by Rob Harrell
“THANK YOU! WE’RE COWBOY ROSS AND THE LOADING DOCK MISFITS!”
There’s stunned silence for a couple of seconds until I hear Frank in the back yell out.
“ENCORE!”
Then the applause starts. And some cheering. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not everyone. It’s maybe not like the standing ovation you’d expect at the end of a movie, but it’s pretty good. Our families, and Frank and the gang, and ten or fifteen students jump up and start whooping at the top of their lungs. Isaac and Chris Stemmle run up to the front of the stage and start bowing to us like they’re crazy fans, which is kind of awesome.
But there’s a good part of the crowd that seems unsure how to react.
It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t for them. What matters is how I feel. How Abby and Jimmy feel. My body is still vibrating from all the volume as we walk offstage, and I’ve never felt better.
Then, maybe best of all, as we leave the stage, Sarah and Denise step back out of our way like we might be dangerous or something.
I love that part.
40
AFTERGLOW
As soon as we’re offstage, Abby turns and pounces, somehow wrapping Jimmy and me up in one big hug.
“THAT WAS THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER!”
Jimmy is laughing, and I’m so happy I feel like my feet aren’t touching the ground.
“YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST!” I turn and give Jimmy the most unlikely hug ever. “EVEN YOU, JIMMY!” He laughs and hugs back.
I faintly hear Sarah onstage saying “Okay! Yes. Well . . . wasn’t that . . . something?” as we stumble out into the hallway beside the auditorium.
Frank, Denny, and Lisa are just rounding the corner as we come out. And Linda, my dad, and Abby’s parents are right behind them.
“YOU GUYS!” Lisa looks more excited than any of us, which I did NOT expect from a viola instructor. Her tight ponytail has started to come loose.
Linda looks a little freaked out, frankly. “YOUR HAIR!” Not mad, just really surprised.
Then my dad comes up. “Did you just . . . Whose guitar was that?” He turns to Frank, who is laughing. “Did he just smash your guitar?”
Frank waves a thumb at my dad. “You’d better tell him, Ross.”
So, I do, as Linda holds me at arm’s length to inspect my Mohawk.
“I swapped it out. The guitar. Frank had another blue guitar that was busted ’cause Denny drove over it.”
Denny tips his head and smiles, like he’s either embarrassed or proud, I’m not sure. “That’s true. I did.”
I go on. “So, when I walked offstage, the busted one was there.”
My dad has his hands on his hips, nodding. “Wow. Okay. Now about the hair . . .”
I shrug, and Abby—arm in arm with her parents—speaks up in my defense. “He was partly bald anyway, Mr. Maloy.”
“Yeah. True.” He’s still nodding, and I wonder which way this is going to break. Then he smiles. “I think I like it.” He reaches out and gives the strip of hair a rub.
I look at Jimmy, who’s high-fiving with Denny, and realize his parents aren’t there. He doesn’t seem fazed by it, but I notice.
I turn to Frank. “Is Jerry here? That was him that yelled, right?” And just then, Jerry comes around the corner of the hall. He’s in a wheelchair that Callie is pushing.
“Dime Slot!”
He raises one arm and pumps it as well as he can—with a rock hand.
This brings on some laughs from us, and some coughing from him.
“Jerry! I can’t believe you came! That’s so cool!”
He laughs as they roll up. “Wouldn’t miss it. Whatever it was. Was that second thing supposed to be music?” But he’s smiling.
I shake his hand and realize he’s lost weight even since I saw him. But his grin is as big as the day I met him.
“Good for you, Ross. Good for you.” He takes a slow, labored breath. “Not so good for that poor guitar, but good for you.” Which gets a good laugh from us all.
We all eventually head back through the lobby into the auditorium—all except Callie and Jerry, who head out to get him some rest—to hear the judges’ results. As we come in the door, Isaac is standing there like he’s been waiting on us, a big goofy grin on his face. Chris is there, too, just behind him. Isaac’s looking back and forth between Abby and me, and I realize there are tears in his eyes, a quivery smile on his lips.
“I want to be you guys when I grow up.” He throws his arms around my neck and gives me a bear hug that almost knocks me off my feet. Then Abby. He’s wiping his eyes when Abby finally talks to him.
“Okay. Come on, Dummy. And bring Chris.”
We all file into the back row.
We don’t win, but I don’t care. It’s pretty tough to beat a classical solo on a unicycle.
Afterward, someone suggests we should all go get food. There’s some discussion about where to go before Jimmy pipes up.
“Does anybody like Dagwood’s?”
41
ONWARD
Three days later, Abby and I are sitting on the front steps of her house, bundled up, looking at her dad’s ridiculously overstuffed SUV. Every few minutes, her mom or dad runs in and out of the empty house, trying to figure out what to do with the full trash bags and cleaning bottles that are left.
The moving van pulled away twenty minutes ago with most of their stuff, and the rest is in the Honda Pilot at the curb.
“Is there room in there for you?”
Abby keeps rubbing her Converse together nervously. “Yeah. Between the cooler and the suitcases, there’s about an eight-inch gap for me to cram myself into.”
“Well, that’s nice.”
“Yep.” She blows a loose orange curl out of her face. “I think I’ll be good so long as I suck in the whole way to Minnesota.”
