by Amy Reed
“They’re not letting me out yet,” I say. “They were supposed to let me out.”
“They know what’s they’re doing, Evie,” Will says. “They have to get your pain under control.” God, why is he always so serious?
“Stella, you just missed a really good joke I said,” I tell her.
“What was it?”
I try to think, but all I find in my head is cotton. “I don’t remember.”
“Sounds hilarious, babe.”
Will is determined to set up the backgammon board. There are at least a million little black and white pieces for him to find the right places for. It’s making me dizzy just looking at it. And not the good kind of dizzy. Not the warm whirlpool of forgetting I had before he got here.
“Will, stop it with the backgammon,” I say. “I told you I’m not playing.” I can’t put my foot down, so I thump my fist instead. But it’s harder than I meant it to be; I’m stronger than I’m supposed to be, and the game and all the pieces go flying. White and black buttons fall in slow motion to the ground, tinkling dully and rolling away to darkened corners where they will never be found.
“Oops,” I say. I know I should look at Will. I should make this easier for him. I should soften the blow of all these things falling apart. But I cannot take his sad face anymore. I cannot risk his reflecting me in those glassy eyes and showing me a version of myself that is not as indestructible as I want to feel.
So I look at Stella. Strong, wild, beautiful Stella. She could probably be a supermodel if she wasn’t such a feminist. “Stella, you’re beautiful,” I say.
“Don’t tell me you’re switching sides, Cheerleader. And with your boyfriend sitting right here. Scandalous!”
“Excuse her,” Will says. Why is he crawling around on the floor? “She isn’t herself right now.”
“I’m myself,” I say. “I’m totally myself.”
“Maybe this is herself, Loverboy,” Stella says as she picks up the huge photo of my cheer squad out of the jungle of flower arrangements. She looks at the photo and shakes her head, then puts it back down facing the wall. “I can’t look at these fembots anymore,” she says. “No offense.”
Will looks up from where he’s kneeling on the floor, his hands full of white and black game pieces, as if finding them all will make this day salvageable. He looks so tired. Is this new? Or am I only now noticing? Is it my special slow-motion super-vision? But what if I don’t want to see this? Why am I sad? I thought morphine was supposed to make all the pain go away.
“Get up,” I say as kindly as I can. I try to focus on him, try to remember what it feels like to want to make him happy. “Come here.” I reach out my hand for him. I see him take it but I barely feel a thing. I flex my skeleton arm and pull him to me—amazing how much power I have to move people. I smile, kiss his chin, and just like that, I make everything okay. I will hold his sadness if I have to. It is heavy, but at least I don’t have to do it for much longer.
“You two are so cute,” Stella sighs. “I wish Cole was here. We could, like, double-date or something. Do something superexciting like go to the cafeteria and share some fries. Cole’s going through this weird phase right now where all he wants to watch is kung-fu movies, but I’m sure he’d join us in the playroom to watch Toy Story 3 for the fiftieth time. He’s a good sport like that. Though if I have to watch that movie one more time, I think I’ll tear my eyeballs out.”
“I like Toy Story 3,” Will says.
“You haven’t watched it forty-nine times.”
“There you are, Stella,” says a dreaded voice from the doorway.
“Crap!” says Stella. “Quick, hide me.”
“Miss Hsu,” Nurse Moskowitz bellows, “go back to your room right now. Doctor’s orders are to rest. You know that.”
“I’m not even tired. See, watch.” Stella dances a little tap dance in her big black boots.
“Right now, young lady.”
“But I put my boots on and everything. Do you know how long these things take to lace up?”
“Do you want me to call your parents?”
That makes Stella stop dancing. “Ooh, Nurse Ratched. You are diabolical.” She makes a show of dragging herself out of the room. “Have to go back to my cell now, kiddos. Come over tomorrow, Cheerleader. We can drink Diet Cokes and braid each other’s hair and talk about what we’re going to wear to homecoming. So long, Loverboy. Stay gold, Pony Boy.”
