by Paul Mosier
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” I say.
“My name is Octavius.”
I already knew his name, which kind of stands out during roll call. “Nice to meet you, Octavius.”
“Nice to meet you, Elle.”
I feel myself blush. Maybe because I’m possibly allergic to rocks, and maybe because he knew my name and because it feels like he spelled my name E-L-L-E when he said it. Even though it doesn’t make any sense to feel that he spelled it a certain way when he spoke it.
He reaches into the tray, which is in fact a cardboard shoebox that says The Wanderer, size 9. I wonder whether Mr. Bleeker is wearing a pair of The Wanderer in size nine.
Octavius holds up a pinkish rock, which has a tiny sticker with the number 1 on it.
“This is feldspar,” he says. “We can skip the testing on it.” He writes feldspar on the sheet next to the number one.
“How do you know it’s feldspar?”
He looks into my eyes. “If I tell you you’ll think I’m very uncool.”
“Maybe I already think you’re uncool.” It’s not like me to say something like that. Fortunately he smiles.
“It’s a dreadful story. I had a great-uncle who was a rock enthusiast, and he made me learn all about this stuff. When he walked he used to drag his left leg behind him, because he hurt it falling down a mine shaft.”
“Really?”
He smiles. “No. But that story is better than the truth. The real story is that I got a tray of rocks for my twelfth birthday.”
I smile. Not a real smile, but the shape of a smile at least. “How lucky for me to be paired with you.” He keeps staring into my eyes. I clear my throat. “Because you know so much about rocks.” I look down into the tray and touch one of the stones.
“Right,” he says. “I’m a gem of a boy.”
I touch another rock, one that’s flat and smooth, dark gray with white stripes. Finally I look up.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?”
He raises his eyebrows. “What?”
“Exactly. It wasn’t funny.” I pick up the one labeled with the number 2 sticker. “So what’s this?”
“I don’t know that one. Taste it.”
“Really?”
He looks at the instructions. “Number two.” He nods. “Yep.”
I touch it to the tip of my tongue. It tastes like rock.
“You just tasted number two,” he observes.
I furrow my eyebrows. “Is that supposed to be funny?”
“Again, no. It’s just an observation.”
I smile. But again, it’s not really a smile. Just the shape. I put the rock back in the tray.
“It’s jasper,” he says.
I look at him. “You’re sure?”
“Sadly, yes.” He writes it on the sheet.
“Was I really supposed to taste it?”
“Yes, but I already knew it was jasper.”
“Sadly.” I reach for rock number three. “How about this?”
He leans back in his chair. “So far I’ve been doing all the work.”
I smirk, but I don’t really mean it. It’s just the shape of a smirk. “It isn’t work if you already know the answer.”
He leans forward. He puts his hand on my wrist, on my visitor bracelet from the hospital.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a bracelet.” I pull my arm away.
I should have taken it off. When you take it off you have to get a new one on your next visit. But keeping it on gives me away as someone who has to spend every free moment visiting a loved one in the hospital instead of doing normal kid things.
“Where did you get it? I’d like to get one for my girlfriend.”
I sit on my hand, the one with the bracelet on my wrist. “That’s not a real question. Do I have to do the tests on rock number three? Or are you gonna amaze me with your rock knowledge?”
He smirks. “That’s funny. Sad, but funny. Who’s in the hospital?”
“My grandma. But it’s none of your business.” I really mean this. I look at rock number three and turn it over in my hand. I pretend to be interested in it.
“Every day a hospital bracelet.” He takes the rock from my hand, then puts it back in the tray and writes agate on line number three. “Every day the tired eyes. The spacey stare.”
“What’s your point?”
“I recognized the bracelets right away,” he says. “Midtown Children’s Hospital.”
My brow furrows.
“My mom’s a doctor,” he adds quickly. “So . . .” He looks at rock number four. “The cafeteria is pretty solid, huh?”
