Positively Beautiful

by Wendy Mills

  I sit at a picnic table by myself. I’m not hungry but I don’t want to sit there and look pitiful. I try calling Mom, but she must be sleeping, because she doesn’t pick up. Her appointment isn’t for another two hours. I reread the e-mail from Ashley!!!, the chick from the BRCA forum. I haven’t e-mailed her back. I wasn’t sure what to say.

  Now I type.

  My mom didn’t plan on telling me about the gene until I was older. In some ways I wish she had kept it a secret, but then I feel angry at her for even THINKING of keeping something like that from me. But now I don’t know what to do. She says she doesn’t want me to think about it. I don’t think I can stand it. The waiting. I could get tested for the gene by that online place and Mom wouldn’t even know.

  Are you glad you got tested? Or do you wish you didn’t know you are positive? I’m Pandora right now, wondering whether or not to open the box.

  Ashley!!! e-mails back almost immediately:

  I wish I had an answer for you. I don’t.

  Easiest would be not to ever know about the gene at all. That’s the kid in me, I guess. Once I knew, there was no going back to oblivious. I got tested because I wanted to know one way or another. Now that I know, I try to live my life like it’s a nonissue. When it’s time, I’ll do the surveillance.

  Honestly? I don’t think about death. I think about living.

  Me:

  I keep thinking of getting cancer like my mom. It’s so hard watching her go through this. We’re still waiting to see how bad the cancer is and it’s so HARD to sit around and wait. I want to be doing something, anything.

  Ashley!!!:

  So … I went kite surfing yesterday. You stand on a board about the size of a surfboard and you hold on to a sail and you go zipping across the water like you’re not even connected to it. And sometimes you’re not, sometimes you hit a wave and you go flying through the air and it’s just like you’re flying. You don’t think when you’re out there, you just feel.

  But here’s the thing. Yesterday was windy, I mean, REAL windy. It has to be windy to go kite surfing anyway, but it was seriously blowing. It was scary, and I’m standing on the shore trying to decide whether or not I wanted to do it. I hate to admit it, but I stood there a long time, trying to decide. And then I went ahead and did it, and it was scary, yeah, but not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. Really? The worrying was worse than the actual thing.

  “You saving the whole table?” Michael straddles the bench so he’s facing me.

  “Watch out, you sat on my imaginary friend.” I look up and give him a little smile.

  Michael pushes his dark hair out of his eyes. His lip twitches but he doesn’t smile.

  “One day I’ll make you laugh,” I say. “Evidently I’m good at it. Evidently I make a lot of people laugh.”

  “People are stupid. You can’t worry about them.”

  “Oh yes I can.”

  He shrugs. “No one believes it, anyway.”

  “Oh yes they do.”

  He looks at me steadily. “Anyway, I just wanted to come say hi. So. Hi.”

  “Hi,” I say. It’s moral support and I’ll take it.

  He leaves and Faith comes out of the cafeteria in time to see me staring at his butt as he walks away.

  If looks could kill, I’d be a bag of bones smoking on the ground.

  I’m walking out to my car with Chaz and Trina after school, hurrying because I want to get home to Mom and hear what the doctor said, when Faith comes toward us.

  “Chaz!” she calls.

  “Uh-oh,” I say, “Dorkster Twins activate.”

  I wait for the fist bump, but Trina is staring at Faith. “I like her outfit,” she says, almost to herself. Trina has been dressing more … normal lately. I hadn’t really thought about it, but the red pantsuit she is wearing is pretty tame, even with her hair up in a high, bright blue ponytail.

  She avoids my look of amazement.

  “Heeeyy, Chaz.” Faith tucks her dark, shiny hair behind a delicate little ear. “Just wanted to tell you I’m throwing a little party at that school—what’s it called? The one you and Michael took me to by EAV?”

  “Uh … the John B. Gordon School?” Chaz is confused.

  “That’s it. I figured you could be there to show us how to get in, okay?”

