Hummingbird Heart

by Robin Stevenson

  “Because if you were, that’d be fine. I’d be cool with that.”

  “I’m not.” My voice was almost a wail. “I wish I was though.”

  Mom’s mouth twitched.

  “Mom! If you laugh at me, I swear I’ll never tell you anything again.”

  “Baby, I’m not laughing. But not everyone is having sex at sixteen, no matter what they say. I wish I hadn’t.” She was suddenly serious. “Well, I suppose I don’t mean that, because I wouldn’t have you, but you know what I mean.”

  “Not really.” Mostly what I knew about her seemed to be lies.

  Her eyes flicked away from mine for a brief moment. “If you don’t want to have sex, then don’t. Wait until you’re ready. Believe me, it’ll happen.”

  I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  “Okay.” I picked at a hangnail on my thumb. “So anyway.”

  “Change the subject?”

  “Yeah. Please.”

  Mom stood up. “So, Seattle was good.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The lead singer is a genius. He really is.” She grinned. “And Julia got his phone number.”

  “Here we go.” I rolled my eyes.

  Mom laughed. “I’ll go and unpack. And get something to eat. I’m starving.”

  “Mom?”

  She paused, her hand on the door handle. “What?”

  “Do you think we’ll hear anything about the blood test this week?”

  “No. Two weeks, they said.”

  I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. “I sort of ran into Mark and Casey when I was out for a bike ride.”

  She spun back around to face me. “You ran into Mark? And you’re just going to mention that little fact now? As a…as an afterthought? Jesus Christ, Dylan.”

  “It’s no big deal.” I was glad she didn’t know about my earlier visit with Toni.

  “Yes, it is. He’s…”

  “My father.”

  “Unfortunately, yes. That doesn’t mean you have to sneak around behind my back—”

  “Mom! I said I just ran into him, okay?” I hoped she wouldn’t ask where I’d run into him. I didn’t think telling her that I’d been hanging around his hotel would go over well.

  “What did you talk about?” Her voice was strained.

  “Nothing much. I don’t really want to talk about him if you’re going to be all psychotic about it.”

  “I’m not being…So did you meet Casey? How was she?”

  “I don’t know. Cute kid, I guess.” My throat started to ache whenever I thought about her.

  Mom’s face closed tight and hard as a knot. “Remember what I said? It’s not likely that you’ll be a match.”

  “Not impossible though.”

  “No. It’s not impossible.”

  “I don’t want to let her down, you know? She’s just a little kid. It’s so unfair.” I felt tears threatening, a wobble in my voice, and I clenched my teeth tightly to hold it all inside.

  Mom’s hand slid off the door handle. “You can’t think of it like that. You wouldn’t be letting her down.”

  “Whatever. I don’t really want to talk about it. I just wanted to know when we’d hear the results.”

  She stood there for a minute, probably trying to figure out how to interrogate me about Mark without seeming psycho. She was so weird about him. I couldn’t figure out if she hated him or if she was still sort of hung up on him. Finally she shook her head and left, closing the door behind her. I held the cool back of my hands against my hot cheeks and waited for my heart rate to return to normal. I hadn’t intended to say all that stuff about Jax. It had just sort of come spilling out, a big ugly mess. It was so embarrassing. Maybe she was right and it was no big deal. I mean, why would I want to have sex with a guy I didn’t totally trust and didn’t even really know?

  On the other hand, after all the lies Mom had told me, I wasn’t sure I should believe anything she said.

  I eyed the telephone. I kept hoping Toni would call me first, even though I was obviously the one who needed to apologize. I knew Jax wouldn’t call, and that was fine with me. When he’d driven off on his motorbike Friday night, he hadn’t even looked back once. He’d been drunk too. I shouldn’t have let Toni go with him. I picked up the phone, stared at it for a moment and put it back down.

  Maybe it’d be better to go over to her place and talk in person.

