by Rob Harrell
Jerry laughs—a wheezy, good-natured laugh—as he struggles up to the front of his seat. I shake his enormous hand. It feels like it’s made out of limestone.
“They stuck you with Frank, huh? I’d say it could be worse, but I’m not sure how.” Then his bushy eyebrows go up. “Go okay in there?”
“I think so. I guess?” I look away at the fish in the tank beside him. Why am I always so awkward?
“There ya go. Just lay back and let these guys do the hard stuff, right?” Jerry has a rough, deep voice—it reminds me of gravel in a blender. He leans back, and I notice the blue mesh band at the bend of his arm where he’s had blood drawn. I’ve gotten annoyingly familiar with blood draws. I can tell you where my juiciest vein is, which is just weird.
Frank scans the waiting room. “Where’s your mom, Ross?”
“Stepmom.”
“Stepmom. Did she skip out on you? Flee the country?”
“Probably.” I sit on the edge of a couch. I know how to wait. That’s what phones are for.
“Well . . . if you’re still here in three hours, I’ll give you a ride. Least I can do.”
Jerry shakes his head. “Oh, good Lord. Don’t take that ride. They’ll let anybody have a license these days.”
Frank starts to walk away. “Keep trying, Jerry. You’ll say something funny one of these days.” Then he spins around to walk backward, pointing at me with both fingers like guns.
“Forty-four zaps to go, Ross. But, seriously. Tomorrow. I want suggestions for REAL music. Or I start playing you some of mine.” He jams his backside into the doors and is gone.
Jerry studies me, deadly serious. “Do it. Bring music, or he’s likely to play his band’s CD. You’ve suffered enough.”
“He’s in a band?”
He blows on his coffee. “In the loosest sense of the word.” Then he grabs a magazine, so I guess I can take out my phone without looking too rude. I text Abby.
She texts back immediately.
Abby had asked to come today, but I told her I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. She pressed, but I insisted she not come. If she’d come, there would’ve been hugs and high fives, and it would have been a Big Deal, and I feel like if I give this thing as little energy as I can, it’ll just . . . fade away.
I think Abby understood. Eventually.
The front doors fly open, and my stepmom stalks in on a cloud of cool air and caffeine. “Ross! You’re out! I’m so sorry. I needed a jolt, so I hopped over to Bucky’s and thought I’d get back before you were out! How was Day One?”
One of the more annoying things about Linda is her insistence on calling Starbucks Bucky’s. It gives me chills. She stops in front of me and looks over at Jerry. “Hello.”
I start to get up. “That’s Jerry.”
Jerry starts the process of standing up to shake her hand. “That’s me. I’m Jerry Thompson . . .”
Linda flaps her hands at him. “Oh, no need to get up. We have to get going. It’s nice to meet you, Jerry. I’m Linda.” They shake hands quickly, and she turns to me. “You ready? I need to get you home. I have about two million things I need to do.” She turns to Jerry and rolls her eyes. “Real estate.”
Jerry smiles. “Ah, yes. Big doings.” Then he kicks my foot lightly with one of his Velcro orthopedic shoes. “Nice meeting you, Ross. I’ll see you around. I’m glad your Day One went well.”
I stand up and pocket my phone. “Nice meeting you too. What day of your treatment are you on?”
“This round? Day Thirty-six. But who’s counting?”
Linda’s phone starts chirping as soon as we’re in her Grand Cherokee, and we ride home to the sounds of Linda talking up a beautiful little three bedroom/two bath not too far from the lake. It apparently has amazing light and the most adorable breakfast nook.
I text Isaac, not really expecting him to text back. He hasn’t been around much lately. Like. Not at all.
I sit there watching my screen, and I’m kind of surprised when the three dots start up. He’s texting back for once?
The three dots flash, and flash and flash . . . And then they go away. I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but my heart sinks. What’s going on with him? I wait, staring, for the dots to start again, but they don’t.
Eventually I cram my phone back in my pocket. The rest of the way, I just space and stare out the window. I’ve been getting pretty good at that lately.
