Leading Lines

by Chantel Guertin

  If only I had my camera here. Seeing the night through the lens, focusing on everything from behind my camera, giving me something else to do so I’m not just stuck in this awkwardness.

  “Want a beer?” one of Muse’s friends offers. I shake my head, but Dylan nods and takes the plastic cup.

  “You’re drinking?” Dylan never used to drink, because of the cancer and the treatments. And even though he’s cancer-free now, he didn’t tell me he was drinking.

  “Not a big deal, OK?” he says, not looking at me. “I know you can’t drive us home—I’m just having one.”

  “Does Muse know about the cancer?” I blurt out as the band comes onstage.

  Dylan gives me an annoyed look. Brow furrowed, almost as though he’s willing me to shut up without saying anything. “No. Nobody does.” He takes a sip of his beer and looks back at the Radio Flyers as they kick into their first song.

  I follow Dylan’s gaze, toward the stage, but I’m distracted by Muse, who’s jumped up and is dancing, shaking her hips in her black jeans, shimmying in her boots, throwing her hands in the air. When the song ends she whistles and then sits down, breathless. But when the next song starts, she’s up again and so are her friends, and Dylan’s pulling me to my feet. The song is catchy, but it’s my first time hearing it, and they know all the words. I couldn’t feel more out of place. I keep hoping each song is their last, but it never is, for more than an hour and a half, until finally, finally they call it quits.

  I can’t get out of there quick enough, but Dylan wants to say hi to the band, so it’s another agonizing half hour until we’re on the road. And the ride home—just the two of us—isn’t any better. Dylan hits Radio Flyers on his iPod, and the now-familiar tracks make me replay the evening.

  “When Mike K stood on his drum kit with the cast on his leg? Who does that?” he says, in that way when you admire someone who’s clearly nuts.

  “I guess that’s how he got the broken leg?” I say.

  “Yeah, two shows in.” Dylan laughs. “That guy’s so insane.”

  I don’t laugh with him. “So you hung out with Muse the whole time you were away?”

  “Yeah,” he says, not adding any sort of amendment like, But hey! She’s gay! Or But don’t worry, she’s got a boyfriend! Or even, Yeah, there was absolutely no one else to hang out with, and I talked about you the whole time. He merges onto the I-90 and the rest of the drive home he sings along with the Flyers and rehashes the night some more.

  “Hey, so are you nervous about tomorrow?” I interrupt.

  He glances over at me and I feel like a buzzkill, but also like I need to talk about something real—and other than the Radio Flyers. He shrugs, then turns his attention back to the road. “Nah. It’s just a routine MRI. I have to get them every three months for two years or something.”

  He pulls off the highway and the playlist ends, and we revert to our mildly awkward mutual silent treatment. Eventually he pulls onto my street and into my driveway and turns off the car. Then he leans over and looks at me and I feel like I have his full attention for the first time all night. “Come here.” He unbuckles my seatbelt and I twist in my seat toward him. He puts one hand on my knee and the other on the back of my neck and the warmth from his hands sends sparks throughout my body. And then his lips are on mine, and I’m closing my eyes and forgetting about the whole not-so-wonderful night. His breath is a mix of beer and minty gum and I stop thinking. I love kissing him.

  “Philadelphia Greene,” he says, when we finally pull apart, my curfew alarm dinging on my phone.

  “What?” Our eyes meet.

  “You are something else.”

  My stomach flip-flops. “I’ll see you in the morning.” He kisses me once more, and I don’t want to get out of the car but I slide out and into the cold. I hurry up the steps and inside, locking the door behind me.

  CHAPTER 6

  Dylan parks in the visitor lot, and we make our way up the concrete stairs to the front door of St. Christopher’s early Saturday morning. These steps hold mixed feelings—that panic attack the first time I returned to the hospital after Dad’s death, but also, the first time Dylan and I met. Or re-met, since he’d graduated.

