by Beth Vrabel
“Tux? What?” I asked.
Mom paused, looking at me like I had just asked if Patrick was polite or if water was wet. “Of course. For the fund-raiser.”
“I thought it was a race?” I felt like I was testing out my voice, making it steady despite another news story about something horrible I had done.
“The race is Saturday,” Patrick said. He was straightening his tie in the hall mirror. Yes, he actually wore ties to his internship. “Friday night is a black-tie event for sponsors.”
“Do we have to go?” I asked. All I wanted to do ever again was stay put in the house.
“Of course we do,” Mom said sharply. “Patrick is playing a concerto he wrote especially for the event.”
“Of course he is,” I echoed.
Mom kissed my forehead as she walked out the door. “Your brother has worked hard for this fund-raiser all summer; he even created a slideshow to play during his concerto. I can’t wait to see it all come together.” She paused and came back, kissing my head again. “Your forehead’s a little hot. Are you okay?” Mom pressed her hand against my cheek.
“I’m fine,” I said, shrugging her off. “Just thrilled about tux shopping, I guess.”
Mom laughed. “Call me if you feel sick, okay?”
The moment the car pulled out of the driveway, I grabbed the blue serum bottle from under my bed. I buried it under a tree on my way to see Kit.
I knew Kit was waiting on Mermaid Rock.
The crows told me.
They perched on either side of the stream, cawing and screeching. As I got closer, I saw them, swooping from one branch to the next, again and again, dipping lower and lower over where Kit sat huddled in the middle with her hands over her ears. I splashed across the stream, past my damp sneakers that were still waiting along the edge, and grabbed Kit’s hand. Together, we ran back to her house, through the open door, past piles of trash and half-emptied boxes, past her mother asleep on the couch, up the staircase, and into the turret room at the top.
I looked around her room. The walls were covered with drawings, sketches on torn-out pages of old books. Drawings of birds. Of fairies flying over treetops. Of me, with water lapping over my ears and my eyes shut. “When did you do these?” I asked. They weren’t little kid drawings or garbled messes like I would’ve done. They were perfect snapshots, done in pencil.
For the first time since I had met her, Kit looked embarrassed. Her cheeks were pink and she didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands. She twisted them into the hem of her T-shirt. “I draw sometimes, at night.” Kit touched the one of me. “It helps me remember.”
Along the edge of the circular room was a pile of old books. I saw gaps where pages were missing. I felt a pang for the notebook I had made her, now shoved into a drawer of my desk. I should’ve given it to her. She shouldn’t have had to draw on other people’s stories like this.
“You’re awesome,” I said.
She smiled, more pink blossoming on her cheeks. “Grandmom and I used to draw a lot. I didn’t think she’d mind if I used her books.”
I looked around. Next to the pile of books were trash bags with clothes in them. One had clothes kind of folded (well, I’d consider them folded. Mom wouldn’t). The other was jammed with what looked like dirty clothes. She didn’t have a closet in the room. “I thought you said you slept here?” I didn’t see a bed anywhere.
“Yeah,” Kit said and pointed to a pile of blankets. “Right here. It’s been too hot some nights, so I go to the porch. Grandmom said she used to sleep on the porch, too.”
I nodded, like it was normal to not have a bed or a closet. I guessed for her, it was.
“About the bird,” I started, “it’s not your fault. You didn’t know.” And then I told her about what Derek said, about how the crows hold a grudge.
Kit shook her head. “No, it’s not that. The fairies are mad at me. I shouldn’t have returned their gift.”
“Kit—” I shook my head, but she cut me off.
“Why is it so hard for you to believe?” she said, her crystal eyes wide. She closed her eyes as if thinking through where to begin. When she opened them again, they spilled over with tears. “I wish Grandmom were here. She’d tell you so you understood—everything. You’d believe her, I know you would, Caleb!”
I didn’t say anything.
“Grandmom told me, Caleb, my whole life she told me about the fairies. And it was true. It is true. That’s why Mama is the way she is. It’s true. It’s true!”