“Bye, Stella,” I call behind her. The room is smaller and darker as soon as she leaves. The lights start pulsing again, but not in a friendly way.
“She’s so weird,” Will says. “I don’t get how you two are such good friends.”
I shrug. Something like pain twists in my chest. It has nothing to do with cancer or my broken leg. But one of the charming things about morphine is it comes in waves, so just when sadness comes sneaking around, a warm surge turns my blood cozy again.
A sound like Uhhhghhh comes out of my mouth. Like something deflating.
Will is a cartoon character, startled, a little furry animal with his eyes bulging out of his head. Danger! Danger!
“Everything’s okay,” I mumble. My eyelids are so heavy.
“What happened?” he says. “Are you okay?”
I don’t want to talk to him right now. I don’t want to darken this fluffy cloud with his worry.
“Morphine,” I say. “Will you marry me?”
“Oh, Evie,” Will says, barging in on the conversation.
“Stella, get me that flower over there.”
“Stella’s gone. This is Will. Are you okay?”
God, that question!
“Are you in pain?”
“The flower, please.”
“Which one? There are a million flowers over there.”
“Bouquet, second from the left. Little yellow flower on the bottom. You can barely see it.” Even with my eyes closed, I know every millimeter of those flowers. I feel like I’ve been staring at them for years.
“This one?”
My eyes open. The room is just a cave. The machines are just shadows. Will hands me the flower and I hold the tiny, fragile thing pinched between my fingers. Amazing that my fingers know how to stay still while the room wobbles.
“Will, I’m dying.” It comes out like water, liquid and cool.
“You know I hate it when you say that.”
“No, really. I’m stopping treatment. There is zero chance that I’m going to live. Ask my parents.” I am lucky because I don’t have to feel his pain. I don’t have to go with him inside where his heart is breaking. I can stay right here, floating, a safe distance from it all.
The sound I hear resembles “No,” but it is more like a waterfall—crushing, deafening, love trapped and drowning beneath tons of violent water.
“Look, Will,” I say. “This flower knows things. It’s called a buttercup for a reason. Put it under your chin. Just like this.”
I am blind. I see with my fingers. I can feel his afternoon stubble. I remember what it used to feel like on my cheek when we kissed. The best sandpaper.
“It paints you yellow if you like butter. Makes you glow. Right here. Right where I kissed you.”
“Where?” The word sculpted out of tears.
“You can’t see but I can. Your desire lit up like the sun.”
“You’re talking nonsense.” I know from his voice that he’s crying, but I will not look. I know I should feel sad with him, but the flower is the only thing I will let myself see.
“Other flowers tell other things. Do boys do ‘She loves you, she loves you not?’ with the petals? Guys play football, girls decapitate flowers. But we don’t need to ask, do we? We already know the answer. Right, Will? Right?”
He is kissing my hand. His lips are wet with tears. Trembling. Wordless.
“It’s so weird you give them to sick people, don’t you think?” I feel my words and blood thicken. My tongue is a fat slug in my mouth. “As soon as you pick a flo
wer, it starts dying.”
“Stop it,” Will whispers.
The world dims and spins its final spin. I am still and heavy, a windless fog.
“Will,” I think I manage to say. “I give you all my flowers.”
five.
THIS SLEEP ISN’T LIKE THE OTHER KIND OF SLEEP. IT’S BETTER. It’s magic.
In this sleep, I am not sick. I have never set foot inside Oakland Children’s Hospital. I float around time and space, unburdened by gravity. The morphine makes me invincible—my bones are steel, my marrow is liquid silver. I am superhuman. Warmth spreads from the IV through the central line in my chest, into my head, down my spine, and deep into the rest of me, hugging me from the inside. I have never felt pain. I will never feel pain. I am cradled by peace. Liquid love pulses through my body. I am home.