At home, I go straight upstairs. I drop my pack and head to the mirror in my bathroom. There’s no visible mark where the beam went in by my temple. Weird.
But looking in the mirror brings up some bad memories, seeing my scar and my closed, squinty, permanently winking eye. The biopsy. The diagnosis. The surgery. I try to keep that kind of looking to a minimum, so I don’t get all wigged out.
Eventually I go in and flop facedown on my bed. My phone starts buzzing in my pocket, but I’m asleep before you can say “proton radiation therapy.”
I have a dream where I’m a french fry in a basket, getting lowered again and again into thick boiling oil. It sounds really dumb, but it’s completely terrifying.
When I wake up, my room is mostly dark, and my dad is sitting next to me on the bed, his hand on my back. “Hey, Ross. You awake?”
I grunt yes, kind of.
“How’d it go? I want all the details.”
I roll over slowly, half awake. His hair is messed up on one side, and he’s loosened his tie. He needs a shave.
“Wow,” I say. “You look awful.”
He laughs and rubs his face with both hands. “Ha. Yeah. It was a day. And all I wanted was to be there with you.” He’s a trial lawyer, and he’s in the middle of some big megacase. It’s about some huge insurance settlement or something.
He lets out a long sigh, like he’s been holding his breath for days. “So, spill. Gimme the dirt. Start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”
So I slide back against my headboard, he settles back beside me, and I tell him.
4
SCHOOL FUN. YAY.
When I get to school the next morning, Abby is less than thrilled with me—I fell asleep and missed a bunch of texts from her. We drop her viola off in the band room, and as we make our way down the hallway—past a kid dumping crazy amounts of spit out of his trumpet—she lets me hear about it.
“You forget how to return a freakin’ text? I thought maybe they aimed wrong and your brains fizzled out after you got home.” She’s digging through her backpack trying to find something. ChapStick, most likely.
She’s the only person who jokes with me about my “situation”—she’s done it through most of this whole ordeal—and I literally could not appreciate it more. It makes me feel like something in the world is normal.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’d be weird if everybody else joked about it.
But it’s Abby.
Abby Peterson has been my best friend since the third day of first grade, when I choked on some milk and a Flintstones gummy vitamin shot out of my nose—a Dino, I think. She laughed so hard she almost threw up—and a forever bond was formed.
Around fourth grade, we welcomed the eternal goof Isaac Nalibotsky into our friend group—it was an easy fit—but he’s been acting weird lately. He’s just vanished, as far as hanging out with us is concerned. He’d normally be making this walk with us, and it’s still bizarre that he isn’t.
“I just really didn’t feel like talking,” I said. “Or texting. Or lifting my head off the pillow. Did you do the Language Arts homework? I totally ignored it.”
“Pssh. I think Ms. Bayer’ll let it slide. You only have, like, the ultimate excuse ever. ‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry, but I had a beam of pure energy shot into my head yesterday.’” She slathers on enough lip balm for three people. “But how was it? Was the beam hot?”
We stop at my locker so I can grab my math textbook. “It was . . . It didn’t feel like anything. I just have to lie there for a while, and then I
’m done. It’s pretty weird.”
Abby stares at me for a few seconds, thinking. “Yeah, that isn’t gonna cut it. When people ask, you need to drama it up a bit—for them if not for you.”
“Okay. Right.” I shut my locker with a bang. I notice a couple of girls watching us. I’m pretty sure they’re sixth grade. “Maybe I say I could smell burning flesh. Or I could hear my eye sizzling like bacon.”
“You joke, but I wouldn’t stop there.” Abby puts an elastic thingy between her lips, gathering her wavy orange hair into a ponytail. Puts her headband in her backpack. “You can milk this whole laser beam sci-fi thing as far as you wanna go, friend. You’re school-famous.”
Such an Abby thing to say. If there’s one thing Abby enjoys, it’s standing out. Which is good, as her tangerine-colored hair can be seen from space. Add to that an eccentric sense of fashion—some would just call it insane—and Abby is someone you can’t miss. But her nutso style helps me out. I’m all but invisible standing next to her.