  Chaz frowns. “At the school? A party? Why?” Snap, snap go his fingers.

  “I thought it was pretty cool. How fun and goth would it be all lit up with candles? Something different. My friends have no imagination when it comes to parties. I wish I thought of it over Halloween.”

  “You can’t mess it up,” Chaz says, still perturbed. “You have to pick up all the trash.”

  Faith smiles, her white, white smile. “Of course. I know how strongly you feel about leaving nothing but our footprints. I hear that all the time in my Sierra Club meetings. I get it. After you get us inside, why don’t you hang out? And, you can bring your friend if you want.” She smiles all crocodile at Trina, who looks faintly stunned.

  “Hey thanks, Faith, sure,” Chaz says. “Sounds like fun and yeah, we’ll be there.” He’s flustered enough to make it clear he’s not used to this sort of attention from Faith. I wonder how she treated him when she was dating Michael.

  “Thanks, Faith, that sounds like loads of fun,” Trina gushes. Someone has taken over her body.

  Faith smiles queenly and lets her glance fall on me before turning away. No, I am not invited.

  “Who gives a crap about your stupid party?” I say without thinking.

  Chaz steps back from me like I might be contagious.

  Faith turns around slowly. She says nothing for a moment while she looks me up and down.

  “Who are you again?” she says. “The party is just for my friends. I’m sorry but I’d rather not have any losers there. You understand, right?”

  This is said in such a sweet voice it takes a moment for the words to sink in. She’s gone before I think of anything to say. Naturally.

  “Oh no, Erin, why’d you do that?” Trina asks. “I told you you needed to watch her. God, I should have said something. I should have stuck up for you. What is wrong with me?” She grabs her ponytail and yanks on it, hard.

  “Stop it,” I say tiredly. “It’s okay.” I can’t blame her because I didn’t say anything either. But I do blame her, just a little.

  “I won’t go to her party,” Trina promises. “I don’t even want to go.” But her tone is unconvincing.

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s no big deal. You guys go. It sounds like fun.”

  “Are you sure?” Trina studies my face.

  I shrug and try to smile. “I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “I wish you hadn’t said that to her, Erin,” Chaz says as I walk away. “Epic fail.”

  But I can’t worry about it right then, because I’m too focused on getting home to Mom.

  I should have worried, though. I should have realized Faith wasn’t done with me.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “What did they say?” I blurt as I burst through the kitchen door.

  But I can see it’s bad. I stop, and it’s like I’m waiting to get hit, my stomach muscles all tight and my breath coming in short punches.

  “It’s … a little worse than they thought. More extensive, more aggressive, more … everything.” Mom looks up at me, her face taut and pale.

  “All right. What next?” I try for all upbeat, like no big deal.

  “Chemo,” she says. “Then radiation. We’ll beat it, it’s just going to be a little bit harder.”

  She’s crying, and I’m crying, and I hug her, but it’s hard because of the bandages and the tube and so we sort of rock back and forth as best we can.

  The next morning before school I order a genetic test. The website says it will take a couple of days for the kit to arrive. Then I have to spit into a tube and send it back to them and it’ll take two to four weeks to find out if I have the mut
ation.

  I’m not sure I’m going to do it. I don’t know if I want to do it.

  But if I have the test, at least I can do it. I can’t take the limbo anymore. I don’t want to be standing on the edge of the water wondering how bad it’s going to be. Sink or swim, I want to do something.

  As I go to get up from my desk, a piece of paper flutters to the ground. It’s the number for the flying school I got at Dino’s, the day my mom told me she had cancer. I still don’t even know why I got it.

  I look up at the picture of Dad standing by his red plane with his dark, curly hair just like mine and the big smile on his face. That’s what I remember about Dad. He was always smiling, always laughing. And yet he did dangerous things, like flying fighter jet missions over Iraq. After he got out of the military, he took up aerobatic flying as a hobby, which meant flips and rolls and stalls and all sorts of crazy stuff. He teased death every day, and one day death got tired of playing.

