by Melody Grace
“Will you be OK getting home?” he asked, and I could already see it, that kid-glove concern I’d fought to keep at bay. I wasn’t just Claire to him anymore, I was Claire with cancer, and there was no taking it back.
I nodded, my voice failing me now.
This time, when he walked away from me, I didn’t try to follow. I watched him go, a shadow slipping into the darkness, until I couldn’t tell him from the night.
Then he was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Hope died in the springtime, when the world was supposed to be cherry-blossom fresh and only just beginning. We buried her on a blue-skied day so bright it hurt my heart to look, and marked the headstone with a dozen yellow daffodils, dancing in the breeze. I thought I knew what it was to love and lose, to feel that wretched agony split your world apart, the jagged edged of an empty forever taunting with every raw, ragged breath. I thought I’d seen the worst of it, mourning for her, for me, for the lives we’d never get to lead. And then I lost Theo, too, and discovered that heartbreak comes in a thousand shades of blue.
I don’t know how I made it home. Looking back even now, there’s nothing but glimpses; my brain snapped tight against the grief. The crunch the snow made under my stumbling boots, the glint of headlights blurring neon in the night. I swam, dizzy through the rush of blood pounding in my ears, barely breathing all the way back. I must have found the footsteps somehow, because I woke up in darkness, still dressed on my bed. My head ached, my lungs burned, and my heart . . . my heart was broken clean apart.
It was over. He was gone. And with him, with Theo’s fast-departing stride, he’d taken with him the only thing I had left to cling on to, my sweet and distant daydream of a love that could somehow even make the rage of my tumor fade away.
It was over. It was all my fault.
It was over, and I had nothing left now until the end.
My mom found me that way, curled on top of the covers with my snow-damp boots staining the sheets, weeping so hard my body convulsed to chase the anguish out of me. Every ragged sob sent a sledgehammer splintering through my brain but I couldn’t stop, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but gasp for air and grip tight to the mattress to keep from falling off the edge of the world.
“Honey . . .” Her voice came slipping through my hysteria, but I was too far gone to pull myself back. “Claire, sweetheart, you need to breathe. Claire!”
Breathe? I could barely feel my own body. I was lost to it, anchorless, pitched wild on the tempest of grief. My sobs shuddered over and my head cracked in pain, and even though she’d done this, broken my life apart, I couldn’t resist when Mom pulled me to her and rocked me in her lap like she’d done so many countless times before.
“Breathe, baby,” she murmured, her voice cracking with fear. “Please, just breathe.”
But he was still gone, and I was still cut in two, and nothing would change that. Nothing would be so perfect ever again. The truth grabbed hold of me, sent me tumbling into its bleak depths, and still I cried. I cried for everything I’d lost, and everything I would never get to lose again. The boy who’d made me believe in forever, even if forever was measured out in minutes, not months and years. I’d been fooling myself, ignoring the fact that every morning I woke up in his arms brought me one day closer to the grave but oh, how sweet that denial had been. A week, a month—I’d sworn that every moment with him would be enough to last me a lifetime, but I’d lied. I could live to a hundred, spend decades in his arms, and I could never have enough.
There was never enough time.
“Shhh, that’s right.” Mom held me. “It’s OK, Claire. It’s all going to be alright.”
My grief didn’t waver, but the body can only take so much. Soon enough, my sobs subsided and my limbs stilled, leaving nothing but an empty ache and a bullet wound through my skull. Mom sat there, gently stroking my hair, until I finally lifted my head and she reached wordlessly for one of the bottles, passed me two pills and the glass of water, and watched as I obediently swallowed them down. “I thought you caught a flight home.”
“I couldn’t leave you.”
I felt bloody, split open, and sanded raw. “He’s gone, Mommy.” I crumpled at the words. “You told him, and now he’s gone.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” Her voice was soft and she held me tight, rocking back and forth, back and forth. “I was trying to help. I thought maybe, if he knew, he could help you. Look out for you.”
