting you with secrets that I don't usually tell people, and only because you're such a pro at keeping your own secrets. I need for people to think I'm less sharp than I am."

  "But why?" I figured he deserved some kudos. He wasn't going to get any kudos on his looks—not around here, where muscles "rule the cule."

  "Because seeing through human behavior is, like, a blessing and a curse." He started talking fast, like his mouth had to keep up with his thoughts. His graceful hands moved to emphasize his thoughts. "I had to understand why kids bullied, or I would have been completely ... helpless. Knowing bullies were once bullied, knowing they depend on your fear, knowing that they hate their own feelings of victimization and not really you and that none of this has changed one speck since Moses managed to walk out of Egypt ... all that stuff makes you react differently than if you're just using your gut."

  "Like how?"

  "Because..." His hands kept moving in that graceful way. "... your gut would tell you to be afraid. Fear is what bullies feed off, and it paralyzes you, too. If you're thinking pity instead of fear, they don't get such a charge. And sometimes you can think on your feet and figure out how to get away. You can't if your mind is paralyzed."