  Do animals feel joy because they don’t think about death or because they live with it every day?

  I wish I could ask Dad. I think he’d know.

  I remember how it felt when I was up in the plane. I loved looking down at the world from up in the air. It all made sense up there, somehow, even when we were flying upside down and doing loop-de-loops and my parents told me they loved me, they did, but Mommy and Daddy needed to live apart.

  Flying with my dad was the best time of my life. How sad is that? The best time of my life happened when I was six years old.

  I want to feel like that again.

  Without letting myself think too much about it, I pick up the phone and dial the number.

  “What the hell?” is the gruff answer.

  “I, uh, want to sign up for flying lessons,” I say, confused. “Do I … have the right number?”

  “At six thirty in the morning? Are you kidding me?”

  “Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t realize …” I feel stupid, my cheeks glowing hotly. “I’ll call back later.”

  I won’t though. I already know that. And it is kind of a relief. I tried, at least.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” the man grumbles right as I go to hang up. “How about Saturday, a week from tomorrow. What’s your name? Speak up!”

  “Erin,” I manage.

  “Erin. E-r-i-n. Ten o’clock. Sharp. And if you’re under eighteen, you need to have your parents sign a consent form so they won’t sue my ass off if you die. Got it? Good.”

  He hangs up on me.

  I stare at the phone.

  What have I done?

  That afternoon I call Aunt Jill on my way home from school.

  “Hey, Rinnie,” she says, her voice loud and cheerful as usual. Immediately I conjure her round, smiling face framed by long, dark hair streaked with gray. Jill always smells faintly of sweat, because she uses a crystal instead of deodorant, and washes her hands so much you start wondering what kind of creepy-crawly stuff she’s working on in her lab. She comes across as kooky sometimes, but she’s a supersmart microbiologist who started her own successful research company.

  “How’re you holding up?”

  “Uh … fine, I guess. Listen. I need some advice.”

  “Shoot. Wait. Malcolm? Mommy needs some mommy time right now. Remember, we talked about this? Just because Mommy is on the phone doesn’t mean you have to talk on the phone too.”

  I hear some incoherent little-kid mumbling, and then Jill says, “Okay. What’s up? I have about five minutes until he figures out how to pick the lock.”

  “I want to fly!” I say. “I don’t know why, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I even registered for lessons, but I need Mom to sign some sort of parental consent form. And you know what she’s going to say.”

  “Wowie. I wondered if your dad was ever going to make an appearance in you. You know why your mom’s going to say no, right?”

  “Because it’s dangerous.” It makes me almost sick—with dread, excitement?—just thinking about it.

  Jill makes a buzzing raspberry sound. “Wrong answer. Try again.”

  I frown. “Because my dad flew? I remember them fighting about it a lot before they got a divorce. After, too, when he took me up.”

  “You’re getting closer. Your mom … I knew her before she met your dad. She was on a mission to get away from that crappy little town where she grew up. She wanted a career—a good one, mind you, so she’d never have to worry about being poor again.”

  “Mom was poor?” I frown. I guess I knew Memaw and Granddad didn’t have a whole lot of money, but Mom never said anything about being poor, as in I’m-hungry-and-I-have-no-shoes poor.

  “Yes, she was poor.” Jill’s voice is firm. “She got her degree and her good job, and then she started looking around for a nice, stable husband because she wanted to have a family. She met your dad, and at first he seemed like the answer to her prayers. He was calm and steady, he had a good business, flying private charters. He seemed secure, and that’s what she wanted. I’ve never seen two people so in love. And for a while it worked, but ultimately … your dad had something in him that needed to go fast. In the air, in his life, everything. He needed that element of danger to make him feel alive. And your mom … your mom has to feel safe. It’s what makes her tick. And once your dad started taking you up in the plane … it was too much for her.”

