The Fire Between High & Lo (Elements #2)

by Brittainy Cherry

  Wait.

  What?

  No.

  My heart dropped into my stomach, and I felt acid climbing up my throat as he kept talking. “We’ve been dealing with this news for a while, unsure how to handle telling you all. I already had surgery to remove a tumor, and I’ll be starting my first chemo treatment soon, but—”

  “I’m sorry. Slow down. Back up. What?” I interrupted him. My blood was boiling, and I felt myself on the verge of a breakdown. My fingers dug into the side of my chair, as my body started to shake. What the hell was he talking about? Kellan didn’t have cancer. Kellan was healthy. He was always healthy. He was the only one in our family who wasn’t a mess. He couldn’t be sick. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  No.

  No.

  Alyssa’s eyes saddened by the news, and she almost reached out to take my hand, but I shook my head. He went to speak, but I stood up, uninterested in him explaining. I didn’t want him to say any-fucking-thing else, because his words were currently toxic and they were poisoning my soul. I needed air. Lots of air. I headed for the patio door, and stepped outside. The cool air rushed at my steaming face, and I let out a pained breath. My hands gripped the railing as I stared out into the darkened sky, taking deep breaths, trying my best to not fall apart.

  I shut my eyes and snapped the band on my wrist once.

  It’s not real…

  I couldn’t open my eyes.

  He was fine. He was healthy.

  I snapped the band on my wrist twice.

  It’s not real. It’s not real…

  The sliding door opened to the balcony, and I listened to the footsteps grow closer. Kellan leaned against the railing beside me.

  “You set me up,” I said.

  “I didn’t want to tell you like that. I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  “What kind?”

  “Colon.”

  Shit.

  “I—” My voice started but then it trailed off. I felt like I should say something, yet I didn’t know what the right words were. Were there any right words in a situation like this one?

  My fingers gripped the railing tighter. “We have to go see TJ. I won’t believe it until he tells me straight to my face.” TJ was the doctor that both Kellan and I always went to as kids. He was a good friend of Kellan’s father, so even though I hadn’t had any money or healthcare to go to a doctor’s office, TJ always checked me out for free. He was a weird guy, but a good man, and the only doctor I’d trust to tell me the truth about my brother’s diagnosis.

  “Logan.” Kellan’s voice softened. “I’ve already spoken with TJ. Besides, he’s not an oncologist.”

  “I trust him,” I said through clenched teeth. “I trust him, Kellan. And only him.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay. We’ll go see TJ tomorrow if it will make you feel better.”

  “It will.” I cleared my throat. “Until then, tell me everything you know. What stage are you in? It’s curable, right? How do we get rid of it? What can I do? How do I help? How do we fix this?” How do I fix you?

  “It’s stage three.” No. That’s not good. “But for now, we wait. Like I said, I had the surgery to remove the tumor and two lymph nodes. We start chemotherapy in a week and we have to give it time to see if it works. The chemo will help stop any potential cells that may have spread elsewhere in my system.”

  “What happens if they spread elsewhere?”

  He went quiet.

  No.

  No.

  No.

  I bit my tongue. “You should’ve told me.”

  “I know.”

  We turned around to face the house. Erika screamed at her mother as she yelled back at her. Alyssa tried her best to neutralize the situation, but had no luck whatsoever.

  “You can’t marry a person who has cancer, Erika. It makes no sense! You’re thinking with your heart instead of your head.”

  What a fucking awful thing to say to a person.

  “God. Their mom is insane. I forgot how insane she is. She actually makes Erika seem…normal?”

  “She’s a tough one, that’s for sure.” Kellan dropped his head a little and stared at his shoes. “She’s not completely wrong, though.”

  “What?”

  “Erika’s in this panic mode. She’s rushing to marry me, just in case something happens. Just in case, things go wrong. Don’t get me wrong, I want to be her husband but…” His words faded off and he looked back up into his home, which seemed like it was seconds away from exploding.

  I wanted to dive deeper into his thoughts on marrying Erika, but I could tell by his body language that he wasn’t in the mood.

  The conversation going on inside the house must’ve hit its boiling point, because Lauren went storming off. Erika quickly started clearing the dining room table, breaking plates in the sink, and rearranging chairs while Alyssa stood back watching.

  “Uh, should we go help her?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “It’s part of her process. Just let it happen.”

  I snapped my band once more. Or twice. Maybe fifteen times.

  “You know what’s crazy? I smoke and you get cancer.”

  “What’s yours is mine…”

  “And what’s mine is yours,” I replied.

  “If it makes you feel better, you can’t get colon cancer from smoking. But you should stop smoking.”

  I huffed at his parenting voice.

  But he wasn’t wrong.

  “Grandpa had colon cancer,” I said, my voice cracking. It was what ended his life.

  “Yeah.” Kellan nodded. “I know.”

  The only person in my life who loved me like my brother did was my grandfather. Watching his life be sucked away from him was the hardest thing I’d ever had to witness. What was even worse was how fast it happened. One day he was there, and a few months later, he wasn’t. I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye, because he lived so far away.

  “Listen. Maybe I should move back here for a while. I really had nothing going on back in Iowa.”