  TWenTY-Seven

  Toni’s house was a short bike ride away, but it was like another world. My street was all duplexes and triplexes, with the occasional low-rent apartment building. The lawns were covered in dandelions. Proudly Pesticide Free, read one small hand-lettered sign. People drove old Honda Civics and Ford Escorts with bumper stickers that said things like Free Tibet and Visualize Whirled Peas. Toni’s neighbors did not put bumper stickers on their Lexus SUVs and their BMWs. The houses were old but not old as in scruffy, like mine. They were old as in heritage, beautifully restored, with freshly painted trim and manicured front lawns.

  Toni opened her front door in flannel pants and a black UVic hoodie. Last night’s black eyeliner was smudged under her eyes, and she looked like she’d just got out of bed.

  I didn’t know where to start. “Toni. Look, I wanted to say that I know I screwed up. You totally trusted me with…” I lowered my voice, not sure if her mom was around. “You know. What you told me. I don’t know why I told Jax, but I’m so sorry. I wish I hadn’t done it. If I could take it back…”

  “You can’t.”

  “I know.” I swallowed. “I just blurted it out. As soon as I said it, I wanted to take it back.”

  She just looked at me, her face expressionless.

  “Look, Toni. You’re pretty much the most important person in my life, okay? I mean, you’re my best friend. Jax is nothing. He’s kind of a jerk, actually.”

  “I told you.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “You’re better off without him, Dylan. He’s an asshole.”

  I raised my eyebrows, startled at the forcefulness of her tone.

  Toni leaned against the wall. “He gave me a ride home just so that he could hit on me.”

  “Oh.” I wondered if she wanted to hurt me, if that was why she was telling me. “Did you…? Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

  “Give me some credit,” she said. “I told him to fuck off.”

  “You did?”

  “Course I did. Come on! He knows I’m with Finn, but he figures I’m pregnant, so I must be easy.” Toni’s fists were clenched, her words coming hard and fast and aimed to sting. “What a loser. I don’t get what you saw in him.”

  But it was me she was angry with, not Jax. I took a deep breath and tried to hold my voice steady. “I think I wanted to be like you. Like you and Finn. I wanted to be part of a couple like that.” I chewed on my lower lip for a minute, trying to find a way to explain. “I guess I’ve been sort of jealous. It used to be just you and me, you know? And I’m happy for you, but sometimes…” I shrugged. “Sometimes it’s hard. But I am so so so sorry I told Jax about your…you know. Do you hate me now?”

  “I still can’t believe you told him.”

  I shook my head helplessly. “I can’t explain it, Toni. We smoked some weed. He wanted to fool around, and I asked him what he’d do, you know, if I got pregnant. And he wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t take me seriously. And it just sort of slipped out.” I started to cry. “Please don’t be mad at me forever.”

  Toni shrugged. “I’m not exactly mad. I don’t know if I can trust you anymore, that’s all.”

  “You can. I promise. Toni, whatever you want to do, I’ll help you. If you’ll still let me. I mean, if you want to get an abortion, or keep the baby, I’ll be there for you.”

  “I know that, stupid.” She started to cry.

  “Toni? It’ll be okay. It will.”

  She shook her head, cheeks wet with tears.

&n
bsp; I grabbed her arm, pulled her out onto the porch and pulled her front door shut behind her. “Okay? Now your mom can’t hear us. Talk to me. Please?”

  Toni sat down on the top step, rubbed her hands over her face and gave a shuddery sort of sigh. “I got my period this morning. I’m not pregnant.”

  “Toni! That’s so great. I mean, so really, truly, incredibly great.” I sat down beside her. “How come you’re crying?”

  She sniffed and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “I don’t know.” She looked at me and immediately started crying again. “Relief, I guess. Or hormones.”

  “I’ve been such a wreck,” I whispered. “I figured you’d never speak to me again.”

  “It’d serve you right.” She leaned her head on my shoulder. “I’m such an idiot, Dylan. God. What if I had been pregnant?”

  “What do you think you would have done?”

  “I don’t know. I thought about how it might be, having a baby. And part of me was almost excited about it, you know?”

  “Nope.”

  “Come on. Buying baby clothes, having this little person who’d love me no matter what.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Please.”