  I never thought about it, but she’s right. Mom is happiest when she’s in her comfort zone, which seems to include mainly watching movies at home with me and going to work. We never went anywhere on vacation, though we would do fun stuff around Atlanta like go to the zoo, or the aquarium, or the botanical gardens. Has Mom even been out of the state of Georgia? How could she have fallen in love with someone like my dad?

  “She even asked him to stop flying,” Jill continues, “and he did for a while, but he was so unhappy … I think she always felt guilty she asked him to stop. And mad he couldn’t, not really.

  “So, here’s the thing. You could have chosen about anything else, oh, say, recreational knife juggling, and she’d take it better than the flying. That’s why she’s going to resist. Because she still feels like flying is what took him away from her.”

  “I never knew …”

  “Yeah, well, I think it’s time you did know. Malcolm, sweetie, the door is locked for a reason.” I hear an outraged howl.

  “Can I ask you something, Rinnie?” Jill says over the stuck-pig screeching.

  “What?”

  “Why did you sign up for flying lessons? I’m proud of you, honey, I am, but I’m just wondering why you’re doing it.”

  I am quiet for a minute. In the background, Malcolm’s rage has turned into pitiful sobbing. “Up there, it was just me and Dad and all that sky. It was like we could do anything, go anywhere. I liked that feeling.”

  “Okay, Malcolm—gotta go, Rinnie. Good luck, girl, and I’ll talk to you real soon— Here I am, don’t cry, baby, I’m right here …”

  The phone goes dead.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The day before Mom starts her first round of chemotherapy I decide to talk to her about the flying lessons. If I don’t do it now, I’ll have to cancel the lesson on Saturday.

  The last week has not been good. On the plus side, Mom is feeling better. It’s been several weeks since her mastectomy, and she can’t wear a prosthetic breast yet, so she’s been wearing bulky sweatshirts to try to hide her uneven cleavage. She had to go earlier this week for a procedure to put a port in her chest. It’s a small disc under the skin above her breast that allows the doctor to inject the chemo without running an IV every time. She said it was no big deal, but if that’s not a big deal, how bad will the rest of it be?

  On the minus side, school hasn’t gotten any better. People aren’t actively laughing as I walk by anymore, but I know the nickname Va-jay-jay Girl has stuck. Trina was horrified when she finally heard about it, but there was nothing she could do. And it’s not like I saw a whole lot of Trina th
is week anyway. She’s trying to be fair, trying to still spend time with me, but I can see she wants to be with Chaz. It hurts. I’ve been avoiding her so she doesn’t have to choose.

  Michael hasn’t been at school most of the week, and when he does show up he looks tired and drawn. I wonder if he’s working on his models. He’s nodded at me a couple of times, but we haven’t talked. Who wants to talk to Va-jay-jay Girl?

  I close my physics book. Mom is stirring beef Stroganoff, my favorite, on the stove and checking her e-mail. She’s been working at home for the past few weeks, but plans to go back to work as much as she can through the chemo. If she’s lucky, the chemo won’t be bad—it affects people differently so you never can tell.

  “I miss Jill,” Mom says suddenly. “I wish she hadn’t moved so far away.”

  I know she is wishing Jill could be here tomorrow.

  “We could have moved to Seattle,” I say. “When she started her new company. She wanted you to come.” Lately, I’d be just as happy if we lived on the other side of the country.

  Mom frowns. “It’s such a long way.”

  “But you would have been with Jill.”

  Mom says nothing. She’s never even gone to Seattle to visit Jill.

  “I want to learn how to fly,” I blurt out.

  She stares at me in astonishment. “You want to do what?”

  “I’ve signed up for flying lessons. I’m supposed to start Saturday. I need you to sign this parent consent form. I’m using the money I saved from working at the yogurt shop, so you don’t have to pay for it or anything, but I … want to do this.”

  She closes her eyes and presses two fingers to her temple.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Rinnie. Not right now. We can talk about it later, after all this is over.” She gestures vaguely at her chest.

  “No! Don’t you understand? I need to do it now. I need … something else right now.”