by Rob Harrell
“Anyway . . . how are you feeling?” The look of concern on her face makes me want to crawl into a hole and stay there for maybe forever. I’m super uncomfortable with the prolonged we’re-all-here-for-you eye contact hold.
I redden. “Oh. Good. Yep. I’m good,” I mumble.
“Hang in there, okay?” She nods and gives me a sad smile and turns back around.
I take a deep breath and slide down in my seat. I fold up the talent show flyer and stick it in my back pocket.
I may have dorked out a bit, but my heart didn’t seize up.
That’s a win in my book.
5
FINE DINING
“Honestly, it was the nicest Jimmy’s ever been to me.”
This gets a blurt-laugh from Abby. We’re eating lunch in our usual spot on the loading dock, where we’ve kicked a space clear among some fallen leaves. I’ve never seen the big slide-up door here used for anything, but it backs up to the auditorium stage, so I guess it’s for that.
“Oh, Jimmy gets it, y’know? He’s such a sensitive young gentleman, with his jar of spit and all.” Abby takes a huge bite of her sandwich. She’s not what you’d call dainty. She sets it down and tucks her hands inside the sleeves of her hoodie. “How are you not freezing?”
I shrug and chew, the two of us eating in silence for a while. I’m watching two squirrels chase each other across the fence of the football field. They’re having a full-on squirrel party.
Isaac used to eat with us out here as well, but he doesn’t come around these days. There’s no question that Abby’s my best friend, but it feels like something big is missing, not getting Isaac’s input as well. He’s a funny guy.
I mean, it was just this past summer that the three of us made the Great Oreo Pact out at the lake.
Isaac’s uncle Anthony had taken us out on Lake Monroe for the day in his speedboat. A perfect late-June day. We started out working on getting Isaac up on skis. Abby and I had figured it out on the last couple of boat trips, but Isaac—skinny little Isaac—had yet to stay up.
I remember him standing on the back of the boat while his uncle got the rope ready, flapping his thin arms around to loosen them up. The life jacket looked huge on him, but then again, so did his swimsuit—it hung well below his knees.
“THIS IS MY DAY, PEOPLE!” He yelled it loud enough that other boats could hear. “Gonna do this. Gonna show you all how it’s done.” He sniffed. “Might even slalom today.” He pointed at Abby and winked.
Four minutes later, he fell trying to get up and forgot to let go of the tow rope. He held on for maybe four hundred feet while he got dragged just under the water—until his senses kicked in and he realized he could just let go.
Climbing back in the boat a few minutes later, he was laughing. His eyes were wide, and his voice sounded weird from all the water he’d taken on. He kind of looked like a wet rat.
“I think I just got a nasal enema.”
Later, in a cove called Allen’s Creek, where boats anchor and hang out, the three of us were sitting on the back of the boat, our feet in the water. Isaac’s uncle was in the front, talking to a friend on the phone. Oreos, chips, and sodas were out as we sat and discussed some of the other boaters. Five or six boats had tied together near us, and it looked like the party was in full swing. Music was drifting over when the wind was right.
“This is awesome. I love this.” Isaac is generally a pretty happy guy. “Right? I mean, what’s better?”
Abby took a slow drink. “Dummy has a point.” I can’t remember how it started, but she’s been calling Isaac Dummy for a couple of years. Isaac seems to like it.
I was watching the people on the party boat. A few of them were singing along with the radio. “Is that gonna be us in ten or fifteen years? Are we still gonna be hanging out? Here? Rope swinging?”
Isaac crammed two Oreos in his mouth at once and talked through them. “We’d better be! Three musketeers and all that. Y’know?”
Abby and I nodded, but it wasn’t enough for Isaac. “Let’s shake on it. Like, in a movie where people cut their palms and swear a blood oath.”
I looked at him like he was nuts. “I’m not cutting myself. Sorry.”
Isaac waved it away. “Yeah. No. We could do a spit pact. We all spit in our hands and—”
“Gross. No.” Abby was having none of that.
