“Heeyyy! Happy Monday!” Her face immediately drops when she sees I’ve been crying. “Girl! What is wrong! I know you ain’t cryin’ in here by yourself.”
I smile at her before I can stop myself. Tisha runs the four hundred meters, so I see her around the track and locker room every day. She has always been so unexplainably nice to me. “No, I’m fine! I just kind of made a fool of myself at lunch. I’m being an idiot.” I shake my head. “It’s not a big deal. I don’t know why I’m crying.”
She tilts her head sympathetically. “We’ve all had those days, baby. Trust me, I’ve definitely had mine.” She crouches down so her eyes are in my line of vision. “Tomorrow will be better. You know that.” We hold eye contact until I nod at her. “Good. I gotta pee. See you this afternoon at practice. And smile! Don’t let that shiny hair go to waste!”
She shuts the door to a bathroom stall and resumes humming. With a lighter heart and the remnants of an involuntary small grin, I reach for the bathroom door. Lunch is over and it’s fifth period. I am headed to precalculus, my most challenging class. The only real threat to my almost perfect GPA. I hold on to the door handle without moving. Where do I find my safe number? In the cafeteria it just, well, appeared. I wait quietly.
57.
It floats down into my mind like a gift with a parachute.
I swing open the bathroom door with a new outlook. I’ve made a few embarrassing mistakes, but I’m fighting cancer. I am the holder of insider information about the true nature of human physiology. It’s not going to be easy. And, like Tisha said, it will always be better tomorrow.
I count my steps out loud all the way to precalculus. I arrive proud of my life-saving efforts, and with twelve steps to spare.
• • •
The bell rings to end sixth-period chemistry, and the room shuffles into action. I linger, packing up my notes and textbook, waiting for my safe number to appear in my mind. As I pretend to fuss with the binders in my bag, it arrives. 68.
“Come on, slowpoke.” Jenny is waiting for me at the door and points at her wrist. We have to get all the way to the gym on the other side of campus for dance class. “Would you hurry up?”
“Coming, coming . . . ,” I mumble as I stand from my desk. “One, two, three,” I count my tiptoe steps toward her across the classroom. Jenny is in almost all my classes and also a member of the cross-country team. Although she is a much faster runner than I am, I do better than her in school. We are both close friends and fierce rivals.
“So, did you finish your homework?” she asks.
“What homework? Twelve, thirteen, fourteen—”
“The homework you forgot to do. The reason why you skipped lunch with me and Rebecca?” Her voice questions and assaults me. She is clearly annoyed.
“Oh, yeah. I finished it. Thanks. Twenty, twenty-one . . .” There is an uncomfortable silence. I know what’s coming.
“Why are you counting?”
There it is. And I’m ready for her. “Well, there are about two thousand steps in one mile. I just want to see how far we walk every day between classes. Don’t you think Coach would be interested?”
“Um, I guess so. Isn’t that what a pedometer is for?” She pauses, looks at me, and continues before I can reply. “So, last night I was talking to Sara, and I told her . . .”
Jenny continues her monologue as we maneuver through campus. “Thirty-eight, thirty-nine.” She wants a new pair of boots for her birthday. “Forty-two, forty-three.” But it’s just so hard to find good brown boots, you know? “Forty-nine, fifty.” Especially in this little town.
“Fifty-one.” I stop.
Jenny walks a few paces before noticing. “What’s wrong? What are you doing?”
I look up at her. I only have sixty-eight safe steps, and I’m already at fifty-one. Looking down the path, we are much farther than seventeen steps from the dance studio. I can’t keep going without a plan. “I forgot my . . . calculator! In Ms. Matthews’s class. I have to go back and get it.”
“Your calculator? Just go back after school! You’ll be late for dance?” Students jostle between us and she is forcefully carried away with the crowd. I know she’s going to be mad that she had to walk alone the rest of the way to class.
“Tell Ms. Stern I’ll be right there!” I yell down the breezeway.
I need to be alone for this. I have seventeen steps left to get me what looks to be about the distance of a football field. It seems unlikely, even impossible, but I have no other choice.
