by Beth Vrabel
I shook my head again. “No, I was sick.”
Patrick nodded. “Right. Like I said, massive panic attack.” He put the violin back into the hard black case. “So I was right about you having a girlfriend. Just wrong about which one.”
“What happened?” I ask. “I only remember falling.”
“That girl, Kit, she saw you fall. She pulled you over to the shore. I don’t know how. She’s probably the only person skinnier than you. Anyway, she pulled you to the shore and came barreling through the woods, screaming that you needed help. Mom heard her and came running. You’ve got to stop sneaking off like that.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, and rubbed my palms into my eyes. “I won’t do it again.”
“I don’t need to worry,” Patrick said. “Mom’s putting an alarm system on your windows and the doors.”
“Seriously? Geez! She’s overreacting!”
“It was Dad’s idea,” Patrick said.
For a few seconds, I just listened to Patrick pack up his violin. He did so deliberately, wiping down the shiny wood and laying it so it was cradled in the blue velvet case. “What was that song called? The one you just played,” I finally asked.
Patrick’s ears turned red. “‘Caleb.’”
I stifled a groan but fell back against the bed. Once again Perfect Patrick does something noble.
“Don’t worry,” Patrick said, his voice cold. “No one you know heard it. Mom and Dad were at the hospital with you during the fund-raiser.”
“Like I did that on purpose.” I rolled onto my side, away from him. I guessed now Patrick would just have to show them how perfect he was by winning yet another race, getting another scholarship, or kicking butt in whatever it was he’d try next to show me up. Perfect Patrick, at it again. He couldn’t even leave CF to me.
“Do you know what it’s like,” Patrick said so softly I barely heard him, “to be your brother?”
I snorted. “Yeah, it must be so hard to outshine me in absolutely everything. Even breathing.”
“Yeah.” Patrick laughed, but it was brittle. “It is. It is crazy hard. All they want, all they’ve ever wanted from the time you were diagnosed, is for you to live. Live. That’s all you have to do to be a success. Me? I’ve got to show them constantly that I’m here, too. I’ve got to prove that when—I mean, if…”
“Go ahead!” I shouted. And then immediately coughed. “Say it. When I die.”
“When you die,” Patrick repeated, his voice hollow, “I have to be as good as two sons.”
Mom came into the room a minute after Patrick stormed off. Too soon.
“Patrick?” I heard her say from the hall outside my room. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“He’s awake,” Patrick replied. In a moment, Mom was by my side, whatever she had seen in Patrick forgotten.
She breathed out long and gentle when I smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. She held the World of Faerie book. When Kit had gotten me help, she left the book behind, too. “When you’re ready, Caleb, I have a lot of questions.”
I pushed myself up on my pillows. “Mom,” I said, “can I talk to you about Kit?” My mind, which had been sticky as chewed-up gum before—holding on to every single thought about Patrick, Brad, Shelly, Dad, Mom, camp, and lungs—suddenly focused.
I opened my mouth and I shattered Kit’s life as surely as if I threw it against that barn door.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
When I finished telling Mom everything, she left the room. A little later she came back with a stranger. “Caleb, this is Ms. Grimes. She wants to talk to you about what you told me.” Mom glanced from me to the woman. She was young, maybe in her midtwenties, with red lipstick and eyes lined in black. Her hair was curly and when she took off her jacket and pulled up a chair to sit next to me, I saw angel wings tattooed on her shoulders.
“You can call me Jess,” she said as she sat down. I saw a badge clipped to her jacket pocket and my heart got thumpy again.
“Are you a police officer?” I asked.
Jess paused. “No. I work for the government, though. Do you need a police officer?”
“It’s just—I committed a crime.”
Jess nodded and her red lips twitched. “Your mom mentioned that. You set loose a dog, right? I did a little digging there. One of my friends is an animal control officer. That dog has been found. Turns out he’s mostly wolf. They found a place for him in a sanctuary a few hours from here.”