Actually, I used to be invisible. I could walk through a crowded library and escape completely unnoticed. Unscathed. Hardly anybody talked to me, and I lived peacefully under the radar like a stealth bomber in a hoodie. I never realized it before, but it was kind of great.
Then, y’know . . . cancer.
Gone were my big plans to sneak my way through seventh grade with my non-noteworthy B average, unnoticed by teachers and students alike. Now I can’t walk the length of a hallway without someone studying me to see if I look sick. Or just staring. Or even worse, they ask how I’m feeling.
One kid came up to me and in hushed tones asked if I was dying. He was in sixth grade, so I think he was honestly just unsure what to say. Another kid, an eighth grader named Billy Herrold, just came up and nodded—then told me his uncle died of cancer.
I wasn’t really sure what to do with that info, so I just gave him a half smile and said, “That’s too bad.” He walked away like he was proud he’d opened up to the sick kid, but I had a worried knot in my stomach for two periods after that.
I think those kids are trying to be nice—or at least act nice—but I’d give my right eye to be Anonymous Kid again, which is a super stupid thing to say, ’cause my right eye is where I had my tumor.
One of my worst cancer moments happened when the school did something that was—again—supposed to be nice. Since my surgery happened later in the summer, I missed the first week of school, recovering. On my first day back, I found a huge card signed by the teachers and everyone in my class.
They’d written messages all over it. Get better! Sorry you’re sick! and the always helpful Cheer up!
I was horrified. It had been a few weeks since the surgery, and except for some yellowing bruises, I looked relatively okay. But that card said, Forget sneaking back into school like Mr. Normal. It was like someone had hung a big lit-up sign over my head announcing what had happened. Sick Kid right here!
When I get to class, Ms. Bayer appears next to my desk.
“How are you doing, Ross? You started your treatment yesterday, right?”
I feel a few sets of eyes on us. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
She settles into the desk across the aisle and gives me a concerned look. A mass of bracelets clack and jangle as she puts a reassuring hand on my arm. People like to touch your arm reassuringly when you’re sick, I’ve noticed.
“Okay. Well, let me know if you need anything, or if the homework gets on top of you.”
I nod and think of Abby saying I have the Ultimate Excuse.
“I . . . um . . . I was pretty tired when I got home. I didn’t get the worksheets done, but I . . .”
Ms. Bayer smiles and leans in like she has a secret, wafting thick perfume. “Don’t you worry. Get them in as soon as you feel up to it, okay?” Her eyebrows go up so far, she looks like a cartoon. “Just keep talking with me, all right? Keep me in the loop.” She stands up and walks back to the front of the room.
I blink, a little stunned. Bayer is one of the strictest teachers in the school.
What magic is this?
I’m wondering how far I can take this new power of mine when Sarah Kennedy floats in and the room brightens like somebody upped the wattage in all the bulbs.
She heads to her desk, directly in front of me. Awkward energy floods my body as I busy myself getting out some pens and paper for notes. I have to actually work at looking casual, even though I know she isn’t looking remotely in my direction.
Then she looks.
“Hey.”
I look behind me to make sure she isn’t talking to someone else. She isn’t. “Yeah?” All noise has dropped out of the room except for a high ringing in my ears.
“I’m out of paper. Could I borrow a few sheets?”
She smiles her ridiculously bright smile, and I feel my throat tighten. Sarah Kennedy has this effect on me. She has this effect on a lot of people in my school, if I’m being honest. I know there’s nothing terribly enlightened about going all gooey over a girl I barely know, but . . . well . . . blame puberty.
Sarah isn’t just popular and good-looking and super amazingly smart. A couple of years ago I saw her at the park with her older brothers . . . and she was skateboarding. Skateboarding! And she was good at it! It was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. It was like seeing the Queen of England hop a curb.
It’s burned in my memory forever. I even thought about taking up skateboarding myself. Then I borrowed Isaac’s and just about killed myself and decided that wasn’t happening. Coordination and I are not friends.