“Oh.” I poke her. “With everything going on, I don’t have a Christmas gift for you. I’ll have to send one to you.”
She smiles. “Yeah, I didn’t get to that either. It’s been . . . busy.”
That’s when both of her parents come out of the front door together. Her mom is holding her keys, a bottle of Fantastik cleaner, and a wad of used paper towels.
“And that’s that. Abby? Any last words before we close her up?”
Abby turns and cups a mittened hand by her mouth. Yells.
“Bye, house! You’ve been a good one!”
Her dad takes the keys from her mom. “Well said. I couldn’t have put it better.” He shuts the door and locks both locks as Abby and I make our way to the sidewalk.
Her mom gives me a huge hug. “This isn’t good-bye, Ross. Obviously. You can come visit anytime. Or vice versa, you know?”
I nod into her shoulder, careful not to knock my hat off.
Her dad puts his hand out. “Ross? You’re a good egg. Stay that way, okay? Don’t become a jerky teenager.”
I shake his hand. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Good deal. We’ll see you sometime soon, okay?” He heads to the car. “You guys take a moment. But not a long moment. It’s freezing, and we need to get going.” Then he and Mrs. Peterson get in the car.
Abby flops her mittens against the side of her jeans.
“So I guess this is it for now, huh?” Her voice is quivery.
“Yeah. But we’ll text all the time. We’ll call. It’s not like the Dark Ages where I’d just never see you again.” That Cape-buffalo-sized lump is in my throat again, and there’s an ache in my stomach.
“Right. Yeah. So, let’s not drag this out.” She sniffs and wipes her eyes. Shakes it off. “Everything’s good.”
“If you say so.”
We go in for a hug and stay there for a minute, her head on my shoulder. Her crazy hair in my face. And then she breaks it.
“All right. Text me later.”
“I will.”
She walks toward the car, but with a few steps to go, she stops. She turns and walks back to me quickly. She puts both m
ittened hands on my shoulders and looks me in the eye for a few long seconds.
“You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay.”
I smile and nod.
She tips her head forward, eyebrows up, like she’s making sure.
I nod again.
She pats my shoulder. “All right.” Pats my cheek. “Okay.”
Then she backs up as quickly as she came in. Turns back toward the car.
She opens the door and jumps in, and before the door closes, I hear her shout “Giddyup, people! What are we waiting on?”
Then her dad beeps the horn and they slowly pull away from the curb as I stand there.
It would be a great time for that sappy, final, waving-out-the-back-window shot if there wasn’t so much stuff packed to the ceiling in the back of the car.
Then they turn onto Elm. And then they’re gone.
I stand there for a while before I adjust my hat and start walking. It’s really cold out, but walking home feels like the only right move today. So I do.
When I get home, my dad calls out from the kitchen, “You okay?”
“Not sure!” I head upstairs and into my room and close the door. Then I grab the acoustic out of the RiPE SPoNgE case and sit on the edge of my bed. I’m running through some chords when my phone bleeps, telling me I have a text.
It’s from a number I don’t know, and there are a number of typos in the message.
I find a short video of a huge bear poking at a smart-phone and send it.
I pick the guitar back up and get to work. I’m gonna master that F chord today if it kills me. Oh, and life is a precious, wonderful gift from above. Cherish every blah blah blah.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
While this book is a work of fiction, Ross’s cancer and treatments were based on my experience with cancer back in 2006. The puffy eye, the surgery, the dime slot scar, the hair loss, staring at the big X, the eye goop, the vision loss: That all really happened. Even the dumb hat.
I don’t think I can adequately thank those people who helped me get through it, but this is a start:
Eternal thanks to my doctors—Dr. Weaver, Dr. Shepler, Dr. Thornton, Dr. Sandbach, Dr. Nunery, Dr. Kane, and Dr. Horn. I simply wouldn’t be here without you.
Everyone at Midwest Proton Radiotherapy Institute: Thank you for making a weird, scary thing so much less so.
To my parents, my family, and friends. Thank you for letting me lean on you, and for sitting around watching the Winter Olympics in the hotel with us.
Thank you to the cartoonists who filled in for me when I was out, and everyone at Andrews McMeel Syndicate for the support.
Enormous thanks to my agent, Dan Lazar, who helped me pull this book out of my brain, and everyone else at Writers House for helping the book travel around the world. So many thanks as well to my editor Kate Harrison and to everyone at Dial Books who saw it as a story worth telling.
And Amber. Thank you, thank you, thank you. For being the best researcher/advocate/caregiver/partner I could have asked for.
In closing, if there’s a caregiver in your life, drop everything and go give them a huge bear hug. Seriously. Go do it now before you forget.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ROB HARRELL is the author–illustrator of the highly praised graphic novels Monster on the Hill and the illustrated book series The Life of Zarf. His fifth book, Wink, is a fictional story drawn from his own experiences as a child after being diagnosed with a rare eye cancer.
He can be reached at [email protected]
COPYRIGHT
HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks
First published in the United States of America in 2020
by Dial Books for Young Readers
an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
First published in Australia in 2020
by HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks
a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Rob Harrell 2020
The right of Rob Harrell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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ISBN 978 1 4607 5887 8 (paperback)
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia
Cover design by Mark Campbell, HarperCollins Design Studio
Cover images © Rob Harrell