“He?” I repeated.
Jess nodded. “He’s quite happy, from what I understand. They named him Ralph. And his former owner is facing a hefty fine for buying a wild animal.” She shifted in the plastic chair. “I know about the barn, too. Mr. McDaniel does not plan to press charges. I think your mom had something to do with that.”
“If Mom told you everything already, why do you need hear it from me?” I asked.
Mom pulled her purse up her arm. “I’m going to grab a cup of coffee. Jess, would you like any?”
“Yeah,” she said. “That’d be great.”
“Cream and sugar?” Mom asked.
“Nope. Black as my soul.” Mom didn’t laugh, but I did. Jess winked at me as Mom left the room. “I work with an agency that looks out for kids. If they’re in trouble or need help, I help them find what they need. I need you to tell me what’s going on with your friend so I know how to help her.”
“Are you going to take Kit from her mom?”
Jess folded her hands on her lap. “If that’s what she needs in order to be safe, and for her mom to get the help she needs, then yes. But maybe you could tell me a little about what you shared with your mom and then we’ll decide what to do?”
“Can I ask you something first?”
“Of course.” Jess smiled. Her front tooth bent over the one beside it. I liked that about her.
“Do you believe in fairy tales?”
Jess glanced out the window for a second. “As in everyone gets a happily ever after? And maybe there are guardians, fairy godmothers or whatever, out there, waiting for the perfect moment to appear and fix everything?”
I nodded.
“No,” she answered. “I don’t. I think we have to sometimes fight to get what we need. And what we need isn’t always what we want. Sometimes getting what we need—what we see others need, too—hurts.”
I didn’t speak for a moment. “I don’t know where to start.”
“Start at the beginning,” Jess said. “What’s the first thing you remember about Kit?”
I swallowed, thinking about the trees I saw growing apart from each other the day I met Kit. About how that meant they were friends. “Kit says it was destiny that we met, but I was just going for a walk.”
I got out of the hospital two days later. Mom made me stay in bed for another two days after that, even though I felt fine.
Jess stopped by the house and told us she had followed up with Kit. She said what she found out backed up what I had told her. Kit’s mom wasn’t capable of taking care of her. Kit sometimes went days without eating or having a safe place to sleep. Jess said Kit had been in danger, and I knew deep inside that falling out of the tree hadn’t been what bruised her face. Now Kit lived in a new town, with an older couple who always wanted to have a daughter. “She’s with a very kind family,” Jess said. “She gets to be a kid.”
“She hates me, doesn’t she?” I said.
Jess squeezed my hand. “Someday she’ll understand.”
I shook my head. She wouldn’t understand. She’d never understand. “Are there trees at her new house?”
Jess just smiled.
I held out the notebook I had made for Kit, the one with the bad painting of the crow and all the empty pages. “Will you give her this from me?” Jess said she would try.
On the third day, I told Mom I was going to Mermaid Rock. Just like that. I said, “I’m going to Mermaid Rock.”
Mom was sitting with Derek on the couch. Both of them looked at me for a
long time. “She’s not there, Caleb,” Mom said. Even though she stayed seated, even though Derek squeezed her shoulder, Mom’s hands rose like she wanted to pull me toward her.
I stepped back. “I know. I just want to go there.”
Mom nodded. Her hands dropped. “Take your phone.”
I went back to my room to grab my phone. Derek stood by the front door as I made my way toward it. “Do you want any company?” he asked.
I shook my head and pushed past him. But I turned, halfway out the door. “Do you really think trees can be friends?”
Derek nodded, looking down at his shoes. “I do.”
“Do you think it hurts to grow apart? When they’re friends, I mean.”
Derek did look up then. He nodded again. “I’m sure it does.”
I thought about that now as I walked back to our rock. I rubbed at the aching in my chest, telling myself the pain was okay. Maybe someday I’d hear from Kit again. Maybe not.