I thought about angels dancing on my fingertips. “Maybe it was just a story,” I whispered.
“No!” Kit stomped her foot. “No.” She turned from me, staring at the drawing of me in the stream. “I thought you were special, too, Caleb. I thought out of anyone, you’d understand!”
“Understand what?” I asked.
Kit turned then, her hands curled into fists. “What it’s like! To know things no one else does. To be different!”
“I do understand,” I said, “but this… this is crazy.”
“Don’t you say that!” Kit stomped her foot again. “Don’t you say that word. It isn’t.” She rushed toward me, gripping my shoulders and looking me straight in the eye just like Mom had days before.
“Then what is it?” I asked. “What is it really?”
She told me, then, what her grandmother, the seer of the unknown, had told her. About how her mom had been beautiful, a perfect child. How special she had always been, right up until she ran off as a teenager. How a fairy must’ve fallen in love with her because one day she came back to Grandmom, with Kit growing in her belly and fairies only she could see in her eyes. How Grandmom told Kit they just had to keep her mom safe, how it wasn’t her fault, how it was no one’s fault. How Kit had nothing to fear from the fairies because she was one of them, how that protected her. But that Kit had to try every day to bring her mom back to make her theirs again, to convince her to take medicine from doctors that would block the fairies, talk her into finding work, and, most of all, to keep secret when Mama lost control, even if it meant being lonely or hungry or sad sometimes. It’s what they had to do to keep Mama safe, Kit said. “I never told anyone else about it, ever,” Kit said. “But when you gave me the book, when you appeared in the woods out of nowhere, I knew the fairies sent you. We’re destined to be friends.”
We were sitting with our backs to the side of the turret, seeing only sky and clouds in the windows all around us, like sitting on a cloud. She smiled and rested her head against my shoulder. My head swam, trying to make sense of everything she told me, trying to separate stories from truth, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t find the spot where one stopped and the other started. I closed my eyes and instead of clouds, I saw shadow parents.
“Do you believe now?” Kit asked.
I closed my eyes, remembering the first moment I saw Kit. Of course I believed her. I had known from that second that she was magical.
I stumbled across the stream, doubling back for my sneakers (again), that afternoon. We had spent all day in the turret, darting down the stairs to go to the bathroom. We shared my lunch, but I only ate half a sandwich. My stomach was all clenched up. Maybe it was because we were so high in the sky. I pretended not to notice how Kit stashed our leftovers under the blankets she slept on. I played music on my phone until the battery died a couple hours later and a few times we even danced ourselves silly, jumping around to the fast songs. Kit said nothing would wake up her mom when she was like that. Plus, she said, music was a kind of magic.
I ran back toward the park, past the shield in the hollow tree like usual, and darted to the sidewalk when the coast was clear. They must’ve been doing a craft or something else lame at the park because I couldn’t hear any of the other campers as I headed home, even though I figured it was barely three o’clock.
And then, just before my house came into view, I remembered. It was like a puzzle piece fell from the sky and onto my head. The tux fitting. Mom was goin
g to pick us up at two o’clock. Maybe it wasn’t too late; my phone had died at about one. Maybe I only thought a couple hours had passed! My heart raced but my feet, they just stopped, as quick as if they landed in super glue, when I got outside my house.
Because there, on the porch, were baskets filled with construction paper cards. A half dozen Captain America and Avengers balloons were looped together. A giant GET WELL SOON banner lay abandoned on the grass. Sitting next to it was Shelly, looking bored and snooty and not at all surprised to see me.
“Wow, you’re in trouble.”
Just then, a high-pitched screechy voice yelled, “He hasn’t been there for how long?”
Shelly leaned back on her elbows. “So much trouble.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Once again, I was sitting on the couch with angry-faced Mom and Dad across from me.
“I demand an explanation!” Mom yelled for the thousandth time.
I stared at my hands.
“Why weren’t you at camp like you led all of us to believe?” Mom asked.