This is the best kind of dream. It is the kind where I am in control, where I am both the director and the star. I can simply decide that the last year never happened—and voilà!—life is perfect once again. There was never Sick Girl, Cancer Girl. There was only ever Pretty Girl, Happy Girl. The cheerleader with the perfect boyfriend, the lifelong best friend, the parents who never fight. Here I am with my long hair and perfect skin. Here I am stretching before cheer practice, my hips solid and flexible. Here I am with the sun in my face, when everything is possible.
“You’re so beautiful,” my mother says. I feel her hand caressing the patchy peach fuzz of my head. The touch pulls me from the dream and I am in my hospital room, straddling both worlds. “So beautiful,” she says again, and the words fly away like butterflies. I want to say “I love you,” but it is too much effort to make my mouth move. My eyes open to slits and for a moment the peace drains from me; I know she is lying. In her eyes, I see myself reflected, I see the words that should have been said instead of “beautiful.” All she knows how to say is “beautiful.” She cannot say how pale my skin is now, how sunken in my cheeks, how sickly skinny I’ve become after so many rounds of chemo, after so many meals that refused to stay inside me.
No. She will not ruin my dream. She will not suck the peace out of my blood. Just focus on the hand softly dusting the pain away. Don’t look inside her. Never look inside. Focus on something else, peer through the haze at something that takes you out of this time and place.
My pom-poms sit on a shelf in the corner, next to the giant photo of the cheer squad, signed by everyone. Even though Stella turned it backward, I can still see it; I have X-ray vision. There’s me with my arm around my best friend, Kasey. Her little mouth sings, Remember what it felt like to be part of something? She squeezes me and I feel it, a warm hug around my waist. She says, Remember what it felt like to be the top of the pyramid? Remember what it felt like to be certain no one would ever drop you?
Our happiness is bigger than everything. Our smiles are so strong they blow the stench of sadness out of this room. There goes my mom flying out the window. Bye, Mom! Go home and take a shower. Go out for a nice dinner with Dad. Get your nails done. Have a spa day. Get out of this place as fast as you can.
Evie! Kasey calls from the picture. Evie! the rest of the squad repeats. Their tiny, tanned arms are waving at me to join them. “I’m coming!” I tell them. I can smell the grass of the field already. I can feel the snug comfort of North Berkeley Lions written in blue across my breasts, the tightness of my long hair pulled into a ponytail.
It is the afternoon before the winning game that takes our football team to Regionals. We are getting in one last practice. I have the big finale flip of the halftime routine, but that is not what I am nervous about. There is a big party after the game, but that is not where I am going. Will’s mom and dad will be out until late. We have been dating for eight months and I can’t imagine it being possible to love anyone more than I love him. Our love is the stuff of fairy tales.
I wonder how long he has been planning this night—the fire in the fireplace, the candles, the red roses. I wonder how he managed to score this bottle of champagne. Our hands shake as we ting our glasses in cheers, as we say “I love you” for the millionth time. I wonder if he knows this will be the happiest day of my life, that in a year I will rely on a drug so I can come back here in dreams, that a chemical will help hold me in his arms in front of this fireplace.
That was when I was a different kind of invincible, a time before pain, a time before fear, sixteen years old and three months away from the doctor’s visit that would be my death sentence. The biggest things on my mind that day were if I could pull off my flip in the cheer routine and whether it was true that the first time you have sex always hurts no matter how gentle, if there was still a chance of getting pregnant even with a condom, even after being on the Pill for two months in preparation.
I had been worried then about creating a life. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
And now the pain comes back, like cracks in the sky. Shooting bursts like meteors. The sweet drifting turns into falling. I am crashing. I am no longer weightless. I am full of needles, full of knives. I don’t know if this pain is physical, but it hurts so much I think it will kill me.
“Mom!” I cry, and I sound like I’m drowning.
Come back from the window. Put your hand on my face. Tell me I’m beautiful again.
six.
I AM TOO PRESENT. I AM TOO AWARE OF MY BOREDOM.
“What should we watch?” Caleb says. He’s the only one of us who has his own laptop. We’ve been scrolling through the Netflix menu for fifteen minutes.
