The Survival List

by Courtney Sheinmel

  “But . . . she was in the ninety percent, right?”

  “Yeah, she was,” he said. “And my parents got back together, too—though not till after CJ was done with the intense part of the treatment, which lasted almost a year. She was basically absent for all of sixth grade. I was a total jerk about it, acting like CJ had gotten sick on purpose. As if she wanted that kind of attention.”

  “You were a little kid.”

  “Yeah, and a dense one at that.”

  “Not so dense. You figured out percentages.”

  “My one shining moment, but the rest of the time, I was just pissed. My dad bought the boat with CJ’s name on it. That really pissed me off.”

  “CJ stands for Cara Joy?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sorry I wasn’t honest with you about it—but it did come with the name, like I said. CJ was sick, and my dad saw an ad for the boat, and he thought it was a sign that she’d get well, as long as he bought it. We weren’t a boating family, but that hardly mattered to him when it came to his daughter’s life. I wouldn’t categorize my dad as a superstitious person, but I guess despite what he told my mom, the ninety-percent statistic wasn’t making him entirely secure, either. He brought us all out to see it, and I threw a fit because he said he wouldn’t add my name to the boat. He said it was bad luck to change a boat’s name, and the whole point of buying the boat was to bring good luck to our family, and to CJ especially. I’d never gotten a present that was anything close to that big, and I was pissed at CJ for getting everything, and pissed at my dad for giving it to her, and pissed at my mom for kicking my dad out. And I was pissed at everyone for missing every single baseball practice I had for two years straight. Not that my parents ever came to my practices. They didn’t even always make it to my games because they were usually working. They used to be fairly hands-off parents, if you can believe it. When CJ got sick, they changed their style—my mom especially. But back then it was only directed at CJ, and I was insanely jealous. My mom said she couldn’t come to baseball because it conflicted with when she had to take CJ to her support group at the hospital for kids who had cancer.” He paused. “It was called Sunshine Crew,” he added. “And I’m—”

  “Wait,” I said. “Stop talking. You told me you didn’t know anything else on the list.”

  “I know. I should’ve told you. I’m sorry.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “I tried not to.”

  “Oh, just because you didn’t technically tell me you didn’t have a sibling, and the boat really did come with that name, you think you’re off the hook? You knew what you were doing. You knew you were hiding something about Talley from me. And why—because the Sunshine Crew conflicted with your baseball games a dozen years ago?”

  “No, of course not,” he said. “And it may not have anything to do with Talley. This all happened a long time ago—for all I know, the Sunshine Crew doesn’t even exist anymore, and even if it does, Talley could’ve been writing about something else with the same name.”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  “It’s actually not,” Adam said. “The Sunshine Crew was a support group for kids with cancer. If Talley wasn’t a kid with cancer, why would she know about it? When you think about it, it’s much more likely that it’s two different things with coincidentally the same name, and then it’d be a waste of time for you to pursue it.”

  “Did you even bother to ask CJ if she knew Talley?”

  “No.”

  “Call her,” I said. “Right now.”

  “I don’t think we have service yet.”

  “Fine. As soon as we’re in range, call her.”

  “I will,” Adam said. “But she’s not going to answer. This is why I really didn’t tell you about CJ—she’s been MIA for months now. She’s checked in a few times so we know she’s alive, but she won’t answer if we call or text her. She said she’s tired of my mom trying to micromanage her life, and she needs to be free from all the attachments for a while. Who does that?”

  He paused, waiting for me to say something. But I was too mad to take his side about anything.