  “I know.” She rested her elbows on her drawn-up knees. “Finn would have wanted me to get an abortion. I mean, I know he’d have said it was my decision, but still, he wouldn’t have wanted a baby.”

  “Oh, Toni.” I put one arm around her shoulders. “I can’t blame him.”

  She made a funny gulping sound, cleared her throat, ran her sleeve across her eyes. “I just don’t think he’s ready to be a father, you know?”

  “No kidding. He’s, what, seventeen?”

  She gave me a sideways look. “Your parents were our age.”

  “Yeah, and look how that worked out.” I felt a weird pang of compassion for my mom, and a sudden curiosity. Had it been like this? My mom and her friend Sheri, trying to decide what to do?

  “I was scared that if I had an abortion, I might regret it later. But then I thought about your mom,” Toni said. “And, no offense, but having a baby so young kind of screwed up her life, didn’t it? I mean, I want to go to university and all that.”

  I shrugged. “My mom always says she never regretted it.”

  “Well, sure. She has to say that, doesn’t she?” Toni tucked her hair behind her ears, where it stayed for about one second before springing free. “Anyway, I decided I could have regrets either way. I mean, if I had a baby and regretted it? That’d be way worse than regretting an abortion.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, for sure.” We were quiet for a moment. A bunch of crows swooped overhead and landed nearby, pecking at the grass and cawing raucously.

  “I’m so glad I don’t have to make that decision,” Toni said.

  “God, yeah. Plus, imagine telling your mom.”

  “Believe me, I’ve been imagining it.”

  I thought about Toni’s mom. She was very nice, but she was also very conventional. Conservative, even. In her world, teenagers did not have sex. They definitely did not get pregnant.

  “I wish I had your mom, sometimes,” Toni said.

  “She would totally freak out if I got pregnant.” I thought about the weird sex conversation I’d had with my mom that morning. It had been embarrassing, but I had to admit she’d been cool. No heavy warnings about being careful or taking precautions. I liked to think that she figured I knew all that—we’d had the Big Sex Talk when I was about twelve—but who knew. Probably she was secretly relieved that her daughter’s biggest worry was that she might never want to have sex.

  Toni got up. “I’m starving. You want to come in and have some lunch with me?”

  “Okay.”

  She tugged on the door. “Nice one, Dylan. You’ve locked us out.”

  “Oops. Sorry. I didn’t want your mom to hear us.” I gestured at the house. “Can’t you just knock?”

  “My mom’s not even home, you idiot. And I’m in my pajamas.” She started to laugh. “You better take me to your house and feed me. Otherwise I really will be pissed at you.”

  I gestured to my bike. “Hop on the back, if you want.” She grinned and we both got on.

  “We haven’t ridden double in years,” Toni said as we set off, wobbling slightly.

  I pedaled harder. “Yeah. It’s coming back to me though. You know what they say…‘It’s like riding a bike’. ”

  “Har har har.”

  We rode in silence for a while. My hands were freezing, but the sky, for once, was blue. A bank of low dark clouds ringed the horizon, leaving a clear patch right over town. It was often like that here. Something to do with the ocean and mountains. I listened to the zinging noise of the bike tires on the still-wet road and felt calmer than I had in ages.

  Toni and I were okay again. Jax was history. Everything was going to be okay. And I just knew my bone marrow would be a match for Casey.

  It had to be.

  TWenTY-eIGHT

  On Friday morning, I woke up feeling anxious. I lay in bed, sorting through the haze of sleep and dreams and trying to figure out why. There were too many things to be worried about lately. A cloud of anxiety drifted at the edges of my mind, ominous but undefined. I’d dreamed about Casey, that she’d been flying back to Ontario and the plane had crashed. I sat up and rubbed my hands over my face, trying to erase the dream from my mind.

  It had been nine days ago since I’d had the blood test. Five days to go. I hadn’t seen Casey or Mark again. Mark had told me to call them, but I hadn’t, and he obviously wasn’t interested enough to make a call himself. For all I knew, they were back in Ontario already.