  “Wait a sec,” I say as Dylan’s about to walk through the sliding doors. He turns. I race back down the stairs and then turn and crouch so that the railing along the left side of the stairs is at eye level, a leading line from the bottom left corner of the frame up to Dylan at the top.

  “I better not be in these,” he calls, amused.

  I pull off a few more shots and then race back up the stairs. “It’s for the alumni-dance mural thing I told you about. Favorite memories of Spalding.”

  “What, and I’m yours?” He grins.

  “Obviously.” The volunteer placement I had dreaded turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. I still have the other half of my hours to complete before graduation, but those hours start up again next fall, somewhere else. Though I can’t imagine anywhere else comparing to my time at St. Christopher’s, especially in the romance department.

  The sliding doors open and the warmth envelops us, sucking us into the bright atrium, where it could be summer.

  “Dylan,” the receptionist says, and Dylan smiles. “And Pippa. We miss you around here. Especially when you were sneaking around to find Dylan.”

  I blush.

  It’s kind of cute how everyone knows we’re together now, and we walk down the hall. We’re just getting to the elevator when Luis Juarez, who graduated from Spalding last year, comes around the corner.

  “Dylan! Where you been hiding?”

  Dylan slaps his good hand—the other one is peeking out of a cast—but avoids his question. “You know Pippa?”

  Luis gives a friendly smile. “I remember you.” I nod.

  “What happened?” Dylan asks. Luis holds the casted arm up.

  “Snowmobile fail. Luckily it was my left so I should still be able to man the camera and even the boom pretty easily. We’re shooting this mockumentary …” Luis, like the majority of last year’s graduates who opted for the local community college, is taking the radio and television arts program. It’s always the most popular. “So what are you guys doing here?”

  “Pippa had to pick up something for school—for her volunteer placement,” Dylan blurts out before I can say anything.

  “Cool. Well, four hours in here is long enough for me. This place is depressing.” He cocks his head. “Hey, my parents are out of town next weekend. So, party, obviously. See you there?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Dylan says, noncommittally.

  “Oh, too good for Spalding now, huh?” Luis teases, then salutes with his casted arm and walks past us, toward the main entrance.

  I nudge Dylan. “Way to rope me into your lie,” I say as we wait for the elevator.

  Dylan has this thing about people knowing he got sick. Except for with me, his friend Callie and his parents and doctors, he fibs all the time to cover for it. Although, it’s not like he was exactly on the up and up with me either when we first starting hanging out here at the hospital.

  The elevator’s empty and we get on. His expression is unreadable, and I know he’s more nervous about this test than he’s willing to admit. The doors open and Dylan is out into the hall. He picks up his pace and I have to practically jog to keep up with him.

  My gut feels like it’s full of rocks.

  I grab Dylan’s hand and squeeze it. We turn down a hall and then down another, lots of people saying hi to Dylan and him responding with a fake smile, until we end up in the waiting room for the MRI.

  I don’t recognize the woman at the desk—she must have started after my placement ended, and she doesn’t know Dylan either. He gives his name and hospital card, and she types something into the computer and hands the card back and tells him that it’ll just b
e a moment. We move over to sit in one of the black chairs that line the walls of the waiting room.

  Dylan pulls out his phone.

  “Hey, don’t you find it kind of exhausting to keep up the lies?” I say quietly. “Why not let it go after these results?”

  “I just don’t want the world to know about it,” he whispers hoarsely.

  “But there’s not even really anything to know. You don’t have cancer anymore. You beat it. It’s awesome. You should be happy that people know. It’s inspiring.”

  “Yeah, real accomplishment. Take a bunch of drugs and lie on the couch for weeks. Listen, I don’t want to talk about it, OK?”

  He refocuses on his phone, and I peek over his shoulder at his screen.

  “You have 2,916 Instagram followers? I didn’t even know you Instagrammed.” I say incredulously.

  He shrugs. “I took this pic backstage one night with the Blasters, and now, like, all their followers are following me.”