  “Yeah, so, my mom’s a control freak,” he went on. “She’s obsessed with things like what we’re eating, and whether we’re drinking or smoking, or doing anything that can cause cancer. It makes me nuts, too. But I think that’s a really shitty excuse to just up and disappear. My parents are a wreck about it, and fighting all the time. I’ve left messages for CJ to clue her in—you think she wouldn’t want to be the reason my parents split up for a second time. Maybe the cancer wasn’t her fault. But this sure is. She was so abrupt about it, too. It’s not like she had a big blowup with my mom—or my dad for that matter. She was talking to them all the time, and then all of a sudden she just decided she’d had enough. It didn’t make any sense. But now I’ve been wondering . . . maybe she met Talley, and Talley told her how she didn’t follow the life plan your dad had for her.”

  “Oh my God. You did NOT just try to pin this on Talley.”

  “I’m not trying to pin it on anyone. I’m just trying to understand what’s going on with my sister, the same as you’re trying to understand yours.”

  “We’re not the same. I wouldn’t have kept this from you for so long.”

  That was it for a while. We lapsed into silence. I had my cell phone in my hands, and I was checking the bars every minute or so to see if we were in range. It turned out I didn’t have to check, because the instant we were back on the grid, both my phone and Adam’s starting pinging with notifications of messages. Adam’s parents were looking for him, and both Aunt Elise and Juno were worried about me.

  I made Adam call CJ first. As he’d predicted, she didn’t answer. He left a message: “Please call back, or send a text, or a carrier pigeon—whatever. It’s really important that you get in touch. It has nothing to do with Mom and Dad this time. You don’t have to worry about them—not that you ever do. But still, I need to tell you something, so get in touch, okay?”

  He hung up and glanced over at me, like he was expecting a nod or a smile or a thumbs-up sign. I looked down at my own phone, typing “Sunshine Crew Stanford Hospital” into an internet search box. There was a brief explanation about the program—they offered support groups to kids aged three to eighteen who were going through treatment, and there was a phone number to call if you had a child in need. I didn’t have a child in need. I tried calling anyway, and after three rings, the call went to voice mail. It was after hours. I texted Aunt Elise to say I was sorry to have worried her, and that she didn’t need to wait up. I’d see her in the morning.

  I also texted Juno. The messages from her had stacked up all day, first all Audrey-related. But then she got increasingly worried that I was mad at her for some reason, and that’s why I wasn’t responding, and then she was worried that something terrible had happened to me. The last few texts, in all caps, were all the same: I NEED TO KNOW THAT UR OK

  I wasn’t okay, but I did want to assure her I wasn’t, like, in a ditch somewhere or anything like that.

  I’m safe, I wrote.

  She was probably sleeping anyway. But a few seconds later, my phone rang with a call from her. I pressed the button to reject the call, just like I’d done to Talley.

  She texted again: Glad ur safe but are you ok??????

  Me: Not really. More later.

  Adam and I hardly talked the whole way home. When he pulled into a rest stop to charge up the car, we just sat in silence. I made myself look busy pretending to scroll through things on my phone. Adam did the same. Back home, Dad occasionally got worked up about how cell phones contributed to the breakdown of social etiquette. But sometimes you really don’t want to have to talk to someone, and in those cases, having a cell phone at your fingertips is a saving grace.

  Finally, close to midnight, Adam pulled into Aunt Elise’s driveway. I had my hand on the door handle even before he’d fully slowed to a stop.

  “Sloane,” he said. “Wait. I
just want to tell you—look, things have been hard with CJ, but I still should’ve been honest with you, and I know that. I really am very sorry.”

  “Is that all?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what else to say.”

  My hand was still on the door handle. “You know,” I said, “when I left Talley that last morning of her life, I didn’t know it’d be the last time I’d see her. I didn’t tell her all the things I should’ve, and now for the rest of my life, I have to live with all that was left unsaid. But in this case, I know it’s going to be the last time I see you.”

  “I hope that’s not true. Even if we’ve only known each other a few days, you’re my friend. A really good friend.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not your friend,” I said. “And you’re not mine. My friends would never do what you did. Goodbye, Adam. That’s all that’s left to say—goodbye.”