I didn’t want to believe her, but I didn’t have it in me left to fight. She was all I had left now, wasn’t she? Her, and Dad, counting down to the end. Could I really hold it against her to try and steal me back, snatch the last few moments of her baby’s life alone? I was too sick to even think about it, it all seemed drifting and far away, so I just shrugged my jacket off and fumbled, trying to unlace my boots.
“I’ve got it.”
She knelt on the floor by the bed and un-looped the stays, peeling off my boots and gently undressing me piece by layered piece. I let her, like all those days I was wheeled home from chemo treatments too sick to even stand, until I was wrapped in a soft cocoon of machine-fresh flannel, slipping deep beneath the covers.
“You’ll feel better in the morning,” she said, leaning in to press a gentle kiss to my forehead, like always. But this wasn’t poison racing in my veins, or the sluggish distance of recovery, scars lacing tic-tac-toe across the back of my skull. This was my heart torn open, not my body, and for that, I knew, there was no repair.
Mom closed the door quietly behind her, but sleep didn’t come, not just yet. I curled tight, and waited for the pills to work their magic, seeping softly through my pain, threading my body with numb delirium until finally, I couldn’t feel it anymore. I couldn’t feel a thing. I was empty and floating and free, with nothing but an echo of the ache that had gripped me and the thunder in my skull. But they were waiting, I knew. The wolves were at my door, and tomorrow, it would all be back again: the pain and the loneliness and the bitter slow-burn countdown that ruled my days. The only thing that wouldn’t return sure as clockwork with the rising sun was the one thing I wanted more than anything.
Theo.
A slow tear slipped down my cheek. I stared at the shadows on the ceiling and wondered, what was left now for me until the end?
How easy would it be to just slip away right now?
Maybe you think it’s unspeakable, to crave life and contemplate death in the same desperate heartbeat, but it’s the truth. Even as I fought my hardest, pining for another lifetime, another hundred years, those dark, dangerous thoughts still found a way to snake in the back of my mind, when the nights were longest and I felt so alone. The low whisper tempting me with some semblance of control; a way to rule my destiny even as the cancer took me over, one final act to say that this body, this life, was all my own. It sat there on my nightstand, after all: one little bottle. Two dozen tiny pills. Hope kept hers hidden in a tiny glass jar at the back of her dresser drawer. A boy I met in chemo—bald and brazen and barely skin stretched across brittle bones—told me to start hoarding soon, early, and often. They pay attention later, he said with a hollow smile. You need to stock up now, before they dole them out in singles, and never leave you with the lot.
A way out, before even that effort was beyond you.
A way out, before the toxic end dismantled you piece by gasping piece.
She begged me once, in the hospital, three weeks before the end. I pretended like I hadn’t heard her, got up and went to get us sodas from the machine down the hall, my heart racing, sick inside. It would have been easy, that’s what she told me, and it was true. I knew where she kept her pills and how to slip past the night nurses who turned a blind eye to visiting hours, how to leave the bottle open there on the table, or even worse, feed them to her one by one, washed down with a sickly-sweet cherry coke, the taste that would linger to the end.
I stared at that neon machine with my hands shaking, knowing that if she
meant it, if this was her plan, then nothing would stand in Hope’s way. Whether it was me or her or someone else, she would make it come true, the way she did with everything else in the world. An unstoppable force. Unstoppable—until the end.
I don’t know how long I stood there, terrified of the choice ahead, but when I finally went back to her room with two cans and a bag of M&Ms, she was watching old Friends reruns on the tiny TV screen as if nothing had happened. I scooted up on the bed with her, still wound tight with fear, and we watched the sitcom audience laugh until she felt asleep beside me, breath stuttering as the ventilator whirred on slow.
She never asked again, and maybe that was her gift to me. She went slowly, fearfully, painfully, but she went alone, fighting until the end.
Just like I would, too.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
When I woke again the next morning, sunlight burned the edges of the heavy drapes, and my heart ached fresh, the safe wisps of chemical denial dissolving fast in the early light to leave me raw and bruised again. I slowly lifted myself out of bed and sat there, staring at the floor. For the first time in months, the day ahead stretched not like a gift, but an enemy, filled with an empty accusation I couldn’t bear to face.