Isaac started looking around—he wasn’t letting this idea go. Then he grabbed an Oreo. “An Oreo Pact.” He untwisted the cookie and used his front teeth to scrape off the little white cream patty. Put it in his damp palm.
I looked at him for a second, then nodded. “That works.” We shook, and did our best to smash the white filling in between.
Isaac looked disappointed. “Not gooey enough.” He poured some of his Cherry 7UP between our clasped hands, mixing it with the white stuff. “That seems more pacty.”
Then he turned and did the same thing with Abby. Then Abby and I did the same.
Isaac hopped to his feet and spoke in a booming voice. “AND WITH THIS ACTION, OUR OREO FRIEND PACT IS OFFICIAL!” Then he took a mouthful of 7UP and sprayed it in the air, so it misted down over the three of us and all over the back of the boat.
“ISAAC!” It was Anthony, and he wasn’t happy. Isaac gave us a comical uh-oh look and dove sideways into the dark water.
Back on the loading dock in the cold, Abby takes a long sip of her Dr Pepper and lets out a huge burp.
“Well . . . Ross. At least after today we have definitive proof that Lady Sarah knows you exist. That has to feel good.”
“Yeah.” I wad up my chip bag and shoot it at the dumpster ten feet away. It misses. “We’re a romance for the ages.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re just going through a suuuuuper awkward phase right now. It’s almost tragic, really—the awkwardness—but you’ll grow out of it. Imagine the handsome butterfly that’s going to emerge from this horrific cocoon.”
I stand up and brush crumbs off of my jeans. “Right?” I hop off the dock. “But, ugh, you should’ve seen the pity on Sarah’s face. It was . . . I really don’t enjoy being ‘the Sick Kid.’ To her or to anybody, you know?” I walk over and put the chip bag in the dumpster. “I wish Linda would’ve kept her mouth shut.”
Months ago, when we got the diagnosis, my stepmom texted one of her girlfriends. Who texted about thirty of her girlfriends—and then Linda’s phone was blowing up and everyone in town knew. Including everyone at school. Including Sarah Kennedy.
I’m still not sure what Linda was thinking. She might as well have pulled out a bullhorn and announced it to the world.
Abby’s always telling me to stop worrying about being the Sick Kid. Or in her words, “I don’t know why you let that stuff chew you up so much.”
I lean on the dock thinking about ways to disable my stepmother’s iPhone.
A big gust of wind throws our hair around. Abby’s especially. The cold and wind make my eye sting.
Then I remember the flyer in my pocket. “Did you hear about the talent show? Sarah gave me a flyer about it.”
“Yeah, I saw one in the bathroom.”
I twist around and look at her. “You should do it! Play that one solo I like!” I mime playing the viola.
“Maybe. If Sarah runs the show on the up-and-up.” She sniffs and wipes her nose on her sleeve. I can tell she’s not 100 percent on the Sarah train. “But maybe you’re onto something . . . Kids these days can’t get enough of viola solos, am I right?”
I laugh. “Whatever. You’re super good. You could come up with something cool.” I’ve sat and drawn for countless hours while she practices.
“Hmmm. Let me think about it.” She puts a red curl in her mouth to chew. She chews her hair when she’s deep in thought. “You should do something. For the show. It’d be an easy in with Princess Sarah.”
“Okay. Like what? Drawing isn’t much of a spectacle.”
“Yeah . . .” She puts another curl in her mouth
for extra thinking power. “It’s really too bad you suck at everything.”
I ignore her, and we sit there for a while watching the squirrels.
I sniff loudly. My nose is freezing. “Have you talked to Isaac at all?”
She lets out a puff of air. “Nope. I mean, I see him in the halls, but we don’t really talk.” She sniffs, louder. “We’ve been officially ghosted.”
“It’s weird.”
Abby nods her head and looks away.
Isaac’s a video game fanatic, so when we’d hang out as a threesome, it was usually at his house—in his awesome basement. He and his brothers have every game and gaming system known to man. And, while Abby isn’t huge into video games, she liked the Nalibotskys’ pinball machine. And their popcorn machine. And Isaac.