  I opened the door and headed up the walkway to Aunt Elise’s front door. I would’ve heard if he backed up out of the driveway, but the car stayed idle. I knew Adam was watching me, but I didn’t turn around. I just let myself into the house.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I MADE IT TO STANFORD AFTER ALL. NOT IN THE WAY that I’d told my Dad, but still: there I was, on Thursday morning, exactly four weeks to the day that Talley had died.

  I took the Caltrain back to University Avenue in Palo Alto, which was the Stanford University stop. It was just over a mile walk from the train station to Stanford Hospital, and from there I followed the directions that Alba Castall had given me.

  Alba was the person who’d answered the phone on Thursday morning, when I’d called the number listed online for the Sunshine Crew. Unlike every other person I’d contacted based on an entry from Talley’s list, when I said who I was and gave Talley’s name, Alba said, “Oh yes. I do know Talley. How may I help you?”

  You’d think after having to talk about Talley’s death every day for four weeks, the words would come more easily, but they didn’t. They still took the spit from my mouth, and simultaneously I felt my eyes filling, as if there was only so much liquid in my body, and at that moment, the liquid was allocated to tears. “I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to say it,” I said. “Talley died.”

  On the other end of the phone, I heard Alba suck in her breath. “Oh, dear,” she said. “I’m so sorry for your loss. I wasn’t aware that she was ill.”

  “She wasn’t ill,” I said. “She died by suicide.”

  “Ah,” Alba said. She went quiet for a couple beats, and I didn’t rush to fill the silence. “Unfortunately, we do see increased rates of depression among cancer survivors. The suicide rate is markedly higher, too, even years after remission is achieved.”

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “We see—” she started, but then she cut herself off. “Sloane, I’m sorry. I hate to do this, but I’m getting another call. Would you mind holding? I’ll be back with you in just a second.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I heard the line click, and then hold music started softly playing. Alba’s voice was running through my head: The suicide rate is markedly higher, too, even years after remission is achieved.

  Remission is the term used when someone’s cancer has been successfully treated. But Talley never had cancer.

  Had she?

  She couldn’t have hidden a cancer diagnosis from me.

  But what if she had?

  She’d always been so clued in to people who were going through a particularly hard time. “Imagine if you’d had childhood cancer,” she might have said. I didn’t remember her ever saying those words in particular, but I did remember how she’d tried to get me to read the memoirs about sick kids. Was it a test to see if I could handle the news of her own diagnosis—a test I failed?

  And then there was the time she got all her friends and me to donate our hair to make wigs for kids with cancer. Was that to give back to an organization that helped her in her time of need?

  Was Talley wearing a wig at some point during our childhood? How could I have missed that? Presumably she would’ve been absent from school a bunch, but I wouldn’t have necessarily known, since the only year we were ever in the same school at the same time was when I was in kindergarten and she was in fifth grade. After that, we were never together again. If she missed days, I wouldn’t have noticed her missing. If she had to stay overnight at the hospital, she could’ve told me she was staying over at a friend’s house. It wouldn’t have been easy, but she could’ve pulled it off.

  As for her connection to the Sunshine Crew—could she have commuted back and forth to Stanford? Dad would’ve had to be in on it. Was it his idea to hide it all from me, or was it Talley’s? I imagined the conversation she would have had with him: Sloane couldn’t even make it a chapter or two through a memoir about a stranger. She can’t handle my illness.

  Whoever said what, they would’ve been partners in the decision. I always thought of our family as Talley and me, and Dad. Talley and I were partners, we were one unit, and Dad was his own entity. We loved him, but he was separate from us. But maybe I’d been the one who’d been separate from the two of them.

  It all could’ve happened before I was even born. The Sunshine Crew was open to kids as young as three, and I didn’t come onto the scene until Talley was five. Maybe that was why Dad was adamantly opposed to me pursuing Talley’s list; it wasn’t the “moving on” crap so much as his worry that I’d find out about a secret from the past they’d held together.