The path is crowded. It is the peak of class-change traffic, and I am being buffeted and nudged by the rabid mass flowing around me. With an emphatic jump I lunge forward and land about five feet down the path. My flailing arms swing wide and barely miss smacking a girl I don’t know in the head. She glares at me and keeps walking. I lunge again, moving another five feet. Fifteen steps left.
I am exhausted as my steps dwindle to five, then four. It is hopeless. I am nowhere near the dance studio. The class bell rang long ago, and I am completely alone outside on the concrete pathway. I extend my front leg out and then wiggle it forward against the pavement until I am in a near split. I plant my hands on the ground and scoot my back leg forward to meet my front. Three steps left. A stream of sweat begins to trickle down the side of my face onto my neck. I am moving slowly, the weight of the day adding to gravity’s effects.
I extend myself into another almost split and then drag my back leg up to meet my front. Two steps left. My shoulders sag and I feel myself giving in to self-pity. Where is all of this coming from? A week ago—four days ago!—I knew nothing of cancer cracks or brain tumors. I halfheartedly kick my leg out for another split and find myself sobbing.
None of this makes any sense. Why are there safe-step allotments? Why do cracks cause cancer? My friends, my teachers. They are noticing. They are staring. I don’t want to count my steps, I don’t want to avoid cracks, but how can I not? This is brain cancer!
I crumble from my split onto the concrete and allow the sobs to take control. Confusion, fear, frustration pour out of me. Wiping my nose on my arm, I lie down on the concrete. The warm surface is soothing against my cheek. I almost forget that I’m—
“Allison?” There are brown loafers about six inches in front of my eyes. Frayed denim. I lift my head a few inches to look up, and framed against the sun is a letterman jacket and tousled brown hair. Sam. “Is everything okay?”
I lurch my torso up from the concrete, snot and tears covering my face. “Me? Oh, hi! Yes! Of course.” My voice breaks slightly as I try to tamp down the raging tears. “I, well . . .” I look back down and quickly wipe my cheeks across my sleeve. It only creates a bigger mess, I can tell by the mascara now smeared on my arm. Gritty dirt mingles with the thick wetness on my face, and I smile blankly up at him. How can I explain this? His green eyes question me, waiting for a response. My mind racing, I open my mouth without a plan, hoping for the best. “You know, I think I have low blood sugar.” Ah, yes. Well done. “When I don’t eat or something, I just fall like this out of nowhere. I’m so glad you found me.” I look up at him again, a dainty maiden rescued by a preppy, basketball-playing knight. “It’s never happened at school before.” I half giggle, half exhale as I try to dab away the more obvious drops of sweat between my eyebrows and along my hairline.
“You should really get that checked out, Al.” I blush at the nickname. No one else has ever called me that. His arm is extended down toward me, but I can’t see his face against the sun’s glare. I hold his hand as he pulls me to my feet. He smells so good.
I smile at him. “Probably should!” An awkward, forced laugh. We look at each other for a few moments and I give a small shrug. Ask me to ice cream, I will him. Invite me to your basketball game tonight.
We make eye contact for a full three seconds. He opens his mouth, moves to talk, and then closes it, tearing his eyes from mine. “Well, gotta run to class,” he says as he gestures his arm to the right and, with a wh
ip of his neck, flicks his hair out of his face.
“Yeah, yeah. Me too.” I fidget with the corner of my binder. “See ya around!”
He walks away from me down the pathway and I can finally relax. I let out a long, stale sigh and realize I’ve been holding my breath. I don’t move. Can’t move. I only have two safe steps left. Out of my peripheral vision, I see Sam pause as he rounds the corner and glances back at me, frozen in place with dirt on my forehead. My smile remains plastered on my face, my waving hand still suspended in the air. It tingles where he touched me to help me up, his fingerprints glowing coolly on my skin.
I want to cry. I have to cry. Again. My chest shakes, my breath catches in my throat, but there is nothing there. I know that tears would help, at least a little bit. But I’m empty.
I need more steps.