On the way to the rock, I dug up the blue serum bottle. I grabbed the bark shield, too. At the stream’s edge, I kicked off my shoes. The woods were so quiet, the water so cold. I climbed the rock and stood upon it.
Kit wasn’t here, so I talked to the trees.
“You were right,” I said, my voice echoing through the woods. “You were right. You said we were destined to be friends. You said everything would change because of it. You were right.” I threw back my head and shouted it. “You were right!”
A single crow swooped overhead. I left the bottle and the shield on the rock as I slid off. The rock seemed so much smaller without her on it. Even though I wanted to, I didn’t look back at the rock to see if the gift was accepted.
When I got back to the trail, Patrick was there. For a second—just a second—a flash of resentment went through me. “Hey, Patrick,” I said instead of yelling at him.
“This is where you’ve been hanging out?”
“Yeah.” I picked up a rock and skipped it across the stream. It bounced four times. Soon Patrick picked up one, too. His only skipped once and fell in.
“You’ve been a real jerk,” Patrick muttered as he threw another stone. This one landed with a plunk.
“I know.” I threw another stone. Seven skips. Then I shoved my hands in my pockets and forced words thicker than mud to come up through my mouth. “I’m sorry. I… I think sometimes it’s easier to hate you than it is to hate all the things you get to do and I don’t.”
Patrick swallowed, his throat bobbing up and down. “Sometimes I do things just because you can’t.” He didn’t look at me, just stared across the stream. “Can you show me how to skip rocks?”
So I did. I think he probably already knew how, but it was cool to teach him anyway.
Mom drove me to school the next day even though I usually took the bus. She waited in the car, watching me, as I walked into the building. She’d become a bit suspicious.
This year, we had to switch rooms for each class. Right before lunch, I had art class. We could draw whatever we wanted. I painted a blackbird. It still looked more like a blob than a bird, but I kind of liked it. The art room was on the other side of the building from the nurse’s office, where I had to stop for Creon, so instead of being first for lunch like I had been the year before, I was last.
I’d like to say the whole cafeteria quieted as I walked in, waiting to see where I’d sit, but the truth is, no one seemed to notice. All the seats at Brad’s table were taken, but I wouldn’t have sat there if that were different. Brad had nodded when we passed in the hall earlier, but I could tell things were never going to be the same. Sometimes friends grow apart.
“Mind if I sit down?” I asked, standing just beside Shelly. I had to repeat it, since she had in earbuds and was listening to music.
She raised an eyebrow. “It’s a free country,” she said, and kicked a chair back a little for me to sit.
“Did you hear Black Widow’s getting her own movie?” I asked as I unpacked my lunch box.
“’Bout time,” Shelly said.
When the bell rang twenty minutes later, we were still debating whether Captain America should’ve risked everything for Bucky.
“Can I ask you something?” Shelly said.
“It’s a free country.”
She rolled her eyes. Hers were brown, like chocolate. Like mine. “Why’d you sit with me?” Shelly stared hard at her tray, her ears red. “If you’re here to make fun of me…”
“No!” I said quickly. “It’s not that at all. It’s just… we both could use a friend, I think.”
“No one put you up to this?” Shelly crossed her arms.
“Nah, I wouldn’t do that.” I smiled, thinking of Kit. “Besides, I do what I want.”
(Plus, Patrick was right. Shelly was sort of cute.)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you doesn’t begin to encompass the gratitude I have to those who opened their hearts and shared their experiences of living with cystic fibrosis. Many thanks especially to William Marler, an award-winning filmmaker and all-around great person. Will spreads awareness of cystic fibrosis through his podcast, Straight from the Lungs. Be sure to check it out! It’s an honor to be part of it and an even greater honor to be his friend.
Thank you also to Charlee Peters and her son, Jack Shorter. Jack, who is about the same age as my son, is the epitome of optimism, focusing on the bright side whenever and however possible. His mom, Charlee, inspires me with her courage and strength.