  “Huh.” I open the Instagram app and search for him by name. DylMc—DylMc?—has a lot of photos. And a certain MuseMusicLove has liked a lot of them. I keep scrolling. Actually, Muse has liked every single one of his photos. Even ones—a pic of his toes?—that are really not worth liking. His phone dings and he laughs, types something, then puts his phone in his pocket and looks at me, catching me watching him.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” I say. But of course I want to know if it’s Muse he’s texting.

  “OK.”

  I know it’s not the time—he’s about to have a “Has my cancer returned?” test—but I want to push it, tell him that no, I’m not OK, I think Muse is into him, and I need reassurance that nothing is going on between them, especially since I’m the one who’s sitting here with him at the hospital. He grabs a magazine off the table—Popular Mechanics, which, what are popular mechanics? And more importantly, when did Dylan become interested in them?—and so I grab the only other magazine on the table, which is the American Journal of Proctology. If I’d known Dylan was going to basically ignore me, I would’ve brought a book to read. I’m only halfway through The Scarlet Letter, which we’re supposed to be finished reading by Monday. Anything would be much better than reading about butt issues.

  “Dylan McCutter?” A woman in a white lab coat over a purple sweater dress is standing in the hallway between the intake desk and the room where the MRI happens.

  Dylan stands up. “Back soon.”

  I’m about to say “Good luck” but that seems inappropriate, so at the last second I jump up and kiss him on the lips, which sort of ends up half on his bottom lip and half on his chin. And then I sit right back down and Dylan heads toward the MRI technician, who smiles kindly and then leads him down the hall.

  The hospital received a large donation last year and now the MRI room is like something out of Star Trek. The room doesn’t have a door—just a massive wall you go around and then behind, which supposedly is a psychological trick. Like if you went into a room with doors, it would be like going to the other side, the cancer side, or something. On the wall, there’s this huge light-up sign that says In Use in red letters. I watch as Dylan disappears behind the wall.

  “The waiting’s the worst,” a voice says. An old man sits down beside me. He’s holding a Bible. I nod, suddenly feeling the weight of what’s happening. Dylan won’t have the results today—the scan begins a morbid chain letter: the technician sends the scan to a specialist, who reads it, who then sends it to Dylan’s doctor, who then calls Dylan in to let him know the results.

  “Your brother?” the man asks.

  “Boyfriend,” I say.

  “So young to have a boyfriend,” he says, almost wistfully.

  “I’m 16.”

  “I was 17 when I met my Margaret. We’ll be married 70 years next month. We’ve been through it all, but love is blind, right?” He nods. “So’s Margaret, now. Both eyes and still has to get treatment to make sure it doesn’t spread even further. I read the Bible. Mostly to pass the time, and because I can still see. Have you read it?” he asks, as though he’s holding up the latest bestseller everyone’s talking about.

  I shake my head. “I’m not … really religious. We don’t go to church. Except for weddings and funerals, I guess.”

  “Me either, but this—it’s a pretty good story. Told four ways. It’s a little like reading a court transcript for a very juicy trial. There’s murder and adultery. I’m quite into it.” He pats the cover. “I’m hoping her treatments are done before I finish, and I never find out how it all ends.” He winks at me.

  The In Use sign clicks off; Dylan will be out any minute. I stand to get a drink of water, and when I come back Dylan emerges. He grins at me. “I feel a bit like a superhero when I’m in there. Like the Incredible Hulk getting radiated.” He laughs. I figured he’d be thinking about cancer and death in that room, but he looks like a weight’s been lifted.

  “You ready?” Dylan grabs his coat and hat off the seat beside me. I say goodbye to the old man and follow Dylan through the double doors.

  “What was the percentage of recurrence again?” I ask once we’re out in the hallway, waiting for the elevator, even though I know the answer. The chance of his cancer coming back is low—4%. But I ask to remind him. To keep the mood light in case his superhero act isn’t that solid. He rolls his eyes at me—he knows what I’m trying to do.

  “Let’s go get something to eat. I’m starving. Caf?”