I shrugged.
Dad sighed. He did an exaggerated version of my shrug. “Sorry to inconvenience you. But it was kind of inconvenient to shell out a couple grand for a camp you’ve been to twice all summer. Twice!”
“It’s not about the money as much as it is us not knowing what you’re doing,” Mom volleyed. “Where were you? What were you doing?”
Now I stared at a dark spot on the beige carpet. It kept jumping, or maybe that was just my head. It pounded with every breath I pushed in and out.
“Caleb,” Mom said, softer now, “don’t you understand that we need to know. You don’t have the luxury of doing whatever you’d like. You have special concerns. We have special concerns regarding you.”
“I’ll do better,” I said. “I’ll go to camp tomorrow.”
“Darn right you’re going to camp!” Dad bellowed.
I stood, my legs wobbling. “I don’t feel well. Can I go to bed?”
Dad crossed his arms. “Sit down. Your nap can wait.”
I sat.
Mom didn’t look up. “Do you have any idea what it was like for me just now? Wondering why you’re late and then the camp counselor shows up with balloons—with get-well cards—wanting to let you know they’ve missed you so much.”
I shook my head, now staring at the layer of dust on the coffee table.
“Of course not,” Dad snapped. “You never think of anybody but yourself.”
I stood again. “I really need to go to bed. I’m sorry.”
“Sit down!” Mom and Dad yelled together.
I sat.
“I want to know exactly how you’ve been spending your days,” Mom said. “I know it isn’t here. Patrick told me he gets home before you or at the same time almost every day and it’s clear no one’s been there.”
“I don’t know, Mom,” Patrick butted in from where he sat at the kitchen table. “It’s not like I was searching for clues or anything. I guess he could’ve been here and then left just before I got home so it wouldn’t look like anyone had been here.”
“Is that what happened, Caleb?” Mom demanded. “Were you just staying at home all day? Why would you do that?”
Patrick cleared his throat. “Well, he is a lot older than most of the other kids at camp. There was only one other twelve-year-old and she’s the counselor’s cousin.”
I stared at my shoelace.
“Is that it, Caleb?” Mom asked. “Are you embarrassed to be at camp?”
“Can I have a drink of water?” I asked instead of answering.
“Go to your room,” Mom snapped. “Go to your room and don’t come out until I tell you otherwise.”
Hours later, Mom brought in a tray of food and left without saying anything. It was dark when I woke up, shrugged on my vest, and went through my nighttime meds. I clicked on Captain America. It was the scene where he got his shield for the first time.
I smiled, even though no one was there to see it. Here’s the thing: While I sort of felt sick, I also felt really good. For the first time in a long time, I felt good. I wasn’t carrying around a heavy secret. Mom and Dad knew I hadn’t been to camp. It was over.
Mom opened the door before I could wipe the smile off my face. She turned off the TV, unplugged it, and carried it from the room.
I stopped feeling so good after that.
Mom woke me the next morning by standing in the doorway and saying, “Get up.”
She was still mad then.
I was a little dizzy as I got to the kitchen, and my head pounded, but no way was I going to complain to Mom. She had made a big production out of announcing that she had to take the day off work to get Patrick in to rent a tuxedo since we missed the appointment the night before. I didn’t ask about my tux. I sort of guessed my invitation had been revoked.
“Crows are worked up today,” Patrick said as we walked to Mom’s car. Kit was waiting for me at Mermaid Rock, I knew. As the birds screeched, I wondered how long she’d wait for me there.
So if you skip camp for a couple months, leaving the other campers under the impression you’re sick, and then a whole week of camp is spent making stupid get-well cards for you, no one is all that jazzed to see you upon your return.
Plus, it was the last week of camp, and just about everyone had a group. Four guys sat on top of a picnic table hashing it out about Pokémon cards they found in one their parents’ basement. About a dozen kids played tag, the same guys going after the same girls each time. A few people did the craft—crocheting pot holders—with Ava in the center of the pavilion. Another trio played soccer. In fact, the only one not doing something with someone else was, of course, Shelly. She leaned against the wall of the pavilion, her feet up on a chair, reading comic books.