You lied. You lied. He’s gone.
I forced myself to take a breath and padded slowly to the bedroom door, the frigid floorboards a shock against my bare feet. I could hear voices outside murmured low, and when I pushed it open, my parents looked up from the breakfast table with matching expressions of anxious concern.
“You’re awake.” My mom leapt up. “I fixed some eggs, but I can make you some toast if your stomach isn’t up to it. Your father picked up some bagels, too.”
“Better than the ones we get back home,” he said, trying to smile. “They were baking them fresh right there in the back of the shop. I’ll have to stock up.”
They were trying so hard it hurt to even see. All they had to do these days was worry about me. God, how exhausting must that be?
“A bagel sounds good,” I said quietly, and I went to join them at the table. “Sesame?”
“Is there any other kind?” My father’s smile was cut through with clear relief, so I let him toast me one, while Mom poured juice and nudged some cut apple onto my plate, and we sat there together, the radio playing somewhere down the hall, and the pages of my father’s newspaper crinkling with every turn. It was so normal I could almost pretend that this was real. That I was a student at the art school here, and they really had just stopped by for a holiday visit, and would be back again in the springtime maybe, or I would pile some boxes in a car and hit the endless highway back home for the summer vacation.
“You’ll need to book another flight,” I finally said, pressing my fingertip to catch the last seeds scattered on my plate.
Mom gave him a look. “We were thinking,” Dad began cautiously. “If you’re happier here, we could stay too. Rent an apartment nearby.”
“The hospital here is excellent,” Mom added. “Doctor Benson is up to date now with your case, so we can call or go in if . . . if you need anything.”
“But only if that’s what you want,” my dad said firmly, placing a restraining hand on Mom’s. “It’s up to you, Claire. Whatever you want from these next few months, we’re here for you.”
What did I want? The question shivered in the air. Even with Theo gone now, I couldn’t imagine taking that westbound flight to Texas. Returning to my childhood bedroom and that old familiar cancer ward would feel like a failure, turning on my tail and sloping home. Turning my back on everything I’d fought so hard to build.
And still, I hoped for him. Time, he’d asked for. How much time would it take?
“I’d like to stay,” I said softly, knowing I was asking the world of them, but still needing it, God, I needed it so badly.
“Then we’ll stay.” Dad nodded.
“But what about work?” I asked, twisting inside.
He gave me a faint smile. “Don’t worry about that. I’ve taken a leave of absence. We’d always planned it; they can spare me for a little while.” His words landed softly, but I heard my mom’s rushed intake of breath. His face changed. “Or a long while,” he added quickly. “What matters is that we’re here for you.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, to keep from breaking down. Yet again, they’d rearranged their life to fit the space my cancer had left for them, without question. Without complaint.
Mom forced a bright smile. “Won’t this be fun? I’ll start making calls about an apartment. A college town like this, it should be simple. We’ll get a two bedroom, so you have a place to move when . . . when you decide you want to.” She got up and began clearing our plates, bustling with a busy, tight energy. “The city is nice, but I think we should be this side of the river, closer to you. Something with character, there’s so much history here, it’s a nice change, don’t you think?” She ran the water in the kitchen sink, clattering dishes and squirting soap. I leaned against the counter and watched her. I knew her too well; she would sweep us onwards without a backwards glance, not a word about what she’d done to get us here.
“Mom.” I stopped her. “It isn’t OK. What you did. You had no right.”
She stopped breathing, and I saw her jaw tremble as she stared down into the sink, the dish suds billowing up, over her hands. “I know, sweetheart. I just couldn’t bear it. It felt like . . . it felt like you chose him. Over me.”
“Mom . . .” I slipped my arms around and hugged her from behind. “It was never like that. I thought you’d understand.”
“I’m trying.” I felt her voice catch, the flinch in her determined spine. “I just can’t lose you yet, sweetheart. I’m sorry, it’s selfish, but I won’t let you go a moment too soon.”