  “Yeah?” he asked, sniffling his nose, placing his hands on the back of his head.

  “Yeah. No big deal. I might even go see Ma soon. See how she’s been doing.”

  “It’s not good,” he said. “I was going to go grab her food stamps card and take her some groceries later this week.”

  “I can pick it up tomorrow.”

  He cringed. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Logan. You know…with you being clean and all. Plus, with what you just found out. I don’t want you falling back into that world.”

  “It’s fine,” I assured him. “I can handle it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I laughed and shoved him. “Dude. You’re the one with cancer, and you’re sitting here worrying about me. Stop. You’ve taken care of Ma and me our whole lives. It’s my turn, okay?” When the word cancer fell from my lips I felt like dying.

  “Okay,” he sighed, crossing his arms. “I have a few things to do tomorrow after we go see TJ, but Erika can drive you.”

  “She’ll do that?”

  “If I ask, yeah. But don’t be surprised if you have to make a few stops beforehand.”

  I shrugged my left shoulder.

  He shrugged his right.

  We watched Erika destroy the house, before she put it together again, and I wondered the whole time if I was really strong enough to face my past again. I didn’t know how it would feel, coming face to face with Ma.

  I didn’t know how strong I was.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Alyssa

  “Logan?” I whispered, knocking on his bedroom door. He’d been in his room for the past thirty minutes, and I could only imagine where his mind was traveling to after finding out about Kellan’s cancer. I listened to him moving around the room before the door opened. He sniffled a little and ran his hand over his face before narrowing his eyes at me.

  “Yeah?”

  His ey
es were red and slightly puffy. I wanted to reach out to him and wrap my arms around him, pulling him in closer to me, apologizing for his hurts and suffering.

  You were crying.

  “I just wanted to check in and see how you were doing,” I softly spoke.

  “I’m fine.”

  I stepped into the doorway a little, growing closer to him, knowing he was far from fine. Kellan was Logan’s world. When he left for Iowa, he only kept in contact with his brother. When he ignored all of my calls, he answered every single one of Kellan’s.

  “You’re not okay.”

  “I am,” he nodded, a cold stare in his eyes. “I’m fine. I’m not gonna fall apart and shit, Alyssa. People get cancer every day. And people beat cancer every day. He’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

  Any normal person would’ve missed it, the small tremble in his bottom lip, but not me. I saw it, the way his heart was currently inflamed with pain. “Lo, come on. It’s me. You can talk to me.”

  “And who are you to me, exactly?” he hissed, a bitterness coming through his tone. “How long did you know? How long did you know he was sick?”

  My lips parted, but he kept talking.

  “So you did know? One thousand and ninety messages, Alyssa. You left me one thousand and ninety messages. You called my phone one thousand and ninety times, but you couldn’t take the time to call and leave just one message telling me my brother had cancer, the same cancer that killed our grandfather?” he hissed, lifting his hand and grabbing his doorknob. He slammed the door shut, and I wasn’t surprised. Everything he said was harsh, but it wasn’t untrue. I did know about Kellan’s cancer for a while, but it wasn’t my place to say anything. Kellan made me swear that I wouldn’t.

  My fingers landed against the door, and I closed my eyes. “I live at the last house on the corner of Cherry Street and Wicker Avenue. It’s a yellow house with a piano shaped flower pot on the front porch. You can stop by if you need to, Logan. If you need to talk to someone. You can come whenever, anytime you need to.”

  The door swung open, and I gasped lightly as he stepped forward, hovering over me. His face was hard, and where reddened eyes once existed moments ago, they were replaced by an angered stare. “What don’t you fucking get?” he hissed. He stepped toward me as I stepped back. We kept this up until my back was against the hallway wall, and his body was inches away from mine. Our mouths were so close that if I leaned in, I could’ve felt the lips I used to always want against mine. His words fell from his tongue, stabbing me with each syllable. “I don’t need you, Alyssa. I. Don’t. Need. You. So if you could do me the favor and stop acting like we are friends, that would be great. Because we aren’t. We will never be friends again. I don’t need you. And I don’t need your fucking supportive shoulder.”

  He walked back to his room and shut the door. I took a few deep inhales, my nerves shaken. My heart hadn’t stopped pounding destructively against my chest as I walked to the living room to grab my jacket and toss on my tennis shoes.

  Who was that?

  That wasn’t the same boy I knew so many years ago. He wasn’t my best friend.

  He felt like a complete stranger to me.

  “Are you okay?” Erika asked, frowning my way.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Can you just be a bit easy on him, Erika?”

  “Seriously?” she huffed annoyed. “He just snapped at you, literally snapped. And you are asking me to be easy on him? I am two seconds away from telling him to get the heck out of my house.”

  “No,” I quickly said, shaking my head. “No. Don’t. He’s going through a lot. I mean, I couldn’t even imagine… If it were you…” My words faded. I wasn’t sure how I’d handle finding out that my sister had cancer. “Just give him a break.”

  Her posture eased up. “Okay.” She gave me a hug and whispered. “It’s okay for you to keep your distance from him, Aly. You know that right? I know seeing him again has to be hurting you.”