I always kind of had this feeling that Abby and Isaac might date when we were older. I started calling them Ron and Hermione for a while until Abby gave me a nipple twist so hard she almost pulled it off.
Then . . . I got sick. And he slowly stopped coming around. Or inviting us over. Or texting. Or responding to texts. It makes me sick to my stomach if I think about it too much.
The timing with me getting sick and him vanishing seems too exact to be a coincidence. That has to be it, but it’s really . . . I don’t know. It sucks.
Abby blows hot air between her hands. “He’s hanging out a lot with Chris Stemmle. Eats lunch with him and that whole Fortnite crew.”
“Yeah. I’ve seen.”
Chris Stemmle is a guy I’d always thought was at least unfriendly and possibly a real jerk. I don’t get it.
“Meh.” This is Abby’s couldn’t-care-less sound, but I’m not buying it. I think she feels hurt too. “His loss.”
I brush some Doritos dust off my jacket. “I guess.”
Just then, a huge gust of wind kicks up a bunch of leaves. Abby covers her head with one arm and starts shoving things into her bag.
“Nope! No! Screw this! Winter is coming, and I’m going inside!”
I grab my pack and follow her. We duck in the side door by the auditorium, where a bunch of the band members are eating in the hall. Abby knows them all—she’s first chair viola, after all. I’m still not entirely sure what that means, but I know it means a lot to her. She always looks the happiest when she’s practicing.
Abby takes a moment to pick a leaf out of her hair and check her reflection in the announcements box. She seems happy with the crazy, windblown mess she sees there. “Perfection!” she says, throwing her shoulders back and strutting through her fellow band kids like she’s a model on a runway.
It gets a laugh.
6
BACK TO THE BAD
Bad Day #2 was Diagnosis Day, when I learned whether the thing in my head was benign (what we were hoping for) or malignant (what we were most definitely not hoping for).
A couple of weeks earlier, we’d gone into the hospital super early one morning for a biopsy, where the doctors took a little chunk of my tumor: They knocked me out and shoved a big needle through my eyelid to get a sample . . . and then I lay in bed and watched Netflix all day. Isaac and Abby came over that day, but even then, Isaac seemed like he wasn’t looking at me or my bandaged face when we talked.
I had to wear a big patch for a couple of days and got a black eye afterward, but if I’m being totally honest, the black eye was kind of cool. I kind of liked the looks I got with it, like I’d been in a fight. Like I was some kind of brawler.
But this day—Diagnosis Day—was different, so it gets the Bad Day title. It was still summer, and that morning was so hot and humid, it felt like my clothes were soggy. It was a Tuesday, so my dad had to pull some major strings, but he got the morning off from trial prep to take me.
My dad, Linda, and I piled into Linda’s Grand Cherokee and had a quiet morning drive to Dr. Sheffler’s office. The kind of drive where Linda—in the passenger seat, unsure of what to talk about—chose to read random billboards and store signs out loud.
“Plassman Plumbing—We Get Things Moving.”
“ONE DAY ONLY—Half-Price Mattresses.”
“Gyros as big as your face!”
I’m not sure why she thought this was better than silence—my grandmother, Gammy, does the same thing sometimes—but Linda kept going until I wanted to bang my head against the window.
When we arrived at Dr. Sheffler’s office, he looked flustered. His hair was messed up in a few places, where there was usually never a hair out of place.
“Okay.” He looked us each in the eye. “I’m not going to sugarcoat this. We got the results back, and this is an aggressive tumor. A mucoepidermoid carcinoma of the lacrimal gland. It’s an incredibly rare tumor, as well.”
We all just stared.
“I honestly didn’t think I’d ever see one in my career.”
At that point, my head ever so gently dislodged from my neck and began to float toward the ceiling. At least that’s how it felt.
As my dad and Linda started asking about things like prognosis and outlook and treatment, my balloon head kept slowly rising toward the fluorescent light above me. It was the weirdest feeling—like I was watching from above while someone else heard all about how dangerous this tumor was. And about how one of the other doctors in his office had dealt with one of these before. And how she’d agreed to meet with us.
He went to get her, and we waited in stunned silence until they both came back.