When I accidentally stepped on a crack, I was saved by introducing a second, more difficult requirement—reaching my destination in a certain number of steps. If you obey this new thought, then you are forgiven for stepping on that crack. It was like a trade! I gave my protector something else it wanted, and I gained back my health. I feel a tentative edge of comfort as I realize this is my way out. I can barter for more steps. I look around for ideas. What would my protector want? It needs to be meaningful. I want to demonstrate true sacrifice. Show him that I’m not just trying to gain more steps, but also thanking him for his protection and warnings.
I scan my body: shoes, legs, shorts, arms, lunch bag.
Lunch bag. I’ve already eaten most of the contents but there are still grapes and pretzels inside I have saved to have as a snack before cross-country practice. As my stomach sends a pang of hunger through me, I know I have found the answer. I whisper out loud: “I won’t eat my afternoon snack if I can walk safely to dance class.”
A window of hope opens wide within me. I have another tool, another weapon to fight against cancer. My glimmering happiness tells me my protector approves. Still avoiding cracks, I walk casually toward the dance studio, counting out loud, with a new safe number. I roll the top of my lunch bag down tightly and shove it into my book bag.
Sara:
Is everything ok?
Me:
Yeah, I’m fine. Why do you ask?
Sara:
I ran into Sam. He asked me if there is something wrong with you . . . like mentally . . .
CHAPTER 4
Later in the week, I spend all morning rubbing the edges of my brown paper lunch bag between my thumb and forefinger, continually reminding myself how much leverage I have left for the day. The Ziplocs of food all stare at one another silently. It’s Russian roulette: Who will be sacrificed next?
I have eaten almost nothing in two days. With my newfound bartering tool, I trade away food with abandon. It’s as if my mind knows, lunch bag in hand and dinner on the horizon, that I have about ten get-out-of-cancer-free cards. My feet are looser, my gaze less focused. Oops, a crack. There goes my ham sandwich. I lose my Fritos when I run out of steps after fourth period and my string cheese when I trip onto a crack on the way into lunch. Each mistake is muffled by the bubble wrap padding of bartering away individual servings of food. Each loss sharpens the pangs of hunger that color my every movement, but the pain is comforting. It is the side effect of being cancer-free.
My body is physically drained. As I walk about campus, I teeter on the edge of consciousness, tempted toward a warm cloud of sleep and darkness. My tongue drags across ragged, chapped lips. Gorging myself at the water fountain, I fill my stomach to its brim, briefly tricking it into drowned submission.
I can’t focus in any of my classes. Not today, not this week. I spend a significant amount of time at the beginning of each period ensuring that my feet are positioned perfectly to avoid the ragged cracks in the aged classroom floors: the white tips of my sneakers frozen on pointe like clumsy, double-knotted ballet slippers. I check on them frequently to make sure they haven’t shifted. My thoughts are consumed with food: what’s in my lunch bag, what I’ve already given up. How many more mistakes can I make, how many more lives are left in my brown paper bag? Over and over, against the drone of a teacher’s lesson, I run through my remaining options as if trying to remember a phone number. Carrots, Jell-O, Nutri-Grain bar. Carrots, Jell-O, Nutri-Grain bar. Carrots, Jell-O, Nutri-Grain bar. My stomach growls loudly against my ribs. Listing them makes them real, it reminds me there is hope. My hands have a slight tremor and my head is fuzzy, but I still have a chance. Carrots, Jell-O, Nutri-Grain bar. There are still some options. One of those could eventually make it to my stomach.
• • •
I settle onto the long wooden bench in the women’s locker room. It’s the treasured solitary minutes of warm, humid silence between afternoon classes and practice. For the first time today, I have a few seconds to myself. Since lurching into first period at eight forty-five this morning, I have been surrounded by a tornado of other students—their words, their laughter, their haphazard steps all mixing with and confusing my own thoughts. I’ve been blindly, passionately avoiding cracks and donating food to find redemption for my missteps. Balancing the continuous buzz of anxiety with my searing hunger, I am exhausted.