  Anyway, I wasn’t expecting to hear from them. So when the phone rang while I was eating breakfast, I assumed it was Toni and ran to answer it.

  “Dylan? It’s Mark. Ah, is Amanda there?”

  She was in the living room, but I didn’t want to be the last to find out. “Not right here. So…did you get the test results already?”

  “Not yet.”

  I wondered why he was calling. Not to chat with me, clearly. The back of my neck tingled, like little electric shocks running down my spine. “So, um, I guess you’re back in Ontario now?”

  “No.” He hesitated.

  I figured he was wondering whether to call back later and talk to Mom. “So what’s up? How’s Casey?”

  “Actually, that’s why I’m calling. She’s not too well. She’s been admitted to hospital.” He cleared his throat. “She’s at the General. I was wondering if you’d like to come and see her. She really enjoyed meeting you. She’s talked a lot about it.”

  I wanted to ask if she was going to be okay, but something stopped me. “She sure liked those dollhouses,” I said instead.

  “She sure did.”

  There was a long pause. “Um. I think I hear Mom,” I told him. “I’ll just go get her.”

  I took the phone into the living room. Mom was lying on the floor in some weird yoga pose. I handed her the phone. “It’s Mark.”

  She swung her legs back to a more normal position and took the phone. “Mark? Hi.”

  I hung around, trying to listen in, but all Mom said was stuff like, Yeah, Uh-huh, Okay, Oh no, I see, et cetera, et cetera. So I had no idea what the conversation was about. I pulled at a hangnail on my thumb until the skin tore and a tiny droplet of blood squeezed out. I stared at it and wondered how they tested blood. Something about HLA markers, from what I’d read online, but I didn’t really know what that meant.

  I remembered Lisa’s crossed fingers and found myself crossing mine tightly. The gesture didn’t feel foolish this time. I pictured Casey’s round face as she looked at the dollhouses, and hoped as hard as I could that I could help her.

  Even if Mark never did want to spend time with me. Even if no one ever knew about it. Even if the doctors had to stick needles in every bone in my body.

  Mom finally put down the phone and turned to me. “I guess you know that Casey’s sick.”

  I hunche
d on the couch and wrapped my arms around my knees. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Mark said she had a fever and was throwing up, so they took her to Emergency. Because, you know, they were worried…”

  “Is it the cancer? It’s come back?” Mark had said that Casey’s remission probably wouldn’t last very long, but it hadn’t occurred to me that she might relapse before we even knew whether I could help.

  She gestured helplessly. “They don’t know. I mean, yeah, that’s what they’re worried about.”

  “But throwing up…I mean, lots of kids throw up. Right? It could be just stomach flu or something.”

  Mom sat down on the couch beside me and tried to put an arm around my shoulder, but I stiffened and pulled away. I hate being touched when I’m upset, and Mom’s always doing it.

  “Listen, Pickle. They don’t know. So yes, it could just be a virus.”

  “But they don’t think so. Mark doesn’t think so, does he?” My voice wobbled.

  “He’s hoping that’s all it is, but he’s scared and...” Mom hesitated.

  “What? What were you going to say?”

  “Oh, baby…Casey’s blood counts are down. Her platelets, Mark said, and something called neutrophils.”

  “They’re a type of white blood cell.” I wrapped my arms around myself. I’d read about all this online. “Not the ones she has cancer in. Another kind.”

  Mom gave me an odd look. “Well, that can indicate a relapse. But it’s possible that it’s due to a virus too. They don’t know for sure yet.”

  “I have to be a match,” I whispered. “I have to be.”

  Mom didn’t say anything.

  “Can I stay home?”

  “Sitting by the phone isn’t going to make any difference. Anyway, school will help take your mind off all this.” She hesitated. “I’ll pick you up after school. I think it’d be a good idea for you to visit her. I’m sure she’d like that.”

  I stared at my mother for a minute, trying to read beneath the words, see past all the lies she’d told me. I dropped my eyes to her wrist, but the red and green of the hummingbird was hidden beneath her sleeve.