I sat on the other side of the pavilion and tried not to think about how long Kit had waited for me to show that morning, how much angrier than usual my dad was, and when my mom might smile at me again.
After lunch (I’m sure it was just a coincidence that Mom packed all the foods I don’t like—ham and American with mustard, sour cream and onion chips, vanilla snack cakes, and soggy grapes), Ava told us all to change for the pool. I didn’t bother, just slumped into the lounge chair by the water.
I couldn’t stop shivering even though it was like ninety degrees out. I grabbed one of the beach towels off the rack and pulled it around me like the world’s worst blanket. Here’s the thing: by then, I knew I wasn’t just nervous or guilty and that was what was making me wobbly and giving me a headache. I figured out I was actually sick. But it was such horrible timing. Would anyone at camp even believe me if I was like, “Oh, hey, you know how I let you all think I was sick all summer? Now, I actually am sick.” The last thing I needed was to bother Mom. So I tried to ignore it. Until I couldn’t.
The football guys showed up, Brad at the helm, and dove into the pool, even though the lifeguards whistled at them and the splash shot chlorinated water up the noses of all the littler kids in the pool. I rolled onto my side away from them.
“Hey!” Jett shouted. “Brad, isn’t that Caleb? I heard he was dying or something.”
“Nope!” I heard Brad shout back from the other side of the pool. “Turns out he’s just a liar.”
“Ouch,” Shelly said as she sat on the lounge chair next to me. She tossed a comic book onto the chair. “Finished this one. It’s pretty good.”
“Thanks,” I muttered. I opened the book, but the words danced around the page. I was so, so cold. My teeth banged into each other.
“You don’t look so good, Caleb,” Shelly said.
“I-I’mmmm fine.” My legs curled up toward my stomach as the coughing started. Hacks erupted out of me like lava. I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t sit up, couldn’t do anything but cough.
“Ava!” Shelly screamed. “Ava!”
Mom’s car screeched into the parking lot a few minutes later.
Her face blurred in and out of focus in
front of me, her hand scalded me as she laid it across my forehead. “He’s burning up,” she said. “We need to get him to the hospital.”
“Should I call nine-one-one?” someone—Ava—said behind her.
“It’ll be faster for us to go straight there than to wait for an ambulance,” Mom said.
And then I was in the air, lifted by two steady arms, one under my knees, the other under my arms. Patrick. When did he get strong enough to lift me up like that? “Thanks,” I muttered.
“Don’t mention it,” he said back.
Four days later, I heard Dr. Edwards talking to Mom and Dad just outside my hospital room. I kept my eyes closed and pretended to be sleeping.
“Frankly,” Dr. Edwards said, “we’re incredibly lucky he’s never been this sick before. This is only the third time he’s had pneumonia since he was diagnosed, which is remarkable.”
“Lucky?” Dad snapped.
“Yes,” Dr. Edwards said firmly, “very lucky. In no small part due to Steph’s constant vigilance. But the truth is, despite all the advances we continue to make with CF, it’s a progressive disease. I think it’s time we start making some serious decisions.”
“Like what?” Mom voiced my question.
“I never want to be this caught off guard by Caleb again. It’s too challenging to bring his white blood cells back to an appropriate level from where they plummeted. I want him in for IV antibiotic infusions every four months, year round. He’ll be admitted under a controlled environment, stick around for two weeks, and then we’ll release him stronger and better able to fight infections before they settle.”
I peeked through my lashes. Dad leaned against the doorway. “We’re there already?”
Dr. Edwards said, “This isn’t a bad thing, George. It’s what he needs and where many, many of my patients have been for years before they reach his age. With any luck, that and Caleb’s commitment to his physio care, we should be able to get to his twenties—maybe even through them—before he’s on the transplant list.”