Dr. Inzer was a severe-looking woman. She was super thin and had incredibly straight, long black hair. With her lab coat on, she reminded me of a black-and-white Popsicle.
She was about as warm as one too, but I was willing to forgive her personality if she could help me.
“Hello, Ross. Mr. and Mrs. Maloy.” She sat on a stool next to Dr. Sheffler with posture that would have made a drill sergeant look lazy. “I’ve looked through Ross’s file, and I’m here to tell you I can help.”
My dad let out a breath like he’d been holding it for weeks. “Oh, thank God.”
Inzer gave him what I think was supposed to be a smile.
“Now, you may not like what I have to say, but you need to know that this is an extremely aggressive tumor.” She looked me in the eye, and I swear I shivered.
“Here’s what we need to do.” She glanced at Dr. Sheffler, then scooted her stool toward me. She lifted her hand—an insanely long-fingered hand—up to my eye.
“We’ll remove the entire eye and socket.” She twisted her clawlike fingers around my whole eye area to demonstrate—like an ice cream scoop.
“That’s really the only way to get safe margins.” She gave me another alien smile. Maybe it was supposed to be comforting? “We’ll fit you for a prosthetic for that part of your face, of course. And then we’ll follow up with radiation.”
She sat back, ready for questions.
We all sat there blinking for a moment. Even Dr. Sheffler looked stunned. I can’t speak for anyone else, but my blood had turned to ice. It was the bluntest delivery of horrible news I can imagine. Like she was telling me she was going to pop a zit on my forehead.
My dad sat back, and I couldn’t tell if he was going to yell at her or pass out. “When . . . when would you . . . do this?”
Dr. Inzer didn’t blink. “I have an opening Thursday morning.”
My dad’s face fell. He looked to Dr. Sheffler for help, then back. “In two days?”
Inzer reached down and straightened the edge of her lab coat. Gently settled her hands together in her lap. “I’m terribly sorry. I know this is a shock, but time is absolutely of the essence.”
I wasn’t sure I could speak. “Is that the only . . . the only way?”
Dr. Sheffler sat up and started to try to soften the blow. “Well, I’m sure we can look into—”
Dr. Inzer put a hand on his arm, and a look passed between them. She looked annoyed. “In my opinion, Ross, it is our only option. I’ve dealt with this before. This is a serious tumor and needs to be handled as
such. To be frank, your life is more important than your vision.”
Linda swallowed, loudly. “So, his vision? It would . . .”
Dr. Inzer scooted back a bit. “Obviously, there would be no vision in the resected eye.” She sighed—the first sign that there was a human in there. “The unfortunate thing is that radiation will almost certainly cause vision loss in the left eye, as well.”
“Jesus!” My dad stood up, then immediately sat back down. “How much vision loss?”
“Total. Unfortunately.” In her defense, Dr. Inzer looked like it genuinely pained her to say it. Dr. Sheffler just looked uncomfortable.
We all sat in silence for a bit. Linda fished a wadded-up Kleenex out of her purse and dabbed at her nose. For some reason I couldn’t feel the chair under my butt. It was that floating feeling again.
Apparently when bad things happen, you feel like you’re floating.
Finally, the doctor spoke again. “I am so sorry. But you need to know how serious the situation is. I wish I could give you better news.”
I was wishing the same thing. Or that this was some really twisted joke. Like she was going to tell me I was on a prank show.
But she didn’t. I wasn’t.
Yet again, leaving that office is a blur to me. I saw Dr. Inzer write down the name of a few books we should look up online. She handed the piece of paper to Linda while my dad was talking quietly with Dr. Sheffler. Linda only half tucked it in her coat pocket, so I grabbed it when she wasn’t looking.
The first book was something about “accepting a new normal.” The second title had the words “living with disfigurement” in it.
Wow.
I quietly tucked the paper back into Linda’s coat and walked outside to wait for them.
Later, my dad took me over to Abby’s. She’d been texting, and I hadn’t responded. Telling her by text would have felt wrong.
She met me at the front door. “So?”
I gave her the best smile I could. “Let’s go for a walk. Down to the creek or something.”