Now he’s trying to be all cozy with me, like he can relate. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I say. “Sorry.”
I leave the classroom quickly. I don’t want to know what kind of doctor his mom is or how he’s familiar with the cafeteria at Midtown Children’s Hospital. I don’t want to know his story, and I sure don’t want to talk about mine.
I hurry down the hall to the bathroom. I’ve spent way too much time in the bathroom this first week of school, staring at the door of the stall in front of me.
I sit on the toilet and pull my tiny journal from my shirt pocket. I turn to a list I began last night.
Plausible Reasons Why I Am Not Myself
Afraid I won’t make any friends at my new school.
Town house next door is being noisily gentrified.
My apartment is haunted.
Then I take my little pencil from behind my ear and add the words
Little sister has a disease that might possibly kill her.
I look at the line I’ve just written, then shake my head and cross it out. Then I stare at the floor. “Echo is going to be fine.” As I speak to the tile floor, the words echo and come back to me. I hear my words but I’m not sure I believe them.
I close my tiny journal and slide it back into my shirt pocket. Then I flush the toilet. I don’t know why, because I didn’t pee and nobody is even in here. Then I wash my hands and head back down the hall to class. Before going back in, I pause with my hand on the doorknob. I make up my mind that, cute or not, Octavius doesn’t get to see me suffering over Echo. And he doesn’t get to know about her suffering. Even though Echo doesn’t seem to have any idea that she is suffering.
Miss Numero Uno’s eyebrows are natural in seventh hour. There’s no charcoal to show us how disappointed she is with us, and she seems subdued. It might be my imagination, but it’s almost like she feels remorse for being ridiculous the day before. She really should.
At every table there is a small mirror on a stand, like a makeup mirror, but more old-fashioned looking. We take our seats as Miss Numero Uno stares out the window. She poses dramatically against the wall of windows, where the cloudy sky presents her, backlit in a posture of sadness. She delivers the assignment without looking at the class.
“On your desk are a mirror, a sheet of newsprint, and a Conté crayon.” She says it without emotion, as if she is exhausted. “You will look in the mirror. You will draw what you see. Then you will leave your work on the table and exit the class in an orderly fashion.”
I look toward the windows. The light from the clouds is white, but when I stare into it, I can see the gray of the stone building across the street, and the green of the trees that reach this high. I don’t know if I’ve ever noticed this about light.
I turn to the mirror and see myself. I look as exhausted as Miss Numero Uno sounded in delivering the assignment. I don’t want to look at myself or draw myself. So I tilt the mirror until it shows a portion of the ceiling. It’s covered in white decorative tin, with a water stain of brown. This is what I draw. First the ornate mirror, then the reflected water stain on the ceiling.
My book bag is already zipped up when the bell rings. I’m the first out of Miss Numero Uno’s classroom, and I trot down the wide wood planks of the hallway as quickly as I can without drawing attention to myself. Out the entrance, down the concre
te steps, and onto the sidewalk, where I find my dad with his hands in his pockets, bouncing on his heels. He’s like Mr. D with the heel-bouncing. Maybe it’s a middle-aged-man thing. He gives me a grin that’s almost a grimace. I’ve been mad at him ever since lunchtime, when I discovered he packed the most embarrassing lunch ever, but he’s totally oblivious.
“Hey, honey. How was school?”
I hold up one finger to indicate wait. I rush down the sidewalk, and he picks up his pace to stay beside me.
We round the corner at the bodega, out of sight of school, and I drop my book bag to the sidewalk. I open my lunch box and pull out my sandwich.
“This,” I say, “is how it was.” I shake the bag so what’s left of the hemp butter sandwich bounces inside it.
He cocks his head to the side. “I don’t understand.”
I growl. “You put my lunch in a dog poop bag! See? See the little dog grinning and giving a thumbs-up? This is what you bring to collect poop in when you take a dog for a walk. Why would you do that? Are you trying to ruin my life? Or just give everyone else at my school something to laugh about?”