“Something scary,” Stella says. “Or sexy. Something scary and sexy.”
“I want to watch something funny,” I say.
“Me too,” Caleb says.
“You always want to do what Evie wants to do,” Stella says. “Hey, can I borrow your laptop tonight?” She always wants to borrow Caleb’s laptop.
“Why don’t you use the computer in the teen lounge?” I say.
“Maybe I don’t want Dan looking at what I’m doing.”
“Is it illegal?” Caleb asks.
“No.”
“Is it porn?” I ask.
“Jesus, what’s wrong with you people? Who do you think I am? I’m just Skyping with Cole, okay? It’s almost impossible to find a time we can both do it because he’s so busy with school and work. My parents won’t let him visit, so it’s the best I got. I haven’t seen his face in like three weeks.”
“Okay,” Caleb says. “You can borrow it.”
“How is he?” I say. I’ve never met Cole, but I feel like I know him from hearing Stella talk about him for the several months they’ve been dating. I know he’s in his second year of nursing school at Cal State East Bay, works at a coffee shop on Telegraph, and shares a two-bedroom apartment in downtown Oakland with a waitress/burlesque performer. I know he’s vegan, loves to bake and watch movies, and dreams of backpacking across South America someday. I know he can calm Stella down when no one else can, not even me. I know he was born a girl, but has considered himself a boy for as long as he can remember. I know he gives himself a shot of testosterone every Wednesday night and has been for the past year.
“What about this one?” Caleb says, his attention back on the computer screen. “It has Will Smith in it. He’s funny.”
“Evie,” Stella says, ignoring him. “It’s nice to have you back in the land of the lucid. Though I have to say, Junkie Evie is pretty entertaining.”
“I guess,” I say. “I was just starting to get used to it, then Dr. Jacobs said I had to go back on the wimpy pills again.”
“Dr. J is stingy with the narcotics. He’s notorious for it. He’s all about prescribing the bare minimum, then taking it away as soon as he thinks you don’t need it anymore.”
“But isn’t it supposed to be, like, the one perk of being a terminal cancer patient, that you get free rein with the painkillers?”
“You’re preaching to the choir, girlfriend. He’s a sadist.” She laughs. “You never cease to surprise me, Cheerleader.”
>
“Why? What’d I say?”
“Have you ever even been high before? Like smoked pot?”
“I got tipsy on hard lemonade once.”
“Hard lemonade: the gateway drug to morphine. Oh, Evie, you’re adorable.”
“I think it’s good,” Caleb says.
“You think what’s good? Hard lemonade?”
“No, Dr. Jacobs not giving out too much drugs. It’s good for us to be here, like really here, as much as possible. Don’t you think?”
“I’d rather not be too present for my dying, actually,” Stella says.
“But you don’t want to be a zombie for the time you have left, do you? If you’re all high on painkillers, you miss the opportunity to say good-bye to the people you love. I want to make sure I can spend as much time as possible with my family. And you guys.”
I don’t like the direction this conversation is going. What happened to watching a movie? If I was still on the morphine, this wouldn’t even bother me.
“I guess you’re right,” Stella says. “I’m sure Dr. Jacobs isn’t going to let Evie be in pain or anything. I’m sure when it’s really, really the end, they pump you full of everything.”
“But Evie still has some time until then,” Caleb says.
“Wow,” Stella says. “We really know how to pick conversation topics.”
It’s quiet for a while after that.
“My parents want me to be at home,” I finally say. “When it gets to that point. When it’s really the end.”
“What do you want to do?” Caleb says.
“I don’t know. I want to be able to decide then.”
“Did you tell them that?” says Stella.
“Yes, but Dr. Jacobs says that isn’t realistic. Because at that point I might not be in any condition to make decisions.” And then it hits me, a wave stronger and harder and heavier than the morphine ever could be, one that sucks the air out of me and replaces it with terror. I start crying. I feel everything slipping, falling, tearing away.