  “It’s fine.” I shifted my feet around and shrugged. “I’m fine with it.”

  “Yeah, but it might just be better to keep a safe distance. For both of your hearts.” I agreed. Besides, I didn’t see him finding his way to me anytime soon.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Logan

  My back stayed against the bedroom door until I heard Alyssa leave. Pushing her away was going to be tough with me staying around town, because such a big part of me always wanted to pull her closer to me.

  I sat in my bedroom on my cell phone, with my web browser opened, searching for information about colon cancer. My eyes danced across page after page of information, filling me up with more panic than I’d thought I could handle. For a while I read story after story of survivors, but then somehow I traveled into the dark world of the internet where the stories of those who passed away quickly from colon cancer existed.

  I found natural remedies. I found common lies. My eyes stayed open until the sun came up, sending the light through my window.

  As my eyes grew as heavy as my heart, I shut off my phone.

  The only thing I learned that night was that WebMD was the devil, and Kellan probably wouldn’t make it through the night.

  I pulled out a cigarette and lit it with my lighter. I opened the window, sat the cigarette on the ledge, and allowed myself those few moments to hurt.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Logan

  Doctor James Petterson’s office was cold. Colder than it needed to be. Sure, outside it was probably near the nineties—which was hot for Wisconsin weather—but there was no need for it to be an ice cube in his room. James—or Toothpick Jimmy (TJ) as everyone around town called him because of his tall, skinny body—was the only doctor I’d ever known and trusted. He didn’t seem like a normal doctor, though. Half the time I wondered if TJ was even a real doctor or if he got bored one Saturday night, bought a stethoscope, put on a white coat, and never took it off. He lived in the apartment right above his office, too.

  His office even looked like it was a fake doctor’s office. On the mantel behind his desk was a huge deer head that he swore he shot down with his eyes closed years ago. Beside the deer head was what was supposed to be a black bear’s fur, but really it was just a rug he probably found from Walmart on clearance. He pushed the story of how he killed the bear with a beer can in his right hand and a shotgun in his left.

  On the corner of his desk, TJ had a jar of jelly beans along with black licorice sitting on the right side.

  It blew my mind that a doctor was pushing candy into the faces of his patients so much, but for TJ it made sense, seeing how his wife Effie was one of the town’s few dentists and she was always looking for new patients.

  TJ and his wife should’ve used more common sense when picking out the candy though, because nobody in their right mind ate black licorice.

  I crossed my arms, pressing them against my body for heat. Shit. I was freezing. My eyes moved to the chair right beside me where Kellan sat.

  When I looked up to TJ I saw his lips were still moving pretty quickly. He kept explaining the situation over and over again. At least that’s what I thought he was doing. I couldn’t be certain though, because I wasn’t listening anymore.

  I didn’t know the exact moment when I stopped hearing the words flying from his tongue, but for the past five or ten minutes I was simply watching his mouth move. Meaningless sounds flowing from his lips.

  My hands gripped the side of my chair and I held on tight.

  The shock was the worst part, not knowing if I should laugh or cry at the diagnosis. Not knowing if I should get pissed and punch a wall. Not knowing how long I had left with my brother. The overwhelming feeling of isolation took my breaths. The panicked heartbeats that rolled through my system were terrifying, yet not unfamiliar. The fear and anger made each moment unbearable.

  “Logan,” TJ said, pulling me back into the conversation. “This isn’t the end for your brother. He’s working with the best doctors in
the state. He’s getting the best treatment out there.”

  Kellan brushed his fingers against his neck and nodded his head. “This isn’t the end for me, Logan. It’s just a hiccup.” His head nodding paired with his word choice, confused me. If it wasn’t the end, wouldn’t he shake his head instead of nodding?

  My right hand brushed against my cheek and I cleared my throat. “We need a second opinion.” I started pacing the small patio porch and my hands raced through my hair. “And then we want a third opinion. And a fourth.”

  That’s what people did, right? Searched for an answer that was more pleasant? More promising?

  We needed a better answer.

  “Logan…” TJ grimaced. “Getting second opinions will only slow us down. We are already attacking this head on, and we are hopeful—”

  It happened again. I stopped listening.

  The rest of the meeting continued, but I didn’t say another word. There wasn’t anything to say anymore.

  Kellan and I drove in silence the whole way back to his house, and my mind wouldn’t shut up, replaying the word cancer over and over again.

  My brother, my hero, my best friend had cancer.

  And I could no longer breathe.

  ***

  When Kellan told me that Erika wanted to stop somewhere before she dropped me off at Ma’s, I wouldn’t have imagined us sitting in aisle five of a store for over twenty minutes. It had been a full day since Logan told me the news about his health, and I only thought about using drugs every minute to cope—which was better than every second. Erika had a different kind of addiction that helped her cope with stress, though, called Pottery Barn.

  “How long are we going to be here?” I asked Erika, as we stood in front of a display of overpriced plates. We’d been standing there for at least twenty minutes, as she contemplated which new sets of plates to pick up, seeing as how she broke pretty much all of the china in their house.

  “Will you hush,” she ordered, her arms crossed, her eyes narrowed, and her mind obviously still completely insane. “This takes time.”