  But now that Talley had died, what was the point of him keeping that a secret? Even if it happened before I was born, she was still my sister. I was entitled to know what had happened to her, and I would absolutely confront Dad about it.

  But before that, I wanted to get as much information that I could from Alba Castall.

  “Sloane?” she said. “Are you still there?”

  “I’m still here. Ms. Castall—”

  “Call me Alba.”

  “Alba,” I said. “Talley had . . . What kind of cancer did she have?”

  “Acute lymphoblastic leukemia.”

  So there it was. Leukemia. My sister had had leukemia. And whether it was the good kind or not, it had killed her. There are increased levels of depression and suicide in cancer survivors, and it had killed her.

  “I can only imagine how difficult things are right now,” Alba said. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I know you’re probably very busy, but I’m just here in California for a couple more days. I came out here to connect with people Talley knew, and I’d really love to talk to you in person, if you have time.”

  “I’ll make time,” Alba said. “Let me give you directions.”

  Her office was on the second floor of the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. I hadn’t been to a hospital since Talley died, and this time around, I was focused on getting to the hospital; I didn’t stop to think about how it would feel to get there.

  But when I walked through the front door, the floor and the walls were exactly the same colors as the floor and the walls of Golden Valley General Hospital, as if there was one company that all the hospital decorators went to for such things. The smell was the same, too. That was the hardest part. Talley’d once told me that memory and smell are linked. The part of your brain that processes smell is connected to the parts of your brain that store emotions and memories. There was even a phrase for it, she said: the Proust phenomenon. It was named for the French writer who’d once written about the memories evoked from the particular smell of a madeleine biscuit soaking in tea.

  I felt like my legs were going to collapse under the weight of the rest of my body, and I cupped my hands over my nose and mouth to try to filter the smell as I breathed.

  Talley had been in this building. She’d been here. And upstairs there was a woman who’d known her, who was waiting to meet me.

  Somehow I got my legs working and walked to the elevator bank. I r
ode up a flight, and walked down a long hallway, following the signs for the Child Life Program. There was a woman sitting at the end of a bench, and next to her was a young girl in a wheelchair, a knit beanie cap on the girl’s head. Our eyes met in the couple seconds it took to walk past, and I wondered if it was cancer, if it was leukemia, if it was the good kind of leukemia. I hoped she’d be one of the 90 percent who got cured, and I hoped what had happened in the end to Talley wouldn’t happen to her.

  I pushed through double doors at the end of the corridor and entered a waiting room. There was a reception desk at the back, and I gave my name to the guy manning the phones. “What time is your appointment?” he said.

  “I spoke to Alba Castall on the phone, and she said I could come in,” I said.

  “All right,” he said. “Take a seat. I’ll give her a call.”

  The waiting-room chairs were the same as the ones in the waiting room back at Golden Valley General, though the fabric was gray and not blue. I sat right on the edge of one. My heart was pounding in my chest like a jackhammer. I tried the yoga breathing exercises that Aunt Elise had taught me, lengthening my inhale by counting to three, and then exhaling to the count of three. In for three, out for three. Rinse and repeat.

  This part of the hospital, I realized, didn’t smell like hospital. Or maybe I’d just gotten used to the smell.

  “Sloane Weber?” a voice called.

  I looked up. A woman was standing by the reception desk. She had a small face, dark-rimmed glasses, and remarkably long and thick hair. Like hair in a shampoo commercial. How weird to have hair like that and to work with kids who’d lost theirs.

  I stood up and walked toward her, expecting to exchange a handshake, but she opened her arms in a hug. “I’m Alba,” she said. “Come on back. Let’s talk.”

  I followed her back to her office, a box-sized windowless room that was nevertheless quite cheerful looking, with posters on the walls, and a bright-red beanbag chair in the far corner. I sat in one of the regular chairs, and Alba sat in her desk chair. “Can I ask—was Talley ever in here?”