I loved getting to know Rab of rmalikreports.wordpress.com. Thank you for sharing your experiences.
Caleb and Kit wouldn’t have been the same without the insight they provided.
I wanted to write a book about friendship, about how sometimes being a good friend means you have to allow the other person to grow in a different direction. And I also wanted to write a book about a character who happens to have cystic fibrosis. Why? Because many children do.
But something happened as I wrote Caleb, as he began to grow and become real in my mind. Sharing his story became difficult. I didn’t want him to be facing this reality. Thank you to my wonderful friend Cecy Robson, who sensed this when I floated the idea of changing the story from first to third person. “Knock it off,” she told me. “If it scares you, if it’s hard, it’s important.” As always, you were right.
Much love and gratitude to my incredible agent, Nicole Resciniti. You push me to dig deeper, celebrate the result, and then set a new challenge. Where would I be without you? I shudder to think. And to editor extraordinaires Julie Matysik and Adrienne Szpyrka—where do I begin? Having you in my corner means the world to me.
To my family, thank you doesn’t cut it. Not for the days of pelting you with facts about crows and trees. Not for the playlists of songs that “Caleb would love” or that are “so, so Kit” that I made you listen to again and again. Not for blanking out in the middle of a conversation and running upstairs to scribble down a new idea. And not for blanking out through entire conversations, stuck in their world. But thank you is all I’ve got.
Finally, to Maura. You once told me, “You never know how strong you can be until you have to be for your child.” And you are unbelievably strong. But you’re also so much more. You’re radiant, and my life is better because you’re in it. Thank you also to Joey, the toughest little fighter I’ve ever known.
PRAISE FOR
CALEB and KIT
“A realistic story with strong, recognizable characters that doesn’t reduce cystic fibrosis to a tragedy.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A can’t-put-it-down tale. Caleb’s discoveries about his own strength and resilience during his friendship with free-spirited, imaginative Kit will expand your heart and fill your soul. From the beautiful cover to the last sentence, this book is a favorite to savor and share.”
—Bibi Belford, author of Canned and Crushed
“You can’t help but fall in love with twelve-year-old Caleb, his humor, his determination, and his won
der as he navigates his friendship with the mysterious Kit, his changing school relationships, his divorced parents’ issues, and his comparisons to his big brother. You cry and cheer as he learns how hard it can be to do the right thing.”
—Tricia Clasen, author of The Haunted House Project
“Having a disability myself, my heart broke for Caleb, who wants nothing more than to feel like a normal twelve-year-old kid—at any cost. Caleb and Kit will forever be entwined, the roots of their friendship solid, rich, and strong, just like this beautiful story.”
—Kerry O’Malley Cerra, author of Just a Drop of Water
“In the midst of Kit’s self-constructed fantasy world, Caleb’s heroism is the real deal. He’s determined, courageous, and witty despite his unusual physical challenges. Beth Vrabel doesn’t shy away from the tough stuff that can complicate the lives of tweens. Readers young and old will find this a unique novel well-deserving of a permanent place on the family bookshelf.”
—Melissa Hart, author of Avenging the Owl
PRAISE FOR
BETH VRABEL
“Vrabel takes three knotty, seemingly disparate problems—bullying, the plight of wolves, and coping with disability—and with tact and grace knits them into an engrossing whole of despair and redemption.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Vrabel displays a canny understanding of middle-school vulnerability.”
—Booklist
“[Vrabel’s] challenging subject matter is handled in a gentle, age-appropriate way with humor and genuine affection.”
—School Library Journal
“Vrabel tackles some tough issues, including albinism, depression, and loneliness, with a compassionate perspective and a charming voice.”
—Amanda Flower,
author of Agatha Award-winning Andi Boggs series
“Beth Vrabel’s stellar writing captivates readers from the start as she weaves a powerful story of friendship and hardship.”