“I think I can see your point.” He’s trying to look concerned and maybe sorry. But I can tell he thinks it’s hilarious.
I drop the bag in a trash can. “It tasted exactly like what you’d expect to find in that bag.”
“I sincerely promise that there was never any dog poop in there.”
“It’s called the power of suggestion. I read about it.”
“Smarty-pants.”
I close my lunch box. “Why do we even have dog poop bags?”
“A few years ago I thought it would be cool to take Meowzers on walks. Like a dog.”
“I can imagine how that worked out.” Meowzers won’t even look out the window. He’s strictly indoors.
“Meowzers did not wish to make it part of his fitness program.”
“Anyway, I’m starving.” I turn and look across the narrow street to a pizza joint. “So . . .”
“So you think I owe you a slice?”
“Or two. I’m a growing girl.”
He smiles. Then he finally starts laughing. “I’m sorry, honey. I don’t know where we keep the sandwich bags.” He puts his arm around my shoulders as we walk across the street. “I’ll figure it out.”
I furrow my brow as he holds the door open at Luigi’s Slices. “You don’t really need to figure it out, right? I mean, Mom’ll be back probably tomorrow. And Echo. Right?”
He smiles, but it’s not a believable smile. He’s never been good at hiding the truth.
Predictably, after pizza we drop down to the subway and head straight to the hospital. Dad says the idea is to get me to bed earlier, and also that there are certain people who work at the hospital who are there in the day and not in the evening after dinner. It sounds really fishy to me, and it makes me worry even more about this visit.
Arriving in Echo’s room on the seventh floor, there are all sorts of doctors standing around. Everyone looks at me like I’ve interrupted a conversation I’m not supposed to hear.
A woman wearing surgical scrubs smiles at me. “You must be Echo’s sister.”
“Yes.” I look around. Nobody says anything.
Echo is in her bed, asleep. She looks beaten-up, and her mouth is wide open. Her tumor is so huge it’s practically coming out of her mouth.
“Is she okay?” I ask.
“Yes,” Mom says. She doesn’t look like she believes Echo is okay. “There’s a person who’d like to meet with you, El. Why don’t you go down to the lounge and she can come find you?”
Everyone is standing around waiting for me to leave. Mom and Dad, and three or four doctor types, and a nurse. It’s like they’re holding their breath.
“Okay,” I say. I look over my shoulder at Echo as I begin leaving. Then I stop and glance at the monitors. The one that shows her heartbeat tells me her heart is still working. That will have to do for the moment.
I leave the room and walk down the hall to the lounge. It has tables and chairs, and a coffeemaker that makes tea and bad-smelling coffee, and a couch that faces a television, which shows a chubby man in silky shorts exercising with a bunch of old ladies. I’m just about to set down the tea I’ve made and join in the exercise routine when a round woman with a big smile walks into the lounge.
“You must be Echo’s sister!”
“I must be,” I say, then regret sounding snarky.
“Please, have a seat, and we’ll chat.”
I sit at a bleak table. She lowers herself across from me.
“I’m Jan,” she says. “I’m so glad we finally get to meet! Your mother told me your name is Laughter. I love it!”
“She was joking,” I say. “It’s actually El.”
“Oh. Okay. Well then, El, my job is to help family members of children who have cancer understand what they are going through, and also to help you become acquainted with the resources that are available to you.”
“Cancer?” My mouth has been hanging open ever since she said that word. “I think you’re confusing me with someone else. Nobody has said anything about my sister having cancer.”
She straightens up and folds her hands on the table. “It is cancer, a very unusual variety called rhabdomyosarcoma. Only five children in every million will get it.”
“My sister’s name is Echo. She’s got this thing in her mouth that’s pushing her front teeth forward.”
She nods. “Yes, that’s the rhabdomyosarcoma. The tumor, you see. It’s been growing very quickly. I know this is a shock—”
“Five kids in a million? Is that what you said? There’s no way that Echo has that. She’d be more likely to be hit by lightning.”