  “Seriously?” We haven’t eaten in the caf since I was a candystriper and he was a patient. Back when I didn’t know he was sick, when I thought he was on the nonexistent music team, and we would pick out the most awful-looking foods, just to prove something doesn’t have to look good to taste good.

  “Actually, that’s probably a bad idea, right?” He grabs my hand and leads me down the hall, around a corner and straight for a set of doors that says Open Only in Emergency. Alarm Will Sound. He looks at me, grins and pushes open the door, then pulls me through as the siren blares. We race down the stairs, two at a time. He’s whooping. I’m laughing and suddenly everything feels all right again.

  CHAPTER 7

  For seven years, Sleepover Saturdays have been Dace and my thing, but as I’m lying on my bed on Saturday afternoon, post-hospital escape, wasting time online when I should be editing my photos for photo club, Dace texts to cancel. She thinks she has the flu. Actually, what she texts is this:

  Dace: 99% sure I have flu. Or Lyme disease. Possible spider bite on arm.

  Me: Lyme disease caused by ticks not spiders.

  Dace: Maybe spider flu then?

  Me: U sure it’s not bird flu?

  Dace: OMG is that a thing?

  Me: No. Well yes. But no way u have it.

  Dace: What if I got it in biology?

  Me: Weren’t u dissecting worm?

  Dace: What if bird touched worm & I touched worm & now have rare disease? Will I be better by tomorrow?

  She has a go-see tomorrow for the Nordstrom website. Catalog work isn’t what she wants to do, but since her agent used to book her for car shows in Cheektowaga, this is a lot better.

  I tell her to eat a lot of Arrowroots and that I love her. She tells me if she dies I can have her bras. Then I call Dylan to see if he wants to do something. After going to the Orange Turtle, this diner we kind of made our place over the holidays, he dropped me off at home, saying he had to help his dad chop firewood. I figure he should be done by now. He answers his phone on the second ring.

  “I’m going to the Radio Flyers’ second show, remember? Aren’t you sleeping at Dace’s?”

  I flop on my bed and tell him Dace is sick and wait for him to say he doesn’t need to see the band he saw for two weeks straight and then again last night and would rather see me, but he doesn’t. I try not to be disappointed that he is sticking to his plan. Of co
urse, I made it clear to Dylan that Sleepover Saturdays were a tradition and I didn’t want to become one of those girls who forgets all about her best girlfriends the second she gets a boyfriend. So I can’t exactly expect him to drop his plans just because my plans changed.

  Then, almost as though he can hear my thoughts, he says, “Do you want to come?” But I don’t. Last night was fine, except for the entire four hours where I felt totally inferior to Muse and paranoid that there was something going on between them. So a repeat performance? No thanks.

  “Is Muse going to be there?” I ask, regretting it the second the question leaves my lips. I sound unmistakably jealous.

  “Yeah, probably,” he says. “She goes to all the shows. You know she’s Patrick’s girlfriend, right?”

  Silence. “What?”

  “Patrick, the bassist.”

  It’s like the sky has opened up and there’s rainbows and butterflies everywhere.

  “Oh! Great!” I can’t control my enthusiasm.

  “I told you that.”

  He did?

  And then it all clicks together—how he told me he was hanging out with some of the girlfriends of the bands. He never said their names, though. And I figured they were all about their semi-famous boyfriends and weren’t thinking about Dylan in that way because even though I know he’s a super-talented musician, to those girls I figured they just thought he was the dude in the merch booth.

  “You’re a freak,” Dylan teases, and then tells me he’ll call me tomorrow.

  • • •

  I’m making myself a Nutella sandwich when Mom’s phone rings. She’s upstairs, so I peek at it. My heart stops.

  David Westerly.

  The knife in my hand shakes and I put it down on the counter and then wipe my hands on my jeans just as the phone stops ringing and it goes to voicemail.

  One Missed Call.

  A moment later the phone dings, and the voicemail icon pops up. I pick up her phone, my hands quivering.