I exhaled slow, feeling the desperate tension that gripped her body, holding on: holding on to me for as long as she could. We were all just clinging to the rock face, taking whatever handholds we could find. I couldn’t blame her for this, not after everything she’d given up to get me this far.
“I know,” I said softly. “It’s alright. I know.”
The week passed, that winter limbo between Christmas and New Year. Around me, the city came to life again, the streets bright and busy with tourists and shoppers, store lights gleaming in the early-afternoon dusk. My parents found a rental three blocks from the edge of Harvard Square: a second-floor walk-up with wide plank floors and an antique range, with windows that overlooked the tips of the bare park trees. It was fully furnished, and they moved in with nothing but the bags they’d brought from home, but within days my mom had filled the place with the scent of cocoa brewing on the stove and the sound of country classics on the radio playing through the day. They made sure not to smother me—that was Dad’s doing, I knew—but we fell into a routine: arriving at my apartment for a breakfast of fresh bagels in the morning before my shift at work, and ending the day with a family meal around their table, curling up in front of the TV until I was almost too tired to make the walk back home. But I did, every night, with Mom’s gift of a rape alarm pressed in my pocket and the streetlights shining, all the way back. Somehow, I was still clinging on to some semblance of freedom, and I would keep holding tight for as long as I could.
Six days, and Theo hadn’t called.
I turned my phone over in my hands, sat on the floor in the back locker room at Wired after my shift. My legs were stretched out in front of me, tipped with red knit socks, blurring in the background as I focused on the small screen in my hands. Round and round I spun it, a pinwheel of possibility that every day kept coming up short.
Should I call him? The question taunted. Should I be the first one reach out? He’d asked for time, but time was running short. I didn’t want to crowd him, but every day that passed without him was a day that tugged him further away.
And again, my heart splintered open. Maybe he was already gone.
The door opened, and Kelsey trudged in, weighed down with a
backpack and duffel coat and a long, skinny black scarf trailing in her wake.
“You’re back.” I looked up. “How was your holiday?”
She tossed her bag down with a thump and then herself after it, sprawled beside me on the smudged, dusty floor. “I got food poisoning off bad turkey, fought with every person in the state of Connecticut, and almost got arrested trying to drive back here as fast as I could,” she said. “You?”
I took a breath and confessed. “Theo broke it off. I don’t think he’s coming back.”
Kelsey peeled off a strip of red licorice and chewed. “You win.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, bleak. “Do I get a prize?”
She offered me the candy. I took a piece, too sweet on my tongue. “What are you doing tonight?” she asked.
Tonight . . . “New Year’s,” I realized. “Oh.”
“I know,” she said with a sigh. “Peace and goodwill to all mankind.” Kelsey paused and gave me a sideways look. “We should go party.”
I smiled again. “Sure.”
“No, I mean it.” There was a determined glint in her eye now, something sharp and almost dangerous. “You need to forget all this bullshit, just for a night. Start the year as you mean to go on. Don’t let him make you waste it.”
She said it like a challenge, and despite everything, I felt a spark. A lone flame of something burning through my numb, broken heart. “OK,” I told her suddenly. “I’m in. What’s the plan?”
“You’ll see.” She stood and pulled me up by my hands. “Pick you up at nine. And wear something slutty.” I rolled my eyes, but she laughed. “I believe in you, Claire-bear. Be the change you want to see in the world!”
Sure enough, she was on my doorstep at nine, wearing torn fishnet tights under her coat and her no-shit boots laced all the way to her knees. She looked me over with a critical eye, my plain black dress and boots about as wild an outfit as I could dig from my closet. “You’re missing something,” she decided, and pulled her eyeliner out of her purse right there at the top of my steps, holding my chin steady with one hand as the other smudged a dark, steely glare over the crease of my eyelids. I stood patiently, the way I had that Halloween, waiting until her handiwork was complete. Kelsey gave me a satisfied nod. “Now you’re ready.”