“Well, perhaps. But she hasn’t been hit by lightning. She has been—stricken—with rhabdomyosarcoma.”
“Can you please stop saying that word?”
She inhales slowly and gets this expression like she’s here to spread joy. “My job is to help you learn about it, and to help you and your parents become familiar with the resources that are available to you.”
“You already said that!” My heart is beating fast, and my breathing is shallow. I reach into my shirt pocket for my tiny journal, flip through the pages without seeing what’s written on them, then drop it in front of myself on the table, where it sits uselessly.
Jan takes a folder with the hospital’s name on it from her canvas bag. She presents it to me.
“This is a bit of a starter kit I’ve compiled for you.” She opens the folder. “This packet explains what rhabdomyosarcoma is. This one talks about the different types of treatments that are possible for Echo.”
“Is she gonna be okay?”
“Well, your sister will get the best care possible. The doctors will work together to come up with—”
“Is she gonna live? Just tell me she’s gonna live.”
Jan folds her hands. She speaks like she’s being careful with every word that comes out of her mouth. “There are many different factors that contribute to the survivability of cancer.”
I bolt from my chair, which falls to the floor. I throw my useless journal in the wastebasket on my way out of the lounge. I run down the hall to Echo’s room. The conversation stops when I appear in the doorway.
“El?” Mom says.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you have that woman tell me?”
Mom looks to Dad, who looks back at her. I hurry to Echo’s bed and put my hand on her arm. It’s warm, and I can feel the life in her. Mom comes to my side and puts her arm around me, but I ignore her. Instead I look to the monitor, which shows Echo’s heart beat, beat, beat.
5
FRIDAY MORNING I wake up and cry. It’s the first thing I do. I think of the empty bed in the bunk below me. I think of it being empty forever. I think of Echo’s birthday coming and her not being around to celebrate it. I think of vacations without her, and Christmas, and Halloween. There’s no way we can do any of those thi
ngs happily without her. We were a family of three before she came along, and it was fine. But I don’t want to go back to being a family of three.
We can never be three again. It’s not fair to Echo. It’s not fair to me.
The jackhammers and power tools come alive to mark the hour of seven, Echo’s age at her next birthday. I think of how much the universe would suck if Echo wasn’t able to make it to her seventh birthday. Then Dad raps on the door and opens it.
He looks at me, gauges me. “Good morning.”
“That’s a generous assessment.”
He nods. “I’ll give you one free pass from school. Do you want to make it today?”
“Yes.”
He nods again. “Okay. I’ll make breakfast.”
He shuts the door. I lie on my bed and hear him calling the school. Two schools, actually—mine and Echo’s. Then I hear the skillet and the coffeemaker, all in between the jackhammer and the saws and all the other racket.
I smell pancakes through the vent, but it doesn’t connect to my stomach. I smell the coffee, hear the teapot whistle, but it doesn’t get me out of bed. Finally he comes for me.
“You’ll have to eat something,” he says.
At the table, I pick at my pancakes. Instead of cutting them into fat bites with my knife, I shred them with my fork.
The classical station is on the radio, but it’s pointless with the noise of construction and destruction from outside and next door. Meowzers jumps from a chair to the table. He looks at me, sees my expression, and jumps back to the floor.
“I’m hoping you can help me with something,” Dad says.
“What.” I ask it without a lilt.
“This is going to be hard on all of us. But we can get through it together. And in the spirit of that idea, I’ve devised a cheesy slogan.”
“Oh.” I really meant that as Oh? It just didn’t come out that way.
“The slogan is ‘All for one, all four one.’”
I take a sip of tea. “That’s kinda redundant.”
He leans forward. “No, the second four is the number four. Like, all four of us are—”
“I get it,” I say. “I was just kidding.” I take another sip of tea. “It’s really kinda sweet.”