I sigh into the silence. Out of context, standing on their own, these secret connections in my mind look like randomly created Mad Libs. Insert creative noun here (“cracks”), insert scary consequence here (“brain cancer”). In a quiet, cobwebbed corner of my mind, I laugh at their absurdity. They honestly make no sense. I look at these rules, newly chiseled on my brain like the Ten Commandments, and, for a moment, I falter. My mind presses hard on the brakes of what feels like a runaway train. How do cracks cause cancer? Is that really possible? Wouldn’t everyone in the world be dead by now? And who am I sacrificing food to?
The questions bounce around my mind, each one seeming to make a better point than the one that came before. What makes a number of steps “safe”? And who is deciding what the right number is? My mind digests the questions for a few moments, chewing on their rationality. Cracks are just cracks. No one is communicating with me. It was a harmless dream followed by a harmless song on the radio. A feeling is swelling in me, the crest of a wave of clarity rising up from within. A hopefulness. I lift my head slightly at the rays of sunshine poking through four days of clouds.
But what if? My mind stomps, shattering my thoughts. What if cracks are dangerous? What if counting my steps is the thin wall between me and death? What if someone is protecting me and these sacrifices are all that keep me safe?
What if I die of brain cancer?
And with this thought I’m submerged immediately in the cold, murky sea of my dream. I’m in my inevitable future. At first, in the weeks after the diagnosis, things would be okay. We would be powerfully optimistic, put on plastered smiles in the hopes of a miracle. They would enroll me in medical trials, adjust my medications, pump me with poison. But by my sixteenth birthday, the silver SUV with an enormous red bow I’ve always imagined is replaced by a beeping plastic hospital bed. They shove it into my room under bouquets of well-wishes and dozens of balloons. I lose weight and my hair. My father buys me a wig, but it never gets taken out of the bag. There isn’t time. Feeding tubes, last good-byes, my mom’s tears staining my quilt as she cries herself to sleep at my bedside. My grandfathers, my father, my uncles and cousins strain under the weight of my casket. Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” leads my devastated parents out of the church into a harsh, lonely world without their only child. My breath quakes with the sound of a metal shovel hitting soil in front of my new tombstone.
Cracks cause cancer. I need to count my steps. You can trade a fatal mistake for food and be forgiven. Something inside me knows. This is right. It has to be.
A tightness in my chest returns, the sharp edge of being on alert at all times. The fear, in its strange familiar way, is comforting. I grab and hold on to this renewed feeling of conviction, of knowing the truth.
“Oh, heyyyyy!” Maddie bellows betwe
en opened arms from the doorway of the locker room. Her beaming smile moves toward me as she leads a group of jabbering girls forward. “Ready for the long loop? Gotta love Thursdays.” She flops her book bag down on the bench beside me. I look at her blankly as a thought drags itself into my brain. It’s Thursday? A long pause. If it’s Thursday, why hasn’t Sara texted me about the JV game? She has badgered me about going to the JV games every Thursday since the first week of freshman year. Of course she’s noticed my counting and the “blisters” that have kept me tiptoeing through school for a week. But, until this moment, it had not occurred to me that it might impact our friendship. That she might find someone else to go to the JV games with.
“Are you okay?” Maddie is stooped down in front of me, peering into my eyes. “You look out of it. Are you sick?” She is in the middle of putting up her wild hair and mumbles through multiple bobby pins stashed between her lips.
“Sick? What?” I loll my head to my left shoulder and lurch off the bench in an effort to literally escape her question. “I’m fine! Just exhausted. Studying, you know. It’ll get ya.” I tiptoe toward the nearby water fountain, pretend to take a sip, and stumble back toward my bag, keeping my eyes focused steadily downward. I am watching for cracks but also intentionally avoiding eye contact. Although Maddie is a few months younger than me, she is a wise old woman. I know she will see through my half-conscious mumblings and excuses. And she’s the type who will make her opinions known. Loudly.
“Right, I guess I know what you mean.” Her eyebrows crease together to go along with her changed tone of voice. “Maybe try to go to bed earlier? You need to rest. You’re not a robot.” I nod and busy myself with my gym bag. Maddie’s eyes examine me for another ten seconds until she moves away toward the bathroom.
With a heavy sigh, I let my eyelids sink closed. Just a ten-minute nap. Right here, this bench. I need it so bad. The thought is satin against my face. I curl up on the wooden surface and—
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