“Mm-hm. Sure.” I pull out a couple of sheets of paper, but my fine motor skills have fled the building. My hand chooses to crumple them as they come out, so I shove them in my backpack and pretend it didn’t happen. I go into my folder for a few more and hold them out for her.
Then comes a deep voice to my right. “So, what? You got superpowers ’n’ crap now?”
I turn slowly.
It’s Jimmy Jenkins.
“Nope,” I say. “No superpowers. Not yet.”
Jimmy is the biggest kid in our year. Definitely the sketchiest. I’ve heard stories—about him being mean or crazy or both—and frankly, it freaks me out that I have to sit by him. An encounter with Jimmy is like handling a grizzly bear. One wrong word can result in him getting angry, and you don’t want him angry.
I heard, in fifth grade, he gave a kid a noogie so bad the kid went to the hospital. And last year he supposedly roughed up a high school junior over a football bet or something.
Jimmy’s tongue expertly adjusts an enormous wad of gum—grape Big League Chew, most likely—around his mouth as he considers this. He’s always chomping on an enormous ball of the stuff. It’s gross. His mouth gets all wet when he chews it, and then he ends up sticking those big blobs wherever he feels like when he’s done. I’ve stepped or sat in a couple of Jimmy Wads, as they’re known around the school.
To make it even grosser—sorry—he carries this little juice bottle around with him and spits in it. I don’t know if he thinks it’s like he’s chewing tobacco or if he has some kind of saliva problem, but it’s literally the nastiest thing ever. I’ve had nightmares about it.
“Sucks for you. Did that cancer beam make ya crap your pants or anything?”
All of my blood has gone to my ears, and I can feel Sarah watching the exchange.
“No. Nope.” My voice cracks. “None of . . . that.”
“Yeah? How ’bout yer piss. Does it glow in the dark? I heard that happens.”
This is like threading a needle. Don’t poke the bear, but maintain dignity in front of Sarah.
“Not . . . not that I’ve noticed.”
“Mm. Too bad.” Jimmy grunts and starts chewing again. He shifts his oversized bulk to face front again. His interest in me has run its course.
Sarah is still looking back, holding the paper. Is she looking at my scar? My squinty eye? I tip my head away from her just in case.
“Well. T
hanks for this. I used all my paper on . . .” She lifts up a thick stack of flyers and hands me one. “For the Christmas talent show. It’s in December. End of the semester. Maybe you could do some of your drawings or characters onstage or something?”
I take the flyer, trying to imagine how that would go—me doodling onstage while students yawn and die from boredom in the front row.
My cheeks flush deep red at the thought.
I’m a doodler, not an artist. Huge difference. My mom was an artist. An illustrator, actually. She did work for kids’ books and magazines and stuff before she got sick. She was crazy good, and we have her artwork up around our house.
I mean, I’m not bad, but . . . the characters Sarah’s talking about are Battbutt and Batpig. I made a tiny splash on our school’s art scene a couple of years ago when my doodle of Battbutt got me my one and only trip to the principal’s office.
I make dumb little comics about their adventures sometimes, but since the principal thing, I’ve focused more on Batpig. There’s less risk.
I actually have a sketchbook where I do most of my Batpig comics. Or just drawings of random stuff. And some more-involved sketching—of real things. Life drawing, as my mom called it—but I don’t show those to ANYBODY. Not even Abby. Or my dad. It’s this awesome beat-up old sketchbook holder that was my mom’s. I found it in her things a few years after she died. I don’t really remember her dying all that much. Or her, really. But that sketchbook still means a lot to me.
It just feels private, so I keep it that way. For me alone. Or maybe I’m just worried somebody’ll tell me they suck.
Anyway, I’m kind of shocked my doodles have even landed on Sarah Kennedy’s radar. She’s always seemed pretty busy with her friends and the whole being-super-popular thing.
Then, while she’s looking at me, this thing happens to Sarah’s face. It morphs and shifts, and suddenly it’s all sad-eyed and sincere. I know what’s coming. I’ve seen it a lot lately.